Listen and You Shall Hear

 

 

As I sit here late at night at my computer there is one glaring theme that keeps ringing in my head to write to you about and share.   “Our success is in direct portion to our ability to be relationship with others.”   I have been contemplating the deeper and more generative meaning of this statement for a long time.  

If there is one thing I have learned through the years is that life is not a solo journey.  It is done in relationship to many others.   Business here in Australia is fundamentally based upon who you know and yes, you require having a great product or service but rarely, at least in my experience, have contracts ever shown up at my door and asked to come in.  I’ve required to go knocking and through the relationships I have established through the years doing business in Australia, my relationships have always opened the doors to amazing possibilities.

It is fundamental to our success in relationships that we discover the common ground amidst the seeming differences and establishing mutual understanding between people and communication styles whether that be between parents and children, life partner to life partner, husband to wife or director of a large organization to the upper management.  Relationship success means: establishing the sameness between people and witnessing what is inclusive rather than exclusive. The foundation of recognizing the power of your relationships is and forever will be everything to your ability to succeed.

As I work with more and more organizations in both Australia and the United States there is inherent in all the problems a organizations may face, the ever present issue of communication between people.

Organizations spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on systems forgetting that it is the functionality of the people and their relationships with one another that actually make the systems work.   

So how do we bridge the differences between the viewpoints of people who come from such life reference points, each with their individual body of evidence that convinces them that how they see the world is right and correct?

The answer is the CONVERSATION.  My particular brand in conducting corporate training is the ability to facilitate the difficult conversation.  As I continue to facilitate groups in holding the conversations to discover the mutual understanding, the unspeakable is finally spoken and strategies discovered that will finally move the group to action and resolution.

The same holds true for couples, parents and children, any form of relationship success will be based upon this one fundamental principle.  It is so basic, so simple yet most people find it the most difficult thing to do.  

As I watch the culture shift in organizations I am working with and the conversations happen that have been withheld for so long, I often stand in wonder of how beautifully simple and powerful people become when they master the art of the authentic conversation.  These types of conversations can transform companies, marriages, children and the world. 

Here is a brief outline for an authentic conversation.  Begin yours today!!!

The RULES:

1.       If there is problems in your relationships either professionally of personally it is because of the quality of the conversation.  Take responsibility for being half the problem.

2.       Do not interrupt the speaker when they are speaking.

3.       Be in physiological rapport with the speaker.

4.       If you disagree with speaker ask more questions so you can clarify their meaning.

5.       Acknowledge what is being said is valid from the perspective of the speaker and that you can understand how they could feel that way.  

6.       After the speaker is complete say: “May I add my perspective to clarify my position.”

7.       Stay out of defence.

8.       Watch your tone of voice and remember that 38% of the meaning of your communication is the tone of your voice.

9.       Stay out of sarcasm.

10.   Enter the conversation with the intention to empower enrich and clarify.

As I continue to facilitate building the bridges of communication between teams, executives and people struggling in their relationships I have come to one major conclusion.  The true sacred temple is the temple of our relationships.

It is here that we polish off the rough edges of our personalities and begin shifting out of the ancient programming of our past.  It is here that we can begin to create growth in ourselves and prove the evidence that we can and are maturing. 

Every conversation within every relationships is our point of power where we chose in that moment to become more than our past programming and demonstrate our well earned wisdom or we opt to further engrain the patterns of our past that keep us frozen in unworkable strategies that increase our frustration.

Find the common ground and discover the underlining truth that all people desire fundamentally the same things and hold similar values.  Establish what is mutually desired in all the differences between people and how they see their realities.  What you will find in the seeming differences of people is the same heart, with the same desire for peace, joy, love and connection.  HOLD THE CONVERSATION YOU HAVE BEEN AVOIDING. 

Love & Light

Our wisdom matures through life

The trip to Australia has had its challenges, as well as fantastic possibilities, that could shift the paradigm of how I have travelled my career path to this point.  The question I am often asked by clients is: “why after I have set my goals, done  the inner work and outer preparation, what do I do when I don’t get the results I expected?”

As I have worked with clients, this nagging question has repeated time and again by nearly every client.  The question of “what do I do when it doesn’t work?  What do I do when I have done my best and the results are still not evident.  There is a beautiful presupposition of NLP that states that there is no failure only feedback.  We all have the ability to  retain all of our learning’s  from our experiences as we enact and become more and more flexible in our behaviors. What is required is to become more creative, curious and strategize massive action so we achieve our outcomes.

The greater your flexibility, the greater leader you become.   When I face this question in my own life I have a strategy for it which I desired to share with you. 

Step 1 = I refuse to wallow in self doubt.  I frame the experience as feedback and say to myself that there is something I have not seen, some knowledge I require or some alliance I require to make.  I know the circumstances are showing me a blind spot that I have had. My commitment to myself is to increase my ability to educate, inspire and train millions of people before I dance out of the mortal coil.  Reframe from wallowing in self doubt, frame the experience as feedback and become curious.

Step 2 = I ask myself: what resources do I have? What relationships can I contact for ideas or assistance?  What have I not done, that if I did it would make all the difference? Where have I not shown up 100% that has caused this circumstance?  Be courageous with yourself and lessen your pride.  Ask for clarity and ideas from the ones you trust and be willing to receive the feedback to help you break out of your tunnel vision into a new way of expanding your perspective.

Step 3 = Do the inner work.  Do an authentic evaluation of your core beliefs, secondary gains, values and emotions that may be hindering the realization of your goals.  Take responsibility.  It doesn’t happen to you it happens from you.  You are your own reality generating machine and you are part of the equation of the reality you are manifesting.  Knowing NLP, you can decode your nervous system from core memories using the Memory Resolution technique.  Change your limiting beliefs using time based techniques, submodalites and the 90 day new belief manual.  Conduct a values elicitation and verify your goals are aligned to your top five values.  Do the inner work.   Commit to learning the NLP skills that makes everything work, and commit to travelling your life journey fully equipped to manage your mind therefore the results in your life.

  Step 4 = Model the excellence of others who have done what you desire to create in your own life and explore how they have accomplished their results. It is important for you to understand the steps that have worked in the past so that success was achieved.  Adapt, become flexible, intertwine your ideas with the ideas of the masters and geniuses of our time and follow their steps. Never giving up until you reach your outcome.

  Step 5 = Base your outcomes anchored to a higher purpose.  You will have unstoppable power and endless energy to achieve your outcomes if they aligned to your highest values.  Be aware that the end of the day the only thing asked of you at the time of your death is “How much love and devotion did you develop for the life force that animates all of us and how did you demonstrate that love to others in your life. Leave a Legacy and make a very light footprint on our earth while giving massively.  Know that operating in our lives is a force that unconditionally loves each and everyone one of us.   

Fear is the mind killer.   You are infinite possibility in the physical form, claim your birthright and activate your flexibility in thinking and behavior.  You will then create the greatest contribution to whatever system you belong, whether it be a family or organization. Envision your life leaving a legacy that can last for generations to come.

What I have learned on this trip is, when life does not happen as you expected it would, it is a fertile environment to kick into your highest level of flexibility and possibility.  There is rarely an outcome that you cannot achieve.  Never give up in the realization of the goal.  Find new ways, new paths to create the change you desire and take massive action.   Know as well, that there is something higher at work in all of our lives. May you practice surrendering over the results of your efforts to a Higher Power. Ask ultimately that whatever your life expression creates, people are touched, and you have made the contribution you came here to make.

 Many Blessings and Happy Happy Holidays!

Love & Light

Gary De Rodriguez

Knowledge

I truly believe that the continuation of learning is the very most important thing we can do with our lives.  I do my best every year to go and train with someone who I respect and honor to increase my own skills and knowledge and find new systems that dove tail into the work that I have been doing for so long. 

 A while back, I participated in a certification for myself in team assessment model.  I found the information and the trainers to be exceptional.  Some of you may remember when I sent out an invitation for the Mobius Model certification. Well, I went and found the information to be just what I was looking for.  A very simple yet powerful system for taking a group from conflict to possibility while discovering the group strength and designing the actions required to create the solution.  The Mobius Model is a communication model that moves us from a monologue consisting of praise and blame, claim and worry to a dialogue that establishes mutual understanding of the common ground that exists at the foundation of all conflict between people.

 Here’s the model in a nutshell: the model is an exploration of the possibilities that exist within the differences of perception between people.  Listen to understand not necessarily agree or disagree, and then seek the common ground and what is positive and missing that will benefit all concerned in the future. 

 As many of my readers have studied NLP we know that the map is not the territory.  Our perception is clouded, at best.  We can only see our perception of reality but not reality itself. When we come together in a team or partnership, we collide with different reference points and maps of reality, but there exists a common ground waiting to be discovered within all our differences.  The conflict is the birthplace of possibilities if we chose to practice deep listening.

 The art of perceptual positioning oneself in a relationship by practicing a three point perspective of others is vital to individuals who are choosing to lead.

Gregory Bateson says “that unless you can take three points of perception of another you do not have enough information to create an opinion.”   So we need to begin with the foundation of mutual understanding to seek and discover the common ground between people’s differences.  This inquiry unfolds possibilities and reveals the common ground that builds rapport and deepens our relationships.

 Relationships will be forever more the greatest heaven or the greatest hell we will venture into. I truly believe that in the hearts of people there is inherit goodness and beauty. The experiences that wound, can leave such lasting imprints upon us that they cloud our reason and perception so we cannot see the possibilities in our partnerships, our families and our teams. Relationships are the true acid test of where the rubber hits the road of what we learned in our life and how we demonstrate that learning so it can harden into our character through repetition of right action towards others.

 We are all seeking connection.  The practice of listening for what is the common ground between people’s differences is an act of choice that discovers the hidden patterns in our language, and the thoughts that connects us all in the quest for oneness.  

Love & Light

Time & The Human Mind

Time is a construction of our mind used to measure experiences, distances and events.  If we lived by the Mayan calendar, we would be measuring time in states of being instead of actions or doingness.  The Roman Catholic Church developed the clock and time keeping.  This development externalized the consciousness of man and woman and indoctrinated the world to what we can do rather than to who we are.

 In the quantum field of possibilities there is no time.  There is consciousness void of a measuring instrument to determine what the mind perceives.  One of the primary distortions of our consciousness is that time exists.  We project our minds into the future with worry or anticipation. We send our minds into the past in regret or reminiscence.  We rarely ever experience the sacred moment of “now” — where we really are.  To be truly self aware we require to practice being fully present in the NOW.

 When I first conducted training’s in Australia several years ago, I remember flying above Sydney with the beautiful city, opera house, harbor and royal gardens down below.  As I looked out the window of the plane, after a very long flight, I closed my eyes and in my minds eye was this old Aboriginal man staring me in the face. I opened and closed my eyes again and there he was.  This vision never left me for my entire two month stay in Australia during my first trip.  I didn’t think much of the experience other than it was a bit annoying to fall asleep every evening staring this old man in the eyes.  The vision never spoke just appeared and stayed when ever my eyes were closed.  Years past and I continued to return to Australia to conduct trainings and perform corporate consulting.  One of my dreams was to do work with an Aboriginal healer because I believe that the indigenous people of our planet have secrets that our form of science is just beginning to catch up to.  I have studied in India, Hawaii and with Native American healers and I deeply desired to be introduced to and work with an Aboriginal healer.  

After four years of wondering whether or not this would happen, one of my students approached me after one of my courses and asked if I would be interested in meeting the Aboriginal law keeper for Western Australia.  I said, “Are you kidding?”  So, we arranged a pick up for me and off we went to meet Violet.  I didn’t know what to expect from the meeting and was told that Violet would know when she saw me. I entered her home and was taken to a slight, dainty Aboriginal woman about 70 years of age. She greeted me with a hug and whispered in my ear.  “White Buffalo Calf Woman, do you know why you’re here? I looked at her with her big smile grinning back at me and I could only just nod yes.  I have a history from many years back with the Lokota legend of White Buffalo Calf Woman and somehow Violet knew the depth of the Lokota legend to my soul. 

 Now I must digress to another story for a moment so you fully understand the impact of Violet’s comment to me. When I was a young man, I participated in a re-birthing training in San Diego, CA. I was one of about twenty participates.  It was a great experience and during the closing circle I noticed one of the women in the circle.  She had, sitting before her, a buckskin bag with some object within it.  When the talking stick came to her she looked at me and said, “I don’t want to do it, but the dream was so real and vivid and the message was that you would know what to do with it. I cannot do anything else but to give this to you.  It is my most sacred object please guard it with care.”  I took the bag and opened it and within the buckskin was a beautiful deer antlered medicine pipe.  I took the pipe home that night and began to make up a ceremony that I did frequently through the months in the privacy of my home by myself.  It consisted of facing the sacred four directions of North, South, East and West and extending blessings and prayers to all living things. About a month later I picked up the book Return of the Bird Tribes.  As I read along, I came to the chapters on White Buffalo Calf Woman and her pipe ceremony.  As I read about the legend, I came to the section in the book that described the entire pipe ceremony and what I had made up in my little ceremony was White Buffalo Calf Woman’s ceremony word by word.  The depth of Violets connection to time and what she could see amazed me, and yet within this gentle soul was an antiquity that I had rarely encountered in all my travels.  She remained standing and beckoned me to sit next to her.  As I sat, there were several other Aboriginal people who had come to see Violet.  She turned to her assistant, a large Aboriginal woman with the deepest blackest eyes I have ever seen and Violet asked her, “Is he a goodie or a badie?” Her assistant went into dream time and slowly opened her eyes and said:  “He is in-between.”  Violet then looked at me with a large grin upon her face and said “I know who you are. You are the one from Atlantis who bridged science and spirituality together and your back to do it again.” Then, she said, “You know that Aboriginal man you were seeing all the time?” (Remember, this is four years later.) I said, “Yes.”  She said, “That was you.  You have come home.”  She gave me my Aboriginal name and spent four more hours with me leading me on several Shamanic journeys.  My life was not the same when I left her presence.    

 I have thought since then that she did not live in time as we know it.  All time was the same to her as if she had access to all dimensions of time - past, present and future — simultaneously.  I have to wonder how difficult it has been for the Aboriginal people to fit themselves into a culture that runs itself so fundamentally differently.  It would make it impossible for the Aborigine to integrate into a western model of time or culture.  They are a special and sacred people. So when we think about how Quantum Physics is proving that time is a mental construct and what is real is consciousness, it raises the questions of how real can our past really be and how real is our projections into the future.  Worry serves no purpose nor does regret of the past.  What does make a difference is our focus of mind upon the eternal and timeless presence of who we are and being in the eternal NOW. 

 We are quantum creating beings spinning out our world with every thought we think, emotion we produce and word we speak.  Let us spin our realities from a heart focused upon the knowingness of ourselves as the eternal traveler.  We are returning ourselves back to a state of oneness.

Love & Light

Gary De Rodriguez

Listen and You Shall Hear

One of the key beliefs of Humanistic Neuro Linguistic Psychology is the person who has the most flexibility becomes the most contributing and free person with the systems in which they belong.

 We all belong to a family system that comprises a variety of different relationships, each with their unique perspectives, problems, strengths and weaknesses.  Each one of us has developed complex-beliefs, values and strategies to adapt to the appearance of the loss of love.

 As we mature, we begin to realize that the foundation of our subconscious patterning may not serve our mastering of achieving peace and success.  Instead, it becomes the search for answers, mentors and information to help lead us through the forest of our perceptions and into the clearing of our options and choices.  Here are some perspectives to help us get to the clearing sooner, rather than later.

 A mighty law of life is the requirement to become masterful in our relationships.  This is where the rubber hits the road between what we have studied, and hold as beliefs and truisms, and what has actually been integrated inside us as our identity.

 When we are able to demonstrate congruency between what we believe and what our actions actually are, we strengthen our identity and raise our self esteem.  This, also, allows us to resonate out into the complex, unseen universe of causation a field of “I am worthy.” This field permits us to draw, like a magnet, the opportunities that support our every dream.

 The art of causation is based upon various laws, other than the law of attraction, and must be honored to obtain consistent results and a sense of mastery over the unpredictability of life.

 Here is a key principle:  Only commit to what you know you can keep your word to; and keep your word no matter what!

 As you strengthen your worthiness through the laboratory of your relationships, hold to this one rule so you can increase your compassion for others and develop the muscle of your growing flexibility and congruency.

 Realize that each person behaves out of a different set of beliefs, memories, values and collection of experiences that act as their map of reality.  Another’s reality will be forever different than our own.  We have to master the art of flexibility to our perception and find curiosity in what happened during another’s experience to cause the molding of their beliefs.  Once we master this art, we can honor the other person’s perspective and offer more genuine conversations and relationships.

 The success driven individual realizes that to create the success they deserve, one must honor another’s perspective and have the courage to hold authentic conversations filled with artful questions that are filled with respect.

 Conversations filled with the positioning of who is right and who is wrong, or armoring for the next attack, will always lead to destroyed relationships, stress and fractured families, organizations and teams.

 Each of our realities are just as valid as any other person’s, so we should enter our dialogues with the primary intent to clarify, understand, enrich and empower our relationships with appropriate boundaries for ourselves.

 Here are some strategies for holding conversations that work, build relationships, congruency and respect while avoiding the pitfalls that are common when two people are seeing through different colored lenses.

 Be mindful of the following:

 When you enter into a difficult conversation, begin the dialogue with an established outcome for the discussion.

 Questions to ask:

 What is your outcome for our conversation?

 What do you need to feel like we both are honored?

 What would be your highest choice for this situation?

 Foundational Principles:

 Be in physiological rapport with the other person.

 Enter the conversation with the intention to clarify, enrich and empower.

 Be accountable for your part of the situation.

 Know that you are creating your own emotional responses and that you do have a choice.

 Be fully and completely present with the other person.

 Here are some great questions to begin the conversation:

 What choices can we co-create?

1. What is our outcome for this conversation?  What do we desire to have an awareness of, breakthrough in or resolution with?
2. What do you require to know from me to give you clarity?
3. What do you and I need to do to create a resolution?
4. What information from me do you need to feel safe?

 Many times in relationships, we hold in silence those conversations that seem too difficult to have.  This act of silence results in the growing resentment toward the other person for our own lack of courage to be authentic.  We will, generally, blame the other person for how bad we feel and our emotional contraction will lessen our sense of self respect and self worth.

 This is how relationships fail both personally and professionally.  The heart of the relationship is the conversation.  The success of that conversation is based upon our courage to step up with our intention to empower and clarify.  When we engage in our relationships from this foundation, we strengthen our self worth and empower ourselves to attract the opportunities that we deserve.

Love & Light