Episode 03: Michelle Masters

ABOUT OUR GUEST:

Michelle Masters is an NLP Trainer and Family Consultant at the renowned NLP Marin. She has been working with clients, students and organizations throughout the San Francisco Bay Area since 1995. She works to create change and remove blocks to success, love, health and well-being.

At 1:14, she gives a brief description of NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming) and how she uses it to help clients have the life and the experience they want, by-passing the self-doubt and self-imposed confusion. Helping people through their hopelessness and helplessness, she explains, is the best feeling in the world. Unconscious patterning, and the challenge of consciously trying to override unconscious behaviour, is touched upon at the 3:43 mark. She compares being aware of unconscious patterns and trying to change them to yelling at your computer and expecting it to behave differently. Revision of unconscious patterns is best done without show of force.

We learn a little more about who Michelle was at 5:55, where she shares her story. As a child, she describes herself as having a bit of an achievement problem – the same way some people have a drinking problem. She couldn’t stop joining competitions and aiming for top prize. As admirable as it was, she had nothing else from which she could draw a sense of self. At 18, she realized that she couldn’t keep doing so, and thus gave up achievement in search of something else that would give her a sense of self.  She couldn’t find it.

Michelle ­tried many different things – painting, teaching, coaching, selling (a bit of traumatizing experience for her, she admits), and finally working as a manager for Mrs. Field’s Cookies. It was a rather low point for her, and that was when she promised herself that the next job she would take would be something that mattered to her. It took a while – she was out of savings, her relationship had crashed, and she had nowhere to live. Luckily, a friend of hers changed her life simply by suggesting she attend a free NLP seminar.

Another turning point for her came in the form of a story on the radio, which she recounts at 8:27. It’s the story of a coyote out on the mesa, caught up in a rockslide. Rocks and boulders are raining down, and it’s all the coyote can do to dodge. It stops one particular boulder from crushing it by holding the boulder up. It works, but now the coyote can’t move. It stays that way for two weeks before its strength runs out and it resigns itself to its faith. In an act of surrender, it drops its arms and falls to the ground. However, the boulder does not roll forward and crush it, as the coyote expected it would. The boulder stays where it is – it had stopped moving a long time ago.

A lot of people, Michelle says at 10:14, think they’re supposed to find what it is they should be doing. What they’re meant to be doing. She discusses how some people go about life like there’s this mission that’s been decided for them, and nobody’s going to tell them what it is, but they’re supposed to figure it out. And there’s no way of telling if they ever figure it out. She doesn’t subscribe to this belief. The places where you’re happy, she says, where you’re inspired, where you’re lit up – that’s where you’re supposed to be. That’s what you should be doing. It doesn’t have to be saving the world. In fact, at 11:00, she asks an important question: where would you rather live? A world full of people who are doing what they think they’re supposed to do, or a world full of people that are inspired and lit up?

At 13:23, she lists the two big things that are in the way of people getting what they really want.

1. Belief System – this is formed by the time we’re 3 years old, and it’s all done by 6. Your beliefs are shaped by association: If things are bad, and I’m here – then I must be bad. If there’s a struggle, and I’m here – I have to struggle. The foundations of the belief system are laid down before we fully develop conscious choice – which is why redesigning them is so huge.

2. Family Relationship – we stop ourselves from living the life we deserve because of our familiar. It’s not easy to be the first one in the family – we feel like we don’t belong if we have it better than the people we come from.

When you revise these two things, lives are transformed.

One of her personal habits, which she attributes most to her success, is respect. Her clients don’t need her to tell them how to live their life. They just need her to guide them through it. People already have everything they need inside them, Michelle explains, to do and be and have the lives they want. She names Skype as the one platform she cannot live without, as all her clients are scattered over the world, and she recommends anything by Abraham Hicks. She also encourages people to read a little book from the 1920’s called “The Game of Life and How to Play It” by Florence Scovel Shinn. It’s a book written based on the concept of changing your thoughts to change your life. Michelle names it as sort of a religious foundation for NLP. Her public hero is Nelson Mandella and she thinks the world could always use more reassurance. She encourages listeners, at 20:04, to look where you’re lit up. Look for where you’re excited, where you’re wanting, she says – because that’s where you should be.

In mid-August of this year, Michelle will be going to Sydney to do five workshops on different topics – such as unconscious relationship patterns, money magic, how to use stories to communicate, and so on. Afterwards, she’ll be flying to Auckland to run one on money. You can hear more about this at 21:09. 

In addition to working with people privately, Michelle teaches NLP to students wanting to become Practitioners, leads and facilitates Family Constellations, teaches courses in how to facilitate Family Constellations and develops and facilitates workshops designed to create lasting changes for participants, such as Money Magic, and Weight Magic, Unconscious Relationship Patterns, Metaphors for Change, Family Systems for Change, and The Adopted Healing Experience. She has spoken at conferences, on television and radio on the topics of NLP and on using Family Constellations to resolve unconscious family generational entanglements.
Michelle believes that learning happens most easily when it is fun as well as functional. In addition to NLP, Michelle has continued to study a variety of quantum-based healing modalities which she incorporates into all of her work with students and clients.

Michelle has clients all over the world–in the U.S., Europe, Australia, New Zealand, Asia, and South America, and she speaks and teaches internationally. To find out more, visit Michelle’s official site:  http://michellemastersnlp.com/upcoming-workshops-2/

PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION:

[01:13] Meet Michelle – who she is, what she’s doing now, and how she’s making a difference on people’s lives
[01:44] She discusses and describes NLP (Neuro-Linguistic programming] in more detail, and compares it to revising software
[03:41] Michelle discusses the concept of unconscious patterning – when it starts, how it is formed, and how greatly it affects us
[04:31] Michelle discusses how revising the unconscious patterns in our life can bring about tremendous, graceful change
[05:55] Michelle shares her incredible story of how she got to where she is now
[06:43] Michelle talks about her earlier adult years and how she just “wandered around for nearly a decade”
[07:10] “You know what? I don’t know what it’s going to be but the next job I take is going to be something that matters to me.”
[07:31] Michelle shares how a friend’s suggestion completely changed her life around
[08:27] She shares another pivotal moment in her life that came in the form of a radio story about a coyote out on the mesa
[10:12] Michelle shares some advice with the listeners regarding happiness, inspiration, and they’re place in this world
[12:04] “If you could go back in time and tell your old self one thing, what would it be?” Michelle tells us how she wouldn’t just go back 10, 20 years. She’d go back further, to when she was a child, and she’d tell herself: ‘You’re okay.’
[13:12]  Michelle shares the two biggest things in the way of people getting or having what they really want. 1. Their Belief System, and 2. Their Family Relationship.
[16:40] “If you were starting over from scratch today – whether in your life or your business – what is the one thing you would do?”

• [17:12] Start of Quickfire Questions: What’s the best piece of advice for your industry you’ve ever received
• [17:34] Share one of your personal habits that you strongly believe contributes to your success?
• [18:00] What’s one piece of tech or app that you or your business can’t live without?
• [18:10] What book or resource would you recommend?
• [18:45] Who is your hero?[19:12] What is the world missing?
• [19:37] Who do you recommend we have on this podcast?

[19:58] What’s the one thing listeners should do to make movements towards their freedom? “Look where you’re lit up,” Michelle says
[21:00] To find out more, visit Michelle’s official site: http://michellemastersnlp.com/
[21:28] Michelle is flying out to Sydney to run five workshops – here, she names the different topics. You can find out more by visiting her website: http://michellemastersnlp.com/upcoming-workshops-2/