Very helpful
I have been struggling with anxiety for years. I was amazed at how quickly Ms. Chamberlain was able to help me with this issue. We discussed various other aspects of my life and I decided that I could also use some support with weight loss and motivation to exercise. I have now dropped 25 pounds so far and am very excited about the way I feel and look.
Happiness Set Point
My mother started me in my quest to be more positive at an early age. “The Power of Positive Thinking” and other similar books were part of our home library. But does thinking more positive make you happier? Or maybe people who are happier just tend to be more positive. Is happiness the same as optimism? If we don’t know what it is how do we know if we are indeed happy?
Growing up, I was labeled “Pollyanna” by my little sister. I really didn’t realize at the age of 12 that I was that positive a person. I remember feeling pretty lonely, bored and unhappy. But her perception was that I was unrealistically happy. Which of course I hated at that time. However I believe that it was that ability even when bored and lonely to find something positive that has made me so resilient in life. To some degree I was better at choosing the more positive thoughts
Louise Hay is an author and speaker who has spent her life demonstrating the power of positive thought. She agrees that we can and do choose our thoughts. It is her contention that she cured her cancer with positive thought. But is this idea helpful to others? How does the average person become more positive and happier in their lives. Is it possible to change your happiness set point?
I believe it is. Throughout my life I have used self-hypnosis, hypnotherapy and NLP to increase my ability to be positive, resilient and yes, happier. By using hypnosis to develop better focus and the ability to subconsciously increase my positive self talk I have increased the amount of time spent in the state of happiness.
Popularity: 2% [?]
Improving Sales by Improving Yourself
Hi, my name is Inga Chamberlain and I am a salesperson.
Ever feel like you’re confessing to a terrible character flaw when you say what it is you do for a living? Has anyone but me noticed that “sales” has become a dirty word?
I still remember in the 80’s when I worked as an executive recruiter. During sales cold phone calls, I was routinely hung up on. Obviously this is demoralizing to someone in sales. I got really sick of feeling badly and like I was bothering people by calling them. I realized my self esteem was part of the problem and I had limiting beliefs about myself and salespeople in general. This is how I found NLP. I decided to change myself instead of changing careers and it worked! I not only continued in sales but started my own recruiting firm and for 10 years happily sold my service to a national market.
So how did NLP help me to change? First I worked on developing the self confidence that could stand up to those demoralizing phone calls. During this time I also worked on increasing my skill set to have better sales techniques . I used NLP to help me build rapport on the phone and close more effectively. But the main changes came from changing me. How I saw myself and my place in the world. I also used NLP and hypnosis to overcome a strong fear of public speaking so that I could make presentations more effectively. I then proceeded to change anything else that was holding me back and in the end also got rid of a fear of heights some general Anxiety and some left over trauma from childhood.
When I decided to leave the executive search industry to become a trainer , coach, speaker and hypnotherapist the transition was easy. I had already done all the ground work necessary to be successful in any field I might choose because I had increased my emotional intelligence or EQ as Daniel Goleman calls it. I had gotten rid of the things that hold most people back.
In my private practice in Atlanta , Georgia I work with many salespeople who want to improve their sales. We always start by using NLP and hypnosis to remove negative conditioning, beliefs and behaviors. Then we boost confidence levels and condition in new positive habits and behaviors. One of the most common problems with low performing salespeople is that they don’t like being in sales(or their perception of sales). By changing the way they see their career and themselves a salesperson can dramatically improve productivity and income. But even more important, they will feel good about themselves and their choice of career.
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Popularity: 3% [?]
Weight Loss, Why not just stop eating?
One sure way to lose weight, it might seem, is simply to stop eating for a while. Simple as it sounds, that idea is fraught with potential problems.
The basic weight loss equation certainly remains valid in this case: using more calories than are consumed results in weight loss. If you don’t take in calories by eating, it’s fairly easy to satisfy that equation. Your body burns 70 calories per hour even just sitting idle on the couch.
But while you may be idle, your body’s systems are not.
First of all, the body – deprived of food – will slow down the metabolism and burn calories more slowly. Weight loss can be sudden at first, but the rate slows very soon thereafter.
At first, it goes after glycogen stored in the liver and converts it to glucose to burn for energy. That energy is used to power all the body’s activities.
When that is used up (to a degree), the body then begins going after the energy stored in the bonds of certain molecules in fat cells. The process is called ketosis and accounts for why your breath sometimes smells like fingernail polish (made with ketones) after hard exercise.
So far, that all sounds good. You burn calories, reduce body fat and lose weight. Exactly what you wanted. But, unfortunately, this isn’t all the body is doing under these circumstances.
Because of the relatively rapid weight loss/calorie burning from this method of ‘dieting’ the body will experience a ‘rebound’ effect. In other words, it will cause you to crave food like crazy. The food you do eat will cause you to put on more pounds than you lost. The body is compensating for a radical deficit.
At the same time, there are serious health risks to simply starving or a long term fast. Going without food for a few hours or even a day isn’t dangerous, though it can be uncomfortable since you’ll get very hungry. But this method causes a number of carefully balanced nutrients to get out of whack.
It upsets the delicate balance of insulin, sugar and a variety of other essential compounds. Apart from regulating energy levels, they influence hormones that regulate the brain and nervous system.
Concentrations of potassium and sodium get out of balance unless you compensate with sports-style drinks, which can be more difficult to adjust in the absence of food. Those minerals are key to regulating the heartbeat, not to mention being found in every cell of the body and the fluid in between where they participate in an enormous variety of vital tasks.
Fatigue, dizziness and difficulty concentrating are only three of the milder symptoms that will result. Dehydration is likely, since much of the fluid we gain is from food, not just liquid. That can easily lead to heat stroke if the weather is at all warm and you are even a little active.
The kidneys will have a more difficult time filtering properly. They clean waste material from the blood, play a role in regulating blood pressure and stimulate the bone marrow to make red blood cells.
The odds of heart attack are increased, brain function suffers,… the list is endless. Even if the fast is ended long before death (at about 4 weeks), serious physical effects would occur.
Instead of fasting, eat a balanced, healthy diet of limited calories – combined with an age and circumstance-appropriate exercise program and find a way to stay on track. Motivation is the key to staying with any new kind of life style. Lets not kid ourselves, what permanent weight loss requires is a permanent change in life style. Hypnotherapy is one of the best ways to create a new habit and get rid of old negative or unhealthy ways of thinking about food. That is the surest way to lose pounds safely. Your physical health will be in harmony with your mind and your new healthy eating/exercise habits will become part of who you are.
Popularity: 5% [?]
Stopping Test Anxiety
Test Anxiety just like any Anxiety is overcome using hypnosis. Test anxiety causes the student to become highly stressed. Often times the feeling is more like panic then simple anxiety. When the body goes into hyper drive so does the mind. This creates the flight or fight response and drives blood flow away from the brain. This then creates the “self fulfilling prophecy” so common with fear. The fear does to the brain exactly what the student does not want. It takes away his ability to remember the answers, the ability to think clearly.
I use hypnosis to create a feeling of calm that is linked to the test taking experience on a subconscious level. So the new feeling of calm now becomes automatic. I also help the student be better prepared and more confident of their ability to absorb the information during study sessions and increase their recall and focus.
Recently, I worked with a financial planner who was scheduled to take an important exam. She was completely panicked since in the past she did not do well in test situations. She was so anxious about the test which was 3 weeks away that she was having problems sleeping and studying effectively. We worked together for 5 sessions and she felt calm and confident during the test and passed the exam with flying colors.
I work with children and adults to enhance their test taking ability and overcome fears. Hypnosis serves as the bridge to the subconscious mind and gives much faster results then other types of interventions.
Popularity: 11% [?]
Happiness and Hypnosis
Happiness has been in the new’s recently. People want to feel happier and why shouldn’t we all feel good? Books like “Stumbling on Happiness” and”The Happiness Project”are very popular now in part due to the negative news and economic downturn. I am writing a book titled “The Power of Choice” and it includes my ideas and experiences in transforming my life and increasing my clients levels of happiness by increasing there ability to chose better. I have used hypnosis and NLP to develop myself and yesterday I described my first experience with hypnosis.
It is pretty obvious why I wanted to change my state of mind. I wanted to feel different. Growing up in a fairly isolated place tends to make one introspective. All of that inward focus in childhood can be unhealthy. My mother tended to give mixed messages. On one hand she believed in positive thinking. She read Dr. Norman Vincent Peale’s book “The Power of Positive Thinking” and encouraged us to be positive. On the other hand she was anxious and put her fears squarely onto the girls in our family with the message that “we could be killed” if we attempted to ride a bike or go sledding on a big hill or take a walk by ourselves. I believe that I was mildly depressed in childhood and if I had been in elementary school now I would have been diagnosed with ADHD. Instead I simply spent a large part of 1st grade in the corner with my desk.
When it comes right down to it, what I wanted was to feel happy. That’s what everyone wants. Right?? I read books and tried to be happy. In college I tried some other avenues as many of my age did back in the 70’s but to no avail. I always came back to me. At some point it came to me that if I wanted to be happier I didn’t need to change my circumstances so much as I had to change myself. The way I thought had to change. What I focused on needed to become what I wanted to have and not all the things that weren’t working.
I explored meditation, and have practiced yoga consistently now for over 30 years. These two things have helped tremendously. But being a person with a strong drive to improve they just weren’t fast enough for me. Hypnosis is brief therapy and works relatively quickly. If you know what you want hynosis can help you get there.
Popularity: 15% [?]
High School and Hypnosis
I grew up in a very rural area of Pennsylvania. It was a very sheltered and conservative upbringing. However it was the 60’s and by the early 70’s I was in high school. Because of my sheltered life I read a lot. I was not allowed to date in high school and so I had plenty of time to explore the school library. I read everything, especially non-fiction books on psychology and philosophy. One day I found a book on hypnosis. I found it engaging and interesting. In fact I wrote my senior year term paper on Hypnosis and Medicine.
As a teenager the stories that engaged me were the terrible diseases that had been in some cases cured using hypnosis. Things like icthiyosis(fish skin) responded incredibly well to the power of the subconscious mind. But the thing about hypnosis that attracted me the most was the idea that after having been so controlled in my life experience, I could gain more control over myself, and my thoughts.
As a result of all the restrictions in my childhood I was never given the chance to learn social skills and grow and develop by making mistakes and learning from those mistakes. I had low self esteem and low self confidence and when I left home for the first time to go to college I must admit to basically going crazy with my new found freedom. I also was now too busy with studies to continue to focus on my initial interest in hypnosis and instead focused on the other types of psychology and finished my degree in that discipline.
In reality my entire life has been affected by that first experience of hypnosis. I used hypnosis to change myself in many ways in the following years and in coming post’s I will share with you some of my personal success stories and stories of others who have also experienced dramatic personal change.
Popularity: 15% [?]
The Secret Behind the Secret
Everyone has heard of the “Secret” and many people try to live what they understand the secret to be. They think that if they focus on what they want to the exclusion of all else they will receive from the universe everything they desire. One thing they overlook is the fact that with the law of attraction there is action that needs to follow the thought. The other thing these seekers overlook is the fact that they are incapable of exclusively thinking in any particular way.
Changing the way you think is impossible when done in the conscious mind. The conscious mind acts as a filter and colors our perception of everything. The only way to change your thinking is to overcome the repetitive negative thinking that has been programmed into your subconscious. Once the thoughts change you will at least be capable of thinking and focusing the way you would like.
But I still hear people say to me that they believe if they sit on their couch and focus on manifesting business it will simply flow to them. This was never written in the law of attraction. The law of attraction states that there must be action in order for anything to manifest in your life. Also it doesn’t say when this will happen. So the seed time or the time it takes to manifest has to be considered as well.
As is the case with the supposed real estate gurus, the law of attraction teachers are making money not from using the secret. They are making money teaching everyone else about the secret. If the secret worked in the way that these teachers say it does there should then be millions of people who are now manifesting wealth and abundance all over the place.
When you change your thinking you change yourself. Hypnosis/NLP is one of the fastest ways to change your thinking. But simply thinking positive is not enough. To become truly successful in life takes action. Using hypnosis and NLP creates within the ability to overcome old negative programming which is the cause of procrastination. In other words when you get out of your own way you can accomplish amazing things. Getting your thoughts to be congruent with your goals and then taking action to accomplish them is the true SECRET.
Popularity: 22% [?]
New Year’s Goals that Work
Every year people set New Year’s Resolutions and every year they forget about them within a couple of weeks. The average person doesn’t even make it to 1 month post New Years on working toward a goal.
What is the reason for this? As an expert in human behavior it is obvious that these people are not truly committed to these goals. Also the goals themselves are not crafted in a way that will drive the goal setter toward achievement. The “resolutions” are generally not specific. The fact is that the most well defined goals are the easiest to achieve. Take for example stopping smoking. This is one specific habit and so once you add a time frame with the day you will stop and you commit to it you will stop smoking.
The commitment to achieving the goal is the other key to success. This is the part where I see the most problems. It is not possible to totally commit to 10 goals at once. In fact 3 goals is the maximum that should be set at any given time in order for them to be achieved. If you have a goal to lose weight, spend more time with family, exercise more. Those three goals will require a large investment of time in order to achieve.
So how do you write achievable goals? I like to use a modified SMART goals format.
- Specific
- Measurable
- Achievable
- Realistic
- Timed
- Inspired
I added the inspired because I find that without having an emotional connection or true commitment to having the goal you will not achieve it. By setting goals that can be achieved and connecting to the feeling of having a specific goal you make the process of change smoother and take the guess work out of effective goal setting.
Popularity: 13% [?]
Your Guide to Guilt Free Holidays
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Popularity: 14% [?]
Improving Golf Performance
Fred Shoemaker, a noted golf coach and the author of Extraordinary Putting, explains why most thinking is bad for your game.
"It’s easy for people to accept the fact that negative thinking can be a source of interference. I’ve found that the real challenge is to have people see for themselves that positive thinking can be just as much of a problem. My experience of positive thinking is that it’s just more thinking, a mental process while we’re in a physical activity. It’s also an indication of doubt. Positive thinking is an overlay of doubt; it’s a strategy to overcome negative thinking, and while it may have better effects than negative thinking, I’ve never seen it fully promote peace of mind and freedom.
The way to get out of thinking and into playing the game is having the ability to get into a flow state. Athletes call this "getting into the zone". It is a mental state where thoughts disappear and the person simply plays the game. Hypnosis is known to induce exactly that flow state. Tiger Woods is an expert in getting into the zone.
This brief extract from Golf Digest, in December 2002, appears to confirm Tiger’s training included hypnosis
"Woods’ ability to produce peak performance by ‘willing myself into the zone’ is unprecedented. And at age 13, Tiger began mental training with Dr. Jay Brunza, a family friend and psychologist. Among the techniques Brunza used were subliminal tapes and hypnosis. ‘The first time Jay hypnotized Tiger, he had him stick his arm straight out and told him that it couldn’t be moved, ‘Earl [Tiger's father] says. ‘I tried, but I couldn’t pull it down. [Tiger says hypnosis is] ‘inherent in what I do now."
In a study conducted on the effects of hypnosis on flow states and golf performance. at the Center for Sport and Exercise Science, Sheffield Hallam University, researchers examined the effects of hypnotic intervention on flow states and golf-chipping performance of 3 participants. The intervention involved teaching the golfers relaxation, imagery, hypnotic induction, hypnotic regression, and trigger control procedures over 5 weeks and 7 trials. Analysis indicated that the 3 participants increased their mean golf-chipping performance from the trials in Baseline 1 to intervention, with 2 returning to Baseline 1 performance after the intervention phase at Baseline 2. The intensity of flow experienced by the participants during the performance trials was measured using Jackson and Marsh’’s 1996 Flow State Scale. Two participants experienced higher flow during the intervention phase and much lower flow during Baselines 1 and 2. Finally, participants reported that the intervention seemed useful in keeping them confident, relaxed, and in control. These results support the hypothesis that relaxation, imagery & hypnosis can improve golf-chipping performance and increase feelings and cognitions associated with flow.
I see many golfers both professional and amateur who want to improve their game. We work on figuring out the limiting beliefs the golfer has about himself. Typically these beliefs have an impact on performance of all kinds. We then work on the ability to maintain a flow state no matter what is happening in the game. By doing so the golfer not only plays significantly better, they also feel more relaxed and enjoy the game more.
To learn more about enhancing your golf game through proven techniques and to improve golf performance in Atlanta call Inga Chamberlain at 770-560-4861.
Popularity: 12% [?]