Poignant Moments That Change Your Life Forever

I have had one of the most profound, insightful weekends of my life thus far and there have been quite a few of those in my dark and dingy past I can tell you.

What the hell am I babbling about? Well it all has to do with my NLP Master Practitioners course that I am taking over a ten month period. Once a month I meet with wonderful like minded people as we grapple with our own perceptions of life, values and beliefs, psychoses and neuroses that we have all managed to carry around with us since childhood.

When you hear someone say “Oh I can’t be bothered with him/her, he/she has too much emotional baggage.” Well guess what? If you begin scratching away at that person’s surface you will find enough baggage to keep a psychiatrist in business for the rest of his life. Everything we are brought up to believe in is somehow someone else’s values and beliefs on their perceptions and viewpoints of the world, not to mention the social constraints that culture declares is right or wrong.
For instance, I had a friend who was in a miserable marriage. She knew her husband felt indifference towards her and the fact that she was miles away from the comfort of her tribe (family), yet she stuck out the torment and misery for years, because
a) Marriage was for life no matter how miserable you make one another, its an endurance not an enjoyment.(someone else’s value)
b) Who else would want her? (someone else’s belief)
c) She didn’t want to be left on the shelf. (her belief)
d) Marriage would prevent her from being alone ever again. (her value)
So here’s my friend with all the incongruence that she knows contradicts with how she was feeling and so she told no-one and suffered in silence. Until it all got too much and one day she just disappeared.

Yes she actually ran away from her own marital home, because she was worried about what other people thought, her family, her friends and even acquaintances she hardly knew! In everyone else’s reality though, they didn’t care that her marriage had fallen spectacularly apart, the people who truly knew her and cared deeply for her just wanted her home safe and sound, to be happy with how she lived her life (after all it was her own to live it as she saw fit!), in fact most people were actually relieved she had finally seen the light and no judgments were passed, much to the surprise of my friend. She realised that she hadn't failed in her marriage (which she did enter into believing it was for the rest of her life), merely they had drifted apart and were living seperate lives under one roof.

So the lesson I learned this weekend was this. Just because we think we ‘know what other people are thinking and feeling, it does not necessarily mean that they are!’

Oh and here’s another knew belief ‘I am dependant on myself therefore I am independent and inter-dependant.’ This may be dead obvious to some of you, but for me it has taken a NLP Practitioners Qualification and five months studying Master level to get this concept!

Toodle Pips

Oh and you are probably wondering who my friend is.
Well….My Friend Is Me! (yep another new belief)