Day 4 of Life post-NLP

I'm really going to have to tone it down. People are beginning to wonder about my sanity. I'm bopping to my tunes in the car to work. Picture me, sitting in traffic having a totally awesome time, all by myself in my car, surrounded by grumpy commuters and that's on the way in.

As you know, I tend to do my best thinking on the move. On the way home last night, I considered the impact of the course on my attitude. I feel all bright and sparkly. But it's not at all forced, which I have had reason to adopt when I've been working after I came back from Trinidad last summer. After all, when I had jobs to do, it was a good thing to put my grief to one side and slap on a cheery face. This feels nothing like that. This feels like my pancreas is smiling.

Richard Bandler, the Man Himself, warned this would be the case. After all, I've redecorated my internal world: it's had a massive clearout, the wall paper has been stripped, walls scrubbed and re-plastered. The dusty, old carpet pulled up and under-floor heating and a wooden floor installed. The windows have been replaced. Everything is more energy efficient and green. It's light and airy.

The thing is that the Man Himself and the Man with the Pony Tail, John La Valle, through their anecdotes, exercises and drills, installed a heck of a lot of optimizing programmes. These programmes are making their way through my neurology, updating, clean-sweeping and deleting. It's going to take awhile before the system settles into it's optimum running. But I feel the changes already. They manifest primarily in my mood; my energy levels, which frankly I can't remember being this up; there's a marked improvement in my creativity at work; my confidence has improved; I'm more productive; I'm looking for ways in which I can become more efficient at home and at work. I'm trying different routes to drive into work; just because I can.

One of the exercises we did, was on changing our responses to people we really, really didn't get on well with. You know, the kind of people who when you hear their name, your teeth start to grind - just the thought is enough. And as for dealing with them in person, think nightmare. Everything goes wrong, nothing is ever good enough, you never say the right thing at the right time, they make you feel stupid. Everyone has these sorts in their lives. I certainly have. I used my main teeth-grinding person for the exercise. I had to deal with this person for the first time since I came back today. Talk about a change. All the anxiety I'd been feeling, disappeared. In fact, I couldn't help but grin everytime we had any contact. This person seemed a bit perplexed that I wasn't my usual self and that confusion was enough to stop them indulging in their usual game of poke holes in Roses.

I've had a lot of fun today and the Lovely Ursus is downstairs with Boy, taking him through his chemistry revision, so I'll be having fun tonight too.

I know I'm going on about this. But I never, ever thought this would be the result. In a way, I had it in the back of my mind, that it was all a bit of a scam. That it couldn't possibly be a good or as effective as the books and literature make out. I suppose I was planning for disappointment. Instead, I spent 9 days with some really amazing people of all ages, from different parts of the world, intelligent, bright. I did things I never thought I could do. When we parted company, although it was difficult, it hasn't felt like 'goodbye and thanks for the fish'. I have loads more friends on FB and it's not just making the numbers up either. We're leaving messages, sending e-mails. I've got a whole new community of people to have fun with. Fantastic.

Note to Self: start looking up synonyms for awesome, fantastic and great. Time to widen the vocabulary.