A lot of people are struggling on their own with different things at the moment. Whether that be job security, money or something else. So how do we get our loved ones to open up to us?

This week’s tip is a blueprint for success. However, you must follow it to the letter if you truly want the best for them.

First, find an appropriate time to speak. Not during their favourite TV programme or while they’re reading.

Then, make sure you’re in an appropriate place where it’s just the two of you. Neutral territory where it’s quiet and you won’t be overheard.

Next ask open questions that require a full answer – not “are you ok?” or “is there something wrong”. Also never start a question with “Why?” it can be taken as accusatory and put them on the defensive. Try “What’s on your mind?” or “How can I help you at the moment?”

Then close your mouth and listen – NO, I mean REALLY listen. Keep your opinions, thoughts and advice to yourself. Believe me; they are not wanted at this stage. Resist saying “I know how you feel” because you could never know exactly how they are feeling and it will only serve to make them angry and withdraw again.

Once they’ve answered a question and you’ve listened intently, ask more questions and listen more. Again resist the urge to offer any thoughts, opinions or advice. Repeat this step until they have got everything off their chest.

Let them know that your support is always available. If they then ask for your opinion or advice, now is the time to give it. If they don’t, then just know that they are grateful that you took time to REALLY listen to them.

You may need to read this tip a few times and fully master it before trying it with a real person!

When I work one to one with people, often I’ll offer a free initial session – what I call “coffee and a chat”. It’s a great opportunity for someone to come over without pressure or financial commitment, let me know what’s going on in their life, see if I’m the right person to help them and ask me as many questions as they want. I think it’s vitally important that someone should feel completely comfortable, at ease and confident before they decide to work with me.

Quite often, when it comes to them asking me questions, those questions will be a reflection of what they have been asking themselves for a long time. We constantly ask ourselves questions in our own minds, I call it internal dialogue or that voice in our heads.

The questions, after the “can you help me?” one, usually carry a similar theme. “Why am I like this? Why can’t I just….? What stops me being/doing………..?” Now, if you stop for a minute and really pay attention to the question, you will see that there is only one type of answer you can get. If you ask “Why can’t I ….?” the only answer you can come to is a list of all the things that keep you trapped where you don’t want to be.  Almost confirming to yourself that you are destined to be stuck with that issue for ever.

However, when you start your question with “So, how can I……?”  You will immediately notice something different happening. Your mind suddenly turns into solutions mode and starts seeking out answers to the question. Try it now; I know it might appear too simple that’s why it’s so powerful!

Find a negative question that you’ve been asking yourself and substitute it for one starting “How can I ….?” or “What could I do differently in order to…..?” Notice how the solutions come easily to you.

Keep practicing those better questions, have fun and enjoy the power of the answers.

Suddenly, on the radio, you hear a familiar tune. Your mood lifts instantly as you find yourself singing along, huge smile on your face, energised and completely oblivious to anyone or anything else. If it’s a song from the past you may find memories of a particular time come flooding back even though you hadn’t consciously thought of them for years.  It might be a holiday song, the first dance from your wedding or just one of those songs that you and your friends always had to dance and sing along to.

You see, our minds are amazing things. Especially the “unconscious” part of our minds, it’s almost like a huge computer hard drive. All our memories, everything we’ve ever seen, heard, felt or experienced are all filed away ready for when we need them. Those memories can lie dormant for years until we hear, see or even smell something that stimulates our unconscious mind. I was glossing a radiator this week (don’t ask!) and the smell triggered a memory of painting a model of Henry VIII with my Mum for a school history project over 25 years ago. A bizarre memory that made me smile, I could picture every minute detail of the model.

So with that knowledge in hand, how can we use it to our advantage? How can we give ourselves an instant mood lift when we need it most?

This week’s tip is simple and yet so effective.

Make a list of songs and/or pieces of music that either take you back to fantastically happy times or just generally make you feel good the instant you hear them. Then gather them all together and add them to your mp3 player, make a CD or if you’re feeling really nostalgic – a tape.

Keep them with you at all times and whenever you feel like you need a change, or lift, of mood simply press “play”, turn up the volume, sing as though nobody is watching and enjoy.

Shocked, I asked her what she meant, surely she didn’t hate everyone?!

She said she actively looks for flaws when she meets other women. Her internal dialogue is an endless cycle of put-downs, designed it appears, to make her feel better about herself. As we talked more we came to the conclusion that she didn’t hate other women. She hated herself and her inadequacies, real or imagined. By always comparing herself to other women and pointing out their flaws, she could deflect her low body image onto others.

You might say that if it makes her feel happier, why not let her be?

That’s the question – is she happier? She confessed that she isn’t.

Every day she ends up more and more insecure, forever looking for the validation that neither she – nor anyone – should need. It seems that many people face such body image problems. So how do we start to get rid of such negativity and destructiveness – for good?

Accept that we’re all created differently.

Each person was created in a different size and shape. What’s beautiful and what isn’t is also a matter of different perspectives. You can’t influence peoples’ opinions because it’s all about how they see things. Know that it’s this kind of diversity that makes the human race so fascinating.

Put things in perspective.

Know your attributes, and accept your flaws. Relish them because they make you unique. Understand what you can change about yourself and accept what you cannot. If you decide that there is something you can change then fine, start now! Action is power.

Finally, stop competing with others and challenge yourself instead When we compare ourselves to others there can only be one result. There will always be someone in the world better than us. You can never really win. Instead, accept what you do have and strive to just be a better version of you. Notice how great you feel as you keep winning against the old you.

My aim this year is to give as much as possible away for free. Last month it was a relaxation recording (which you can still get from my website if you’d like it), this month it’s my “Get Better Sleep” programme. My accountant is going nuts! He doesn’t understand me like my last one, I miss him very much.

On my website it says that I’m only giving it free to the first 50 people that apply. However, anyone who jumps onboard in the next 7 days will qualify, even if it’s 5000! Just don’t tell my accountant!! The 50 countdown will start on Saturday 21st Feb.

So if you struggle with the quantity or quality of your sleep, have this with my compliments and start to enjoy great sleep. Do you remember how good that feels?

Also, feel free to send the link to all your friends who you think might enjoy better sleep. It’s good to share.

http://www.markdarlington.com/sleep.html

To your better sleep!
Mark

PS. I’ve tried to cover every base in the course but would be interested to hear how different people specifically struggle with their sleep. Just to make sure! You can send me a private message if you like or leave a comment below.

You can see the results on her site here http://theunwindingpath.com/transhypno/category/10-questions/

Enjoy! 

I have so much content to upload to this blog over the next few days. Bookmark the site or subscribe to the RSS feed to be first to benefit.

Until next time

Mark

Enjoy and I hope you get some use out of it.

“Positive Habits with Mark Darlington”

MARK DARLINGTON, HOST: And so we move onto the final part of this week’s Positive Habits show, and this really is the pivotal positive habit of all positive habits. If you can crack this one, it’s going to give you so much more clarity of mind, so much more energy to achieve the other positive habits that you want in your life and it’s the positive habit of getting a really good night sleep.

Now…we all know how good it feels to wake up feeling really rested and restored; you feel great, vitality and confidence can come naturally to you and you feel stronger in your body and mind but it’s not the same for everyone. It’s estimated that a third of adults have difficulty falling asleep at night and getting enough sleep doesn’t just make you feel good, it’s vital for your health. This is a study done by the University of Warwick (UW) and University College London (UCL), they studied 10 000 people in Britain and found that compared to those who sleep for 7 hours a night, those who sleep for just 5 hours – and notice that’s just a difference of 2 hours, those that sleep for 5 hours double their risk of fatal cardio-vascular disease.

Having too much sleep isn’t good either, so I know I had good news for students earlier in the show, this is the bad news for students but having too much sleep isn’t good either. Mortality rates are higher for people who sleep for more than 8 hours. They say that 7 hours of uninterrupted sleep is the ideal, so have a think about how it is you sleep at the moment: Are you getting to sleep easily, do you have uninterrupted sleep or do you struggle to get to sleep at night like a third of the adult population in the UK. Are you waking up in the middle of the night with all sorts of thoughts racing through your head – do you have what I call busy brain, is that what’s making it difficult for you to fall asleep ?

There are so many things around now and I’m going to share the tips, as I said earlier, of the things that worked for me and the science behind it.

Now this study of the – that was done by the UW and UCL, it was that along with an increase in clients that were coming to me, suffering from stress-related sleep deprivation that prompted me to write a tip back in June; this is one of those exercises hence tips — things that I was talking about. I write tips now and again, put them on the blog, put them on website; so go and have a look if you want for other tips as well: www.markdarlington.com. Find the bit that says free articles and there’ll be a few articles there that can help you out in different things. If work stress is causing you sleepless nights this tip could be the one to help you out. As I said I wrote this back in June and it was hard to prevent unnecessary worry, anxiety and sleepless nights every Sunday because a survey, back at the time, of more than 20 000 workers by the website Monster.com reveals that more than 80 % of workers suffer Sunday-night Insomnia due to work anxiety, so if this is something that resonates with you, listen up.

Many of the people surveyed said that their anxiety rises straight after Sunday dinner as Monday looms. With increasing expectations and pressure, some workers feel the only way to get ahead is to prepare for work on Sunday night: checking their email, mentally rehearsing meetings; worrying about the week ahead and experts say that Sunday-night depression is more common than most people realize.

A guy called Craig Marker, he’s the assistant professor with the Center for Psychological Studies at Nova Southeastern University, was quoted as saying “it’s anticipatory worrying”. So it’s not necessarily planning for the week ahead, its worrying unnecessarily about things that may or may not happen. Now if this is something that currently affects you, good news is there are ways to cope.

Anticipatory worrying is so common in many areas of life and not just confined to work. We tend to find ourselves getting worked up far in advance of actual events, I sometimes call it catastrophising; it’s living in the future and thinking about all the things – all the terrible, terrible things that could happen, that in reality never usually happen. We anticipate all the things that could possibly go wrong and sometimes we can get so anxious it can result in a full-blown panic attack; and then in the future, knowing how scary a panic attack can be, we worry about having a panic attack which then in itself triggers off a panic attack and then we worry about worrying about having a panic attack and so on – I mean you get the picture.

There’s a very famous man, not quite so famous that I can remember what his name is, but towards the end of his days he was quoted as saying “I’ve experienced many, many traumatic events in my life and you know, some of them actually happened”.

It’s quite common that we’ll catastrophise, we’ll worry about all these things that might happen that we get – the brain can’t tell the difference between what’s real and what’s not, so we feel the same feelings about something we imagine might happen as if it’s actually happening.

Now if you’re suffering from Sunday-night Insomnia and anxiety, there’s some techniques to help you cope and I call this one Get the Friday Feeling. Prepare for Monday before you leave the office on a Friday, set aside some time – the last 30 minutes on a Friday, clearing your desk, clearing your workspace and plan for the week ahead. This’ll help you and enable you to write down any to-do lists and get any materials that you need ready for Monday morning. If you’re sitting there thinking oh! I couldn’t possibly spare 30 minutes on a Friday afternoon, this is where I’m so busy finishing off all the things… you’ll be amazed and surprised at how much time through the week this simple exercise will save you and it will prevent you from playing catch-up through the week. You can then switch off from work mode – at 5 o’clock or whenever it is you finish off on Friday, switch off from work mode and really enjoy your weekend right up to the moment that you step foot back at work.

Now I’ve got a friend, Claire, she’s a very, very clever girl. She told me she was suffering – used to suffer very much with this kind of anticipatory worry. She used to take work baggage home, she used to mentally take work home at night and couldn’t settle over the weekend; she discovered this thing; and she told me about it. Every time she went home on a Friday evening – she’s got this tree; she opens the gate, walks down the path and there’s this little tree or bush just to the right of her and every Friday when she goes home, she touches the tree on the way in and she calls this her work-worry tree. What she does is she mentally hangs up all her work worries, all the things that she’s been worrying about on the tree…metaphorically speaking of course! Then by the time she goes to work Monday morning she says she picks them back up off the tree, but always, always they seem to have solved themselves or there’s less of them on the way back to work; it’s just a way of her mentally switching off with her work-worry tree so, if there’s something that you can do that’s similar, have a think about that.

Second part of the tip that I wrote back in June I called Plan your Funday Night Experience. Another plan that could work is to plan Sunday evenings to be as much fun as possible: catching up on your favorite TV programmes, get that book out that you’ve not got around to reading yet; phone family and friends, have great chats; have a really nice, relaxing bath…it is Sunday after all and didn’t we all used to have a bath on a Sunday night before school on Monday and it used to settle us down, calm us down – brilliant! Have a really nice warm bath on a Sunday night, get some candles out; pamper yourself…whatever’s good for you, make Sunday your new Funday night experience.

Another great technique for relaxing is what I call Think Inside the Box for a change. In business we hear all the time about ‘you should think outside the box…‘well this is one about thinking inside the box.

Great technique for relaxing into a peaceful night sleep, as well as reducing feelings of stress and anxiety, is what I call the Box-Breathing technique. Now I teach this to clients all the time who come to see me with anxiety-related concerns, it’s one of the first things we do and it’s so, so powerful. The feedback that I get from there, this is amazing. I would say probably about 75 to 80% of my clients come for stress, anxiety; depression-related conditions and I love hearing about the great results they get using this and some of the other techniques that we share.

Okay, so here’s what you do and you can do this whether you’re struggling to sleep or not, this is great.

Get yourself into bed, get comfortable and close your eyes. Imagine that you’re going to draw a square in your mind, you can choose a colour for this, any colour; maybe one you’d associate with calm and relaxation – mine’s yellow by the way, I’m not sure why.
As you take a deep, relaxing breath in, just imagine drawing the left side of the square from the bottom left to the top; then hold that breath for as long as is comfortable as you imagine drawing the top of the box from left to right and as you breathe out, just imagine drawing the right hand side of the square from top to bottom. Finally hold that breath again as you imagine drawing the bottom of the square from right to left and completing the box; as you repeat this exercise over and over again, you can start to slowly relax all your muscles: from your feet all the way up through your body to your eyes and very soon you’ll be relaxing into a wonderful, peaceful night’s sleep.

Now of course, if the anxiety of Sunday night completely washes over Sunday afternoon, Sunday mornings; even start working its special powers as early as midday Saturday, it might be an indicator its time to either move on to another job or if it’s becoming emotionally disruptive to you and your loved ones, professional help might be the answer. Try this method though and do let me know how you get on. Of course email mark@markdarlington.com, I’d love to know how you get on with those.

There are some other generic sleep tips for you as well here, some great rules to – well to live and sleep by.

Number 1 is: Remember the bedroom is for sleep…and making love only! So the bedroom is for sleep and making love only. That means no television, no computer; and this might surprise you, no reading in the bedroom either. People will often say get a good book and fall asleep in bed, its not quality sleep.

Another thing to do about your bedroom environment, it’s making it a sanctuary for sleep. You need to minimize what’s called Electro-Magnetic Radiation. Turn off your mobile phone, it also saves you getting drunk text messages from your friends at 3 am; so turn off the mobile – or get away that electro-magnetic radiation and if you’ve got a cordless phone base in the room, take that out of the room as well – that’s got to go. Keep your bedroom at as comfortable temperature as possible and in complete darkness.

Now I’m going to assume you don’t still sleep with the light on, if you do that’s fine but research suggests that bright lights before you go to bed can put a serious dent in your dreamtime. Harsh light bulbs, televisions screen and even pc screens can make it much harder to sleep; and this is according to Dr. Helene Emsellem, she’s a Professor of Neurology at George Washington University. So rather than going to bed right after some retina-toasting telly, just a low-powered lamp can move you towards a restful slumber. Limiting your light exposure in the evening eases you naturally into sleep.

Here’s another thing as well, I’m not recommending this every time you go to bed because your partner really will not like this one…too often but a study at the sleep laboratory in Switzerland has discovered that wearing a pair of socks in bed can increase your chances of fruitful shuteye. The research behind this shows that as we approach the threshold of sleep, the body’s temperature regulation system redistributes heat from your core to your extremities: your hands and your feet; so having cold feet upsets the release of melatonin and melatonin is a hormone related to proper wake-sleep cycle. So yeah, treat yourself to a really nice pair of luxury socks…

Also important is to develop a routine. A routine is crucial and this involves always aiming to go to bed and wake up at the same time everyday.

Now dietary and lifestyle changes can make a huge difference if you’re struggling to sleep at night; along with stress and stimulants such as caffeine, sugar surprisingly is the substance mostly likely to be keeping you awake. Caffeine keeps you awake not just because it’s a stimulant but because it depresses the sleep hormone Melatonin, which we’ve just spoken about, for up to 10 hours. It’s sensible to avoid caffeine in the afternoon if you’re struggling sleeping.

Now some people have a drink at night to help them sleep, alcohol is relaxing at first but it’s after effects causes anxiety; better to avoid alcohol rather than depend on it to get you to sleep. Alcohol also affects the quality of your sleep; it acts as an anaesthetic so instead of quality sleep, it’s as though you’re under anaesthetic so probably not great for you.

Now if you’re one of those people that wake up in the middle of the night, here’s a couple of great tips for you:

Hide the clocks. If you wake up during the night, avoid looking at the clock. You’re more likely to start worrying about how little sleep you’ll get, which reduces the chances of getting back to sleep even more. Instead lie on your back, try and relax each part of your body as we spoke about before during the box-breathing; and its not the end of the world if you don’t fall asleep, you’ll just use that time to rest and relax.

If you’re tossing and turning, thinking about things, about work; then keep a pen and a pad at the side of the bed and anything you are worrying about at night, just write it down. What that does is psychologically puts it into your unconscious mind and by the time you wake up, normally it’s gone and you’ve solved it anyway.

And that’s pretty much all I have time for on Positive Habits this week. I hope you’ve found something in there that’s useful for you. As I said earlier, I would love to hear your comments, questions and views; so please email me: mark@markdarlington.com.

Thank you for listening and, until next time, be well.

www.markdarlington.com

This is really exciting for me as it enables me to indulge my 2 passions;

• Personal Well-being
• Radio

The past few weeks have been amazing. As well as running busy Clinical Hypnotherapy practices in Ewloe, Flintshire and Ruthin, Denbighshire I’ve been working on several projects that I can now share with you.

I will be hosting a new Radio Show from Sunday 21st September (7pm to 9pm) on www.wrexhamfm.com You can find the full details and schedule there. Thanks to John Humberstone, Roy Norry and the team for allowing me to combine 2 of my passions Radio and Personal Wellbeing.

The Show is called “Positive Habits” and will be all about you and your well being. 

It will also be available as a podcast via iTunes (I have just over a week then to work out the technicalities of uploading, tagging, formatting etc). 

I’m also really proud to have been asked to speak at Flintshire Business Week 2008.

I’ll be speaking on Wednesday 1st October at the Beaufort Park Hotel near Mold between 7.30 and 9.15am. It’s part of a Ladies Networking Breakfast and sponsored by Network She.

Here’s the write up;

“Reignite your passion……………for business”

 You know how individuals and Businesses sometimes get stuck in a rut and can’t seem to find a way out? Whether that be with self motivation, work/life balance, employee morale or how to increase clients and profits during tough times. In fact I’m sure there are many more ways you can think of to get stuck.

Well, what Mark does is instills rapid and permanent changes using a range of tools and techniques to overcome all these issues and more. Let Mark help you reconnect you and your business to the very things that caused you to be so passionate about what you do at the outset of your journey.

Join Mark and Network She for an entertaining, interactive, impactful and informative session. Reignite your passion for yourself and your business and enjoy reaping the rewards of your transformation. Spend just 45 minutes with Mark and see immediate benefits.

You can see the full programme for Flintshire Business Week 2008 here

Network She is a fantastic organisation that bring together like minded professional women from across North Wales and the North West who want to expand their professional and social circles.

You can find out more about Network She at www.networkshe.co.uk

I’ve been working on 2 new websites too which will be packed full of free information and tips. One is a generic well being site to link in with the “Postive Habits” Radio Show the other is based around my speciality which is anxiety related disorders (panic attacks, anxiety, stress, depression). Both should be online in the next week or so and I’ll give you the website addresses then. 

I’ve also been busy writing and I have a big batch of tips to share with you over the coming days.

Until next time.

Be Well
Mark

www.markdarlington.com  

I came across a short piece of work by Portia Nelson the other day, it made me smile. Although I wouldn’t normally do this, I wanted to share it with you.

It’s called “An Autobiography in Five Short Chapters”.

Chapter One

I walk down the street.
There’s a crack in the sidewalk.
I fall in.
I am lost… I am helpless. 
It isn’t my fault.
It takes forever to find my way out.

Chapter Two

I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I fall in again.
I can’t believe I’m in the same place.
But it isn’t my fault.
It still takes a long time to get out.

Chapter Three

I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I see it is there.
I still fall in… it’s a habit.
I know where I am.
It is my fault.
I get out immediately. 

Chapter Four

I walk down the same street.
There is a hole in the sidewalk.
I walk around it.

Chapter Five

I walk down another street.

Now, my smile was a wry one. I see these patterns often with my clients, but they’ve never made it to Chapter Four. They wouldn’t be clients if they had. They normally call me whilst in the middle of Chapter Three, but not quite at the end. It’s like living Chapter Three as Groundhog Day without ever getting to the “I get out immediately stage”.

Even though it’s a horrible, debilitating place to be it’s a “familiar” place and that can be all it takes to prevent change.

Yes……….. I know change might feel scary to people right now. I also know that if you keep doing what you’re doing, you’ll keep getting what you’re getting.

Change or no change, you decide.

If it’s change, I’d love to hear about it.

Until next time
Mark

www.markdarlington.com