Dubliner Express, part #2 (Oct.-Nov.'14), Urbanima (bringing desired states)

Sometimes we photographers find interest in things that don’t seem worthy of being noticed. Like abandoned places, ruins of things or trivial aspects of our everyday surroundings. From my experience and observation I find that this can turn into a way, an alibi, to escape reality, to hide our self from seeing our self. It can be the opposite too, it’s an actual matter of choice and conscience. But it’s also about this thing with photographers that we can find beauty everywhere.

But I don’t want to talk in this article about photography. I’m using this idea and a series of photos that I took in Dublin in October and November 2014, while attending the NLP Master Practitioner course at the Irish Institute of NLP with Brian Colbert and Owen Fitzpatrick, to share a few insights about changes. And a practical way, small, easy but can be very help when you are about to bring changes in your life.

It’s been said a lot that the only thing that doesn’t change is change itself. Indeed it is a universal force. It happens natural. Then what happens when people seek a personal change but are finding it difficult to achieve? There are a lot of things out there (techniques, disciplines, organizations, sciences) that offer ways to change the way we live, our diet, the way we treat our bodies, our emotions, everything. Plus, the personal will power that one fires off when working towards changes. I’m sure all of them are good, even though not every time and not with all the people and situations. I believe that when change doesn’t work out, it’s because there hasn’t been examination and intervention in a very fundamental and deep level of our being. The one of beliefs.

As grown-up, logical individuals we consciously know what we want to have in life. At the same time, in a core level (the hidden part of the iceberg) most of our basic beliefs have been planted in us at a time where we didn’t have much choice. Many of these beliefs have been outdated but we still run them unconsciously and as we grow in experience and grow new beliefs, we often experience conflicts between new and old. To give a few crude examples, think of the man who wants to be economically abundant and runs at the same time the belief that only the poor will enter heaven. The one who finds his job is overwhelming him with stress and he tries (!) to relax (how can you try to relax?) while deeply rooted there’s a “No pain no gain”. Or why, after decades of input from the advertisement and movie industry that cigarette will relax and make someone look cool, two of the main difficulties for quitting smoke are stated by people to be the stress that supposedly will affect and the factor of appearing confident and at ease when socializing. Actual research shows that this is not true. But that won’t necessarily stop those beliefs from running deep inside.

So, if you are at a time when you want to make changes in your life, whatever way you’re using to make these changes, it’s useful to first examine your beliefs about the matter of change.

Start by examining your limiting beliefs, the ones that try to pull you back to “normality” and prevent change. It won’t be so hard to find. They’re all over the place. They come out when we speak and communicate. They penetrate our stream of thoughts. They even reflect on our body, our posture and movement. All we have to do is pay attention. Meditation is a very beautiful way to bring awareness to these things. But it doesn’t even take to meditate in order for someone to be more mindful and caring about oneself. This is the first step. It’s great but it’s not enough yet. Because knowing what you don’t want means nothing if you don’t know where you’re heading.

“But I already know what I want” you might say. Sure, the thing is that now I’m asking you to examine why you want what you want. Why do you want to be smoke free, why do you want to be successful? I know, it sounds a little silly. “What do you mean why do I want this? Because it’s good for me!!!” Yes, we all know this but the problem with changes that doesn’t work is because they’re based on beliefs from a logical, intellectual level, which is pretty skin deep compared to our whole being. So by examining these things, we’re tapping in deep places, enhancing our positive beliefs, finding new ones and very importantly, we can energize these beliefs, implant them in our stream of thoughts, in our language, in our body too, and start mirroring them with our movement and posture.

Once you do this, the third step is a small and very easy technique that deals with our beliefs about how easy or difficult is for a change to take place. You see, a lot of people believe that for a change to be of any worth, it has to come through struggle and pain. Or that change is blocked by a feeling of not being good enough for this. Probably all of us have thought of things like those. So, now I invite you (and I assume you’ve all have made at least one change once in your life) to picture with your mind’s eye, your timeline. This technique requires that you think and imagine about your past and future, placed on an imaginary line. So basically it uses our own natural way of animating the past and future in our daily discussions. Most of the people tend to place their future in front of them and the past behind. While you’re sitting comfortably in the present moment, contemplating about this change you’re on to, I want you to think about a change in your life that you have achieved in the past. Now, imagine yourself floating back to the past on your timeline until the point before that change that you finally made. Find yourself there and ask him “do you believe that this change can happen?” If the answer is no, come back to your present and wiser self and ask him, what are the beliefs and qualities that made this change possible? If the answer is yes, ask what qualities and beliefs will make this possible. Bring them back to the present moment. Fill your presents with these beliefs and qualities. Really feel them in your body. Then move along your timeline to the future, to find yourself in the state after you have achieved this change that you’re on to. Ask future yourself what it took to make this change. You want to find out what other beliefs and qualities it took for this change to be achieved. And more than this, you want to step inside your changed self and see, hear and feel what he/she sees, hears and feels from this changed position. And then, bring this back to the present moment.

It’s an easy technic to do and very effective, especially if you combine it with other things that you do in your process for change. One important thing to remember is that it’s not an intellectual practice. It uses your intellectual to access and to induce states in you, things that you can feel. An example would be, if the issue is economic, you want to feel in your whole system how does it feel to feel abundant. So, you’re using your intellectual, your ability to visualize yourself how you look when abundant, to listen to how you will sound to feel how you will feel. It’s very easy to practice it and you can do it anyplace and anytime. It shouldn’t require more than 5-10’ and the good thing is that once you’ve done it a few times then you can just think about it and your unconscious will run it automatically. Try it and you’ll be positively surprised. Welcome to the new frontier…our brain! And if you have any questions or comments, I’ll be glad to listen to.

Dubliner Express (Oct.-Nov. 2014), Part #1

Have you ever felt, when travelling to another country that everything is sensed in a new way, everything you see, hear, smell and taste are new and sharp and you’re feeling totally generated and curious and open about how people live in this country? Have you ever travelled to a new country to do a seminar or training? Did you notice that you’re actually moving out of your comfort zone but also from the conditions that bring you down and you’re going to a direction of freshness and evolving exploration? How will this be, when you will have had already tapped into the space of creativity and inspiration?

I wrote this in Dublin, while on a 6 day in October and 5 in November for the NLP Master Practitioner training with Owen Fitzpatrick and Brian Colbert of the Irish institute of NLP. Travelling all this way from my country for a workshop makes sense when it has do to with the life changing experience of NLP brought in a wonderful way by these two people who are top in their league, and also for me wanting to travel to Dublin again, after having just a taste, on a weekend visit a decade ago.

My free time was afternoons and a morning after or before the course. So I’m not out there for some kind of a project on which I did research and prepared myself, I’m just playing around with my camera, reflecting my experiences and moods of these days.

I fly in the airport, take the bus to the city, and my feeling is that I’m in a provincial place rather than a capital city. I’m entering downtown along the bank of a velvet river under a silvery shiny light. No traffic jams, no massive concrete buildings and at the same time, the atmosphere of a metropolis. I see the grand boulevard, which is epic in an abstract way and I picture Dublin as a big takeoff runway. I see those doors on the sides of the river frome where music, voices and light comes out as the warmth from the fireplace and I think of this city like a small place where everybody knows each other.

In the coming days I’m experiencing not only the joy of been a pedestrian but also how this city creates of openness in peoples interactions. One thing that strucks me is how polite people are. Somebody gets in the way or bumps me, says sorry. I get in the way or bump someone, they say sorry. And I’m thinking, it’s probably a sign of how people respect other’s space. But at the same time this polite condition is a way to keep others out of one’s space. Where ever it’s coming from, there is a strong sense of respect of space, public and private.

Dublin doesn’t look like a city in economic crisis, and if it does, certainly not like my city do. I see closed shops and homeless, surely not as in Athens. And it’s not only this. People are not afraid to look you in the eyes. People are not edgy here. I’ve been in cities, including mine, where there is sometimes a tangible atmosphere of i.e. rush or isolation, anger or fear. Here people go about pretty relaxed and available for communication. I guess it’s in their culture and how the psychogeography have shaped it. But I don’t think it’s a product of the crisis period, I believe it shows a deep principle on which the Irish dealt with the situation.

situation. It’s wonderful to go out with company in Dublin. And since it’s a multicultural city you can surrealistically have a company of Portuguese and Brasilian- who have immigrated here- Vietnamese/American and Greek, making noise in a home brewery pub. I’m also enjoying walking in the city with my new Brasilian friend, Jose or to be invited in his place where his girlfriend Lisa makes delicious southern home cooking. Really feels like home to meet Lisa and Jose, as well as everybody else I met, Irish, immigrants or travelers, to be invited, to listen to what they believe and dream about life and how this takes substance in this city. But it’s also great to go out alone. It’s not only that I get the opportunity to explore the downtown, visit places, meet all people. After a full day of learning and experiencing in the course, it helps me digest and put my thoughts together. There comes a moment when my feet hurt and I feel I have to sleep to wake up early next morning but my heart doesn’t want to stop walking.

I am surprised to see that the famous road of central night life is called Temple Bar. I’m tempted to think that the Irish have evolved boozing to religious levels but the truth is that all these noisy pubs and clubs, the fancy hostels and Victorian style hotels, the traditional sweet shops and the barber shops with graffiti of razors and skulls, used to be warehouse on the bar, thank of the river. And Temple was the name of the man who built the place up, in the time when sail ships would curtain Dublin’s delta horizon.

On that man’s street I’m walking on my last Saturday night out, the night before the last day of the course. I’ve been in and out of places, I’ve listened to traditional, to rock music, to street jams and I’m still walking like something’s missing yet. And then, like when the baker puts the bread in the oven and the smell starts to swing out on the streets, the sound of disco music, with strong bass as it’s coming from a basement, comes to seduce my ears. I look around and I spot a few window openings on the base of a building, revealing just the tiny bit that’s enough to make me more curious and drawn to this place. I walk through the door to the ground level of the building and instead of a disco I find myself in the lobby of a hotel that could well be the setting for filming a historic novel. There is even a black porter, who gives me directions, so I cross the building to the side of the river and there on the left is the opening to this underground playground. Don’t ask me what the name is, I even forgot my name that night. I go down the stairs into a small but beautiful room with a bar and as I walk in and through it I discover room after room, one or two more bars, an underground yard and at last, a dance floor. Not a big one but very warm and careless. Beautiful people, nice disco music, sometimes cheesy but so cheesy that it creates a strange harmony with the old times decoration, tapestry and black and white photos on the wall. The whole atmosphere is like home, in the way that no one needs to act here, there’s no need for some special music or setting to relax and have fun. It just feels the right place and right time (after a few moments of hesitating thoughts of me been a stranger, knowing nobody), I go deep into it.

I had worked and walked so much the previous days, so all this energy that is coming out of me on the dance floor, it’s just me letting go myself. Then things happen, like this girl who came to me to give a compliment on my spectacular, as she put it, beard. Now that I think about it, I also think of it as a ritual dance that bonded my connection with the city and its people. We trust each other now as friends.