I thought it would be useful to include some practical exercises alongside the more conceptual exercises that you’ve worked on throughout the book. The following exercise is very loosely based on exercises from the Lightning Process seminar. It provides you with the opportunity to make some change and, because it requires you to use your mind, brain and body, it also gives you an experience of the type of tools you will learn to use within the seminars. This exercise has three steps:
Assess
Coach
Engage
Before we work through the ACE exercise, the second step, ‘Coach’, needs a little introduction. This is because most people are unfamiliar with coaching. So let’s begin with a description. Being a coach is when one person adopts a specific type of role in order to assist someone else to sort out his or her particular issues. The main qualities that ensure the assistance is ‘coaching’ (rather than ‘advice’, ‘interference’ or ‘agreeing it’s impossible’) are that the coach:
But coaching isn’t very common. Often, when someone is in difficulty, people will start to give advice. This can be particularly problematic if help hasn’t even been asked for, because at that point it becomes ‘interfering’.
There is also another danger when you get two people together to talk about a problem. It can end up being a very negative conversation, where, instead of helping with the problem, the other person just agrees that the problem seems unsolvable.
Now that you know the qualities of a coach, it should be relatively easy to see that none of the above approaches are really coaching.
So, before we start the ACE exercise, take a few minutes to go through the following three steps about coaching.
You should be able to notice that in those two ‘good coaches’ examples you can see the presence of the ‘coaching qualities’; and you can also notice how they are lacking in the ‘bad coach’ example.
Great coaches are invaluable, but one of the problems is, due to practical reasons, they just aren’t there when you need them. The Lightning Process has a solution for this. What if you learned to coach yourself very effectively? Then you’d have access to inspiring assistance any time. I call this concept ‘self-coaching’. Let’s develop this skill before going further.
The simplest way to do this is to choose someone who has all the five ‘qualities’ of a coach listed previously. The choice is completely up to you, but these suggestions might help:
That’s all we need to do for now; we’ll work more on this in step two of the ACE exercise.
The ‘A’ of ACE stands for Assess. Any exercise needs to start with a recognition of what the problem is, and its significance, together with some kind of measurement, so that you can notice change at the end. In other words, you need to know what ‘success you’re seeking’.
Let’s begin by taking a statement that often pops up when people are working with beliefs. We’ve already seen how significant beliefs are, from the research into placebos (chapter 3), in terms of how they affect our health.
So the statement ‘I am capable of resolving my issues’ is a good example of a powerful belief that needs to be something with which we feel we can fully agree. As mentioned earlier, if we don’t completely agree we can resolve our issues, it will make the journey to change much more difficult.
We are going to use the steps of the ACE exercise to notice how rapidly you can shift how you feel about this belief.
You may have noticed that you have already performed this part of the exercise in exercise 16.1 in the previous chapter on beliefs. Make a note of your previous score, and then move on to the next step.
You’ve already worked on choosing a coach in the earlier exercise. Additionally, for this part of the ACE exercise, I would like you to make sure your coach already has the belief that you want to have. So, in this example, where the belief you want is, ‘I am capable of resolving my issues’, you need to select a coach who already believes that people are capable of resolving these issues.
If, when you do this exercise in the future, the belief you want to encourage is, ‘I want to believe I can resolve my issues easily’, then you would need to make sure your coach was someone who believes that problems and issues like these can be resolved easily.
Complete the following sentences:
The belief I would like to have even more strongly is…
My coach for this belief is…
Now picture that coach in front of you.
See them holding your gaze. You can feel how, in their eyes, you are someone very special; someone they are proud of; someone they want to work with.
Note down how that feels.
What would they say to you, with all their experience of these things and life in general, to remind you that you can do this?
Write it down, then listen to your coach saying those words; let it surround you and flow into you. Then imagine your coach moves to stand beside you, as we move to the final step of the ACE exercise, ‘Engage’.
The ‘E’ in ACE is for ‘Engage’. This step helps your brain to rewire itself in a way that supports your health.
Imagine now, that you are walking into your future with the constant presence, whenever you need it, of your coach right beside you.
Imagine how it feels to hear their voice reminding you that you can do this, and to feel their presence reassuring you.
Feel how it feels to deal with all the obstacles, challenges and opportunities that arise with this solid, inspirational force walking with you at all times.
For the next section you’ll need a little space to walk around.
Now I’d like you to imagine that your future is a line, and if I were to ask you to point along that line, into your future, then which direction would it point?
For many people it’s in front of them or to the right, but wherever yours is, just make a note of it.
Then, if you are able to walk, physically get up and stride powerfully in that direction, feeling the presence of your coach with you as you do that.
If you are unable to get up and walk for any reason, let your fingers do the job for you, walking in that direction into your future.
If that is not something you’re physically able to do right now, then just imagine doing it in your mind. You’ll be pleased, and maybe surprised, to know that research29 has shown that we get almost the same amount of physical and neurological change by just mentally performing an exercise as we do by actually physically doing it.
Write down how it feels to ‘walk’ into your future with your coach.
Re-assess your original score from exercise 16.1, and notice how this exercise has further enhanced your feelings that you really can do this.
Practice this exercise at least twice a day, and anytime you feel yourself doubting your ability to achieve your goals. It’s natural from time to time for our resolve and confidence to waver. Having an exercise available to you means that you can start to deal with those times of doubt and turn them around to help you put all your energy into getting what you want.