Benay: Welcome to another episode of Coach Pep Talk, the podcast for people who run their own coaching businesses. Each week I talk to an expert who shares wisdom that helps us be better coaches and better coaching business owners. This week I’ve got Mike Bundrant right from the iNLP Center on the line and he’s talking to us all about self-sabotaging behavior that help people stay stuck and he is going to show us a technique that helps you go from completely stark to an aha moment. So check us out on the other side.

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Benay: I’d like to introduce today’s guest Mike Bundrant who is the founder of the iNLP Center and there’s an NLP practitioner, an Ian Fellow trainer, and retired psychotherapist. He became certified in NLP way back in 1993 and got his certification from Michael Grinder after three days of watching him razzle and dazzle the room. Something that he says he’ll never forget. We’ve got Mike on the line today talking about self-sabotaging behavior that keeps you stuck and he’s going to show us an amazing technique on how to get from stuck to an aha moment.

Benay: Hello Mike and welcome to the show.

Mike: Hello Benay and thanks for having me, really appreciate it.

Benay: I am so curious to hear your unique perspective on self-sabotage and I’m sure our audience is going to appreciate it too. So before we get into that could you please set the stage a little bit for everybody, so we’re all coming from the same place, and explain to me and to the listeners what it is self-sabotage?

Mike: Sure. Self-sabotage is essentially, wittingly or unwittingly, acting against your own best interest. So commonly people say I’m getting in my own way, or if we’re talking about other people we often say well he acts like he wants these bad things to happen to him, those kinds of things. It’s easier to see other people, of course than ourselves, but it’s when we see the world in a certain way, often accompanied by certain feelings that don’t serve us, and certainly act in ways that don’t make us happy especially when there are other alternatives. And so it’s that phenomenon where it’s like okay I know I want something, I’ve got this goal, I want to get to it, I want to start a business, I want to market my coaching practice say, and then even though I consciously I want that that’s what I’m aware of, I find myself talking myself out of it. Or I’m procrastinating, or distracting myself, or maybe even there some sort of self-sabotaging fear that comes along with it. So in one way shape or form or another I don’t follow through and I do the opposite of what makes me happy. So in a way we could sort of boil it down to that. Doing the opposite of what makes you happy. Doing the opposite of what’s productive. And for the most part a really important aspect of the definition of self-sabotage is that for most of us it happens on an unconscious level. In other words, we certainly see that we’re doing it, but the drive, the motivation most of us find consciously very frustrating and we don’t necessarily understand it. So if I’m on a diet and losing weight and so on and so forth and then suddenly I start talking myself into and justifying breaking the diet, Oh I did really well today so I deserve to have a snack, or anything that we might say to ourselves or any way that we might feel that sort of leads us into sabotaging the diet. Certainly we’re going to feel frustrated, disappointed. We don’t want that to happen. We know that we’re doing it and we tell ourselves ah we don’t care and have a moment of self-sabotage. But understanding the underlying reasons for it are almost certainly unconscious. They’re outside of our awareness and consciously we typically find very very frustrating. So anyways, long winded definition, but that’s sort of how I would set the stage.

Benay: And it sounds like you know if you have the key to unlocking self-sabotage, I guess for yourself, and your coaching business, and for your clients then you are really onto a big winner.

Mike: It really is a big winner. When you, in terms of the training that we offer at the iNLP Center, which is you know, NLP and life coach training, we factor in this… uh We include this unique perspective on self-sabotage because it’s so helpful on so many levels. I mean if you’re a coach and even if you’re doing great coaching with your clients and giving them excellent motivation, great tools, and strategies, and so forth and yet you’re not necessarily addressing the underlying self-sabotage issue then you know getting clients to follow through and continue on with the coaching and learn to adapt to their new successful life, these kinds of things are much more difficult because most of us have some deep inner blocks against the things that we want and we may even know. I mean I can have a diet plan beautifully laid out. I can have great tools to motivate myself. I can have all kinds of tools and they don’t help me in those moments when I say I don’t care anymore. They don’t help me in those self-sabotaging moments, so being able to address dress that makes you much more effective as a coach.

Benay: So you’ve got to be able to as a coach you need to be able to dig into that core and find those deep inner blocks, I guess within yourself first and also within your clients.

Mike: I think to even understand our model you really have to go through it yourself, which is sort of how the whole model developed, out of my frustration with all the wonderful tools and strategies that I had at my disposal. I mean I was at the time I’d been over 20 years as an NLP trainer and sort of a background in mental health counselling, I learned NLP right out of college so I was an NLP zealot. I mean these tools and skills and strategies were in my mind revolutionary, in many ways they are. And when you get in the trenches with people, with clients who have no interest in NLP or any tool, they are just coming because they’re struggling to therapy or coaching or what have you, a lot of the tools and strategies are the methods that we’re trained in as coaches, they don’t do as well in live coaching or therapy as they do when we learn them in the coach training room when everybody was sort of buying into it. We paid for the workshop and we want it to work and well real life clients and work in the trenches is different. And then in my own life, there were areas of self-sabotage, really frustrating areas for me that the tools and skills that I have, I couldn’t, I wasn’t applying them and so I kept asking my question. How is it that a human being can have everything they need, all the tools, all the strategies, all the support to move ahead and do something that they want to do and yet not do it? In other words, why don’t we just apply everything that we know and move forward? Why would we do something that makes us miserable? And that actually led me into studying psychoanalysis, of all things, right? Now I’m an NLP trainer and life coach, I studied psychoanalysis and some of these deeper principles, they have to do with how this happens. Actually a gentleman that was that ran Freud’s Vienna clinic that came up with a theory about why we move toward the negative again and again and again and that really captivated me. So to come up with our self-sabotage model, I kind of blended that sort of deeper, really complicated, psychoanalytical approach and turned it into something that is appropriate for the coaching world. It’s not therapy. And yet it really cuts to the heart of the matter quickly in a nonclinical way and sort of makes it all very, very accessible and we called the model the AHA Solution because people get a big aha moment.

Benay: Aha.

Mike: And so forth so that’s kind of how it came, how it all came to pass.

Benay: I’m sure everybody’s listening, like myself included, are wondering can you tell us about this Aha? How does it work?

Mike: In other words, why do we move toward the negative? Why don’t we apply what we know? To put it in a nutshell, it comes down to a couple of things; One, is the fact that you know when you’re born and you’re raised on the earth with human parents among human beings you cannot and will not escape negativity. It’s just part of the deal. Even when your parents are loving, well intended, attentive parents, because you got to think about how we come out. We come out with no boundaries, no sense of other people, no sense of time, and when our needs are…when we experience our needs as baby’s, that’s it. It’s all coming down right now and the fact that mom is on the phone and will be with you in just a moment, no, there is no sense of time. And so babies become enraged right? Even when we we’re about to do something we want to do that will kill us like stick, as a toddler stick the car keys into the light socket and Mom or Dad grab the keys away, we’re angry right? I mean they just saved our life, but were we’re angry and we cry. I mean given the setup, there’s no escaping kind of a chronic influx of negativity. Bumping into boundaries, bumping into limitations, when we have no concept of limitations. Being told no. Now when we have bad parents or even abusive parents, of course that piles on negativity all the more. So we’ve got to do something with this negativity and what we…the only thing we can learn to do is ultimately learn to tolerate it, and familiarize it, adapt to it, and that’s kind of what happens. There are several different principles that suggest that while this adaptation to negativity is happening, and as we become so familiar to negativity, that ultimately negativity will become kind of an unconscious magnet for us, if we don’t consciously assimilate it we’ll be drawn to it. And so, because what’s familiar is safe and what’s safe is attractive. What’s not familiar is foreign and what’s foreign is terrifying. A sort of primal instinct. And so we develop this familiarity, this adaptation to negativity and the safe thing to do is to continue to seek more of it. The devil that you know kind of thing. So if you had rejecting parents, being with rejecting people in your life, having rejecting people in your life, is going to feel, deep down, it’s going to feel safer. It’s more of what you know. Having very accepting people in your life consciously might sound very pleasing. It’s what we want, and may even fantasize about it, but when it comes right down to it we’re going to be more comfortable with rejecting people. Or controlling people. Raised by controlling parents that control might not like it consciously., However, that’s what’s going to be familiar on a deep level. We’re going to be seeking out controlling people depriving people, neglectful people, and so on and so forth. These patterns’ that we’ve adapted to that are familiar and therefore safe and the opposite is foreign and therefore scary, it keeps us in this rut again and again and again and unconsciously we are finding every excuse in the world to stay there. And that’s how it happens.

Benay: Now that we are stuck, what can we do about it? Or how can we help our clients past that?

Mike: Yeah.

Benay: Where do you start?

Mike: It’s really a matter of consciously understanding what’s going on. And there are so many different sort of smokescreens that we put up to even shield ourselves from what’s going on. So let me give you one example, in our Aha Solution program, we have a kind of style, a self-sabotaging style that we call the rebel. Kind of a rebellious personality, someone who fights, resists expectations, don’t tell me what to do you know, stick it to the man kind of personality and it, every rebel I talked to that finally is in a place where he or she is saying, I just have had enough and I don’t know what to do anymore, I’ve hit rock bottom with this whole thing, and my life isn’t working because of this. It’s shocking to them that deep down what they’re really moving toward, what they are really wanting to attract in their life is a sense of being controlled. It’s the last thing on earth that would occur to them.

Benay: It’s a paradox.

Mike: It’s a paradox, right, that deep down unconsciously they are behaving in such a way as to encourage other people to control them. That’s the deal and when they see, it blows their mind. It’s sort of like, okay now let’s imagine I’m a manager of a business, I’ve got 10 employees, line up these 10 employees, nine of these employees are basically co-operative and do their job. The tenth employee is a rebel. Now which employee am I going to be intervening on, micromanaging, making sure that he or she is doing their job, which employee invites the intervention of authority, right? The nine that basically cooperate and do their job, or the tenth who constantly rebels and resist expectation. As a manager I’m going to be all over that tenth one, and that’s the rebel that’s the one that hates authority, that’s the one that hates being told what to do. However, it backfires again and again and again. So we all have these ways. The thing that we hate most in life, the thing we hate feeling the most, the thing we hate doing the most, the people that are in our lives that we hate being around the most, we have a kind of a script in there on autopilot that is driving us toward that. And to get off that autopilot we have to consciously understand it and own it and realize it. It’s happening unconsciously. And so and we don’t even see it it’s like in fact we are trying to make the opposite thing happen. Right? Like I don’t want authority intervening on me and so I’m going to prove to them that they can’t tell me what to do so they leave me alone, and that attitude is the very thing that gets them to monitor me even more. And I don’t realize that deep down I’m seeking out this control. And with every one of these situations there’s various different what we call type’s, there’s various different types. You know there’s a self-defeating type. There’s a warrior type. There’s a perfectionist type, these kinds of things where depending on our style and what we do it leads us into the exact thing that we hate. Which could be an ongoing sense of rejection, feeling like an outcast, feeling like I don’t belong. Could be an ongoing sense of emptiness, that my life has no meaning and kind of everything is futile and I never will discover my purpose here on Earth and fulfilment is for other people, Not for me. These kind of core states we unwittingly sustain by virtue of the way we see the world and by virtue of the way we act. But it’s the last thing on earth that we think we’re doing. So in order to change it, we have to see it and there is where the aha moment has to come. It’s like when a rebellious type realizes, oh my gosh it’s like I’m a magnet for authority. Given what I do, I mean what on earth, it’s the last thing on earth that would have occurred to me. And yet it’s what I’m doing. When The rebel has that moment, when anybody has that moment about things in their life that they can’t change, that are frustrating, then that opens up the opportunity to really take ownership of the issue, to understand it, to step into it. And that’s got to happen if you’re ever going to have influence over it. We can’t make choices about things of which we are unaware. Outside of consciousness, I can’t make a conscious choice. So 90 percent of the battle is getting to that aha moment.

Benay: I have so many questions for you Mike.

Mike: Oh good!

Benay: Okay, if you’re coaching somebody and they have this aha moment, sometimes I don’t know, I found in experiences like you feel like it should be an aha moment, but they take it quite flat. So somehow they have an Aha moment but your client hasn’t.

Mike: Right.

Benay: What do you look for in your client? How do you calibrate them to actually know that it actually is stuck at a deep level? Like do they cry? Do they say Aha? What’s going on with the client?

Mike: Right. Sometimes they cry, more often they it’s this moment of awe, right? It’s this sort of moment of disbelief, they’re seeing it for the first time and it’s like, oh my Gosh! It’s like that kind of moment where it’s like they have seen the ocean for the first time or something like that. Where, I mean they are literally, I’ve never had someone sort of not verbalize the fact that they were blown away when they have these moments. Then they say things like I never ever thought of it that way before. I can’t believe, it’s absurd but it’s true. I can’t believe I’m doing this but clearly I am. Why would I do it? You know it’s like they’re saying things like that, but they’re clearly verbalizing that they’re having an aha moment. It’s kind of hard, it’s hard to miss. We developed the program called the AHA Solution and that’s available, you know people buy that program who are just interested in personal development. It’s an online learning program but people who are signed up in our NLP and life coach trainings, they…it’s included in that program too, as well as you know how to work with people as a coach in the Aha Solution program. But the program is called the Aha Solution. I also wrote a short eBook about it called “Your Achilles Eel” not heal but eel, sort of read from the perspective of a parasitic eel that has latched onto you and is telling you, sort of like this self-sabotaging part of you is telling you all of its secrets about how it fools you and how it gets you to do the things that you don’t want to do. And I wrote kind of a story eBook about it like that.

Benay: That’s cool! Is it appropriate for kids or is it definitely an adult thing?

Mike: No no no. It’s appropriate for kids, families. I take the role of the eel, and I’m talking to the reader and explaining how I work. Divulging my secrets that’s about it.

Benay: Definitely have to check that out. Okay, Mike, I have a couple more questions before we need to wrap up. But the AHA solution sounds like from the brief discussion we’ve been able to have today, sounds like a key component are these categories, or the types, the rebel, the self-defeating, the warrior. How many types are there?

Mike: Well there are three categories, and under each category there are four what we call attachment types. So We use the term psychological attachments to say these patterns of negativity that you have grown attached to. So on a deeper level you’re psychologically attached to your angst. So there are three categories. One is the attachment to being controlled. In other words, I’ve sort of set myself up in various ways that suit so that I feel controlled by other people. I feel controlled by life or circumstances. And then another categories are deprivation, setting myself up to feel deprived and empty and so forth. And the other is rejection, setting myself up to experience rejection, not belonging. Being an outcast, feeling worthless. Those kinds of things. And then there under each category, there are different styles that that carry out the attachment so under control, the sense of being controlled, the rebel is a style. It’s like one way that I seek to be controlled is to rebel so that everybody controls me, or tries to control me. Right?

Benay: It makes perfect sense when you look at it that way.

Mike: Yeah yeah.

Benay: So Mike, if somebody signs up for the Aha Solution online thing then they can actually, do they take some sort of a test? And then they get I they get told kind of how they fit how they map into these different types?

Mike: Uh, they don’t. The online thing is purely an online learning program. The eBooks included. There’s a whole bunch of worksheets and explainer videos to walk through it, and then there are 13, sorry 14 content oriented videos that are educational in nature and teach you to see it. And then there are step by step instructions where you self-diagnose.

Benay: Okay. Yeah.

Mike: What’s going on. Also when you get any of our programs then you can join our private Facebook group. People are interacting there all the time, both people who are taking NLP training and such, as well as people who just have the personal development program, aren’t interested in certification. And in there you can ask questions. We do webinars every week that are free and included for everybody in community. So you can go on those and ask questions and so forth. So there’s a lot of resources to help you figure things out.

Benay: It sounds great. And just at the time of recording I mean we’re in and we’re in May 2017. How much does that course cost, the Aha solution?

Mike: The AHA solution is a hundred twenty-nine dollars. It actually comes with five other programs which I won’t go into detail now, but it’s one of six programs. It’s 129 dollars. I think you can buy The Aha Solution alone for 79 dollars.

Benay: That’s very affordable.

Mike: With that you get to be part of the community. That never expires and attend workshops if you want every week that don’t expire either. I mean it’s a pretty good community to be a part of.

Benay: It sounds like a great set up. I mean especially if you’re if you’re an experienced coach like me, I’ve been coaching since 2006, or you know even if you’re just getting started, tapping into something like this could be a really good ongoing development. I think personally and for your own clients. Once people actually have done this self-diagnosis with the Aha Solution, so that they’ve got this conscious understanding of what’s going on, then what’s the next step for them?

Mike: The next step could be any number of things. If we were to keep it simple, there’s three different approaches really. One is the simple approach. The other is the sort of deeper work approach, and the other is kind of the bizarre approach.

Benay: Okay.

Mike: And The simple approach suggests that now that you realize what you’re doing and the prerequisite is the Aha moment right? It’s like I’ve revealed something causal, I’ve revealed something I had no idea that I was doing, or maybe I knew I was doing it, I didn’t know the unconscious aspect of it, I didn’t put all the pieces together. And so now that it’s conscious, you can have a conscious choice about it. You couldn’t before, but now you can. And so we have worksheets in the Aha Solution program that help you track on a daily, or a weekly basis, the various situations in which you are fulfilling your drive toward that negative thing. And when you come to see exactly how you’re getting from point A to point B as opposed to just ending up at point B and being frustrated. Now you’ve put all the pieces together and for the first time you can have a conscious choice about it. So the worksheets in the program are all about putting those pieces together so that you can have a conscious choice about it. And so the simple path is now that you’re aware, stop assess your different options right? There’s a dark alley with a mugger in the dark alley, and you didn’t know that there was a mugger in it before, but now you know there’s a mugger in it. And so now you can walk down that dark alley, always an option. Or you going to go a different path right?

Benay: Uh huh

Mike: I mean sometimes we walk down the dark alley anyway.

Benay: But when you do it from a place of conscious choice, it gives you personal responsibility, so it’s coming from at least from a place of empowerment this time.

Mike: Exactly. And in that case I coach people to say, know what if you see the mugger and you go anyways, then be honest about it. I see there’s a dark alley, there’s a mugger in it, and I’m going to get hurt. I’m walking down this dark alley so that I can get hurt and you know and feel hurt. Be honest about it. Right? And the more honest you are about it the more your consciousness expands and therefore the more choice you have. Sometimes going down the second path, things come up, in other words it presents an opportunity to do some work. Maybe there’s a perspective shift that needs to happen. Maybe I have, maybe I’m visualizing things in my head in a certain way that are part of the self-sabotage. And now that all the cards are on the table and I start sorting through them, what I find is that all of the NLP techniques, the Emotional Freedom techniques, all the different methods that a lot of us are trained in, they actual start to work with these tough situations when they may have failed before. because It’s sort of like saying I’m going to do this technique on you and I’m going to take away something that is so familiar and safe to you, so familiar and safe for you. The technique isn’t going to work.

Benay: You need to have that Aha moment first.

Mike: You have the aha moment and you also probably need to give it some time because what happens is if I’m so used…if what’s so familiar to me is living in a state of rejection as opposed to acceptance is foreign to me. I’m going to have to have a little adjustment period where I learn to tolerate acceptance and people don’t think about it that way. But if I go okay I’ve been miserable for 30 years I’m not just going to suddenly one-day transform into happy and be okay with it. It’s much more common when you find the key or a key to your happiness you have to adapt to it. I tell people look you’ve got to give yourself time to learn to tolerate this happiness. It’s not familiar to you. It’s been a fantasy. It hasn’t been an experience. Now you’re experiencing it. Don’t be surprised if you resist it from time to time. Right? You got to get used to it.

Benay: Is there any kind of, how long does it need to take?

Mike: You know that is so strange, because I’ve had so many different kinds of experiences with clients. I guess sort of depending on their readiness and so forth, with some clients there is the big aha and then the oh my gosh, and they’re so motivated and they start to do stuff and then two weeks into that, they have this sort of experience, this massive protest and backlash, right? Where they just abandon it all and go right back where they were. And I sometimes warn people about that. The inner protest that you’re going to experience or that you’re likely to experience, that’s a good sign. That’s a sign that you’re on a new path that’s unfamiliar to you and you freaked out.

Benay: Okay.

Mike: And So let that be a good sign and we’re going to work through it. Other people sort of had the experience, this is usually my experience working through one of my own self sabotage issues. My own experience is I get all the cards on the table and I realize what I am seeking that I hate. I call myself on it every day and so on and so forth. And after a few weeks I realize, oh I’m not doing that thing anymore. That’s usually my experience. A lot of people have that, it’s like, and then you go, wow that’s where I did that for 20 years.

Benay: And now I’m not doing it anymore.

Mike: I’m not doing it anymore! It just sort of dropped away and that’s usually how I experience it. Other people they go, things that their parents said start coming back, start coming to the surface and sort of memories of being ridiculed in the schoolyard, or what have you start coming to the surface is sort of like we dredge up a bunch of stuff and now we need to use some techniques kinds of things in order to put those memories and those feelings to rest. To get some distance from them. Again that’s where a lot of the interventions that so many of us have learned, that’s where they really start to be effective. So there’s a lot of different paths and sometimes as a matter of days and weeks, sometimes it’s a matter of months. I usually tell people if you coach with me for six months and I have a very very limited coaching practice. I spend most of my time teaching, but I used to tell people, if you could just me for six months and you stick with it, there’s no way that you’re not going to have a massive paradigm shift in the area of your life where you need it.

Benay: So we’re not talking years, we’re talking weeks and months really?

Mike: We are talking weeks and months.

Benay: As long as you can have that aha moment. Can we just recap? So you have your aha moment, your conscious understanding of what’s going on, and then you said there were there were three ways people tend to, categories people tend to fall into. We talked about simple in detail. Did we cover the other two?

Mike: We didn’t cover the bazaar. The bazaar is really my favorite way. But people sometimes think I’m nuts when I talk about it, but once you’ve accepted that deep down you’re setting yourself up for this thing you hate. That deep down because it’s familiar, you’re seeking it. Then I will sometimes say to people, look here’s what I want you to do, if you’re seeking this then you’ve got to own that. You’ve got to own the part of you. You’re not chained to the back of the bus with a mad man at the front, you’re going to go and sit in the front of the bus and drive it on its present course if you’re ever going to take control of the situation. And so I will say to people, let’s say the issue is under the rejection category, they will get up in the morning, and I’ve done this myself many times, get up in the morning and they’ll set a goal and the goal is worded something like this: today my goal is to experience rejection as many times as possible.

Benay: Okay, probably a lot of listeners are going like, WHAT!

Mike: I know, but if you think about it and you are someone who does experience rejection many many times a day. And that rejection most likely is coming from a perspective, a paradigm, an interpretation of the world. If that’s you, if you of go through your day as an outcast and you’re seeing things the way an outcast would, it’s as if some part of you does have a goal to continue to see things that way. And let’s own that. Let’s consciously get involved in that so that we can have a choice. And you would think, you know, some people think, well that’s a downer. It’s not a downer, when it’s you, when you’ve had the aha moment and you go through the day, my clients actually do that somewhat enthusiastically. And they go okay here we go. And they go, it’s like okay I’m on my way to work, I texted my friend, they didn’t text back right away, and this voice went off in my head, they don’t even like you anymore. You’re such a pest. And if like there it is! There it is!

Benay: I did it! I achieved my goal!

Mike: I got my goal, right? That’s what I… And that would have happened anyway. So they walk into the office, they walk past a colleague who doesn’t acknowledge them, and they go, Man he’s trying to get me fired, He never liked me. And there it is again right? Every day the boss sends you an e-mail, says I’d like to see you at 1 o’clock today, and you think Oh my gosh I am gonna get fired you know and I’m worthless. And it’s like I got it I’m doing it. Once you do that for a little while. You can’t do that for a little while without going, this is so nuts right? I mean this is so absurd. And do I have to do this? Is there a different way to interpret this e-mail, or that text, or that walk by? You know when I come home my wife is telling me things to be done around the house, is she really telling me you’re a crappy husband? Or is she just wanting to remind me to be helpful. How am I… given the different ways to interpret it, if I’ve got this unconscious goal to experience rejection as many times as I can, I’m going to be bent on the worst possible interpretation. And if I can catch myself doing that and recognize what it is, that’s when choice starts to happen and that’s when I can go, oh that’s a rejection thing. There it is. I did it again. Do I want to do that? No. Okay what are my other options?

Benay: It’s so playful. I think clients could have a lot… I think I am gonna do it for myself!

Mike: I mean it’s really fun and I’ve done it in ways myself that are fun. I’ve also done in ways myself that you know are painful because sometimes we go, there is my goal, but you know it takes a week, or two, or three, which can feel like an eternity. To stop doing it or to sort of begin to turn a corner and it can be painful too. Going, hey there’s the dark alley, I’m gonna walk down it. I don’t want to be walking down it. I’m compelled to walk down. It’s this weird space to be in between conscious and unconscious living. Right? So Anyways that’s the bizarre way.

Benay: I love it! Okay so just to recap, if we can do a really quick one, there was simple, there was something else, and there was bizarre. What was the something else called?

Mike: The something else was called intervention opportunities.

Benay: So for all of our NLP trained listeners, they would be looking at what sort of interventions or comment come up.

Mike: Yeah, NLP trained people then this is going to reveal stuck states. There’s going to be anchoring, re-anchoring opportunities, there are going to be change history opportunities, sub modality, Inter VAK work and strategy opportunities. All kinds of opportunities to utilize the techniques, if you know core transformation, that’s a common one because often in this scenario a wounded part of us is revealed. A really rejected part of us that knows nothing but rejection and it’s all it knows and it kind of survives on rejection, at the same time it really hurts. This is for a six step reframing, but a core transformation type process can be very very healing. We come out of that so much stronger without the need. It really reduces the need to continue to seek more of what we don’t like. And come out of that with resources.

Benay: For our listeners who aren’t actually that familiar with neurolinguistics programming or NLP, can you just in as few sentences as possible, just explain for them what an intervention is?

Mike: Oh an intervention would be a NLP technique, basically NLP consists of a wide variety of techniques to bring about personal change by altering our inner experience. There’s a lot of sort of step formats that you go through depending on what someone is struggling with to actually guide them through a process of change. So an NLP intervention is sort of a step by step protocol that you take people through.

Benay: Why I like NLP intervention work so much is because it works on this sort of unconscious level with your clients and they say some weird stuff and they really have no idea what they are saying. But all these shifts are happening and their brain is kind of being rewired in a more empowered in a way for them to move forward.

Mike: It absolutely does.

Benay: Two more questions and then we’ll wrap up. For the people who are listening, and I’m putting my hand up as one of them, you know all of this is based on all this negativity in your childhood and just you know that we’re so negativity focused, I don’t know where is the love in this whole picture? If you can just kind of set us all at ease, because I have a feeling that holds a very important place for you. I just want to talk about it a little.

Mike: Oh absolutely. In other words, where is the focusing on the positive and so forth.

Benay: Yeah.

Mike: All of this happens in the context of coaching with the understanding that we are wanting and fully capable of moving toward a positive, energized place. And that’s the purpose of it. The self-sabotage protocol we employ when there is a deep obstacle that we can’t get around and it utilizes the principle, it’s actually out of engineering that suggests a well-defined problem seeks its own solution. Sometimes with some problems you really have to understand them well in order to solve them. And so our purpose going into it is not to focus on negativity. Our purpose is to identify the negativity so that we can heal it. And it is, it is a focus on that negativity in the very idea for some people to say, it’s as if a part of you doesn’t want to lose weight. It’s as if a part of you wants to keep things exactly the same, and when you do start losing weight as part of you sabotages the process. Some people just might not even have a tolerance for suggesting that is going on, and if that’s the case then this model isn’t for you. But we certainly don’t understand, focus on, or work with negativity in any way with any intention to do anything other than heal the negativity.

Benay: I love that reframe. That was a good word. Healing. Healing those old wounds.

Mike: You know shine light in the darkness, that’s what we’re all about. We are not saying that darkness doesn’t exist. That’s the only thing we’re not doing. We are saying darkness may very well exist and let’s acknowledge that and shine some light into it.

Benay: I love that. I am a very realistic person, so this approach works beautifully for me. If you could get our listeners to do one thing as a result of having listened to our episode today, take an action in their life, read something, whatever, what would that be?

Mike: What I would have people do is ask themselves a question, which is when you think about your life and the ways that you feel, or the things that you do that are consistent and there against, they are not what you want, you think that area of your life that has sort of been immune to change. Ask yourself the question, what if a part of me were seeking this? What if a part of me found this thing that I don’t like to be too familiar to let go? And what if I’m setting myself up to experience that? What If that were true? And how am I setting myself up? Just shed your conscious light on that area. And then if I could throw in a second thing it would be, we have a free video on the Aha Solution on our website, it’s about 20 minutes long, gives a very very succinct rundown of the self-sabotage model, as well as some examples about how these psychological attachments develop. And I would encourage people…and it outlines the Aha process in order to work around it. How to become aware. How to act on new information. I would encourage people to watch that video and there is a link to it on your blog post where this episode is on your website.

Benay: We will put a link for everybody so it is easy just to click it and go and check on that video.

Mike: Yeah.Yeah.

Benay: Okay so I just want to recap that question because it was kind of multipart. What if a part of me were seeking this? And how am I setting myself up?

Mike: How am I setting myself up to re-experience it.

Benay: Re-experience. Oh and this is focusing on something that’s sort of an area of your life where you’ve been stuck for a long time.

Mike: You’ve been stuck and in some way the tools you have, you either aren’t using or they aren’t working.

Benay: So if people want to learn more about your work they can look out for that self-sabotage link. I will also include a link to your home page as well. And I’d just like to thank you so much Mike for taking your time out today and talking to us and sharing all of your wisdom with our listeners. I really appreciate it.

Mike: So great to be here. Really appreciate it Benay.

Benay: And thank you listeners and please like the show on iTunes. That’s a great way you can help us out. Everyone have a great day and happy coaching.