Do you ever have days where you find yourself thinking ‘it shouldn’t be this hard’? Well you’re right, it shouldn’t. The good news is; it also doesn’t have to be. There has been a new wave of momentum quietly building behind a completely different style of coaching people towards success – its part of my Tame your Brain program and it’s all about Neuroplasticity.
Now before you get turned off by such a hefty neurosciencey term… Let me tell you a story.
Neurocoaching is the application of this amazing knowledge of Neuroplasticity. I stumbled across this technology whilst running my own business in the city. My sales went up 300% overnight. I then helped out a friend at his company, and billed nearly double what my nearest competitor was billing, from a cold start. As a result of this I was then asked (funnily enough) to train everyone else in the company in what it was I was doing so differently. What I found was, some of the consultants I was training were SO resistant to what I tried to teach them because ‘I’ve tried that before, and it didn’t work’.
My training at the time boiled down to our choice of action from an input. It’s called Behavioural Psychology or Behaviourism, and it’s about how you change your actions (output) to the same stimulus (input). There was a great deal of hype about ‘Affirmations’ and ‘Mood Boards’ at the time and one very senior consultant who shall remain nameless flipped his hand at me in the middle of one of my early training sessions and said: ‘If this shit worked we’d all be driving a Ferrari. I’ve done my affirmations. Nothing bloody happened’.
No, it doesn’t if you only do half the job.
Affirmations on their OWN are the equivalent of going into the garden and chanting over and over again ‘There’s no weeds, there’s no weeds, there’s no weeds’ and imagining that will somehow eradicate your Japanese Knotweed and Mare’s Tail (that was just for the gardeners among you 🙂).
No, of course it doesn’t work like that. First you need to get a bloody big stick, do some actual hard work, and THEN call in the experts. Get a Neurocoach. I know I’d say that, but honestly, the investment in YOU is so very worth learning how to do this properly. You are worth taking the time to refurbish in 2020 because yes, life doesn’t have to be this hard. There is a better way and with the right guide beside you, it can be even more enjoyable and vibrant. Let me tell you more of the ‘How’.
Think back to the days you pulled out an LP and put it on 33rpm (and if you don’t know what that is, I’m jealous of how young and sprightly you must be). The needle hit the groove and it could ONLY go one way, in an endless spiral towards the middle as the deck turned whilst sounds played out. Our brain works the same way, established neural pathways are like those inscribed grooves in our brain, holding the needle steady and ‘playing’ the same tune when we encounter an event. Our responses and reactions and the emotions we feel are wired in to what we’ve encountered before, our ‘belief’ about what it means is already primed.
Here’s the thing. Neuroplasticity research now tells us the brain CAN change its hard wired neural pathways, you can literally ‘rewire’ your brain into a new, maybe healthier response to a stimulus. About 15yrs ago they began taking MRI scans of active brains and assessing the firing up of different areas under different stimuli.
What they found was, you can literally choose your response, if you know how.
So an event can happen, but if you want to you can TOTALLY change what it means to you, and therefore what you do about it. Take failure for example.
For some people, it means ‘I’m not good enough’ or ‘This is just too hard, there’s no way I can do this’ or ‘I’ve cocked it up AGAIN so it must mean I’m just a complete twit and there’s no hope for me’ or even simply ‘I’m crap at everything I try’… sound familiar? You run that ‘tune’ several times and the groove deepens, and that response to stimulus or your ‘pattern’ becomes really ingrained. It becomes almost impossible to NOT think that thought that you’ve thought a thousand times before.
You run that ‘tune’ several times and the groove deepens…
Neurocoaching is all about how to help a client achieve their goals effortlessly using this incredible power of the brain to form new associations. Literally, it’s knowing how the brain fires and how you can positively rewire it for success. Imagine if all each failure meant to you was ‘ok so that didn’t do it. Great, I’m completely delighted that I’ve discovered another way not to do it because it means I’m one step nearer to cracking this- NEXT!!’ Failure then acts to speed you up, not stop you dead in your tracks. It becomes actually empowering to ‘fail’ so you stop even calling it failure in your brain. The rewiring won’t let you, if you do it well enough.
This is a key point – you have to know what you’re doing when attempting rewiring!! I’m passionate about teaching more people how to do this simple 4 step process, it made such a massive difference to my life, and ultimately empowered my next 20yrs of growth – I want the same for you.
In my next Blog I’ll be delving a bit deeper into Neurocoaching and how you should start your journey on Tame your Brain. In the meantime if anything I’ve said has made you fancy a bit of gentle brain poking, please do get in touch and I’ll be delighted to see how I can help. It’s fun, honest.
Libby
