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typically iceberg like the conscious mind because it only does five percent of the things we're doing.
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It's what we're thinking right now where the unconscious mind is storing all of our memories.
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It's all of our mental programming. It's all of our values, our beliefs, our attitudes, our unconscious
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behaviors that we have to do all day.
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Welcome to the Meaningful Jobs podcast. I'm your host Adrian and today we've welcomed Alex here
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who is a specialist in NLP. He's got a lot of passion in this area and I'm sure this episode
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will be really interesting. So hi Alex, how are you? I'm good. Thanks for having me. How are you doing?
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Yeah, very good. Thank you. I guess as I alluded to just now, I think your work in NLP
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really fascinated me at first and it'll be great for you maybe to talk a little bit about what NLP
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is, what you're doing, how you're going to it and perhaps how you maintain your passion.
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So yeah, could you tell us a little bit about how you got into NLP?
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I got into NLP about six or so years ago now I think and I was going through a tough time.
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I had some personal issues, some financial stuff going on and I kept having these certain
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thoughts that weren't good and so I started kind of scouring online and asking around friends,
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family, different things to do for personal development and I found NLP to mostly fix
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personal issues the way that I was mentally programmed and mostly for that and then it
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kind of grew from there, my passion in it and everything. So I've been continuing the thinking
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and learning more every day since with it, but that's specifically how I got into it.
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If you don't mind me asking because usually when people, when I come across people who've got big
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financial issues or personal issues, I guess the first thing they think about might not be NLP.
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So is it like kind of random how you go into this or?
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Well, I started reading some books first. So I started to, I mean way back then one of the
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first books I started reading was The Secret. I mean so many people have heard of this book,
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Love, Attraction and all this. So I started thinking like this. So I would say
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you know reading and then I read The Power of Your Subconscious Mind by Joseph Murphy.
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So I read a couple of books and I started you know believing how your thoughts are related to
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your reality and your thoughts lead to your results and your behaviors and all these you
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know the pictures that we hold in our mind. Chances are that's what we're going to get
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whether we're thinking good or bad. So I started off with these concepts and I started reading and
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then in some of the books you know they give other book recommendations and stuff and NLP was in there
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and also I knew some people personally who had done specialized trainings such as this and so
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they recommended it as well. They had recommended it to me many times before. However, I wasn't in
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like the right place at the right time to be like hey I didn't click in my mind yet that I absolutely
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had to do it and then all of a sudden the time was right. I found someone to learn from and you know
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the rest is kind of history. Right, I see, I see. Well so I guess the books must have inspired you
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a lot. So when you started getting into NLP you know what the difficulties that you you know encountered?
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Well I was going through some financial trouble so around that was a lot of negative emotions.
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I mean honestly the good thing about it is I finally sat there and felt like a full range
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of emotions. So here in the unknown like what's going to happen next. That leads to of course
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some anxiety you know plus I was a bit angry at myself for making poor decisions and things like
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this and you know you're a bit sad of how things are going to move on and things like this and
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of course you have some regret. So I finally you know sat there and just felt all these emotions
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and so it allowed me to kind of go within and find something that was you know helpful for it
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and so I was able to with NLP and all these things release these emotions so then I could
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fill up my life with you know things that are good and beneficial for me. Right, I see. So
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can you tell us a little bit about perhaps what you do now? So I guess you are a you know
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certified NLP trainer you've got your own training firm. Can you tell us a little bit about this?
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Yes, so currently I'm living in Athens, Greece. I'm originally from California so I took some
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trainings different places in the world some online some in person and you know I went through
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this steps to become a certified trainer of NLP and then recently as of last year I'm a master
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trainer as well which essentially means I can train trainers. So we give out different certifications
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in NLP, hypnosis and timeline therapy so you know they're approved by different boards,
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certified boards, certified training so we offer that as well as you know professional
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development sessions if someone's looking to you know pursue certain things in their career.
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Let's say we help a lot of people in this specific niche as well as different you know
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business owners who want to grow personally and professionally so we offer different private
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sessions as well. Right, I see, I see. It's not normally somebody associated you know NLP with
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Athens so you know I find that you're very interesting that you chose you know to move over here.
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Is it because you know NLP is really big in Athens or you know is there any other reason?
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No, I happened to when I first started doing NLP I started talking to this person online.
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We started talking about NLP. She's my wife now so this is she's Greek so this is
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why I'm here. However the good thing about let's say NLP here in Greece as opposed to
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the US is it's not as let's say a saturated market which doesn't necessarily mean one thing or another
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because you know it competition is however you look at it anyways. However it's growing,
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more and more people are kind of open to this thinking and this mindset of coaching and things
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like this so I think it's a good place to to be. However I do work with people all over
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Europe as well as the US and India other places so everything is done online a lot of times so
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when you can reach different people so that's a good thing. In terms of NLP how would you say
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it personally helps you navigate your you know difficult life passes you had before you know
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going into NLP? The first thing is is there's a lot of things that we're already doing.
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What we're doing these things unconsciously so let's say like building a connection or report
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with someone else so what NLP does is it makes you consciously aware of the exact steps that we
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need to then do this in an excellent way. So now I'm able to you know create connections with people
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very quickly based on you know things that I do to build a report so whether that's with my
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with my voice my listening skills my communication my physiology whatever it is so that's one way
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I use it. However I just use it continuously thinking how we teach people to think and
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two of those ways are to you know so always be curious so when we're communicating with someone
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we always want to be curious because chances are they know some something that we don't know
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and and we always want to have a willingness to experiment you know to try different things
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with different people of course with both of us benefiting and mine so I'm always using it in
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this way too as well as in personal relationships to deliver communication how the other person
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actually wants to hear it because most people they communicate things how they want it and
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then the other person might be looking at them like hey you know it doesn't resonate with them so
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we need to be able to focus in and really communicate how other people want to be spoken to and you
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know communicate that way so these are just a few ways. Right so I think you talked a little bit
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about you know unconsciousness I'm fascinated by how you know unconsciousness can actually help
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humans perform you know at a higher level because you know by definition you wouldn't know what your
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unconsciousness is so can you maybe explain a little bit about you know how what unconsciousness
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is you know in LLP. Yeah so we have two minds that are working for us the conscious mind and the
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unconscious mind so a little metaphor is usually like that a lot of people have seen that iceberg
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photo online where the tip of the icebergs above the water and you know usually around success
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however you can think of the tip of the iceberg like the conscious mind because it only does
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five percent of the things we're doing. Right it's it's what we're thinking right now where the
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unconscious mind is storing all of our memories it's all of our mental programming it's all of our
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values our beliefs our attitudes our unconscious behaviors that we have to do all day yeah so
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it's 95 percent of what we're doing every day because I mean who would want to have to wake up
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and be like hey this is how I'm gonna have to breathe this is how I'm gonna have to move my
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arm this is how I'm gonna have to brush my teeth so it makes our life
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easy as long as we're giving it good information to go with so really with NLP we find out people
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we find out how people do things inside their heads so their unconscious processes and we find out
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how we can change those to get better results because it's not it's not even anyone's fault if
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they have certain programming let's say because most of that we get when we're you know aged
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zero to seven we run around like a little sponge and our unconscious mind soaks everything up and
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over time we get taught limitations so we need to eventually learn how we can be limitless again
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so we can make all those changes at the unconscious level so then we can achieve
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a new thing so that's how we essentially work and separate the the two because the unconscious
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mind it's about as million it's about a million times more powerful than the conscious mind so
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why not use it you know to our advantage this might be a bit of a difficult question but say if
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you know a client comes to you and his request is for you to train him in terms of his to tap into
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his unconsciousness and help him you know perform better how would you approach this you know
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it all depends on the person because everyone's going to you know kind of how I was saying earlier
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everyone's going to communicate differently and everyone has different you know if an event happens
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on the outside we're all going to filter it different because of our beliefs our values our
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attitudes and all this so first we first we need to understand just a bit about their personal
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history and then understand how they actually do behaviors and stuff inside their mind
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because what we do inside of our mind then leads to our how we feel internally which leads to how we
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you know carry ourselves with our physiology which leads to our behavior so we need to just get
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detailed enough on the inside of them how they actually do things so then we can create change
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but usually we start off you know people generally need to let go of different emotions how is it's
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kind of saying earlier things like anger fear sadness maybe they have regret guilt things like
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this so we need to release these emotions first because they're stored up in the body and it's
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over time it gets you know causes stress or anxiety it's harmful for the body so we need to
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release these so then we can fill them up with more let's say new strategies and new behaviors that
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actually lead to like you said the way they want to perform and things they want to achieve
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right um did it take did it take you long maybe to let go of the negative emotions you had was
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a difficult so um it's not it's not difficult as long as you trust the trust the process you're
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doing you're doing it with your unconscious mind so as long as you you build a good rapport with
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your own unconscious mind it's it's an easy process as long as you um i mean really anyone that wants
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to um you know take their results seriously and wants to invest time money and energy bettering
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themselves they can do it they can do it with ease you can do it in uh really quickly i don't
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want to say like a you know hey you can do it in 30 minutes or an hour or four hours or something
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because uh it depends on the person however it can be done quickly so so what are the long-term
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benefits of you know mastering your unconscious mind i would say one of them is controlling how
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we feel internally so we can go into um any situation let's say um you know based around career
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someone has to go deliver a presentation if they're feeling nervous if they unconsciously have a
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a different skill they can then turn that into let's say being totally focused or in control
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or confidence yeah so this is this is one benefit um the other benefit is just understanding how
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our mind works and knowing what what questions to ask other people to understand how theirs
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works as well so then we can influence each other in a beneficial way because it's all about win-win
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right right i see so um you know i think you've been an nlp trainer for over a decade already
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if i'm not incorrect in this uh not a not in decade i mean decade no um i've been doing
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relatively about six years all this stuff yeah you know having to do this on a daily basis um
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what what are some of the main challenges that you come across and or how do you maintain your
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your your passion or your professionalism yeah the the challenge i would say one of the challenges
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is when you're teaching and training people especially in nlp we're teaching people to
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be excellence um as much as they possibly can so for me um i'm still a human so if um let's say i
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have personal things going on in my life or you know things are happening around the world whatever
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it is um when i'm training i have to i have to be excellent regardless so i have to control how i
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feel internally i have to yeah um be calm i have to be in control and essentially you have to continually
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just take responsibility for everything that happens around you you have to be at cause which
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essentially means to get results um if you're at effect you're going to be giving reasons and excuses
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and blaming other people so one challenge is to always anything that happens whether or not it's
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let's say your fault or whatever it is like take responsibility for it and learn from it because
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there's no failure there's only feedback so you continually have to give yourself um feedback
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so i would say one challenge is just always being like on always being um at your best so you get
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used to it because you start building habit of it um but you have to be ready for anything
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i think so that's another thing you never know what's going to happen as well uh because during
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a training people can have different let's say breakthroughs realize different things they get
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pushed to their limit and they're ready to break through and maybe there's some resistance so you
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also have to be ready for everything and think on your feet quite well so you know one thing i always
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ask my guests on my podcast is um you know obviously we all work for um monetary compensation
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you know in some respect um would you say it's difficult for you to maybe separate you know the
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monetary side of things and you know actually you know helping clients um i would say it's not very
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uh difficult of course you want to um you know charge what you're what you're worth which
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essentially means that the client's going to uh value get value out of what you're giving so um
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i mean i enjoy what i do because you get to see someone come in um in their present state where
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they're they may be stuck or whatever the issue is and then you get to have them tell you at a
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certain point like how could they they feel so i mean regardless of what you're charging someone to
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see that is super cool it never it never gets old so it's it's not it's not i wouldn't say it's
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difficult to separate at all because um i mean a lot of people say like find something you're
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passionate about and learn to make money off of it you know be happy so regardless of what people
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do i think that should be the the goal right um so you talked about you know um clients having
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a range of emotions and you're feeling satisfied you know seeing them perhaps improve on their
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emotions after you know receiving an LP therapy um have you had cases where you know it took
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clients a very long time longer than you expected to see any improvements and you know how did you
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deal with these cases i mean every every person's different um how they how they process uh things
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can be different so maybe someone is more um analytical let's say and they're they're thinking
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more um logically so if someone let's say is um doing this they may be trying to do the techniques
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um with their conscious mind as opposed to unconscious mind so it's going to be harder
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to create the change um so it's not that it takes uh let's say so much longer you just need to teach
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certain people uh different ways to do this because it may not be a strategy that they
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normally use um however depending on the person of course things can work very quickly yeah and
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maybe they only want to do a few sessions where others want i mean others they want more uh long
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term uh coaching and support and things like this so either way i'm happy to offer it so lastly i
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i um before we end um could you maybe you know tell us a tell us a little bit about you know how your
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entire program works about the structure is and you know just to give a brief intro to it
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yeah so um as far as i would say the main program that we offer is uh trainings so
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we do this currently we're doing it all online so you can join uh from anywhere in the world
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which is a benefit um for everyone so um basically before you start um i have a some
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pre-study that i've prepared which is a lot of theory on what people will learn so they can
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they can hear it a time or two before they arrive and then once they arrive we start kind of more
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slow because if we start with that big bang let's say maybe someone's not ready for it so everything
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in the training is designed to lead to uh the next thing so we have um different modules um
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communication then we move into more the the heavier uh techniques and after about let's say
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two three months you're certified so and you can earn you know whatever certification
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we offer we offer a few different ones so depending on what training you want to
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take along with NLP if you want to do timeline therapy or hypnosis as well
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uh you can earn you know three different certifications for that but it takes about the
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whole process um we space it out of it so it's about uh two to three months to get the certification
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I see all right thanks a lot Ax for coming to the podcast today and you know wish your business
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all the success and I'll see you soon all right thanks for having me