The wellbeing industry is on the rise, partly spurred on by the litigation culture but also because there's a growing recognition that a happy healthy workforce is a more profitable one. The rise of NLP and New Thought are finding a growing market in the world of business for a new breed of wellbeing consultants.
The question is does all of this stuff work? Well yes, but ONLY if it has at the heart of it the primal driving force of human nature - the emotions. Many philosophies make the mistake of making emotion the enemy, a beast to be caged and suppressed.
My work and experience has now convinced me that this is a fundamental mistake. No amount of affirmations, conferences, positive thinking, and all the other success tactics advocated by success gurus will make any lasting difference unless emotional management is at the heart of it.
The penny dropped for me after finding myself in a foul mood one day despite all my training. Yes I had become more focused, happier as an individual and at peace with myself, yet was finding myself all too easily upset by one circumstance (or individual!) or another. Clearly something was missing. A piece of junk mail from another coaching guru discussing happiness mentioned something in passing that suddenly in a flash of inspiration opened my eyes, or more accurately my mind.
What does happiness actually mean? Up to this point I had adopted the standard therapy approach of "what does it look like?" It became clear that neither I nor a fair number of my clients actually knew - but they DID know how they wanted to FEEL.
Somehow, the link between happiness and feeling good has got lost. Men particularly have had any emotional intelligence beaten out of them. Another friend and therapist commented on a male client she had recently who had not even the most basic understanding of his own feelings or where they were coming from. I have completely overhauled my own treatment plans as a result of my discoveries and now put FEELING GOOD rather than some vague concept of success at the heart of helping my clients.
Like most good things, the secret to feeling good is not complicated, but it does require practice at focusing your attention rather than letting it wander. In my next blog, I will explain how your feelings underpin the destiny of your whole life, and how you can literally grow the right ones to achieve that elusive idea of "happiness" everyone is looking for.
To find out more about Gary Blonder Hypnotherapist, click HERE
