Take charge of your thoughts. You can do what you will with them.
Plato
Conscious Versus Subconscious
Consider when you were just an infant and you were learning to walk. You didn’t get all the way up off the ground on your shaky little legs only to fall on your bum and say, ‘Well this is not really working out for me, this walking thing.’ And then when you tried it again you didn’t say, ‘Nope I don’t think so.’ You tried it one more time and never gave up. You got up every single time. You looked at where you were going and even with wobbly legs you began to focus on where you wanted to go, to focus on what it was you wanted to have. When you were crawling about you had the idea that walking would improve things for you, if you could just get there. Mummy’s there and Daddy’s there and they are beckoning, ‘Come on, come on, come on you can do it . . . come to Mummy.’
And you did. Eventually you toddled right over to your mother’s arms. The reality is, if you focus on where it is you want to go, you will get there. The problem for most people is that they give up too easily.
Our brains love what they already know, what’s habit. However, our brains can only learn by doing different things, new things. As you got older, rather than respond instinctively as you did as a child, you began to think about things and you began to choose immediate comfort over change. But the devil you know is not always better than the devil you don’t. Each time you hesitate, a little more uneasiness builds and builds until it becomes unbearable. It lingers in the background of your mind as a nagging feeling that you are better than this, while your old brain says you can’t keep going on changing things willy-nilly.
The Laws of Repetition and Association
Both parts of the brain have their useful functions. The older part, to build and keep habits, works through The Law of Association and The Law of Repetition. Once it finds something that works, it keeps on seeking it out and doing it over and over again so that it feels natural. This is the part of the brain that is responsible for your habits. It is good for learning and remembering stuff. It is good for learning how to ride a bike, drive a car, swim, speak etc. But it’s not perfect in that it has not got a lot of discernment. It is based on the here and now and does not take into account the future consequences of not repeating something. For example, you might be familiar with the following scenario inside your head:
‘I think I feel like having some chocolate tonight.’
Oh but that’s not very healthy
‘I want chocolate.’
But all those extra calo–
‘I want chocolate, I want chocolate now!’
But . . .
‘But nothing, never mind your butt, I want chocolate, lovely sumptuous chocolate, adorable melt-in-your-mouth chocolate. I’m dying here, where’s the goddamn chocolate! It’s party time! I love chocolate! Isn’t life great! Ah for the good things in life.’
Oh I really shouldn’t . . .
‘Shut the hell up brain I’m eating here! Yeah baby, now that’s what I’m talking about.’
Honey, do I look fat in this?
Ask yourself which part of your brain you have been using more of lately. Is it the habit part (the lazy part) or is it the creative part (the innovative part)?
Your brain is constantly building new neural nets for the ‘old brain’ to manage. Once the net is built by the conscious part of your mind, it is handed over to the non-conscious mind or the automatic mind (the ‘old brain’). However, once handed over, it can only survive if it is exercised. The neural net is much like a muscle and like any muscle you have to use it or lose it.
Your brain is made up of billions of neurons. Neurons are the tiny brain cells that make up your nervous system. If you could imagine a huge crowd of people at a live music performance all chatting away to one another, each having their own interests and concerns, this would be similar to what’s going on with the neurons inside your brain at any given time. Each time you experience something, a message travels from one neuron to another and imprints itself on your brain. This leaves a trail much like you do if you walk through long grass in a field. The brain acts on these imprints and creates interconnecting pathways or networks between the neurons, so that the next time you experience the same thing, such as riding a bike, driving a car or learning a new skill, your brain uses this same path. As a result, the skill becomes easier and you can do it with less effort.
It’s like what happens when the band strikes the first note of your favourite song, as soon as you hear it you immediately recognise and recall every note of it, because the brain has your ‘favourite song’ pathway already imprinted. These interconnected pathways are called neural networks, you know them as memories and often experience them as habits. In the case of your favourite song, learning to recall all the different elements – the vocals, the drums, the bass, the lead, the keyboards – all feels easier because of the positive emotion it stirs in you. However, when learning new skills or creating behavioural change our emotional approach tends to be different. Change can feel temporarily uncomfortable or even fearful depending on how long you have been slacking off. But once the older brain gets the experience clocked up a few times, it will work on making it feel natural to you. That’s just the way it is. The brain, once given the opportunity, will normalise anything. Have a look around you at what some people consider normal.
The Kayan women of Burma and Thailand consider it normal and beautiful to wear multiple neck rings (brass coils), which give them the appearance of having an elongated neck. The coils, which are applied from the age of five onwards, are added to once the weight of the previous brass coil pushes down the collar bone and compresses the rib cage, thereby making space for a new one. After ten years or so these women say that the coils feel like a natural or normal part of their body. The brain has normalised the sensations that go with this.
Some people consider it normal to go to the gym every second day. Some people consider it normal to eat curry for breakfast, dinner and tea. Some people consider it normal to read five or six books a week. These people are not different from you, they have just done different things more times than you and now they are carrying on as normal. (Well, at least their version of normality!) All of this comes from the older brain, the habit-forming brain, or what psychologists call the unconscious or subconscious part of the brain.
You have done this many times yourself. You now have skills, capacities and abilities that at one point were unfamiliar, unknown or even apparently impossible to you, but with perseverance you succeeded. You can now read but there was a time when you couldn’t.
But for now your questions are:
WHAT DO YOU WANT TO FEEL NORMAL TO YOU?
WHAT HABITS DO YOU WANT TO BUILD?
We like to think that life is supposed to be easy all of the time – and life can get to be a lot easier – but it’s supposed to be challenging too. Wouldn’t it be boring if everything was so easy?
Have you ever thought about those pivotal times, those defining moments that let you know that you are growing as a person? Times when it feels like you’re evolving, developing, transforming into something better, someone to be proud of. They were the times when it was most challenging. It could be changing jobs, taking on a course of study or ending a relationship. You got through that and you said to yourself ‘Well it didn’t kill me . . . and what doesn’t kill you makes you . . .’ so you end up being a much better person because of it.
Things are often not as difficult as you might think, but they are as difficult as you make them. And what you will learn throughout this book is how to begin to change your thinking so you can start to make things that were once challenging a lot easier. The next time – and there will be a next time – that you feel the emotional pull to hesitate, recognise that it is just your older brain doing its thing, attempting to keep the status quo, to play the same record again and again.
When people consult me in my clinic on an issue like weight management they often tell me that they have tried lots of things to keep fit, but they just lose their motivation after a while and say there is no point. The change required is too big, they don’t have the time and they can’t manage to fit it into their lives. This is because there is a threshold point where things change. When they try to do their exercise routine and fail to see the results they want at the pace they want, they get disillusioned. They claim they don’t have the motivation, that it is too much hard work.
Now it is true that change very often requires effort, but these clients are used to effort. Many of them lead very busy lives and work hard to earn a living, so hard work is rarely the problem. Tiredness, exhaustion, exasperation and frustration are often the enemy. However, a lot of this is borne out of their mental approach to change as opposed to their physical approach. So when they try to add in an extra behaviour on top of an already hectic lifestyle, the brain decides that the change is not a good thing and pulls them back to ‘normality’. Sometimes the brain doesn’t know what’s best for you. You have to learn how the brain works to get it to work for you.
This is your opportunity to take charge of your brain and let it know that it will get that familiar feeling once you have done it enough times. Because that brain is also a greedy brain and it just loves more of the same. However, to give it more of the same (i.e. that underlying feel-good feeling) you have to keep doing different things. It’s all down to chemicals and thinking is chemical.
If, for example, you like chocolate, follow this sequence through. Buy a bar of your favourite chocolate. Bring the chocolate to your mouth and draw in the smell of it through your nose. Notice the delicious taste of it (you have taste receptacles in your nose). Now take the first piece and let it slowly melt in your mouth while you indulge in its rich decadent flavour. Slow everything right down as you and your taste buds relish the entire sensation. When you’re ready, swallow it and track the feeling as you complete the process. Now take a second piece and restart the process. You will notice that after a while the freshness, the newness and the attraction reduces and what you are really doing is just satisfying a habit. What is happening is your habit mind is making you continue just for habit’s sake (The Law of Association: I did it before and it tasted good, and The Law of Repetition: so if I keep doing this stuff I will continue to feel better). But that is not true.
The more you continue to do the same thing over and over again the less benefit you get from it. In fact if you think of it, the more you do something over and over again the more you need of it to feel the same as you felt at first. This is how out of control habits work. The drug addict calls this ‘chasing the dragon’. It’s the thing he knows will get him in the end. With overuse, as with over-indulgence, the sensation (nerve endings) gets saturated or dulled and so more is required to replace the original sensation, until eventually even that can’t be reached.
Frank, a friend of mine, used to tell me with pride that he was a redhead which ‘meant’ he was fiery by nature. Over the years I witnessed his assumed identity wreak havoc on his relationships. (I was tempted to suggest that he shave off his hair to see would his fire subside!) His belief led him to develop the habit of allowing himself to get angry with people and of justifying his behaviour afterwards as ‘genetic’ so to speak. He got sense in his later years and realised that all he was doing was feeding a habit borne out of the dubious belief that all redheads must be hotheads. Now he is so much happier and when he gets angry he realises it’s not his hair that’s making him do it. It is just a learned habit which he has the power to change. Frank is a much more amicable man now, he is in a successful relationship, life is improving and so is his temperament.
What’s Seldom Is Beautiful
To survive and thrive you have got to do different things on a regular basis. Because that way you don’t have to change everything all at once. If you do a little a lot then it gets dull, but if you do a lot a little then life gets to be more wonderful. You now know how the expression ‘what’s seldom is beautiful’ came about.
You need challenge in your life. Challenge is not always a comfortable thing, but that does not mean that it is a bad thing. Challenge is about change, change is about survival and survival is about evolution, which is what keeps you on top of things. Each and every challenge is an opportunity to make you stronger, more successful, more resilient and more capable of dealing with whatever else comes your way. To succeed more readily you need to be on your own side, especially when you are creating and engaging with those challenges. Doesn’t that make sense?
So by now some readers are working with me, while the others are thinking, ‘He’s probably not talking about me, he’s probably talking to the rest of the readers so I’m not going to take this on board even though it’s a good idea.’ If you do what you have always done then you will get what you have always got and this book is about you changing your life around for the better, yes? Albert Einstein said that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result! Sound familiar? If it does, then the solution is simple, it’s time to change.
Far too many people hold back and say, ‘You’re not messing with my head.’ I know, I have been there, I did the self-hate thing, I hated everything for a time until one day the penny dropped, ‘Who cares? There you go whinging and moaning and no one gives a damn except yourself and you don’t count because you don’t even get on with yourself.’
Ashby’s Law
In systems theory there is a principle called The Law of Requisite Variety, often referred to as Ashby’s Law, which states that any member of a system needs a certain minimum amount of flexibility in order to successfully adapt and survive. When applied to your life this means that in order for you to consistently achieve your goals, you must vary the things you are doing over time to continue succeeding. Nothing stands still, things change, circumstances change, situations change, opportunities come and go, you change, your body changes, your resistance levels change and as such your success strategies need to change too.
Behavioural Flexibility Is the Key
In order for you to succeed you need to notice what is happening and if what you are doing is not working you need to do something else. For example, if walking worked to help you achieve your goal of losing weight before and you find that it is no longer working, this just means that you need to do something else. Most people notice this and they end up walking for longer and longer to get the same result. The only thing that has changed here is the distance and if that works well and good. However, what has happened is that the body got used to this level of exertion and is no longer challenged by it, so really it is time to do something more than a little different – that could mean swimming instead of walking, or running, or taking up yoga. At this point it is all about introducing that level of ‘flexibility’ to get the same result. You are simply keeping your eye on your target but getting there in a different way.
Exercise: The Law of Requisite Variety
Select three of your most important Big Picture goals from Chapter 1 and write down as many different routes to achieving each of these goals as possible. The more avenues, the more possibilities for success.
Goal 1:
Goal 2:
Goal 3:
Bringing Your Brain on Board
Your brain is constantly processing what’s happening to you. It is also taking note of what’s happening around you. The details of every event are being stored as you encounter them. Because of the way your brain is organised when you recall (or imagine) an event it is a bit like re-living it. This is the reason we feel good or bad, happy or sad, energised or deflated. Our thoughts determine how we feel. Although our brains are similar, there are huge differences in how we access and use them. Learning how to run your brain is the fun part of building the habit of happiness.
Many of us think that in order to change how we feel we need to go to a therapist or a specialist. That is not always the case. You can change how you think about many things. In a moment I will show you how. The following exercises will help you. Each exercise will need to be read first and then tried with closed eyes afterwards.
Exercise: Eliminating the Negative, Option 1
This exercise can be done anywhere, even in company. The men in the white coats will not be called to take you away (at least not for doing this exercise anyway). This exercise is in two parts, steps one and two. Read step one of the exercise first and then close your eyes and do it. Afterwards do step two. Read it first, then close your eyes, do it and notice the difference!
Step One
• Take a moment to think about someone that annoys you, someone that irritates you or makes you angry.
• Bring that somebody to mind, using your imagination or your memory.
• If you can’t think of a person, just think of a behaviour that irritates, annoys or makes you angry.
• Notice what you may be seeing, hearing and feeling as that person is doing the thing that provokes you.
• You can only get this right. So whatever elements or parts you recalled are perfectly okay.
You’ve just completed step one. Hold your judgment until you have completed step two. Remember, read through the instructions first, then close your eyes, do it and notice the difference!
Step Two
• Bring that person or behaviour to mind again.
• This time I want you to imagine that you are bringing the image, or the feeling or the sense of them right up close to you, so that they are practically breathing on top of you.
• Imagine the person is right ‘in your face’. You know that sensation, that feeling that you get.
• Imagine they are breathing down your neck, complaining, moaning and whinging and giving out or doing their really annoying thing. You may take a few moments to make this vivid in your mind.
• You will know you are getting there when you notice differences in your experience.
• Next I want you to imagine as you look at that situation or person that the colour is being drained from the experience. The entire image is losing its definition. Imagine all the colour being drained from it so that the picture itself becomes like a faint black and white watermark.
• If it’s not a picture you see, begin to notice the sounds in the experience and reduce the volume a little bit.
• If you are hearing the sound of a person’s voice, turn down the volume a little bit too.
• Next imagine you can actually push that person or that image away, out further into the distance.
• Notice as it goes off further into the distance it begins to get smaller; it starts to shrink to the size of a tiny little pea.
• Imagine as it shrinks that the voice shrinks as well and the sound is more faint, even cute like the voice of a cartoon character.
• Hear that tiny person giving out to you now.
• Imagine a huge gigantic foot coming into the top right-hand corner of the image.
• Imagine this foot coming thundering down on top of them and making a squelching sound as it smashes the pea-like image you see there.
• Notice what that feels like now.
Typically once you have done this exercise you will have noticed something changed as soon as you changed the structure and content of the memory you had been storing. The most significant changes are in your feelings.
Memories are a bit like balloons. When you blow them up and then let the air out of them they do not go back to their original form. So the fact that a memory has been stored in a certain way through circumstance or experience doesn’t mean that you have to keep it that way. It’s your memory, you can do what you like with it. Remember it is a memory. It is not the actual event. It is not the actual person or situation it is just your brain’s recording of it. No one gets hurt if you alter it. You have been altering memories throughout your life. The next time you blow something out of proportion, take a closer look at how that affects the pictures inside your head. Do a little mental housekeeping and adjust the memory until it fits.
If you didn’t get the result you expected yet, that’s okay. This is new to you. Perfection is not a requirement the first time. In fact perfection is never a requirement unless you make it one. So relax, you have only done this once. There are plenty of other exercises to come. Not everything works for everyone all of the time. There is plenty more to be getting on with. This does not mean that NLP is not for you. Hang in there, this is just the beginning.
Right now you are learning how to take control of your brain, of your thoughts and your thinking, rather than being subjected to them.
I have done this exercise many times at my seminars and have gotten all sorts of responses. From ‘fun’ to ‘brilliant’ to ‘nothing happened for me’ or ‘now I feel really annoyed’. Others say things like ‘I feel great now but what happens when I meet the person for real?’ I tell them to wait and see (I know they will be pleasantly surprised). Still more say, ‘I feel better but I need to do more’ and that is also allowed. This stuff is all open, you have full permission to experiment and play with it. One way or the other your experience of it is your experience of it, no more and no less. Some things take more time than others. I do not expect you to do this only once. You can work on it some more later. In a few moments I am going to get you to do another variation of the same exercise.
I will continuously suggest ways of doing things, as I did in the previous exercise. They are not meant to be written in stone. Just do whatever works for you. Find your own freedom within it to mix and match, delete or include. Stick with the principle of the thing, which is to make you happier as a result of it.
Suzie, a very positive and successful 34-year-old businesswoman, came to see me because she was having a hard time dealing with her over-critical Mum. Her Mum grew up in different times and felt that Suzie ought to have long since settled down, found herself a good man, got married and had kids. Suzie was not ready for this. But her Mum was not letting go of it. Every time Suzie visited her Mum she left frustrated and deflated. She told me there were times she felt like strangling her Mum. That added to her problems because she felt guilty for even thinking the thought. I took her through the exercise but she hesitated and opened her eyes. She said, ‘But I love Mum, I can’t do that to her. I can’t crush her. I know she can be annoying at times but she is an absolute treasure.’ When I suggested that she leave out the part with the foot in it she relaxed and smiled and said, ‘I can do that,’ and she did.
As it was her Mum I thought that rather than getting rid of the negative associations why not amplify the positive loving feelings she had for her too. So I did the following exercise with her.
Exercise: Accentuating the Positive
1. This time think of someone that makes you feel good when you are around them. It can be someone you love, it can be a best friend, one of your joker pals whatever. (In Suzie’s case it was her Mum.)
2. Now take this experience or this memory and as though you have a remote control for the movie screen of your own imagination, I want you to take the image and draw it closer.
3. Make it bigger, make it a little brighter.
4. Turn up the sounds and make it three-dimensional.
5. Imagine that person is right here with you now and breathe in the experience.
6. If they are saying something to you, make it clearer.
7. If it is appropriate, let the person draw nearer and let them give you a warm, affectionate hug. If it’s your child let him run up to you, dive into your arms and nuzzle into your neck as his eyes sparkle with delight.
8. Once you have got the experience running take a deep breath in and savour the feelings.
9. Notice how much better that feels.
My guess is that for most of you this is an easier and a far better experience than the last exercise. Everyone has someone that can make them feel good and when you bring that person into your mind then you experience those same feelings all over again. It doesn’t cost you anything except a thought. Now that is worth doing. If this experience made you smile, then you know how to be happy in an instant. Think about it! It only takes a few moments of your time to bring this experience into your mind and as soon as you do you begin to feel happier. If you can do this in such a short period of time the real question is: What else is possible?
Good feelings are available to you always. You just have to make use of them. Elderly people do this often, they reminisce about the good old days. They smile, laugh, giggle and flood their bodies with warm, glowing feelings and as they do so the good old days become the good day today. No matter what age you are, you have enough good memories inside you to last you a lifetime. But that is just for starters, I am not done with you yet. There is so much more we have yet to do so that happiness will feel second nature to you. Imagine the thought of getting up each day and knowing you have a choice in it. That you can be happy if you choose to be because you know how to make each moment count.
It doesn’t matter what age you are, it doesn’t matter what predicament you are in now. Somewhere, someone in your life makes you smile. Someone, somewhere in your memory, makes you giggle. It could be a friend from school. It could be a workmate. It could be someone that has passed on. Somewhere, someone can make you laugh still, can bring a big smile to your face, can brighten up your day. If you can’t find someone you are not looking hard enough. If you can’t find one leave down this book and go look for one. Even the most hardened heart will find it difficult not to smile back at a two-year-old child looking at the world with the freshness, enthusiasm, delight and curiosity that it deserves. If you still can’t find it, you’re just not trying, so get up off your arse, stop acting the Mick and find it. You deserve happiness, not sympathy.
In order for you to be annoyed with someone, peeved with them or depressed with life you have to be running pictures inside your head, you have to be saying things to yourself and you have to be generating feelings. Annoyance, depression, sadness and pessimism all work the same way.
At the age of twenty-one, Loren was beginning to find her feet in life. She had just finished college and was getting the finances together for a world trip before pursuing a career in the corporate world. Her first full-time job was on a production line in a sweet factory. The people were friendly and she made good friends there. However, her line manager didn’t like ‘college types’ and was making life a living hell for her. He was arrogant, offensive, obnoxious and downright rude to her.
Loren told me she didn’t want to make trouble for herself at this point. She didn’t want to leave her job either. She said she wanted to hold out for a few more months to gather enough cash to go on her travels. Although this guy was unimportant to her, he was having a disastrous effect on her confidence and on her ability to enjoy her time there. With a torrent of emotion Loren said to me, ‘I just can’t seem to get him out of my head! He is always there hovering over me, waiting for me to screw up, which I inevitably do because he is scowling at me! Every day he has something to say for himself. Every day he does something on me. He’s always on my back; he never leaves me alone to get on with it. I wish he would just clear off and leave me be!’
I knew to help Loren I would have to do something shocking. I looked at her and then distorted my face into a pouted grimace and scowled in disgust and replied, ‘And yet you sleep with him?’ Loren looked at me in horror and said, ‘What do you mean?’ To which I replied, ‘But you do, don’t you? You do, you really sleep with him!’ Loren moved rapidly from shock to disbelief and asked me, ‘What sort of planet are you on? You’re missing the point completely!’ Now that I had her full attention I said, ‘Well isn’t this what you do? When you have an argument with him you go off and you run the argument inside your head for hours and let it spoil your day? Then at night time when you get into bed and you’re naked, you’re still thinking about him, he’s right there with you in the bed without your clothes on?’
Loren’s jaw dropped and she squirmed with disgust, she was stuck for words. I knew my job was almost done. I had installed an image inside Loren’s head that was so powerful that she decided enough was enough. It was time for her to put a stop to things. I continued, ‘If your manager is annoying you, causing you grief, causing you pain or difficulty doesn’t it make sense to try and stop the feelings as soon as he leaves your company? Isn’t it bad enough that he annoys you once rather than you carrying it with you right through the day (or in some cases right through your life)?’
When your manager does that offensive act, walks away and you end up being annoyed – think about this, he is not there any longer, but yet you’re still being annoyed at him. Perhaps that is understandable if the incident is very recent and he has just left. But as a therapist I get people who are still annoyed about some things that happened years ago. Not only has the person left their company but they may have also left the planet. Seems to me like an awful waste of energy that could be used on something more worthwhile.
You don’t even like your manager and you are carrying on a conversation with him inside your head for the rest of the day, which only makes you feel bad. Then you complain about how you feel like crap because of him. How else would you expect to feel? Doesn’t it make sense that when you recollect an annoying event, a depressing event or a pessimistic outlook that all you are doing is running a memory of it?
What’s happening inside your head is that you’ve had an experience and you’ve stored it in a particular way, but not the best way. You could be having fun with it and he will never know except for the smile on your face the next time you see him. Just think about what you can get away with in your imagination. Think of all the fun you can have with it. You have a choice in how you store your memories, your experiences. Obviously your manager is right out of line and of course you deserve to be treated with dignity, courtesy and respect. You don’t always get to choose what happens to you, however, but you do have a choice about how you respond to what happens to you. You can get bad memories and experiences and rip them apart, smash them up, burn them or do what you like to them. You can learn how to operate the software of your brain so that when someone’s annoying you, you see what you can do to change it.
Loren was now ready to try the following technique.
Exercise: Eliminating the Negative, Option 2
1. Think of someone who annoys you. You can draw in a different person if you want or the same person that annoyed you before if you wish to do more work on that.
2. Imagine or visualise the person standing in front of you trying to give out to you, moan at you, complain to you or doing that annoying thing that they do, but this time imagine them in the nude or perhaps wearing a pair of bloomers with love hearts on them.
3. Imagine, if you like, that on the middle of their face is a big, round, red clown’s nose and on their feet are two huge, brown clown’s shoes complete with red and white striped socks.
4. Look at them as they try to be taken seriously, finger pointing and gesturing with their clown’s gloves trying to scold you.
5. Hear them go on and on as you admire their new clothes.
6. Imagine them doing that and try taking them seriously.
What does that do to the image? What happens to you? You just can’t take the person as seriously can you? Remember there are no rules about how you do this. Just because the person gave you a bad experience didn’t mean that you had to store it and run it as you experienced it. You might even blow it out of proportion! It makes sense for you to stop and say to yourself that this is your experience, your memory, your brain and so you will decide how to run it. You decide if you want to change it. You decide how to change it. This is about thinking. It is about beginning to look at the inside of your head and to clean it up so that you can get the habit of happiness.
Exercise: Your Secret Gift
Experiment with this over the next while.
1. Imagine that each person you meet today is deliberately conspiring to help you become happier.
2. Decide if you would like to become an inverse paranoid. And even if they treat you mean, just imagine that deep down they have your happiness at heart and that today may simply be their ‘off’ day. So, in your mind, forgive them for their actions and leave them be.
3. As you engage with each person whether it is for the first time or not, just imagine they want what’s best for you.
4. Because of this I want you to give them your secret gift. Your gift can only be seen by you but it will be felt by both of you. Your gift needs to remain outside of your conversation, not to be spoken of but simply to be experienced. As soon as you see the person that you are about to engage with I want you to imagine them being cloaked in a shroud of light, bright, transparent light. Pick your own bright, light colour perhaps one from the colours of the rainbow.
5. Imagine this light is fuelled by a warm, loving feeling of care and curiosity. Visualise this feeling as coming from your heart and swirling out softly to surround and nestle this person in a glow of appreciation and interest.
6. Continue doing this occasionally throughout your interaction. Look for nothing in return, this is your gift.
7. Notice what happens and enjoy!