Just Two Things: Recent Episodes
Ewan Mochrie
The brand new podcast from NLP Master Trainer Ewan Mochrie. Exploring NLP, Time Line Therapy and Hypnosis to broaden the toolkit for where you are going in your life
Most people would agree that being in a committed long-term romantic relationship with another human being is one of the greatest gifts that life can offer. And that being in an unhappy one is a whole lot worse than being single. Positive romantic relationships can bring joy, and even better health outcomes in our lives. And being in a relationship which is not happy is challenging. But how do you learn how to make relationships work. From your parents, or friends maybe, certainly not in school. This podcast is about relationships and draws on advice from renowned couple’s therapists. So, regardless of the form of relationship you are currently in and even if you are single, there will be something you can learn about relationships in this podcast.
Human evolution is a fascinating subplot in the history of life on Earth. What makes us different is our ability to walk upright and our large brain. Upright walking evolved first about four million years ago. Our branch of the Hominin tree of life, Homo sapiens, are currently judged to have arrived on the world stage about three-hundred-thousand years ago. As well as evolving a large brain, how we use that brain has been, and continues to evolve too.
On this podcast I am going to explore a psychological model that maps out the evolution of human thinking. This model was developed by Clare Garves, and it details how humans think, what motivates us, how we like to organise ourselves because of that, and how that thinking changes over time. When I look at the world through this Gravesian lens the world becomes much easier to understand. Don Beck, who worked with Clare Graves used this system to advise the South African government as it transitioned away from apartheid in the early 1990s. It is useful for leaders, managers, and coaches, because it can give you a sense of the different motivational hot buttons that people have, and how someone’s thinking might evolve next. It also helps us to understand what might be next for humanity, if we continue to evolve that is.
One of the enduring mysteries of life is death. Even though we often push the idea away, we all know that death awaits us at some point in the future. Religious belief systems reassure us that there is a heavenly after life realm, and at the same time attempt to scare us into good behaviour with the idea of a hellish alternative if we are bad. Modern, secular, scientific thinking scorns the whole idea of life after death. If you believe, as materialistic science does, that consciousness is produced by and in the brain, then the death of the physical body means the end of your consciousness. There is nothing else to experience. To some degree, you do need to make yourself comfortable with the idea of the death of your loved ones, and of yourself. Of course, you always can delay having to face the idea until it happens.
On this podcast episode I am going to explore Near-Death-Experiences. These are accounts of what people experienced, whilst they were clinically dead. Not only does this subject gives us information about what could await all of us eventually, it also tells us more about how we should be living our physical lives on Earth too.
When we’re born, we come into this world like a new personal computer. Our operating systems are in place and functioning, but we don’t yet have any applications downloaded. As we go through life we are constantly, often unconsciously, downloading various applications from the environment around us. We are little biological learning machines. But what are we learning, how efficiently, effectively, and how consciously are we learning?
In this, so called Post Truth World where we are saturated by social media, filled with influencers who sometimes present content of dubious veracity, and where mainstream media and politicians spin a message to suit their own agenda, knowledge is the antidote.
You may want to learn because you have qualifications that you want to get. Or you may have children who are learning. Or you may just like learning for the sake of it. Or maybe you follow Gandhi’s instruction to, “Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.” Whatever your reason for learning may be, my intention is that by listening to this episode you can learn something new about learning.
On this episode I talk about mindset, what is it, and if you need to, how do you change it.
Today the world faces many challenges. I believe that the way to tackle these issues is to re-understand what our experience is about and how reality works. We need to update our model of the world, we need a New Paradigm.
Leadership is one of the most studied but least understood subjects in the psychological and social sciences. But it is an essential component of making any organisation successful. Though it is hard to teach, it can be learned, and it can also be coached. On this Podcast episode I will look at key elements of leadership and highlight these with some examples from history.
You could be leading just a handful of people all the way through to a large organisation, or even a country. Your leadership could be in a family, social group, a sports setting, a charity, a corporation, in the military, or even politically. Either way there will be something on this Podcast that you can learn from.
Although good leadership can sometimes be difficult to describe, you tend to know it when you see it. Today I believe we are being starved of good leadership by our political, business, and spiritual leaders. I believe that humanity is rapidly approaching a significant bifurcation point. We are about to be confronted with stark choices about our future. If we don’t significantly up our leadership game, then this test is one that we will flunk. Perhaps you are one of the aspiring leaders that the world needs today. If you are, remember that becoming a leader is about growing into more of who you are; it is about fully becoming you.
The pursuit of happiness is assumed by many people to be the purpose of living. But do we need to pursue it, can’t we just be happy because that’s what we chose to be?
Sonja Lyubomirsky is a psychologist who has studied happiness. In her book The How of Happiness, she says –
“Happier people are more sociable and energetic, more charitable and cooperative, and better liked by others…happier people are more likely to get married and to stay married, and to have a richer network of friends and social support…they show more flexibility and ingenuity in their thinking and are more productive in their jobs. They are better leaders and negotiators and earn more money. They are more resilient in the face of hardship, have stronger immune systems and are physically healthier. Happy people even live longer.”
Another eminent happiness researcher was psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. He discovered that people were the happiest when they were in the state that he called flow. Flow is when we are involved in an activity to the extent that nothing else matters. Our ego falls away. Time flies. Every action, movement and thought follows inevitably from the previous one. Your whole being is involved, and you’re using your skills to the utmost. But what is the flow state, how do you access it and what is achievable for you when you do?
On this Just Two Things podcast I explore the idea of happiness and how to achieve it and the state of being called Flow.
There are a handful of thinkers, writers and speakers who have influenced me the most, and it is two of these Wayne Dyer and Stephen Covey that I talk about in this session of my podcast.
Wayne Dyer is the author of what is, in my opinion, the best personal development book ever written, Your Erroneous Zones. To date this book has sold over 35 million copies, and it is also one of the most gifted books in the world. The best way to summarise the book is through Wayne Dyers own words. He said that it is…
“An approach that relies on responsibility for and commitment to yourself, plus an appetite for living and a desire to be all that you choose to at this moment. It’s an uncomplicated approach, a common-sense approach.”
Your Erroneous Zones helps to highlight incorrect thinking and gives the reader ideas about how to change. It helps people to build self-worth and to begin fully expressing themselves as the person that they want to be. As you do so you become independent.
And as you master this sense of being independent you can then kick into a higher gear by incorporating the thinking of Stephen Covey, as expressed in his book The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. By doing so you then become truly interdependent.
If these were the only two personal development books, you ever read you would still be fully armed to become the person you want to be.
These books have guided my thinking and they are well aligned with the philosophical basis of Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP). By listening to this episode you can incorporate the ideas of two personal development giants into your life too.
“You cannot be lonely if you like the person you’re alone with.” Wayne Dyer
“Life is not about accumulation, it is about contribution.” Stephen Covey
This episode is an introduction to stories and metaphors. The more you explore the idea of using stories, analogies, anecdotes, and metaphors in the way you communicate the more you will understand just how deep a subject this really is.
There are many reasons to use storytelling. People find that stories are more memorable than cold hard information. This makes storytelling useful in the business world too. You can make a sales pitch or a presentation more memorable by incorporating elements of storytelling. It is also useful in a leadership setting. Here you can inspire people by engaging them with stories. One of the ways that children learn about the world and what strategies to use in it is through stories. And much of our religious or spiritual understanding is conveyed through stories too. We also make up narratives about who we are and how the world works and carry these with us in our consciousness as we navigate our way through life. And of course, our novels, plays, and films are all stories too.
During this episode I will introduce the idea of the Hero’s Journey, which was originally codified by Joseph Campbell in his 1949 book The Hero with a Thousand Faces. Campbell explored ancient myths and stories and identified a common theme running through them. This Hero’s Journey is a human archetype. Hitting the beats of this in a story makes the story more appealing, because it is an archetype that at the very least resonates with our unconscious. I will also explore how our unconscious mind likes to find connections between the characters and events in a story and relate that to our own lives. This is the basic structure of a metaphor.
Explore this episode for yourself and discover more about your own story.
“Opportunities to find deeper powers within ourselves come when live seems most challenging.” Joseph Campbell
Hypnosis is associated with Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP), because one of the people who was studied in the creation of it was a medical doctor and hypnotist, Milton Erickson. And because the creators of NLP noticed that hypnosis is a very effective tool for personal change. Still many people have strange ideas about what hypnosis is, this may well be because their experience of it comes from watching a stage show. Here hypnosis can look like a loss of self-control or being controlled by someone else. But simply put hypnosis is a form of trance. And trance is a natural and normal part of being human. You can be in a trance whilst driving. You are driving along and then 15 minutes later you are like, “Where am I? How did I get here?”. All the time you were driving for those 15 minutes you probably didn’t think you were in a trance. It was only when you came out of it you thought anything odd occurred. You can also be in a trance watching TV, or in a meeting, or a training, and whilst falling asleep or waking in the morning, as you pass through the hypnagogic state. The trance state is a natural and normal part of being human. One of the things about a hypnotic trance is that it puts your mind into a receptive state to accept positive suggestions. This is why it so useful in personal development, and at the same time why it is used on the stage.
The techniques of hypnosis point the western mind in the direction of unused abilities or potential within the unconscious. To the eastern mind, with its long traditions of yoga and meditations these ideas are not new. Eastern philosophic writings were only translated into western languages in the 1820s, and the more widespread study and use of its practices only started in the 1960s. Today it is not uncommon for people to meditate, and mindfulness is even taught in schools. There are several purposes of meditation, one is this sense of focusing the mind in the present moment. When we feel negative emotions, we are living in the past, and when we feel anxiety, we are living in the future. Meditation is about training the mind to reside in the present. Now let’s not pretend that we can live our whole lives always in the present. But let’s increase the amount of time that we do spend being in the now. Mindfulness is then about taking this sense of living in the now off the meditation cushion and into our day to day lives. Become more aware of your life and what is happening around you in each moment. Become mindful rather than mind full.
So, what are the similarities and differences between western hypnosis and eastern meditation. At a superficial level they will feel very similar. A light hypnotic trance and a light meditative state are qualitatively indistinguishable. Indeed, if you listen to a guided meditation, you are effectively doing hypnosis. But beyond that the intention of the two practices is different, and at their deeper levels they feel different too. What both do share though is this sense of using more of the power of your own mind, so that you can grow into more of who you are.
I believe that humanity is slowly beginning to awaken from its own self-induced trance. For thousands of years, we have been asleep to who we really are and what we can really achieve. Now as we slowly awaken from this slumber. One of the paradoxes for us is that part of the awakening process is that we will realise that we are still asleep, and that we are the dreamer of the dream.
“Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes.” Carl Jung
Feeling emotions, good or bad, is an everyday aspect of being human. We constantly undertake activities that we believe will bring us a sense of happiness, joy, fulfilment, accomplishment, success, fun, or purpose. Experiencing these emotions helps us to feel fully human. And yet there are times in our lives when instead we feel anger, sad, fear, guilt, hurt, shame, or jealousy to name a few of our darker moods. These too are part of being human. The problem comes when negative emotions start to take over our lives.
I love history because it is jam-packed full of interesting stories, extraordinary events, and fascinating people. History is the story of how we ended up where we are now. It is the reason that people speak certain languages; why countries have the borders that they do; and why people follow certain belief systems; as well as so much more. By understanding the past we can put the present into its proper context.
The first in a brand new series helping you get more out of yourself and more out out of life. A little bit about Ewan Mochrie, NLP Master Trainer and why ‘Just Two Things’?