Lorraine came to me with a problem with her skin. She suffered terrible eczema and had become very distressed as it was affecting her face quite noticeably. For many years she had been able to ‘manage’ it all the time it was on other parts of her body, hidden away.
I asked Lorraine to tell me what it was she really wanted in her life. She gestured dramatically and declared that she just wanted her life ‘sorted and in order’. It seemed to her, ‘things’ had been out of order and in chaos for too many of her 45 years. I gently drew out from Lorraine the detail of what was not sorted and was out of order in her life. The final straw had been recent difficulties in her relationship with her long term partner. Once she had voiced her concerns she was noticeably more relaxed and at ease. Also she was more than a little surprised at how, when she had named and looked in detail at all the areas where things were not sorted and out of order, she could easily put together some simple action steps to take control of her surroundings, her paperwork and her feelings about her relationship. This was a big step for Lorraine who had been a hoarder of material things, believing that she could lose everything at any moment. The realization came to Lorraine that instead of making her feel more secure, these possessions no longer had any use in her life and added to her feelings of chaos. She was taken aback at how she concluded that it would be OK to let go of these material things and live a life less encumbered, and in her words, “weighed down”.
To give Lorraine confidence to deal with any possible ‘outbreak’ of disorder in the future, we did a simple exercise. She was a keen student and always kept on top of her studying, whatever else was going on. I asked her to remember a time she felt that she had things totally in order. I simply asked her to visualize that wonderful ‘sorted’ state of her coursework, to feel all the confident and energizing feelings of being in control when she remembered that tidy file. As she did this I asked her to simply press on a particular spot on her left little finger. Anytime that she felt that things might be going out of ‘order’ she could just press that spot on her left little finger and it would bring back all the feelings of order and it would run the ‘programme’ in her mind of taking control and getting order back into her life.
She left our session with an air of excitement at getting down to tackling what needed to be done.
She telephoned me a week later to say that her skin was much improved; she had cleared her house from top to bottom,had taken bags and bags of rubbish to the tip and was planning a mini break with her partner.
NLP Coach and Personal Development Trainer, Beryl Whiting delivers professionally developed management training programmes to individuals and blue-chip organisations. You can contact Beryl via her website http://www.berylwhiting.com. Go now and complete the free Stress Assessment.