Thinking and decision-making are skills, no different than the skills you use to compete or perform in other fields. If you want to ensure your thinking is your best possible thinking, you need to prepare.

In NLP courses, we learn to build rapport and read changes in ourselves while we are connected to others. The mind you read is always your own, but it is your mind under the influence of someone else’s thoughts and feelings

How can you build optimism? It takes willpower to move your attention from problems to the strengths that will solve them. That willpower is a little easier when you surround yourself with people who are also looking for strengths and solutions. It’s not about looking for a bright sid

Flow is one kind of congruence. Another is a sort of touchstone that allows you to know when all parts of you agree on a next step. This often comes after you have deliberately gathered as much information as is avaiable to you before you make a decision. At some point, searching and testing alternatives stops giving you new information. When it’s time to choose, you do what feels right.  What feels right is congruence. It’s the choice that is grounded in your awareness, settling your body and your mind. It’s the choice you know you can live with.

The way the human being is structured, our enormously complicated brains run most of our behaviours outside of our conscious awareness. We literally don’t know what we’re going to do next, most of the time. How research and stories help us explore the vast territory that makes us who we are.

The techniques and tools of NLP are processes for making change. But the real effect of these processes is only possible when you use them for a clearly shaped purpose so that you can observe tangible results. And you can only predict results when you deliberately adopt different perspectives to mentally model what is happening and what might happen next

A better way to think about the point of a mindfulness practice is to see it as a way to connect with what is present now so that you can recognize and adapt to change. Your choices depend on your answers to two questions: ⁃ who are you? ⁃ what do you want?

Fun is not something you create to build a team up so that you can break them down again with work. Fun comes from play and play leads to innovation. Play creates energy, openness to diversity, and a willingness to explore ideas which do not, at first, seem practical.

What’s got you wound up? It could be that restless feeling that you have lots of ground to cover before you take a real break. Or that chaos of the end of the school year. Or maybe you’re doing the things you used to do but they just don’t feel the same as they used to. You’re curious about what could be better and scared of making things worse. Your instinct might be to work harder or to play harder. But it’s possible you need something different.