We are what we think

A relatively new science called psycho-neuro-immunology has appeared on the block, which studies the interaction between thinking and the chemistry of the body in relation to illness and disease. If you remove all the water from yourself and your clients, you will be two piles of chemicals having a coaching session.

Thoughts become chemistry. If a client has a happy thought, she creates a particular chemical cocktail different to when she has depressed, stressed or angry thoughts. The quality of her thinking changes not only the chemistry of her mind and body but her ability to process information.

We become what we practise

How do you get to Royal Albert Hall? The answer is to practise, practise and practise more. Every human behaviour that is practised consciously becomes an unconscious habit at some point. Practice is the ‘mother of skill’, and every human behaviour is an accomplished skill brought about through repetition.

Self-awareness teaches a client to have a greater range of flexibility and self-management about how she thinks and feels, enabling her to be more creative and resilient.

Regard every human behaviour as a learned skill, whether that’s playing the piano, procrastinating, stressful thinking or being resourceful. If a client has practised the skill of depression or worrying, she has clocked up many hours doing negative thinking and simply become good at it. People can’t unlearn a skill, just like they can’t forget to learn how to play the piano, or to read or tie a shoelace. What you coach her to do is to become aware of what she is doing and, if negative, coach her how to stop doing it. Then replace the old habitual way of thinking with a new more resourceful way of thinking until the new practice becomes habitual.

Coaching a client to become self-aware and to manage her own internal world is truly transformational. Before coaching others to be congruent, ‘go there first’. Practise the techniques in this section on yourself so you can lead by example.

Noticing the effects of a negative emotional state

The negative effects of stress on judgement, decision-making, health and performance is well researched and documented. It has a huge cost to business. In the UK, 10.4 million working days are lost to work-related stress, costing £460 million a day due to employee absence and affecting the UK economy by £15.1 billion a year. Making bad decisions and mistakes and stress costs business money and has a toll on an organisation’s most valuable asset - its human capital.

What’s not so clearly researched are the costs to individuals and businesses of other emotional states that affect performance: depression, procrastination, worry, doubt and the impact that small daily stressful events of life can have a on people. Never underestimate the effect a delayed train can have on performance.

Our emotional state has an effect on how we perceive and react to the world around us and how we behave. A depressed or stressed person sees the world as a depressing or stressful place and acts differently to the same situations and circumstances to the same person when in a happy state. Our ability to perform is said to be ‘state dependent’.

Looking at the State Behavioural Model

The State Behavioural Model, shown in Figure 10-1, provides a framework for evaluating how individuals create the quality of their thinking and generate their states (emotions and moods). It provides the basis of a self-awareness and self-care plan. The techniques in this chapter all relate back to this model.

The model has four parts to explore with clients:

• Physiology: The impact on posture – how they sit, stand, move and breathe. The next section explains how changing physiology affects thinking and states.
• Internal dialogue: The impact that self-talk has on states is profound; talk to yourself in nice tonality, and you will feel good; talk to yourself in abusive tones, and you will feel bad. The ‘Changing Internal Self-Talk’ section later in the chapter explains how we have the power and ability to change our internal dialogue and change the way we feel.
• Internal pictures: The images and movies people play in their minds have a large impact on their states. These visuals range from idle daydreaming to catastrophic traumatic thinking of an epic proportion. In the later in the section ‘Making Mind Pictures That Matter’, we explore how you can become the script writer, director and producer of the internal pictures and movies you make in your mind.
• Environment: External factors such as noise, light, motion, food, drink and drugs affect emotional and mood states. Many people use external environmental means to change internal states, often in unhealthy and dysfunctional ways. Throughout this chapter, we explore ways to manage the inner world of thoughts and emotions so clients need not change the environment in order to feel good.

Always separate the behaviour from the identity of the individual. For example, ask ‘What’s the problem?’ rather than ‘What’s your problem?’ Then find out what clients are saying or imagining to create their experience. They can then be coached to change it.

Your role isn’t to coach a client to eliminate or manage all thoughts and emotions like Mr Spock from Star Trek. Firstly, make her aware that it’s okay to experience the full range of human moods and emotions. Doing so normalises her experience. Then use the State Behavioural Model and the techniques to coach her to see that she has a wide range of choices as to how she thinks and feels at any given moment.

Working with the four F’s of flight or fight

Most people recognise the story of others who have studied for an exam. They have read all the texts, done the practice papers and know their subject matter. They enter the exam room, and their mind goes a complete blank. As soon as they leave the exam environment, they give a sigh of relief, and all the information and answers they needed in the exam room come flooding back to them.

This phenomena happens to businesspeople during meetings, networking events, presentations and in the middle of taxing or emergency tasks. It’s caused by neuro-endocrine changes in the brain brought about by stress that affects thinking and then behaviour. The phenomena is part of the flight-or-fight survival pattern:

• Flight: Identified by raised breathing levels, increased adrenaline and cortisol levels and heart rates, sweaty palms and a dry mouth as the body prepares to run for the hills.
• Fight: The same physiological indicators as with flight. However, the decision and reaction isn’t to run but to confront the perceived threat.

Most people are aware of flight-or-fight patterns, but two lesser-known yet equally impactful patterns are:

• Freeze: In the freeze state, breathing becomes shallow or hyperventilated. Blood and oxygen flow is restricted to the brain, the thinking capacity is reduced and problem thoughts seem to run on an automatic loop.
• Flow: Indicated by a calm, relaxed state and the ability to assess a situation quickly and to make a quick, informed decision and take appropriate action. (Later in the ‘Using mindfulness, meditation and the mysterious to support business’ section, you discover how to access the state of flow on demand.)

In business (and in most people’s private lives) which warrants freeze, flight or fight is quite rare. However, we all have these unconscious programmes available to us if we should ever need them. If you’re confronted by a sabre-toothed tiger, you will be thankful for them. The sequence is first to freeze, then flight; fight holds more risk of damage, so for most people fight is an option of last resort. These three patterns can all be triggered by a buildup of smaller events rather than one big trauma or drama; this accumulative effect is what is often overlooked.

Under stress, the brain switches off parts that aren’t relevant to dealing with anything other than the immediate perceived problem, which is perfectly fine for dealing with a sabre-toothed tiger, but not for reviewing and coming up with creative solutions to a business problem. Only when the problem is over can people breathe and neuro-endocrine levels return to normal and thinking comes back online, enabling it to make creative solutions.

Coaching clients to recognise whether they’re already in or are accessing freeze, flight or fight patterns and training them to change to the state of flow may take some time and practice but is worth it. (See the sidebar ‘What does it cost to replace a burnt-out executive’ for a real-life example.)

Knowing that breathing is a better choice than not

The first place to start coaching anyone who is in an unresourceful state is to change her physiology. Most people find changing physiology easy to do, and they notice an immediate change in the way they feel.

To identify the freeze pattern, follow these steps. Where the instructions are to do an action slowly, read very slowly. If a client fails to notice any change during the exercise, she did the actions too quickly.

1. Sit comfortably with your feet flat on the floor and arms by your side facing forwards. Take a moment to relax and notice how you feel inside your body.

   What you’re looking to assess is how awake and aware you feel. Grade this with 0 being completely switched off and 10 being wide awake and aware.

2. Slowly and carefully, lower your head centimetre by centimetre and notice what happens to the feeling of awareness as you do this.

   Most people experience a sense of switching off, and as their chin lowers to their chest, breathing becomes shallow. This sensation is often described as ‘feeling like shutting down’. Grade the experience again 0 to 10 so you can compare this to the starting assessment.

3. Then, slowly, lift your head back up and notice what happens.

   As you do this, you probably experience a sense of being awake, aware of being switched on. You get to a critical point where it feels like a switch has been flicked. People often say something like ‘it’s like coming back online’.

By lowering the head, you’re restricting the breathing and blood supply to the brain and effectively changing your physiology and, by doing so, going into the posture of the freeze pattern. Simply by adjusting your head, you’re changing your neuro-chemistry and your state.

Consider how many people work all day, looking down at a screen or keyboard and are inadvertently accessing a stressed state just by their physiology and breathing.

In the section ‘If things aren’t looking up, looking up helps’ is a stress reset technique that you can teach clients to use to come out of switched-off states and access more awake, alert states on demand.

Looking downright depressed is a dismal choice

In Neuro-Linguistic Programming, you find physiological patterns called the eye-accessing cues. The direction and positioning of the eyes enable a trained observer to identify if someone is:

• Accessing recalled visual (VR) images – imagining a remembered past event
• Accessing constructed visual (VC) images – imagining a constructed future or past event (constructing does not necessarily mean someone is lying)
• Accessing recalled auditory (AR) information – for example, recalling a piece of music or a conversation
• Accessing constructed auditory (AC) information – imagining a conversation that’s not happened
• Engaging in auditory digital (AD) behaviour – talking to self
• Kinaesthetic (K) – accessing internal feelings

Figure 10-2 is shown from the position of the observer looking at the client. The eye-accessing cues appear like this.

You may have heard the phrase ‘I feel downright depressed’ or ‘I feel downright happy’. These descriptions of the experience are literal where most people (predominantly right-handed people; for left-handed people this may be reversed) look down and to the right to access the feelings inside the body. If they’re accessing positive states, such actions are not an issue. Only if clients are accessing unresourceful states do they need to be aware of the importance of changing their physiology.

Make the client aware of the impact that her posture, breathing and where she looks have on her states and behaviours. Awareness is the start of being able to change a habit; as she becomes more aware, she can then interrupt her habitual patterns.

If things aren’t looking up, looking up helps

The 7/11 stress reset is a technique developed by Steve Crabb. Steve specialised in coaching clients with therapy-related issues, particularly depression, anxiety, fears, phobias, stress and emotional overload. The technique is designed to be fast-acting and requires little training for it to be effective. It incorporates changes to physiology, breathing and eye direction, which have all been discussed in this section.

The benefits of doing this technique as part of a regular self-care plan are multiple. As a result, clients spend less time in stress-related states, become calmer, clearer-headed, more resourceful and resilient. They begin to experience better sleep patterns, and an extra bonus is that if they practise the technique on public transport, when they roll their eyes upwards they will also be guaranteed a seat on their own!

Follow these steps to try the 7/11 stress reset.

1. Instruct the client to sit comfortably in a chair, feet flat on the floor and hands relaxed by her side. Ask her to notice whether she has any physical or emotional stress in her body and grade it 0 to 10 with 0 being none whatsoever and 10 being the top amount possible.
2. Instruct her to imagine a candle in front of her and to breathe out completely and empty her lungs as if blowing out the candle.

3. Then, instruct her to smoothly and easily breathe in fully and deeply through her mouth while pushing the tummy out to the count of seven.

   This step ensures that the breathing is diaphragmatic and the lungs fully inflate.

4. When her lungs are full, tell her to hold her breath for a second or two.

5. Instruct her to roll her eyes up to the ceiling.

   Ask her to imagine that she has a pair of sunglasses on top of her head and is attempting to look through them while avoiding tipping her head or neck back.

6. Tell her to relax and close her eyelids.
7. Ask her to softly and smoothly breathe out through her mouth to the count of 11.
8. As she breathes out, remind her to relax her jaw and let it hang loose.
9. Then, have her relax her body completely loose and limp like a rag doll, starting from the top of her head down to the tips of her toes.

10. Ask her to become aware of the difference in her body and grade it 0 to 10.

    She will almost certainly report a significant shift after doing this technique once. Get her to practise this exercise on an hourly basis.

What happens during the different stages of the technique is the following:

• By breathing deeply, the client is coming out of any freeze, flight or fight pattern. The heart monitors the oxygen supply in the blood, and the elevated oxygen triggers a feedback signal to the brain, basically saying to the brain, ‘She is breathing again, the sabre-toothed tiger must have left, so switch off the adrenaline. All is well’.
• The eye roll upwards stimulates theta waves in the brain, taking the client into a relaxed state.
• The jawbone is one of the strongest bones in the body, but during times of stress or threat, the joint can be vulnerable, so stressed people often hold their jaw tight. By relaxing the jaw, the neck muscles and surrounding muscles also relax, releasing tensions.

Coach clients to do this technique hourly for a few days. It has an accumulatively positive effect on the body’s neuro-chemistry. Once a day isn’t enough for it to have a chemical impact. Use the setup of saying, ‘It’s a technique that will enable you to feel good for no particular reason, just because you can’.

Understanding that it’s not what you say, it’s the way you say it

In the 1960s and 1970s, it became popular to practise the power of positive thinking and to use positive affirmations; yet for many people, this failed to change the way they felt. Although they were using positive words, many were saying them with a negative tonality and doubting what they said.

Whether the words come from someone else or from our own self-talk, what is said has less of an impact on the mind and body than how it’s said. Consider your own life experiences when maybe someone said something where the words meant one thing but the tonality conveyed a completely different message. For example, if someone says, ‘Oh, well done’ yet the tone is sarcasm, the tonality has the greater impact, not the words.

Many qualities of the internal self-talk can affect the feelings that are created. The following are four to listen out for:

• Volume of voice (or voices): From a quiet whisper to a bellowing shout
• Speed of voice: Ranging from slow to fast
• Location: Whether the voice comes from the front of the head, the back, sides or top of the head has an effect
• Tonality: Including a wide range from calm, worried, sleepy or angry to sarcastic, happy, irate or loving

To identify your internal self-talk, simply experiment and begin to become aware of the distinctions between the different internal self-talk voices that you use and how these different voices make you feel.

1. Remember a time when you felt confident about doing an activity.

   Choose a subject that is also good for you to do. Talk to yourself inside your head in the way you spoke to yourself back then.

2. Notice how it feels and grade it 0 to 10, with 0 being no confidence and 10 being totally confident.
3. Once graded, become aware of the volume and the speed of the self-talk, its location (point to where the voice is located) and tonality of the voice. Make a note of the qualities you use.
4. When you have finished the exercise, stand up, walk around, shake your head and break out of the state of confidence.

Repeat the preceding steps for:

• Doubt followed by certainty
• Hesitation followed by desire
• Stressed followed by calm

You can experiment with other combinations.

After you know how you talk to yourself in a range of internal self-talk voices and how it affects the way you feel, consider where using this knowledge would be useful. Consider the applications for your clients – where they can choose how they talk to themselves in a way that supports the behaviour they want to have.

Making the ridiculous sound ridiculous

Here are two simple yet powerful techniques you can use for yourself and clients to change any negative or limiting internal self-talk by changing the qualities of the voices used.

Ask a client who is unduly stressing herself to first identify how she talks to herself:

1. Get her to remember a time she was stressing and talking inside her head and tell her to talk to herself in the same way now.

2. Ask her to grade the stress 0 to 10.

   Even when not actually going through the events, people can still experience stress because of the power of their internal dialogue.

3. Ask her to note the volume, speed, location and tonality of the stress voice.

   She should change the qualities of the internal dialogue one at a time, as follows:

   • Volume: Turn the volume up slightly. (She may experience more stress when doing this.) Then turn it down to a whisper, and then put it back the way it was.
   • Speed: Speed up the voice so it’s talking so fast she can’t make out the words. Then slow it down like a record played at a slow speed, and then put it back the way it was.
   • Location: Hold out an arm with thumb pointing upwards, then tell her to imagine moving the voice down the arm till eventually the voice is coming from the thumb talking towards her.
   • Tonality: With the voice now coming from the thumb, change the tonality to that of a cartoon character such as Donald Duck or Sylvester the Cat.

4. Instruct her to stop, break state, stand up and shake her head. Then say, ‘Now, try in vain to talk to yourself in the same old stressed voice, but notice what’s different now’.

   You need to use these exact words because they almost guarantee that she will be unable to get the old stressed voice back.

5. Have her grade how it now feels and compare to when she started the exercise.

   Some people experience just a slight shift, in which case you can do the exercise once more and the shift will happen.

Many experience a complete change in the voice. People often say, ‘It sounds ridiculous now and has no effect’. The brain has the ability to rewire and reorganise itself – scientists call this process neuro-plasticity. With this exercise, you’re working with the client to scramble the old neural pathways, making it difficult and sometimes impossible for someone to again talk to herself using the stressed internal voice.

If clients are used to saying ridiculous things to themselves, have them do it in a ridiculous voice and it won’t feel the same anymore.

This exercise involves scrambling the internal self-talk. Follow Steps 1 through 3 in the previous exercise so you can identify the negative or limiting internal self-talk. Then instruct your client to do the following:

1. Slow down the internal voice, saying one … word … at … a … time … with … gaps … between … each … word.
2. Say the same things this time with the gaps and streeetch … ooooout … eeeeevry … siiiiingle … woooooord.
3. Spaaace … aaaand … streeeeetch and give every word a cartoon-like tonality.
4. Stop, break state, stand up, shake her head.
5. Then say to your client, ‘Now try to talk to yourself in the same old voice but notice what’s different’.

Again, clients find it virtually impossible to talk to themselves in the old negative way simply because they’ve given instructions to the brain to reorganise.

Explain to clients that what they’ve been doing is the equivalent of taking a CD and scratching it so it’s difficult to play it the way they used to.

Being kinder and nicer matters

The above techniques are all about changing negative self-talk. Here is a simple technique that can enable a client to find out how to talk to herself in nicer tonalities. We recommend you only do this technique on a one-to-one basis unless you’re experienced in dealing with someone possibly becoming emotional in front of others.

This exercise is about being nice to yourself:

1. Scramble the negative self-talk using either (or both) of the two techniques just given.
2. Tell the client to imagine sitting in front of her is a young woman who is stressed/lacks confidence/lacks motivation, whatever the negative self-talk is that you’re working with.
3. Instruct her to talk inside her head nicely and kindly to this woman in a way she would if she were sincerely encouraging and supporting someone she cared deeply for.

4. Tell her to point to where the kind, loving, supportive self-talk is, and notice the volume, speed and tonality.

   When she does this, ask her how it feels hearing this voice? The answer is always in the positive.

5. Then say, ‘Now I want you to realise that the person sitting in front of you is you. So keep talking to yourself with kind, loving support and perhaps this is something for you to practise on a daily basis’.

If someone does get emotional, let her have her moment, sit quietly, remain calm and when she is done, ask what happened. For many people, this may be the first time they have spoken to themselves in this way, and it can cause an emotional release. Later in the chapter, we discuss what to do should a client want to discuss (or demonstrate) therapeutic issues beyond your coaching skills or remit.

Getting distance from the situation

Mind pictures come with picture qualities that affect the impact they have on people’s feelings. These qualities are known as submodalities. Here are a few key visual submodalities:

• Location in space, size and distance from the observer
• Associated (in the image) or disassociated (being an observer of the image)
• Still picture or moving
• Colour or black and white
• Two-dimensional (2D) or three-dimensional (3D)

Here are two simple techniques to enable clients to manage their own mind pictures. Empowered leaders can put things out of their mind so they can see the bigger picture. These techniques can be used to get over poor performance, bad experiences, mistakes and stress.

Practise these exercises on yourself first, working with good feelings, before using them with clients so you have a personal experience of the effects of changing submodalities.

Follow these instructions to feel amazing for no particular reason:

1. Remember a time when you really enjoyed a pleasurable experience.

   See what you saw, hear what you heard and notice how you feel now and give it a number. On a scale of 0 to 10, choose something 8 or higher to work with. Even though you aren’t in the experience, you’ll still recall and experience some of the positive emotions associated with the event. You will feel good.

2. Point to where the image is and notice its location, its distance from you and its size.

   Are you associated or dissociated? Is it still or moving? Is it colour or black and white? Is it 2D or 3D? Now, let’s experiment and notice what happens to the feelings when you do each of these changes.

3. Reduce the size and move it farther away.

   If an associated image, step out and see the event as an observer would; if colour or black and white, drain the image so it becomes translucent; if a movie, make it still; if 3D, make it 2D. Notice what happens to the emotions. They will have reduced.

4. Put the submodalities back to the original.

5. Increase the size slightly, step into the image, become associated with the experience, turn up the colour (if black and white, add colour), make sure it’s a movie.

   Notice what’s happened to the emotions. They will have amplified and may even be more intense than when you first started or even had the experience.

This exercise is call Out of Sight, Out of Mind.

Use this with a client who keeps dwelling on an event and you think it would be useful for her to put it to the back of her mind and get on with things. Before doing this exercise, check with the client that she wants to change the way she remembers an event. Some people will want to leave things just as they are, and that’s their choice. If she agrees to do the exercise, before changing any submodalities, ask her to consider what positive things she can learn from the event. Even negative experiences teach us something. Start by using the door example earlier so she is familiar with what you mean by mind pictures.

If working with a client to diminish overwhelm, stress or upset, only work with issues up to a scale of 8 out of 10 until you get more experience. Do not work with trauma or therapy issues unless you have received formal training. See the section on ‘Identifying when therapy is the answer’.

1. Instruct her to remember the event and grade it on a scale of 0 to 10.

   See what she saw, hear what she heard and notice how she felt, then notice the predominant emotion and on a scale of 0 to 10 give it a number.

2. Tell her to point to where the image is and notice its location, its distance from her and its size.

   Is she associated or dissociated? Is it still or moving? Is it colour or black and white? Is it 2D or 3D?

3. Instruct her to reduce the size and move it farther away, to step out and see the past event as an observer, and to freeze the image to a tiny still picture and drain the image so it becomes translucent.

   It will have already changed to a 2D image.

4. Quickly ask her to close and open her eyes, making the picture black then white, black then white. Tell her to do this rapidly for a minute.
5. When she has followed the instructions, use these exact words ‘Try to recall that past experience but notice what’s different now’.

Clients find it virtually impossible to retrieve the old memory in the same negative way. They report that it’s now farther away and looks irrelevant and has no emotions. Clients have, with their own thinking, given the brain instructions to literally ‘get some distance from the event’. Note though that on some occasions, you may need to do this exercise twice with a client.

Consider the applications for this technique with business clients, which can include:

• Getting over a bad presentation
• Dealing with bullying in the workplace
• Moving on from a mistake

Focusing not on that but this

Great leaders focus not on the problems but on the solutions. They keep the bigger picture in mind, have clarity of vision and make good decisions based on the information to hand. All these phrases tell us about the inner world of excellence and what they focus on. The following exercise reorganises the brain to keep on a positive track and to focus on the desired outcome of any situation.

This exercise is called Swish Pattern. Ask the client to think of an event that didn’t go the way she wished it had. If she had the chance to do it again, with hindsight would she want to behave or act differently?

1. Tell her to point to where the image is and notice its location, its distance from her and its size.

   Is she associated or dissociated? Is it still or moving? Is it colour or black and white? Is it 2D or 3D? We call this the ‘past image’.

2. Do a break state: Have her stand up and shake herself out before doing the next part.

3. Instruct her to imagine a large screen called her ‘success screen’.

   On this, ask her to see herself disassociated, in colour and in a movie, handling the situation the way she wished it had gone. She should create a short movie of success and edit the movie until she is happy with the outcome. We call this the ‘success movie’.

4. When she is satisfied the ‘success movie’ is the best it can be, tell her to shrink it down to the size of a postage stamp.

5. Tell her to bring back up the ‘past image’ and position the postage stamp-sized ‘success movie’ in the bottom right-hand corner.

   Ask her to do this step quickly. Tell her to push the ‘past image’ off into the distance over the horizon, have it get smaller, so tiny it becomes a speck and flicker it on and off, on and off and then quickly pull open the postage stamp ‘success movie’ so it becomes big, bright and colourful.

   Do this a few times, ending with the ‘success movie’.

   Each time, it gets more difficult to recollect the original ‘past image’, which is exactly what you want to happen.

6. Instruct her to ‘now think about the event’.

   The brain automatically retrieves the version of ‘success movie’. Effectively, you have now installed a new way to think in relation to the event.

Go there first – practise on yourself before using these techniques with clients. Some of the techniques may seem silly, but they’re not stupid. They retrain and imprint the mind to think in resourceful ways.

Identifying when therapy is the answer

The techniques and concepts covered in this chapter deal with self-awareness and self-management, empowering all individuals to acquire the qualities and characteristics of self-leadership. While coaching clients to manage their thinking and emotions, you may encounter extremes that are beyond your training and experience. As tempting as it may be to offer respite and relief, you must learn to recognise where the limit of your skill set is as well as the limit of your brief time with the client.

Recognise whether you’re out of your depth and, if need be, call a halt to a coaching session. You’re always best to be honest with clients. As you build trust with them, they often reveal personal habits, behaviours or characteristics that go beyond your remit and abilities. Don’t feel disgrace in admitting that you aren’t trained or able to assist with an issue. Find experienced, competent people who can deal with therapy issues so you can always refer clients on to the right people.

Presenting problems to be aware of and to refer on include:

• Clients who hallucinate auditory or visually and find it difficult to distinguish between hallucination and reality
• People addicted to substances – food, drink and drugs
• Clients suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder
• Clients diagnosed with bipolar or who haven’t been diagnosed, yet demonstrate large mood swings between euphoria and depression
• Suicidal clients
• Clients who exhibit violent or aggressive behaviour

You must always be of service to your clients. However, always put your own physical well-being first. If you’re ever at risk or feel intimidated, bring a halt to a coaching session. We also recommend that in your trading terms and conditions, you include a clause for terminating a coaching arrangement if you receive any form of abuse from a client, whether physical or verbal.

Using mindfulness, meditation and the mysterious to support business

Any interventions that help with stress, depression and addiction are impressive. Introspection promotes psychological flexibility, awareness, resilience, job performance, better decision-making, reduced absence rates and the ability to learn new tasks. No wonder businesses are interested in developing leadership programmes that actively promote these skills.

Mindfulness is defined by the National Health Service as an ‘evidence-based step’ for better mental health – paying more attention to the present moment, to your own thoughts and feelings and to the world around you.

Until recently it was a term confined to Buddhist texts and meditation retreats, part of a spiritual path to awakening. The practice is no longer seen as simply spiritual or a New Age, tree-hugging fad and is rapidly being welcomed into executive boardrooms. The list of blue-chip businesses that have adopted mindfulness programmes continues to grow and includes well-known companies such as Apple, Google, Ikea and Sony. Apps and web courses on mindfulness proliferate, as do reports on new ways in which the practice can do good and benefit the individual and the organisation.

The basis of mindfulness and meditation in its many forms is to enable individuals to achieve a greater self-awareness and to quieten down the hectic mind and allow themselves to be more present and in the moment.

Many similarities exist between the mindfulness approach and that of ‘flow’, a term coined in 1975 by Hungarian psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, one of the founders of positive psychology. He noted that the act of creating seemed at times more important than the finished work itself. He was fascinated by what he called the flow state, in which the person is completely immersed in an activity with intense focus and creative engagement.

Csikszentmihalyi identified five factors of flow:

• Intense and focused concentration on the present moment
• Merging of action and awareness
• A loss of reflective self-consciousness
• A sense of personal control over the situation or activity
• A distortion of temporal experience

Flow is the fourth choice in the flight and fight patterns. If you look at the factors identified by Csikszentmihalyi, you see why the flow state is such a useful state to practise entering on demand, not just in stressful situations but whenever you and clients want to perform at optimal bests.

Follow these instructions and experience mindfulness, being present, in the now and in the state of flow all in one simple exercise.

1. Stand up, feet shoulder width apart, facing forwards.

2. Quieten down the internal dialogue by saying out loud in a soft whispering voice, ‘shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh’ (six short) and then ‘shhhhh, shhhhh, shhhhh, shhhhh, shhhhh, shhhhh’ (six long).

   The mind quietens down. Let it stay quiet and allow any thoughts that might drift in to simply drift off.

3. Do the 7/11 stress reset exercise described in the earlier section ‘If things aren’t looking up, looking up helps’.

   You are now standing perfectly physically relaxed with a quiet mind.

4. Imagine extending in front of you at chest height from left to right a line that represents time.

   The past is to the left, and the future is to the right. Immediately in front of you at heart level is the present moment, the now.

5. Reach out with your arms at shoulder width and imagine taking hold of the timeline and quickly bending it by pulling back with your hands to create a point in front, with the past going behind you to the left at 45 degrees and the future behind you to the right at 45 degrees.
6. Slowly pull this line inside of you so the present moment is now in the middle of your body.
7. Let your hands drop to your side and relax in the present for a moment.

This technique uses timelines (see Chapter 9) and visualisation to reorganise how you process a quiet mind and being present. Many people experience a sense of quiet stillness, of time slowing down, of being aware yet detached, all of the characteristics of flow. Use this and coach your clients to use it whenever they want to access the state of flow.