It’s a little long… 8 minutes but has some good suggestions on making 2011 a super year.

We value skepticism and cynicism where I come from. Notions such as ‘The Secret’ will wash with a certain audience in the country but many will dismiss it as ‘American shite’ as they say over here. We have the idea that the cynical you are the more intelligent you are and the less likely you are to be ‘conned’. We are bombarded by the media with ads and through the internet with continuous marketing of products that will make our lives better. The idea is that we need to watch them with an eyebrow raised to make sure we don’t all buy snake oil.

Now, I find myself in an area that can double as a field day for the average cynic. I have had my fair share of cynics attack what I do with the usual ‘intelligent’ skepticism. I have been presented as being a proponent of the idea that we just have to think positive and we will become happy, healthy and rich. For the record, I don’t believe that.

I read a post of a friend’s facebook page. She and her husband (another friend) promote fitness and health bootcamps. Someone commented on there that there was no need for their bootcamps. Instead, he suggested getting fitter and losing weight was about two things ‘eating less and exercising more’. Very intelligent. With those two tips he managed to solve an age old problem that has become a multi-billion dollar industry. He then went on a rant to attempt to get society (or at least the readers) to ‘free their minds’ and stop falling for the ‘new fads’. I am going to call my actual friend in this ‘good friend’ and the very intelligent one line cynic my ‘learned friend’ for the duration of this post. ‘Learned friend’ is an expression heard used a lot in debates back in school and I always wanted to use it.

Indeed, I am sure my learned friend would solve the world’s emotional problems with a similar nugget of genius. Just think positive and stop thinking negative. There we have it. No need to make it any more complicated. No need for any products, advice, wisdom, education. All you need to do is think positive and stop thinking negative. Voila.

Oh and let’s solve the global financial crisis while we are at it. ‘Stop being in debt. Start improving the economy’. Brilliant. This is so good. Let’s go for one more. World peace. ‘Stop killing people. Start helping people’…….It’s that simple friends. Get with the programme and stop supporting all these charlatan charities that try to help people.

Now, relax, before you start into my gross oversimplification of this kind of advice or my seeming lack of awareness of the existence of real charlatans in the health and fitness industry… I know, I know… there are plenty of rip off merchants out there that feed off the overweight and unfit. They sell them products they don’t need, systems they don’t use, memberships they never avail of. It is business and a thriving one at that. I, myself, in the past have often paid for gym memberships or supplements I rarely used and, even worse, things that made big promises but failed to deliver.

But here are the facts of the case. My learned friend’s advice doesn’t work for everyone. I know that because I have met many, many people who did eat less and exercised more but they ate the wrong kinds of foods for their metabolism and exercised in a way that wasn’t very productive for them. I know of people who have lost weight with walking and eating less but I also know plenty who haven’t. So the advise ‘eat less, exercise more’ is actually pretty good to start with for some people.

The problem is where does that leave all the rest of the people who have tried it and it doesn’t work. The more choices we have the more likely we are to succeed in the best possible way. So the advise that my good friend proposes is a different method that has got good results a lot quicker than walking and hiking more and eating less and good testimonials to back it up. The bootcamps have become popular and the method tested on Irish television. So, it seems to work, at least for many people. But here’s where I think my learned friend has a problem.

You see, the world we live in has become a world where competition is intense. If you work for yourself as many of us do you have to grab attention. You can’t shout the loudest as you don’t have the money like some of the biggest companies. So you have to get attention some other way. How do you do this? You make big claims. You give counter intuitive advice to get attention. You make big promises.

Imagine my good friend was to promote their system like this ‘It can help some people lose weight’. What would that do for their business? Nothing of course. The truth is that if you want to succeed in this world, you have to grab attention. You have to give value, show value and make yourself stand out.

I am sold on my good friends system because I am actively trying out most of their suggestions. It works for me. Now, of course, nothing works for everybody but I also know and have met plenty of people it works for. I know my friends. I don’t agree with everything they say but they have done their research, have a lot of experience helping people and have come up against and helped a lot of people who struggled to lose weight even though they knew and applied the simple suggestion ‘eat less, exercise more’.

My learned friends worry was that ‘like the catholic church’ (now there’s a true Irish argument… it’s like for years we would blame Britain for everything… now to add to your argument bring in the Catholic Church… we are all brainwashed yada yada) we would find ourselves offered the promised land by yet another guru and I can understand their concerns. The model is simple and prevalent. Want to be X? Well, I was a loser and then I achieved X by following a simple, proven system. Now, you can too if you just follow me. Join me on facebook, twitter, subscribe to my page and buy everything that I sell and you can be X too.

Yeah, yeah I get it but guess what? It’s the world we live in. That is how we must get the message of what we do out to the world. Your alternative is to let the world come to you. In the marketplace we have those interested in making a quick bit of cash and they desire to promote themselves to the masses so they can sell whatever to whoever. They don’t care about people. When Bill Hicks did his wonderful rip on marketing executives and advertisers he was talking about these people.

Then you have people with the guts to put their hat into the ring (is that how the expression goes). Entrepreneurs who believe they can help others more effectively, more cheaply or more quickly than others. Some of them are misguided and some of them are wonderful people to know. I can vouch for my friends. Not just because they’re my friends and I have an insight into their values but because I follow their system and it works.

Anyway, enough of my argument for health success. I’m far too self absorbed to waste an opportunity to talk about myself!!

Here’s me. I’ve a website promoting charisma, confidence and personal improvement. I’m not a failed actor or comedian. But I promote ‘charisma’ workshops. There is nothing more arrogant I’m sure than telling people that you can teach them to be charismatic ‘just like you’. But here’s the thing. My background is in psychology. I studied the most charismatic people I could find for my masters thesis. I’ve worked with thousands of people in therapy and many of them I have helped them boost their self esteem and become more confident. (incidentally I did try and tell them to ‘be confident and not be shy’ to start with but they needed more for some reason I still don’t get )

Anyway, based on that I developed a model of charisma and what it takes to be charismatic. Here is my theory in a nutshell. Some people tend to be naturally more charismatic than others. All of us have charismatic potential in different contexts. Charisma is an impression you create in the mind of another person. You can learn to become more charismatic by becoming more comfortable with yourself and understanding how to make a better impression with people. In my workshops that what I teach. The Charisma Bootcamp is where I also bring in 7 other experts to help participants master skills of style, comedy, performance, voicework, social media, leadership and effective presentations.

I teach NLP with my friend and colleague Brian Colbert, author of the happiness habit. We have both learned from and been recommended by Dr Richard Bandler, co-creator of NLP. NLP has been used and raved about by most of the best known companies, sport stars and well as millions of people across the world including the likes of Google, Apple, Microsoft, Serena Williams, Greg Norman… etc… etc

We talk about how you can become happier and more successful. We have cheesee photos up and impressive bios. Yet here’s the thing. The vast majority of people that we have worked with report that they have felt happier than ever before since working with us. Readers of Brian’s book ‘The Happiness Habit’ have raved about how they have been enjoying life more since applying the wisdom in the book. I know Brian personally for the last fifteen years and he’s a happy guy.

So yes, it’s easy to label someone a charlatan if they offer coaching, therapy, NLP or suggestions on happiness and charisma. Yes, it’s easy to tarnish us all with the same cloud munching brush of yet another positive thinking proponent. But here’s the reality.

I ain’t always perfectly charismatic or happy. I don’t have my personal life sorted perfectly. I have my problems. But I’m doing good and I wasn’t always doing good. At one time I wanted to end my life. Now I don’t. I am actually lucky enough to travel the world teaching people how to make the most of themselves and their lives.

What actually turned it around for me was my decision to change, followed by me learning how I needed to change the way I thought, felt and behaved… and then practicing it.

So, my if my learned friend or anyone with similar opinion drops by this article, I hope you take it in the right spirit. I agree with your concerns. I agree that there are far too many people out there in the self improvement and personal fitness industries offering perfect solutions from perfect gurus that are too good to be true. But sometimes the only way to beat these people is beat them at their own game. They are being listened to so we must grab the worlds ears and get them to listen to something valuable. To survive, we find ourselves caught into the necessary evil of blatant self promotion in order to stand out. It’s stand out or die.

So, in a world full of snake oil, be mindful that some of it actually works and makes a wonderful difference to the quality of peoples lives. My friends in their industry and i in mine do our best to do that. Long live that kinda snake oil.

PS. I have no interest in arguing about this. So, any attack wasted on me will be fruitless. Here’s the facts in advance. I’m not perfect. Some people don’t like me. I’m sure people out there think I’m a ‘fraud’ while others think I’m a manipulator. I know many more people who would disagree with them.

I will promote myself with big promises and counter intuitive suggestions and big claims because I want to stand out. I will offer free advice to people and give them value and I will ask those who have benefited from my work to praise me on my site to show my value. Then maybe I will have your attention and then I can help you improve your life. And I can do it for some people out there better than anyone. That I am convinced about.

Trust is something that crops up in all sorts of situations from relationships to friendships as well as in business. The most obvious breach of trust is outright lying or cheating and there are many acceptable breaches such as telling the other person they look great when you don’t think they do. The term ‘trust’ is usually reserved for the big issues.

Like most people I know, I have been burned by people in business. They say one thing that you believe and it turns out when push comes to shove that they weren’t really thinking that way and they were just words. The words came out and you took them in and, unfortunately for you, you were the only one who believed them.

So, many times people will make promises to you. They will get you excited and motivated by showing their enthusiasm for what you have to offer. But they may never buy nor have any intention of buying. Sometimes they will take everything you have to offer and lead you on but when it comes down to it, they will walk away.

This is the tough cruel corporate world we live in. So what is the answer?

Well, I have recently come to realize that when you trust someone, you are not only trusting their morals and honesty and integrity as a person, you are trusting their intentions and desires at the time. You are not trusting them as a person but what they are saying to you. You can assume that they are saying what they are saying for a particular reason. Sometimes it is because they believe it and really do want to do business with you. Sometimes it is because they want to make you like them or feel good. Sometimes they want to get as much out of you as possible. Sometimes they aren’t sure if they want your product so while they are waiting they get themselves in the best possible position to accept it or not.

So, when you understand that you won’t know the reason… you can simply appreciate their statement is the first level of trust. Once they actually take a step in the right direction and actually do something to follow up with their commitments, that is the second level. Sometimes when they are on the first level if they have a good track record of following through you can have more confidence in them. But ultimately, regardless of what level they are on, or their track record, it’s important to always have a back up plan made to ensure that you prepare for the possibility of them betraying your trust. If there’s one thing I’ve learned it’s that often the people you think you can’t trust aren’t the ones that let you down and it is the people that you think you can which you have to look out for.

Can people be trusted in business? Absolutely. As long as you accept they have their own agendas and you watch their track record in following through on promises, you will have a good idea of whether or not it’s a good decision. Furthermore, if they just say something versus taking action it’s a different kind of signal. The trick is to remember trust is a multi-step process not an all-in-one commitment. It’s not black and white but it’s something that depends on a number of factors. So, people in business can be trusted… to different degrees at different times.

So, how can I deliver an adequate explanation in a blog? Well, here goes.

NLP is about how you can communicate more effectively with yourself and others. You communicate more effectively with yourself by learning to think in more productive and effective ways. You communicate more effectively with others by understanding how others think and how you can influence how they think.

NLP involves having an attitude of determination, curiosity, a great sense of humour and a belief that anything is possible. It’s important that you realize that while you can’t always determine what happens in the world, you can determine how you think about it. It’s also essential to remind yourself that most of your limitations exist only in the mind.

NLP is a set of skills that enable us to think in more useful ways. We do this by realizing that our way of thinking about the world is just our way of thinking and we can change it. We do this by finding out how we represent our thoughts through the internal images we have or the way we talk to ourselves. Then by changing the way we represent things, we can change how we feel about them. For example, if you have a phobia of spiders and you learn to change how you think about them, you feel differently about them. There are certain tools and techniques that enable you to condition yourself behaviorally so that you think about things in the new way consistently.

NLP is also a set of communication skills that allows you to create connections with others, make them feel really good and influence and persuade people. When you learn how language and beliefs work, you can uncover powerful questions and language patterns that can help you to change beliefs through the way you use language.

Coaching involves helping you to figure out what you want, where you are now and how you can get from where you are to where you want to be. It involves finding out the things that get in your way and figuring out solutions to them. Often the biggest obstacles reside in our own minds and therefore we can use many NLP tools in overcoming them.
Of course, there is a lot more to NLP than all this but hopefully it’s given you a simple understanding of the main areas. To learn about NLP, join Brian and myself on one of our courses with the Irish Institute of NLP http://www.nlp.ie/

The Irish Institute of NLP has recently celebrated its ninth birthday. For almost ten years, my training partner Brian Colbert and I have taught thousands of people from across the world to use the skills and attitudes of NLP to change their life.

One of the things that I believe makes us stand out and deliver high quality trainings is the focus that we have on making the concepts as simple as they are. As far as I’m concerned this is pretty rare in the field of Neuro-Linguistic Programming. Often, the more complex the ideas sound then the more valuable they are supposed to be.

I have read my fair share of NLP books and sadly found the vast majority of them repeating the same message with the same examples or presenting the ideas in such a convoluted way that it was near impossible to understand them. For me, the simplicity of NLP works like this.

It’s a set of attitudes and skills to do with how you think and communicate that allow you to improve your life when you use them. You are the one who needs to use the skills and have the attitudes for you to make the appropriate changes. If you go to an NLP Coach, they will use the skills and attitudes to help you make changes.

The problem comes when we become obsessed with the ‘idea’ of NLP and we forget to actually practice it. I know I have slipped from time to time from practicing the skills but I always remind myself to get back on track. Unfortunately, there are many people who ‘speak’ NLP lingo or talk all about it but fail to actually use the skills.
So what do I mean by using the skills. If you want to create rapport with someone, you pace the representational system they use, mirror their body language and ask yourself how can I help them get what they want? If you find yourself thinking in unproductive ways, you use the meta model and challenge your limiting beliefs by using the questions on yourself. If you have to make a sales presentation, you prepare by practicing using anchors, creating powerful states and using Milton Model patterns.

These are just some basic examples that should be obvious but yet they just aren’t. So, how are you using the skills of NLP to change your life?

Cicero was a politician of ancient Rome who is widely known for his prowess at public speaking and rhetoric. Having studied some of the greatest speakers from Greece at the time, Cicero became a powerful figure largely through his ability to inspire and move his audience. So, what are some of the keys we can learn from Cicero and his skills of oratory.

Cicero explained that there were five elements important to consider when creating a speech and making an argument. They are:

1) Invention
2) Arrangement
3) Style
4) Memory
5) Delivery

Let’s go through each one and explore how we can use this system.

Invention:

This is exactly what it sounds like. The first key is to ask yourself the question what is the goal of your speech? When you create anything, that is a good question to ask. Once you identify what you want, the next step is to list out all the different ideas or concepts that might help you make this happen. It is a good idea to figure out what is the message you want to deliver to the audience.

Arrangement:

This is how you structure your speech. This is broken up into Introduction, Main Body and Conclusion. Your Introduction should introduce your message, establish your credibility and connect with the audience. It should also capture their attention from the outset. You main body should share fact, evidence, stories, examples using both logic and emotion to influence your audience. You should acknowledge any arguments which counteract your one and dismiss them using logic and reason. The conclusion should then drill home your message and leave them with a good feeling connected to it.

Style:

This is how you write or prepare your speech. The words you use must fulfill the following criteria. They must be simply put, clear, vivid, fit with the expectations of and in the same language as the audience and lastly, the words must sound good out loud. When you read out what you have written you will get a good sense of what sounds good and what doesn’t.

Memory:

This reflects how you manage to remember the key concepts. It is a good idea to practice creating hooks that you attach each idea to. This means try to fit your speech into a story or connect the main concepts to a mind map or picture. This allows you to use a device to immediately remind you of what the next part of the speech is. Often powerpoint or keynote can suffice here.

Delivery:

This is how you actually deliver the speech. Your facial expressions, eye contact and use of your voice are key factors in presenting your speech powerfully. When you tell a story of something that made you cringe, cringe when you talk about it. During your speech keep making eye contact with the audience and stay a few seconds on each of them. Use variety in your tone of voice and pace of speech. Make sure that when you make an important point you slow down and emphasize the point.

So, let’s take the example of making a best man speech.

Invention:

What are the main goals of the speech?
Who do you have to thank?
Who do you have to complement?
What do you want the audience to know and feel?
How do you want to present your relationship with the groom?
How do you want the groom to feel?
What are the best stories you have of your time spent with the groom?

Arrangement:

What joke or funny story can you start with?
How do you want to introduce yourself?
How can you best connect with the audience? What will they relate to?
Where will you do the ‘thank you’ part of the speech?
Which stories will you tell? (usually picking 2 or 3 is perfect)
What order will you tell the stories in?
How will you finish the speech? (sentimental or funny)

Style:

Is the vast majority of your speech something that everyone can relate to?
What do you need to explain in order for everyone to understand the stories?
When you choose the stories to tell, how can you make them more vivid?
When you read the speech aloud, does it sound good?
How can you make it sound better?

Memory:

Use cue cards if you need to with the main keys of the speech written as words to remind you.
How can you link the stories together so that each one reminds you of the next?
How can you remind yourself of all the different people to thank?

Delivery:

How can you tell the stories in the best possible way?
What accents can you do or impersonate to really make the stories more vivid?
How can you include the crowd on any of the jokes?
How can you use variety in your tone of voice to make it more entertaining?

Here is a video of Richard Bandler talking about our book ‘Conversations with Richard Bandler’.

In this video, I share what I consider to be 5 key principles that lead to the very best performers in sport and business. They include: Self Belief, Performance Focus, Double Edged Motivation, Bounce-ability and the Desire to Excel.

In this video I have explained what I believe are three differences between a Positive Mental Attitude and a Champions Mindset in the way they approach competition.