Eat Love Do – Andy Coley, Understanding Your Unconscious Mind and Beliefs

Hello and welcome. I'm Janine Newbury and this is the Eat Love Do show, exclusive to Women's Radio Station. Um, do pop over to our social media channels and give us a little follow and like. We are Women's Radio STN on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. And head over to our YouTube channel, hit that like and subscribe button because it really does help us and we love it when you support the show. I've got a fantastic guest on this week. I've got the lovely Andy Coley. He is an NLP expert. I've actually attended a couple of Andy's events in the past, some of his trainings, and he's phenomenal. And he is a trainer, he's a TEDx speaker and a coach. And he's, well, I won't tell you more, I'll let him tell you himself. Andy, welcome to the show. Would you like to just introduce yourself, tell the audience a little bit about yourself? Yeah, so great to be here on the channel, on the radio station with you, and to just get the opportunity to just share a little bit about my passion and a bit about what I do. So yeah, I predominantly train in something called NLP, which is neuro-linguistic programming for those that have maybe never heard of it before. And really it's the study of the way that the mind works, how we take in and process information, how that information becomes our version of of the world that we live and that we experience, then how we show the way that we're processing that world through our language and through our body language and our behaviors and what we end up doing, basically. And for me, NLP has definitely become something that I've been very passionate about and that's really helped, actually almost literally saved my life in the past from experiences where I was in places that I just really didn't want to be in and found myself sort of really trapped within in relationships, in my life, in my own head. And so for me, NLP has been a really fantastic resource to help me to kind of sort my stuff out, basically. That's brilliant. So if somebody was thinking or interested in working and using NLP, How would you approach them? How would they approach you? What can you help them with? So the people listening get sort of an understanding of what NLP can do for them. Yeah, so NLP is very layered. Some people use NLP with coaching. So I work with a lot of people to help them improve their coaching skillset, their coaching ability. And coaching might be that you go and see a coach or that you are a coach and you support people, or it might be self-coaching. How can you get yourself out of your own situations when things come up. So NLP as a coaching tool and a coaching technique is really useful. A lot of my work, actually, I take NLP into the corporate arena. I do a lot of work with computer games companies, for instance, to help them with having more effective boundaries when they're dealing with players or when they're interacting with each other. When they're running these big— What do you mean by that? Interacting with each other or the boundaries part? The boundaries? What's the boundaries for the players? You mean actually in the computer game, or you mean when they— I know, yeah. So I did a, for instance, I did a big piece of work with a computer games company called Ubisoft, and they actually got me to come in and do some work on professional boundaries, which is effectively how can they make sure that their staff feel safer when they're dealing with players and their player base. So how do they make sure they switch off after they leave home from work? Most people go to work and they do their piece of work and then they switch off and they go home. But effectively, one of the things that happens in something like the games industry and the film industry is that these people that make this stuff are the superstars of the industry. But of course, people get to know individuals. They know the designers, they know the developers, they know the customer liaison people. And so they reach out on their private Twitter accounts, on their Discord channels. There's a lot of work-life boundary slippage that's starts to happen. And of course, players are typically playing when they're not working. But of course, a computer games company, for instance, like a lot of companies that rely on influencers, they need these people to rave about their games. They want them to think fantastically about the company because they put it all over Twitter and Twitch and YouTube and all the other streaming channels. And so they need to keep these people sweet and keep them along for the ride and make sure that they're feeling looked after. And at the same time, there's stuff behind the scenes they can't tell them that's happening within the game, or they've got to keep, you know, sort of secret or secure from a business perspective. So having those boundaries and having that kind of healthy relationship between you and the client or the player or whoever it happens to be is really important. I work, for instance, with a domestic abuse charity in Surrey. I've been down to see them 3 or 4 times now, and I actually help a lot of their staff who run refuges and work and go out into communities and support women who have been in situations where they need to escape from their partner or escape from the situation that they're in. And so, again, professional boundaries in that context is really important to make sure that they can remain empathetic but not sympathetic. When you're providing a service as a professional to somebody, and you'll know this as a coach yourself, you have to be able to listen to somebody's story, but without making it your story and about maybe something you've experienced in the past. That's very unhealthy when it comes to providing something, because if you end up becoming too sympathetic, you get sucked into their drama, you get sucked into their story, and maybe you don't provide the same consistent level of service or offering to all of your stakeholders, all the people that you work with. So again, professional boundaries is a particular passion area of mine that I work with quite a lot of companies. I've done work with everything from the Church of England to charities to the NHS through to computer games companies on that particular subject. So again, training is another area that I work in. This is really interesting, boundaries thing, because I think people, we're sort of learning about putting in boundaries, like personal boundaries in relationships, but you're working specifically with professional boundaries, what you're doing with people. So could you share with us, like, what is a technique or something that somebody can do to help establish a boundary, like a professional boundary, to do that, to protect themselves so that they can, you know, be safe at work and not take it home? And, you know, what would you teach? What's like a little nugget that you could give us that somebody could do, take on board? Yeah, so I think the main thing is step into your role. When you're in that identity as that professional person, it's to step into that role as that professional. So you are the warden in a housing association, you are the customer care person, you are the receptionist in the doctor's surgery, you are whatever the thing is that requires you to have that professional perspective, a lawyer, a doctor, whatever. You are in that role. When you are in that role, you are there to be able to listen to what the other person is telling you is going on for them. Okay? So that's part of the key thing is always be listening to the other person's story and don't relate that story to your experiences. That's one of the really key things. And when something like drama is happening, and there's a great model out there called Karpman's Drama Triangle, and that talks about when people are not getting their own way or when situations are happening and you've got a narcissist or somebody who's very manipulative with the way that they build relationships with other people, they'll step into one of three roles. Either they will play the persecutor, so they'll try and overwhelm the situation with anger, be manipulative, try and overwhelm with kind of energy. They'll play the victim, the 'woe is me, this is happening to me, can't you see how bad this is for me, you know, help, help, please help me out.' And ultimately, what they're trying to do with the victim is go into the third part, which is the rescuer. They're trying to suck you in to come and rescue them, make it all better. 'It's okay, you know, I'm so sorry to hear that's happened to you,' etc., etc. So as a professional, you've got to be able to empathize with a person. You've got to be there to guide them and at the same time not be their friend. You're there in a professional capacity to signpost them to the right place, to hold a boundary if they need to hold a boundary, to hear what they are saying to you and at the same time do your job. And that's really important to be the role and to have the expectations and your organization will have a set of standards and a code of conduct and a way that they expect you to operate. And if you're operating within those parameters of the organization and your role, that is a very good first set of ways of making sure that your boundaries are good and intact. Yeah, I like that, the triangle, yeah, the persecutor, the victim, and the rescuer. That's, it's just really simple to understand. I think anyone listening, you would probably all experience each of those individuals in different scenarios and maybe even been them ourselves. I'm not sure. You can even be them in one sentence. If I said, I'm so annoyed about the way you've made me feel. Now I've got to sort this out. I've gone from being persecutor to victim to rescuer in one sentence. When we get stuck in traffic, we're really annoyed and frustrated that why didn't I leave sooner? Why did you make me late? God, why couldn't I get the kids in the thing because they couldn't put their shoes on the right way and they put the coat on, it took 5 minutes to get the bloody seatbelt done up. Yeah, I've got kids, I experienced this myself, you know, you can get so, oh, you've made me late or whatever. Just simple stuff. Every day we will experience drama within ourselves and within other people. As a professional, you've got to let people be in their drama. You can't tell them to not be in their drama. You can't tell them it's all going to be okay. They're experiencing their life. At that moment in time, that is real for them. But as a professional, you're going to let other people run their drama and not join them in it. As soon as you're joining them in it, you're not necessarily having that professional boundary between you and the other person. That's one of the key elements from that point of view. But yeah, drama is so interesting. And even knowing about drama, I get sucked into it, you know, hours, minutes each day I'm in drama. But I think one of the key things for me And I'm sure that you find this and probably everybody listening will be experiencing this because you probably wouldn't be listening otherwise, is start raising your level of emotional intelligence. Yeah. And this is one of the key things I found out about myself just over 11 years ago when I got into this stuff, you know, personal development, human development, is start becoming aware of what's been triggering you, what's pushing your buttons. Why am I feeling this way? Most people can go through life just experiencing getting angry, getting frustrated, and they don't even think about it afterwards. There's no reflection, there's no thinking about it, there's no, "I'm sorry," whatever. They just don't do that. But I think as people raise their level of emotional intelligence and start thinking, "Why did I get so upset? What made me angry? I'm really guilty about feeling that way. What's that doing or saying or being about me?" I think as you start to learn more about yourself and recognize those trigger points and those triggering mechanisms, was it an internal voice? Was it something somebody else said? Was it something I read? The things that trigger us in terms of emotional states, because everything starts with a thought, those thoughts create our feelings and those feelings affect our behaviors and what we end up doing. Start recognizing the trigger points because then you can do something about it and then that is again raising that level of emotional intelligence, becoming more aware about what makes you you. And sometimes it's your parenting and sometimes it's your thoughts and sometimes it's a whole mixture of all of these things, but that makes each of us unique. And that again is why I love the approach of something like NLP because it's very unique to the person and the person you're working with and their patterns and their stuff. It isn't a one-size-fits-all methodology to fixing your life. And you've just got to be aware that each of us are so unique and individual that the reason why we get frustrated is not the reason why your partner gets frustrated or why your kids get frustrated. So also got to be aware that each of us has different reasons to why we feel and do things. Even if the results look similar, there'll be different reasons to why we're motivated towards something or why we dislike something. So yeah, just becoming more aware of your stuff is such an interesting approach. Yeah. I mean, we've all had different upbringings, we've all had different experiences as kids and adults, and each of those things has created like a little impact in our subconscious and a little belief, and we're all being triggered by that. And then you get two people that have been triggered in different ways, and then the next minute the drama goes— but I like what you say, like, let them be in their drama. It's real for them, but don't get involved in it. Like, just, like, just keep separate. And, and I think also it's key, like, not to make it, not to make it about you, because it's not about you. I think sometimes people, um, take stuff on. They'll say, why are you speaking to me like that? Like, they'll, they'll make it about them. So I think that what you're saying, like, keeping that boundary in place, like, it's not about you. What, what someone's going through is, it's just them being triggered. It's just their wound or them being triggered. So let them play that out, and you just keep that boundary in place and just know it's not about you and be there and hold that space. I like that. Yeah. And this is one, for instance, that I often talk about with people in doctor's reception. I do a lot of training for GP surgeries, for instance. When a patient walks in, let's face it— Do you train the receptionist? Because they're often quite rude in doctor's surgeries. I don't know if you ever notice this. I do do a lot of training for receptionists, but think about their job, right? Nobody pops to their doctor's surgery because they're having a great day. Okay? They rock up because they're ill, because their kids are ill, because something's going wrong. Typically. Yes, I know there's the sort of births and the other stuff that sometimes more pleasant experiences as to why you pop to your doctor's surgeries. But typically you're feeling unwell, your state's off, you're frustrated. It's taking you 40 minutes to get through on the phone lines before you've even spoken to this person. And the doctor's receptionist have to be the buffer between the outside world and what they're able to offer on the inside within the surgery. So immediately they've got a very difficult job to be able to start to get through. And somebody's frustration is not personal to that person. If we were both working in a doctor's reception and we picked up the phone, so we go, "Bloody hell, it's taken me half an hour to get through on this phone." If we took that personally, and it's not about us, It's about the phone line, about the other person, and about their kid who's got a fever, and they just want them to be well again, because it's the fifth time over this winter that they've got this ruddy virus again, and they just want them to be at school, and I've had to cancel my work, and there's loads of stuff that's going on with that phone call. If I take it or you take it, it's never about us. It's about the other person and what they're experiencing. And in the same way, no matter what your role is or what your frustration is, people get frustrated often not about what we've done or said, particularly if we're the boundary holders or the gatekeepers. They're frustrated about the situation that they're in, or about what they've done that's maybe created that, and that kind of cause and effect piece. You get a parking ticket or you get fines because you've driven down a school street on the wrong day at the wrong time. Typically, it's not the counsellor's fault. How do you know I've been doing that, Andy? Well, I live in a place where they just put new school streets in, in Lewisham, you know, and that's taken a bit of getting used to. Thankfully, we only got the warning letter and not the fine, you know. But the thing is, is that like you've not seen the sign, you've still driven down the road. It's not the council's fault. Yeah. Because what they're looking to do is to protect these streets at these times of the day and make sure it's better for kids coming in and out of school. Less pollution at that time and all the rest of it, whatever their reasons are for doing things that they're doing, they have a reason. And then we get frustrated because we've not noticed it or we thought we could get away with it and not stick a quid in on the parking app because we didn't have our phone with us at the time. Now we've got to pay 60 quid. So we get annoyed often. It's not the parking attendant's fault. They're just doing the job. They're just going around scanning number plates and double-checking things because that's what their role is to do. But that's why we get so frustrated by stuff sometimes, because typically we often know that it's probably something we've done or not done that might have created that. And that might be because we didn't know, or it might be because we didn't know, but actually we then forgot, or that we thought it would be okay, or whatever in those situations. So this is, for me, again, it's about the emotional intelligence. Being the frustration, being the annoyance, being the, how am I going to get this? How am I going to pay for this? How am I going to do that? What have I got to do instead? Do all that and also go, but you know what? I created this situation that's just happened and own it at least. And then learn from it. This is the key thing. All learning is basically knowledge plus experience. So just because you know something doesn't mean you're good at it. And just because you've not experienced something doesn't mean you can't learn from it each time. And that's the value of feedback. That's why feedback, self-feedback. I know how to do handstands, but I'm useless. I like that. It's like taking responsibility for your own actions, isn't it? And stop trying to blame others in the world. I think that really empowers you as well, because as soon as you take responsibility for everything that's happening in your life, then you've got the power to do something about it, and you've got the power to control how you emotionally respond to it as well. Yeah. Like, I think other people say, that person made me angry. No one's got the power to make you angry. Only you have the power to respond in a way based on what you're making up about that scenario in the moment. So I love that, like, if you just take your power back, like, taking your power back is taking responsibility and going, yeah, actually, I did do this. Yeah, exactly. And having that, that responsibility is a real key thing to making sure that you're able to be at the center of the solution, yeah, or that you're at the center of what happens next. And this is one of the key things that when I started getting coaching for myself back in 2011, it was one of the key defining moments that really was a sort of switch for me. I'd spent a lot of my life blaming other people or other situations for how my life was and the decisions I'd made and the things that had happened to me in my life. And so starting to then take control of those situations, go, right, well, I am where I am. What can I do about it? For me, it was part of the reason why I got into NLP. I had a friend of mine who was a master practitioner. There's several levels of NLP training, and he's the sort of, you know, the more advanced level of NLP training. And he really helped me to look at my situation and where I was in my life. And I was in my mid-30s, and I'd just split up with my wife of 11 years. And to be honest, we probably should have stopped after about 7 years. Various things had happened, and I'd I'd hidden a lot of financial stuff that was happening in the life, debt, and I wasn't earning as much as we needed, but I also didn't want to let her down and tell her that I couldn't cope. And so I was ostracizing myself in terms of ignoring the avoiding conflict and hiding stuff. And that lack of communication broke our relationship, if you like. And we kind of toddled on for a while and things got a bit better. But after 11 years, we thought, you know what, we just need to stop. We're two people who are just about still getting on living in the same house now. This isn't a marriage. This isn't what both of us want in our lives moving forward. So I moved back home to my mum and dad's house, you know, Bon Jovi posters on the wall and copies of Star Wars in the DVD rack, and kind of back into that situation of kind of resetting my life. And that's when I then started working with a coach. Because things had started to get so bad that I was even considering not being here. I remember driving along a country lane one time at night, late, going back to that kind of house that I was sharing with my wife at the time, thinking, I just, you know what, I could just flip the car off the road right now into that tree. If I did that, nobody would miss me. Nobody would care. But my kind of mind took me forward into what my funeral would look like if I did that. You know, when you get those split-second things that pop into your head. And I thought, you know what, they would miss me and they would be disappointed that I hadn't gotten out. Life's not that bad. There are options, there are things, your work's okay and you've got friends and you can start again. Who says that you can't? But I was carrying around all this, oh, but nobody else in your family's ever gotten divorced. That's still true. Even 11 years later, I'm the only person in my family who's ever gotten divorced. You should 'You make your bed, you lie in it. You've got your lifetime commitment. You're committed to each other. You should just kind of get on with it. And who says that you should be the one kind of moving on and getting going? And what about the person you're leaving behind? How are they going to cope with the house and the mortgage and all that kind of stuff?' So it was playing all this rubbish in my head, and none of it's true. It's just stuff that I was holding on to. So Having that kind of reset moment and working with a coach to go, okay, what can I start to take control of? What can I do moving forward? Was a massive catalyst for me getting into doing this work. I used to be a web developer doing IT geeky website design, e-commerce shops, that kind of stuff. But I was really bored with doing it. I tried to be in business and failed and got into more debt, because of just trying to— You were bored with doing IT? Andy, bored of doing IT? Sounds like the most important job in the world. Yeah, but at the same time, I also didn't want to do the consulting aspect of IT. I didn't want to schlep into London and back all the time. Yeah, so I was pretty much working for myself. So again, that was that pressure to earn, pressure to to be in those situations. And I kind of really needed to, when doing that reset, go, right, what can I take control of? I was also massively overweight, 23 stone at the time, 142 kilos in weight and thoroughly down and a bit depressed. And I went on some medication from, I think, Ceptrolene, I think, from the from the doctor to just kind of help out, just to kind of get my head reset. And that really helped shut up the voice in my head that was kind of really— I don't know if any of you have this listening out there, but that kind of little inner critic, you know, the one that goes, "Nyah, nyah, nyah, nyah, nyah." And often we carry around this inner critic, but we don't often enough tell it to shut up or even change its voice and make it sound like Mickey Mouse so it has less power over it. Often that voice comes into our head because people have said things to us in our lives, maybe our parents, maybe our siblings, maybe our ex-partners, maybe the teachers that we had. We end up with these little voices, little phrases that just completely disempower us sometimes. But because we're saying it to ourselves, it sounds like it's coming from us. But actually, the source of that voice was probably far, far further back in the past than we actually now remember or attribute it to. And so learning to shut that voice up and take some control, it's just so important, you know, in terms of kind of that reset moment in my life. And that's something that NLP does really powerfully as well, isn't it? Like, so those little voices are basically beliefs that are stored in our subconscious mind. And for anyone that, you know, doesn't know about this kind of work, And it can come from a past experience. It can also be like what I call social scripting as well. Like you mentioned before, oh, you've made your bed, you're lying in it. That's like a social script that gets banded around. It's like a belief that gets shared socially. And then people take it on as if it's true. Money doesn't grow on trees. That's another example of a social one. And we take those beliefs on as if they're true. They're not actually true. We're just believing that. And it gets stored in there and we start to run our life and the way that we, you know, think about ourselves and others in the world and how we're going to move forward. And if you've got beliefs like that, or this sort of negative beliefs that really prevent you from moving forward and doing the things you want in your life, and that's that negative little voice that you were just talking about then. So if anyone's got any of this going on, or they're wondering why they, you know, can't get themselves down to the gym, or they're not writing that book they want to write, or they're not having the relationships that they want and bringing in the right relationships, or they're not having the success in business that they'd like, it's generally these beliefs that are preventing you and creating blocks. And this is what NLP is so powerful at. So do you want to learn? Should we talk a little bit about this? I find this absolutely fascinating because I think your beliefs create your reality. So what you believe about yourself and the world and others will, you know, will enforce what you do and the actions you take and the things that you're attracted to and the things that you attract in and take action on. Will be linked to your beliefs. So do you work with this in the business environment? Is this what you do with the corporates as well? Because I know you do one-on-one coaching. Do you work with this with your coaching clients? Like, yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yeah. I mean, as soon as, as soon as a belief comes up, and beliefs often are attached to values, you know, things that are important to us, values that are, that are really working for us in our life, or maybe even values that are not working, are holding us back because we value a particular aspect and they all have beliefs attached to them. So yeah, absolutely. When I come across a belief, particularly a belief that maybe is a limiting belief or a belief that's kind of used to be true or is still holding people back, the key thing to do is one, recognize it exists. Okay. So if you are holding yourself back, one of the key questions to start asking yourself is what's stopping me? What's stopping me getting to a new relationship? What's stopping me going for that promotion? What's stopping me? Yeah. So sometimes they might be social scripts, those kind of societal beliefs, that glass ceiling principle, the things that we might perceive that we can't do because of X, Y, Z. They might even become religious beliefs from cultural things that you've inherited or that you have been part of in the past, perhaps, or even now. So recognize what is the belief, yeah? And if you look at the word belief, it's got the word lie in it, you know? So also recognize, is there a lie in the word belief, yeah? Is it true, this belief? And how do I know it's true? And often, if you start looking for evidence about the belief, you'll suddenly recognize you probably think it's true, but it isn't really true. Recognize what is real. How do you have proof? The way that we have proof is we see something, we hear something. Go back to the evidence that you've got. Do you have evidence that something is true? If you do, great, learn from it, take feedback from it, do something with it. If you've got a perception that you think it's true, but actually when I think about it, it probably isn't, that's probably often one that you can start to discard or pop. And often when we're coaching, and you'll know this from coaching people and working with people, that if you start to really question people's beliefs, and I'm not talking, again, I'm not talking religious beliefs, I'm talking about beliefs about a situation or about why I'm stuck. If you start looking at those beliefs, often people go, oh, it's not really a problem. Oh, it's not the thing I thought it was. Oh, I don't have to be stuck doing this thing. Because I don't know that's true. The other thing that can happen as well is we can generalize things. If something occurred to us once, we can then say, "Every time I speak to somebody, they do this," or, "Oh, this happens to me all the time," or, "I can never do this." These generalizations, these "all the times," these "never," these "every times," these "always" type conversations, They're the ones I'm listening out for when I'm coaching people. So somebody goes, "Oh yeah, every time I go on a date, it always never works out." "Never?" "Oh, well, no, a few of them have been great." "Yeah, a few of them have been great, but there was this one person, God, they were, they were just—" "Oh, okay, so it's not all the time, it's one person." And sometimes you start to unravel the belief, you suddenly recognize that we hold on to Often what we hold onto in our minds is stuff when it really doesn't work out, or when it's horrible, or when it really failed, or when we felt a negative emotion. We tend to hold onto those ones. We forget all the positive stuff. Then we just pay attention to the times when we couldn't do something. "Oh, I could never get the kids to put their shoes on." Well, actually, probably 9 times out of 10, they put their own shoes on. But there might be one time when you really wanted to get out, when you were late for something, when they didn't. And then we hold on to that stuff. So when it comes to beliefs, think about what's stopping you. Okay, what is stopping you? How do you know it's true? Okay, what's your evidence for knowing that it's true? And then go, okay, is that still true if I was on the outside? If I was being told this by a friend, how can I get objective to this? We call it kind of taking a meta position. How can I get out the emotion and go, okay, well, what can I do about it? How do I know that's true? Is that every time? And that's the power of starting to self-coach. And that's often why I love seeing coaching clients for a small amount of time, because often the stuff that I'm teaching them and I'm doing with them, they just start to do it themselves. And this is starting to question and get reflective upon these barriers and these boundaries and the things that are stopping things from occurring. Because again, start to get to know yourself and suddenly you recognize that often we are the things that are holding us back. And yet overarching over all of this is the fact that your unconscious mind created that belief, created that boundary, created that barrier, created whatever happens to be going on for it for an absolutely good reason. For itself at that moment in time. So your unconscious mind wants to keep you safe. And in keeping you safe, what it's trying to do is create a situation where maybe it doesn't want you to get uncomfortable, but it doesn't want you to stretch. It doesn't want you to put yourself in a situation where you might end up getting stressed. And so therefore, it kind of creates a world and creates a situation whereby it kind of brings in these beliefs and this stuff that comes up in order to kind of protect you from being disappointed or protect you from some stress that it perceives that you might get. And that's often what your unconscious mind is doing by creating these belief sets for you. Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. Your subconscious mind does try and keep you safe, doesn't it? And knowing that is really powerful as well, because it can allow us to be more gentle with ourselves and more forgiving. When we do kind of like put blocks in our own way and mess up or react to things or overreact to people, um, it's just a trigger and a belief, and it's actually our subconscious mind trying to protect us because it's afraid we're going to get hurt in some way. So it's, you know, and once we know that, that's very empowering, I think, as well. So yes, so yes, your conscious mind wants to keep you safe, and once, once you know that, that empowers you to know it's okay to let go of that belief because you don't need to be kept safe anymore. Because that belief is often formed when we were like maybe a child, like like something happened when we were 5, so we've created a belief around that, and it's trying to protect us from that happening again now. But we're an adult now, so we don't need to have that safety net that's been put in by a 5-year-old, because we, we're able to cope with things because we're grown-ups now. So yeah, I think it's really empowering to know that it's just a safety thing. Yeah, and that, and that's why the becoming aware of where this stuff comes from, what was the trigger points, really useful. 'Cause if you can sort out the trigger, the repercussions of things that happen later don't happen. So for instance, next week I'm working with an interior design company and I'm actually going in to help them with their pitches because they have some people where they have to go and pitch for tenders who really hate the presentation aspect of it. And often with things like presentation skills or interview skills or anything, going on a date skills, we can get these kind of butterflies, we can get the dry mouth, we can get the stuff that comes up for us because we have to, we're putting ourselves out there, we're putting ourselves in front of people, we're feeling judged. And often what comes up, particularly with things like presenting, is that reminder of when you were 7 or 8 and somebody accidentally peed themselves on stage, or you fell over and you tripped on the stage and everybody in the room laughed at you. That's the stuff your unconscious mind is held onto all these years. And now when you're grown up in your 30s, 40s, 50s, whatever age you are now, as soon as you think about standing up in front of people, your unconscious mind brings up the same feelings. It wants to keep you safe. And then that's what creates frustration and creates annoyance. So sometimes that inability to articulate ourselves, all that stuff that comes up for us, we go, oh, I don't know why am I feeling so nervous? I know my stuff, but I can't feel like I can do it. Again, that's the sort of coaching style, the kind of coaching clients I love working with, those that actually have these blocks to clear because there are NLP-based processes. So for instance, there's a great time-based process that's all about letting your unconscious mind know that it's okay to let go of these past and previous experiences because it doesn't need to bring them up now. How would somebody do that then? Because it sounds very simple, doesn't it? Oh, I'll just tell my mind to let it go. But how could somebody actually do that? So if they're listening to this now, they'd be like, oh, they can actually apply it to something that's relevant to them. So one of the key things that you can do, you can do a little bit more consciously. When I'm working with clients, it's a little bit more visualization and led and sort of going through. But one of the things you could do a bit more consciously is if you've got something coming up that you are nervous about or that you are you know, scared about or that you've got coming up, but you really need to do it or you want to do it. Yeah. Okay. What are the things that are coming up? And if I were to know, where might I first have experienced that feeling when I was younger? So there's something called Gestalt theory, which talks about when we are younger, that's when we form our emotions and then we attach labels and kind of freeze in time what that emotion is like. So anger, fear, sadness, guilt, frustration, kind of all the stuff that we create as our big emotions, we tend to have formed and labeled when we're much younger. But sometimes we don't evolve those labels over time. We don't work out what that guilt's like or how to evolve anger or how to notice it. We kind of freeze and recall the angry stuff we felt when we were a child. Yeah, when we're in that kind of rage mode and we felt out of control. And that's the stuff that kind of comes back up for us as an adult. So first of all, think about, okay, what emotions, as I think about giving that presentation or going to that interview or having that really difficult conversation that I don't want to have with my partner, with my family member, whatever, whoever. Yeah. What emotions are coming up for you? Where am I feeling those emotions? Whereabouts in my body do I feel? Because if we have an emotion, often we have an area within our body that it comes up for us as well. What's that feeling like? So again, butterflies in the stomach is quite a common one that people experience, or they have it in their throat and their throat feels blocked, or the hands get really nervous and shaky and they kind of feel it through their body. Almost like a kind of vibrational type thing. So notice what emotions coming up, what physiological effects does it have? And then maybe just let your mind drift back. Imagine almost like there's a timeline, you can imagine a line going back in your life. Where does your mind think it probably first created that feeling? Okay. Maybe write that event down if you can recall it consciously, or if not, It might even feel like you can think of it, but you can't remember what it was. Again, that is just as true to your unconscious mind. You don't have to remember in vivid detail what it might have been, but just have a sense that maybe you can recall that first time. And then think, okay, so now knowing what I know, with all of my life experience now, what can I do that allows me easily and effortlessly to just let that go? Like with all the learnings I've taken on board, With all my experience, with all my skill, with all my knowledge, with all the things I've got going on for me right now, what can I do to let that younger version of me let this emotion go right now? And that, in essence, is what the process is, is going back and going, do you know what? I'm 46. As a 46-year-old, do I really need to hang on to the stuff that my 4-year-old had? Do I really need to hang on to that stuff that my 8-year-old created? At that moment in time. Because I have a lot more experience than that 8-year-old. I have a lot more control than that 8-year-old. I might sometimes behave like the 8-year-old, absolutely. But actually, my knowledge and my skill and knowing what I know and knowing with all of my life experiences, actually I can give my younger self some advice about actually letting that go. And because you're doing that yourself and somebody's not telling you to do it, you're doing this of your own free will, often that's when we can let stuff go and we feel like a weight's being lifted. And so those are the kind of processes when I'm working one-to-one with clients in coaching and even in situations like going into this interior design company and working with their staff and their teams to let stuff go. I'll be dealing with and looking at some of the practical aspects of how to present and feel confident and making sure that your pitch works and building rapport with your audience and all of the skills when it comes to speaking to people. But actually, some of the key fundamentals, some of them may have, are actually the feelings that are coming up. And again, I'll work one-to-one with those individuals as part of the workshop, just allow them to let that go. Because by doing that, often that's the key blocker that stops people going for that promotion, that stops people being able to speak up in front of a group, And the group might be 4 or 5 of your teammates, your team members in a thing, or it might be a room with 200, 500, 1,000 people in it. Again, we all have these blockers and these experiences that stop us from putting the best version of ourselves forward. And that's what I love supporting people is that we all have so much to give and so much to shine and so much to deliver to the world. And sometimes we just stick a bloody carrier bag over the top of it and stick it in the corner because we're just too scared sometimes to let that shine. And it is, isn't it? It's fear. I think that's interesting. I think Marianne Williamson talks about you're either living in love or you're living in fear. And when we've got those negative limiting beliefs, they're all fear-based. They're all fear-based emotions. And they hold— that's what holds us back. When we clear them out, it's so empowering and so powerful. When we clear them out. So if anyone's like wanting to change something in their life or move towards something and you're stuck, I could not recommend highly enough working with a coach, someone like Andy or myself or any— or whoever you're drawn to work with. Like, you know, it's got to resonate with you to clear this stuff out, because when you clear this stuff out, it is incredibly powerful. Um, and I really recommend working with Andy as well because I've done some work with Andy and I know how fantastic he is at what he does. So, uh, which is why I've got him on the show. Thank you. Yeah, I have a little phrase that I say to clients: be in the here and now, not the fear and now. Yeah, yeah. And this is where— yeah, stealing it. And this is where things like mindfulness can be really useful, because often when you're being mindful, and anybody that practices mindfulness or meditation That's about being present, present to this moment in time, to the now. You are living your life at this moment in time. But actually, if your head's often then in the past, that's where we're playing out our old patterns and our stuckness. If your mind's too much in the future, you're kind of daydreaming and constantly just living in the what's next, planning and preparing, but you miss being in the moment. And so you've got to really focus on the now. Like now is when you choose what comes next. Based upon your experiences in the past and the feedback and the learning. So that's where so many of these other methodologies and experiences and ways of being can be so complementary to the work like NLP, because actually things like mindfulness really support you being in that moment. And really doing that work can really help you to create and support yourself and the people around you just being present to what's occurring right now. Yeah, I think the more you kind of learn about yourself and understand yourself and grow, the more you can be there for other people in your life as well and support them. And also the more you can do in your career or anything else you want to do, you can create more in your life because once you clear all the blocks out of the way, you become unstoppable, you become bulletproof really, and it's empowering. And that's when the real shizzle happens, that's when the fun begins. When we clear all the sludge so we can actually get that clarity and that joy back. Because sometimes I think, like, some people, they talk about that they've lost their mojo, they've lost their joy, or they've lost their confidence. Um, and it's not that they've lost it, it's like it's still there, it's just been blocked. Like, these blocks are just in the way. So if you just, like, work with a coach to remove them, and it's like they're like, oh, I found myself, I got my mojo back. It's like, no, it's already there, it's always there, just a few blocks in a way that were preventing you from seeing it and realizing it was there. That's why I think— that's why I find this work so powerful. It is literally life-changing. So yeah, absolutely, absolutely. I could talk all day with you about it. And that's what, you know, when I go again, go back in time to those 11 years ago, that's what getting those blocks out the way really helped me with, you know, when I felt like so much in my life had been ruined and been changed and was off-kilter, I was out of balance again, focusing on my health. I lost 6.5 stone in weight, 32 kilos in 9 months because I gave it some attention. NLP doesn't make you thin, by the way. Don't sign up for the magic weight loss formula. But it was because I changed my behaviors and I switched my mindset and I started doing things that made me love myself again and pay attention to myself. And then through learning about that and the work that I do, I met my partner now, Sophie, and we got married 6 years ago and have had 2 daughters of our own. And I now do the work that I'm doing in the way that I do it now because everything keeps evolving and moving on and changing and working with coaches and being reflective. Cocking it up and learning from it and all of those things. You've got to live those experiences and learn from them. Because if we're not learning, we're staying still. But often when we're staying still, we're getting left behind. And that's a really important one as well to recognize, is if you are learning and you are moving forward, what about the people around you? That's quite key. When I run NLP training courses, diplomas and practitioner courses, I always say to participants, make sure that you are bringing your partner along with you because otherwise you can leave them behind. You do all this self-work and yet they're still the same person. People can come back from courses. We went to a course together in Portugal, didn't we? We did a presentation skills training course. And you come back from these days with this great big buzz and these experiences and you've done all this stuff and your mind's gone pop, pop, pop, changed. And then you come back and the person that you come back to or that was back, you know, home in those situations is still the same person. Yes, they've had their experiences, but they've been very different. So you come back with this buzz and then the other person goes, oh, you've changed, you're different. So it's really important when you're doing change work to make sure that you're doing it in a way that sort of works for the people in your life and around you. So all change, we call it congruent, you know, all change has to be congruent and within, you know, working within the environment that you're in as well, you know, you can't just change you, other people have to keep on the pace along with you as well, because otherwise you can end up leaving people behind when you go through these sort of massive transformations. Yeah, so sometimes that's necessary, but sometimes if you want to keep people in, if you're in a relationship, I believe that you grow together or you grow apart, constantly growing and evolving. Whether you're doing coaching work or not, you're still going to grow and evolve and change as a person. You're just naturally going to do that. There's no stopping that. But if you're consciously making that choice to grow and better yourself, why wouldn't you want, you know, that with your partner as well? Like, you grow together and you both become happier, healthier, wealthier, whatever it is that you want to create more of. I think that's phenomenal. And I think growing together as well keeps that kind of passion and connection together because you've got another thing to share and bond together as well. I think it deepens it and makes it more powerful. Yeah, 100% on that. So I'm all for going with your partner. Not that I have a partner, but when I have a partner, I shall be encouraging them to join me should they wish to. Yeah, and then that's the thing is that one of the things, I guess, you know, on your list of, of people, you know, when it comes to a partner, it certainly was when I was you know, looking for a partner myself, is it has to be somebody who got what I did. You know, so I had partners in the past that really just felt threatened by what I did. And it turned out I needed somebody to be able to do the stuff that I do. And I met my wife Sophie, introduced through a trainer that I went to doing the kind of work that we do. You know, so we met on a Clean Language course or through a Clean Language trainer. And Sophie does the work. She's a coach and she supports women predominantly to have amazing births and feel empowered in the birth world. So she's a hypnobirthing teacher and a doula. And her work is around coaching women and couples. We were both coaching last night, working with a couple of women coming up to their sort of 36 to sort of 38 weeks. Of their birthing, just to make sure that they were in the right place, both as birthing goddesses and their supporting partners, to make sure that they both felt empowered and were both on the right wavelength with each other for what's to come in terms of their birth and their birthing experience. No matter what birth throws at you, no matter what happens, whether or not you have a— Well, hopefully it throws a baby at you. Absolutely. I mean, that's always going to be the end result. The baby's coming no matter what, but it's about how you feel going into that situation. And no matter what happens, how do you feel in control? We can't control external situations and external circumstances and things that happen, but the way you deal with what happens is then the key most important part. And that cause and effect, not letting yourself get into the drama or letting the drama happen, but then stepping back from the drama. Once you kind of got it out your system and going, right, now what can I do? You know, it's not that you shouldn't become emotional, absolutely not, but it's you should also draw a line under the emotion sometimes and step back and go, right, I've been annoyed, I've been frustrated, I've felt like the victim, I felt like I've got to come in and solve everything. Now how do I step back and go, right, what can I do right now to be in control of this situation? That's so important. Yeah, it's powerful, isn't it? So it's back to to that thing you said about the persecutor, the victim, and the rescuer. Now that you know that, you can, you can challenge and ask yourself and go, hang on, am I being one of these three right now? And if I am, that's not really supportive. So it gives you that chance to step back and sort of separate yourself from, isn't it, oh, I'm just playing that role, it's not who I am, I'm just playing that role at the minute. So what actually would, what actually would support me right now? What, you know, and what's actually real about this situation and what's true? And I think That's really empowering as well, to ask yourself that. I just love that, that sort of differentiate, oh, I'm being the persecutor, I'm being the victim, I'm trying to be the rescuer. That's not helping me and it's not helping others. What would help? What outcome would I love? So yeah, a really good little technique for this, if that's happening in your life, you're in this situation where there's that drama happening, is to write it down. So write down the problem, the issue, the thing, the experience, the emotion, like just get it out your head and get it down onto something. Then kind of step back from that book or that piece of paper or whatever you've written it down on and go, right, if this was happening to my friend, what advice might I give? Okay. So if I wasn't in this situation, but I knew what I knew about the situation, what advice might I then give? Because often when we dissociate from feeling that emotion and being in it, and we're able to step back and think, okay, this wasn't occurring to me, but it was occurring to my mate XYZ. What advice might I be giving them as a friend? And then going, okay, and if I took that advice on for myself, what might stop me from taking that advice on? Because that's when the belief starts kicking. Oh, it's easy for them because of this, or they can't do this because of that, or I can't leave that because I've got to do XYZ. So then that's when the beliefs start to come in, social norms, the self-beliefs, the limiting beliefs. Yeah. Or other times we'll step back and go, oh, of course I can do it. And then we just get it done because we've gotten rid of the perception there's a block and actually found out there isn't. So again, these things around blockers and beliefs are really important. It's nice that that disassociation, because we're often kinder with our friends and people around us than we are ourselves. We're so much more critical call of ourselves. And, and we can often see an easy solution when it's for somebody else, for a friend. So I love that kind of separation thing. I'd even step it up one step further as well. You could say, what would I do if this was my friend? Or even, and even ask, ask the question, what would love do in this situation? So if love was coming up with a solution, like, you know, what's, you know, the outcome you'd really love this to be? What would love do? So if you were going from a position of love, what answer could you come up with as well? So that's quite an interesting one to try. What, what would you come up with if it was a friend? And if love was coming up with a solution, you're in that energy of love, what would love do in this situation? I think that's quite an empowering thing. It sort of diffuses the other, um, emotions that are not helpful, the fear-based emotions, and kind of get into that space of love and then answer it from that space. That's quite powerful as well. Yeah, it's quite interesting what different solutions you can use from that place as well. Yeah, I'll steal that one back. I love this stuff, Andy. So I'm gonna steal that one. Yeah, you can steal away, it's a good one. Like, I want to cover the world in love. Use that as much as you like. But yeah, I think it's really perhaps as soon as we take anything back to a resonance of love, it just, just diffuses everything else. Just diffuses it. It's like, ah. Because often these are the higher internal, almost more spiritual, but I don't mean that in a sort of God sense. I mean that in a kind of an internal resonance of self sense. These are the things that really are controlling us. That sense of love, that sense of wholeness, that sense of sort of wanting to be and strive and achieve and and what that gives us and what that gives others and the legacy that we leave behind. When we've left this world, what will people remember about us? They'll remember the love. They won't remember the things you end up doing, the number of times you wash the dishes, or they'll remember the sense that you left people with and your achievements from that perspective. And often those achievements are probably more emotional than physical. From that point of view as well. And often when you meet somebody, you remember how they made you feel far more than you do specifically what they told you. In turn, to— for love is yourself. Love yourself. Love yourself to be with the right person. Love yourself to do the things that you love. Love yourself enough to make the decisions you've got to make to bring the love back in if it's not there. Nobody's going to do it for you. At the end of the day. So you've got to take control of you in order to make sure that you're feeling and experiencing the world in the way that you want to feel and experience it. And if it's not happening for you, what can you do to bring a bit more love in? Yeah, yeah, I love that. And it's not even— a coach can't even do that for you, but they can help you get there. So they can give you the tools and the different perspectives and help you help your mind work differently. But ultimately you take yourself there and you create that yourself. Yeah. Love was a big feature of my TEDx, you know, when I did that last March, March 2020. You know, a lot of what I spoke about, love and empowerment, was actually the theme of the TEDx event I did in Lewisham. And, you know, the power of home when we birthed both of our daughters at home. For instance, the experience of my own mindset around that and that kind of, that piece of self-love as well. So yeah, on the ted.com website, you'll find the TEDx talks on there. What's your talk called if you look for it on TEDx? What's it, what's the title? Just search, just search for my name. So Andy Coley, that's A-N-D-Y C-O-L-E-Y. Um, that's the, the easiest way to find me on the TED website. So brilliant. I'll have a listen to that myself later. I've not listened to that yet. I'm excited. So you said you, um, your wife, she, she had the birthing at home. Did Did she coach herself through that or did she bring in a coach? With our first daughter, Megan, we had the midwives there. Things looked like they were going to progress quite quickly, but then they slowed down. The midwives left. And then within about 45 minutes of midwives leaving, we had a baby in our arms and it was just the two of us in the bathroom at the house. We had planned the home birth. That was something that we wanted, but we hadn't planned a free birth, not having a midwifery team there. At home. But no, it was just the two of us. Because when it comes to that experience, being in control, slowing your breathing down, enabling you to know that you're just trusting the intuition, the wisdom of your body to be able to know what to do. After all, it's grown a baby for 9 months. It's gotten that far. Everything physiologically is there in order to make sure the baby's turning the womb's got these longitudinal muscles for pushing out, latitudinal for turning the baby. It knows what to do. It's designed for it. So therefore, creating a space and an environment in which if everything's going well and everything's working well, there should be no reasons to why, you know, I caught the baby as she came out, literally in sort of two big surges from literally just sort of glimpsing the head. In the birth canal to having a baby in my arms is about 90 seconds and 2 really big surges. That was the first birth of Megan. And then with Beatrice, who's now 3, we had a water birth. So it was a sort of daytime water birth, curtains closed, music on softly. The birthing team from Nurishim were there again. And then she emerged into the pool sort of middle of the afternoon. Again, two completely different experiences, but both of them, you know, born at home, you know, born into that kind of loving environment that we wanted set up. And so I feel very privileged to have experienced that in two very different ways. So I know everybody's experience of birth is very different, and a lot of that can be your mindset going into what you expect the experiences to be. If you're watching One Born Every Minute or if you're watching something that already creates stress and creates drama in your mind, that isn't the best thing for birthing your baby. Sophie often says, the room in which you birth your baby should be similar to the room in which you make love. And that probably isn't with the lights on with lots of doctors surrounding you and looking on and lots of stress and lots of stuff going on. It should be intimate and That's where I've been going wrong, Andy. Lights on, surrounded by doctors. There we go. Fascinating stuff. I didn't expect the conversation to take this turn, but it was interesting nonetheless, I can tell you. That's brilliant, Andy. We've run out of time. This is all about knowledge and education and approaching something in the right state. Because if you have knowledge about it and I've been lucky being surrounded by knowledge about birth. I know a lot about the physiology of birth. I know a lot about the womb, placenta, how a baby is birthed. So by having knowledge, it enabled me to feel much better about the process of birth. And on that little bombshell, it's a great little ending, actually. Thank you for coming on the show, Andy, and sharing. It's been a fascinating chat. Absolutely loved it. And I hope our listeners have too. I'm sure they have. Every week, 9:00 AM and 9:00 PM, different guests sharing awesomeness. Thank you for listening. I'm Janine Newbery. This is the Eat Love Do Show on Women's Radio Station.