Change? Burn your bridges and destroy all the things that were you Humpty.

This time extreme measures for change, lasting change.  

I have pondered over the years how some people go on and realise their goals and many do not. Some of the musicians tour the world, others set up in business as a player and teacher and become successful at that. I had seen it in the areas of health, people who make the transition from illnesses to health and others who do not. As seen the people who cannot change like the smokers who have cancer who cannot give up smoking even when it means the difference between life and death.

So what is it that makes change possible? Some people seem wired up so that they can change, you will know some people like that, they seem to embrace change but I think they are in the minority for most of us it takes something else. For many having nothing to go back to is something that causes movement towards difference and away from something old and familiar, remember the familiar can be abuse and unhappiness, look at the people who leave one abusive relationship only to find themselves in another. Sometimes amping up the pain helps to make the move away from it easier and then you need to burn the bridges that would take you back. So pack up the job with nowhere to go, buy a one-way ticket to somewhere else. The Exodus story is a good metaphor, the people of Israel escaping Egypt not being able to return over the sea as after getting through the parted waves the sea returns therefore destroying their way back.

Now for destroying the image of you.

Bowie gave up Ziggy Stardust when he was at the top of his game and created himself anew, so working on yourself; now you cannot go back to the person before, letting go of what you were. Destroying the photos, anything symbolic, get some new clothes, change what you are wearing, and throw away the old. Now aim in the direction that you expect to arrive at, allowing things to come in and help, chance happenings, chance meetings and strange coincidences. On my podcast I interview musicians and artists and the times that they say that their lives changed in this way is the norm not something that was planned but something that was acted on. So the unexpected invitation to join a band which was responded to straightaway ,the chance hearing of them playing in a little pub in an out of the way place, the overheard conversation that gave you an idea etc. If you think this is a little bit woo- woo, then it is, I would say that it does not interest me whether we validate that but does it work? The evidence points to it, the data says that it does and secondly dismissing this may reflect the trap of one’s own thinking, because it is that type of thinking that stops change because it is risk averse. For real change, lasting change we need the ‘triple whammy effect’ that breaks you in such a way that you cannot reconstitute the old you anymore. A little bit like Humpty Dumpty

Vic Hyland

www.bluescampuk.co.uk

Now I have done the workshop, unleash me on the world.

Over the years of teaching and being involved in NLP I now see that I might be part of the problem, that of the weekend workshop. My fascination with the mind and consciousness has let me to explore many things, music, hypnosis, meditation and those things were fed into my work. However I have seen in my time the rise of the workshop seminar course on a level that certainly did not exist even a few years ago in this country. There are workshops for everything, hot yoga, raw food, Tantric techniques and all of this is driven by somebody selling something. 

Now as part of this problem I can see that the unintended consequence of this is someone goes to the weekend workshop and becomes a practitioner of it. Now I do not think that the university courses for things alternative are any better with herbalism courses that do not involve going out and finding the plants in the wild, and massage courses that don’t involve any physical contact, (I joke not) and music courses that do not teach how to make money, that has to be learnt by chance it seems. Obviously in the past if you wanted to use herbs you learnt literally in the field, the herbalist of old never learnt in a formal setting and therefore they never got caught into the intellectual way of exploring something: the way that involves the use of statistics and is data driven. Much of the data and statistics are at best misinterpretations and at worst are things that are pulled literally out of the air, I have seen data that supports something that later is refuted by other data, the thing that seems to be missing is personal experience.

So how does the teaching of music fit into this? Music once was the domain of the unprofessional, one would have learnt by watching and maybe being apprenticed to another musician. Once the church was involved then things got into a pattern so that musicians learnt to play to the script not only the written music but the essence of it and no funny stuff, (this is why improvisation fell out of favour). Contempory music in this country was until recently like the former description of learning on the job but now it is learning in a college setting and it has the hallmarks of what I was saying earlier something disjointed and removed from the root of the music. 

So what to do? Attending the workshop is okay however that is only the beginning of a long journey with the beginning point of ‘evangelising your enlightenment’ needs to be repressed and for the years to develop and mellow the fruit. That will eventually come along after the flowering of the seminar and college buds have fallen away and the developing fruit has withstood the rain, the pests, wind and all the interested birds of life looking to damage your ideas.

The resulting misshapen and damaged fruits no longer look like the pictures that the advertising gave you with their brilliance shown in the workshop but they will be nourishing and better than anything that a workshop picture will afford you. And how long does it take for the fruition?

10,000 hours………..

Vic

www.bluescampuk.co.uk