Letting go of outcome

The more I do BJJ, the more it appears to hold a million metaphors for changework and coaching.

One of the things I help people with is goalsetting. And one of the lesser known tenets is that, when one has a chosen and specific outcome, is to ‘let go of it’.

“So what the hell does that actually mean?”

Well, this means not wearing blinkers, so much you’re only focusing on the outcome and nothing else.  Instead, it’s about putting yourself in the moment, paying attention to the individual task in hand, paying attention to the little steps, as it’s those that are the micro components that lead to the outcome, just like the sea is made up trillions of individual tiny drops of water.

There is also the understanding that by, once the larger goal or outcome has been firmly set, this will allow your unconcious to apply its ability to alter your experiential filters, i.e. things that are brought into our consciousness, given that we distort delete and generalise incoming sensory data and crunch it down to 7 bits from 2,000,000!

This speaks then, of our ability to retrain our ‘filters’ or the way we see hear and feel the world. So by setting the big scale goal we can then focus on the smaller scale stuff, that’s actually going to allow the outcome to be made manifest. (Wouldn’t you like to meet Maid Manifest? I would).

Learning to trust our unconscious is a  B – I – G  factor for this, in my opinion.

And only last night I had a personal experience of the fruits that letting go of outcome will bring…..

So I’ve been doing BJJ twice a week since the top of the year now (well, February), and, like most people I’ve been fixated and have targeted the attainment of a higher grade (the path to getting off the white belt with no stipes newbie status). I’m ok with this as it is a perfectly natural response, – after all the brain is goal seeking in nature, and if you have impose a system on a bunch of people, let alone 99% men, there’s just going to be a competitive element.

It’s been tough seeing other guys get promoted, and sometimes initially discouraging too (before my stubborn ass never-quit gene kicks in furiously).  It’s very easy to see how some guys get the
’shoulda been be’ syndrome – but that’ll get you nowhere -  and fast! 

My personal experience was that I was flitting between patient zen-like approach, you know, the same attitude as the developers of Duke Nukem II had i.e. – ‘it’s done when it’s done’

Duke Nukem

 

And that of that darned annoying Shrek character Donkey (Click to listen) - “Are we There Yet?” 
 

 

 

Donkey

 

It took some time, last week infact, until I truly let go of outcome. I posted on Twitter last week about how I had reframed my approach and actively *welcomed* in being where I was:

“I do not own a white belt, I own a newborn Black Belt.” #BJJ #NLP #martialarts http://short.to/c7nz

White Belt - No Stripes

This caused a bit of a kerfuffle amongst the non Martial Artist chums of mine (yes, I do have some ☻) who thought it meant I had an *actual* Black Belt… lol to get one of those in 6 months would make in one crappy school!

Really what I was saying here was a declaration and embracing of where I was, right at the moment, and that I’d *finally* let go of being obsessed about grading.

What happened next

So only yesterday, in class we were drilling escapes, particularly being in really uncomfortable pressurised situations, i.e. having a 300 pound man resting all his weight on your chest while trying to choke you type scenario, and I was happily drilling away, having the air squeezed out my body, and generally being crushed while doing the drill, when Professor Marc Walder came up to our space on the mats –  I thought he was adjusting my technique (as usual ☻) but no –  to my amazement he placed a stripe on my belt! I was pretty speechless, only able to eek out a “thank you very much”, in respost to his words of congratulation, but then – to my amazement, he placed *another* stripe on there too!

Two stripes.

Woah. I was gobsmacked. My partner Big Mike was really pleased for me – and told me I’d deserved it.

I had done it, I had let go of outcome and sure enough, just like it always does do when I do, it paid off. Bigtime.

White Belt - 2 Stripes

So yeah, I’m pretty chuffed right now.

And here’s the thing.. my game, from that moment, my game improved.

How crazy is that?! Well not at all really, I was talking about this to my mentor who reminded me – how we often seek external validation from someone who we  credit as an authority, and on having that, it gives us permission to be the person we can be.  And that’s something I see that all the time in my clients, it’s not me doing the magicks, it’s THEM.

So, with that in mind, if there’s something you’re working on doing or becoming…

Who would need to validate you as having succeeded, and what exactly would it be like if they did, and how would that change things in a suprisingly immediate and transformatively profound way now?

That’s something worth considering, is it not?

In other news, Later this evening I’m going to be assisting someone who is learning Hypnosis to be even better, and then will be doing some Deep Trance Identification myself with a specific Jiu Jitsu Athlete.

Funfunfun!

 

Till next time. 

Let Go Of Outcome…

 

Al

Fighting for fun and Therapeutic learnings

You know, it’s funny. Seriously – it really is.

So I’m at the Thai Boxing gym, doing my best impression to not feel so tired I want to cry, and I was listening to the coaching from my good friend, Network Marketing & Usana Jedi Nick Wilson who was taking the class. Anyway something he said really struck me..

Now, I know Nick from Thai Boxing for many years, and he was also recently a delegate on a recent workshop I put together on Goalsetting, but in recent times, we’ve been working together specifically around the area of personal coaching and how the stuff I do -  i.e. NLP & Hypnosis can be of benefit in the arena of business, as well as (specifically) Martial Arts.

Anyway, he was explaining, (quite correctly), how  when you fight, you must fight your own fight. As you may or may not know, fighting requires and facilitated radically altered states, but I’ll get to that later….

Nick was saying how you must *not* get drawn into your opponent’s fight, becaue if you do – you’re literally dancing to his/her tune, instead of your own. And that’s what gets your ass kicked.

If you fight someone who is massively congruent, confident in their abilities, and brimming full of intention, it’s going to be a challenge. Yet it will not be impossible, to break away from the fight they want to fight if you keep your own intention strong, being in touch with your own potential and of course self belief, then it’s going to be a *true* battle, as opposed to a drawn out dance to the inevitable loss.

And that’s where it struck me – and this is where the altered states thing comes into play, it’s just as important when you’re working with a client for therapeutic or coaching purposes. Ive been lucky enough to have a a fair few clients who have really helped me develop in my coaching and therapeutic application of what I do. Blammo! You’ve fallen into *their* trance. And their trance  is one of disempowerment and helplessness, or stuck at least, hell that’s why they’re there!

So the key is to with love, control the frame, as elegantly as possible.

so how do you do that?

Crunched up knee, energy healing and upcoming interviews!

Last week (ironically my first week of twice a week) at BJJ I got swept and *crunch* landed all my substantial weight on my kneecap.

Ouch.

Next day, walking was not happening. Got in touch with a good friend of mine who does energy healing, and he did his woowoo on my knee.

You, like me are probably a person who generally calls “bullsh!t” on such things.

And so am I -  unless they work. And this did.

After two mornings of his work, I was literally woken up (no mean feat) with surprise at how, over the course of the night my mobility of the leg in question really increased!

Needless to say I asked for more please, now!

I’ve done a few of my own remote energy experiments and had fair success, tho I’m always stacking the deck with hypnotic language

Went back to BJJ tonight -  didn’t spar (didn’t want to anger the knee gods) but successfully did the session with onle 1 single knee tweak.

+++++++++++++ STOP PRESS ++++++++++++++

My Maestre, Marc Walder has agreed to do an interview for the blog.

The theme will be from a modeling perspective, and also the BJJ mindset (especially compared with the stand up fighter’s mindset).

Watch this space….

Till next time.

A baby’s first steps, the Flow State and a brand new site!

I had to post today – as my little one year old girl walked today -  unaided by Robots or Humes!

It was just the best. Even the Grandparents Hi-5′d me!

It’s funny, she’d been holding herself back for ages, – she’s been able to walk for a good while, and would hold herself up, yet when she’d notice she was doing so, she’d plop herself down on her bum.

It’s similar to the Flow State, experienced by athletes and sports-people and hey maybe even YOU!

They are in optimum performance mode…. and they are doing it ….. and doing it …. and when their concious processes say ‘hey look at what we’re doing’ -  they drop out of state.

Why?

Because mastery is always unconscious (tho’ I’m sure there’s *something* that doesn’t fit that generaLIEsation).

AND

As if the girl’s first steps weren’t enough, last night, on New Years Eve, I finshed and turned live my Website for Coaching and Hypnosis. The development of which had been suckig my life for the last 3 months!

There are still a few improvements I’ll add over time, but the bulk of the work’s done.

Please do go check it out at West Essex Hypnotherapy.co.uk – all the cool kids are!

Until next time,

Be spookily billiant!

Al

Being a busy bird…

Wow, the cracks are really showing now!

It’s been sucking my life – this web development game…

To think some crazy buggers like to do it full time! *shudder*.

My goal is still to have my Site live by 1/1/9 – and it’s going to go to the frikkin wire!

Juggling kids, researching stuff, working on other projects, Christmas, Eating, missing training. Wow it all adds up!

Like every other punk I’m saying “I’m gonna hit the gym hard in Jan…” Truth is, I’m going to be fairly consumed with coaching, running my new seminars, and trying to keep the family on an even keel!

Still, I’ll bootstrap and be flexible with my time, and my workout methods. I’m still on week 6 -  the final week of www.hundredpushups.com but as my training has rexaled off toward the end of the year disrupted my flow – making the workouts wonderful and killer! Target now is end of Jan for that.

Right. Back to this damned copywriting.

Train Hard Play hard, sleep hard.

Al

Training with Royce Gracie and the new Black Gi

How lucky can a guy be eh?

After waiting a couple of weeks for my Gi to come from Ebayland (wherever the hell that is) it finally showed, and in time for a very special event!

Marc told us, at the end of last Monday’s class that he’d not be able to take next Monday’s class, waited for our puzzlement before telling us that this was because Royce Gracie would be taking the class!

Marc has strong links with a lot of the Gracie family and other top BJJ masters and so the club benefits from this – obviously!

The class started by walking in to seeing the all guys chipping in to set down the mats. I was interested to see who the new guy with the good tan was, and was stunned to see that it was Royce, the man himself was there laying down the mats with a great deal of care. This was for me, really impressive.

I got changed into the new Gi and  -  after a mix of ribbing and congratulations on the Gi, we started the class.

Royce went straight into  a really simple escape from a grab. The structure was great -  good solid stuff and in small enough chunks that even the newest of all BJJ newbies (that’ll be me) could get a grip on them. As seems to be the nature of the BJJ classes, the teaching is ‘componentized’ and loosely linear, so the next logical step would be the next chuck we’d learn and practice. Then when we’d get to the floor we’d perform the next component in an ongoing flow, then the following one would be the “what if they get wise to that” and would offer an alternative strategy or adaptive technique to counter the opponent’s counter/defence.

We did this for about 1.5 hours (changing partners regularly) before starting the rolling (sparring).

I got lots of great experience of getting choked out more times than my dainty scathed neck cares to remember. I think I got one tapout and tapped out erm well, I forget! Anyhoo, as I have written before, making mistakes is where it’s at!

In keeping with the way the class started, Royce proceeded to help putting all the mats away and was kind enough to pose for all the fanboys who wanted pictures. So if this doesn’t prove that you don’t have to be an obnoxious aggressive dick to be the toughest guy on the planet then what does? Now that’s what I am talking about!

See Royce and I below!

So Till next time Train in fun and a ferocious attitude to learning!

Al

Royce and Self in new Gi

One month later: Sub Stellar Trance and Ripping the Gi.

Wow.

Can’t believe it was a month since the last post on here. A great example of – with the greatest will in the world, today’s high paced life can sometimes get in the way of . . . stuff.

Along with the usual mix of both fighters and therapeutic clients, Neanderthal kids and a trip abroad, maketh 4 weeks flyeth. Or something.

Apart from that - some good thinkum time floating on my back under the Iberian starscape (Yep – I’ve finally gone hippy).

So anyway, when I was on away, I went swimming at dusk.  At the time then that one part of the day recedes and let the other part come to the fore…I’m sure you know the kind of the thing…

And as I was swimming, noticing all my surroundings; the feeling of the water on my skin, the temperature of the air . . .  and listening to the chatter of birdsong vie for my attention over the tingling notes that the water was making . . . I happened to glance at the blanched whitewalls of a hacienda . . .  and the sky that night had at the horizon, a trace of pinky clouds that were courting the setting sun. .  (Walking her home if you like).

And this made a pink, the beauty of which I have never seen before . . . and tho’ I already had a full sensory gamete -  . .  the smells  . . . the tastes . . . of the salty air, the notes of the waves, the birds, all the things, I still managed to feel an overwhelm . . . An awe at this bluey pink radiance . . . and it made me think, you can you know, feel free – feeling like you can notice the beauty of life . . . and you can feel bliss at the slightest of things.. And on I swam . . . Deeper   and   deeper and then I noticed something.

The exchange of light where the streetlamp close to the wall started o dominate the hue… and when I saw it, I still saw that magical colour, the kind that made you feel like anything is possible, like all the things in your past that used to cause you certain feelings were so very far away. Those pictures so fuzzy, so drained of colour and so silent that they just melt away and with them those feelings do too Now, instead was this new focus, this new ability to feel and notice the wonder of the moment, and accept it for all that it is, and how you can honour it and thusly so will it honour you.

———————————–

In other news, BJJ last night was bloody tough, and great. I was rolling and training with a couple of biiiig guys - even bigger than yours truly! Exciting stuff. Made my life lovely and super challenging. I heard there the story of Roger Gracie, who while fighting with someone in competition, actually ripped the Gi. The Gi, or Kimono is the traditional uniform worn by Jitsu players. Very similar to Judo ones, these things are double woven strong as steel type things. That’s just freaky and Magickal – but that’s the Gracies for you!

Till the next time -  have fun, and play well.

In other

The Art and Science of Making Mistakes

What a lovely week.

The wonderful, really wonderful thing about when You have experienced a week of stuff not going your way is knowing that there is wonderful joyful stuff to come and even more new stuff . Now, last week was, in other areas of one’s life, a challenge. In fact, it was not pleasant if I generalise (and therefore lie) for a moment.

However, this week has been filled with incredible curvaceous twists and turns like a twisty turny thing (and you can call me Susan if it isn’t so). So Monday saw me put in as usual, 100% -yet I saw less than optimal conscious learnings. The way we are taught to be in the west in general is that we are conditioned not to feel satisfaction unless a learning is in cognition, and something what was for me a below optimal set of results consciously. Thankfully, NLP that has been delivered/installed/whatever’d into the target/source/victim/delegate/whatever  does change the way you think and you can learn more, faster.
Now

However -  a great fighter at the gym, perhaps the most senior -  a BJJ Brown Belt called Adam, invited me to what he called an ‘Open Mat’ session – which I went on to attend. It was lovely – free flowing and without structure.
Adam, is a small and perfectly formed fighter who has incredible technique – giving the impression thereby of incredible strength. Well, we rolled/sparred/grappled/whatever for 40 minutes or more. Naturally I got tooled most of the time, (OK all of the time) and Adam offered me the BJJ rookie tutorial that I’ve been missing from my previous groundfighting endeavors (i.e. what the hell am I supposed to do exactly). I learnt so very much from that, and am slowly continuing to unlearn my instinctive responses and learn new instincts.

“You can’t learn new instincts” I hear some of you cry.
“Bullshit” -  I respond -  after all what are instincts but learnings that lead to behaviours from a long time ago that were previously found to be useful.
Well, as much as I love my oft Neanderthal nature, just because it worked in the past doesn’t make it valid for the present or indeed the future -  ok? If we stick only to what we already know works, then we’ll learn nothing and fail to continue our evolution.

I refer to what the legendary John Grinder; Trainer of Secret Agents, Uber Linguist and of course Co-Founder of NLP says:
“Success can be problematic”
Yes, that’s right, some of you may be thinking and calling bullshit on that, but wait, let me explain this amazing gem from the man -  from whom I picked up a radical new way of thinking for myself when I was an elected model at one of his Modeling seminars.

You see Grinder taught was that once you’ve learnt something can perform something successfully, the most dangerous thing for your own personal evolution is to keep doing it the same way. Now, I understand this rubs up against the “If it ain’t broke don’t fix it” school of pragmatism -  a school of which I was a long standing member -  and still have and am in some areas, but there is real wisdom in what he says. By doing something you know a new different way, you learn. If it isn’t as successful -  that new way, then you learn another way not to do something, and ultimately you’ll find new ways to do the elected behaviour / thing / whatever. Interestingly enough, I would postulate that (Neurologically speaking) this is an extremely useful meta-approach for life, especially if you think about how Alzheimer’s affects The Brain: Consider a road that you use every day to get to work. Then one day you see a great bloody wall that’s been built, thereby bricking up the route you usually take and utterly impeding your progress and ability to access where you need to. Now, if you don’t know other routes, other ways to get to the same outcome, place, memory, you’re in for a damned hard time. Better then to have multiple ways to acheive the same outcome than just one.

Getting back to the BJJ, for me this means relaxing and taking my time. This seemed so contrary to all my survival combat mode and yet -  I see by this new way of thinking, and essentially noticing and being in the moment, without an urge to hurry through into the next phase, whatever that might be, is the beauty, the learning and most importantly, the true pragmatism.

It takes practice, and how wonderful that it does, for how much more cherished will these new set of fighting/living/thinking/reacting instincts will be when they’re deep in the muscle now.

Credo.

Al

Coming home to Muay Thai again

Ok, so I know that I said I ached but…

Now I really ache!

Thursday saw my return to Muay Thai for a little longer than I have enjoyed.

In the true (according to whom?) spirit of the NLP Co-Founder Richard Bandler, I said to myself

”’Fuck it”. and I decided to do both the beginner’s and advanced session. Now, let me be clear – it was just the fitness part that tooled me. I’ve sparred with champions for years -  and often enjoyed a hiding from them.In fact, I realised relatively recently that I’ve recoded the pain, the hardship to be .. well.. fun.

Yup, I’m a freak, I know. But when I’m  training in the fighting arts, and life, I’ve found it is far more useful to find enjoyment in what you’re doing, especially if it is something you do that can be challenging and regular.

Most recently I have been actively finding the perfection in each moment.

Horsedung I hear you cry. Well, when I was at my most knackered while sparring with my trainer (heavyweight world champion currently training for a big fight) and his brother (another mean and very skilled bugger) I drew in some cool air from the only goddang fresh air source in the damn gym -  a pair of fire doors

And I breathed in. And it was like drinking in iced water in the middle of a desert. And it was good. And thru the leathering I was getting, and the screaming exhaustion I has in, and all the other shit I was NOT focusing on -  it was so lovely.

You see, fighting, for me, isn’t just a sport, it is the only sport. It’s such a lovely thing.

Really.

Forgive me, but this is what comes from recoding you’re experience to be something better than what it was.

And it just gets better and better. How are you making life better, your fighting better more and more now, didn’t you?

And drop me a line for more stuff.

Now.

Superstruct your reality.

Al

BJJ #2 :Learning to Unlearn

Man do I ache!

Monday night was excellent, as I established with the help of the Maestre – that I had a ”kink in my think” that was linked to my current.. erm ‘’style” of ground-fighting. While I was training at a previous MMA class I was pretty much just left to get on with it – i.e. make the best of my natural strength flexibility and endurance – BUT zero real skill was there!

Anyway, Marc explained where I was going wrong -  and explained the BJJ mindset (more on that to come).

I was suffering from I’ll call the ‘Newbie Shuffle’ due to the fact that my skillset was so weak, what I would do was simply ‘do what works’ – as an NLPer I should damn well know better! Still better that I recognize that right at the start of my BJJ experience now. More specifically, I would use brute force and resilience to bore my opponent into submission, relying on a strong base and all my weight bearing down on their neck till they tapped. Inelegant yet effective. Then in the drill I would always rush the technique to crank on the armbar/lock/choke/whatever as again I didn’t know that small controlled and steady tweaks would be far more effective then just trying to apply a technique incorrectly -  that is, with the incorrect part of my body – instead of a sharp boney part!

A lesson learnt.

An adaptation unlearnt.

Now let’s think about that.

Firstly – it is important that there isn’t blame poured on yourself or anything negative -  in fact pour thanks upon yourself. That was you doing the best it could given the information that was available and able to be digested. Additionally, if it wasn’t for the fact that you do technique x in a less than optimal way, you wouldn’t have had this revelation that you can now learnt even more – haven’t you? Already begun it the process of making something better.

Secondly – unless you know the NLP Swish Pattern, the next best thing would be to scratch the record of your less than optimal technique as follows:

1.
Think about how you do the technique that you aren’t doing the way you want to. Be sure you experience it through all the sensory systems. What do you see what you do it, hear when you do it, feel as you do it. If you say something to yourself what is it?

2.
Note the qualities of the experience. Checkout the list of what are known as Sub-modalities of any internal experience. Thanks to Wikipedia for this table (which is NOT exhaustive by the way). Once you’ve established how exactly you have this move represented internally then utterly frazzle it by completely radically changing the way you represent it. So for instance – if you make a picture of the move and it’s a clear one – make it the hell blurry. if it feels strong in your body to perform it then do it with a feeling of namby pamby weakness. If you say to yourself a grunt, or a phrase  -  then try saying it’s opposite.

3.
Work to get all these factors of the experience and add them altogether so u have a totally messed up representation. Play around for a while and you’ll end up with a fairly messed up technique.

This is nowhere near as thorough as The Swish, but it will go some way towards it. If you google you’ll find details of the Swish without much effort -  so you might want to try to do that as well.  Alternatively find a local friendly NLP practitioner. Better still one with fight experience. Better still one who’s held national titles.

Oh that would be me then – well have fun and get in touch when you need my help, ok?

Be So Well You’re Swell.

Al

Representation system	Examples of submodalities
Visual (sight, images, spatial)	Location: to the left, right, top, bottom Size Distance Brightness Color or monochrome Framed (nature of frame?) or panoramic 2D or 3D Clear or fuzzy Shape: convex, concave, specific shape Movement: still, photo, slideshow, video, movie, looping Style: picture, painting, poster, drawing, “real life”
Auditory (sound, voice)	Mono / stereo Qualities: Volume, pitch, tempo, rhythm Variations: looping, fading in and out, moving location Voice: whose voice, one or many Other background sounds?
Kinesthetic (propreceptive, somatic)	Proprioception: Somatic sensation, location, movement Tactition: pressure, texture Thermoception: temperature