Category Archives: nlp

3 top tips to be fluent in a foreign language

Languages-www.cogniscientNLP.com People who speak a single language perceive fluency as an ideal. It encompasses a concept of being able to speak freely, without pauses to think of vocabulary and grammar. A fluent speaker has mastered the language. To the language professional though, fluency is a slippery slope. Someone with conversational fluency may be able to talk about everyday subjects easily, grammatically, fluently – but be lost for words when the conversation moves onto the intricacies of playing cricket or baseball, or conversely be bamboozled by a discussion on late 19^th century art. A street urchin selling souvenirs in a souk might speak half a dozen languages fluently, but not grammatically – and more in depth conversation might reveal that their vocabulary is limited.

The traditional way of learning a language academically involves a lot of translation accompanied with learning vocabulary (which is relevant to the translation work). The advantage of such an approach is that it develops your formal knowledge of grammar and the translations can be tailored to make the vocabulary relevant to the learner. However, most people learning this way find it extremely difficult to speak well or fluently – with language graduates from university often failing basic conversation tests when they finally reach a country where they can speak the language. They know individual phrases, a lot of words and a lot of grammar to hold it together, but have had very little experience bringing the words together. Learning this way also means that in order to speak in the foreign language, often you have to think of what you want to say in your native language, then translate each word and add the appropriate grammar. This process requires a lot of mental energy and is very slow. This was how I initially learnt Russian, and it was spectacularly unsuccessful. Even a small sentence required me to hold about 20 pieces of information in my head at any one time. Sentences were painfully slow to speak and difficult to put together.

A better way to learn

Learning a language through translation is only part of the puzzle and should be kept as a small part if you want to develop fluency. Language is learnt for communication – not for translation, so why learn via translation? A big problem with this sort of learning is that most people will learn words as individual words, without context. However, it is the context which gives words meaning. If you look up a dictionary you will often find half a dozen meanings for any word, depending on context. So it makes sense to learn words within context.

Secret Number 1: Learn words in context.

Instead of learning le chat as “cat”, learn an entire sentence. This means you absorb the grammar associated with the word as well. So le chat suddenly becomes “Est-ce que tu as un chat?” (Do you have a cat?) or perhaps “Le chat noir est sur la table” (The black cat is on the table). The advantage of this is that you are always working with sentences and so always have living example of the word in use in front of you and that the word is being actively used with context and meaning.

Secret Number 2: Use images.

People who often seem to speak languages well, don’t think in terms of an actual word, when they want to say “cat” in French, they don’t think of “cat” in English and then think “chat” (this often happens as the result of learning via translation), they see an image of a cat and immediately think of word in the language they are thinking it. It is an automatic association that is faster, and seems to reflect how we mostly use our native language. Visual memory is also extremely powerful, so by adding images you also make it easier to remember the vocabulary. So when using vocabulary cards, add images. If you can draw, you can draw the images onto the card, otherwise, make vocabulary cards on the computer and paste images from Google images into the flash card. This means you can then have vocabulary cards using a combination of images and words.

Est-ce que tu as un ?

The reverse side of the card can have the full sentence and any other information, which is relevant, such as gender, pronunciation information, conjugation or declensions. Use colour and images to stimulate visual memory. To represent that chat is a masculine word, you could put it in blue, for example, so you have another visual reminder of the grammar necessary when you use the word. Because the reverse side of the card is also in your target language, you are also constantly practising thinking in your foreign language. Good preparation for the real thing. Dictionaries almost always have examples of a word in use which you can use as part of the learning process. If the dictionary is any good, you will always be learning correctly. The sentences are often transferable, so in real life you might not want to ask someone if they have un chat, but maybe if they have a boyfriend… Est-ce que tu as un copain? or girlfriend… Est-ce que tu as une copine? Of course, if you don’t care, you might need to make use of this phrase “Je ne savais pas qu’elle avait un copain” (I didn’t know she had a boyfriend).

Secret Number 3: Subject cards

There are always going to be things you will find yourself talking about. These will include yourself, your hobbies and interests. If you are English, then perhaps the weather… Write out subject cards to cover sentences vocabulary and grammatical phrases which you need to discuss the subject. You might also want to write subject cards for going to a café or restaurant, travelling on the metro or taking a bus/taxi, asking directions, or visiting a doctor or pharmacist. Write short conversations for yourself with each subject card covering everything you can think of in a conversation. Learn useful phrases which you know you will want to use when talking to someone. These might include such useful phrases as “I like pizza and beer” to “I want to do extreme skiing in the Austrian Alps.” Both phrases are equally useful in my experience (I have never used either of them). By creating a number of subject cards and practising the words and phrases you expect you’ll need the most, you can increase your functional fluency for parts of the language which are relevant to you. This can take a bit of time and require a little bit of imagination but are beneficial in building up fluency and vocabulary. Again, add as much imagery to the subject cards as possible. Act out conversations, the more senses you involve, the better you will remember the vocabulary. It is partially for this reason that immersive learning can be so effective because you can hear, feel, smell the linguistic environment which creates stronger memories.

If you want to learn more great ways to learn and master foreign languages, purchase Peter D Campbell’s book Language Learning Secrets Revealed: How anyone can learn a language or book a consultation with Peter.

About the author: Peter D Campbell is a professional Russian to English translator and journalist with over ten years translation experience. Peter speaks fluent Russian, has a degree in Latin and can speak conversational French. He has written three books and two novellas, all available from Amazon.com.

Writing without writer’s block

www.cogniscientNLP.com-writersblock Writers’ block conjures up images of the impoverished author, sitting at a typewriter, a blanket over his/her lap and a cigarette hanging despondently from stained teeth.

This malady has three main forms:

Perfectionism: you know what you want to write but what you write is never good enough, or never expresses what you really mean, or doesn’t capture the soul of the subject;
Motivation: you know you want to write, you might have the ideas, you might have the plot thought out and the characters described but somehow you just never have the time to write or never feel up to writing when you do;
Direction: you have the desire to write, you probably even have a great setting or a great character but you just can’t write.

When broken down into these particular forms, writer’s block starts to make sense and can be easily dealt with.

Perfectionism

www.CogniscientNLP.com-hemmingway-writersblock If you find yourself sitting at the computer hour after hour rewriting the same sentence, it probably means that you want your writing to be perfect. After all who doesn’t want to be perfect?

However, why would you want to write a manuscript which is so good it doesn’t need editing? And who does that anyway?

If you want a perfect manuscript you will not achieve it by rewriting that sentence 50 times. Although each sentence you write may be structurally perfect, a good story or a good novel is much more than the choice of words and the sentence structure. Professional writers who are successful have a holistic view of their work, if a sentence or paragraph isn’t quite right, that’s fine because after they have completed the work they can see whether it is really necessary and can see how best to alter it to fit the structure of the entire story. You see, if you really want to write the perfect story, you really need to forget about perfectionism.

Once you have forgotten about writing the perfect story it becomes much easier. Each line you write is no longer a work of art – it is the final copy which is the work of art. This means you are less emotionally involved with the manuscript and can see more clearly what needs to be cut, what needs to be extended and how to rephrase sentences to meet the overall needs of what you are writing.

There are a couple of good tasks which you can do to get you past the perfectionist mindset.

1. Free writing: sit down and spend 15 minutes writing about what-ever comes to mind. Make sure the writing is continuous, that you do not pause to think about it. The majority of what you write will probably be atrocious but see how much you have written and compare it with how long it would normally take you to write that much normally. If you already have a story or novel idea in mind you may find that what you have written is actually pretty good and just needs a little editing.

2. Flash fiction: Give yourself the task of writing a paragraph within a two minute time period. Write four paragraphs and see what story you have. For example write separate paragraphs for each of the following:

a setting
a character
an action
a dialogue

This is sufficient for fully rounded short story. It will probably only be 200-300 words in length, but when was the last time you wrote a short story in 10 minutes? Then try experimenting with it by changing the order of the paragraphs. Write a new story starting with a character, then dialogue, then action, then setting, play around and see how different structures affect the creative process.

3. Spend 10 minutes describing one of your favourite hobbies or interests and explain why you like it. Focus on writing for as much of the ten minutes as you can.

You will notice that these exercises all focus on writing quickly. Quality is something which can be polished and improved on with time, content cannot, you need to be able to write it before you can make it perfect. People who write a lot tend to produce higher quality prose than people who write only a little, largely because they spend a lot of time practising both the writing and the editing. This effectively serves to train them to write quality copy even in their first draft, but their focus is not on quality, it is writing the story as the first step to producing a final, publishable draft.

Motivation

www.cogniscientNLP.com-writersblock02 Want to write but never get round to doing it? The chances are you aren’t motivated to write. There are good reason’s to be unmotivated, it requires time and energy, it is often solitary and for most there is little or no financial reward. If you are not writing and would like to be you need to find a reason to write.

You can work out what is stopping you from writing and come up to solutions to those problems. If you find writing to solitary and isolated – start writing with somebody. You could try writing independently and just discussing your work or you could even try writing collaboratively.

If you need a financial reward you can try setting yourself goals to make money from your writing – find publications that pay for creative writing, research what sort of writing they want and start writing specifically for those publications. Alternatively you can “pay” yourself for your writing by establishing a rewards system. If you complete a story or a piece of work by a certain deadline, you reward yourself by buying something you really want, or doing something you really want to do.

If you find that you don’t have time to write but would like to, you need to start looking at your priorities. How much do you really want to write? Why don’t you have the time or energy to write? What do you need to do to enable yourself to write?

If you do want to write regularly, you need to make writing regularly a priority and that may mean lowering the priority of other interests: TV or trivia night might be something you cut back on while writing.

Another important part to motivating yourself to write is having goals and knowing what you want. If you want to be a writer – what exactly does that mean to you? Do you need to write everyday to consider yourself a writer? Do you need to be publishing what you write to consider yourself a writer? When you know what you consider is necessary for you, you can decide on what aims and goals you have.

You may decide that as you have full time work, you want to write a novella a year. This would give you an ongoing goal which would fit in with your work timetable. You can then decide to spend a few hours each weekend writing. You might decide that you want to write a short story a month and might spend two evenings a week writing. When you have a clear aim of what you want to do, make sure you also have a deadline to keep – this helps reduce procrastination. When you do meet your deadlines and requirements, reward yourself for doing so. It helps keep you motivated and interested.

Direction

Image processed by CodeCarvings Piczard ### FREE Community Edition ### on 2014-08-06 16:15:00Z | |

The other problem which writers have when suffering from writers’ block is essentially a lack of direction. You have the motivation to write, you have an idea or a character or an event you want to write about but you just don’t know what to write.

If you story lacks direction there are two main problems that you need to deal with. You may not have a sufficiently strong plot or your characters may not be sufficiently developed to drive the plot.

If you are having trouble developing the plot, focus on the setting and the characters. Work out the environment the characters are living in. Work out what they do as part of their daily lives in the location where they currently are. Then think about the characters, what is their background? What skills do they have? What habits, what friends, what interests do they have?

Work out the details for all the characters. Once you know the setting and the characters it will be much easier to find their need which then acts as the stimulus for the rest of the plot. Once you have a need and know the sort of people your characters are the plot will quickly fall into place and the characters will come across as being genuine, plot events will be plausible.

These are the three main problems people have with writers’ block. If you follow through each of these stages you will probably resolve many of the issues you have had.

There is a myriad of techniques which can be used to both enhance your creativity and overcome issues surrounding sabotage and writers block. For more information contact Peter.

Surviving disaster: An NLP based roadmap

www.cogniscientNLP.com-disaster Disasters, whether they are manmade or natural come with a physical and emotional cost. The true trauma of a disaster occurs after people have recovered from the initial shock. Survivors who continue to live in the disaster zone are burdened with the clean up and the costs: financial, material and emotional.

Take care of yourself

It is critical, for you and those around you, that you take care of yourself. Stress and emotions require a huge amount of energy. If you have insufficient energy life is going to be harder for you, you will have less energy for the clean up, less energy to support those around you, and you may become terse, irritable, emotional or irrational. These responses make a difficult situation much harder for everyone. The solutions in this case are easy. Eat well, sleep well. Try to take time out to do something you enjoy and which relaxes you.

If you have trouble sleeping at night, make sure you do enough physical activity during the day so you can sleep well. You can also take a nap during the day if you are disturbed at night. Stay rested.

www.cogniscientNLP.com-comfortfood Eat comfort foods. This is something which we tend to do automatically when stressed, but it is worth mentioning. We all have some food or beverage which reminds us of better, happier times. Take time to enjoy it. It might be a cup of tea or a particular sweet.

Listen to music. Like comfort food, we all have favourite songs which can throw us back into a good mood. If you are feeling down, put it on. This is no time for parties, but right now we need to stay focused. By looking after ourselves and by staying positive, we can be much more focused and get much greater results.

Talk about it. The chances are you are going to want to talk about your experiences. This can be good way of getting the experience out of the system and to come to grips with what has happened. However, how you talk about an experience affects your memory of that experience. I have come across cases where people have survived traumatic events without suffering any trauma, but have later become traumatized because of the way they talked about that event and thought about it. REMEMBER no experience is traumatic in itself. It is how you think about it that makes it traumatic or not. The way you talk can affect the way you think. When you think about the experience:

THINK POSITIVE.

KEEP TO THE FACTS.

STATE WHAT HAPPENED and WHAT YOU DID.

Stay focused with your thoughts. Talk about what needs to be done and do them. When you are not doing them: relax, do things you enjoy doing, spend time with people you like. Try not to think about the bad things that have happened: you will simply feel bad. KEEP YOUR MIND ON WHAT NEEDS TO BE DONE.

Take care of those around you

Make sure that those around you are eating well and sleeping well. It will make things easier for www.cogniscientNLP.com-comforteachother everyone.

Talk about the experience following the guidelines above. It is typical for people suffering shock to talk only about the experience, and repeat descriptions over and over again. If this is happening, talk them through the experience, keeping to the facts, and talking about what they did and what you did. If people mention the victims or the destruction caused by the earthquake, acknowledge it, but try to move on. Keep their thoughts on making the present as comfortable as possible and ensuring the future is going to be one you are proud of.

Do fun things together – play games or sport. Go for a bike ride or do gardening. Be active. This will keep you from thinking about events and get you tired for sleep at night.

Do things that help each other and others. If you and the people around you feel like you are making a positive contribution, you know that you are mastering the situation. That feels good and removes the threat of a victim mentality. We are not victims, we are survivors and we are moving on with our lives.

Show sympathy, empathy, and lead people on to doing something positive. It might be helping clean up the neighbour’s yard or making pancakes or delivering water to friends.

Use comfort food and music.

Recognise the need for help

If you or those around you (loved ones, friends, flat-mates, neighbours) continue to suffer from anxiety, worry, insomnia, depression, panic attacks, flashbacks or an inability to concentrate, then seek professional help. These reactions are natural and can be resolved. If you would like a personal consultation to help you through these, contact me. I provide one-on-one consultations both in person and on Skype.

What is NLP and why I prefer it

There are many types of support available. I use NLP (neuro-linguistic programming) for the simple reason that I found it extremely effective and useful for dealing specifically with trauma and depression. NLP is a results orientated therapy. The focus is on identifying what issues you have and resolving them as quickly and painlessly as possible.

In the case of psychological trauma, an experience takes on whatever meaning you subconsciously give it. Recent research into neuroplasticity has shown that when we recall an experience, by the process of remembering it we recreate it in our mind. We then store that new recollection in our memory. This gives us a crucial key in dealing with traumatic memories. By getting people to recall experiences in a way that is non-threatening, future recollections of the experience no longer cause anxiety or any of the other symptoms associated with psychological trauma. NLP has numerous, elegant techniques which enable people to effectively alter the way they think in order to overcome a wide range of problems and enable people to perform to much higher and greater levels. NLP is used successfully to help: build confidence, motivation; deal with stress, anxiety, insomnia; develop resourcefulness and overcome fears and addictions.

When to say ‘Yes’ to couples counselling

It is a common mistake among couples that they only go to a relationship coach or counsellor when things get bad. This is like suggesting that the national team shouldn’t have a coach unless they start losing games. The time when you should ask for advice about your relationship is before you have started it.

Before starting a serious relationship there are several things you should do before becoming more deeply involved which help ensure that you are compatible and that being together is the sensible option and not simply ‘a nice idea.’

One important thing that you should do is check what values you have and make sure these values are similar. Furthermore, they should be prioritized so that you both know which values are most important to you. It’s no good thinking that ‘time together’ is a shared value when she considers it the most important element of the relationship and he believes that ‘time together’ is something that happens only when the weather is too bad to go fishing and there’s no sport on.

Another good precaution is to sit down and describe to each other the ideal relationship and how you envisage the relationship together. Many couples go into a relationship with differing ideas about what an ideal relationship should entail, they both try to create an ideal relationship, but because its an individual, rather than a team effort it leads to frustration, unhappiness and conflict. Knowing what the two of you want and coming up with a shared goal for life together is essential to ensure that that life will be just as magical as dating.

Learning how to communicate can also help ensure that a relationship continues to function beyond the honeymoon. This may seem odd, because if you are thinking of taking the relationship to the next level you clearly like being with each other and are communicating. However, there are important principles to learn about each other which couples often do not know and never learn.

One of the common mistakes is not speaking the same language as your partner. Have you ever had a situation when you have been with someone and they have said something and you really don’t know what they meant by that? With your partner it is often slightly subtler, in that you probably think you know what he or she means, but it doesn’t really have much meaning to you and consequently you don’t value it.

Furthermore, when couples communicate and miss-communicate they often do a series of quite predictable mistakes which can cause havoc with a relationship. These mistakes can be simply failing to respond to your partner when you are busy, failing to take an interest in what your partner does, not valuing your partner – and worse, valuing them, but not telling them that they are valued and failing to have a shared purpose together.

happiness-www.cogniscientNLP.com Good relationships are not simply the result of chemical highs caused when we are in love, if we rely on these, we don’t get a relationship but an addiction and become addicted to the non-functional nature of the relationship. A relationship takes love, care, affection and communication and for your lives to work happily together they must be bound with overall goals and hopes. All of these are things which need to be worked out before becoming serious, otherwise serious problems can be caused in what would otherwise have been the perfect couple.

Book your consultation with Peter here.

How to be brave: An NLP based approach

www.CogniscientNLP.com-shark At some stage most of us go through a time when we have to be strong and brave. Whenever we find ourselves in a dangerous and continually threatening situation it is natural to ask “how long will this continue?” For some of us this question really is “how long do we need to be brave?”

Sleepless nights, fear and anxiety have their impact on all areas of your life, affecting your personal health and relationships. Here’s how to build resilience and courage.

Although people will often tell you to “be strong” or “be brave” few people actually know how to be brave. People will often tell you that bravery is something you are born with, someone is brave and someone else is a coward.

It’s not that simple.

www.CogniscientNLP.com-WWIIairplane Bravery is relative, it is also context specific. Above all it is all about what is going on in YOUR mind. There is a story of a World War II bomber pilot who had flown into through enemy anti-aircraft fire on numerous occasions. He said he never felt fear. There was too much to do.

The bravest thing he ever did was walk through a rice paddy in Burma. He never got a medal for it. There wasn’t an enemy soldier present for 50 miles but he had perceived that the danger was high and walking, he had nothing to occupy his mind – and it fixated on the danger.

I was once snorkelling with a friend of mine at a seal colony (in a wetsuit) and I asked my friend if he was ever afraid of sharks. He looked at me as if he hadn’t even considered the possibility and said, “If I think about it, of course I’m afraid of them. I just don’t think about it.”

He mightn’t be one of my smartest friends, but he’s certainly the bravest, and amazingly enough, he’s still alive.

www.CogniscientNLP.com-RomanLegion The Romans believed that bravery could be taught. With an army of 500,000 men they protected an empire that encompassed Europe, the Middle East and North Africa. They regularly fought armies much larger than their own. The Roman legionaries were definitely brave.

The Romans taught their soldiers to be brave by accustoming them to the sense of danger and teaching them how to respond to it. Danger triggers adrenalin which can significantly enhance your strength, awareness and abilities.

In a dangerous situation you can become another person, if you know what to do.

The key is to focus on what to do, what you can do and responding to the situation. People who are afraid focus on the danger, the possibility of being maimed or killed and the possibility of having loved ones maimed and killed. They’re not pretty thoughts. In crisis situations don’t think them.

Easier said than done, you say.

Exactly.

And it might take some effort to teach yourself not to do it, but it can be learnt, and all it takes is a little bit of time.

What we want you to be able to do in an emergency is to replace those terrifying and unpleasant thoughts which trigger fear and flight and replace them with immediate actions that need to be done. But the first thing to do is general preparation.

General Preparation

Have an emergency kit ready, check the Civil Defence website for suggestions
Make sure your family knows how to respond to emergencies
Have meeting points arranged so you can meet up
Minimise dangers at home and work

By taking these steps you know that you have done everything you can to minimise the danger. This isn’t a guarantee but it means the chances are in your favour that you and your family will survive. This means that when the ground starts to shake or any other emergency begins, that you are set up for survival.

Research the Experience

Know what you are going to do when an emergency occurs. Do some research so you know what the cause is and what the best response is.

Knowing what is causing the emergency by itself makes it feel safer.

Rehearse the Experience

Now you know:

what will happen in an emergency
know that you have safeguarded yourself as best you can
know what the best response is

You can mentally rehearse various emergency scenarios. There are several effective NLP techniques for doing this, if you know something of NLP you can do these yourself.

They include:

The Swish
The Trauma Cure
Chained Anchors
Timeline processes
Mental Rehearsal

For those less familiar with these techniques, the best approach is simply mentally rehearsing what you are going to do and how you are going to do it. If there are family members that you need to look after, include helping them in your plans. Play these plans like a movie over and over several times. The repetition moves the thoughts into your subconscious mind so that when you need to, you can act immediately.

This preparation will enable you to act immediately, without thinking, to do what you need to do. Like the WWII bomber pilot, when you know what to do in an emergency, you just don’t have time to get yourself scared.

For more information and to book a consultation, contact Peter.

Sport is a mind game too

www.CogniscientNLP.com-running There is nothing so disheartening as competing and knowing that you are being beaten by a player who isn’t as good as you are, or who trains less seriously than you do. Every sportsperson has participated in games where the worse player has somehow managed to win. This was particularly galling when I was the player being defeated and I could do seemingly nothing as my opponent, lacking technique and finesse, doggedly took my game to pieces and came out the bloody victor at the end. Most sportspeople know of this experience and have often experienced it both ways, taking satisfaction at knowing that they have beaten someone who is better than they are. So how does it happen?

A couple of years ago I ran a half marathon. At the time I had a bad knee injury and doubted whether I would be able to finish the run, nonetheless, I had committed to it and had no intention of letting an injury hold me. I was aware that how we communicate with ourselves affects performance and wanting to protect my knee started the race repeating to myself the words ‘slow and easy.’ This was demoralizing. People kept overtaking me and I do dislike loosing. In the end I decided that my running commentary could be changed to ‘fast and easy’.

Immediately people stopped overtaking me, and shortly after the change of my commentary, I started overtaking other people. Not only did I complete the half marathon, but out of 90 runners I came sixth.

www.CogniscientNLP.com-hockey This is a clear demonstration of how what we do with our minds affects how we perform and who we are. As human beings we have a huge amount of control over what our bodies do and how they behave and react. Since we are complicated beings, the majority of these tasks are assigned to the subconscious mind (and a good thing too, imagine what would happen if we absent mindedly forgot to breath) and since the subconscious usually operates beneath our conscious awareness we lose control of this vast and complicated system which runs our bodies for us. With NLP techniques we can take back control of some of these functions and reset the system so it operates more efficiently and towards the outcomes which we set. This is extremely useful in sport when often we have to force our bodies to operate at a peak level the logical and sensible option is simply to take a break, eat some food and relax until we have some more energy and can focus more easily on the game. Sport just doesn’t let you do that, so instead we have to force our bodies and if the subconscious is unwilling, we literally have to fight against ourselves, which distracts us from the important task of focusing on the game or the race and putting all our resources behind winning.

I used to know a talented fencer, one of the best in New Zealand, he would come off the piste after losing a bout in a national level tournament and hadn’t even raised a sweat. He thought he wanted to win, but he hadn’t tried. NLP can be used in cases like this to focus an athlete on an outcome and motivate the athlete to really try to achieve.

www.cogniscientNLP.com-kayaking In other cases it is a matter of self belief. Steve Gurney expected to lose his last Coast to Coast because the running leg of the competition had been increased and he had short legs. Dr. Richard Bolstad, who was working with Steve Gurney, took him through some processes which altered the belief that he couldn’t win. For the first time ever Steve won the running section of the Coast to Coast. He attributes his success entirely to NLP and the work that Richard Bolstad did with him (see Lucky Legs, Steve Gurney).

Another problem, which you often see in tennis, is athletes getting flustered by an unexpected event that puts them off their game. This indicates that the mental preparation before the game has not been sufficient, for which we have several excellent techniques. However, it can also be dealt with on and off the field by the appropriate use of anchoring techniques to ensure the athletes stay in a positive and resourceful state throughout the competition. Often something will go wrong while an athlete is competing and they will start to blame that problem for their failures. This is destructive as it has the effect of creating a reason to do badly during the competition and this has flow on effects on performance.

By using NLP we can prepare athletes to put their best foot forwards in every competition and to develop and maintain a winning mindset that can keep you at the top of your game so you can achieve the results that you have been dreaming for.

For more information about how NLP and hypnosis can improve your sporting performance book a consultation with Peter today, or purchase his book The Champion from Amazon.com.

Resetting relationships

relationships-www.cogniscientNLP.com Relationships can spiral out of control. By the time you realize that counselling might be useful it is often too late. Both parties have been under such emotional stress, have felt so much pain that they are no longer certain that they want to maintain the relationship. To end the pain is easier than trying to fix the relationship. Furthermore, even assuming that the relationship can be fixed, people may choose not to because they have experienced it break and don’t want to go through the emotional pain of having the relationship spin out of control again.

However, the great thing about watching your relationship spin out of control is that you get a first hand experience of what makes the relationship fail. You learn what not to do. If you had this experience at the beginning of your relationship you would know how to make it work wouldn’t you? That’s useful information. The problem is that you have such an unpleasant track record with your partner that you feel reluctant to risk giving that person the power to make you unhappy again – because the power to make someone unhappy is the power to make them the happiest person in the world. And often we choose not to accept it.

Once a choice is made to end the relationship no amount of counselling, no communication techniques will make the relationship work unless you and your partner make the decision that you want to have a relationship with your partner and decide how you want to make it work. If you can take that decision then we can hit the reset button and you can take your relationship back to what it had been when you had enjoyed the honeymoon phase.

So why would you make a choice to renew and reset the relationship when the relationship has already failed once?

Maybe you value your partner? Maybe you love your partner? Maybe you remember how good you had been together and doubt that you could find happiness with anyone else and long to be able to achieve that happiness again? And maybe you can trust that learning how to make your relationship work will enable you to achieve that happiness.

So once a couple have decided that they want to make their relationship work, we have a great range of tools that can help. Using NLP techniques, we can clear most of that emotional baggage from the past. Old insults, bad feelings, hatred, even infidelities can be cleared up using a variety of tools. Then we can take you back to the beginning of your relationship and rebuild trust between you – helping you to learn what each other likes. This is what I call hitting the reset button.

The next stage is to teach relationship skills. A great deal of research has gone into discovering the keys to successful relationships. These include such things as being appreciative and responsive to each other – to the point of actually being interested in each other’s lives. There is also a magic ratio of 5:1. For every negative statement there needs to be five positive ones. It is little facts and details like these that help maintain a loving relationship.

In addition to knowing what sort of things work in a relationship we can work on communication skills and conflict resolution skills so that people can respond to difficult situations and strengthen their relationships in those situations instead of destroying them.

Individuals may also have issues which are destructive to a relationship and can be worked on. Such issues can be wide ranging from poor communication to anger to just negativity.

By taking a holistic approach to the couple and their relationship it is possible not only to not only stay together, but be in love together and build a happy future.
Peter Campbell does couple’s therapy to help couples rebuild and foster relationships, book a consultation to reset your relationship today.

Overcome Depression

depression-www.cogniscientNLP.com How many people do you know who are either depressed, unhappy or simply negative? There are probably numerous explanations why depression is so prevalent in today’s society but I will focus on a couple and explain how we can resolve depression quickly and effectively without resorting to drugs.

One of the main causes for depression is simply a matter of motivation. Most people are motivated using what we call ‘away from’ or ‘negative’ motivation. Instead of wanting to be prosperous we want to not be poor. This away from motivation is the motivation of survival and as humans have been trying to survive for millions of years it is a very natural form of motivation. But what happens if you no longer are compelled to survive? You no longer have a reason to be motivated. Now the part of the brain responsible for happiness is also responsible for motivation. No motivation means no happiness and that leads to unhappiness and depression.

Other causes for depression can be negative past experiences, which throw us into a downward spiral. This is enhanced since the marketing and advertising industry constantly reinforces the idea that unless we have everyone’s products we should feel unhappy.

So how do we overcome depression? The solution is surprisingly simple. First of all we remove the triggers that have been causing depression and then we work with the actual process that is the feeling of depression. I mentioned the downward spiral before. This is a process which occurs within the brain where someone is depressed thinks about something which is unhappy, consequently feels unhappy and then criticizes themselves for being unhappy. This leads to the familiar cycle. Once we have dealt with the triggers for the depression and alter the process inside their minds most people are cured.

But isn’t depression a bio-chemical problem? Yes it is. When you start getting depressed the brain stops producing certain chemicals – a brain without motivation is extremely inactive and highly non-functional. This is clearly shown in EMI scans. So we teach the brain more useful ways of looking at issues and responding to issues and it starts, automatically, generating those chemicals which are necessary.

To overcome your depression book your consultation with Peter now or purchase the Overcome Depression NLP Course from our online shop.

Harnessing Linguistic Potential

As a linguist I have always been interested in improving my linguistic ability. Learn about a new approach to Linguistic Excellence using NLP to develop latent skills you may have only ever dreamed about.

When I was working as a translator in Russia I met a young woman who was an amazing polyglot. She spoke fluent Russian, Georgian, English and German, and knew Ancient Greek and Arabic. She told me how she learnt Georgian. When she was five years old she was taken to Georgia and enrolled in a Georgian school to learn the language. Throughout the year she was unable to speak a word of Georgian. Then in the final two weeks of school she became seriously ill. On returning to school the following year she spoke perfect Georgian. This story seems incredible but is true. Being a linguist myself I wanted to learn what had happened inside her mind which enabled her to suddenly start speaking Georgian fluently.

Since I was working in Russia I started experimenting with my own Russian and by using hypnosis and guided meditation was able to improve my Russian considerably. However, this interesting experiment was just the beginning of what is now an entire programme. The key behind my friend’s success with languages is that she has an ability to not only store information in her subconscious but to activate it. I therefore started developing techniques to help people develop their latent linguistic skills so that they can focus and learn much faster and achieve a greater level of success than would otherwise be possible.

In my experience this comes down to mainly two things background and strategy. People with a linguistic background understand what is important about language and focus on the language itself. People who struggle with languages tend to focus on understanding the concepts. This distracts people from the language itself and also is inadequate because they are trying to understand a concept without an overall understanding of how the language fits together or works. People with a linguistic background understand these keys to success. Furthermore, they have positive learning experiences with languages which gives them greater persistence and assurance that they can learn material quickly and easily. Since linguistic ability is strongly related with what goes on in our heads, our beliefs about how easy languages are can be vital to the ease with which we acquire linguistic knowledge.

Another key to developing linguistic ability is reducing the number of cognitive processes that are involved. Often we get taught rules to help learn the grammar of a language, but this means that instead of focusing on speaking the language, we have to try to remember the rules for the language. By adopting an approach which is more focused on rote learning information we reduce mental processes which enables people to speak faster.

To learn how you can use these techniques contact me.

Curing Addictions without the Craving

Wine-www.cogniscientNLP.com Drugs and addiction have accompanied humanity since before the birth of civilisation. Most peoples have their own forms of drugs that they take. In the Americas these consisted of tobacco, the coco plant and tobacco. In the Pacific and Melanesia, kava and betel-nut juice are prevalent. Even nomadic horse tribes had their own alcoholic beverages.

However, despite humankind’s long history of using various forms of drugs we have failed to either accept addiction or respond to it in a positive way. Addicts in the past have been seen as outcasts from society and have been demonised. In the present day, with a prevalence of drugs – addicts are not so much abhorred as feared – with an increase in crime associated with drug abuse.

Society, therefore, has a strong need to respond to the drugs endemic effectively and current initiatives designed to fight drug abuse seem ineffective. Furthermore, many of the drug abuse programmes seem only semi effective.One of the most startling stories I heard about recovery from drug addiction was about a teenager. He came from a good, caring, middle-class family and when he was about 13 years old started taking drugs. His parents were concerned about this and his mother took an unusual approach. Instead of lecturing him or banning him from hanging out with his friends, she started telling him she loved him. He responded by saying he didn’t care. This continued for a couple of months.

drugabuse-www.cogniscientNLP.com One day she told him she loved him and he broke down crying. With a lot of support from his family the teenager was able to make a full recovery and although this happened many years ago, has never relapsed.The story demonstrates an interesting point, that the pseudo-religious zeal of anti-drugs groups in many ways acts as an impediment to recovery. Many people who are addicted don’t want to be on the drug themselves but are compelled to take them by cravings and desire.

They don’t need to be told that it is harmful or to be further isolated from people who can help them – what they need is something else. This is where groups like Alcoholics Anonymous are useful. They provide support in a non-judgemental environment, which can help people recover from their addictions. Unfortunately, the success of the AA programme is limited for although it provides people with support – it does not provide people with the tools to be able to recover from the addiction. This is particularly the case because a large part of addiction is environmental.

When people undergo surgery in hospital they often receive large quantities of painkillers, which would normally be sufficient for people to become addicted. When the patients leave hospital they go cold turkey on the drug and don’t even notice it’s absence, apart from an increase in pain. Many US servicemen returning from Vietnam were addicted to heroin. On reaching the USA 90-95% stopped taking heroin entirely. The ones who did were still living in the jungles of Vietnam suffering from trauma.

When we change the environment, we can usually overcome addiction easily – without even noticing that’s what we are doing.With this understanding Dr. Richard Grey established a new type of drug addiction programme, called the Brooklyn Program, in New York(USA). The purpose of this programme is to teach people tools and show people opportunities so the need or desire to take drugs is removed.

One of the first things which Dr. Grey teaches is a process called anchoring. Anchoring is basically physiological association and was discovered by Dr. Pavlov who was working with dogs. Dr. Pavlov discovered that if he rang a bell when feeding dogs – soon they began to slobber even if he only rang the bell. This can be applied to drugs, when someone experiences a high they can anchor the experience and then later re-access the experience without the need to consume more of the drug. This is a useful skill.

The next step in this process is to develop other interests in the patient. If someone becomes passionate about something the need to take a drug diminishes dramatically and this is clearly demonstrated by research. One of the best ways of overcoming addiction is to fall in love or to find work which is fulfilling. The brain releases oxytocin into the system which works as a system reset.

Another important step in the Brooklyn Program is helping patients develop goals and develop some purpose in their lives. When people take drugs, part of the brain closes down. This part of the brain is the orientation association area, when it shuts down people experience a blissful state. This state can be achieved several ways. Taking drugs is a very simple way of achieving it but it can also be achieved through meditation and interestingly enough through being happy. So teaching people to be happy is one of the keys to help people overcome addictions.

A lot of research has now been carried out into happiness and we know that the part of the brain responsible for happiness is also responsible for goal setting. The best way people can achieve happiness is to have purpose in their lives and be on the path to achieving those goals.

The final phase in the Brooklyn Program is a series of mental techniques, which are used to help change the mental associations and the psychological causes behind addiction – these are mainly NLP techniques.

success02-www.cogniscientNLP.com The Brooklyn Program is the most effective drug rehabilitation programme in the United States. The system developed and implemented by Dr. Richard Grey makes use of recent research into the cognitive aspects of addiction and so the programme works not only for various drug addictions but for other forms of addiction including compulsive eating disorders, addictions to particular food and beverages, and to other social problems such as sex addictions.

To start your recovery, book your consultation with Peter today .