Posted by Jamie Dixon on May 19, 2009 in Daily Blog
Today I’d like to announce the release of a new project we’ve been working on over these past few months. The Coach Crowd (http://www.thecoachcrowd.com).
This project aims to bring coaches together from all over the world by giving them a place to organise and RSVP to “meetups”. A meetup can be held anywhere. From the pub to a resteraunt to a picnic in the park. Thecoachcrowd.com aims to bring coaches together in the real world so they can socialise, coach each other and generally share experiences and have lots of fun.
Here’s what it says on our About section over at thecoachcrowd.com
Are you a coach or involved in coaching type work? Perhaps you’re a therapist or god forbid a psychologist
TheCoachCrowd is the place where real people arrange to meet in real life. It’s a strange concept, I know, but I thought it’d be a good idea for coaches to have a place where they can arrange meetups.
Want to find out what events are already planned? Why not View All Upcoming Events. Interested in hosting your own meetups? Start now and Host a Meetup.
You can arrange to meet anywhere you like. The pub, a restaurant, the park, anywhere.
If you’re not already a member Register now!!!
The service is completely free so come on over, register, and join in the fun !!
Posted by Jamie Dixon on May 11, 2009 in Daily Blog
One of the greatest things about being a coach is the vast array of amazing people I get to meet. Whether it’s my clients, my colleagues or people I meet at different events, I’m always in awe of the fantastic work people are doing.
One of the things I hear from coaches quite often is their fear that other coaches are going to take business away from them. Not because they mean too but just because there’s a lot of people doing coaching these days.
That kind of belief can only exist if you’re working from the assumption that every client should come to you and that you as a coach need more clients. The truth is, it’s not the number of clients you see that makes a successful coaching practice, it’s the transformations you help your clients to make.
When you start to work from a place of freedom and transformation, you’ll start to get the clients that you really want. If needing clients is the primary driver then it’s going to change how effective you can be as a coach, but seeing clients because they excite you and you know you can truly help them, makes it so both you and your clients have the freedom and opportunity to trully change.
On this note, I’d like to introduce you to some coaches who I think do amazing work. “Woah, hold your horses lad!!” I hear some of you shouting. “You’re promoting the competition?”. The true answer that that is no. I’m not.
The reason I’m not is because each of these people in their own right are amazing coaches and do wonderful work. One of the things that makes the work they do so wonderful is that they only see clients they really want to see. Competition only exists when coaches are all fighting for the same clients. It’s simply not true that every coach is right for every client and every client should want to see you. The more-than-likely-truth is that each coach and each client are unique and because of this, different people will be more suited to working with different coaches.
My prime objective is the transformations of my clients. When I know they’ll benefit hugely from the work of other coaches, these are the people I refer them to:
Steve is a fantastic coach and friend living and working in Horsham, West Sussex. Steve and I have trained together for over 3 years and in that time I’ve come to recognise him as one of the best coaches in the UK. His genius is his ability to take what seem like complex problems and to turn them quickly and elegantly into things that can be easily solved.
Jenny has been a friend and colleague for around 4 years now and she’s one of the people I go to for my own coaching. One of Jen’s specialities is Confidence Coaching and Coaching for Job Seekers. Read what her clients say about her, you’ll be amazed.
Chris is one of the most inspiring people I know. As a young man he was already changing political policy and now he’s helping people to become amazing at what they do. Chris works with people who want to take what they already have and become even better at it. The work Chris does truly is about creating the kind of future for yourself that makes you go “Wow!”
I met Katie in January 2009 at a training course in Mexico and since then she’s been one of the few people who inspire me just by being around her. Katie’s flair and positivity absolutely shine and it’s hard not to change when you’re around her.
Steve is a down-to-earth yet business minded coach, consultant and trainer. Steve will open up a whole new realm of ideas and possibilities and, exploring these things with him is worth it’s weight in gold. I’ve been around Steve for a couple of years now through various trainings and each time we meet up I’m amazed at how much more skilled he’s become. Truly inspiring.
These are just some of the fantastic coaches I know that make this work truly magical. There’s enough room in this world for everyone and the more we build one another up and inspire each other into creating new and exciting things, the more successful and amazing we’re all going to become.
Posted by Jamie Dixon on Mar 25, 2009 in Daily Blog
As many of you know, music is something I’m passionate about. Having been a drummer since the age of 9 and loving all different types and styles of music, I’ve grown to love anything that makes my skin tingle and my soul dance.
Today I’d like to introduce you to Manu Delago playing a Hang Drum solo.
I love the seeming simplicity of this instrument and yet the total complexity of what this guy does as he plays. To me this is true magic and I hope you enjoy listening to this as much as I enjoy sharing it with you. Many thanks to my friend Keely for sending me this link. Enjoy.
Posted by Jamie Dixon on Mar 24, 2009 in Daily Blog
I’ve just returned back from an evening in London with Michael Neill and as always it was an excellent night.
Michael brings with him years of experience working with many people from many walks of life, but more than that, be brings a real sparkle and true passion to the work he does. What Michael does seems to really work and he’s a great demonstration of really putting into practice what you preach.
What Michael excels at on the stage is making coaching and NLP seem easy and doing it with a kind of kazazz that isn’t cheesy but captivates his audience. I s’pose his years of acting play a part in that but he always seems genuine and caring and when answering questions from the audience, sometimes on a sensitive subject for the person asking, his love and caring really shines.
If you haven’t yet seen Michael do his thing I highly recommend his work and he’ll be back here again on the 9th May for a day of Effortless Success.
One of my favourite quotes from Michael is the metaphor of pooh sticks:
“You throw the sticks in the water and they float down, and sometimes a stick gets stuck. The stick doesn’t need therapy, it just needs a nudge”.
To me, this is a great analogy for the work we do because it’s all too easy for people to think that being stuck means they need therapy and they need this and need that.
Sometimes all people need is a nudge here and there to get them un-stuck and floating back down the river of life. That’s the work I do and that’s the work I love.
Posted by Jamie Dixon on Mar 23, 2009 in Daily Blog
To me, Music is one of the most important things in my life. I love everything from HipHop to Rock, Classical to Funk. It’s what lights up my soul and makes every fibre of my body tingle.
When I hear great music or even music I simply appreciate, I just want to share it. Today I’d like to introduce you to Ronald Jenkees.
This guy didn’t study music, he wasn’t born with ‘musical tallent’ and yet he’s writing music to rival even some of the best in the industry. To me, that’s an amazing feat and my admiration goes out to anyone who accomplishes new things in life like Ronald has.
You can find Ronald at his website http://www.ronaldjenkees.com/ and here’s a video of him creating some fantastic music:
Unconscious Installation? Sounds complicated. Isn’t that the thing where you sit in a training room and don’t have to do anything except zone out and wait to become smart auto-magically?
Yes..That’s right…ahem.
It’s March 2009 and Gabe Guerrero is kicking off the first day of his Unconscious Installation workshop at the prestigious Regents College, London. On our way into the college we pass through Regents Park, down past the river and along the bank where Pelicans, Swans and Squirrels line up to greet us to what will be our home for the next 4 days. It’s a mild spring day and the sun is shining through the trees and reflecting on the lake. There’s something magical about being surrounded by nature and as we step into the training room, old faces and new turn to greet us. Read more…
One thing that’s always been really important to me is to have other people in the same industry think I’m doing a good job. When I was a computer programmer, it always felt great to have other programmers compliment my work and when I did Sleight of Hand Magic for a while, having other magicians tell me i was coming up with great new things always gave me a great sense of joy.
The Lewis Clinic are a group of therapists based at Number One Harley Street in London and they’ve recently invited me to become part of their group as well as seeing my own private clients.
As one of only seven therapists/coaches to be listed with The Lewis Clinc, I’m really happy to let you all know this great news and you can see my listing on their homepage now at www.lewisclinic.co.uk
Just like when i was a computer programmer and magician, I’m really happy and thankful to the people at The Lewis Clinic for recognising what I can do and inviting me to be part of their group.
The idea for Behavioural Crosswiring came whilst I was doing some research into the T.O.T.E model (Test, Operate, Test, Exit [George A. Miller, Eugene Galanter, and Karl H. Pribram -Plans and the Structure of Behavior1960 - ISBN 978-0937431009]) and more specifically the idea of nested TOTEs.
Whilst I began thinking about the structure of the TOTE model and how it applies to human behaviour, I called upon my experience as a computer programmer and began thinking about the TOTE loop in the same way I’d think about other iterative processes when writing computer programs. At first I began thinking about how a result from one TOTE could also be the initial Test for a second TOTE and thus an overlapping of TOTEs would be achieved.
A basic example of overlapping TOTEs in a behavioural context could be opening a door and walking through.
TOTE 1 (opening the door) can be structured as follows:
[is the door shut?] - yes - [reach out][grab the handle][turn the handle][pull the door open] - [is the door shut?] - no - exit.
TOTE 2 can be structured as follows:
[is the door open?] - yes - [walk through] - [Did I succeed in walking through?] - yes - exit.
This is a very basic example of two large chunk TOTEs yet you can already see the correlation between opening the door and walking through. The overlapping of these two TOTEs comes when you realise that human beings don’t simply forget the results from one TOTE before moving onto the next, they somehow remember that the door was just opened and operate according to that knowledge. This leads into the idea that the result from the first TOTE (or some result being returned other than the pure intention of the TOTE) can be stored in some universally accessible variable which can then be used in the second TOTE. This would looks as follows using our example above:
bool IsDoorOpen (create a Boolean (yes/no, on/off, true/false) variable to store the value of true/false as to whether the door is open) TOTE 1 : [is the door shut] - yes - [reach out and open the door, set IsDoorOpen to true] - [Is the door closed?] - no - exit. TOTE 2: [IsDoorOpen = true?] - yes - [walk through] - [I did succeed in walking through] - yes - exit.
Here you can see the overlap between the result of the first TOTE setting the variable IsDoorOpen to true, and the usage of that variable in the second TOTE as the initial Test. As I say, this is a very basic example and while other operations would also be running simultaneously, this gives us a clear way of identifying the possibility of TOTE overlap.
While I was thinking about this idea of using variables in order to overlap TOTEs, and as I was also thinking about the concept of nested TOTEs at the same time, I started to wonder whether some TOTEs also use variables in order to determine exit point. That is, setting some variable in the operation phase which is later used in the final Test to decide whether it’s time to exist the strategy or not.
This could work as follows:
bool isDoorOpen (create a Boolean variable to store the value of true/false as to whether the door is open)
TOTE 1: [is the door shut?] - yes - [reach out and open the door, set IsDoorOpen to true] - [isDoorOpen = false?] - no - exit.
The result here is that the second Test in the TOTE is dependant on the variable IsDoorOpen and the value that’s assigned too it. This means that the exiting of the strategy (or TOTE) is accomplished based on the result of some operation and the setting of the IsDoorOpen variable. What caught my interest here is the question “What’s setting the variable that’s later used to exit the strategy and can it be hacked by some other process”.
Cross Wiring TOTEs
The concept of cross wiring TOTEs came from the question above and the concept of nesting TOTEs. It struck me that if the final Test in the TOTE is dependant on some variable being set to some certain value (like true or false) then it must be possible to set that variable inside the operation phase by nesting in a new TOTE which also has access to the variable in question. A basic example of this can be see using the behavioural process of depression.
Basic TOTE for depression:
bool isFeelingAcheived (set a variable to determine whether the feeling(s) have been achieved)
TOTE: [isFeelingAcheived = false?] - yes - [while isFeelingAcheived = false; do something to create depression and set isFeelingAcheived to true] - [isFeelingAcheived = true?] - exit.
In order to crosswire this TOTE into something new we also need a new TOTE that achieves our desired result. As an example of this we can use something like joy (another nominalisation) to crosswire the original TOTE into exiting.
The basic idea is to nest the desired TOTE inside the operation phase of the original TOTE and have it short circuit the process by setting the variable used in the Test phase and thus exiting the strategy. Since the original TOTE is operating inside of a WHILE loop we should be able to exit the current loop and have the strategy re-check the WHILE condition which will now be set to a condition that allows the strategy to exit.
This would looks as follows:
TOTE: [isFeelingAcheived = false?] - yes - [while isFeelingAcheived = false; TOTE: ([isFeelingAcheived = false?] - yes - [while isFeelingAcheived = false; do something to create Joy, set isFeelingAcheived to true, end while]) if isFeelingAchieved = false do something to create depression and set isFeelingAcheived to true] - [isFeelingAcheived = true?] - exit.
This would then create a scenario that fulfils the criteria of the original TOTE loop however instead of the person completing the operation phase of the depression state, they’d instead complete the phase up-to the point of creating the joy state, fulfilling the criterion of the conditional WHILE loop and then exit the strategy.
The idea so far is still preliminary and much testing is still required. I have some ideas on the installation of this process both consciously and unconsciously and I’ll write those ideas up once more testing has been done.
I’d love to get your input and ideas on this so please leave a comment with ideas, experiences or simply just some ramblings
Sitting in a cafe by the sea in the south of England watching the waves crash up against the wooden breaks, I was talking to a friend about some recent changes in their life. As my friend described how they’d taken a redundancy package at work, I started to notice that they seemed quite down-and-out about what was going on and what the future held for them. I also noticed that each time my friend described the situation and their tone of voice shifted into a depressing tone, they’d look up at something over my shoulder and then her face would drop in a sad unhappy kind of way.
I asked my friend “What’s there?” as i pointed up to the location where she were looking. “I don’t know” was the reply and so I asked; “When you think about having taken the redundancy package, what do you think about?”. Again she looked up into the same location and said “I don’t know. I just see the place I used to work and stuck on the front of it is the number of years I put into working there”. This got me interested and I started to think about the different ways I could help my friend to get out of the stuck state and into a more resourceful place. After all, when you’re looking for a new job you’re probably going to be making some important decisions and being down-and-out is probably not the most resourceful state to make those decisions in.
So I started to think about what could be done to help my friend in a way that utilised the first state and all the anchors associated with it and lead her into something that pulled her towards a more fulfilling and exciting future. I asked my friend to think about that same thing and so she looked up into the same place as before and I asked her; “What’s next?”. She looked at me blankly stating “nothing, what do you mean?”. “Well, when you think about that thing, what’s going to come next?” again she replied “I don’t know. I just see this place with the number on it”.
I asked her if she’d ever had one of those flip books, the ones where you have a little guy on the front and you flip through the pages and as each page comes into view the picture changes and something else happens. Usually he walks around or climbs up a ladder and sometimes he does back-flips and dances around the pages. “So if something great was to happen in the next few weeks, what’s it gonna be?” I asked her. For a moment she zoned out and as her eyes re-focused she looked at me and said “I’m going to be looking for a new job”. “Now notice what image you make in your mind when you think about finding a new job and imagine putting that image right behind the first image like in a flip book so that the further through the flip book you go, the more time goes forwards”.
I asked again, “So what’s next after that? What would be the most wonderful and logical thing for you to have happen next?”. She replied that “Next I’d be going for an interview and it’d be going fantastically. I can see the interviewers smiling at me and nodding”. Again I asked her to take that image and place it behind the one of her looking for a job as she decides what’s going to come next. “Next” she says “I’ll be in my dream job enjoying every moment of doing what I love”. This time she didn’t even need the prompt as I could see her mentally stack this new image behind the others. “This seems great to me” I said…”So what’s next?”.
“Next?” she replied. “I think that’s it really? I’m doing the job i love and it’s amazing”. So I asked her, “Once you’ve got the most amazing job ever and you’re enjoying every moment of it, what else in your life is going to happen that’s going to amazing?”. She looked up and began to smile. Her eyes lit up and her cheeks relaxed. I could see the blood rushing into her face as a sense of excitement filled the room. “I’m going to be on Holiday enjoying myself, relaxing and taking in the sun, sitting on the beach as the sun sets and admiring the view over the ocean”. “That looks amazing” I said. “Now place that image behind all of the others”..”and what’s next?”. My friend looked up at me with glowing cheeks and a big grin and said “Life’s just amazing, it’s all going fantastically and everything, even if not perfect, is just how I’d like it to be”. I asked her to place that image behind all the others and for a few moments we talked about something else.
I then asked my friend to think about that first thought she’d had earlier, of the old work place and the number of years invested there above it. As her eyes de-focused and she began to look slightly down-and-out again I asked her to flip the page and see the second image of her looking for a new job, then to flick over to the third image of her having a great interview and the fourth of her being in her dream job, the fifth of her being on that amazing holiday and the sixth where everything in life is just how she’d like it to be. Then I asked her to go back to the beginning again and start from the first picture, the second, the third, the fourth, the fifth and the sixth. As we did this four or five times I started to notice that each time she went back to the first image she automatically flipped straight through all the new things and started to grin and beam. I asked her to go to the first image and to try and hold it there and look at it. As she did her cheeks began to flush and she started to laugh. I asked her “What’s so funny? I thought this was a crappy memory?”. She told me that she didn’t know why she was laughing, just that everything seemed to make more sense now and that she was ready to get moving and start building a new future. I didn’t believe her so I asked her to go back to that first memory again and to try and feel bad like she did before. Again, she started laughing and beaming.
Today’s Fun Bit.
Think of something in your life where you feel stuck and a bit down.
Notice how you think about that thing and notice where you make the picture in your mind (if it’s just something you say to yourself you can do this auditorily but for now choose something that has an image associated too it)
Ask yourself the question “What would be the most perfect thing for me to have happen next if anything was possible”.
Notice what you think about and what image comes to mind for that thought.
Imagine that image being behind the first one like in a flip book
Repeat these steps with at least 6 things that lead to better and better things. Choose things that make you feel fantastic more and more.
Start to run through each of the slides in this flip book going from 1 through 6. Repeat this 6 times.
Think about what it was that was making you feel stuck and notice what’s different.
Start doing what it takes to make your dreams and ambitions more real every day.
I’d love to hear your feedback of how this works for you. Remember, I made this up, so there are no real rules as long as you feel good and start to make it so that when you notice you’re feeling stuck, that you start to use that as the base of something new and engaging in your life. There are many ways you can use this technique to get yourself or your clients from one place to another and with the build in future pacing used here, you’ll most likely find that the more stuck you get in life with things the more you’ll find new ways to do new things and life will become a more creative process. Keep learning, keep building more and more desirable futures and let me know how well this works for you.
In 1985 Richard Bandler published the book “Using your brain for a change”. A series of transcripts that changed the way many people thought about the way the mind works, how it encodes information and how people can make profound changes in their lives with ease.
It’s now 2009 and Richard Bandler is making his way onto the stage at the Dreams Hotel, Puerto Vallarta Mexico. As the rock music plays, the crowd stands to applaud the creative genius behind the technology known as NLP. This is “Using A Lot More Of Your Brain For A Change” with Richard Bandler, Gabe Guerrero and special guest, Eric Robbie. Read more…
Using the latest findings from the fields of Hypnosis, Neurology, Linguistics and Positive Psychology, Jamie Dixon has created a hypnotic journey that will take you into the adventures of your own mind.
