Weekly Food for Thought - Let Your Real Self Please Stand Up

‘Human beings are not born once and for all on the day their mothers give birth to them, but ... life obliges them over and over again to give birth to themselves.’ ~ Gabriel Garcia Márquez

Dear Friends,

Above the door of the ancient oracle in Delphi (and the slightly more modern oracle in the movie Matrix) stood the words gnothi seauton, meaning Know Thyself.

Ultimately, this of course is impossible - there will always be a difference between the real world and our experience and knowledge of it.

So, if we cannot have an accurate self description the question beckons: what is a good way of organising our thinking about who we are? The answer to this lies in looking at the function of the self image.

But before that, let us have a look at that word: Self Image.

Some people know themselves through making a picture of what they look like. Others know themselves by what they say to themselves about themselves, and others know themselves through feeling what they are. The difference is not trivial and carries with it a key to understanding: just imagine how radically differently you would experience yourself if you exchanged the way you represent yourself with someone who experience themselves through another sensory channel.

Your self concept guides your behavior in the world. It guides what you expect will happen. It guides who you will become.

Your self concept creates a filter through which you experience yourself. If you are not aware that you are attractive for example, you will miss the incoming data saying that you are, and only notice the incoming data that fits with what you already believe.

And it is in human nature to meet the expectations of others. These will of course be influenced by your expectations of yourself.

So here is a question for you. If you could just simply wave a magic wand, what self concept would you create for yourself?

It is of course too complicated to deliver a full course on how to change your self concept within just one article, but we would like to invite you to try the following: imagine for a moment that you already had the qualities you want to have. Maybe you would like to be authentic, congruent, aligned, strong, attractive, honest, incorruptible, successful, proud or humble - what qualities you want to develop you will of course have to decide for yourself.

And start imagining for a moment. If you already had the qualities you want to have:

How would you know that you had them? What would you see, hear and feel to let you know that you had them? How would you think of yourself to let you know that you had them?
How would others know that you had them? What would they see, hear and feel to let them know you were a person of that calibre? And how would they react to that and how would they treat you differently?

Spend some time regularly doing this, because as you might know, the greatest secret is that you become what you imagine yourself to be.

Wishing you a wonderful week and sending you oceans of love,

Your self imagining trainers,

Lidija and Thomas

Lidija Markovic – NLP Trainer (Classic & New Code)
Thomas Bjorge – NLP Trainer (Classic & New Code)

Copyright © Momentum Strategies 2013

Weekly Food for Thought - What is the next step? Upward, not just Forward!

What is the next step? Upward, not just forward!

‘We must be champions of change, because the only other alternative is to be victims of change.’ ~ Philip Mirvis

Dear Friends,

Have you ever found yourself feeling like you were trapped in a hamster wheel; no way out, going nowhere no matter how fast you moved … This is an important point, as many times and very often we find ourselves maintaining what we once created and never really took the time to see it from different angles and like scientists do, inspect our product’s efficiency, quality and sustainability. This often happens when we invest energy in maintaining and keeping ‘safe’ what we have once created.

There is very little joy and development and progress in maintaining the existing. The secret and joy lie in creating and developing and constantly improving.
If all you ever get from putting an extra hour of effort into one of your projects, is a proportional amount of work done, the only way to accomplish a magnitude more lies beyond the border of exhaustion. And that, of course, is no way to live a life. And a life without variation, a life of just living the same week over again and again, while the seasons change outside is … well, shall we just say – you deserve better?.

For some people – like artists, the constant lifelong development of skill is part and parcel of what they do. The violoncellist keeps improving her technique on a daily basis throughout her life. The painter keeps improving his eyes. The actor continuously improves the distinctions regarding how to use his body, his voice, his emotions, his Self.

I was speaking to a programmer once, who said: ‘When I program, the important thing is not the product of my programming, but how I program myself during the process; what skills I acquire, who I become. I could perform my work duties without really developing my skills much, and then I would remain the same  throughout the years. But going about it slightly differently I continuously increase me skill level.’

Development is essential. Most of the time, most of the people spend their time and energy working within an existing framework and running around in circles. In the best case scenario, they copy their own actions, thoughts, work from previous weeks, or in the worst case scenario, they copy other people’s actions, thoughts, work…

It is like the first barber in a town who never made an effort to invest and develop his services. Partly because he was the first and as such had no healthy competition. So when new barbers started sprouting up, he was more concerned with investing energy and time in maintaining the existing structure, rather than pause and think about HOW to improve and develop his services. Compare this with a worker at the Toyota assembly line, when he spots a problem, any problem, he pulls a string and the entire production line stops, the production team gathers and they find a way to change and improve the process. Or the farmer who finds his cow in a ditch, he spends the first part of the day getting the cow out, and the second figuring out how to prevent it from ever happening again.

So the point we are making here is not about working harder, making that hamster wheel spin an extra round, but about improving at selecting what to do and how to do it. Not by fighting harder, but by learning about tactics, by moving into the realm of strategy.

A symbol comes to mind. You have certainly seen the spirally shaped shells. Each segment building onto the previously existing structure.  Enlarging it. Evolving, creating a meaning, and NOT maintaining the same. To put it simply, would you rather be using your half a kilo old brick mobile phone or are you pleased with the creation of light sleek smart phones?

With this in mind, may we invite you to take some time, once a day (this is IMPORTANT!), to step outside your hamster wheels, reflect upon what you can learn from the last time you were engaged in any process and how to improve that process.

Wishing you a wonderful week and sending you oceans of love,

Your constantly improving trainers

Lidija and Thomas

Lidija Markovic - NLP Trainer (Classic & New Code)
Thomas Bjorge - NLP Trainer (Classic & New Code)

Copyright © Momentum Strategies 2013

Weekly Food For Thought - Overrun by Obstacles or Amazed at the Labyrinth?

‘Furthermore, we have not even to risk the adventure alone; for the heroes of all time have one before us, the labyrinth is fully known; we have only to follow the thread of the hero-path...where we had thought to travel outward, we shall come to the center of our own existence.’ ~ Joseph Campbell

Dear Friends,

Has it ever happened to you that you start doing something, start making a headway, and bang… You stop.  An obstacle of some sort appears ...?!

This obstacle usually presents itself out of nowhere, as, let’s be honest here, when you set out on your journey of accomplishing that what you want to accomplish, you didn’t plan on having a pain in the backside, aka an obstacle...

A while ago, I mused about the importance on turning labyrinths or mazes, in which we move round in never ending circles, into friendly obstacles ... Sometimes this also works! Yet, I got to experience, first hand, how turning obstacles into labyrinths can be very beneficial and can exponentially contribute to the way you view the world, and ultimately to your growth!

You see, when presented with an obstacle, a large number of people on this planet would see it as a problem. And when we see something as problem, we tend to turn back and run away from it, jump the obstacle against all odds, or going around the obstacle, hoping to avoid it...

In my experience, none of the above options work, purely because they serve as a means to ‘overcome something’ quick...And we know that when we do something very quickly, unless it’s a running race, it is short lived, and there isn’t a great deal of learning to be gained nor growth to be accomplished. So we end up going back to square one, i.e. to a place just before the obstacle presented itself.

Labyrinths, on the other hand, are a different story altogether. Labyrinths are fun. They are what children run through for the sheer joy of it. And they always have a way out - if nothing else the way in is a way to get out.

One thing which changes when you start considering something as a labyrinth is that if you take the perceptual position of an eagle or hawk, flying far above it, soaring in the wind, using the fantastic abilities of your hawkish eyes to see the situation from the outside, you can much easier see a way out of it or a way forward. And give superior instructions to the ones who are stuck inside it.

With this in mind may we invite you to consider what you liken different situations in your life with, and explore what happens when you start thinking of them in other terms.

If you think of the boardroom meeting as a battle, note what happens if you start thinking of it as a board game or even as a dance. If you think of the negotiations as a game of poker, notice what happens if you think of them as a game of chess, or even as hopscotch.

Everything unexpected that appears on our journey has a potential to be an obstacle, or a potential to be a labyrinth...How we see it, depends on whether we want to have a quick jump and have an illusion of moving forward, or whether we want to explore and see what we are capable of and what resources we have at our disposal. Some of which are only visible when you rise above your challenges and take a hawk eye view.

Wishing you a wonderful and explorative week,

Your a-MAZE-ing trainers,

Thomas and Lidija

Lidija Markovic - NLP Trainer (Classic & New Code)
Thomas Bjorge - NLP Trainer (Classic and New Code)

Copyright © Momentum Strategies 2013

Weekly Food For Thought - Overrun by Obstacles or Amazed at the Labyrinth?

‘Furthermore, we have not even to risk the adventure alone; for the heroes of all time have one before us, the labyrinth is fully known; we have only to follow the thread of the hero-path...where we had thought to travel outward, we shall come to the center of our own existence.’ ~ Joseph Campbell

Dear Friends,

Has it ever happened to you that you start doing something, start making a headway, and bang… You stop.  An obstacle of some sort appears ...?!

This obstacle usually presents itself out of nowhere, as, let’s be honest here, when you set out on your journey of accomplishing that what you want to accomplish, you didn’t plan on having a pain in the backside, aka an obstacle...

A while ago, I mused about the importance on turning labyrinths or mazes, in which we move round in never ending circles, into friendly obstacles ... Sometimes this also works! Yet, I got to experience, first hand, how turning obstacles into labyrinths can be very beneficial and can exponentially contribute to the way you view the world, and ultimately to your growth!

You see, when presented with an obstacle, a large number of people on this planet would see it as a problem. And when we see something as problem, we tend to turn back and run away from it, jump the obstacle against all odds, or going around the obstacle, hoping to avoid it...

In my experience, none of the above options work, purely because they serve as a means to ‘overcome something’ quick...And we know that when we do something very quickly, unless it’s a running race, it is short lived, and there isn’t a great deal of learning to be gained nor growth to be accomplished. So we end up going back to square one, i.e. to a place just before the obstacle presented itself.

Labyrinths, on the other hand, are a different story altogether. Labyrinths are fun. They are what children run through for the sheer joy of it. And they always have a way out - if nothing else the way in is a way to get out.

One thing which changes when you start considering something as a labyrinth is that if you take the perceptual position of an eagle or hawk, flying far above it, soaring in the wind, using the fantastic abilities of your hawkish eyes to see the situation from the outside, you can much easier see a way out of it or a way forward. And give superior instructions to the ones who are stuck inside it.

With this in mind may we invite you to consider what you liken different situations in your life with, and explore what happens when you start thinking of them in other terms.

If you think of the boardroom meeting as a battle, note what happens if you start thinking of it as a board game or even as a dance. If you think of the negotiations as a game of poker, notice what happens if you think of them as a game of chess, or even as hopscotch.

Everything unexpected that appears on our journey has a potential to be an obstacle, or a potential to be a labyrinth...How we see it, depends on whether we want to have a quick jump and have an illusion of moving forward, or whether we want to explore and see what we are capable of and what resources we have at our disposal. Some of which are only visible when you rise above your challenges and take a hawk eye view.

Wishing you a wonderful and explorative week,

Your a-MAZE-ing trainers,

Thomas and Lidija

Lidija Markovic - NLP Trainer (Classic & New Code)
Thomas Bjorge - NLP Trainer (Classic and New Code)

Copyright © Momentum Strategies 2013