Mind Alchemy Day 23 – The Big I AM
February 24, 2011 By 12 Comments
Welcome to day 23 of Mind Alchemy. I can’t believe we’ve nearly completed the course, only 4 more days to go. After today we’re going to ease up a little in the last 4 days as I think we all deserve it after the ride we’ve had 
Today we’re going to be looking at an important part of our psychology which I’ve called the Big I AM.
This part of the course is as important as the major modules such as beliefs, reality, emotions and your thoughts. When I first grasped the significance of this it was a huge revelation and a turning point in my life.
Mind Alchemy Day 23
A few years ago, working as a homeless worker I really started to resent having to go to work each day, knowing that there was something else I was meant to be doing in life, mainly helping others through personal development writing. I identified my job as something that was rigid and was an obstacle in my way of getting to where I wanted to go. When asked ‘What is it that you do?’ I would say ‘I am a homeless worker.’ Always with an air of resentment. That changed when I started to look at the job from another perspective.
I was getting paid to learn about the psychology of others. I was actually learning how people tick, in a crisis. A lot of the service users I dealt with were abusing alcohol and drugs and I was learning, first hand, how the mind worked when under the influence of alcohol or drugs and just how different that was to ‘normal’ people. In actual fact what I realised was that we all act in similar ways when trying to deal with life. When I started to see the job as a fluid, non-rigid event, my perception changed and so did my disdain for the job.
As you know I know I work with alcohol and drug abusers and help them to overcome their addiction, if that is their desire, and I love working with service users, still don’t like the fact that my job is 50% paperwork, but working with service users is a way to learn human psychology.
Now I see my job as a way to speed up the learning process whilst helping service users at the same time and I am learning every day. My job is fluid, it serves a purpose, both for the service user and myself, it it no longer a rigid obstacle to resent. I believe that’s where a lot of us are at the moment with our jobs.
Nominalization
There is a term in NLP called nominalization, which means verbs that have been turned into an abstract noun. This can be hard to grasp but an example would be:
‘There is no communication in our marriage’ – The verb communicate has been turned into something static and rigid: communication.
This means that the communication in the marriage has nowhere to go, that’s that way it is and it can’t be changed. When we say something like this our minds automatically think ‘okay, there is no communication and it will stop looking for solutions because it is a definite thing and there is nowhere to go with it. Instead we could say ‘How can we communicate better in our marriage?’ your mind automatically starts looking for solutions.
Bear with me here as I know this can a difficult concept to grasp, but it is really worth it.
A lot of us have nominalized ourselves in a lot of aspects in our lives. One of the biggest culprits that we use in language are the words ‘I Am’. For example:
“I am no good at maths”
“I am an alcoholic”“I am no good with money”
“I am a terrible sleeper”
“I am an idiot”
“I am poor”
All the phrases above, when spoken, leave the mind with nowhere to go, so the mind just says “Okay, I am no good with money, no point in trying to be better as that’s the way I AM’.
De-nominalizing our life
What we want to do is feed the mind, and let it help us find solutions and become fluid again instead of static. In my job just now, a lot of people define themselves as alcoholics, that’s just who they are. What I try and do is to let them see that their drinking patterns have gotten a bit out of control and teach them ways of thinking to better control their drinking – therefore de-nominalizing their identification with being an alcoholic.
Can you see areas in your life where you are nominalizing yourself?
I don’t want to go too much into this as it can get confusing the more you go into it, but I thought it was an important module to have in the course.
Today’s exercise
Your exercise for today is to think the way you talk to yourself by saying I am and think if alternative ways to get your mind help you find solutions, if you so wish.
A few readers are now blogging about their experiences on the course, and it would be great to lend your support:
Stacy Claflin – Grow With StacyMarty BoneIdol – Living Life in Chapters
Derek Breuning – Tech Life
Stephen – New Life Starts Here
Read the interview I have done with Angela Artemis from Powered by Intuition
Check out the interview with Sandi Amorim for Deva Coaching Following an Alchemist
Watch an interview I made with Suzie Cheel on Mind Alchemy
Tomorrow
Tomorrow we will looking at helping others to help yourself. Until tomorrow my fellow Mind Alchemists……..
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