What’s Really Real?

One of the most easily applicable ideas in NLP is the ideal of the sensory modalities – or the preferred representational systems (PRS).  Based on the way the human mind uses the senses to process the world and create meaning we can use the following categories to aid communication and learning: 

Visual:

•  Learn by looking at things and forming mental images
• Tend to be neat, well groomed and orderly
• Interested in the way things look.
• Use words like: “look, see, picture, imagine, notice, appears”

 Auditory:

• Talk to themselves and are distracted by noise
• Learn by listening and memorise by steps, procedures and sequence.
• Respond to certain word and tone of voice.
• Use words like: Listen, Talk to, Said, Speak, Hear, and Sounds like.

 Kinesthetic:

• Access feelings and emotions to get a feel for what they’re doing.
• Respond to physical rewards and touching.
• Often physically oriented people such as atheletes.
• Memorise by doing or walking through something.
• They use words like: Feelings, Get in touch, Hold, Grasp, and Handle.

 Auditory Digital (AD):

•  Not related to the senses – AD people want things to “make sense”
• Will have conversations in their head.
• Rarely spontaneous as they like to think things through
• Decisions based on logic and facts and figures.
• Say things like: correct, logical, makes sense,

 Although we use all of these modes of operation, most of us will have a system we prefer (PRS) which is the easiest way for us to communicate and learn.
Its also possible to tell which system a person is accessing by watching their eyes:

 

By simply understanding that everyone processes the world in a different way empowers us to teach our children, sell our products, relate to our partners and learn faster and easier.

To learn what modalities you use most and more about them try this quick test:

http://www.transformdestiny.com/nlp-guide/nlp-representational-systems-preference-test.asp

Perception is Projection

I just completed my training as an NLP practitioner with TCI (the coaching institute) in Melbourne. Neuro Linguistic Programming was created in the 1970s by Richard Bandler (a mathematics student) and John Grinder (a linguist)  and explores the relationships between how we think, how we communicate and our behavioural and emotional patterns.

For those who know my background (which has involved an eclectic approach to self development including experimentation with kineisiology, reiki, life coaching, martial arts, buddhist meditation and the study of human behaviour, belief and influence) its probably no surprise that i found the tools and principles of NLP to be extremely congruent with my existing world view.

I learned a number of techniques and principles (to be shared in later posts)
that greatly empower my ability to communicate with other people, to create results in my own life and to become an even more positive influence on the world around me.

What struck me as odd (after seeing first hand the awesome potential of the tool applied first hand) is the number of people who have expressed their fear and distrust of NLP to me.

one of the ideas I love (which originates from Carl Jung) is that “Perception is Projection” – that there is nothing in the outside world that isnt projected from our psyche onto the world around us. This is a concept i first encountered whilst learning NET (neuro emotional technique) and practicing various forms of Buddhist meditation. I like to keep it in mind when im tempted to complainor fight against external events or behaviours…

“If you imagine someone who is brave enough to withdraw all his projections,then you get an individual who is conscious of a pretty thick shadow. Such a man has saddled himself with new problems and conflicts. He has become a serious problem to himself, as he is now unable to say that they do this or that, they are wrong, and they must be fought against. He lives in the “House of the Gathering.” Such a man knows that whatever is wrong in the world is in himself, and if he only learns to deal with his own shadow he has done something real for the world. He has succeeded in shouldering at least an infinitesimal part of the gigantic, unsolved social problems of our day.
“Psychology and Religion” (1938). In CW 11: Psychology and Religion: West and East. P.140

The Breakthrough Experience

so.. this weekend i did John Demartini’s breakthrough experience,
a 2 day seminar introducing the participant to demartini’s methods and philosophies which include the quantum collapse process and demartinis unique and indepth understanding of human behaviour and value systems.

as you can imagine the whole thing is profoundly deep and theres no way i can fully explain it in a short blog post but i did want to mention it a little.

i was first introduced to Demartini’s body of work about 5 years ago and went on to listen to and read a variety of his audio and books and utilise his ideas both in my own personal development and in my life and business coaching with my clients.

On of the central concepts of the breakthrough experience is the application of quantum physics to practical areas of our lives – resulting in a direct understanding that the universe is always perfectly in balance providing a scientific method to dissolve any distorted perceptions that suggest otherwise.

the process can be applied to pretty much anything – ranging from our perceptions of our parents to traumatic memories of violence or rape. when applied thoroughly the process is able to dissolve the time bound, lopsided perception of any experience and restore our mind to its natural divine state of balanced equilibrium.

i ran the process on my relationship with my dad and within an hour was able to permanently dissolve negative perceptions ive held my whole life as i realised that every perceived “negative” trait he embodies is also present in myself and that each of those traits are as positive as they are negative.

completion of the process allows the person to see all sides of a memory or event and ‘collapse’ its negative or positive charge. once this happens the only thing left is a profound sense of love and gratitude….

www.drdemartini.com

So.. What do YOU do?

i used to hate this question.

“well im kind of a rapping lifecoach with an interest in comedy and martial arts, but right now i work in sales and i kind of like to think of myself as an entrepreneur whose branching out into public speaking and writing.. but i really dont like to put myself in a box yknow – how about yourself”

this is a networkers nightmare. the rules are simple. work out what you can offer people and formulate that into a simple statement. often the people with the best brands are the ones who do one thing well and know how to communicate it to others (and stick to it).

but im not a brand gary – im a person! i hear you. for many of us its getting increasingly difficult to explain what we do because we dont even know.

“does this really matter?” i hear you ask. well it depends. are you trying to make money? or build a fanbase, client base or other kind of following
(things you will want to do if you dont want to work a day job forever)
if so it is kind of important to cut the bullshit and put yourself “gasp”
into a category.

ultimately this only seems like a big deal if were too attached to
who we think we are (yep i can go from marketing talk to buddhist philosophy in a paragraph or two) these descriptions of ourself arent the sum total of who we are.

nowadays heres how i handle that question:

1. well im a rapper and spoken word artist – mostly inspired by blah blah

2. well im a sales and business coach, i mostly work with people just
emerging into business and help them sell them selves more effectively

3. well im a writer and speaker, i mostly write about blah blah blah

in other words the best thing you can do is prepare multiple ‘elevator
pitches’ depending whether your talking to a 50 year old business man,
a hot girl in a bar or an aspiring musician. At the end of the day its not so much about who you are as what do you have to offer…

Baggy Trousers, Baggy Pants

I remember my first pair of baggy jeans. i was 12 or 13 and i stole them from K-Mart. I’d recently upgraded from listening to MC Hammer and Vanilla Ice and was now listening to Ice T and NWA. It was time to be gangsta.

My parents of course thought the whole thing was a fad. The funny thing is on so many levels it was. I didnt even know about “Hip-Hop culture” i was just this kid who liked gangsta rap, met a few other kids who did graffiti and was generally regarded as ‘a homey’ – a classically Australian misinterpretation of LA slang.

I bring this whole thing up now because i remember my dad telling me i looked ridiculous and that my pants looked like they were falling down. He probably felt how i would feel now if i was raising some emo kid who wears super skinny jeans. I just dont get it.

The amazing thing is how far this all led, despite having all the hallmarks of a teenage fad – this whole youth movement shaped my life. Its literally 20 years since those first shoplifted jeans and if i look back on it I’ve travelled the world, played hundreds of shows as a rapper, battled on street corners, picked up girls and had punchups all through the filter of a self created Hip-Hop identity.

When i look at it like that maybe id let my kid wear whatever pants he wanted to. Who knows what it might lead to..

A SPINE OF THE TIMES

For the last 8 years i’ve seen and experimented with a variety of different healing modalities and practitioners.
I’ve come to the conclusion that having a decent chiropractor is invaluable, not only for correcting postural problems but for maintaining overall health and energy levels too.

Since i often end up in conversations about this with people – some of whom like to tell me how terrible chiropractors are (despite having little or no experience with them) – i thought id post my two cents worth here.

When do i see a chiro? Any time my energy levels are running a bit low and i can feel my posture starting to slump, or like last weekend – after ive had a particularly big one and know that my poor organs are under stress and functioning at minimal capacity.

When the spinal vertebrae are out of alignment they place pressure on the nerves in the spine. Since the nerves govern the functioning of different organs when the spine is out of alignment all kinds of medical ailments can occur. by realigning the spine and other joints the body can return to normal – essentially when a bone or joint is out of place it interrupts the flow of energy through the nervous system – this can often be easily fixed by a simple adjustment.

Like every other kind of practitioner – not all chiropractors are created equal. My recommendation is to find a chiro that uses kinesiology to muscle test and work out which bones and joints are out of alignment. Usually they will have AK (applied kinesiology) after their name.

For many reasons chiropractic comes under fire from critics – but having worked with a range of chiropractors (the good, the bad and the awesome) ive had some profound results in my own life (mostly in terms of posture and resetting of immune system and energy levels) – i feel its important people understand that quite often its not the therapy as much as it is the therapist.

AGEING (DIS) GRACEFULLY

Last week i turned 32. Despite often portraying myself as a well adjusted, zen smart-arse and entrepreneurial wordsmith (some people even believe me), i was kind of freaking out. “im 32!” i thought. “what happened to all that grandiose shit i thought i wouldve achieved by now.” so yeah i had a moment of self doubt, dissapointment, whatever you might call it.

Now i really dont like being drawn into unresourceful states for too long if i can help it. It doesnt feel very good and it usually means your feeding your energy into a fiction that your life is more bad than good or something along those lines. So i sat down and made a list of as many things as i could that had happened in my life that i felt grateful for. A list of ‘successes’ – or at least things that i was glad had occurred.

The funny thing is they mostly weren’t achievements as such. They were things like “the time i met that beautiful girl in japan” or “when me and affiks quit our hospitality job and ran amok in london” and lots of other things that are too personal to share here. After a while i realised that my life has been a success – i could tell because i was alive, healthy, living somewhere i wanted to and feeling connected and appreciative
once again.

Most of the things on the list were special moments that are still clear years later and most of them were shared with another person or were significant to me. What i guess it reminded me is that moments make up a life – not achievements. So despite being a compulsive goal setter – i sat down and planned out some experiences id like to have in the next year – well knowing that a lot of the best stuff does ‘just happen’ its just important to realise that reality is always better than any illusions you might of held about who you ‘should’ be. You are who you need to be – right now.

Reinvention

So…

Long time no blog. Suprisingly enough plenty of people have been still reading the stuff here – even though i havent been posting anything. Thats rather comforting! The following is a bit of an update on the growth and experiences ive been going through – simply because i feel like sharing…

Some things have changed since back when i began this blog – and some things remain exactly the same.

I changed my postcode – and with that changed a few aspects of my mindset. I moved from Collingwood to Port Melbourne, really only a few kilometres from the inner north side of melboure to the inner south side. I decided to do this to give my self space to grow and develop new beliefs and behaviours and ive been in Port Melbourne for just over a month now. I think its just what the doctor ordered.

On the one hand i’ve moved further away from my friends and further away from the music scene that has been my playground for the last few years – this has been very beneficial for me – ive realized that ‘the scene’ occupied a lot of my waking thoughts and time and energy, even though i wasnt performing or making music anymore it still seemed to shape who i perceived myself to be. Moving to a more affluent, quieter suburb has helped me with the ongoing reinvention of my self (which has been going on for ever)
on the flip side its made me appreciate the friendships i do have.

Im still coaching. Over time its evolved into my own brand of business and sales coaching – the phrase How to Sell Yourself without selling your soul has become a kind of mantra of mine and ive realised im pretty damn good at helping people become more entrepreneurial. I have about 8 clients at any given time at the moment. This is a reasonable number considering i still work for National Australia Bank as a sales coach – something ive improved at a lot in 9 months.

What ive really been working on as a person is belief change. I did so much work on the subconscious and physical side of my conditioning over the last ten years (through NET and meditation etc) and after learning more about NLP and coaching over the last 2 years ive really began to become conscious of the dialogue that runs through my head. With a lot of practice and a lot of coaching and reading ive managed to finally start to change my beliefs around money. This is a big deal! For so long i was OK with improving my self esteem and self worth – to a point. to the point where it didnt increase my actual self worth in $. which on planet earth is how we measure it. I really examined my beliefs and realised i was carrying a lot of junk like “rich people are dodgy” and ‘if im rich ill lose my friends’ and ‘money is in short supply’ those kinds of things. When digging this stuff up you have to dig deep becuase its not as if anyone actually ever told me those things – they were just implications i picked up from the behaviours, attitudes and energies i was surrounded with a child. some of the beliefs i now choose to live by are “the more money i have the more i can help others” “money is an energy and i attract it” “everyone deserves to be rich” and my personal favorite “money is the root of all awesome”. Part of moving to a more affluent suburb was to give myself permission to see myself as wealthy. at the end of the day – you are what you beliieve!

After more than 6 months away from it ive decided to start doing music again. So much of what i do is wrapped up in identity. I stopped thinking of myself as ‘a rapper’ and started thinking of myself as ‘an entrepreneur’ the fact is that all labellling of the self is reductive. Really all i am is “a being’. I forget where i heard it but did you know that we can change any behaviour from one month to the next? we can literally recondition who we are in 30 days if we commit to it. Profound change though, can happen in an instant we simply have to see things in a way we never have before.

Some things ive been practicing lately include – dressing differently – wearing cleaner, nicer clothes that convey more confidence, wealth and creativiity. Talking to strangers more – in clubs, on street corners. even on the tram. Its my aim to be able to talk to and build rapport with anyone, anywhere from a homeless man to a glamorous celebrity. To this end ive become fascinated by subjects such as networking, NLP, pick up artistry and even more fascinated with communication in general. Ive also started a business website at www.garynewton.com.au which will also have a blog connected to it – one more relating to business and entrepreneurship and coaching.

Anyways. this has been a fine ramble – im still sitting in bed with my laptop gradually getting hungry so ill wind it up here. Thanks for reading and if your someone i havent spoke to for a while – let me know how your doing!

The speed of the genius.

I know that deep down; all of us have access to source of deep genius. The consistency with which we allow ourselves to access it determines whether we decide we’re a “creative person” or not. Since childhood I’ve written: short stories, not so short stories, poetry (and after getting hooked on hip-hop as a teenager) rap lyrics – literally by the bucket load. I remember every year or two throwing out a shoe box full paper because id covered everything from exercise books to receipts with abstract lyrics scribbled on every single sheaf – all long before I’d ever performed live or shared began sharing my output with another person.

Years later after doing probably a couple of hundred performances and releasing a few CDs I reached a point of frustration – culminating in a decision at the beginning of this year to leave it all alone for awhile and see what other outlets I could find. The main reason was the seeming complexity of releasing music – it wasn’t just writing and recording any more but mixing, mastering, artwork, searching for distribution and trying to time it all right and maximise the exposure and blah blah blah. My entrepreneurial and organisational brain had started to grow and it was seriously dominating the arty part.

What I’ve realised lately is that many artists (of various kinds) take the whole thing way too seriously – underground hip-hop heads are no exception. For many people I know, the whole process is incredibly precious, their art is their life and things have to be just right. Of course, like anything we do, our attitude towards what we create reflects our general attitude towards life. I realise now how much my perfectionism and obsession with doing things ‘right’ has cost me in terms of enjoyment and how much its limited what I’ve chosen to share with the outside world.

Since blogging and since learning to take myself a little more lightly this year I decided to start writing and recording music again with a different attitude – in the same way I do with a blog.

I don’t agonise over these things, I simply write them down when I get an idea, do a very cursory edit to make sure its not complete gibberish and then bung it on the web in the hope that you’ll want to read it. Why should music be any different?

Today I downloaded some recent work by Buck 65 – an artist that I really enjoy. His recent project “dirt bike” is 3 full length mixes of demo type material released for free over a 3 month period and mixed on a cheap pair of headphones. I’ve been listening to it today and I reckon its some of his best work. I guess like everything else it helps to know WHY we’re doing something – my new reason for writing lyrics is simple – it’s an attempt to share some of what flows out of my head and on to the page with other people. So in that spirit please check out some of this new stuff I’ve recorded in the last 48 hours. I’ll attempt to link it here and on MySpace too – id also recommend
that my artistic friends out there do themselves the favour of lightening up a little – as long as something captures your essence, and its honest – then its good art!

BOLLOCKS! EMBED NOT WORKING – ILL PUT THE TRACK UP SOON – FOR NOW TRY THE MYSPACE

 

ARE YOU ON PURPOSE?

Recently I remapped out my life goals across all the major areas using a system I pinched (and modified) from Dr John Demartini. This time when I wrote them out I stretched myself a little further in terms of what I could envision and I was sure to attach a powerful “reason why” to each one.

I must’ve done something right because almost instantly I felt a surge in my sense of purpose – a big boost in adrenalin and a sense that I was back on track – and had an important mission to fulfil. I believe that a strong sense of purpose is one of the things that can elevate a ‘good’ life into a GREAT life. I also believe that we choose our purpose (although events may transpire that influence us to choose) and that we can add purpose to our lives at will just by envisioning a bigger picture and by choosing goals that on some level make a contribution to society.

I just watched UFC 104 – Lyoto “the dragon” Machida defended his light heavyweight title against Mauricio ‘shogun’ Rua. For those not familiar with the UFC (ultimate fighting championship) it’s a US -based mixed martial arts organization that has become extremely popular worldwide and that I have become fairly addicted to watching. Lyoto Machida has been pretty much unstoppable and was recently crowned the light heavyweight champ.

 Somehow he just managed to defend his title in a controversial decision that left me wondering how you retain your sense of purpose once your major goal has been achieved. The only way forwards (as I see it) is to set some new, bigger goals and/or attach a new sense of purpose to what already exists. Given two people of equal or similar ability the person with the greater sense of drive and clarity of vision will always achieve a greater result. More on my seven folders goal setting method later.