NLP, Tiredness and the ‘10% New Challenge’

In our NLP courses we give lots of attention to how our moods occur and how we can use NLP to be more in charge of our feelings and reactions. And we explore how slipping into unpleasant moods produces a cycle in which the mood finds the evidence to support itself – the mood becomes self-feeding!

Compare the following scenarios. 

Scenario 1

Take a moment to step into and experience the following:

	It’s a mid-winter Monday morning.
	Outside it's cold, raining, and dark and gloomy – you can hear the traffic sloshing by.
	You’ve got a very heavy workload facing you this week because you’re covering for someone who is off for the week.
	And, oh yes, you have to attend the usual, very boring, 2-hour work meeting once you get in.
	You’ve just checked your emails or opened the morning post and discovered that you owe more money to someone that you’d expected.

Right, how do you, or would you, feel in this scenario?

And, especially, how energetic do you feel? Are you bouncing about, running up and down steps and stairs, walking with a spring in your step, looking at the world with a twinkle in your eye, ready to take on and meet the challenges of your working week.

Unlikely. Most people will feel low, deflated, and at least somewhat drained at the prospect. 

Scenario 2

Now slightly change the scenario - it's the same day and everything is the same as above apart from one item…

	It’s a mid-winter Monday morning.
	Outside it's cold, raining, and dark and gloomy – you can hear the traffic sloshing by…
	You’ve got a very heavy workload facing you this week because you’re covering for someone who is off for the week
	And, oh yes, you have to attend the usual, very boring, 2-hour work meeting once you get in…
	…but just before leaving your home you get some great news (choose from the following or invent a better one to suit you)...

• Somebody who you are very attracted to has just sent you a text saying they would like to meet you one evening this week or…
• You have received a legacy of a substantial amount of money (though not enough to enable you to give up your job)…
• You just received a letter saying that your interview was successful and that the job of your dreams is yours -- you can start in four weeks time…
• You have received great news about a member of your family (e.g. your partner or yourself is, finally, pregnant after a long wait)

What's your mood like now as you head off for work? And how is it the different to before you received this great news?

How would you feel at the end of the second versus the first scenario?

Our mood affects our vitality

Most of us feel weary or even downright exhausted at times. Sometimes with good reason, such as when we’ve been working very hard, exercising strenuously, under a lot of stress, and so on.

But often it’s the sameness, the mundaneness, of everyday life and its routines and struggles that gets to us – and creates a sense of mental and physical weariness.

Mentally we begin to focus mainly on the things that are not going right in our lives and/or to the bad things which might happen.  

Physically our posture slumps, our movements become slower, our face becomes less animated and the pull of gravity seems to become a little bit stronger!

Soon these mental and physical patterns become the norm. Our attitude changes and we accept that ‘this is how I am’ and put it down to age or our genes! And our bleak attitude, in turn, finds even more evidence to support it! 

What's the answer?

It’s a pretty grim picture, isn’t it! Yet few of us will not have experienced such moods.

Some people advocate changing diet. And, yes, tiredness is often accompanied by a lack of magnesium, potassium, and the B and C vitamins – but I have yet to come across anyone who has eliminated this type of weariness with nutritional supplements. Better to ensure you adopt a varied and healthy diet of regular meals.

Other people will advocate taking up exercise. Great idea – but the catch is that when you’re tired the very thought of exercise is off-putting.

Time for a change?

Think about what happens when you go on holiday for a week or two – or even have a weekend away. The different location, things to do and see, food, and people – and the different routine or lack of routine - refresh us. So we begin looking at life differently.

We look at each other – and even at ourselves - differently. This is one reason why so many people are tempted to move permanently to the holiday destination. But it rarely works – because our affinity for routine soon produces the same attitude there! Shakespeare was a pretty bright guy in how he observed life and the human condition. He says in Henry IV ‘If all the year were playing holidays to sport would be as tedious as to work’.

A key theme in good NLP training is that it’s not just the people or the place or the activity that needs to change – it’s how we mentally think about them.

The need to break routine

In our NLP courses, as part of how we examine this phenomenon, we explore the implications of the Comfort, Stretch, Panic model and, especially, the 10% New challenge.

Routine kills the joy of living. And by breaking the cycle of sameness-boredom-weariness-sameness with change, with new activities we wake up our minds – which gradually wakes up our bodies. Our attitude changes.

 What to do?

We need routine to make our lives run smoothly and to do things efficiently. But un-ending routine will corrode the joy of living – producing weariness and tiredness. So offer yourself the 10% New Challenge.

	Do a little bit new every day
	Take a different route to work
	Do things in a different order
	Go out for a mid-week meal
	Dress a little differently
	Talk to people you haven’t talked to before...
	.. the list is endless (go to the Pegasus NLP Blog and add more suggestions that have worked for you…

The main thing is to start making little changes (that’s why it’s 10% New – not 90%...) part of your the new routine! 

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