In this article, we will discuss how changed is possible even when you think it isn’t!
In my work, I have people who come to see me in Hertfordshire because they want to change and they obviously believe that change is possible because otherwise they probably wouldn’t come to see me. There are other people that I work with who are not clients and there are the people that I know socially, for example, where I have noticed that some people develop an idea that the things that they dislike about themselves are not changeable. Think about what I have said there for a second.
Imagine being in a situation where you have resigned yourself to being stuck with the things that you dislike about yourself. You’ve decided that these things cannot be changed that you cannot change them and that there is no point really finding another way of doing things. You are stuck with what you’ve got and that’s the end of it and then imagine that those things about yourself actually really impact your relationships with other people. How well you are perceived by the rest of the world or how well you are able to form other relationships moving forward. Imagine believing that there’s no point even trying because you’re just stuck as you are.
Doesn’t that now just sound a little bit crazy!
Sometimes change is not seen. Sometimes the tools that we need to be able to make changes are not easy to come by and perhaps in the past you have given it your best – gone at it, all guns blazing, thinking that this thing, this new way of being, this methodology, this strategy, this therapeutic intervention, this is going to be the one that finally makes things change for you. NLP Practitioner can help you become open to these ideas.
And then it doesn’t work.
That happens. It happens that sometimes the route that we want to take to create the changes that we wish to make are not the right ones for us, for our individual psychology, for our way of being, for our environment or for our way of life.
Sometimes you don’t hit upon the right route to take you to where you want to be the first time around or second, third or fiftieth. Sometimes change doesn’t come fast. Sometimes it doesn’t come easy and sometimes it doesn’t come via the route that you think you need to take. Mental health makes a big difference here!
Does that mean that you should just back it off and make do with your lot in life?
If this thing that you want to change about yourself is actually quite important or could actually make a really big difference, then it is important to continue the pursuit of that change, in spite of, the knocks, failures and errors that you’re going to make a long way.
We know that the human brain has the ability to rewire itself. It works with neuro-plasticity things can change in there and you can change them but sometimes it’s as if our ego has got cemented into place and that ego says “this is who I am and everyone else is going to have to live with it and in fact, therefore, I have to live with it too. I have to stay this way.”
Don’t let your ego get in the way of you being able to recognize that you don’t know everything, that other people have solutions that you haven’t discovered yet, that other people might have some quite quirky alternative ways that really work for helping you to be able to change who you are and how you are in your life. Don’t let your ego get in the way of you exploring another way of being by convincing yourself that you are the one person on the planet whose psychology is set in stone and doesn’t work on the same neuro-plasticity that every other human being does, don’t do that to yourself, that’s silly and it prevents you from moving forward.
Don’t be fooled into thinking that you’ve already learnt it all, that if it existed, you would have already found it.
Keep searching, be curious, you know, part of what we learn in NLP is an attitude of curiosity. Use your creative brain to find alternative ways forward when in stuck situations.
I haven’t got all the answers here yet.
This doesn’t mean that they don’t exist.
It just means that I haven’t found them yet.
And if you cannot find them alone then find someone who’s a good researcher and who has a good brain for being able to find a way forward.
We’re going to accept that we might not know how that change will occur but we’re also going to accept that change can occur. There is a way for us to bring that forward into our awareness even if it’s utilising the skills and knowledge of other people who might be able to look at things from a different angle.
By Gemma Bailey
www.peoplebuilding.co.uk
