Can we let this lie?

I was interested to read articles on the BBC News website,  Yahoo, and watch a BBC TV News story about diminishing Integrity, in the UK.

The Essex Centre for the Study of Integrity, at Essex University, have carried out a research and there is a PDF, available for download from their web site There is also an Integrity test that you can take and you can find this at essex.ac.uk/government/research/integrity_test.pdf

The study includes comparisons :
by Social Background,   by Occupational Status,   by Age Group,   how standards have changed between 2000 and 2011 and   measurements for 20 European Countries, from Russia the most honest to Portugal ….. naughty naughty!

     The UK seems to rank 14th … oh dear!

It seems that we are telling lies more and that the standards under which we lie are changing – I guess 

like everything else, it seems to be getting easier to do and yet more complicated to manage.

Coaching the truth

One of the principles that are vital to any form of coaching or mentoring is integrity and telling the truth is part of that. It is not only an auditory activity, it has to show up in all the other senses and be demonstrated physically – I can’t coach you to tell the truth whilst driving you to a restaurant at 50 miles per hours in a 30MPH zone! That would place me out of integrity.

     So I have to BE in integrity as well as speak in integrity.

But there is a stage before that can happen and it is not just gaining rapport. 
I would call it ‘the set up’ or even ‘the mechanics’.

     It’s agreement.

Agreeing a platform or foundation or method where you can tell the truth, even if the other person doesn’t want to hear it! 
For me establishing the fact that “there is only here and now” and that “all reasons are made up” seems to work nicely. I take away as much reason as I can so I can to establish a basis of nothing from which we can create.

So that I am in integrity, I have to tell you now, that this is based on the work of Landmark Education, who started my quest for truth and I don't mean in a traditional spiritual sense. I am not seeking truth, rather living it to the best of my ability, which means that I will slip from time to time and that’s OK.

Rapport

Yes, I would have to gain rapport before I could tell someone a truth they may not wish to hear but I can do that quickly by physically using my head  - i.e. copying their head movements as I meet and greet and then get more involved in conversation with the person I am with - I describe to this in my blog post: "The Heads up on Rapport" 

But the principle is simple:

Lies Leak!

Physically, your body will react and convey that you are telling a lie. If someone is telling us a lie, unconsciously we pick up. It bothers us and we rationally calculate whether we are being told a lie or not, even though our body seems to scream to us that we are.
I talk about this in another blog post: That’s a Lie!

You Gotta Lie Right, right?

Unfortunately, in order to recognise the truth, we have to have a measure of what that looks like, feels like, sounds like, maybe even smells like – Can you smell a rat, here?
Which means we have to know what a lie is.

Without the comparison, the truth would have no meaning or value, so as I say: “I will slip from time to time and that’s OK”.

Its OK because it reinforces what the Truth is.
Notice too that I may slip and that I am not consciously telling lies.

Children live in their imaginations where it is all made up and yet I have known children being chastised for lying when actually they were exercising their imagination. The adult interprets the child’s behaviour as lying and now the child has to live a lie in order to satisfy the adult’s perception of the truth.

I also know of one famous Golf Pro, who avidly denied that he ever sliced the ball even though he did. His failure to acknowledge the fact was an instruction to his brain not to process the that he sliced the ball and therefore removed the brain’s attraction to slice the ball.

     Our brains attract to us what we talk about in our internal dialogue.

The difference is whether the lie is conscious or unconscious and the real driver is not whether something is Good, Bad, Right or Wrong or even any combination of those, rather to follow what is intended by the agreement (or rules if they exist) and do what works.

So for me to access the truth and build on it:

• Elicit rapport
• Get agreement
• Set intention
• Be integral
• Remove reason
• Change language
• Explore unconscious
• Become conscious
• Iterate until job done

     and that’s the truth!!!

     Should you lie? No! It’s not Wrong, it just doesn’t work and it leaks!

images various sources

Beauty is only skin deep

A married couple was in a terrible accident where the woman's face was severely burned.  The doctor told the husband that they couldn't graft any skin from her body because she was too skinny.  So the husband offered to donate some of his own skin. However, the only skin on his body that the doctor felt was suitable would have to come from his buttocks.

The husband and wife agreed that they would tell no one about where the skin came from, and requested that the doctor also honour their secret. After all, this was a very delicate matter.

After the surgery was completed, everyone was astounded at the woman's new beauty.  She looked more beautiful than she ever had before! All her friends and relatives just went on and on about her youthful beauty!

One day, she was alone with her husband, and she was overcome with emotion at his sacrifice.

She said, "Dear, I just want to thank you for everything you did for me.   There is no way I could ever repay you."

"My darling”, he replied, "think nothing of it.  I get all the thanks I need every time I see your mother kiss you on the cheek."

source various

Who lies

 

What lies behind us and what lies ahead of us are tiny matters compared to what lives within us.

~unknown

image from freemages.co.uk 
Quote from shareaquote.com 

A pointless conversation

Last year I got myself a new friend to go play with. A Master Hypnotist who lives in my town and frequents the local Starbucks to boot. Now, I don’t know if Starbucks sell Cud  but we manage to chew great quantities when we are there!

The great thing about conversation coming from a pointless state of ‘just for the sake of it’,  is its ability to create. It comes from the unconscious and usually creates the unexpected or  unexpectedly reminds us of something we haven’t considered for a some time and may have forgotten about.

During our last visit to Starbucks, JJ and I talked about the work of Dr David Hawkin, amongst other things. 

Whaddya know?

In that one conversation, I found a model  to easily explain a coaching model that I have been continually refining for about 10 years AND a superb explanation as to why the coaching model works.  I came to know it differently.

I perceive knowledge has 4 states, 2 conscious and 2 unconscious:

1. there are
   a.) things we know and
   b.) things we don’t know
2. but there are also those things
   c.) we didn’t know that we knew and
   d.) things that we didn’t know that we didn’t know.

Group 1. are logical experiences and come from the conscious mind, whereas
things in group 2 just occur and come from the unconscious. 
Group 1 originate in the past and group 2 originate in the present.

Compared to the logical things , the unconscious things are almost limitless in number and always show up in conversation. Only in a conversation can you find out what you didn’t know that you didn’t know or realise that you knew something that didn’t think you did.

Then it is probably a good thing to start a conversation almost unconsciously, talk to people for no reason. There are no limits at that point. Try it on a bus or train and be surprised by how many strange looks you don’t get!

The limits come as one becomes more conscious of the conversation.
It makes me wonder if there is ever such a thing as a pointless conversation, since they will almost all arrive at a point.

However, conversation needs an intention and yet intension, in itself, starts as an unconscious thought. There are a few studies to support this and I have listed one below.

Then we might as well go chew the cud with everyone. Perhaps Forrest might explain it thus:

“Conversation is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you’re gonna get”

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“To boot”

means Moreover; in addition to
The 'boot' is thought to be a derivative of the earlier 'bat' meaning 'good or useful'. This is also the root of the word 'better'

“Chew the cud”

means To chat, in an aimless manner
…part digested food that ruminant animals, notably cows, bring back into their mouths from their first stomach, to chew at leisure

definitions and explanations from The Phrase Finder

Intention

“TIME OF CONSCIOUS INTENTION TO ACT IN RELATION TO ONSET OF CEREBRAL ACTIVITY (READINESS-POTENTIAL)

~ Benjamin Libet,  Curtis A. Gleason, Elwood W. Wright and Dennis K. Pear
http://psiquadrat.de

Image

From the movie Forrest Gump 1994  http://imdb.com 

Source http://blu-ray.com

Investment in the Future?

An artist asked the gallery owner if there had been any interest in his paintings on display at that time.

"I have good news and bad news" the owner replied.
"The good news is that a gentleman inquired about your work and wondered if it would appreciate in value after your death. When I told him it would, he bought all 15 of your paintings"

"That's wonderful!" the artist exclaimed. "What's the bad news?"

"The guy was your doctor"

source joke and image various

Go Create

Life isn't about finding yourself.
Life is about creating yourself”
~ George Bernard Shaw

Born 26 July 1856 died 2 November 1950
Irish playwright and co-founder of the London School of Economics

source various
image wikipedia

What kind of year do you feel you are expecting?

What kind of year are you expecting?
- because there is almost every chance that you will get it.

Life just occurs, one moment at a time and the signals moving through our nervous system to our brain take time to process. Whatever we are experiencing , we are experiencing inside and after the actual event AND  has been filtered through our personal relational database – our past experience.
Therefore everything in life is filtered by our interpretation and so we have already set a benchmark – it is as we say it is.

So what else would you like to say? 
In NLP we could call this reframing. You can find out more at  
 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reframing

My Mentor, Steve Crabb often uses the example “What the thinker thinks, the prover, proves” ~ from Robert Anton Wilson’s 'Prometheus Rising'. Landmark Education proved to me that I can always find the evidence to prove life is how I say it is and I have noticed the tone that I take causes the quality of my experience.

So, the Financial situation that the world finds itself in is caused by conversation or the Frame in which we put it. Sure, the facts are the facts but it is feelings that cause action and action is how to reSOLVE everything.
SOLVE(nt = fluid = constantly changing structure)

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You should view the world as a conspiracy run by a very closely-knit group of nearly omnipotent people, and you should think of those people as yourself and your friends ~ Robert Anton Wilson

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As Anthony Robbins says: “our motions cause our emotions”
I think the whole thing is an iterative loop – our emotions cause our motions   which cause our emotions    which cause our motions ………

In NLP we use a technique of spinning feelings; imagining the feeling floating out side of our body and by using our imagination, describing it in detail, using every sense that fits.

To change a feeling we can then change the colour of the feeling, the sound of the feeling, the smell and so on. Imagine how you would feel if every time you experience fear, you could smell your favourite food, hear your favourite music …. Having reframed the feeling, we can put the new feeling back inside and experience something completely different

Reframing and spinning remind me of my personal favourite quote, which comes from Louise L Hay, in her book ‘You can heal your life’.

”… the point of power is always in the present. You are never stuck..”

How are you feeling about 2012?
Thinking about it now, while you imagine your loved ones, the last really great joke you heard and your favourite drink and your favourite place on earth … How are you feeling about 2012?

This year is going to be the most rewarding year, financially, emotionally and experientially, because I say so and it feels that way to me. The only thing that stands in the way of that is what I might say as the year progresses.

Happy New Year!