Leslie Nipps Counseling

Archive for January, 2010

Every NLP session begins with these four magical words: “What do you want?”

What makes them magical?

After all, I see them lit up in digital form on the screen displays of lots of cash registers. Indeed, they can seem trite, or self-serving, or in an extreme form hopelessly narcissistic and consumer-driven. Why in this world of excess would I encourage people to ask that question?

Well, let’s see. Try it. Take a moment, take a deep breath, and then contemplatively and respectfully ask yourself “What do I want?”

What, for this day, seems most important to what you want to be or to experience today?

This question is immensely powerful, for a few reasons:

• It shifts our attention away from problems, and toward desire, hope, rightness of life.
• It opens our heart to possibility, rather than focused on limitation or already established pattern.
• Most of all, as we begin to answer the question, we already start making the answer true by imagining it, empowering it, and reaching for it.

One alternative to asking this question is not asking it—preventing our heart from wanting at all. Another alternative is appearing to ask the question, without really doing so, and ending up with ready but frustrating answers like “Another piece of cake!” or worse “Nothing much, really…”

I have recently lit upon the daily practice, in my morning meditation, of asking this question. Sometimes the response refers directly to something important happening that day about which I have a special intention or hope: I want to be fearless in my horseback riding today; I want to allow my competency to shine forth as I work with a suffering client tonight.

Other times, the response is more general, addressing large life issues that continue to be part of my life’s journey: I want to experience intimacy today; I want to invite the pain of Haiti’s people into my heart.

In either case, asking the question and allowing a creative, heart-felt response to form is itself the work of bringing into reality these things that I am pretty sure are part of God’s and universe’s desire for me, as well.

What would you like? As you respond, let the power of your heart’s answer begin to re-pattern and re-illuminate your life…

Peace, Leslie

Toward the Stormy Ocean by Leslie Nipps

We teach what we most need to learn.

The day was foggy, cold and windy, and a horse was bucking in circles on his lunge line a few feet away. Everything in me was expecting my normally calm—but not bomb-proof—horse to start prancing, jigging and jumping. He had every right to, given the circumstances. Why had I even tried this? It was my first ride in two months, still healing from my first ever, incredibly painful and frightening, herniated disc. I could not risk being bounced around (much less thrown off). My horse had to walk, and only walk. And here I was, completely tempting fate.

And yet, I took the risk. I dared to trust him, and life. I dared to trust that I was ready, and that I am a good enough rider, truly, to ask my horse to calmly walk when I need him to, and succeed.

And we did.

I learned not simply that I can trust. Okay, that’s a pretty simplistic lesson. It’s that life is regularly, almost daily, offering me experiences that remind me that trust is the most useful and truthful stance toward life. Life reaches back out in trustworthy acts.

We teach what we most need to learn.

I discovered this as I grew as a preacher in my former career as an Episcopal minister. My best sermons were never about the issues about which I had clarity and certainty; indeed, they tended to be boring and a tad strident, or at least pedantic. My best sermons always focused on whatever I was working on, struggling with, confused or curious about. They might sound “convincing” (and I got regular feedback of how inspiring these sermons were), but they resonated because they came from my own searching and desire. I was reaching for God (Spirit, Life, Hope, Meaning, etc.), and so the congregation could reach with me, and find what they were looking for.

Since my counseling tagline is “Trust as a Way of Life,” you can assume that is what I myself am reaching for. Trust is at the heart of the well-lived life. Without it, joy is harder to come by, we have a hard time seeking relationship, we can’t fully express our creativity and work, and we can’t help others. At the least, things feel unstable, and at the worst everything may be “out to get us.” Whatever wound we carry, whatever behavior or experience of life we would prefer not to have, distrust is some substantial contributor.

Take a minute now, and make a picture of a future version of you who trusts in exactly all the ways that you want and which would support the things you most long for in life. Notice how natural trust is to that version of you, and enjoy that one’s experience of life in the midst of such joy…

Peace, Leslie

California Hillside by Leslie Nipps