Man is made by his belief. As he believes, so he is.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
1749-1832

I once asked a well-read, philosophically inclined friend of mine to define what he felt reality was. He thought a little and said “as far as I can see, it would appear to be how your mind interprets the information it receives from your senses.” Well, life has moved on and those “sitting up all night sorting the world out” times have evolved into “10 pm already – must be bedtime!”

However, the definition of reality he gave (and I chose to take on) has held me in good stead over the years – especially at those times when “reality” has been a slightly fluid concept! Possibly the most constructive outcome for me has been that it has shown me that how I perceive reality has been coloured intensively by what I believe. Much of what we believe would seem to be hidden, even from ourselves, and having a way in to that secret part is a key to taking more control in how we walk through our days.

When I studied Cognitive Behavioural Therapy I found Albert Ellis’ ABCs theory a real path into discovering what I believe. The theory that between the activating stimulus “A” and the consequence “C” there sits a belief “B” which is why, according to this theory, different people react differently in the same situation. Asking myself the question “what do I believe that makes this so” can uncover some surprising stuff!

Also working as a therapist for four years has shown me how powerful belief is. What we believe can shade every relationship, every psychological transaction. Bringing these beliefs to consciousness and working on changing them has dramatic and transformational consequences.

By the time you read this, I will have completed seminar 5 of the NLP Practitioner Training. It is entitled “Beyond Belief” and is the seminar I have been most looking forward to. So, who knows what I will believe by the next time we speak!

Fran

The image used was found on Flickr using a creative commons search and is by Wunluv

What is their secret?

Many years ago I became fascinated by this and sought out people who seemed to have a higher quality of life than average. I chose six of the best to research in more depth using the NLP approach known as Modelling. What follows is a brief summary of my main discoveries and in it are some suggestions that can really make a significant difference.

What I discovered is that they all shared a similar attitude to life, a shared belief, which was something like this.

We are responsible for the quality of our lives.

Waste no energy on blaming others or circumstance. Instead, put your attention and energy into learning to enjoy as much as possible of what you do. If that is not possible, then remind yourself that those things that are emotionally painful or difficult in your life are life’s lessons. They are in your life so that you may grow and develop through them, or not. However, if you do not learn from life’s lessons they will simply be repeated until you do. And, when you do master one lesson, then, of course, the next lesson will be presented.

All of the above is a matter of belief. However, if you act as though it is true, it is a great motivator for focussing on learning from the experience of life’s lessons.

One more belief they all shared was in the importance of habituation.

Habituation is simply the tendency of the mind to make automatic and unconscious any behaviour that is repeated frequently. For example, learning to use a mobile phone is hard the first few times, but after twenty or so repeats, it is well on the way to being an unconscious habit that requires little conscious thought. They all believed that repeating the habit of learning from experience many times a day would result in this habit becoming automatic. And that seemed to be the case.

How exactly did these good people go about the business of learning from experience on a daily basis?

They recognised the lesson, and then focussed on the learning. So, to take this into your life, you begin by learning to spot the first signs of one of life’s lessons. This is usually a feeling of emotional discomfort. Next you ask yourself a question that focuses you on the most useful learning from this experience. For example, “What would I do differently next time?”, or “What is the most useful learning I can make from this experience?”

This starts off a period of reflection, based on hindsight, of the experience in question. Your focus will be on the best way to handle it differently, and you imagine a range of different alternatives. These may include; avoiding it, behaving differently, thinking different thoughts, changing your emotional response or adopting another belief about it. Probably it will be some combination of these. If you get stuck, ask yourself, “Who do I know that would be able to handle this situation well, and how would they deal with it?” You imagine them in the situation, and notice what they do differently to you. Aim to reflect on each learning experience until you have come up with at least three good options. You now rely on your intuitive gut feel to choose the best one (or the best combination).

Having chosen the best option, you are ready to fine tune it by rehearsing this option mentally.

Imagine yourself back at the beginning of the original learning experience and watch yourself dealing with it differently using your new approach. If at any point it doesn’t feel quite right, stop, and go back to reflective thinking to generate new options until you find the best alternative. Continue until you have been through the whole experience and you are happy with the way in which you have managed it. You may want to repeat this mental rehearsal process a number of times until your new approach feels comfortable enough that you can begin to imagine it quite easily. This is evidence that the new learning is starting to habituate, and therefore is likely to happen the next time you find yourself in a similar situation. The final proof is when you do take a new approach in a similar situation. Congratulate yourself.

You can use your skill of mental rehearsal to learn from life’s lessons many times a day. One of the best side-effects of doing this is that it tends to eliminate any worry or guilt about the situation. It is as though, having made the learning, your mind is free of negative emotion about it.

You can also use it to mentally rehearse any future situations that may be tricky. For example, you may have a difficult conversation coming up with someone, or a demanding negotiation. When you mentally rehearse a future scenario there will usually be branch points where it may go in different directions. For example. “If they say this, then I could… , and if they say that, then I could… “. Rehearsing future scenarios is a great way to prepare yourself in advance for difficult situations.

One last aspect of mental rehearsal is often overlooked. You can use it for learning how to improve your ability to enjoy anything you do. Use questions like: “How could I enjoy ‘x’ more?” or “How could I create more satisfaction for myself and others in the way I do ‘x’. Initially this can be rather challenging, unless you are one of life’s perennial optimists. With repeated practice, however, you can learn how to focus on the most enjoyable aspect of everything you do.

By practicing these different types of mental rehearsal daily over the next month, you will be surprised at the difference you can make to the quality of life.

Sceptical? Well, there is only one way to find out – try it and see. Perhaps the hardest part is remembering to do it. That is where daily journaling comes in – and there is an article about that on my blog page on the JSnlp website.

Believing is the beginning.

If there was something that, if you believed it were possible, would make a big difference in your life what would it be?

And what would you need to do to make it possible?

Let us know your thoughts and / or experiences?

Check out John’s article on Daily Journaling here.

The image used for this blog was found using a creative commons search on Flickr and was by zanzo

Would you like to feel more confident when making decisions?

In the following article, adapted from a piece written by John Seymour, learn how our values, conscious and unconscious, impact on our lives and the decisions we make. Discover how to uncover your core values and use them for choosing the best direction to take in your life and strengthening your ability to make sound decisions.

Your Values are the Compass of Your Life

What are values?

The Shorter Oxford Dictionary defines values as: “personally held judgements of what is important in life”. From an NLP viewpoint they are the system of beliefs we hold, consciously and unconsciously, about the relative importance of everything, and that we use to direct our lives.

The importance of values is that they hold the key to living a fuller and more satisfying life. However there is a lot more to them than the commonsense way we usually think of them

So what exactly do values do? They motivate us. We are more motivated to do things we consider to be important; earning money, for example. Values guide our decisions. Given a choice we are more likely to decide according to our idea of the relative importance of the options. For example, the decision to work a four day week instead of five is likely to work well if you value your extra time more highly than the extra income. Values will also determine how you evaluate something after the event.

Increasing your awareness of your values can improve motivation, the quality of decisions you make, and satisfaction with your life. Put simply, the more your life reflects your true values, the happier you will be. The more your life conflicts with your true values, the more off-track and dissatisfied you will feel.

What then, are your true values?

Here is a simple exercise you can do to clarify your core values. In NLP this is known as life values hierarchy and allows you to elicit your core values and order them according to their importance to you.

Sit down in a quiet place with your journal, or a piece of paper, and ask yourself: “What is most important in my life?” Let your mind go as blank and see what words or phrases come up. Take your time. Aim for at least ten words or phrases and write each down. Now ask yourself which are the top five. Rely on intuition/gut feeling to put them in rank order one to five.

This exercise is simple, but most people will find it far from easy until they have done it many times. The trick is to just do it. By doing it you will be a lot clearer about what really matters to you and this will help you to make decisions that work better for you and those you care about. By making better decisions your life will tend to become more aligned with your true/core values which leads to you experiencing a better quality of life and contributing more in your chosen areas.

There are many ways you can use the values hierarchy exercise. For instance, anytime you want to do a life purpose statement (the purpose of my life is …) or any life planning I strongly recommend that you take 20 minutes to do a life values hierarchy first. You can also apply it to each of the separate areas of your life, incorporating it into your daily journaling, or by building it into your time management system (so that the way you spend your time becomes more aligned with your values). It is a simple thing that really does make a difference

Of course there is a lot more to values work than simple hierarchies. Some of the other aspects we explore on our NLP courses include identifying and clarifying values conflicts, a cause of much human misery, and identifying other people’s values, which drive their behaviour. We also explore the difference between espoused values, what we like to think we value, and operational values, what we behave as though we value. An example of this would be being concerned about climate change as the biggest issue we face while continuing to take flights for holidays. Last, but not least, we explore the difference between instrumental values, or means to an end values for example money, and intrinsic values, for example health or wellbeing.

As this year ends and we move into the next enjoy bringing your life more on track by clarifying your values.

Practice groups are so important. If you are reading this and have a practice group I would love to hear some of your experiences of what works well for you. If you have questions about practice groups post them below and I will do my best to answer them.

NLP is at heart a set of skills. Like any skills, you only acquire them by repeated practice.

So, what is an NLP practice group?

It is a small number of students of NLP who meet regularly to practice their NLP skills. There are hundreds of practice groups meeting regularly across the country.

What are the advantages of a practice group?

If you do attend regular practice groups, the payoff is huge.

Many of these skills are generative, such as outcome thinking, mental rehearsal, resource states, etc. and will benefit you for the rest of your life.

More than that, they will help you to create the rest of your life.

And the more you practice the higher your levels of competence will become. You will have more of your skills up to unconscious competence faster. This, of course, is the biggest payoff, when you are getting the full benefit of highly generative skills, with minimum effort.

How does a practice group work?

Typically, between three and six students arrange to meet one evening a week. Their aim is to have a good time talking about all the things NLPers talk about and, of course, practicing the skills they most want to develop. There will often be a social beginning and end, and in the middle a practice session lasting around one to two hours.

There are some important essentials to agree at the beginning of a meeting:

• Be quite explicit about how you will respect client confidentiality.
• Decide at the beginning of a meeting what time people need to leave and agree on how long each session should last – and stick to it, unless you all agree otherwise.

Use each of the three classic NLP roles, client, practitioner and observer, and spend equal time in each role.

In the client role you choose an issue to explore that you are motivated to resolve. The practitioner works with you on this for the agreed length of time, often around 30 minutes. The observer keeps time and is available to coach the practitioner if they get stuck. You then move on to the next role for the second round, and the third role for the last round.

Each of these roles has different advantages.

Client role

When you are in the client role, you learn the skill of picking which issue to work with. Daily reflective journaling will offer you a range to pick from. Some will be relatively easy to shift, and you may get through a few in a session. Some will be medium hard, and they may take a number of sessions to shift. Some will be really hard. You may not feel emotionally ready to tackle them; respect this. They may also be hard in that you may not get a shift unless you work with someone considerably more skilled and experienced. We encourage our students to bring in any unresolved issue to the next seminar, where the assisting tutors will be happy to work with them between training sessions.

From hesitant beginnings, most people learn to make good use of their client time and resolve many of the issues that have prevented them from achieving important life goals. Resolving significant issues and achieving the goals that really matter to you, are some of the most satisfying parts of the whole training, and where you really develop as a person.

Practitioner Role

When it is your turn to be in the practitioner role, you practice using many of the skills you have been learning. These might typically include:

• Embodying the presuppositions of NLP
• Rapport
• Information gathering:            Clarifying the issue
  • Eliciting a well-formed outcome
  • Diagnosis
  • Changework:
    • Using a change process
    • Testing
    • Future pacing

In practice this process can vary considerably. For example, simply clarifying both issue and outcome is often enough on its own. The learning either becomes obvious, or sometimes it just occurs spontaneously. Whichever way it turns out, as the practitioner, you have been using and developing your skills. And these are some of the key skills that will serve you well for the rest of your life.

Observer Role

The observer can learn a lot from the interaction, for instance observing how the practitioner uses their skills to ‘read’ the client to gain rapport and check for congruence, or  watching the subtle signals that show how a client is responding to the practitioner’s questions.  As observer you are in a good position to give the practitioner feedback on what they did well and on what they could improve. In many ways, the observer position is the best one for making useful learnings.

 
The image used was found on Flickr using a creative commons search, the artist is United Nations Photo’s photostream

The benefits for me came in different ways.  On a basic level I learnt the change processes, I learnt to trust the process and I learnt that the doing of NLP is the key. There is only so much you can gain from just watching or reading it in a book.

Probably the best thing about a regular practice group is the mutual support and encouragement to have a go and make the mistakes.  Its the only way to learn and the feedback is brilliant because it gives you a clear understanding of what to brush up on and do differently next time, as well as the realisation that there is lots you really know well!  As a group, you will all have your strengths and weaknesses, and it‘s about sharing what you know and exploring what you don’t.

I practice every week now in a group and about twice a month over the phone and it never ceases to amaze me how much I am still learning.  Listening to the feedback is the most important part for me.  I want to know how I could improve my skills and techniques and there is nothing like client feedback to tell you that!

Apart from all the obvious benefits for learning there is also the friendships you develop by sharing so much with each other.  Tears and laughter feature regularly in my practice group and and the best bit is you get to mop up all your issues with like minded people…   Jam on it !

Nicky Maidment
Master Practitioner

Nicky’s Top Tips for running a practice group

Venue:
This can be just anywhere you can find a space to practice, someone’s house, office, board room etc. Don’t rule out the possibility of practicing over the phone, it works fine and all the eye cues you miss are present in the language. Skype is becoming a hot favourite with people who live miles from each other and again it’s surprising how well it can work.

Forward Planning:
Agree dates in advance and nominate one person to email/text these dates to everyone for their records. Follow this up by sending a reminder out and ask for confirmation of attendance so you know the practice will be actually taking place. Commitment has a surprising effect on numbers!

Structure:
Agree a structure for your practice group to allow you to get the most out of the time you spend there and elect a time keeper.

Practice Format:
In 3′s if possible – Client, Practitioner, and Observer roles – 15 minutes each, so 45 minutes per round which hopefully will give everyone a chance to be in each role. If you are practicing simultaneously share your experiences at the end so you learn from each other.

Feedback:
Presupposition being the more mistakes you make the more you learn, keep the feedback positive, what could somebody do differently next time to make this even better, follow the feedback sandwich model.

Fun:
Remember to have fun with your practicing, the best way to learn is to relax and enjoy yourself!

JSnlp adds:
Be prepared: If you want to practice a particular change process you may want to let the group know in advance so that at least one person comes with a suitable issue. Go prepared with at least one issue you are willing to share.

It’s interesting noticing the impact this experience is having on other areas of my life.

For instance, I love music and making music.  I already enjoy singing and would really like to play a musical instrument.  In fact I have started learning guitar, keyboard and tin whistle so many times and talked about it for so long that my family don’t believe me anymore!

So why the disparity?

Well, I love singing and have sung for my own entertainment for years.  It comes easily and singing in our community choir is a real joy.  It takes very little effort to make a nice sound.

On the other hand, the instruments I have tried to play, and ultimately abandoned, require a fair amount of practice to get past the clunky stage.  It has not come as easily as singing, and I have lacked the tenacity and patience to achieve an even passable sound.  So they lie dusty and silent.

Now, with my new found understanding of the power of practice I have decided to break through the ‘pain’ barrier, real in the case of the guitar, and master the art!  I am setting myself two tasks; firstly to find a teacher who can show me the necessary skills and secondly to practice, practice, practice!  Through the NLP training I have realised that it really is the only way to mastery, or even passable novice.

The image used was found on Flickr using a creative commons search, the artist is thart2009

We all make decisions all the time (shall I make a cup of tea now or in a minute? Shall I move these plumpy cushions into a slightly more comfortable configuration?). Only the ones with noticeable consequences stick in our minds. The ones with negative consequences stick harder. It can become somehow comforting to enter into a state of self-blame, to hide away and not engage in any major decision making.

Having got stuck at this point myself, I knew I had to change my perspective or drive myself insane. So, for your delectation, here is my three step plan:-

Step 1 – Believe that there is no right and wrong, only action and consequence. There is no such thing as a wrong decision, only one that has challenging consequences emotionally, physically or psychologically.

Step 2 – Every time you make a decision that leads to a challenging consequence, look back at your decision making process and learn what worked and what didn’t. Were you too caught up in what other people might think of your potential action?
Did there seem to be a “right” way to behave?

Step 3 – Do whatever it is you have decided to do 100%. If you enter into things half-heartedly then the chances are that you are unlikely to have a positive experience.

This was not a one-off, 100% process. It took time. One of the tools I used was a piece of paper divided into 4 sections headed: What will happen if I do? What will happen if I don’t? What won’t happen if I do? What won’t happen if I don’t? This got me to look at possible consequences without the confusion of internal argument.

Life will always bring us decisions to make. It takes practice to get good at it!

By the way, it took me blimmin ages to decide what to write!

The image used for this blog post was found on Flickr using a creative commons search, the artist is stuartpilbrow

One of the most common traps that we fall into is believing that there is a ‘right’ decision. This is not helpful because it increases the pressure to ‘get it right’. Bear in mind that we do not know the future, and any decision will simply cause different outcomes with different positive and negative consequences. These could be good, or they could be bad. In the fullness of time who knows? So far, so Buddhist.

You are probably familiar with some of the more common decision making strategies. These include writing out a list of the pros and cons before deciding. A variant of this is talking it through with someone else before deciding. Make important decisions on a good day with the sun shining (you don’t want to make them if you are feeling down). If you are not sure what you think, toss a coin and notice your immediate reaction to the result, either for or against. If you are still undecided, sleep on it.

What does NLP bring to decision making? Well, the last two strategies point to the crucial role of the unconscious mind. Since your conscious mind can only think about a few variables simultaneously, while your unconscious mind can process many variables simultaneously, you are usually going to get better results from the latter.

Perhaps this is why one of the most common decision making strategies involves asking a question (auditory), looking over the options (visual), then choosing the one that feels right (kinaesthetic). And again why ‘gut feel’ is generally considered so important.

Robert Dilts and Judith DeLozier’s new book, ‘NLP II – The Next Generation’ has three major sections: the cognitive (conscious) mind, the somatic (body) mind, and the field (collective) mind. Of these, the somatic mind may be most closely associated with the unconscious mind, and our guts have a kind of second brain (the enteric nervous system with 100 million neurons) which lies at the basis of gut feel. This is according to Professor of Anatomy, Michael Gershon, who has written about the scientific basis of gut instinct.

How can you refine this gut instinct to serve you even better? A bit of self-calibration helps and here’s how to do it. Think of a time when you made a significant decision and it turned out to be a good one. In your imagination, step back into the moment in time when you made the decision. Make sure you are fully associated (in your body) and notice the submodalities (exact physical sensation) of a key bit of that ‘yes’ feeling, so you can recognise it. Finally, make sure that you cannot make this exact key bit occur by conscious effort alone (i.e. without the memory). If you can, choose another key bit of the sensation.

Repeat for another significant decision that turned out well. You will probably find it has the same key physical sensation. If not, repeat until a common key physical sensation emerges, this is your congruence signal – a signal that all unconscious parts of you agree to the proposed decision.

Now it is payoff time. Once you have self-calibrated your own congruence signal, you can take any proposed decision (or plan of action) to you unconscious mind and ask it to give you the congruence signal if this is a wise and appropriate decision. You will either get your congruence signal within a few seconds of asking for it, or you won’t. This allows you to make full use of the wisdom of the unconscious mind to help you in making better decisions.

Most people who have tried this, find that using your congruence signal is faster, easier, and leads to noticeably improved decisions. Try it yourself and see. The only caveat is that over time (often a year-ish) conscious minds can sometimes learn to control the congruence signal directly. This bypasses your unconscious mind, so that the signal is no longer a congruence signal. If this happens, you just redo the calibration choosing a different key part of the physical sensation.

When I was learning this, I found the hardest part was remembering to use it, but that’s where reflective journaling comes in…

May your future decisions lead you to a better quality of life.

The image used for this blog post was found on Flickr using a creative commons search, the artist is Laenulfean

This is when we have “Too Much to Do”.  I spent sixteen years as a working single parent of two children (plus dog and various small, furry rodents to add to the fun), so this experience is familiar to me.  I developed the following strategy which I would like to share…

Delegate.  This can be nigh on impossible if you’re like me.  No one can perform that task as well as I can!  Sometimes “good enough” has to be enough.

Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff.  When we have a head full of things that “must” be done, it can be difficult to prioritise.  I would give everything a number from 1-5.  If something had a 1 rating, it absolutely had to be done.  I mean, really taking care of basic requirements like food, water and shelter.  Things would move down the priorities list until we came to 4s and 5s which were categorised as “Ok, if I get the time”.  “But Fran,” I hear you say in my admittedly overactive imagination, “I don’t even have the time to list stuff!”  This leads me neatly into…

Take 5 minutes.  I know, I know you really can’t afford the time.  I would say you really can’t afford not to afford the time.  Look out of a window, take the dog for a walk, have a cup of tea – and at the same time switch off your “busy mind” that is running through the list of things that “have” to be done.  I very often found that taking 5 or 10 minutes to think of nothing would allow my unconscious to work on stuff and solutions would pop into my head about how I could combine stuff, change schedules and so on.  Thus taking that 5 or 10 minutes would often save me much more time than it cost.

Learn to say “No”.  You are only one person with 24 hours in each day.  If you can’t, you can’t.  People will get over it.

And finally, I’d like to leave you with this thought – imagine you are in your dying moment.  Imagine what you might feel you could have done more of or less of in your life.  Imagine you could say – “That was a life well spent”.

The image used was found with a creative commons search at Flickr. The artist is LifeSupercharger

But I Don’t Have Enough Time…

Your Time Is Your Life

Have you ever thought you don’t have enough time?  It’s the disease of our age – time pressure.  Would you like to know some of the most effective ways of getting more done and being more relaxed?  Over the years I’ve noticed some consistent differences between people that seem to have time pretty much handled, and the rest of us.  As you read this you might want to notice which approaches you think will make the most difference to you.

Yes, time management skills do make a difference, and I will get to them.  However, what interests me most are some of the beliefs that seem to be associated with having enough time.  How much do you go along with these?

Belief: There is enough time, 24 hours per day, the real issue is values and learning to spend your precious time on what really is most important to you.

Lesson: clarify your values by asking what’s important in your life and writing down your top values.

Change: stop spending so much time on the stuff that’s not so important, like TV, and have more time available for what is important.

Belief: Time pressure is not really about time, or the length of your ‘to do’ list, it is about your emotional state and feeling stressed.

Lesson: focus on your emotional state, not on your ‘to do’ list and the time left.

Change: notice the first signs of stress (or self-calibration) and shift to a more relaxed state by switching attention for one minute or so to a memory of a time when you were relaxed (or use a relaxation anchor).

Belief: Objective time exists (clock time) but our experience of time is subjective. Have you ever been in a rush at a supermarket queue, and been aware of time going really slowly? Have you noticed that when you are enjoying yourself, or in a flow state, time flies by? How come? The submodalities (building blocks) of our experience change.

Lesson: in each case, notice what happens to the speed of your internal images and self-talk.

Change: adjust your internal submodalities to the speed that suits the situation.

If you would like to produce more of the results that matter to you, and have more time available, then you will need to invest a little time every day on learning the specific skills which will enable you to produce more of those results in less time.  These include the skills above and skills such as speed reading, relaxation, delegation, multi-tasking, passive income generation and meditation.

Last, but not least, these skills include time management itself. If, like most people who have read, or done a course, about time management, you are, of course, too busy to apply it…

If you haven’t done either, get hold of a copy of ‘Getting Things Done’ by David Allen.  It’s the best book I know on managing time.  If you’re not sure, you can ‘Look Inside’ on Amazon, where you can get a copy for around £5, or Google ‘Getting Things Done’ and read a bit more about it.  I dip into GTD regularly and find it invaluable.  I use it together with a basic Time Manager diary.

David’s approach is based on what you do with the ‘stuff’ that comes your way, and gives a simply way of creating order out of chaos:

Is it actionable in the next 2 minutes?  If so, do it!

If not, delegate it, defer it (either in the diary or the asap pile), or trash it.

There is, of course, a lot more to it than this.  One of the things I like is that it is so easy to personalise, and I suppose this is the key to becoming more effective at managing your time.  Start with where you are, and add one skill at a time, using your NLP skills, until it is automatic, and then add the next one.  Pretty soon, you’ll be feeling much more on top of things.  Take a moment to think about which skill you will start with first… and where and when…

By the way, there’s a good Guardian article on GTD at http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2005/sep/29/businesssense.businesssense

If you have a hot link or resource on time management, do let me know, so that I can pass it on.  Either way it would be good to hear from you with suggestions or questions. And I hope you enjoy slowing time down, and getting your life more and more on track.

The image used for this post was found with a creative commons search on Flickr. The artist is ElDave