Tag Archives: Performance Improvement

Posture Makes a Difference

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Open or closed body posture makes a difference.

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.

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Rapid Eye Yoga for Performance Boost

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All twelve shooters were stressed to the max. If they failed the test, they lost their jobs. For them it had come down to this one moment.

All twelve shooters were stressed to the max. If they failed the test, they lost their jobs. For them it had come down to this one moment.

It was 1991. Twelve shooters remained at the firing line, their scores too low to pass the Army National Guard weapons qualifications requirement. All twelve shooters were stressed to the max. If they failed the test, they lost their jobs. For them it had come down to this one moment – pass or fail.

The stress was palpable as the shooters stepped up to the firing line with their M-16 for their “last chance”. Fortunately for them, I was in charge of that firing line that day. I told the shooters to add just one simple action to their shooting process. I instructed them to simply cast their eyes several times from side to side and then up and down as far and as fast as they could move their eyes, then shut them very hard and open again three times and then make a big sigh – then shoot.

Each shooter had 60 seconds to fire 20 rounds from each of 5 positions – 100 shots in roughly 5 minutes. Each had to hit a tiny silhouette marked on a target 100 meters away. To pass, each had to hit the target at least 60 times (60%). Every shooter had previously missed that minimum requirement and this was their “last chance” to qualify.

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Power Goal Achievement

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

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:

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Sheeple?

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Is your fear useful to you?

Is your fear useful to you?

“I was just wondering if it is possible for a person to intentionally surrender his will in an attempt to avoid taking responsibility… is this evil? or maybe the person is hypnotized? How do you explain a situation where a person convinces himself that the blood of another man has been used… and will continue to be used to wash away his transgression? Meanwhile, the man in question says, “What you sow you shall reap.” How do you explain a situation where a person convinces himself that a man CAME TO DIE FOR HIM… when the man in question CURSED whoever it was that would betray him! How do you explain a situation where a man goes to explode his life… taking the life of others as well with the belief that he would get a better life?”

The short answer is that everyone is under a form of hypnosis of some description. Everyone is acting from some form of trance-installed belief and posthypnotic suggestion. The trick is to determine what those are and decide whether they are truly ‘useful’.

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Eye and Body Movement for Problem Solving?

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Directing a person's eye movements or attention in specific patterns can also aid in solving complex problems.

Directing a person’s eye movements or attention in specific patterns can also aid in solving complex problems.

A new study appearing in an upcoming issue of the journal Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, is the first to show that a person’s ability to solve a problem can be influenced by how he or she moves.

“Our manipulation [of the body] is changing the way people think,” said University of Illinois psychology professor Alejandro Lleras, who along with Vanderbilt University postdoctoral researcher Laura Thomas, conducted the study. “In other words, by directing the way people move their bodies, we are – unbeknownst to them - directing the way they think about the problem.”

“The results are interesting both because body motion can affect higher order thought, the complex thinking needed to solve complicated problems, and because this effect occurs even when someone else is directing the movements of the person trying to solve the problem,” Lleras said.

According to Lleras, this type of consciousness, “embodied cognition,” describes the link between body and mind in a new and insightful way.

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