Who (or What) Are You Waiting For?

“The only person over whom you can and should have total control is yourself. Don’t give that autonomy away… especially to people you don’t like.”

Have you ever said things like,

• “I will clean the bathroom when my husband stops leaving his toothpaste on the bench?”
• “I will wash the dishes when my kids stop leaving dirty dishes in the sink.”
• “I will forgive my mum when she apologises for making my life hell.”
• “I will talk to my brother when he stops telling lies about me.”

Ok, so your version is probably a bit different to any of the examples above and could well involve serious physical and emotional harm, but I hope they’ve got you thinking about the ways that you are making your transformation dependent on someone who doesn’t care about your happiness or doesn’t realise that you are dependent on them.

If you have, then you are dangerously vulnerable because you have made your happiness dependent on someone over whom you have no control. Even worse, that ‘someone’ is often either impersonal (“the economy”), uninterested in whether you write a bestseller or not (“your kids”), or potentially malicious (the perpetrator).

Don’t Make Your Happiness Dependent on Someone Else!

The truth is, the only person’s behaviour and attitude you can change is your own. Unless you have the force of the law behind you, you can’t make anybody apologise, repay, or otherwise recompense you for any damages that you have suffered… and outcomes-at-law are often disappointing.

So, if that’s the case, then doesn’t it make sense to ask how you can control and change your own outcomes, without waiting for someone else to take the initiative?

One of my clients had been abused by a relative when she was 8 years old. She was 48 when we started working together and the scars of that abuse were affecting her work, her marriage, and her kids, as well as her health. During our initial H.O.W.T.O. Session I asked her if she really wanted to release the hurt and anger she had been carrying for so long. She said, “Yes,” so we went straight into a Time Line Therapy? process.

Thirty minutes later, she walked out of my office looking 10 years younger. Over the next few months as we continued to work on the habits and thought patterns she had developed every area of her life started to change for the better. Her health improved, her relationships with her husband and children were transformed, and opportunities opened up at work where previously she had been frustrated.

As she said, “Chandell, I realised during the H.O.W.T.O. Session that I’d been letting this evil man control my life for forty years! As if his original actions hadn’t been damaging enough! I love what’s happening in my life now, but mostly I love the fact that using Time Line Therapy? I didn’t have to dredge through the memory in order to release it. Before that process I don’t think there was a waking hour when he didn’t come to mind, since then, I’ve got bigger and better things to focus on.”

To the best of my knowledge she’s never met her abuser again, so she never got the satisfaction she’d clung to all those years, but she’s free of his power anyway and she’s gone on to do amazing things!

No-one Will Ever Know…

“I’m great at covering up my feelings, so my boss will never know I can’t stand him.”

“My husband will never know how angry I feel…”

“My sister-in-law won’t know how much I despise her…”

In NLP we talk a lot about the role of physiology in communication. Your physiology includes your deportment, your facial expression, and your tone of voice. If you are angry, resentful, anxious or in any way secretly unresourceful others will detect it. They may not know what they are picking up, but they will know that something is incongruent and they will respond appropriately.

Therefore, quite apart from the fact that you’ll feel much better about

? yourself,

? your life,

? and the situations you are facing,

It’s important to deal with your negative emotions and limiting beliefs for the sake of your communication and relationships with others.

This is Not Just a Personal Issue… it Affects Your Sales

In my book, “Confident Closing: sales secrets that grew a business by 400% in six month and how they can work for you” I talk about the fact that we’re all in sales. Everyday you need to sell your ideas, opinions, skills, and knowledge to friends, family, and colleagues even if you aren’t officially in a ‘sales’ position. Your happiness does depend on your ability to this successfully.

Unacknowledged limiting beliefs are often the reason why you fail to sell yourself and your ideas. Your listener or prospect picks up on your secret thoughts of inadequacy and you end up sabotaging your outcomes without realising it.