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May/June 2010 newsletter Hello... ...and a happy Spring to everyone! Spring is definitely here in the Pacific Northwest. Recent days have proved it. Color is emerging with early flowers, chickadees are chirruping in the mornings, weather patterns quickly shift from vibrant sunny skies to hail storms to rain and wind and back to sun. Mother Nature’s display has put me in mind to focus on looking at change in broader terms for this newsletter. In this month’s article, “On Refrigerators and Caterpillars,” I’ll share some thoughts about the change process from a personal perspective. A conversation with Janet Schieferdecker, owner of Quantum Growth Consulting, looks at how she takes the ideas of growth and change and uses them when she works with clients. She is a wonderful example of someone who deftly handles change and facilitates that process in others. In Five Element Theory, Spring is the season associated with the Wood element—the element known for growth, change, vision, and an abundance of energy. We’ll take a closer look at the Wood element in the Five Element Face Reading Corner. All Good Wishes to You, Quote of the Month “Before a caterpillar can become a butterfly it must deconstruct, the butterfly emerging from a soup of “imaginal cells.”” On Refrigerators and Caterpillars When I tested at the NLP Advanced level, the guest client answered my first question, “What would you like?” with this answer: “I’d like to clean out my garage.” I knew then and there that I was in for a ride. When clients ask to work on, “cleaning off my...fill in the blank...” we are often looking at the person wanting to make some shifts in identity. Recently, I find myself wanting to clean out my refrigerator — the large, white box that hums and clicks in the kitchen and stores the food I nourish myself with, and oops, sometimes forget. My refrigerator is in serious need of some purging. Yet I find countless excuses to not go there. The garden needs tending, the cats need affection, there’s dishes to wash, the carpets need to be vacuumed. You get the picture. And, odd as it may sound, there is a sense that this external holding pattern actually relates to some internal pattern (or patterns) making ready to change. As the caterpillar quote earlier in this newsletter alludes to, part of my “imaginal cells” are breaking down and redefining themselves. And judging from the resistance I’m noticing, this will be a big shift. The process has not been without tears, along with some real joy as well. And I admit there is some fear as dreams I’ve held onto tightly for a lifetime it seems, become less and less an option. All this is made even more scary because there is not yet a firm idea of what the future holds, of what this deconstructing is happening for. So, the soup of imaginal cells for this particular butterfly is not quite done “cooking.” Part of the breaking down process is a building process — envisioning where you want to go. That’s where I’m at in this piece of change work. That’s all I can report now. I’ll keep you posted. —Kara Five Element Face Reading Corner As was mentioned earlier, we are in the Wood energy of newness and change and vision. If you think about tender green shoots pushing through the still cold ground, or the tireless energy of a toddler, you’ve got an idea of the impetus behind the Wood element. Wood energy is forceful, it needs to be. It is not subtle. It’s the boundless kind of curiosity required to explore and change your world. Wood is also about vision — the vision you hold for your life, your “master plan,” and about cultivating that. We all have at least some Wood energy. If there is a lot in someone’s makeup, you might notice that the person may not always pay attention to someone else’s feelings, especially when they need to make a point. They may come across as overbearing, which is a part of the natural, take-charge energy. They may also have a tendency to fight for the underdog, and have the really useful ability to hold a clear, strong vision for how things can be. One of Wood’s strengths is the capability to start to put a plan in place for the vision to happen. Another sign of Wood energy is that the person may seem like an “energizer bunny.” I knew someone like this. He could come home from a full day on the job and then work until it was dark in the yard and then spend some time cleaning his house before finally going to sleep. Just thinking about it made me tired! Anger is the emotion associated with this element. This may show up as someone having a short temper, or anger being an emotion they jump to quickly. They may snap like a bolt of lightning with focused anger. And like lightning, the anger will not linger. They don’t tend to hold on to grudges. Conversations with a very “Woody” person may feel like debates. They tend to be competitive and may have a need to be right, or at least to get the last word in. The main facial features for the Wood element are the eyebrows and the jaw. In general, eyebrows speak to a person’s self confidence, their drive and ambition and how they might go about making decisions. The jaw is thought of as the “roots of the tree” and is related to how strongly someone holds their beliefs and opinions. As a special thank you for reading this newsletter, I’m offering a 25% discount off the regular face reading rate. Call 206-417-4541 or email contact@karapomeroy.com and mention this newsletter to receive the discount and set up an appointment. A Conversation with Janet Schieferdecker Recently, I talked with Janet Schieferdecker, owner and trainer at Quantum Growth Consulting. Janet is a talented woman who has led a varied career path. She holds a MBA from London Business School and has worked and taught internationally. She earned a teaching certificate and taught grade school, has been a coach, and currently is a NLP practitioner and Family Constellations Facilitator. I know you personally and I know that you have some Wood energy in your make up, which is one of the reasons why I wanted to interview you, because I see that manifest in how you do your work. It’s a pretty amazing thing for someone to see who doesn’t have a lot of that kind of energy. My experience of you is that you always have some new plan on the horizon, (we both laugh) which I find absolutely amazing. Can you speak to that, is that something that comes naturally to you? I actually have to force myself to stay with the pain of something, before making the plan. Because otherwise, my experience is I’ll make a plan too quickly and it might not be useful, it might be just the repeat of a pattern. So I need to sometimes slow myself down and actually let myself go ahead and plan something that I fully intend to not execute or just let my brain play around with a plan and then think “Okay, great!” and then instead of doing what I might have done at a younger age, or if I was more attached to a certain outcome, instead of saying, well that’s the plan, and here we go, to actually just say to myself, “Okay, well that’s an option, and let’s sleep on it and then tomorrow let’s make a completely different plan.” Nice, wow. I let myself make up multiple plans before choosing or even realizing, in some cases, that, you know what, there’s all these different ways to go and that was a really fun exercise to do all that planning, but I don’t think I’m going to choose any of them. Holy cow. Yeah, my brain is constantly making plans. Yeah. Constantly. And you don’t seem to panic, at least not on the surface. Right, I do panic, but I’m not panicked about the change. I’ve made a lot of changes successfully for lots of different reasons, and the change itself is not what panics me, it’s more around when things are working or not working. Say more about that. Before I decide to make any kind of change, there’s often a sensation of “something is not working.” That can be at different levels. And sometimes when the things are not working, I can get pretty panicked about it. But once I make the decision to make a change, that feels pretty grounded. Given all your work history, it sounds like the NLP is where you’re most passionate, do I have that right? I would say not necessarily NLP, especially not NLP the way its done in most of the world, I’m more interested in the Transformational NLP that Carl (Carl Buchheit, of NLPMarin) teaches. But I would say where my passion and interest is, is in change. That’s a nice distinction. And not just change for changes sake, but how do we actually transform. How do we just not go from “A” to “B” and “A” to “B”, but how do we actually transform ourselves, so that we get to “C” or wherever it is that we want to evolve to. When you’re working with someone, how do you help them do that kind of change? I don’t know that I do. There are a couple of things you learn when you start working with people. One of them is that for most people to change, to actually really change something, the pain of staying in a certain circumstance has to be greater than the fear of the change. So they kind of have to decide for themselves that they’re going to not just change but transform, not just do something different, but be something different, and that’s scary. That’s essentially becoming someone else. If they’ve gotten there, they’re going to change no matter what I do; if they’ve not gotten there, then they’re not going to change no matter what I do. And another thing I’ve learned is that you can’t ever even suggest that you might know where someone might be wanting to go to, or even that they need to go to, because as soon as you take that stance, then you’re not going to be able to help them with the change. So much of actually working with it as a practitioner is to help people to understand and appreciate what they have already done, who they are and have always been. I’m thinking that all your experience has given you a depth of knowledge that must be quite useful when you’re working with clients. Yeah, but it’s also about the whole stance of it. It’s not just about making the previous thing that they were or are experiencing wrong, even though they might be in pain about it. As a practitioner, I can’t be holding any specific end or goal for them in mind — just loving and showing them how to love their preciousness. So it’s kind of a, not a neutral stance, but a loving neutral stance, I guess, being able to hold all of it, without judging what needs to happen for them. Yes. Because ultimately, as you said, they have to make that choice. Otherwise nothing really happens anyway. It has to come from them, regardless. Yes, all I can do is help them to see themselves, their real selves. But not everyone has the facility to do that. Yeah, there are times when my kind of change is actually not necessary. Sometimes people don’t need to change all the different patterns of their life and their beliefs and everything, they just need some certain technical expertise to get something done. What would bring someone in to work with you? When they’re feeling extremely stuck. When things are not working out, and especially if they have noticed there is some pattern to that. For example, “Oh my god, I’ve just changed jobs, but actually, I have the same boss.” Or, sometimes people come to me because they have gone to that stage where the pain is greater than the fear. So they’re possibly feeling trapped or stuck in a job or relationship that isn’t working for them, and while the fear of going off on their own is huge, the pain of staying in that is more. And they want to make sure that they don’t re-create that situation. A lot of times when people first notice that things aren’t right, they’ll often go for simple shifts. They’ll move or change jobs and then things don’t get better. Even if they’re actually really externally successful. I’ve seen people like that too, where they are externally successful, but they are never content. They always think, well there’s this next thing that I have to do, but the next thing always moves. So it’s, “I just have to make my first million,” or “I just have to get this job promotion,” but then by the time they get that job promotion or big contract, or the first million or whatever, the goal has moved. Oh interesting. In the other cases, it sounds like they reach a certain threshold of pain or discomfort. Is that the same as what you are talking about here? Yeah at a certain point they wake up and think, Oh my god, even if I get that next promotion, or that next million, or that next whatever it is, the more successful that I get, the more in pain I am. The happiness is not coming to me, and the unhappiness is staying. Even with the ways I am usually successful at “fixing it,” it’s not getting better. There’s a certain level of self awareness to begin with, it sounds like. Yes, for that kind of individual, there has to be. And sometimes age does it. But the most common awareness is, “I’m feeling stuck.” And we all sort of have a sense of what that feels like for us. Yes. So then it’s a matter of it’s painful enough to be stuck... Yes, it’s painful enough to be stuck and they’ve tried this and they’ve tried that. And it’s not working. Nothing’s working. That’s when the kind of change work I do is the most useful. We ended the conversation there. Janet sees clients as a NLP practitioner both in person and via phone sessions. She also facilitates Family Constellations. To contact Janet for more information, go to: http://quantumgrowth.biz Classes at Life Re-Solutions! There are ongoing NLP classes, Family Constellation evenings and Theme Constellation classes at Life Re-Solutions, North Seattle’s NLP training center. Please check out the web site at: http://www.life-re-solutions.com/ for more information and times/dates. Free Introductory NLP Workshops: 7:00-9:00 PM: Monday, April 5, Monday, April 19, Wednesday, April 28, Friday, May 7 NLP1: Foundations - August-October Wknd 1: May 14-16 Wknd 2: June 11-13 Wknd 3: July 9-11 NLP 2: Advanced Communication and Change Wknd 1: July 30-August 1 Wknd 2: August 27-29 Wknd 3: September 24-26 Wknd 4: October 15-17 Wknd 5: November 12-14 Comments I welcome your comments and feedback. Please email me at info@KaraPomeroyNLP.com Disclaimer This newsletter is meant to inform but does not replace medical advice or treatment. Contact a qualified health care professional if you need medical assistance. Please feel free to reproduce, copy or distribute this newsletter with people you know who would be interested in the content. When doing so, please forward it in its entirety, including my contact and copyright information. If any other use is desired, permission in writing from Kara Pomeroy is required. Thank you for spreading the word. Copyright © 2010. Kara Pomeroy NLP. All rights reserved. Welcome | About NLP | About Family Systems | About Family Constellations | About Me Serving the Seattle area Registered Counselor #RC00052079
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