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WHAT IS YOUR BACKGROUND, HOW DID YOU COME ABOUT DEVELOPING THIS THINK YOURSELF THIN IDEA?

Nathalie P is from Quebec City, lived 8 years in Toronto and now live in White Rock, BC. She has been teaching fitness for over 27 years, personal training for over 15 years, Nutrition and Wellness Specialist for over 10 years, author of the book: When You’re Hungry, You Gotta eat, and Life coach for 7 years.

Nathalie P has a background most of us only dream of; we wish we could be in life now where she grew up.  Nathalie P was raised around inspiration; she grew up around encouraging, positive and loving parents who knew from the get go the benefits of a positive environment. On Sundays, they would make her sit in the living room to listen to some motivational tapes, as food for the brain. She was wired with a positive outlook on life at a very young age.

At a young age Nathalie P was introduced to the great leaders of the world today, with the likes of Og Mandino and Zig Ziglar paving her path to success she only had one choice, that was to succeed at the highest level, but not only that but to teach her life learning to each individual as she follows her passion of making this world a better place (one star fish at a time).

Being in the Fitness and Nutrition fields, she found out soon enough that it wasn’t just about healthy eating and exercising, there was a third key element and it is to have a proper mindset. Do you know anybody who is exercising 5 times a week and eat well, and yet, still cannot seem to be losing weight?

Think yourself thin with Nathalie P

2. You work with NLP What is that?

NEURO is the brain – the most complex structure of the universe, asleep or awake it controls everything in your life, it is always working for you.

LINGUISTIC – the words we are using to think and to speak are very important, they are the words being heard and processed by your own brain that will try his best to make you right every time. We hear ourselves say things all the time and we think things all the time with some specific words. We don’t realize how crucial the words we use are and how they affect us.

PROGRAMMING – as if our body was a robot and the brain was the engine we would need to write the software with the proper words in order for the brain to order the body to do what we planned. So instead of waiting for life to happen to us, we can make things happen and create what we want. Let’s say that you want your robot to want to exercise, then you would write that in your software and the robot would simply execute. That is what NLP is. Helping you do what you want. Let’s say for example you had decided to stop eating desert and you keep shoving pastries off your face. Maybe if your software had been programmed properly, you would probably not even crave the pastry in first place.

3. We all self-sabotage ourselves in some way. So why are we self-sabotaging ourselves?

We are self-sabotaging ourselves because of what we have programmed ourselves to be. The brain is really powerful and it will always make you right.

I always ask this simple question: Who is calling the shots. Who is in your brain? Who is deciding for you? It is your brain, it is the way you are wired and the way you think. Our brain is the most complex structure in the universe and I believe that we only use 10% of its capabilities. And while we are busy worrying and sweating the small stuff, the 90% unused part of our brain is at work, always trying to make us right. Make us right about our thoughts, about what we think we like, about who we think we are, and if we get specific about our weight loss subject, our brain keeps making us right about the size of pants we are supposed to buy and the number that should be on the scale or the size of our belly or our butt!

It is just a wiring problem in our head. We get what we focus on. If I tell you: do not visualize Mickey Mouse dancing in a yellow tuxedo. Did you see it in your head? Of course you did!! Even if I said DO NOT visualize Mickey Mouse dancing in a yellow tuxedo. We are still processing the information the very same. If for the past 15-20-30-40 years we have been looking at ourselves in the mirror every day telling ourselves: I have a big gut or I am fat or I have big thighs, you know all these self-discriminating thoughts we say and tell ourselves? Well the brain hears it loud and clear, and it does everything it can to make you right!!! You want to be careful what you want to be right about. We focus on not being fat or loosing weight, so our brain hears fat and extra weight.

First of all, with a mind set of being fat, your brain wanting to make you right, will never really ask you to go for a workout or to reach for an apple or for raw veggies, it is doing everything it can to make your right and keep you fat, because that is what you are conditioned to be. You are thinking about yourself as a person with a big butt or a big belly or you think you are a size 12 or 14, or that you are 180lbs and that is the way it is. But let’s say that you kick your butt for a while and you actually go for a workout and you start eating well and that you are actually starting to lose weight, then your brain is panicking because it is saying, oh not… what is going on… she is loosing weight and she is supposed to be fat, what can I do… oh… here is a chocolate bar, I’m gonna make her grad that… so it is how we are sabotaging ourselves because we are wired to be fat.

4. What are some ways that we can re-programs our minds to think positively?

We call it eliciting a positive outcome. You write everything you want (not what you don’t want, remember the “do not vizualise Mickey Mouse in a yellow tuxedo? You get what you focus on. So if you want to be thin, want to crave vegetables, want to feel like going to the gym, etc. you want to write down all that you want with as many sensory cues as possible, visual, auditive, how you feel, what you hear, what you see. “People tell me that I look great” that is an auditory cue. “When I look in the mirror, I see that I look fabulous” that is a visual cue. “I feel amazing” is a feeling cue. So you try be as precise as possible and you repeat what you want to yourself so that your brain can hear it many times a day.

It doesn’t even take that long. Even if you have been repeating yourself negative thoughts for 40 years, the good news is that it is quite easy to change a bad habit. There is a popular belief that it takes 21 days to rewire new neuro-pathways in the brain. It is actually very simple to re-program yourself.

It is not just about repeating what you want, but also, you want to catch yourself with negative thoughts and you re-phrase it immediately. like if you say: ice cream is my downfall… you can immediately rephrase it and say: I used to fall for ice cream but not anymore. I am easily craving healthy food. Or if you hear yourself say: I get sooo tired at night when I get home, all I want to do is to sit on the couch and relax. Well if your brain hears that all the time, it will make you right. Rewire your thoughts to serve you. And we get better and better at it.

We go through the 4 stages of learning all the time, from unconscious incomptence to unconscious competence. You know sometimes you drive for example, have you ever arrived somewhere and not even noticed how you got there? You don’t have to think specifically, here is a green light, what should I do? Should I keep going or should I stop? You don’t have to think about it. You see a red light, you stop, and on a green light, you go. You don’t think about it right? You are unconsciously competent!

Rewiring your brain, you will become unconsciously competent at thinking positively.

5. You were saying that there is a positive intention behind all behaviour. What do you mean by that?

Most behaviours start with good intentions. Even the teenager who takes on smoking to belong and feel the part. When you eat a burger that you shouldn’t have, and you didn’t really want to eat it, there was a positive intention behind your behaviour. Maybe you wanted to recreate the memories that you had on that fun summer weekend when you went away with your friends and enjoyed many BBQ’s.

Finding the intention behind the behaviour is a great technique we use in NLP. One client wanted to quit smoking, and all on his own he decreased to one cigarette per day but was unable to completely quit. It turned out, after asking the right questions during coaching sessions that he had not yet accepted the fact that his father had passed away. His father was a smoker so the cigarette was connecting him to his memories with his father. He did not want to let him go. Finding the intention behind the unwanted behaviour help finding other ways to fulfil that positive intention. Now instead of having his one cigarette at night (the unwanted behaviour) he takes out the photo album and looks at photos of his father so that he can connect and honour his memory.

Here is another great example that shows how finding the intention behind the behaviour can help modifying the behaviour. I had a client once who moved from one city to a new city. All of a sudden she kept buying a certain type of chocolate bar and eating it and she couldn’t understand why. Every day she needed her chocolate bar. She never used to like chocolate and it was never a problem before even when she actually used to work for the distributor of that particular chocolate bar. (Which was quite ironic, a chocolate sales rep that doesn’t like chocolate.) So why was she all of a sudden eating chocolate? What had changed? After a few sessions, we realized that she missed the life she had when she was working for the chocolate company. She had moved and was now alone in her new city. Eating chocolate was her way of coping with feeling lonely and missing her friends. She didn’t really want the chocolate bar; she wanted to be with her old friends. Now, instead of eating chocolate bars, she phones or connects with her friends on email or Facebook, which is a much healthier way to fulfill the intention behind the behaviour. So finding the root behind the issue works better than putting a band-aid over the wound.

In coaching, we don’t give advise. I could see it right away when she mentioned that she was eating chocolate bars. But I could not tell her. She had to come up with it herself. Have you ever had a friend that tells you: “I think I’m gonna do this” and you want to shake them and say: “Dude, I have been telling you this for months!!!” They have to have the idea themselves. So we ask the proper questions in order for their brain to generate the response themselves.

5. Where to find Nathalie P

Nathalie P specializes in improving lives one step at a time.  Covering both the mind and body, working from the inside out. Nathalie P not only teaches you how to be, but how to be your Best! For more details visit Natalie P’s website: www.dnalifecoaching.com

You can also find her on Facebook and Twitter

Nathalie P, wrote this entire post of questions and answers, thanks so much Nathalie!  I look forward to working with you in other areas of business and having you back on the show!