If you could have absolutely anything your heart desired, what would be your ideal present?  What immediately springs to mind?  Are you finding it hard to think of something?  The truth is, what is ideal today is going to going to change tomorrow.  If you have children you will be all too familiar with this concept.  If you don't have children, think back to a time when you were one yourself.  If you are out shopping right now for Christmas gifts, how do you decide what the ideal present will be for you to give this Christmas.  Do you take time to carefully research what your loved one or friends will actually want or do buy based on your own preferences and hope that they will like it? 

Often the greatest results can be achieved from 'standing' in that person's shoes and imagining what is important to them.  What would be an ideal present for them?  What would they attach value to?  If you run a business or you sell in any capacity, this is a strategy that you would do well to master.  I can recommend a brilliant book called 'Influence, Science & Practise' by Dr Robert Cialdini.  If you are interested in finding out what influences people's decisions, then this book is fascinating.

Are you happy where you are right now?  This is another kind of ideal present - the 'here and now'.  I know a number of people who pack so much activity into their day, they never really get the chance to experience the present because they are forever planning for the future.  I like to make an important distinction between human beings and human doings.  We are of course beings, yet we so often forget the being part.  We are locked into doing.  If you don't spend much time in the present, how will you ever know if it is idea or not (apart from the times when you take a long overdue holiday and you experience lying in the sun and feeling the warmth on your body).  If you don't like your present and it is far from ideal, then you need to do something to change it.  If you don't then you have to be responsible for the consequences of putting up with something that is not idea. 

Give yourself an ideal present this Christmas and write down some goals for the year ahead and get into the mindset of actually having the the thing, person, opportunity, windfall or job that you want.

When was the last time that you felt abundant in anything?  What does abundance mean to you?  How would you know if you had abundance?  What would you be feeling, hearing, seeing, tasting and smelling?  If you have clarity about the answers to all of those questions then you are about to step into a much more resourceful place.  Every book that you are likely to read about the laws of attraction, be it 'The Secret' or 'Cosmic Ordering' or even Esther and Jerry Hicks' book 'Ask and It Is Given' will remind you about the importance of feeling the very thing that you want to manifest.

If you are not a natural kinaesthetic person (feeling person) then this might take a little more work.  By the way, for me, abundance is a feeling of having, and expecting infinite, wealth, success, happiness, joy, health and inspiration.  I expect that things will just come my way.  Like waiting for the postman to deliver an exciting letter that contains great exam results, a job offer or notification that I have just received a large sum of money.  Expectation of good and limitless things is a great way to attract abundance into your life.

There are lots of ways that you can feel abundant.  One might be to wear something you know you look and feel good in.  It might be wearing an expensive watch or piece of jewellery that just makes you feel great.  It may be going to eat at a restaurant that is particularly nice and not being concerned about the cost, simply feeling abundant and enjoying the experience.  In the lead up to Christmas we are encouraged to buy, buy buy.  It is a great time to exercise a little abundance and also to get clear about what kind of abundance you want in your life.  I remember the song title of a track on an old 1980's Frankie Goes to Hollywood album that said 'live your life like a diamond ring'.  I like that concept.  Are you inwardly focused or outwardly receptive to wealth and abundance.  If you are inwardly focused, do something today, tomorrow and every day this week for the rest of this month that gives you an experience of having abundance.  Then double, that feeling, treble it and remember to keep brining it back as often as possible.  It works!

When I first started blogging I was attending the Master NLP Practitioner Course run by Paul McKenna training.  I thought it was great opportunity to share the journey, the insights and to re-enforce the learning by presenting the information.  One of the fascinating areas of NLP for me is something called decision strategies.  Simplistically, they are the things that happen inside our mind that cause us to take action.

I never cease to be fascinated and amazed by things that come up in my client sessions.  For example, I come across people who take on a whole new persona in the workplace.  They get stuff done, shifted, dealt with, complete...........yet in their personal lives, things don't happen.  They apply a whole new set of strategies to the things they do outside of work.  Looking at this logically, sometimes it is merely a case of some people being more motivated to do things for others, rather than for themselves, or it may be pure competition.  You want to do better than somebody else.  You want to look better than somebody else.  That is absolutely fine in my book.  You see the truth is, most people get a little uncomfortable when they disclose their egoic ambitions.  They think it is wrong or unattractive to display such traits.  I always remind my clients that I am not here to judge, I am fascinated to discover how they do what they do, i.e. the stuff that works.  For example, take a strategy that works for you in the workplace.  There is always a moment, a point, a place at which you decide to take action.  Something clicks doesn't it?  You get a green light somewhere in your mind and then comes certainty.

Examine your decision strategies.  Notice what happens when you decide to do something.  What sequence of events occur that lead up to you making the decision and then actually taking action.  Everybody can find a place in their lives where they have a decision strategy that works when stuff gets done.  All you have to do is to sift through your experience and remember what worked for you.  When the penny drops, you will discover that there are now a whole raft of things that you can handle with ease. 

Blogs this week are the subject of "The Four Agreements" by author Don Miguel Ruiz.  For those who have just joined us, you might like to go back to Tuesday's blog so that you can follow the rest of the thread.

'Don't Take Anything Personally' is the second agreement taken from the book.  This one is no more or less challenging than the other three.  You may have adopted some habits over the years that make this an interesting one for you.  Has anybody ever told you that 'it is nothing personal' when you have not been selected for a team, or a job or maybe you have been made redundant.  For most people, the very nature of those words give you an embedded command that you will take it personally.  It is a quirk of the English language and for anybody out there with NLP skills, you will appreciate what I am talking about. 

Remember that what other people say and do is a reflection of their own reality, not necessarily yours, unless of course you make that choice.  Immunise yourself to the words and intentions of those around you who do not support you.  Their opinions are just that, opinions.  Newspapers are full of them.  You get to choose what you make them mean.  If you choose to be affected by them, you may be choosing unnecessary suffering.

Adopting a coat of armour or visualising a glass bell surrounding you and protecting you is a good strategy to allow you to just let things slide away.  Letting words just 'wash over you' is a great strategy.  Remember that they are only words and they are somebody else s's words.  Whenever you find yourself tempted to let your emotions be affected, just remember that your own opinions and feelings are the ones that count. 

...............24 little hours, as the song goes.  You know that one don't you?  Well for those of you who feel stuck in a place you might not want to be right now, this should be a useful little tune that you now find yourself humming at the most unexpected moments.  Music is a great cue to remind you of a particular state of mind or an idea.  As a hypnotherapist and an NLP practitioner, I use this all the time in client work.  Television advertisers use it too.  Have you ever found yourself hearing just one word, and then playing back a tune in your head?  I'll bet you have!  It is called anchoring.  For example....whenever anybody gives me their email address and it happens to be a Yahoo address...........I can hear that quirky yahooooooooooooooooooooooooo jingle in my mind.  That means that the advertisers set up an association in my mind between a word and a sound. 

You can set up associations between lots of different things.  Smells, tastes, touches, sounds and sights.  They can all be linked to 'states' of mind.  States when you can achieve marvellous things with joy and enthusiasm!  What do want to achieve?  How would you like to feel when you are doing it?  What do you remember about feeling on top of the world?  How great has your greatest feeling ever been?  Your biggest orgasm, your heartiest laugh, your most excited experience?  Well imagine taking all of those things and then multiplying them by 10!  Outrageous isn't it!  How much pleasure can you stand?  When you feel great, you achieve amazing things.  Your body produces great chemicals like endorphins, dopamine, serotonin and many more. 

Put a marker in this day - wherever you find yourself, and get a butterfly feeling in your stomach as you remember the days when you have felt greatness!  Now prepare to have more of those days.  Remember what a difference a day makes and that you get to choose what you put into your day and how you feel about it.  You can accept that it may be unreasonable to feel elated all of the time, yet you can easily increase the frequency of those good times and enjoy firing off your anchors whenever you need them.  All you need to remember is what makes you feel good and then link it to a picture, a sound, a feeling or a taste, exaggerate it then keep repeating it until your cue instantly creates that feeling or state. 

At any given moment there are thousands of bits of information swirling around in your mind.  Endless thoughts competing for your attention.  What's more, your thoughts have a voice don't they?  You talk to yourself.  We all talk to ourselves!  There is nothing unusual about that.  Have you ever stopped and noticed what kind of tone your voice has, or the way it actually speaks to yo?  For example, when you have done something wrong, does your inner dialogue berate you in an authoritarian kind of tone?  Perhaps one that you remember hearing when you were a little person?  If it does then try changing the sound of your dialogue - the cartoon voices from Pinky and Perky work for me.............like my dialogue has been accelerated 10 fold.  It makes light of what could have been a tongue lashing.  Try it out for yourself, see what happens.  You can do all sorts of wacky things, like slowing it down or adopting a sultry and sexy kind of tone.  It gives you a different experience. 

Now that you have your attention on your inner dialogue and thoughts, it is good to notice what you think about most of the time.   What is getting most of your attention?  Are you worrying and fretting a lot about your job, money, relationship or the state of the economy, or are you daydreaming inspired thoughts about great achievements, laughter, laying on a white sandy beach or having mind blowing sex?  You see it is really up to you.  Whatever you put most of your attention on, will surely come to you.  If you are worrying about stuff, you are attracting it to you.  As vibrational beings, we send out waves of energy that attract like energies.  The worrying energy is very low frequency energy, heavy energy that attracts more of the same.  Inspired energy on the other hand, is very high vibrational energy.  What are you transmitting the most?  What is coming to find you? 

So bearing in mind that thoughts become things, you probably want to spend more time thinking about the things you want to attract into your life, rather than things that you don't want.   Now here's the thing, many of my clients ask me how to stop thinking about the things they don't want.  I always tell them that the effort that goes into not doing something is the wrong kind of effort.  Replace the thoughts with others that feel better.  If you need a visual prop, like a photo or an object to remind you of the thing(s) you want to attract, then that will work really well.  You might prefer to hear things, or feel things that remind you of what you want.  Surround yourself with reminders of the positive outcomes you want to attract.  Now start to think about them more and more often.  As you put your vibrational energy into thoughts, you will soon notice that those thoughts become things.  Whatever you want is just a thought away. 

Have you noticed that some people absolutely thrive on solving problems?  There are some who actively seek out problems and make a career out of troubleshooting potentially problematic situations.  You often hear couples speak of their partners in this way "oh he likes a challenge!"  or "she's not happy unless she has something to worry about". Of course not all problems mean that you need to worry, in fact quite the opposite.  Worrying achieves nothing at all, other than expending your valuable energy that you could be using to do something far more interesting.

There are some problems in life that sometimes just seem too big.  If you have succumbed to the news lately, you can hardly help but miss some really big problems that financial institutions and airlines have been facing.  Of course problems come in many different forms and their magnitude is largely dictated by the attitude that you apply to them.  It can be as big or as small as you choose it to be.  In NLP terms we call this re-framing.  When people view their problems a certain way, it is useful to present an alternative perspective so that they can see things from a different angle.

If you have ever read Viktor Frankl's "Mans Search for Meaning" you will understand how some people survive the worst adversity by adjusting their mental attitude.  Viktor Frankl was a survivor of the Nazi concentration camps during the second world war.  He was an Austrian Psychiatrist who deduced that it was man's search for meaning in life that allowed him to survive.  He developed a unique approach to therapy that became known as 'Logotherapy'.  It is not a book for the feint hearted, yet it is a very powerful insight into human behaviour.

If you have a problem that is seemingly just too big for your to handle or there is no apparent solution, try handing it over.  What do I mean by that?, well, it is really like this - if you reach the conclusion that you cannot truly find a solution, then you will be wasting energy and effort in trying to do something that you may not have the resources to do.  If you believe in a God, the universe of something else, just mentally say to yourself "I now freely and completely hand this over to the divine forces (universe/God..........delete as appropriate) in the knowledge that I know a solution will be forthcoming.  I now choose to regain my valuable energy and trust that all will be well."

For those of you who live in a more cerebral or scientific world, this will undoubtedly be stretch for you, it will also bring you the biggest reward if you are prepared to gather some new evidence.  Go ahead, just hand it over.

Did you know that one in 20 people in the UK have a Compulsive Buying Disorder (CBD) according to a study published by psychologists today in 2006. In the US there an estimated 15 million people with CBD.  You may also be interested to know that men are just as likely to be affected by CBD as women are.  The term 'shopaholic' has evolved from the rising consumer trends of the past 2 decades.  People who are addicted to shopping for the 'buzz' or thrill from the act of buying are deemed to be shopaholics when they are unable to control their habits. 

What are the causes?  A common cause is a condition called Bi-Polar disorder (previously known as manic depression).  Manic episodes can manifest in massive over spending and the desire to do things to the extreme.  If you have noticed any such behavioural traits in yourself or in your loved ones, I would urge you to see your doctor or mental health care professional.  You can also find further help at http://www.bipolaraware.co.uk/ .  Any addiction is typically magnified by stress.  Many people who lead stressful lives attempt to compensate by indulging in compulsive or addictive behaviour.  Shopping often answers a need to be better in some way.  The belief that the next purchase will make life somehow better is very short lived as the shopper discovers that the 'buzz' dissapears very quickly and just like drug addiction, the shopper then seeks to re-create that high again from shopping.   The truth of course is that no ammount of shopping will fill the imaginery gap of inadequacy.  As the problem escalates, people often run up large debts and find that relationships with loved ones begin to deteriorate. 

Hypnotherapy is a very effective way to help sufferers break free from the chains of shopaholic misery.   Therapy helps the sufferer to develop an accute awareness of their habits, and better still, gives them the ability to make a different choice at the critical decision stage. 

There are many addictions that have similar origins to shopping addictions and here are just some of them:-

• Addicted to exercise (Gym Mania)
• Sunbeds (Tanorexia)
• Gambling
• Drug Addiction
• Sex Addiction
• Carbohydrate Addiction
• Cosmetic Surgery
• Collecting/Hoarding

Typically shopaholics might also have other associated addictions or compulsions, usually food related, although they may extend to drugs and alcohol.  The great news is that if you are truly committed to making some changes and have reached a point where you know that enough is enough, then hypnotherapy is a great way to help you gain control over your life and realise that you already have everything you need to be whole and real.

Yes it is a command and a very purposeful one.  It is a command and an instruction that you can give yourself at any time of night or day.  Now some of my clients over the years have confused the part about how to access those good feelings.  Many people who have tried the 'Instant Gratification School of Learning' have gone for food, drugs, alcohol or a combination of all.  Yes, they are undoubtedly a way of making you feel good short term, yet you lack the control of how much, how often and of course quality.  Relying on somebody or something for your 'state' means that you relinquish a lot of control.

Now I wold guess that long before you could even spell the word alcohol, let alone know what it meant, you were experiencing all kinds of good feelings.  You learnt about laughter.  You probably also learnt a thing or too about endorphins from vigorous exercise or through laughing so much.  You learnt how to feel good when you embarked upon a great new adventure and I think you even learnt to feel good when you received praise or you went on some ride at the fair ground that excited you.  You probably learnt to feel good in anticipation of a birthday or when you were about to open a beautifully wrapped present.  You most probably felt great when you remember the first person that you had a crush on and maybe your first kiss.  You will be able to remember times when you probably had the best sex of your life.  Although we British people don't like to talk about the latter too much, it is an important area of recall to access your good feelings. 

Now imagine taking those good feelings an then multiplying them by two, and then when you have doubled them, multiply your good feelings 10 fold and notice your breathing change.  Then listen to a great piece of music or play a sound that makes you feel great and now all you need to do is to gently pinch an ear lobe or two fingers together and you can anchor those good feelings.  Isn't it great to know that as you embellish them and make them more outrageous, the better the result.  Now as children we learnt to exaggerate and we always knew that it would be useful someday......................well, that day has come.  Feel good now!.............and every day for the rest of your life. 

Have you noticed that everywhere you turn, somebody is trying to mould your reality?  Advertisers suggesting that you are too fat, too thin, too overworked, too selfish, too tired, too busy, too stressed!  How many seeds are planted in your mind each day?  Where do these ideas come from AND at what point to you adopt them as being true?

Would you really have worried about eating an apple that had gone 2 days past its' 'sell by date' a decade ago?  Most probably not.  Yet there are so many things in a material world that we are 'encouraged' to think about.  The rate of anxiety related illnesses in young people in the UK and the US is at an all time high.  You can probably only guess why that is.  Too much information can cause anxiety to the over active or enquiring mind.  It is no mistake that TV is called 'programming'. 

The simple truth is this.  You can have your world look anyway you want it to look.  You can believe whatever you want to believe about it.  You could decide to adopt a belief that we live on a planet made of cheese if you please.  We are all blessed with vivid imaginations and it is that very imagination that produces the most wonderful buildings, sculptures, paintings, music, stories and films.  You can buy software now to do almost anything for your computer.  You can become a skilled artists, a video editor or musician, just by installing a programme and running it.  Of course you can make your own reality without buying a software programme.  You can start by noticing what makes you feel good and then doing more of that.  You can notice what makes you feel bad or anxious and then stop doing that.  You can even try things that you have never thought of before and remember what it feels like to jump in with both feet and have some fun.

How do you want your world to look when you wake up tomorrow morning and every morning after that?  Take a few minutes now to design it and make sure that it is a place that you feel happy to be in with a big smile on your face.  Install your own programme with unlimited free upgrades called 'Make Your Own Reality'.  Enjoy!