NLP: Neuro Linguistic Programming

Neuro Linguistic Programming or NLP is something I just recently stumbled upon. It can be a bit confusing at first but it sounds like something I’d like to try and I wanted to share a bit about it.

What is NLP: Neuro Linguistic Programming?

According to Wikipedia:

Neuro-linguistic programming (NLP) is an approach to communication, personal development, and psychotherapy created by Richard Bandler and John Grinder in California, United States in the 1970s. […] NLP’s creators claim there is a connection between neurological processes (neuro-), language (linguistic) and behavioral patterns learned through experience (programming), and that these can be changed to achieve specific goals in life

If that seems very confusing, don’t worry. I find the more I read about NLP the more I understand it.
Basically there are a set of practices you can do to acheive results whether it be freedom from depression and anxiety or just the negative thoughts every person has from time to time.
You should know that not all of these ideas can be proven through science and probably because of that, certain people and groups discredit NLP. However there is nothing harmful about using NLP and besides, sometimes if you believe something helps, it helps.

Anchors

Anchors are used to change the feelings/thoughts surrounding a particular situation. You know how sometimes if a person is wearing something specific and they win a competition they start to think of that item as lucky? Whether or not it has any actual luck in it doesn’t matter. The person associates said item with luck and so when they wear it in the future, they feel more lucky.
Anchors are like that but you can make them intentionally too. So if you create a few anchors like a calming stone you can hold or a joyful necklace, you can train your brain to change how you’re feeling when you have those anchors with you.

Change The Memory

There is another one that involves remembering something negative that happened (and that you think about often) and looking at it again from a third person’s perspective, as if you are a movie director. You can zoom in and out, change the view, focus on certain things and unfocus on others.
Manipulate the memory, take the focus off the main part and focus on smaller, average things such as the flowers in the vase behind you or the dog barking at your feet. Doing this enough makes the memory seem distant and non important, stopping your brain from going back to it again and again.

And More

There is way more to it than that. I am still learning but I think it’s an interesting way to try to change your thinking. I wish I had heard of it sooner! There are some resources below if you wish to know more. The free ebook is pretty good and if after that you want to learn more, you might want the other books. Just remember that it can seem confusing at first but keep reading.

Resources:

NLP Canada FREE ebook on NLP
NLP Depression & Anxiety Kindle Books (affiliate link)
Neuro Linguistic Programming for Dummies (affiliate link)

The Difference Between Angry and Mad

How many times have you heard people use the word angry and mad interchangeably (me included) when there really is a difference between angry and mad.

Difference Between Angry and Mad

While there is technically a difference between being angry and mad, it’s not that big of a deal if you say you are mad when you mean angry, especially if you live in North America.
Although I will be explaining a bit behind the meaning of the words, this post is about dealing with your anger as much as it is about the correct grammar.

Angry and Mad Defined

Angry
1. Having a strong feeling of or showing annoyance, displeasure or hostility; full of anger.
Some synonyms: irate, cross, vexed, incense, infuriated, etc.
He makes me so angry.
I get angry when she does that.
Mad
1. mentally ill, insane
Some synonyms: crazed, psychotic,
She felt as if she was going mad.
He could feel the madness welling up inside of him.
If you live in England you will hear the word mad used to mean mentally ill more than you will in North America but the meaning is still the same.

How Angry and Mad Got Mixed Up

So how did people start using the word mad when they mean angry?
Unfortunately a lot of people have trouble with their anger and instead of expressing it well, as soon as it bothers them, they do a number of different things to not express it from bottling it all up quietly inside of them, to acting passive aggressive (e.g. the person who says nothing is wrong but gives you the cold shoulder) to the person who takes the anger out on the wrong person.
When they do this, anger tends to build inside of them and act like a poison to their body. They are not expressing their anger in a healthy way and so it can feel like they are going mad (insane) because their anger is building inside of them and affecting their mental health.
This seems to be the way that the word became known to be about anger.
“To feel and to express anger healthily is actually the antithesis of madness.” – The Angry Book by Theodore I Rubin, M.D.

Not Letting Anger Turn to Madness

I have no idea what the actual stats are but I do know that many people struggle with anger problems.
The Angry Book by Theodore I Rubin, M.D., although old, is a good resource for recognizing how you deal with anger. It shows the MANY and varied ways that people don’t deal with their anger in the best ways. Some are obvious but many you would not at first think have anything to do with anger.
You might be surprised to see how your behaviours might be betraying a long standing “slush fund” of past anger. Slush fund is the term used in the book to indicate the built up anger inside of you.
Definitely if your anger often seems stronger or more potent than would make sense for that situation, is very frequent, hurts your relationships or makes you act violently than you definitely are having troubles with your anger.
Seek help with your psychiatrist, doctor, counsellor or a trusted family member or friend if you are worried.
NOTE: I have reviewed the book I mentioned above at one of my other blogs if you are interested you can read my review of The Angry Book.

Are you the egg, the carrot or the coffee bean?

Are you the egg, the carrot or the coffee bean?

In life, some people are like the egg, soft in the beginning, malleable, delicate. But when pressure (like boiling water or life's pressures) surrounds the egg, it gets harder and is tough, not malleable. These are the people who have a hardened heart thanks to the pressures of life.

In life, some people are the carrot. They start of hard and strong, but when pressure (or water) surrounds the carrot it gets softer and softer until it turns to mush. It can't hold it self together, it gets crushed under any weight.

In life, some people are the coffee bean. When pressure (water) hits the coffee bean, the coffee bean changes the water/pressure, not the other way around. The beautiful scent of the coffee bean is magnified by the mixture with the water and the scent affects life and sets the atmosphere. If you're the coffee bean, you are the scent that clears the air. You affect the pressures of life and spread your scent to everyone else.

So which one are you?

*I was taught about this at the Christian Women's Conference I attended. I wanted to share the short form of it with you.

Christian Women's Conference Day 2

Day two of the Christian women's conference brought me even more knowledge and hope.

Imagine you have a cup of water with impurities in it. You want to drink from it but it's not clean. How do you make it more clean and less impure? Saturate it with more water. The water will filter the impurities to the top where you can take them out. By the same token, God doesn't want to change us, he just wants to put more of himself in us to saturate us with himself so that our impurities may be filtered out.

About Revelation

Revelation - unknown fact that is made known in a dynamic or dramatic way.

You need a revelation about who you are. A revelation of your true destiny. 

 About Drama

Drama reveals reality. Women are deep and so we have more drama. Men are simple. Drama you have been through becomes your reality unless you let it go.

About Your Past

Satan tries to stop you from advancing. He makes you focus on the past and present instead of the future.

Women replay the past over and over. You must let it go.

Don't own where you've been or who you've been.

Use your past as a stepping stone, as a platform.

AA says that once an alcoholic, always an alcoholic but that is NOT true. You are NOT what you used to be.

About Your Destiny

 Satan tries to assassinate your destiny

"You Must Now Know Who I Am!" - I am important, I am unique, I am me

When I know myself - I walk, talk and act different.

"You're about to have a coming out party" - you are going to come out as you really are

If God put me in the world, the world must need me.

About Others

See your accusers, the haters. They look up at you because they are beneath you.

"Take the stench of your past and make it perfume of your present!"

"If you're gonna go with me, you gotta grow with me" - only surround yourself with people who will help you advance.

"You gotta love everybody but you gotta love some from a distance" - regarding people who bring negativity to the world.

About Your Issues

Circle Your Problems, Don't Let Them Circle You

Your dysfunction has become your normal. If you lead a dysfunctional life for long enough, it becomes your normal and you have to constantly work at keeping it where you want it. You have to keep adjusting yourself. You might feel like it gets worse before it gets better.

Get off Facebook and put your face IN the book.

God doesn't want to bless your mess. He can't bless you until you deal with your issues (just like in John 4 when he is talking to the Samaritan woman.

Your issues are coming between YOU and your DESTINY.

C.O.P.I. Identity Christian Women's Conference

Today was day 1 of the Christian women's conference held by a local church. As a new Christian, I figured this was my change to learn something new, to be surrounded by other Christians and hear some great words from a different Pastor than I normally hear from each Sunday.

Here are just some of the great nuggets of wisdom I gleaned from Day 1

About Community

We must all be planted not just in God's word but in a church, one church, a community in order to be surrounded and to defeat Satan. No hopping from church to church, find the one that fits you best and get rooted in it.

About Your Past

"When you run into your past, tell them, let me show you my future"

"We all have a history but we also all have a destiny."

"You are not what happened to you."  - Satan wants you to think that's true, but it's not.

About Our Mind

There is a difference between Truth and Fact. It can be a fact that you feel a certain way about a situation but that doesn't mean that those feelings are grounded in truth.

"As a woman thinks in her heart so is she" - Proverbs 23:7

About Our Purpose

Purpose= motive, justification, advantage, worth, value, profit etc..

Live ON Purpose but also live IN Purpose, live in the purpose that God has for your life.

"It's time for me to be free to be me"

About Satan

Satan is an identity thief. Satan doesn't want you to know who you are.

Pull Satan out of the front seat and stop letting him drive your life!

Let the Lord bless you and the devil pay for it!

If Satan keeps trying to hurt you or make you sin, it's because you are a commodity he doesn't own. You are gifted and he wants you for himself.

About Decisions

You can't make decisions because Satan gives you too many options. If you didn't have options, you wouldn't be able to pick a bad choice like drinking, drugs, adultery, etc

If you say "I'm not going to decide right now" you've already made a decision. You decided NOT to decide.

Decision= settle the matter or cut off all other options.

When you make a decision, you cut off all the other options Satan wants you to have.

About Misc.

Reactions speak louder than actions. Reactions are your first response, your facial expressions, first words. You can't fake your reaction.

When you magnify - you manifest. The more you think about a negative thing, the bigger it becomes. The more you think of good things, the bigger they become. Which do you want more of?

"My setback is a setup for my comeback."

Homemaker In Training...again

I always said I wanted to be a stay at home mom when I first got together with my husband. I loved the idea of caring for my kids, teaching them things, keeping the house clean and organized for my loved ones.

After the number of kids rose and the stresses piled on though, homemaking ended up being last on my list of things I wanted to do. I started getting majorly stressed and because I didn't have a good system in place, the house got out of control and I sturggled to manage it.

Recently, having been called to Christ, I've been reading about homemaking in the biblical sense and I'm working on changing my outlook. I am remembering those I am keeping home FOR. Not me, but my husband and children. I love them and I can show them that by cleaning the house and cooking meals and sharing my knowledge with them.

So I keep reading about homemaking, reading what the bible has to say about it and fine tuning both my attitude and my systems and routines until I get it to where I need it to be.

So for now, I am a homemaker in training.. again.

How My Call to God Affects My Family

My family is not religious. Not the immediate family, nor extended, on either sides. So my kids have grown up knowing there are religions out there but not really being surrounded by it. As I mentioned in a previous post, we celebrated the secular version of Christmas and Easter and although we celebrated some Jewish holidays too, I'd consider the family very reform so it's not religious exactly.

So when I was called to Christianity and have since been embracing it with daily prayer, bible reading and studying and Christian music, it was a lot more than my family was used to. My husband is being very supportive and one of my children is interested in learning more but another of my children apparently is annoyed by it.

Yesterday she asked me, "When are you going to get over it?" I was very hurt by this but today I sat her down and explained that although she's not used to, many families are full of religious observances and talk and that I'm not saying she has to be Christian but if she has any questions I'm here.

So now I'm struggling with being the only Christian in the family. I keep praying that my family will find Jesus but until that happens, I feel very alone.