Laura Claire Aiken

Know your enemy.

Stress should be everyone’s enemy because it impacts our health and our job performance severely.

How well do you know your stress? How early can you spot the signs of stress building? Do you know what keeps it at bay?

Toxic is a word that gets thrown around more than it should these days.

Toxic to one may be heaven for another.

So defining toxic is more about what it feels like to the individual.

Are there any common parts of office culture that others seem to love but give you this feeling?

One of the easiest to implement coaching cues I’ve ever given, but the impact it had definitely makes it worth sharing!

What we say is only part of how we’re perceived as leaders.

What’s your biggest body language red flag at work?

Have you worked in a environment where pressure was high but you felt like your team and your organisation had your back?

What did it feel like? What allowed that to happen?

When we value psychological safety and wellbeing highly, we see better performing teams and more successful companies.

In a sea of doom, this positive take on AI from Steve Nelson came at such an important time last year.

I was so focused on the risks that AI would pose to connectedness in teams, that I was underestimating the upsides it could bring to the way we communicate.

What effect have you noticed AI having on your team - good and bad?

While I’m off on mat leave, I’ve decided to re-share some snippets of past pieces in the hope they might provoke a moment of self-reflection or thought.

This felt like a particularly appropriate one to start with as I take my own pause.

What did you achieve recently and do you think you allowed yourself the time to enjoy the success?

Hypnosis… magic, mind control, or something we’ve misunderstood?

What’s more interesting to me is how it can help in change.

Most people don’t struggle with awareness – they know what’s wrong – what they struggle with is shifting patterns that don’t change through “logic” alone.

Brain imaging studies show that in a hypnotic state:

– activity in the prefrontal cortex (linked to self-monitoring) reduces
– the anterior cingulate cortex (attention) becomes more active
– and thinking and feeling systems become more closely aligned

In other words, less resistance, more focus, and greater impact.

So perhaps there’s more to these brain states than most of us understand…

References:

Faymonville, M.E., Laureys, S., Degueldre, C., DelFiore, G., Luxen, A., Franck, G., Lamy, M. & Maquet, P. (2000) Neural mechanisms of antinociceptive effects of hypnosis. Anesthesiology, 92(5), 1257–1267.

Rainville, P., Hofbauer, R.K., Bushnell, M.C., Duncan, G.H. & Price, D.D. (1999) Hypnosis modulates activity in brain structures involved in the regulation of consciousness. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 11(1), 110–125.

Egner, T., Jamieson, G. & Gruzelier, J. (2005) Hypnosis decouples cognitive control from conflict monitoring processes of the frontal lobe. NeuroImage, 27(4), 969–978.

This question was top of my list in my chat with Fenella Hemus NLP & Hypnotherapy

And turns out, if you’re always on the go, on high alert, or just don’t have the language to describe what you’re going through👋, this might be the tool (or the “magic”) you’re looking for.

Have you tried hypnosis or hypnotherapy?

Fenella Hemus - Master NLP practitioner and coach, teaching coaches and changemakers tools for behaviour change through NLP, Time Line Therapy™ and hypnosis.

Is all the talk around mindset and behaviour change too serious?

What happens when we have a little fun with it?

In this part of my conversation with Fenella, we talk about why change can get easier when we’re having fun.

What helps you access a state where change feels easier?

Fenella Hemus NLP & Hypnotherapy - Master NLP practitioner and coach, teaches coaches and changemakers tools for behaviour change through NLP, Time Line Therapy™ and hypnosis.

“I’m not a morning person.”
“I’m terrible at switching off.”
“I’m just someone who pushes through.”

These sound like small observations - but our language shapes what feels possible.

There’s a strong body of social psychology research showing that we’re more likely to persist with behaviours that align with how we see ourselves.

Most change efforts focus on outcomes… or at best, process.

But behaviour really sticks when it aligns with identity.

So if something isn’t changing, it’s worth asking:

What have I decided is “just who I am”… that might be keeping me there?

References;

Oyserman, D. (2009) Identity-based motivation: Implications for action-readiness, procedural-readiness, and consumer behavior. Journal of Consumer Psychology, 19(3), 250–260.

Shavitt, S., Torelli, C.J. & Wong, J. (2009) Identity-based motivation: The dynamic construction of identity. In: Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, Vol. 41, pp. 1–65.