Richard Bandler and Paul McKenna: Get the Life You Want, review
11 October, 2011
Wembley Great Hall, 1st and 2nd Oct 2011
You’ve probably heard of Paul McKenna (McK) right, but might not have heard of Richard Bandler. He’s something of a big guru in the world of NLP and hypnosis. A controversial character for many reasons, none of which I can be bothered to bitch on about here. His innovative techniques for phobias, metaphorical language and personal change, I’ve used with success. I’ve never seen him because his training seminars are way out of my price range. I have read some of his books one of which “A Guide to Trance-formation” I rate highly as a guide to learning hypnosis – if you ever want to. Overall, I didn’t really know what to think, other than he’s got quite a dedicated fan club who dangle on his every hypnotic syllable (eugh). So when the chance to see him for two days for £188 arrived in my inbox I took it, well I bought it from NLP Life actually. Most of his training seminars cost thousands of pounds to attend (hence I haven’t done any of them) and this seemed (comparatively) a good deal.
In terms of “getting the life I wanted”, well when I booked this seminar I have to admit I didn’t really think that was something I particularly needed. I’ve been feeling pretty happy with my life for a while now. I do struggle to understand the pseudo spiritual culture rife at the moment like “The Secret” where the goal of life is – getting what you want. If I was leading a seminar it would be called “Want the life you’ve already got” (and no one would come). The real “secret” of a lot of this bull is about giving people unattainable dreams and then convincing them they can have them. Then if they aren’t able to attain that dream (because it’s totally unrealistic and implausible and unachievable) then the problem is that they didn’t “believe” in it enough to make it happen. So it’s their own stupid fault they’ve failed again. I think there are kinder ways of seeing the world than this. To be honest, I think it’s probably better for people if you just cut out the middle bit and told them at the start that the “Secret” is it’s all their own fault. I think if you did it in a slightly mystical way with some soft music and a faraway look in your eye then it could be really effective. I’ll try it out on people over the next couple of weeks and let you know how it goes. Maybe in the playground, next time one of my mum chums comes to complain about her husband leaving dirty clothes on the bathroom floor, I can go into a slightly altered state and tell her that I “feel” (because a lot of this stuff runs on how we “feel” about things), yes, I feel that ultimately she is creating this situation and that only she can resolve it (because there is no longer any such thing as “fault” only incomplete solutions).
Ok, so you can see that I wasn’t the most ideal candidate for this seminar, but by the time it actually came round, I have to say I was feeling pretty uncertain about some of the decisions I was making about my future. I’d lost my mojo somewhere around early August and blamed it on six weeks of holidays with my three darlings at home (what to speak of two weeks in a tent with them). But it wasn’t really true, I had properly lost my mojo and didn’t know where or how to get it back. I was happy enough, but just not as sparkly as I normally feel. For example, I’d look at my blog and just not write it, even though I used to love it. So I was sort of curious by the time it came round to see if it would help me, or if it would fill me with impossible dreams and then leave me on Sunday evening, waiting for a tube in the rain with big fantasy umbrella keeping me dry – if you know what I mean.
The first thing about the seminar that made a real impression on me was that McK opened it alone. Yep, Bandler hadn’t bothered to get out of bed for 1,300 people (at an average price of £270 pp). Unbelievable. None of the “Hi, it’s like really lovely of you all to be here, this is gonna be so fabulous” etc etc ad nauseum. I had to admit I sort of liked it him for it. I mean how many of us sit through all sorts of shite just for the social nicety of it all. Bandler didn’t. I think I was envious as I was sitting through yet another McK enactment of his dream life as Sean Connery. (He obviously hasn’t seen Megamind yet).
McKenna smoking during the break
I think it went a bit like this the night before:
Bandler: “Fuck it, McKenna you do the fucking morning, I’m not getting out of bed and driving all the way to fucking Wembley till I’ve had my fucking brunch.”
McK: “Er, ok, I’ll warm them up using my rather fabulous James Bond persona. The natural charm and confidence I adopt will spread good feelings through the audience and……”
Bandler (interrupting) : “Do what the fuck you like, make them cluck like fucking chickens but don’t expect me there before 3pm”.
McKenna: “Ok M, leave it to me, ”.
Bandler: “What did you fucking call me?”
McK : “Nothing”
So McKenna did the morning.
Now I have to say I’ve seen McK a few times in the past. The first time I saw him he was in a really bad mood. I don’t know what was up with him – he was living the Bond life he wanted after all. Wearing a Bond suit, telling the time on a Bond watch, driving a Bond car, planning his career with a real life Money Penny; and dating Bond girls – who turn in psychos and stab him in the back – hey what more could a guy want? Anyway, I went to his I can make you thin event a few times, I bought tickets, I won tickets, I couldn’t get away. And I couldn’t get thin either.
Ok, so let’s get back to Bandler, when he eventually got up and had brunch (he’s American and I believe they all have brunch every day; then hot dogs with yellow mustard in the afternoon when they’re doing their police jobs; then they have dinner somewhere swanky in the evening. Trust me, I’ve seen it ont’elly). He managed to spur himself towards our event and arrive mid afternoon. No rush, no rush. Then he proceeded to tell outrageously funny (and seemingly embellished) stories of inventive therapy sessions he’d conducted. Couldn’t help but like his stories and his irreverential style. During all this he was spinning something called “nested loops”. It’s a hypnotic technique where you begin a story and then digress with another story, and another etc building different levels within each story. Then you do some subliminal work on the clients (us) and close the stories one by one in the right order. Well, that’s how Bandler teaches it, but it’s certainly not how he does it himself. I have to say many of the loops were not closed and I have no idea what the hell he was doing with them all over the place. But I sure felt good by the end of the day and felt like he actually gave a shit about people’s mental well being. This was also reflected in the imaginative and kind work he did with people on the stage. Humble he is not, but skilled he certainly is.
On the second day there was an interesting exercise with McK where we looked at our values and from there our goals (yes, yawn, is there anyone who hasn’t done that a thousand times before), but then we put them on a time line and played around with them on there. A timeline is an imaginary line depicting your life in chronological time. You can move stuff around on it, change things and do interesting stuff with it therapeutically. Anyway, eventually we went to the end of our lines (metaphorically our old age) and looked back over the part we’d been planning with our values etc and checked we were happy with it. McK, then asked a few people in the audience about theirs. Now a lot of the audience were NLPers (you can tell cos they look like estate agents. “Height phobia Madam? I want you to imagine yourself in a low lying bungalow in Southend, feel how big the rooms are, notice how small and grey the price appears, would you like a viewing?”). So, from the audience we got all the typical I want, I want, I wants. There were famous writers, famous musicians, famous filmmakers and famous photographers (notice a theme anyone?). Fine.
But as I looked down my own timeline there wasn’t anything famous on it. I saw myself responsibly bringing up three children on my own, who I love. I saw myself working as a hypnotherapist, which I love. And I saw myself spending an inordinate amount of time getting a science degree from the Open University, which I will love. Nothing sexy, glamorous, award winning, rich or famous along this line. But as I looked back from my old age perspective I felt an incredibly powerful sense of well being, I felt the reward of being responsible to my children, the joy of helping people with their problems and the challenge of study. And I felt an incredible sense of simple satisfaction that I’d spent those years of my life on those things. And to be honest, there’s something a bit priceless about feeling that good about the life you’re living; the one you’re already actually living, not an imaginary life that you wish you had. And right at that moment, I realized I’d found my mojo again.
Paul McKenna
Richard Bandler
The other good news is that I’ve picked up my blog and started writing (obviously) and begun to manically walk everywhere I go. I’ve stopped over-eating and one week after the seminar have lost 5lbs. I have also more strangely found myself doing stomach crunches at 5am in the living room before going back to bed (!!). I don’t know if it was Bandler or McK, but I have to say, I’m really glad I went along.
Bye xx
Back to work
2 December, 2009
I was not alone as I walked hastily out of the playground. Dropping my second child off for her first day of school was an emotional experience, sort of like ecsatic – except happier. The departing mums, slowed by the narrowing of the school gate, politely squeezing through the chicane – many of us, just a little too eager to get out. I now only have one small child at home.
Distraught mums leave playground.
I feel the world is my oyster, a chance to think, to plan and to start working, albeit from home.
The problem with having three children is the amount of distraction they generate. They re-route synapses in the brain. Thoughts which previously left the brain on superhighways, headed to their destination in micro-seconds, now get diverted onto the back roads of the mind. Once mired in there, they continually take the wrong turns until, either they are lucky enough to happen upon a main route back to memory. Or they just wander around cerebral backwaters until they finally disappear without a trace. This is how I experience it. This is the only way I can understand how I, a mother of three children, had forgotten what having a lone toddler at home was like.
It didn’t take me long to remember. Almost as soon as I’d put my laptop on the kitchen table I remembered just how good toddlers are at climbing. Then I remembered just how much toddlers like buttons and lights. And as I picked up the phone, I remembered just how much toddlers like phones. Finally, I vividly re-experienced just how much toddlers dislike the word “no”. Work, was not working out. I Googled “childcare”.
The cost of nursery for a child under two is £50 a day in my locale. As Income Support is £60.50 a week, nursery might not be the best option. A childminder is cheaper at about £3 an hour, but unfortunately Ofstead’s, ever-exacting, inspectors have reduced the number available considerably. Shifts in Sainsburys has proven less stressful to them than Ofstead’s annual audits. I look for several weeks for a local childminder, but there are no vacancies. The other nail in the coffin of home-based childcare is the government’s introduction of “wrap-around” care. I love that title – like they wrap them up, all snuggly and cosy – as if. “Breakfast clubs” and “After-school clubs” outclass childminders by their convenience and facilities. Such a shame then, that they all shut down for the six week summer break. I meet a lot of parents who are sad about this.
But back to work for me. Eventually I find a way. The brilliant idea is to sell printed umbrellas to hairdressers and eventually maybe even to hotels. Flexible hours and I could do a lot of it from home, on the phone and internet, during kiddie naps and empty evenings – brilliant. It came about when one of my friends left the hairdressers with her new £100 hairdo, and low and behold, it was raining. 
By the time she got home, her £100 hair looked more like something the cat had dragged in. Would she have bought an overpriced umbrella promoting her overpriced salon? You bet. I excitedly take my idea to my Lone Parent Advisor at the job centre.
My Lone Parent Advisor is an expert in unemployment – amazing, considering that she has a job herself. I would have thought that disqualified her immediately. She is always full of new ideas that I would never have otherwise have considered. I see her every six months and each time is pretty revelatory to me. generally what happens is we discuss my current idea about returning to work, then she advises me to stay on benefits. This time is no exception. Sensing my disappointment, she eventually relents a bit and suggests I look for a part-time job in a school office. I had a job as a bursar at Oxford in a previous life, so there is some good logic in her anti-entrepreneurial approach. I respond with a compromise, that I look for a job as a school bursar. She smiles kindly and suggests I work as an assistant to the bursar, but part time. I’m not prepared to go any lower at this stage in the negotiations. I point out that in her scheme I’d be earning £12k a year pro-rata and I’d still be on benefits. In my version, I’d be on at least £22k, and if I add in my child support payments, I could be benefit-free . She shakes her head. With gentle patience she kindly tells me that I’m not going to get off benefits. She also advises me to make sure I work at least 16 hours a week to qualify for help with my childcare. Finally, she reminds me that no one is actually forcing me into work. Did I mention she’s an expert in unemployment?
Undeterred, I go back to the drawing board in my mind. Printed umbrellas are cheap on the internet and it will be hard for me to undercut the online providers. In the meantime, I make an appointment with Business Link to discuss some workshops that I’ve been planning and piloting with a few friends. These are nothing to do with bad hair days, they are bad birth-days. For a long time I’ve wanted to provide help for women who have had distressing births. I had one myself. When I was a student midwife, I saw a lot of women in the same situation I’d been in and there was no support or help getting over it. I decide to pursue this idea and I come off Income Support and change to self employed. What I realize is, that if you are setting up a business, you are not necessarily expected to make any money for the first year. That’s normal and that’s normally the hardest thing about a new business, surviving the first year. So I continue to receive pretty much the same level of benefits as before, except it comes from Tax Credits rather than Income Support. This also means I am able to claim back 80% of my childcare. I put my youngest child in the best nursery in the area and get to work. The older children are overjoyed, it is the end of their free school dinners, they celebrate a return to sandwiches and break-aways.
My business link adviser is brilliant. He’s intelligent and enthusiastic and helpful. He is very positive and interested. We go over the business plan I’ve filled in and we stop at the financial pages, they are empty. He asks me how long I can fund myself and the business with my current resources. I look at him – he hasn’t got it. I tell him I’m on benefits so there isn’t a problem, I’m fully supported. He is amazed, and says, “That’s brilliant”. At last, someone understands me. He looks over my plan again and we talk about grants and funding. “You have four employees?” he asks. I shift uncomfortably in my chair – they are employees in a casual sense of the word. “You see, if you had five employees, even casual ones, you’d be eligible for a Train to Gain grant of £500. You can use it for educational courses of Level 4 or above”. I pick up my mobile and hire someone, he makes the referral. I find a one year Diploma as a Hypnotherapist, I will have a therapy qualification to support the workshops. Theoretically, I will be able to take referrals on the NHS and even better, it’s flexible so I can do it around the children. Three weeks later I am in a comfortable bright room in Birmingham telling the woman next to me to “Relaaax and stare at a spot on the ceiling” . Train to Gain paid for more than half of the course and my Lone Parent Advisor pulled out all the stops to help me when I decided I was leaving Income Support. She helped me apply for a Return to Work Grant, which adds an extra £40 a week to my income. This pays for the additional travel and books I need.
Here and now, I’m a qualified hypnotherapist and I love it. I work part time in Witney at the “Anderson Clinic”. My clients give me warm praise and I meet lovely people. I’m not totally free from benefits yet, but I’m on my way. In the new year I’ll be starting hypnobirthing workshops and workshops for women with distressing childbirths. It’s an exciting time and I can see a future – free from benefits ahead of us. It might take a while, but as a family, we are happily on our way.
http://www.andersonclinic.co.uk
