Business Class!

I’m sat here in Business Class…not because I paid for it but because I was upgraded for free.

I travelled Business Class with Virgin a year ago and was stunned by the previously unimaginable quality and superior experience.  Never before had I enjoyed 5 automatic machine-massages before the flight in one of the opulent lounges while subsequently gorging myself on free champagne and exquisitely presented food.  Never before had I slept in a comfortable machine-massage bed for much of a flight, let alone had such impeccable service on a flight, and always with a smile.  More champagne Sir?

Oh go on then!  Like the flight I currently find myself on, I didn’t have to pay for it.  In fact a very good friend of mine paid for it.  Yes I know!  What is striking however is the difference between the Business Class experience I am having now with Saudi Airlines (I thought they were rich!) and Virgin (who I know are rich!).

Business 'Class'?

I’m still waiting for my glass of champagne and we’re nearly at 33,000 feet!  I mean, whatever next.  I wonder in fact, if it will ever come.  The plane looked bland from the outside; old, weathered and boring. The only good thing about it was a delightful sign saying “God Bless You”.  And I guess he did.  I was upgraded for no apparent reason other than being white with a pleasant smile and a cheeky question – “is there any chance of being upgraded?”

When I think about real success in business today, in an age when we have never had so many opportunities to create emotional, mental, financial and even spiritual wealth I think this experience says it all.

Virgin are always innovating, always on the edge, ready to take a risk and obviously very happy to take the Read more…

“Be The Change You Want To See In The World” Mahatma Gandhi (A quick journey in NLP Modelling)

I don’t know a single person in the world with whom these words have not rung true.

I believe that the theme, the essence of these words – Be The Change – are more important and relevant right now than ever before.  In these times of incredible change in technology and human consciousness; in the way we do business; in the way we are called to show up in the World, we all have the capacity to be the change we want to see in this amazing World.

Its been some time since I’ve communicated with many of you, and there is good reason.  I personally have been through massive change in the last 6 months, having come back from a long hot winter in India.

Locals kids hitching a ride in Kerala

As most of you know I’ve taken the last couple of years off travelling, living in Ibiza and India, running workshops and developing my new venture – giving people the skills, experiences and models to literally Be, Do & Have Anything.

Really, the outcome of my ‘work’ is in marrying two apparently disparate concepts – Financial and Emotional Freedom. Success and Fulfillment.  Money and Happiness.

They seem to be very illusive for many people.  Often people make good money, but are not really happy.  And often they are happy and fulfilled, but do not have material wealth.

The question I have been asking for the last decade is, how can we have both?  How can we marry financial freedom – the ability to do what we want, where we want, when we want – WHILE also being truly and sustainably happy? Read more…

Business NLP 101

We no longer live in the Information Age.  We live in the Age of Information Overwhelm.

We live in the Recommendation Age.

I recently started collecting video testimonials from clients who have discovered a new system for focussing faster and more effectively.

We love social proof.  If you run a business, where is your social proof?  How do you transfer emotion to your ideal clients?

People want have an experience – to see, hear and feel how you can help them.  They want to know, like and trust you.

One of the fastest ways of doing that is through focussing attention on videos, testimonials which transfer the genuine emotion of your clients.

I am privileged to have worked with some truly amazing people and businesses.  Thank you for helping me, help you, help others. Read more…

Why would anyone want to learn NLP?

I’ve just ambled lazily back across the pristine white sand of a deserted beach in Cherai having been swimming alone in the Arabian sea – a beautiful luke warm bath with surfable waves apparently induced by the solar eclipse.  Being back in India is like coming home!

The Kerala Backwaters... kissing the Arabian Sea

Having grown up until the age of 7 with with my parents who were hippies, and having lived in more houses that I have lived years its pretty much indisputable that I’m a born nomad.  And I normally feel very much at home wherever I am.  I have been living in Ibiza since last summer which I consider to be my spiritual home, despite the reputation it has among many in Britain!  But India feels as much a home if not more than anywhere else, and coming back here this year for a couple of months reminds me of how utterly special and unique this country is and how I want to keep coming back here each year – to this most rich, vibrant, beautifully alive and special place.

Today, the day of the solar eclipse, is a special day.  Not just because of the eclipse but because I have committed to recognising and changing a pattern of mine which I know will have a profound impact on my life, and perhaps more importantly the lives of others around me.

As you learn NLP you’ll discover what’s known as meta-programmes, or filters.  These are how we filter information coming through our senses and make sense of the world.  Well, today I have added a new one today, an important distinction for me, and that is the notion of ‘input’ versus ‘output’.  I love learning, in fact I am addicted to learning.  A much better addiction than some things, but nonetheless an addiction.  I love input, I love learning, I love to learn NLP; I love finding out what others do, say and think and modelling their success.  But today I believe its time that I reverse this pattern and now ‘output’ more than I ‘input’.

So my new blog and websites are being built and I am in the process of designing products and workshops to give others this rich, peripatetic, vibrant and fun life that I am so privileged to have, or whatever it is that they truly want!

Riding along the dusty roads today on my Enflield Bullet, the thud thud thud of the 350cc single cylinder engine attracting attention as if it were a pink tractor I realised just how lucky I am to have designed my life this way and I know have the desire to give others the gifts and leanings I have had along my journey.

One of many rides I gave to locals kids on my Enfleld Bullet

Its paradoxical in some respects that I am entirely responsible for creating my life in this way and yet at the same time there are unseen forces in the Universe that have helped conspire towards me following this path, to open up to and awaken to all the magical coincidences and synchronicities around me…. around us all!

And so riding along on my Enflied thinking about all this today, I became very grateful and excited. I also became aware of how I can tend to overcomplicated life.  Life can be very simple.  I know that from watching how simply people live out here.

The other day I asked Sajeen, an amazing and young yoga teacher in Cherai, “is life good”? to which he smiled and replied “of course” as if it could not be any other way and my question was absurd.  Now, that is simplicity, finding love and joy in everything because you choose to!

It’s funny that somehow in the so-called civilised West many of us have come to believe, or been conditioned through advertising and cultural norms – that if I get x I will feel y.  Whereas in fact we can feel any way we want whenever we want.  And then enjoy the journey as well as the destination!  Perhaps that is the secret, but of course knowing something and doing it are two very different things.

I heard Gary Vaynerchuck say earlier today “love what you do and if you don’t then STOP.  There is absolutely no need to be not enjoying yourself in this day and age.”

And I concur.  There is more technology, money, opportunity, information and wealth than at any other time in the history of humankind.  If you are pursuing making money or a 9-5 and you’re not enjoying it, then you are doing yourself and humanity a disservice and going after success rather than fulfilment.  And that to me is failure.

There are so many people with apparently so little who manage to be happy…. who manage to just be, and be happy, and I believe we can all learn the distinctions which enable them to live in that place.  For me one of those distinctions is a commitment to daily practice every morning, which at the moment is yoga.  As I sit on the beach now writing this blog, I am looking one way and then the other as far as I can see and there is not a soul… not a single solitary soul.  I could be lonely but I am not.  Because deep inside I am connecting to a place of love, joy and inspiration and that is open to all of us at any moment in time. And I’m outputting

And it is in that connecting, that desire to connect into the bigger system, to output rather than input, that I believe is one of our greatest sources of sustainable joy.  That is where we find happiness.  The question then is, what do we need to focus on, to believe in and do in order to be in that place of joy?  What do you need to focus on now?  Do you want to learn NLP to really accelerate your success?  Just remember, that success without fulfilment is failure.

Looking above me watching the eagles circling in the dense heat of the Indian sky, with nature all around blending seamlessly into an enticing array of colours, cows, cats, cockerels, ducks and dogs, I feel humbled as I reminisce on the rich and varied day I have had.  I am humbled by the smiles of nearly every person I passed earlier today on my motorbike; by the simplicity and pace of life; by the acceptance that all is as its meant to be.  As I recall – the three smiling middle aged ladies in vibrant buttercup-yellow dresses, the pink and orange houses that I passed and the cows grazing peacefully by the side of the road – I am reminded that happiness is all we want.  Happiness is all we truly want.  And that is success.  And that is why I decided to learn NLP…. to discover how I could be both happy and successful.

Go follow your bliss!
With love
Tristan

If you want to learn NLP feel free to enquire about my distance learning programme, or continue browsing the site.

I woke up this morning and didn’t feel great.  I felt a resistance to writing.

Having said that I woke up wanting to achieve something today and that was to design a structure around my new website; to come up with some ideas around the structure, logos and colour scheme etc

Where I’d normally set myself up for the day physically, emotionally and mentally by going for a run, stretching, asking myself some great questions and exploring my outcomes for the day, instead I went straight into focusing on and creating this new website layout.

The lesson I got from this is is about decisions, the power of decisions and how we make them.  It’s more than I want to go into here, suffice to say there was a strategy I used there which is very useful and it certainly didn’t involve analysing much!

“It is in our moments of decision that our destiny is created” Anthony Robbins

You see, decisions happen in a moment, change happens in a moment!  But it can take a long time to get to the point of change or the decision.

So the book I’m writing is called Be Do & Have Anything, which is a pretty big claim! Having said that I do to truly believe that we can Be, Do & Have Anything!  If we simply learn how to learn understand what we truly want and the patterns of human behaviour that hold us back as well as those that get the results we want.

There are people out there in this world who have achieved enormous success who came from nothing. In fact if you look, statistically most famous people and self-made millionaires have come from impoverished backgrounds, traumatic childhoods or are in fact orphans!

So in some respects it’s pain, or ‘problems’ that can be the very catalyst or driver for success.  If you look up the dictionary definition of proBLEM – a blem is something symbolic throw in the way.  And ‘pro’ is something that comes before – your outcome!

I believe that success without fulfillment is failure and so rather than aiming at success, and possibly achieving it at the expense of happiness or all the other important things in our life, I believe that we should be aiming at becoming ‘the best me” possible.

You see most people in modern times have until now (and this is an enormous generalisation) aimed to have nice cars, houses, televisions, clothes and so on.  And to have what they think will make them happy. But generally it doesn’t create sustainable happiness or fulfillment because our emotional state changes all the time.

They tend to think in terms of

HAVE  X
DO  Y
BE  HAPPY

rather than BE, DO & HAVE…

This is the paradox of humanity, impermanence.  We aim and strive for certain things like happiness, a bigger house or a good job and then the feeling we get is only temporary so in trying to accumulate or have we’re missing the rules of the game.  The question now then, is what do we do?

Well have been conditioned or taught in Western society to do what we enjoy, to get a good education, then a good job. But this doesn’t make us happy in the long term either. It is only temporary.  There is a lot to be said for doing what you love or doing what you enjoy and we’ll be exploring how to find and follow your passions in life in due course but for now, and to illustrate a point – most people want to have so they can be happy and then they do things so that they can have things they think will make them happy and in doing so miss the rules of the game, the game of life. And that is that in order to be happy, we have to be.

There is no road to happiness, happiness is the road.

So the sequence I believe, in order to be truly happy is in fact

BE
DO
HAVE

We don’t have or do happiness, we are happy.  We aren’t human doings or human havings but human beings. Be happy, Do things that make you and others happy and then, in time you can Have Anything!

And so in learning how to be, and learning who you are, in being first, and then doing, we can then have anything we truly want and start to understand the paradoxical nature of the world by turning things upside down and going with the flow of the Universe, rather than the demands of our ego.  We then find our place in this world – where there is more joy, more possibility and more passion than most people would ever have dreamt of.

So who are you?

And how do you know when you are being your best?

And I wonder how you can set yourself up each day to be the best you, you can possibly be?

I have just left an NLP Course.

As I fly across the heart of Southern India, from Chennai to Mumbai, or as the English called them Madras to Bombay, I am reflecting on my time out here in India and the amazing insights, revelations and adventures I have had. I wonder how much time we give ourselves in the West just to reflect, to be… in a neutral space and allow the emergence and enjoyment of natural being-ness. I think they call it meditation in the East.

I have been here for nearly two months now. England, winter and the credit crunch couldn’t be further from my mind. It is a strange feeling to even think of such things, and yet when I do, I realize how integrated and accustomed I have become to life on the road and living in India, and how nourishing it is compared to thoughts of striving for more in England when things seems to be almost going in reverse in the depths of winter.

As I write this, I am on my way to visit some very good friends on mine in the financial capital of India, Mumbai, which was struck by terrorist attacks just before I came out here. They are still suffering economically and socially to some extend in Mumbai with the impact of those atrocities. I am only there for a few days before heading back South to Cochin to and an NLP course run by Sue, one of my mentors.

My experience of Chennai over the last couple of days was nothing short of spectacular, bizarre and enlightening. So, where to begin? The spectacular for me, included being treated like some sort of a film star, having my photograph taken over a thousand times and handing out about that many medals and trophies to the children, teachers and parents of the phenomenon that is called BraioBrain. Boy, my feet hurt by the end of the day but my grin was practically glued onto my face.

BrainoBrain is quite simply a revolution in learning. It has been launched by 3 great friends of mine, Ashok, Arul and Anand who I met a few years ago but only really got to know in the last couple of months having spent so much quality time with them. The are brothers, and have all contributed to spreading this revolution, so far into 8 countries, and now, I believe, it is on the verve of exploding across the world due to the utter commitment of the brothers and all those involved. It is also down to the unique ability of BrainoBrain to help children in particular, but also adults to learn, to memorize, the be creative, to use left and right brains and develop the skills, abilities, knowledge and confidence to – I’d go as far as to say – create leaders in the world.

And I do not mean that lightly. What I witnessed as chief guest for the day at the 10th Indian National BrainOBrain competition was somewhere in the region of 4000 children, teachers and parents all committed to developing themselves and each other in a way that gets results unlike anything I have seen in traditional education before.

I gave a short talk on leadership, about being the change as Gandhi put it, and recognizing these amazing young children as leaders of the future… and in fact even as leaders right now. It really was an eye opening and spectacular day. The bizarre was feeling a little like David Beckham, being asked for my autograph by children.

And the enlightening was when I was talking to Ashok the following evening about my vagabonding lifestyle and not feeling like I have a real sense of purpose at the moment. He enlightened me to just what an impact I have had by being me, making the effort to be in Chennai for the event and the children – the hundreds if not thousands of peoples lives I touched by talking to them, being in their photos, giving them medals, recognizing their efforts and success; also playing and connecting with his and the other brothers young children – so that they now have a positive view of Western or white people, an anchor if you will.

Also by spending time in their home – apparently I am the first Western or white person ever to have dinner with him and his whole family – I am building cultural ties and mutual respect, understanding and possibilities for the future. That is something I believe the world needs right now – more understanding, compassion, respect and cohesion. So thank you Ashok, for waking me from my trace of feeling I was not really doing anything productive or constructive with my life, when in fact I am, we are, all the time touching other people’s lives in ways we cannot fully appreciate. As a bumble bee creates new life and possibilities for flowers by going about their normal daily lives completely unaware of the impact they have, we too touch people’s lives in ways we will never really fully know.

I have also been awoken in part by Uta as to what leadership is really all about. It is not, as she put it “about long term planning [or organizing or controlling things] but about doing what is right in front of you wherever you are”. And perhaps even more importantly, it is not really about doing, it is about being; being the change we want to see in the world, and in others; about being an example and living our deepest truth. About being truly present, here and now… and always.  That’s often more than you get on an NLP course in the UK.

I had the great pleasure of not just being force fed by the brother’s families in Chennai- for which I am very grateful, thought a little full, but also by Ramesh and Tulsi. And my hosts have at all times treated me impeccably (apart from the force feeding of course) and given me insights and pleasures I would not have otherwise experienced, had I just been a traveler or vagabond. So I am very much indebted to all my Indian friends for giving me such a rich experience of Indian culture and perhaps, I have got even more than I had previously imagined, now that I take time to…reflect.

Enjoy yourself enjoying others enjoying you!

Until next time….

If you’re interested in finding out more about mind-blowing nlp courses in India and Ibiza just go here.