3 Brains Coach Certification ICF CCEU accredited

Do you recognise those moments of decision making that the head says yes and the gut or heart says no or vice versa or maybe you coach or work with people who experience that?

Would you like to be in "control" of these misalignments and assist your clients, colleagues to deal with them better?

How would being in charge of our so called subconscious benefit you and others?

These internal discussion are actually the core of most of our "issues" as we know our emotions drive between 80% and 95% of our decisions, and to many times are emotional decisions followed up by emotional outcomes.

When we do not align them before we take a decision we could end up making the "wrong" decision and probably regret it afterwards however when we do not decide as we are not sure which Brain to follow we go down the path of getting stuck in procrastination, feeling stressed, anxious, sad, depressed, guilty etc.

This training is the answer and will help you master the techniques and attitude to assist others to overcome procrastination, stress, ineffective decision-making approaches, in order to boost teamwork and performance.

What will you master after these 4 days?

The techniques, insights, and lessons you can directly apply in your work with clients or colleagues include:

1. Analysis techniques

• How to understand the other on their real need level and what motivates and demotivates the
• Knowing how and in which areas to work with your clients, so identity where they really are stuck, so you can successfully assist them to achieve their goals
• Having insight into how we actually make decisions and store our memories and emotions
• Learn to expose the emotional or logical fixations (blocks) that negatively influence decision-making, and therefore create stress, frustration, anger, fear, procrastination, and conflicts
• Identify which Brain or Brains are dominant in your clients in order to pinpoint the issue and find a solution
• Identify the five main misalignments people could have between their different Brains. Misalignments lead to ineffective decision-making approaches and therefore cause all kinds of issues, including demotivation (depression), procrastination, stress/anxiety, and overall bad performance

2. Communication and connecting

• Learn how to communicate so that it is really understood and motivates
• Learn what is being said based on the words that are being used and if they originate from deeper subconscious emotions or are more sec ratio based
• Self Development
• Increase the success of your decision making, instead of following your gut or your heart or your logic learn to have an interconnected decision, based on all your gained knowledge and experiences. Make your subconscious tangible and controllable for your decisions!
• The ability to create better self-management techniques and reduce stress for your yourself and client

3. Advanced techniques for solutions

• Release emotional and/or physical issues that concern the Heart, Head or Gut Brain. Learn how you calibrate and align the three Brains
• Alignment of the 3 Brains in their objectives, decisions and actions
• Renegotiation and solving conflicts between the 3 Brains
• Enable solutions to the most common roadblocks and misalignments in the individual Brains, based on their unique purpose and objectives

4. The science behind the three Brains—our Head, Heart and Gut—and how they work*

5. And most important: Exercises and exercises to master the knowledge and feel/experience the change

*This 3 Brains theory is based on the book How Men and Women Fit, Finally Understand Your Partner with the 3 Brains Theory, by Christoffel Sneijders.

DATE: Wednesday 24th June Saturday 27th June 09:30 - 16:00 and Saturday 18th July 10:00 - 13:00 Who am I and what can I bring to you?

My experience:

• Associate professor at the IE Business School (ranked ninth worldwide) in leadership and organisational behaviour
• Executive business coach and trainer
• (Hypno)Therapist, specialised in depression, PTSD, anxiety and addictions
• Supervisor in clinical hypnotherapy
• Lead trainer for the Advanced Clinical Hypnotherapy & Holistic Psychotherapy course

You can benefit from my 30 years of working in leadership development, coaching, consultancy and therapy and having worked with more than 10,000 people. I feel grateful that I have had the opportunity to work with people in Europe, the Middle East, India, Asia, USA and Australia.

Accreditation

• Accredited by ICF for 28 CCE units (Core Competencies 16 hours Resource Development 12 hours)
• Australian Hypnotherapy Associations for CDP points
• PACFA accepted for study points

Why not let this be a time to take steps further down your journey or let this be your first step on a new path.

Love to see you !

Christoffel

Backgroud  and the Five reasons that our three Brains can make the difference between a success and failure

There are two fundamental things that form the bedrock of all approaches to improving our lives and our relationships.

One is understanding how we think and feel.

The second is observing and empathizing with others, so that we can understand how they think and feel.

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In modern times, we have come to view the human mind as a singular thing. We tend to believe that all our thoughts, feelings and reactions to the world are controlled by a powerful computer in our heads. It is easy to understand how this has happened. It looks like a combined brain, the big blob of gray matter, the limbic mammal emotional brain and the reptilian cerebellum lodged inside our skulls. But, just as your lungs, heart, kidneys, liver, pancreas, and a constellation of other organs, are all crammed into the same abdominal cavity, so, too, your cranium houses three distinct thinking machines, two of which are operated by the Brains downstairs. As a matter of scientific fact, the ‘one brain’ theory is fundamentally wrong.

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Unless we can grasp the processes within ourselves that are blocking us from thinking/feeling clearly and making good decisions, we cannot change them. With luck and patience, we can sometimes also use our insights to help others or provide a model for them to follow.

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Understanding how our three Brains work is the most important part of any quest for emotional connection and happiness. Until recently, the way we thought about thinking was misguided. We focused almost entirely on the talkative, intelligent, and reasoning parts of our thinking process: our ‘Talking Head’. We have ignored, or misunderstood, what goes on beneath the surface. We have overlooked the true power of the parts of our three Brains that (mostly wordlessly) feel, remember, think, react and, yes, control our decisions and our actions. We have not understood how our three Brains work. We know, often to our sorrow, that without this understanding, finding happiness, and creating satisfying relationships is much more difficult.

Reason one: We misunderstand how our mind (one vs three Brains) really works

The Truth is we have three distinct thinking centers (for simplicity’s sake, we will call them ‘Brains’, collectively we will call them your ‘Mind’. Each of our three Brains evolved at different times for different reasons and each perceives, understands, and reacts to the world in its own unique way.

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How our three Brains combination thinks and interacts differs dramatically from one person to another. Your setup, background, and experience are different from mine in profound and important ways, although our three distinct Brains have the same basic functions from one person to the next. Just as we are all born with lungs that breathe, legs that walk, noses that run and other bits of anatomical equipment with specific biological jobs, our three Brains evolved to perform distinct cognitive tasks:

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The Gut Brain is our oldest brain (500 million years old). It is in charge of our survival. It’s the ‘Me’ brain. It’s something we share with every animal/reptile/fish/bird on the planet.

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The Heart Brain, which we share with all mammals, is the seat of emotion. Love, compassion, hate — anything we feel for or about other people flows from the Heart or ‘Us’ brain.

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The Head Brain was the most recent to evolve. It is unique to (or, at least, uniquely powerful in) human beings. The Head Brain is not what makes us human — that’s something that requires all three Brains — but it is what makes humans unique.

The Head Brain is the home of logic, language and learning. It is an enormous database stuffed with all the facts we have learned and things we have experienced. Its job is not to keep us safe, nor to connect us to others — those jobs were already being done quite well by the two Brains we had already. Humans evolved the Head Brain to become creative and expressive, to use the past to predict the future, to plan, to build, to use tools and language.

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Reason two: What is the "issue" when we want to make decisions? Our Gut and Heart Brains disagree about ‘Me’ and ‘Us’ when making decisions

The Gut Brain: This is the most primitive and forceful of our Brains. It is the home of our survival instinct. Our Gut is driven by fundamental animal feelings like fear, hunger, desire, disgust, and rage. When the Gut Brain is making decisions, our communication and behavior is rooted in those feelings and desires. It is always focused on ‘Me’, and it only thinks about the here and now. What do I want? What I need? When do I need it? Now!

The Heart Brain: This second level is the primary home of our emotions. Love, guilt, happiness, hope, joy, shame, sorrow, hate, and sadness are all rooted here. Because they are all based on connecting, belonging and are all about ‘Us’, these emotions are essential to forming and sustaining relationships. It also means this Brain can only contribute to our decisions when we feel safe enough to let our guard down and put the Gut Brain at rest.

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The Head Brain: This level is solely focused on making reasoned decisions for the future, based on acquired knowledge. It deals with intellectual insights such as understanding, anticipation, interest, surprise, and wonder. All those things can influence our decisions. We can only use this Brain when we are feeling safe enough or when it is consulted by the Gut or Heart Brain. It cannot override the Gut Brain in situations that provoke fear. And, as we mentioned above, it has an almost impossible task trying to convince a Heart Brain to change an emotional decision. Did your Head ever succeed in convincing your Heart not to love somebody?

Reason three: The equality problem: We have been taught to dominate or to submit

Most of us were raised to conform to rules that govern how people of our gender, educational and economic background and, sometimes, our ethnic or religious background, “should” act and behave.

Most of our schools promote competition, which means training people’s Gut Brains to seek to dominate and defeat. The ultimate focus is on ‘Me’. It is the rare institution, indeed, that pays attention to the focus of their students’ Heart Brain on cooperation, attachment and harmony. And almost every educational institution is proudest of the intellectual power of the Head Brains it turns out — without regard to whether the people who have them can succeed outside of the academy walls — in the world, in business or in their personal relationships.

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The world is ruled by the idea that we must have economic growth to survive, and to compete with other countries, any top 20 list of blockbuster movies is dominated with stories about good and bad people, and how we fight and kill others in order to win and conquer.[i]

In fact, for people to truly function as happy, successful, connected human beings, all their Brains need to work together, without just one of them being relied upon as the decision-maker.

Reason four: Gender stereotypes: The Mars/Venus fallacy, or the hoax of feminine and masculine traits

One stereotype, based on the traditional indoctrination mentioned earlier, is that men and women think in fundamentally different ways and that there are masculine and feminine traits. From time to time, some stereotypes contain a grain of truth — but that tiny mote is wrapped in a giant package of nonsense masquerading as wisdom.

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It is true, for example, that men and women who were raised in Western cultures were socialized in reasonably similar ways yet still differ; just think of the differences between Scandinavia and the USA. When you travel around the world, you will become aware that men and women communicate, act, and behave differently in different societies based on their socialization. We can call this simple, but appealing, myth, The Mars/Venus Fallacy. In fact, the differences from one individual to another in different parts of the world are far greater than those between the male and female genders.

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In science, when there is an exception to the facts, it means that “it is not a fact any more but just a hypothesis that is proved wrong”[ii]. As not all men and women communicate, act, and behave in the same way, it means it is not a fact or law but just a ‘learned’ preference.

Still, the myth persists. According to the Mars/Venus Fallacy, men are simple creatures, aggressively driven by hormonal urges and desperate for gratification. They think mostly about sex, food, and power (Gut Brain). They will say or do anything to get these things. In this blinkered view, women, driven by a different hormonal mix, are more contextual and emotional in their thinking/feeling processes, focusing on emotional connections, harmony, and security (Heart Brain).

This simple-minded notion has so infiltrated our popular culture that it now has the status of revealed truth. Take, for instance, the following example: According to Mars/Venus thinking, when she says, “Do whatever you want”, what she really means is, “Do exactly what I want you to do”.

The stereotyped explanation of this is that she knows that she should not and cannot tell her partner what to do. So, she pays lip service to his free will, while also believing that only a dolt would not figure out what she really wants. When you start believing this, you go down the path of believing that women, as a gender, are disingenuous manipulators. (And that men, in general, are so far from that sort of behavior that they often can’t recognize it when they see it.) What a toxic little trap that is to fall into!

Similarly, according to Mars/Venus thinking, when she says, “It was a bargain”, it’s because she doesn’t have the courage to confess, “I had to remortgage our house. So please don’t ask me how much it cost”.

If you start believing this, you could end up thinking that women are compulsive liars, not to mention bubble-headed spendthrifts. Such scenarios make for great sitcom storylines. As a world view however, they leave something to be desired.

Likewise, according to the ‘men are Martians’ stereotype, men are just as oblique in the way that they express themselves. Accordingly, when he says, “You are overreacting/dramatic”, what he is actually doing is blaming a woman for reacting to his bad behavior by asserting that she is emotional (while he, naturally, is the rational one).

Even when he says, “It’s my fault, I’m sorry”, the Mars/Venus approach would decode that into, “We have been arguing about this for hours and I just can’t take it anymore. Congratulations, you wore me down. Can we have sex now?”

Again, in this explanation, men are written off as nincompoops who will say anything to end a conflict and satisfy their appetites.

Examples of this sort are entertaining, for sure. As a world view, however, they do not pass muster.

If you have fallen into this way of thinking, you will find the creation of satisfying relationships a long journey, indeed. One way to shorten that journey is to follow this training.

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Reason five: We underestimate the power of trauma, abuse or bullying

Based on our childhood and teen experiences, and painful or traumatic experiences in our lives, our Gut Brain, Heart Brain and Head Brain change in their understanding of the world and human relationships.

Every painful or traumatic experience is encoded by the Gut Brain and, often, the Heart Brain. When we are seeking to understand both ourselves and others, we cannot ignore the fundamental experiences that have shaped our world views.

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When somebody has experienced abuse or anything that made them afraid or feel unsafe, you can be certain their Heart Brain is scarred, and their Gut Brain is constantly on guard. The powerful feelings that those emotions and feelings elicit influence decisions that person makes about life, love and taking risks far more than any other intellectual process, even if the individual is not consciously aware of them.

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What is the solution?

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When I worked with people in teams or individually, I learned and observed that most of the issues about trust, communication, respect, and honesty were rooted in a disconnected Head, Heart or Gut Brain and a dominant communication from one of them. Most of the time, our Brains are misaligned — and that misalignment is rooted in our earliest experiences and our education/socialization.

When we want to connect with other people, especially with a partner, we must free our Brains from all our positive and negative experiences/education and talk to them with one voice, a considered, integrated voice that is rooted in all three of our Brains, making sure that the connection we make is safe and sincere.

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Is there something here for us to work with? Absolutely. We can all learn what drives our own Brains’ decisions, then use those same techniques to recognize and communicate with our partners, friends, colleagues, managers, and everyone else in our lives.

You can educate, adjust, and align your three Brains, and you can help others do the same. No matter who you are, or how old you are, your Brains are capable of learning and changing. They are not made of stone.

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Our Student experiences

"Great choice!

I followed this program in April 2020 and it is a great one for self-awareness and self-development, besides, it provides a toolset to coach and help others to move forward.

The ICF CCEUs were a plus and guarantee of quality.

Christoffel provides his best knowledge and experience in the field of business, coaching and therapy, and the virtual experience of the online training worked out very good!

Teresa Executive Coach and leadership trainer PPC "

"Thanks a lot professor. It was an honor to work with you and the other members of our class/team. It was awesome and the way you conveyed your knowledge / your philosophy was on the highest level.

It was intense and I’m looking forward to share it with my clients 🎯

Alfred Executive Coach and trainer"

"Many thanks for an outstanding couple of days training. I really appreciated the small intimate group setting and your heart led facilitation style. The coaching was also very valuable – nice ahas which will put into practice.

Ros Executive Coach MCC"

" Thank you Chris for an amazing course.

You are a fascinating, knowledgeable and brilliant facilitator!  ​

Most of all, please accept my heartfelt gratitude for the most profound session you conducted with me.  ​

You have an unique ability to get through to the core of the issue with a laser like focus but you do it so gracefully and with so much kindness that it makes space for complete trust in the process.  ​

Our conversation has had an enormous and very positive impact on me and I can not thank you enough for the insights you have given me.

I am grateful for the experience, it was life changing."

“Having that insight of how our body works, and how our decisions are made by our Gut or Heart mainly was a profound insight. More of a “shock” was that my Gut feeling is not really objective in making decisions. Grateful to have worked on that!!!”

“This is for me as a manager so important when I make decisions and connect with people to be able to trust my Gut feeling.”

“It’s rare to meet someone such as Christopher, so clearly doing that which he was put on this amazing earth to do – namely to empower and transform the lives of others. “

“When you do have the good fortune to enter Chris’s world, some incredible things begin to happen to you, and to all those around you.”

“Do you recall that bumper sticker, popular a few years ago Magic Happens? Well Christopher’s gift is to convince clients and students alike, that there really “IS” magic.”

“Chris is one of the most accommodating trainers who will go the extra mile to help out his students.”

“Chris you are the best teacher I ever had! Friendly, positive and easy to understand, you have a natural gift to transmit new concepts and complex ideas in an easy going and enjoyable class.”

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