From Lost to Found - A True Story

NLP – A new way of life

You might want to relax as you let me tell you a quick story.

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A human in need.

Have you ever felt disoriented, mentally stuck or even out of oxygen, like you can't breathe? This is how the last three to four years have felt for me. I was at a standstill.

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Don’t get me wrong, my life wasn’t horrendous. I had a steady job for more than a decade, with a decent salary, insurance and vacations (in the beautiful Greek islands), an enviable lifestyle, a nice car... You could say things were going really well for me, right? I was telling myself the same and at the back of my head there was something bothering me. Like this itch you have and can’t really scratch. I didn’t know exactly what it was, and I could feel it was reaching a crisis point.

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Day after day, month after month, I kept feeling I was losing control of my life. If things where really that good for me, what was the reason behind my restlessness? The more I thought about it, the more it bothered me. The more it bothered me, the more I kept asking the wrong question… “Why?”

Why do I feel like this? Why is this happening to me? Why, why, why… A lot of complaining, yet no action…

I was blind.

I was so blind that I couldn’t see beyond my problem, head stuck in the sand. Stress filled and with no room to breathe or think, I allowed myself to get sick. My body tried to send me the messages I couldn’t realise by myself. I needed to take a good look inside me and seek answers.

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My quest took me to various places. Some of them proved to be solid theories; some were a fool’s errand. But I kept my eyes wide open. I needed a solution and I was determined to. I did not give up and at some point I finally crossed paths with my destiny.  

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A new Path

The first time I entered the “Quest For Success” training room I felt really strange. Christine welcomed me with a big smile. The moment we started talking I realised things were already changing for me. Her questions had me thinking hard in ways I never imagined before. In less than ten minutes I knew I was in for it! It felt even more so when we started our training. Theory turned into practice and I found myself re-evaluating principles, recognising patterns of behaviour and limiting beliefs. My answers were right in front of me. I felt like a veil was lifted. I felt like Neo in Matrix in the bending spoon scene. “There is no spoon”! Reality is what we choose it to be.

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What if you could “bypass” it? Bend the rules? That was the first time in my life I could really understand what people meant by what they said. Even better, I could speak to them in a way they understood better.

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I could read the Matrix! Finally I could really understand people around me, in a far deeper level. More so, I stopped judging them and when I did, I stopped judging myself. I came to realise that their behaviour was the best they could do with the understandings and the resources available to them at that point in time. And that applied to me as well. Instead of judging, the desire to help them become their best possible selves arose in me, because now I knew the way…

I was not blind anymore and I was closer to my life’s calling than ever. A meaningful life full of purpose.

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The Crossroads

Getting my NLP Practitioner’s certification was just the beginning. After that, a variety of options spread in front of me. I am a well-known “trance addict”. Hypnosis means a lot to me and I tend to go into light trance frequently, even while writing these lines. This is the fantastic world of great visualisation and metaphors. I recall, as I sat there in our training, breathing slowly, breath after breath, feeling my eyes getting heavy, I could feel the warmth, I could feel safe. The sensation of delving in a vast world without boundaries was so strong that I could not overlook it. The calmness and tranquility of every session was beyond words and every colleague’s experience was so unique. I will never forget how gratifying I felt when one of my fellow classmates contacted me a year after, to thank me for contributing to her life’s changes. The satisfaction this gave me was immeasurable.  

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Time Line Therapy (TM) on the other hand was the best cleanup of my life. The magic element of Time Line Therapy™ is that you start with a specific topic in your mind and you always end up with something totally different. You see, your unconscious mind knows better than your conscious mind. It protects and guides you in ways you don’t even imagine.  

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A new Life

I have now brought my desire to be of help to others to fruition. I work in a new field and I lead a different life – A better, meaningful and satisfying life. NLP is here to stay with me. Moreover, it is a part of me now. It is not just a technique or a skill. It is a way of life. It helped me understand others and more so, it helped me understand myself. I don’t actually use NLP anymore. NLP is part of who I am.

Author: V. Karagiannopoulos

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