Life Mastery May 2020 - Part One

Good morning. I hope you are safe and well, and welcome to Life Mastery: Find Your Path to Success. We've got an amazing day lined up for you starting in a moment, um, with the first speaker, which will be yours truly. We'll be talking about how you can learn to understand why you think, feel, and do what you do. Usually at this time I go through housekeeping rules of the day and stuff, but obviously you're sitting in your own home, so you know where your toilets are. You'll know when you can go for a break, so just go crazy and be yourself and just enjoy your day. Make sure that you've got some kind of writing implement, whether you're going to type up on your laptop or something, pencil and paper. Because the things we're going to be talking about today be really good for you to be able to write down and implement into your life immediately if there are things that resonate with you and you'd like to take forward. The things that you'll learn today will not only help you in the foreseeable future, but actually for the rest of your life. First of all, I'm going to talk to you a little bit about myself. So I'm a transformational relationship coach, and I am the founder of what's called interpersonal relationship coaching, or IRC for short. And IRC is a fusion of my experience as a coach, counselor, hypnotherapist, and NLP user practitioner. So I put that together because I found that everybody needs a a different approach when it comes to understanding where they're coming from, and the techniques from those approaches help me to help you. I've been working now in personal development for around about 15 years and gradually progressed on from being a counsellor into coaching and added the other skills as I went along. The reason I do this is because The experience of my own life led me to recognize that things weren't great. I wasn't a very happy person and things needed to change, and my personal development journey has enabled me to completely flip my life around. The basic concept behind interpersonal relationship coaching is called the bicycle effect, and I'm going to go through that with you in a moment. The Bicycle Effect explains why we think, feel, and do what we do, and how those thoughts and emotions are influenced. And then when we come to understanding this, we can see the consequences of our lives and why the consequences are as they are. But first of all, I'd just like to tell you a story. I'd just like you to imagine A 14-year-old boy, 14-year-old boy who's having an argument with his brother. And while they're arguing, actually, do you know what? Let me take you back a bit further. Imagine if you can, a little boy. Around about six, seven years of age, his mum has gone on holiday with her father, and his brother has been sent off to spend some time with his best friend, and he's going to be staying there for the week, and his best friend's mum is also. This little boy's mum's best friend, so his brother's got somewhere nice to go. This 6 or 7-year-old lad has been sent off to a friend of his father's, people that he doesn't really know, to spend a week with them while his mum's on holiday. There's no room in his friend's house for this little boy to stay in, so unfortunately for him, he has to sleep in the same bed as these adults. He goes to bed at night and curls up on the edge of the bed, trying to keep himself safe, not knowing who these people are. During that week, visited maybe once or twice by his own dad. He gets to thinking when he gets home, why was my dad not looking after me? Why was I sent to this place where I was very sad, miserable, scared? Why wasn't I looked after? Does my dad not really want me in his life? Move forward a few years, and this little boy is now around about 11 years of age. His mum's left; his parents have separated. And he's living with his dad. He's having a really tough time of things, finding it really difficult to cope with family life, struggling at school, doesn't really want to be at school. And one night he really loses his shit. He's had enough. Something happens with his brother who he's constantly fighting and arguing with. And he gets told off. This seems to be the same story for him. It always seems to be his fault. So he says, "I don't want to live here anymore. I want to go and live with my mum." So his dad says, "Yeah, you can go live with your mum. Go and pack your bags." So off he trots upstairs, gets starts to get his bag out, starts to pack his clothes. His dad comes in, shuts the door. He says, if you want to go, you take everything. Starts ripping all of his posters off of the wall, starts throwing all of his stuff on the floor. And then he gets hold of this 11-year-old boy and he says, you've had this coming for a long time. And this little boy thinks he's going to die because his dad hits him and hits him and hits him and doesn't stop. And when he's left on the floor, his dad says, when you're ready to apologize, Come down. You're going nowhere. So let's go back to this 14-year-old. He's arguing with his brother, and his brother gets a coat hanger and stabs him in the side. He runs to his bedroom and jumps on his bed. He's lying there holding on to his side. Luckily enough, it hit him straight on the hip bone and didn't go right in. His dad comes running up the stairs. The first thing he does is run into this 14-year-old boy's room and start hitting him and telling him to behave himself, just tell him to stop winding up his brother. Until he screams, but he stabbed me! And it's only then that maybe his dad realizes that he's made a mistake. Now, the reason I'm telling you these stories is because they have a profound influence on how we see ourselves. The messages that we receive as we grow up will determine the relationship that we have with ourself, depending on how your brain interprets those messages. And I'd just like to explain that to you now in a little bit more detail with the bicycle effect. So get your pen and your paper ready because you're going to be able to draw out your own bicycle. You'll see why it's called the bicycle effect in a little while. So what I'd like to start with first of all is the front wheel of your bicycle, so draw yourself a nice circle And separate that into 4. Now this bit here we call the TURC cycle. It's something from cognitive behavioral therapy. Let me just tip that down so you can see that a bit better. It's something from cognitive behavioral therapy, and it's used to describe All of the cycles that we go around as far as our brain thought processes are. So you can use it for stress, anxiety, depression, anger. But because you can use it for lots of different things, I decided to give it one name. The first letter. The T is for your thoughts. So everything begins with a thought. Then we have emotions. So when you have an emotion, you only have an emotion because it's triggered by your thought. And then You have a reaction. Now generally we don't have much of a reaction unless we have an emotion beforehand. So if I was to talk to you about something that you really didn't care about, you're not really going to react to it. But if we talk about something that's highly emotive for you, then you're going to react in a completely different way. Now, depending on how you react will lead to your consequences. Now, obviously, if you have a positive reaction to something, generally your positive consequences are going to follow. And if you have a negative reaction to something, then generally negative consequences are going to follow. Depending on what your mindset is and how you see these consequences, because you might have a very negative reaction and get a very positive consequence. And that's when we're talking about people that are generally quite toxic in relationships, manipulative in relationships, use anger and things in order to get what they want. So sometimes a negative reaction can actually get you what you're desiring. So we just need to check in with that to see That your consequences aren't always going to be bad, but they might be very negative. Let's come back to thoughts. So as I said, everything starts with a thought. If you don't think about something, then nothing's really going to come of it. So what we need to do is when we go around in this cycle is check in. With our thoughts. So an example of this would be, I used to get really bad road rage. And the reason I used to get road rage is because when I would get cut up by somebody or they wouldn't say thank you on the road, then my thought would be, they're disrespecting me. Now, they weren't disrespecting me in that, I know now. But because of where I come from in my background, I developed this idea of myself that if somebody did something that wasn't to my benefit, then in some way they were disrespecting me. So then I would feel disrespected. My reaction to that would get a little bit irritated, and maybe the consequences would be I'd give a V sign or bid me hooter or whatever it would be in order to show my displeasure to the person. If they then didn't say thank you or apologize, then my thoughts would get worse. So if they then decided to bid back or slam their brakes on or just make rude gestures out of their out their window, then my thoughts would escalate. So they're definitely disrespecting me now. So my emotional state would increase. My reactions to that would be could be to. Flash them, chase them down the road, start to get verbally aggressive, and the consequences could lead to them deciding to want to have a fight. But the reason that I kind of changed this behavior is because one day I actually nearly killed the passenger in my car when I lost my temper and started to chase someone down the road, and I nearly drove into the back of a tipper lorry that had broken down. If I hadn't been able to just pull out of the way, I missed that tipper load by a couple of inches, and if I'd hit it, I would have killed the passenger in my car. So it really made me take a step back and think about what I was doing. Now you could relate that to any other circumstance that you're in. The thing that's missing in here is meaning. Generally, you won't have an emotional response to something unless you give it meaning. So as I said earlier on, if I don't think of— if I think about something that I don't really care about or has no emotional connection to me, I'm hardly— I'm not really going to react to it. But I have an emotion because I give it meaning. So this thought here is something that means something to me. Now, it may be something that doesn't need to be there, but it's the meaning that I give it that creates this state. So if I can understand what my thoughts are, and then I can understand what the meaning is that I give to those thoughts, I can understand my emotional Responses and the reactions that I then give. Where do your thoughts come from? So look at the three Ps, and the three Ps are. Your past, your perception, and your pain. Now, your past is what will influence your thoughts. Everything you've experienced will create a perception about yourself, about relationships, about your career, about everything that you then do, because you're learning from your experiences. And your experiences will create your perception of certain events. If those perceptions come from pain, then they will trigger things in your present that will cause you to generally have an overactive, an overreactive emotion to certain events. Because we don't have a tendency to process pain very well. The stories that I told you earlier on gave me a perception of myself which was very damaging. So damaging, in fact, that I actually rejected my own name. When I was on holiday one year and I was in my mid-twenties, I had— I won a raffle and I got up on stage and the guy said, what's your name? And when I said John, I felt really flushed and embarrassed. I thought because I was standing in front of all these people, I've just won this prize, I'd also had a few drinks, so I didn't understand at the time that it was actually because I'd actually rejected— I was rejecting myself. Just saying my name out loud made me feel so uncomfortable that it embarrassed me. And that's the reason why John Kenny Coaching came about. When I was thinking of a name for my coaching business I thought, what better name than to show that I actually finally accept who I am by plastering my name everywhere? So that's why I called John Kenny Coaching that name, is because it shows I had finally accepted who I was. So we have a tendency to process pain. On my YouTube channel, I've got a series of videos And one of them talks about the escalation of loss and how we deal with loss. And loss involves pain. Pain is something we have a tendency to avoid. Your brain doesn't like it. So we put in coping mechanisms, we put things in place in order to deal with that pain. But what that pain does then, by not being addressed, it festers, it never gets resolved, and it leads to other outcomes that we don't necessarily want. Because we're not sure how to deal with it. And if you are growing up in an environment where you're not taught how to soothe yourself, so you're not taught that everything's going to be okay, then as you get older, you don't really know what to do with those emotions either. So when you're older, you don't know how to self-soothe because you've never been shown how to be looked after emotionally. Our saddle is where we sit on our life, and if we're sitting on our wounds, then that pain is constant. It never really goes anywhere, even though we may not feel it on a day-in and day-out basis. There will be things that will happen in our life that will trigger that pain. That will then generally trigger the coping mechanisms that we put in place as a child in order to help us cope with those situations. Now, most of this does come from your childhood unless you've experienced some kind of trauma later on in life, then nearly everything that you do which is negative as a— in respect to having a reaction when you're older Will come from something that you've learned in childhood, and then those experiences as the stories that I told you earlier on—they get built upon and they get built upon and they get built upon until we come to an understanding about ourselves which form our beliefs. And the beliefs sit on our bicycle sort of where your water bottle would be, because we tap into our beliefs when we need some kind of sustaining behavior to happen. Beliefs are massively powerful. When we're born, we are born with one real primary instinct, and that's to survive. And As we get older, it is a belief that is the only real, really powerful thing that can override that. So people that kill themselves, generally because they feel like there's— or they believe there's no other option to get out of the situation they're in. Or if there are terrorists and people blow themselves up, they have a belief that's strong enough for them to die. Now, if that can overcome your need to survive, it shows how powerful your beliefs can be. Now, if you've never dealt with your wounds and your pain, these beliefs can stay with you all of your life. Such as my core belief became that I was never going to amount to anything and I wasn't worth very much. So every time in my, in my life that, that I would start to be successful, my belief would kick in and it would tell me that you're never going to amount to anything. You need to do something now to prove that to be true. I was so concrete in my beliefs, even though they were sitting in my subconscious, that I would then— my brain would then get me to act out in a certain way, which would then take away my ability to be successful, to feel like I was worth something. And then I would have to do something in my life which would show me that the belief that I was holding was true. And if we don't address this, our direction will always be the same. We will keep going around in a cycle because our pain, if it's not addressed, will always be triggered. Our perceptions will always be the same based on the fact of the beliefs that we hold on to. They all interlink. And then depending on what we believe and how we perceive situations, that will trigger our thoughts. So for instance, with the road rage, my immediate thought was I'd been disrespected. Now, that was a subconscious thought. I didn't realize I was thinking that at the time. But then that led to a difficult emotion because of the meaning I gave that, which reverted back to when I was a kid. When I was the one that had to apologize, when I was the one that was told off first, when I was the one that didn't get my own way, it was always about me apologizing to someone else. It was always about me being punished For things perhaps I hadn't even done. So that feeling would come back. That was the meaning that I gave that thought, and therefore the emotion that I got would then drive my reactions, and then the consequences of my behavior would lead me to feel pretty rubbish. Now what we can do is try and understand the wounds that we're sitting on, how we perceive things, the pain that we're carrying, and what beliefs that we're holding on to. Because if we do that, we can then change this. Because the initial thought might still be there, because these things are hardwired in your brain. When you are a child, you're born in survival mode, and you're also born in a learning mode too, because it's a vitally important time for you to pick up information. So the things that we learn when we're children have a tendency to stick. First of all, because they teach us how to survive. So if we experience a lot of difficult circumstances, our brain says you need to be able to survive this, what are you going to do? And it puts things in place in order for us to be able to do that. And it also learns them at a very deep level because the brainwaves of a child are slower and therefore they absorb information much more quickly. And so they can go in really, really deeply and form these neurons in your brain, which then as you get older, when certain circumstances happen, these neurons get triggered and our subconscious decides how to deal with these circumstances. But what we can do is we can create new neurons. So what we want to be able to practice is different. Thought processes, and then different behaviors. And we can challenge those thoughts. If we don't know why we're doing something, we need to take a step back and have a look. What did I think? What do I believe? How do I perceive this situation? And what am I actually feeling that's causing this kind of cycle to go around? If you can change your thought, you can make this a more positive outcome. Or you can just stop it progressing any further. Now, the only problem with that is, is depending on how deeply held your beliefs are, it can stop you from moving forward. So if you don't think you deserve good things and you try and change this, then procrastination can start. And that's what I call resistance. And that is when we put the brakes on. We put the brakes on change. Change can be difficult because our brain likes certainty. Our brain likes the familiar. Now, when I was having— when I had relationships in the past, I would have a tendency to choose the same types of relationships that reminded me of the things I experienced as a child, and then subsequently had difficult relationships with other people, which then reinforced and concreted my belief about what relationships were all about. My brain would then look for something familiar when it came to relationships, and all the time I thought I was looking for something new, I was actually looking for something exactly the same because that was my comfort zone. That was my safe space. My safe space as a child was generally to be by myself. So as an adult, I would always try to aim to be back by myself where I felt safest. So therefore, I would choose relationships which would then take me back to that point in that circle. So here I was. have a relationship. My belief was I wasn't worth very much, so I would choose relationships which would prove that to me. I'd get to that point where that would be proved, something destructive would then happen, and I'd come back to my safe space, which is here, which is being by myself. It was only when I learned my pattern, what I was actually choosing for myself, that I was actually able to interact with my beliefs and my thought processes And say, what am I doing? Do I really want to do this? Is it something I can change? And I allowed myself to follow a different pattern because we have a tendency to look for what we don't want a lot of the time. So I was telling myself, I don't want a relationship which is like the past. I don't want one where I'm going to feel rubbish. But the problem with that is anything on my radar was Because I was looking out for everything that I didn't want, and I was missing all of the good stuff. So somebody that could have been really healthy for me, I was letting them pass me by because I wasn't looking for them. So when we're thinking about changing this, it's a change of how whole of our mindset around us. What do we want? What do we allow in our lives? What don't we allow? What do we deserve? What do we think we deserve? And where all this comes from. And there are things you can do in order to change that. As I said, the first thing to do is to understand yourself. Understand where you come from. Understand what your patterns are. What your pain might be that you're holding on to. What wounds are you sitting on? What are your beliefs? And how do they manifest in your life? Do you recognize that some of the behaviors that you have come from the decisions that you make? It doesn't mean that the things that are going on are necessarily— they're not your fault. It's just understanding that sometimes the things that are happening in our lives are our responsibility, and we have the ability to change them. If you're treated badly, that's not your fault. That's the responsibility of the person that's treating you badly. But what's your role? Are you allowing that to happen? Are you choosing that to happen because you're aiming to get back to a safe space like I was? So understanding this will be able to help you to move your life forward. I'll just give you a few seconds to just make sure you've got that all written down. I'm just seeing if there's any comments or questions at the moment. No. So I hope you found that useful. The Bicycle Effect is, uh, something that's available, um, on my new membership site, and I'll talk to you a little bit more about that later. Um, it's, uh, some of the stories also that I told you are available in my book. Which you may have seen, the People Program on the membership site that I'm running. I'm going to tell you, like I said, a bit more about it later, um, but I'm gonna— I've put all of my— a lot of the coaching stuff that I do, I've put it on all on PDF downloadable formats, and you're going to be able to download all of the coaching tips and tricks from this membership site, copy of my book, copy of The Bicycle Effect book as well. So you'll be able to access a lot of this coaching stuff via my membership site, which I will tell you about a bit later on. We've got another speaker coming up in about 20 minutes. If there are any questions about this, please do pop them into the box below, and I'll just see if there's anything in there at the moment. I'll give that a couple of minutes. In the meantime, any questions? No? Cool. I hope you've got your bicycle drawn out and you're going to be able to think about how it relates to you in your life. And you can use this for anything, it's not just about relationships, it could be affecting your work, it could be affecting anything that goes on in your life because the things that you're doing at the moment could be holding you back. So think about what you're doing, your choices, what you allow, what you don't allow. Do you find something similar to me, that as you would move forward in your life, that you would get to a certain place in your life where you'd feel like you were doing, doing really well, and then all of a sudden it would all start to go wrong? That you would take your foot off the gas, that you would do something which would take you into a state of distractedness. Perhaps chaos. And because also there's a thing that once we get used to a certain way of doing things, then it's really difficult sometimes for our brains and our bodies to be able to switch away from that. There's quite a lot of research coming out now about how your body craves certain emotions as well because of the hormone that it releases, but also the state that it creates for yourself. So if you're used to a life like this, and then you decide to change things, and then your life becomes a little bit like this, then sometimes that really will freak your brain out. And your brain will look for things to take you back to this kind of idea of chaos. And it's the same with your body. If your body's got used to being in this chaotic state, then what will happen is that your body will send messages to your brain to say, I need to be back in this state again, how can you help me? And your brain will then decide to do things which will help put your body back at ease. Now, if your, your body is at ease under stress or in pain or in anger, then unfortunately, then your, your body could be telling you to do things that you don't really want So that's another thing that we just need to check in with when we are trying to put change in place. If we start to feel uncomfortable with change, then it can be because our brain is rejecting the thought of it entirely, and it wants to keep you in the same state that you've always been. So it's really important that you check in with that. One of the things that you can do to change your beliefs is to be disbelieving and create new beliefs. So every time that you recognize that you might be saying to yourself, well, you're a bit rubbish, you're not going to get this anyway, is just to tell yourself that's not true. I can get what I want. I deserve better. I deserve more. The more that you start to tell yourself different things, the more quickly you're going to build up these neurons in your brain. But a good way to start with that is if you don't feel comfortable being really nice to yourself, which I know when I first started doing this, I, I was okay. That's how I started. That's how I felt kind of uncomfortable but managed to be able to be nice to me by just saying, you know what, John, you're okay. That's gradually grown up now, so I won't tell you what I say now because it's got swear words in it and I don't know if there's any children watching. But it's something to do about being really awesome. And it's about just being able to accept that for yourself, because you've spent so long with this perception of you that we need to create a new one. But the first way to— the beginning to the way to do that is to say, I don't believe that anymore. That's an old belief. What I believe is this. And you can start to positively reaffirm things with yourself. Stop telling yourself off. And you can start to move on in your life. If you go to the John Kenny Coaching website, we have now got a membership page. So the membership site is all things coaching, all around the interpersonal relationship coaching approach. And as you can see, at the moment we are offering a special price. An opening offer of £49 a month with a minimum term of 3 months. Even though it says term, I need to change that. And or if you wanted to book, join up for 6 months, it's only £234. So you're saving £10 a month off the normal membership. The membership page here just tells you all about the membership. You're actually on the YouTube at the moment, and one of the videos in there will tell you all about the membership. It's Once you've joined up— let's open that up. Where are we? Where's that gone? I can't see this. Maybe this one. Let's have a look. Bear with me for one second. Why is that not open? There we go, that's why. Sorry about that. Okay, once you've signed up to the membership site, you will get access to all of the content. So all you need to do is log in. So we've got an audio program here, the How to Create a Positive Mindset in 3 Weeks audio program, and then you've got your 6-week stress management video program. There's a copy of the People Program book, so you'll get a PDF version of that to download. There's the Bicycle Effect book and video, and on these, as you move down here, These are where your downloadable PDFs will be. So if you're looking to reach your goals and dreams, then what we need to do is just click onto the goals page, and there you have a list. All of these things in blue here, they're all downloadable PDF sheets. For you to be able to, uh, click on, download, read through, copy, do what you want with them because they'll be yours. If you want to understand yourself a little bit more, again, just click on the page. There's the sheets here. All you need to do is just click on the list of sheets there. They're all exercises and coaching tips and tools and stuff that you can use. And then right at the bottom, there's a couple of hypnotherapy downloads as well. So how to manage your anger via hypnotherapy and also helping you to sleep better via hypnosis. So you can listen to those whenever you need to. As I said earlier, we are doing the monthly membership at £49, and all you need to do is to go to www.johnkenny.co.uk johnkennicoaching.com/membership. Um, they— on, on that page there, you'll be able to have a look at the details of the membership, and then you can sign up for the 6 months at £234 instead of £294, which is how much it would usually cost for 6 months. Or you could sign up for the monthly membership, which is £49 a month, and you can gain access to all of the coaching On there, not only that, we will be holding live Q&A sessions. So if you want to delve into the world of coaching and you're not really sure if you're ready to take the plunge in speaking to a coach themselves at the moment, then we will have live Q&A sessions running throughout the month where you can send in questions or come on live with myself, and we'll be answering questions around coaching relationships and everything that you need to know. And we will also be doing live webinars, so live webinar trainings will be included, and then they'll all be recorded and popped onto the website so you can revisit those anytime you like. If you are interested in one-to-one coaching and you'd like to know more on a more personal basis, then you can also contact me, John Kenny, at www.johnkennicoaching.com and just click on the contact button there, or drop me an email at john@johnkennicoaching.com. And we can talk about what the coaching that you need in your life.