Hey everybody. Many of us have got
meetings or people that get stressful
and maybe that's because they're
difficult, maybe it's because they get
confrontational, maybe it's even
aggressive, I don't know, but anyway at
the end of this video you'll have a
great process for remaining calm in
these situations. It's what I call the
STRESS SHIELD and it's something that
comes from the field of neuro linguistic
programming or NLP, and it enables you to
be in a difficult place, and stress less,
and stay relaxed, and remain composed, so
that you can respond well. Now stay
around to the end, because as well as
presenting the process I also want to
talk about what's BEYOND the process,
which may be even more powerful for you,
and also I've got a FREEBIE!! My
name's Steve and I'm a professional
coaching trainer, I work mostly with
professional people on the topic of
succeeding, but from a happier and more
grounded place, so for the best ideas and
practices in that theme, please subscribe
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I developed the stress shield several
years ago by adapting recognizable
patterns in NLP or neuro linguistic
programming. I am an advanced master
practitioner and trainer of neuro
linguistic programming and it's still
something that I use very much in my
work. Even though this channel isn't
specifically about NLP, those processes
do show up in my work and I've used them
to transformational effect with many
clients over the years. Before I
present the process, let me get a couple of
things out of the way. First of all I
am going to present the process rather
than facilitate it as if I was
facilitating you one-on-one. If I was
facilitating you one-on-one, we'd take a
lot more time over this, we'd spend more
time doing the steps and checking the
steps, whereas in this video I'm not
going to do that, I'm just going to tell
you what the steps are.
You can facilitate yourself through
this but if you do so I would urge you
to start at the shallow end rather than
the deep end. In other words pick
something that isn't too bothersome to
you, to make sure that that you feel
right with this process and that it's
something that will
work for you. Only then gradually work up
to the tougher situations. The final
thing I want to say is that the idea of
this is to practice it AHEAD of time, so
that it can become a resource IN time.
the first stage of the process is to
practice accessing a feeling of being
relaxed and alert, and the way I would
get people to do this is ask you to
close your eyes and think of a time
where you were relaxed and alert.
Some good examples of this might be
things like being on a sightseeing day
where you are relaxed, it is a relaxing
day, but you are attentive, you're paying
attention to what's going on around
you're taking in what's going around you,
you're watching, you're listening, you're
interested, and I want you to put
yourself back inside that experience, so
you close your eyes, go back to it, put
yourself back inside it, see what you saw
then, hear what you heard then, feel what
you felt then, and make sure it's vivid.
Make sure for example that what you're
seeing isn't just some small picture in
front of you, but it's all around you, and
it's vividly colorful, and is
three-dimensional, and is moving, and make
sure that the things that you're hearing
are clear, that you're hearing them with
a clarity that you heard them then, and
that the feelings are as clear in your
body as they were then. This is where
we would spend a little time just making
sure that it's vivid, make sure that
you're getting right back into it.
Step two is to repeat that a couple of
times so that you find yourself easier
and easier to be able to get into it, and
like I said make sure it is vivid, make
sure you're noticing details, actually
look around that the visuals and see
little details that are there to help
you get fully back into it, and every
time it feels like the feeling is gonna
get its most vivid, then just say to
yourself in your head, "Relaxed and alert,
relaxed and alert," so run through this a
few times, this is what we would do, when
you get to the peaks, take relaxed and
alert. By the way let me know in the
comments which situations you find
stressful and how you've learned to cope
with them. I'd love to turn this into a
conversation, so if you're okay with
sharing that, then I'd love to read your
comment and I'll reply to as many of
them as I can. So the first stage of this
process was to practice accessing a
feeling, and what I want to get people to
naturally access that feeling, to do the
whole relaxed and alert thing, get into
it, get vivid with it, and I'm going to
use some hypnotic phenomena. So I would
want you to imagine that this feeling,
the center of it has some location your
body, it may be spreading out but it will
have a center somewhere in your body. I
want you put your attention on
where that center is, the other thing I
would want you to notice is how that
feeling is spinning, you either
perceive it as spinning forward like
this, backwards like this, round clockwise
round anti-clockwise. Don't overthink
this! Whatever feels instinctively
correct, go with. If you like just try
match it with each of these spin
directions, which one feels
correct is the one to go with, and the
other thing I want you to do is to give
this feeling of color. Again don't
overthink this ,don't overanalyze, it's
not an intellectual process, just
whatever current color comes to mind
when you're thinking about this feeling,
when you're putting your attention on
this feeling, that's the color to go with.
Now keep tuned in to this feeling by
keeping noticing the location of the
feeling, it's spin, its color, keep your
attention on those things, but come out
of the past experience and put yourself
in the present, experience wherever you
are, holding that feeling, remember to
keep noticing its location, keep noticinng
its spin, keep noticing its color, and use
that as a way of holding onto the
feeling whilst you come in to the present,
AND imagine that there is a room sized
perspex screen in front of you. Now
keeping your attention on that feeling and
holding that perspex screen I now want
you to project yourself into the future
into the place where you'll be having
this difficult meeting, or meeting with
these difficult people. This screen
is fully transparent so you can
perfectly see everything that's on going
on in the room, you can perfectly hear
everything that's being said in the room,
it's just that they are on the other
side of the screen to you. Step five
is to continue holding that feeling by
noticing where it is in your body, how
its spinning, what color it is, and to
keep the perspex screen in place but now
to mentally rehearse being in that
meeting and every time somebody says
something confrontational or aggressive,
I want you to imagine that it's like a
paint ball that flies towards the
perspex screen and splats on the screen,
and just slides down, something hurtful,
splats on the screen and slides down, you
can see what's going on, you can hear
what people are saying, you can learn
from what people are saying, you can pay
attention,
it's just that these things cannot get
to you. And now I want you to mentally
rehearse remaining composed and saying
whatever you're gonna say from a calm
place, by keeping steady, taking breaths,
taking pauses if you need to, but just
responding from a composed place. Now if
you've never experienced any NLP before
that might have been new to you, it might
have even been a bit weird to be giving
feelings colors and spin directions and
things like this, but these are just
hypnotic phenomena that we use to be
able to transpose feelings from one
place to another and to use them as
resources in future situations, but while
processes and techniques like that can
be very useful in building new resources
for you, and useful for changing your
feelings in the moment, I do see them as
somewhat tactical because I think what's
more powerful than that is to be BEYOND
the process. You know, I often say that, if
we take motivation as an example, what's
even better than having a motivation
technique is not even needing one! And so
I want to talk in my next week's video
about something which is BEYOND
techniques, a way of being that is beyond
technique, which can also be useful in
situations like this, so do remember to
subscribe to the channel and click that
notifications bell so you can see when
that follow-up video arrives.
I mentioned a free gift! If you go
down to the pinned comment below this
video you'll see a link to access a free
guide to managing stress in the moment
and making better decisions under
pressure. I would love for you to help
yourself for that free guide. Just go
down to the pinned comment, click the link
and you'll get access to it. Besides
that I hope you enjoyed the video please
like the video it helps other people see
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