Newmarket Hypnotherapy

Picture this: I was waiting at Birmingham train station. I’d been on a four day training course. I’d passed the assessments but I felt low. The things I was telling myself in my head weren’t good. The images I had were all the stupid things I’d done wrong. I wanted to get home as fast as I could. The negative parts of the feedback I’d been given were ringing in my ears. I wanted to be away from other people and on my own.

I wandered around WH Smith to kill time and, as often happened, found myself looking for answers amongst the self-help books. I had a library full of them at home already – I’d never finished one yet and seemed to hope that by some sort of osmosis my life would be transformed. It hadn’t worked yet but I still had hope.

I picked up a book and began to flick through the pages. Something in the content resonated with me. Still I wasn’t sure so I

put it back. A few minutes later I picked it up again. I took another look and began to feel optimistic. I bought the book with a promise to myself that this time I would read the whole thing. It was one of the best decisions of my life.

The book was ‘How to be Brilliant’ by Michael Heppell (www.michaelheppell.com). It’s packed with useful stuff and one chapter really made the difference for me – the five characteristics of brilliant people. I wrote them out and kept them on my desk as a constant reminder - here they are with my thoughts:

1. Positive Action

There is often a lot of talk about positive thinking – and while that’s great, it doesn’t really achieve anything on its own without taking action.

How many people do you hear each day say “I’m fine” when asked how they are. It’s an almost automatic response but, as what we focus on increases, don’t you want more than that? Why not be good, great or even brilliant every day and see the difference?!

Then think about the other words you use every day and instead of focusing on what you don’t want, flip it and focus on what you do want. Instead of thinking how tired you are, aim to get more energy. If things are crap, how could they be better? And if you’re scared, how could you be more confident?

One of my favourite learning points was around the word ‘try’ and how it implies a lot of effort spent not achieving anything. To see for yourself, touch your nose, then don’t touch your nose – and then try and touch your nose. Trying to do something is not the same as doing something.

2. Break out of limiting beliefs

I love this: “what is it that holds us back? What is it that keeps us inside our comfort zones? FEAR. It’s fear that holds us back. Think of fear as a simple acronym for False Evidence Appearing Real”.

It’s just so true – think back to before anything you thought you were frightened about and it becomes obvious that all the fears are just made up in our heads or were put there by others and we took them on. If we put them there we can kick them out again.

3. Think differently

I’ve never been big on the left brain logical/right brain creative thing. What I do get though is this: when I was young I knew I could paint, draw, sing, dance, talk to anyone about anything and be imaginative. As I got older this all slowly disappeared until by the time I left education I no longer thought I could do any of them (except the dancing!). At some point most of us start saying “I can’t paint/draw/sing/be creative/be imaginative/ etc….”

Now the fact is some of my drawing is not going to end up the Tate and my singing is not going to win me X factor – but I can do them, I can draw and sing – I just could be a bit better at them!

4. Ability to manage stress

Stress is unavoidable – what differs is how we manage it and how much we expose ourselves to it. Practicing relaxation is key to achieving the life you want.

Before I read ‘How to be Brilliant’ I used to spend around eight hours a week watching soaps and probably double that watching other rubbish telly. It wasn’t relaxing, it wasn’t even much fun. Has anyone ever watched Corrie or Eastenders and felt happier and more relaxed for it? My advice – watch what you enjoy and invest the other hours in doing the things you love.

5. Massive Action

“Why aren’t you getting out there and doing things instead of just talking about it or watching others do it?” The key point here is to take massive action. Because massive action = massive results.

You could probably take this a step back and say any action is better than no action. But why aim low when you can take massive action for those massive results that will make a difference?

As Michelangelo said, “the greatest danger for most of us is not that our aim is too high and we miss it, but that it is too low and we reach it.”

Doing it!

After reading how to be brilliant, I booked on a course to see Michael live. It was inspirational. I’d never felt so positive, focused and motivated all at once. Within three months I had moved house, changed job, secretly organised proposing to my now wife in a way she would never forget (on stage at Showaddywaddy!), joined a running club, made some great friends and made many other changes that helped move my life to the way I wanted it.

Even if you did nothing else differently from the book, by applying these five principles to every area of your life it will lead to amazing results.

Newmarket Hypnotherapy: Successful hypnotherapy, hypnosis & NLP in Newmarket. To contact Dan call 07724 155715 or e-mail This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .