Newsletter, February 2016
Dear Friends and Subscribers,
Thank you for accepting our invitation and staying on our mailing list.
We really appreciate that.
We will be sending you a newsletter about once a month.
Our idea is that newsletter will contain 3 elements: one article from our website blog, one practical technique to use in life situations and one exercise per month.
For your convenience and in order to make a newsletter as concise as possible all above will be fully accessible on our website (that means newsletter itself will contain only a snippets and a links).
Although blog is and will remain accessible to general public, techniques and/or exercises will be exclusive for subscribers of this newsletter.
We will make it as interesting as possible for you, sharing with you articles, ideas and techniques that you may find useful and helpful in life.
We would like to invite you, if you like, to interact with us on our Blog page, Facebook page or via email.
If you would like us to cover any particular topic or technique in future issues please just let us know.
Apart from newsletters you can expect updates about our events or other offers from Mind Transformation Solutions from time to time. So let us begin:
Today’s newsletter content:
Recycled article from our blog: “Are you sure you know who you really are?”
State control technique of the month: “get rid of irritating person from your head”..
Exercise for this month: noticing positive within
1. Are you sure you know who you really are? Continue reading on the blog
2. State control technique of this month: “get rid of irritating person from your head”
Have you read Harry Potter’s books? In one of them there is a mention of a spell called “Riddikulus” that works against “boggarts” . It is based on a technique I am going to present here.
First a bit of theory so you know what you do:
I don’t know if you are aware of that or not, but the only way we can think and process information about and from the outside world is by: pictures, sounds, feelings, tastes and smells and by our internal talk.
This is all we have: modalities of our five senses and internal commentary – nothing more.
Sub-modalities are small distinctions of modalities we use to represent the outer world inside our minds. To code a meaning of our experience in modalities mentioned above, we unconsciously add some small distinctions e.g. with regards to pictures, we use sub distinctions called sub-modalities such as: size, colour or black and white, focus – defocus, saturation, contrast, distance and so on. The same goes for the rest of the other modalities. It just happens so automatically and quickly that we are usually not aware of it.
These added small distinctions determined for us the meaning of experience we have. By changing them consciously we can change our experience.
There are many practical applications of that little piece of knowledge I just shared with you. Here is one of them:
Everyone of us has somebody, who when we think about, our heart quickens…I do not mean that kind of quickening – I meant because of the annoyance or irritation. Just think for a moment who that might be for you? A boss or a colleague, maybe a neighbour, a postman or a lady in the local shop or a waitress in the restaurant you visited lately.
Now, when you think about that person notice your feelings towards them and notice where the picture of that person appears in your mind’s eye? By “where the picture appears” I mean when you think about them with your eyes closed, where the picture is located? Is it in front of you, on the right hand side or left hand side, up or down, close or far? Where is it on an imaginary mind’s screen?
Once you noticed the feelings and location of the picture do the following:
“Shoot up the picture of that person at a very high speed into the space and let it come back. When it comes back, immediately shrink it down to the half size or smaller, make it black and white, put them red nose of a clown on their face and let them sit on a chamber pot (or whatever comical situation comes to your mind) and let them talk with the high voice of Mickey Mouse. Make it really ridicules.
Check how you feel about them now.
What did we do here? Each time we think about a person and feel a wave of irritation or other unpleasant emotion it is called remembering.
Of course it is important for us to remember what we learned about interacting with that individual. By doing the above exercise we teach our minds a new way of thinking – not to take that person so seriously anymore. This is called thinking and planning. If you did this exercise successfully, not only you smile now when thinking of them, next time you see that person you will positively grin.
Do you think that your next interaction with that person will have a different flavour to it?
3. Exercise for this month: noticing positive within.
We often tend to judge ourselves. If we think about a purpose of doing that we may discover that the main reason for judging is to check where we are at and/or to better ourselves.
The thing is, all our behaviour is state related. If we are in a bad mental state we cannot behave well. In other words if we want to change our behaviour without changing our mental state we are probably not going to have big results.
Our internal state is controlled by our internal representations and our focus.
Internal representations are: our thoughts in a form of internal pictures, sounds, feelings, to some extend remembered smells and tastes and our internal commentary we add to all the above.
Our focus is what we pay attention to inside our heads.
To give an example we can think about a proverbial glass: each of us has a different internal representation of the thing called “glass”. Some will imagine it as beautiful, or an ugly glass, tall or short, made of crystal glass, ordinary glass or plastic, or it can be other container for liquids. And of course it is filled to some extend with liquid let’s say water.
Our focus is what we pay attention to:
how much water is in it
or how much water is missing from it.
If we pay attention to what is missing we will experience poverty, feelings of lack. Actions coming out of these feelings will not be very generous hence results will not be so great.
If on the other hand we focus on what is present in the glass then we can experience richness and a feeling of abundance. Actions coming out of these feelings can be generous. The generous actions produce completely different results than the opposite ones. So this is down to our focus what results we will produce.
Now I encourage you to do an experiment:
Every day, for next 30 days focus on and write down positive things about you. Start with:
- 4 good things about your body, your physicality, (e.g. I am fit, healthy, strong, or whatever comes to your mind)
- 4 things about your emotions, (e.g. I am kind, compassionate, empathic, positive towards others etc.).
- 4 things about your mental qualities and (e.g. I am intelligent, clever, smart, quick learner etc.).
- 4 things about spirituality it this apply to you (e.g. I search deeper meaning of life, spirituality is important to me, I value higher ethical standards etc.).
Every day write a new list. Every other day add one more trait to each category so at the end of a month you will have about 20 positive qualities in each category. Next month I will tell you what to do next ;-).
This is all for now.
Have a lovely month and until we meet again it this virtual reality.
Tom & Dorota
