Open or closed body posture makes a difference.

NLP trainers have known for some time and common sense tells you that posture plays an important role in determining whether people act as though they are really in charge. Research from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University confirms that “posture expansiveness,” or positioning yourself in a way that opens up the body to take up more space, creates a sense of power that produces behavioral changes in a person independent of their actual rank or hierarchical role in an organization. Indeed, these study findings demonstrate that posture may be more significant to a person’s psychological manifestations of power than their title or rank.

“Going into the research we figured role would make a big difference, but shockingly the effect of posture dominated the effect of role in each and every study,” Kellogg PhD candidate Li Huang said.

Apparently, how you sit and stand makes a significant difference in how you act and how others act toward you. No surprise there, I hope. Still, if you want to get something done, position your body in an open way – legs apart or crossed ankle over thigh – arms spread to the sides or above shoulder height – as you would if you were sprawled on a sofa with your arms across the sofa back. The opposite body posture would be closed, in which legs are tightly pressed together and arms are held close to the body in front or back.

Submissive body posture reminds me of my military postures in which arms are held rigidly tight against the body. A more aggressive body posture would include standing erect, chest out, shoulders back, arms on hips to make the upper arms fold outward. Think about the Army drill instructor chewing out a new recruit. These would be extreme examples of the body postures involved, but you get the idea.

So, the next time you face your boss for a pay raise, make sure you do so with open body posture. Don’t do the drill instructor bit, though…

“With 1.9 million new jobs on the horizon this year, our research suggests that your posture may be quite literally the way to put your best foot forward in a job interview,” said Standford PhD candidate Lucia Galinsky.

“Powerful Postures Versus Powerful Roles: Which Is the Proximate Correlate of Thought and Behavior?” and appears in the January 2011 issue of Psychological Science. Research was led by Kellogg School of Management professor Adam Galinsky and PhD candidate Li Huang, along with Stanford Graduate School of Business professor Deborah Gruenfeld and PhD candidate Lucia Guillory.

Jump-start your goals with the 5-yrs-from-now Exercise.

My friend, Noel, from Ireland, asked how he could better achieve his goals. Years ago, I borrowed ideas from Richard Bandler and others to create an exercise that helped one company sales team achieve their goals in record time and helped a group of women lose unwanted pounds and keep them off. Perhaps it will work for you, too.

First, I recommend Win Wenger’s Imagestreaming, perhaps the best exercise I’ve ever seen for breaking up writer’s block, clearing the mind for creative thought, and generally improving creativity.

Then the NLP Outcome frame offers a great outline for focusing the mind, clarifying goals, and creating a track on which to run. It also provides invaluable instruction on HOW to set achievable goals.

To jump-start your journey to goal achievement, I recommend the “5-years-from-now Exercise.” It’s amazingly easy to do and will provide you with motivation AND information necessary to achieve your goal – and do it all in minutes. I think it’s best done with a trained NLP professional to assist you, but you can get great results yourself by following the directions in this post. Here’s how:

Simply place two pieces of paper on the floor a “distance” apart that represents 5 years (or whatever your goal time is), stand on the “NOW” paper and make it full sensory now (the way things are now – including how your current world feels, looks like, sounds like, smells like, which textures come to mind, etc. – along with all your desires you currently have for your goal).

Once you’ve established the now pad sufficiently (make sure you include all your reasons why you can’t have what you want now and your hopes for attaining it in the next few years – at least by the time you set).

Next, while still standing on the NOW pad, project to the other pad all your FEELINGS about achieving your goal. Don’t get caught up in what it looks like or smells like or any of that – go for FEELINGS (satisfaction, success, positive YES feelings of accomplishment, whatever feelings you think you’ll have when you achieve your goal). If you wish, you can use your arms and hands to “put” those feelings “over there” – onto the other pad of paper.

Then simply walk or jump or run (move) to the other pad (where you have achieved your goal). Just bask in it at first. FEEEEEEEEEEEL it. AFTER you have fully enjoyed basking in that feeling, then and only then, start describing out loud (preferably) all the other sensations you’re having – focus on physical sensations in your body first. You don’t have to do anything about the sensations other than acknowledge them (“ooh, there’s a slight twinge in my left forearm”, “my chest feels warm”, etc.).

After you’ve fully taken on all there is to take on in the THEN-NOW frame, on the now NOW pad (it used to be the 5-years-from-now pad, but is now the NOW pad – make it real – BE 5-years-from-now NOW on that pad), turn and face your PAST you pad.

Imagine there is a real person standing on that now PAST pad. You know how he feels about where you are now (5 years from then). HEAR him congratulate you on your achievement!! FEEL that congratulations (it will probably raise goose bumps or hair somewhere on your body). ENJOY that feeling for a moment and then say “Thanks”.

Then LISTEN – to the “how” questions your past self is asking you about “how did you get where you are from where I am”. BE STILL and LISTEN. Don’t mull anything or try to figure out anything. Just LISTEN – with your body rather than with your mind. You’ll feel sensations – rather than hear voices. There is NOTHING you need to DO – just do nothing but FEEL (physically – sensations). Acknowledge any sensations that arise (“I feel a tightening of my neck muscles”, “my finger jumped”, “my leg feels warmer” etc.) – speak them out loud as soon as you feel them.

Continue until your body settles down and you feel no further sensations. Look back to the PAST pad and acknowledge the input, “Thank you.” Imagine gathering up all the knowledge and feelings you have in this time frame (while standing on the 5-years-from-now pad). Using your hands, gently “pat” this knowing into all the cells in your body (simply pat your body all over – head to foot and back again – you should feel a “got it” sensation all over you when you’ve done it enough – usually once or twice over the body does the job).

Now that you have this knowing, it’s time to return to the past.

Walk, run, or jump to the PAST pad and make it NOW by standing on it fully present (“I am here now”). Just stand there for a moment – knowing you have all that information of your 5-years-from-now you installed within the cells of your body. This was knowledge unavailable to you before – but now you have it! Now you have ALL the information you need to achieve your goal in the time frame you’ve set.

You may repeat the above NOW – THEN pad thing repeatedly, gathering more and more information as you desire – in fact, I’d recommend you do just that – until your mind and body say, “Let’s do this [goal]!” Your mind may also be flooded with ideas you didn’t have before about HOW to achieve your goal. I recommend writing those ideas down – on your NLP Outcome Frame – so you  can refer to them later as needed.

When mind and body are in alignment with a goal, it’s almost impossible not to achieve it.

Doing this exercise along with ImageStreaming and the NLP Outcome Frame should provide you with an unbeatable goal achievement machine.

I’ll be interested in hearing your results.

Joseph

Click here to buy

Whew! 15 years of work! Although this is book #5 for me, it was the most difficult to write – because it’s about ME and MY thinking errors (don’t you just love self-disclosure?!). The publisher says that if you use the code MVY7M9SU they will knock off $3. That’s about 20%. Nice!

What Were You Thinking?

Some Common Thinking Errors and What to Do About Them

Authored by Joseph Bennette

A critical look into how our magnificent brains can help us make the most of our lives – and get us into deep trouble. Fortunately, thanks to our big brains we have the capability to solve our own thinking errors – once we know what those errors are. Explore some common thinking errors and what you can do to prevent or correct them. From the introduction:

Just what are thinking errors? Is it a thinking error to disbelieve what someone else believes? Is it a thinking error to misjudge someone’s character? Is it a thinking error to challenge convention? Just what do I mean when I subtitle my book, “Some Common Thinking Errors and What to Do About Them”?

We’re thinking all the time. Some of that thinking tends to bring about outcomes that differ from our intentions or wishes. Frustration is often the result when outcome doesn’t match intention or expectation. Maybe you’re seeking to lose a few pounds and have discovered that wishing isn’t enough. Maybe you’ve tried diets and other programs to lose some weight yet always find yourself defeated when you regain the pounds later. There is probably a thinking error at the root. Fix the thinking error and amazingly, the pounds drop like rain.

Every living creature makes mistakes. By ?mistakes, I mean choices resulting in disappointment, frustration, missteps, danger, and death rather than the intended or expected outcome. Humans are no exception. We make mistakes – loads of them!

We will continue to make mistakes. That is the course of life. The intent of this book is to help you perhaps lessen the number of mistakes and make your wishes come true more often in the way you wish them to come true.

I don’t intend to tell you the truth about life or to support any belief or belief system; only to investigate and challenge some common thinking errors. If you find after clearing these thinking errors that you are more supported in your beliefs, great! My hope is that you will find the courage to challenge your thinking and investigate your beliefs with clear thinking processes. I hope you will find the courage to change your life as necessary.

What Were You Thinking?

Some Common Thinking Errors and What to Do About Them

by Joseph Bennette

Tempted? Clench your lip muscles shut!

A study reported in the Journal of Consumer Research says firming muscles can shore up self-control. Of course, it only works if the choice you are faced with is in alignment with your goals and the muscle clenching is done at the moment of highest self-control dilemma. For example, when faced with the choice to snag a high fat snack when your goal is to lose weight is the perfect time to clench your muscles – adding will-power to your self-control dilemma.

Apparently it doesn’t matter which muscles you clench – what matters is the timing. You must clench DURING a crisis of will-power – like when you’re staring that cigarette in the face! It doesn’t help – in fact it works to your detriment – to clench muscles before the temptation.

So, next time you feel the urge to break your diet, clench your lip muscles shut instead!

Study source: Iris W. Hung and Aparna A. Labroo. “From Firm Muscles to Firm Willpower: Understanding the Role of Embodied Cognition in Self-Regulation.” Journal of Consumer Research.

It takes more energy to stop a thought than to change it.

Thinking, that is! A study out of Case Western Reserve University shows that it takes more energy to stop a thought than to change it. No wonder it’s so hard to stop smoking or stop berating yourself or stop that tune that got stuck in your head. It just takes too much energy!

Some years ago, I underwent a year of intensive thought transformation in which a group of us focused attention on catching each other or sometimes even catch ourselves saying the “wrong” things – things that detracted us from our goals. “Try” was on the taboo list of words for obvious reasons – it holds a built-in failure. So, each time we’d hear one of us say the word, “try”, we’d say, “Cancel that!” The process seemed horribly difficult as we were catching each other often over that year. In the end, however, the goal was attained and my speech cleared up so much.

I wonder if we were unintentionally making it harder on ourselves by canceling (stopping) our thoughts instead of reframing them – sort of like nudging an asteroid instead of hitting it head-on.

For my readers unfamiliar with reframing, the concept is to redescribe a thought form from a different perspective or to relabel it. So, in the case of the word “try”, we replaced it with “do”, etc. Instead of stopping, we looked into changing our thoughts by changing our language. Instead of resistance to change, we explored our options. Instead of saying, “NO”, we examined ways to say yes (positive) instead while retaining the same outcome. Wow, did that speed up our process!

Consider in your life where you are saying, “no” or are working to stop a thought process instead of changing or modifying it. Might it be less energetic (read “difficult”) to do if you were to think in terms other than stopping? Might you seek ways to nudge the asteroid?

Study reference: http://www.nature.com/jcbfm/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/jcbfm2010107a.html

Proxy or surrogate healing is the act of standing in for another during some kind of therapeutic process.

I consider myself a pretty pragmatic guy. I appreciate how important it is for us to have an answer or some kind of reason for why things happen as they do. We invent religions and gods to help us cope with what we don’t understand or fear. Even science has its own religion of sorts – always seeking to find that illusive reason why.

I, too, would love to know why. It’s in my nature to want to know. Although questioning is important, asking the right question is much more important – and difficult to do. In lieu of proper questions, I’ve often settled with poorly formed questions along with answers I’ve settled upon and defended – answers to the wrong questions or a question asked wrongly. Further, I have tended to put “reasons” behind my settled upon answers – a means by which I can protect my “truths” and make them seem right no matter their veracity. We call this process justification or rationalization.

For a moment, let’s dispense with all reasoning/justification/rationalization and simply look at cause and effect. Something happens and that causes something else to happen. Some cause and effect relationships we have experienced often enough that we feel that we can predict effect from cause.

For example, if I step off the step, I fall to the ground. I’m familiar with the action of gravity on this earth and I can expect to fall to the ground every time I step off the step. Further, I can predict with fair accuracy that if you step off the step, you, too, will fall.

Physicist David Boehm showed that cause and effect is all an illusion, though, because all causes are entwined with all effects in a mesh so tightly woven that it is literally impossible to separate cause from effect – we just believe that we can – it makes us feel safer to know that we can know cause from effect.

This is “if-then” thinking and we all do it – it is our nature. We like to accurately predict – it makes us feel safer. Even when we accurately predict hurt, it somehow feels better because we were right about our prediction.

That leads me to cheating. We are great humans but lousy scientists overall. That is, as humans, we like to be right rather than correct. I will tend to “fix” the outcomes of my experience to make me look more right – rather than accepting what is as correct. To that end, I set myself and others up so that I will more likely make myself right. I cheat!

The Golden Setup

Now to the good stuff. Let’s consider the common cold. What if I want to experiment with what happens when I change a small part of the cause-effect relationships I have assigned to a cold? What if now I want to introduce a new element into the cold equation? I want to introduce a setup – a new “reason” for the cold – a new purpose. I want to affect my cause-effect relationship in the case of a cold.

Since I am introducing a new element that I already believe might change how I experience a cold, I am primed for a new cause-effect setup – and a new or different outcome. In NLP language, I’m messing with my presuppositions to achieve a new outcome – a “frame-up.”

In my experiment, I tell myself that my cold is no longer a sub-par condition – that is, I am no longer “under the weather.” Rather, I tell myself that the purpose of the cold symptoms is cleansing or body energy realignment, or mind-body belief system adjustment, or proxy clearing, or even weight adjustment processing. I elevate in my mind the purpose of the cold from recovery from disease to some positive function – part of my weight reduction regime, for example. I’ve assigned a new frame for the symptoms I collectively call “cold.”

Now, when I see the weight loss, my new cause-effect relationship is “when I experience the symptoms of a cold it is part of the overall weight reduction my body does as a result of my weight management plan and goal.” This is just as valid a cause-effect relationship as my previous one that basically said, “My body is reacting to a disease element that is invading my body.”

From a purely results oriented viewpoint – without any judgment – which cause-effect relationship would you consider more useful in a weight management regime? I think it’s obvious.

Proxy or Surrogate Healing

I don’t adhere to the “processing the woes of the world by proxy” viewpoint because I don’t think there is anything fundamentally wrong in the world. There are merely events that I interpret. If I want to change something to suit my mood, attitude, present mind set, or whatever, all I have to do is change MY MIND – MY PERCEPTION. Proxy is just one way I can do that.

It’s a scientific fact that if you change your mind, you will change your body as a result – it’s all part and parcel. This is no mystery – change your mind about where you want your finger to be in space, for example, and you will move your finger accordingly – your body has adjusted to suit your mindset about the location of your finger – so long as your thought about movement rises above a certain threshold so as to become action – that is, the thought extends beyond simply thinking about moving your finger (trying) into the realm of action where your finger actually moves (doing).

If I proxy the hurts and woes in the Middle East, for example, my body will change as a result of my change of mind/heart. That change could show up as cold symptoms – it’s merely evidence that we can interpret.

If one enjoys “processing” (an action taken in response to environment, such as body sweats, tearing, heart racing, etc.), they might over time believe – and reinforce their belief with more experience interpreted in the same manner – that they are somehow blessing the world over and over and over – but seeing little or no real change as a result – which might cause them to continue to do more of the same – like doing proxy every day for the world that never seems to get any better – “so I better keep doing more proxy or the world will get oh, so much worse if I quit… blah, blah, blah…” This is the same mentality that sent thousands of warriors and young women to their deaths in the rituals of the Mayan, Hawaiian, and Aztec cultures to name but a very few.

The truth may be that the world never needed healing in the first place because it was never sick or hurt or wrong or whatever else from just being what it is.

I call such behavior – doing proxy repeatedly because it appears to be needed – proxy addiction – just like healing addiction – or substance addiction – or any other kind of addiction. It is simply one way to use the power of justification/rightness. All addiction is, from that point of view, is a pattern of satisfaction – a cycle that reinforces good feelings – feelings the person likes and wants to repeat. It could be thought of as part of a cycle of action and feeling that includes justifying one’s behavior toward others.

At this time of my life, I’m letting go of getting all wrapped up in the right “why’s” – the right answers. I already have those. Instead, I’m now interested in seeking out the questions. That is what the world is short of if anything.

“What the world needs now are questions, sweet questions – that’s the only thing that there’s just too little of…”

It’s a reasonable answer, eh?!

Scientists Tamar R. Makin, Meytal Wilf, and Ehud Zohary from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem along with Isabella Schwartz from Hadassah Mount Scopus Hospital in Jerusalem wanted to investigate how hand amputations affect visuospatial perception in near space. Through a series of ingenious experiments, they discovered, “…that the possibility for action in near space shapes our perception – the space near our hands is really special, and our ability to move in that space affects how we perceive it.”

Another study, this time by researchers from Colgate University and Radboud University Nijmegen (The Netherlands) revealed something NLP practitioners have known for some time: that congruent action and verbiage communicates messages far better than when there is incongruent action or speech.

The space around our bodies is simply made for communication and perception. When we move our hands, especially, in this space we affect perception – our own and others’. Science is just now showing us that the intuition and understanding of many NLP practitioners and teachers has some validity in fact.

When you shake your head and answer yes, your perception as well as the perception of others you are attempting to communicate with will feel confused and your message will probably be missed or at least be misunderstood.

Sources:
Article “Two Sides of the Same Coin: Speech and Gesture Mutually Interact to Enhance Comprehension” Psychological Science.
Barbara Isanski – Association for Psychological Science

About the speaker: Julian Treasure studies sound and advises businesses on how best to use it.

Suppose you make a goal to slim down this year.

Mathias Pessiglione, of the Brain & Spine Institute in Paris, and his colleagues showed that motivation could be subconscious – and can be associated with brain hemispheres. Apparently, you can be more motivated toward a goal if you face that goal with your most motivated side. Now THAT is some useful information!

Suppose you find yourself setting a goal but having difficulty achieving it. Maybe the reason is not environmental (i.e., you don’t make enough money), or internal in the way you might suppose (you’re not worthy or smart or good enough, etc.). Suppose the problem with non-achievement has to do with which way you physically turn your body in relation to “where” you represent your goal achievement to be in space.

For example, suppose you make a goal to slim down this year. So, you go about setting up a series of short term sub-goals to help you work your way up to achieving your longer range goal of having the body you want. Maybe you follow a goal achievement program and write your goal and sub-goals down. But at the end of the goal time frame, work as you may, your goal seems just as distant as when you started.

This time, instead of writing it all down, maybe posting your goal on your fridge, etc., you get a photo of your desired outcome – that new healthy body (remember, this is an example – your goal could be much more esoteric) – and post it to your fridge. This time, though, you turn your body to the left – your head, too – so that you see your photo to the right side. NOW, check inside and rate your level of commitment to that goal (maybe on a scale of 1-100). Next, move your body in such a way that your photo is to the left of your visual field and again check your level of commitment to the goal (on the same scale). Which side has the higher number?

Every time you gaze at your photo on your fridge, make sure your body is in the very same position as it was for the higher level of commitment (motivation). Even avoid looking at the photo from the other side. Let the motivated side help you achieve your goal.

It also occurs to me that your other, less motivated side has resources the more motivated side needs in order for you to achieve your goal. Let those resources come to you by moving your eyes horizontally, vertically, diagonally, and zig-zag up to down to up – rather than looking in the less motivated direction at your photo.

Because your motivations are subconscious, just let the exercise of moving your eyes do the trick of sharing resources – rather than TRYING to make those resources available or WORKING to find them. Instead, you might be able to simply face your goal – on one side, that is…

Source: Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science

“The benefits of a psychologically well work force are quite consequential to employers, especially so in our highly troubled economic environment,” Kansas State University researcher Thomas Wright said in a recent article published in the Journal of Management. “Simply put, psychologically well employees are better performers. Since higher employee performance is inextricably tied to an organization’s bottom line, employee well-being can play a key role in establishing a competitive advantage.”

Methods to improve well-being include assisting workers so they fit their jobs more closely, providing social support to help reduce the negative impact of stressful jobs, and teaching optimism to emphasize positive thought patterns.

None of this is new to those NLP practitioners and coaches working with organizations. The importance of this report is as it relates to a business’ competitive edge. In today’s market of rapidly diminishing returns on investment (ROI), perhaps the best ROI is that invested in employee job satisfaction. And to do that, organizations and businesses are wise to invest in employee personal happiness.

The job is not entirely what makes people happy. People can make themselves happy with their jobs. To be happy you must either do a job you love or love the job you do. Either way, you love your job. And when you love your job, magic occurs. Oh, yes, indeed!!

Some years ago, I worked at a job I didn’t like. For years I plodded along in that job – completely dissatisfied with it. And for years I stagnated – feeling stuck in my career. And my friends, family, and environment at the time reinforced in me the belief that I was “lucky to have a job.” One day, I realized that I could love my job – it was a choice. I reasoned that, “I’m doing exactly what I most want to do at this time or I’d be doing something else right now.” I might not like the alternatives, yet I appreciated that alternatives most certainly existed.

It became a mantra for me that I’d repeat daily hundreds of times to myself – especially when given a particularly distasteful assignment by my supervisor. Within days of singing my mantra to myself, I received two rather large monetary rewards (nice surprises!) and offers of more. Further, my part-time job suddenly exploded financially – so much so that within two years I was able to leave the old job and focus full-time on my once part-time job (which I loved in itself).

Want to get a competitive edge for your company in today’s uncertain economy? Invest in personal happiness education for your employees and effective employee management strategies for your managers that focuses on employee job happiness and satisfaction.

You could start today by investing in as simple a thing as hiring a massage technician to give weekly massages to your telesales department. Or invest in a group yoga class. The cost is minimal compared to the increase in productivity. Then hire a NLP-based employee relations coach. Your company will suddenly find itself head and shoulders above your competition.