We are a training company that helps individuals and corporations move towards their destination,” says Carelle Mangaliag-Herrera, CEO and founder of Trainstation International. “We help our partners reach their desired destinations.”
It was a gloomy Saturday afternoon when I spoke with Trainstation’s dynamic couple RR Herrera, chief strategic officer, and Carelle about how Trainstation prepares you for life and its many pit stops towards a destination.
The couple, who trace their roots to theater acting, have found that their background has prepared them for the mission they now face — that of helping other people face their “demons” as they move forward in their lives.
Carelle shares that the people behind Trainstation (mostly fellow theater actors like themselves) have undergone training in Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP), which is a psychological approach that involves analyzing strategies used by successful individuals and applying them to reach a personal goal. NLP uses the thoughts, language, and patterns of behavior learned through experience to achieve a specific outcome.
Whether it be competence for higher sales, better customer service, team synergy, empowered leadership, motivation, agility or innovation, Trainstation equips people to make better choices and be empowered towards better contribution and to become amazing in the process — by choice.
NLP is a tool that understands how the outputs we receive affect the way we think, speak and act. NLP shows participants that they have a choice: to either be the cause of things or the effect of things. This is done through expanding awareness, providing tools in calibration, mirroring, matching, leading, and many more exercises. It involves understanding the brain behind the human factor and what affects beliefs and behavior. The brain is the seat of all motivation, emotion, and decision that drives perception, communication and action.
“We equip people with mindsets, heart-sets and skillsets to change worlds,” says Carelle. “We help create transformations in individuals and organizations, with people in mind. We enable people towards the greater good. We believe that people build families, communities, organizations, nations and society. If we elevate people, we elevate humanity.”
How can we alleviate pain?
“A lot of people are in pain and that is one of the things we really want to be able to look at and help with,” shares Carelle. “How can we alleviate pain in organizations and individuals in both a personal and scientific way?”
People do the best they can with the resources they have. It is that belief — the ability of people help themselves — that has led them to results. It is a belief that anyone can be empowered and equipped to make better choices if given the proper resources.
Carelle and RR believe that they help people move forward through stories and laughter — these are some of the tools that help people get on their feet. Through Enter-TRAIN-ment and physical stretch exercises the couple have been helping their clients to see that their lives can be amazing.
The couple shared that most organizations address the behaviors and what habits they should change to get the results they want. But, from their experience, when a client is told what to do, the change is usually temporary and unsustainable.
“We understand that for any real change to last, it should start from within,” says Carelle. “That is why we address the belief systems first. People cannot change through a scientific approach alone. We have to create experiences for them. So what we do is provide that space for people to experience what good resides in them.”
It can be quite impossible to ask a depressed person to find hope in what seems like a hopeless situation. Trainstation provides an experience where they let clients play or have dialogues, which lead them to a space where hope resides — and it is there that people discover that hope exists in them.
“This leads me to why we started Trainstation — well, it is really because we want to lessen the pain the world experiences,” quips Carelle. “We are very idealistic people who come from theater and performing. What we have discovered is that with the life choices we have made, we can inspire people to do the same.”
Scientific approach
Carelle says it’s when she started studying NLP that she began to see that helping other people goes beyond skill and tools, “because I realize that you cannot tell someone what to do if they are not okay,” she says. “So, it is important to take care of a person’s mental health before they are given any tool to handle a work or life situation.”
Trainstation facilitates experiential learning through multi-sensory activities that are both enjoyable and relevant. It’s psychology mixed in with the fun, facts, and fundamentals for an altogether amazing, inspirational, and easy learning experience.
A leader’s effectiveness is determined through a holistic development of their role, relationships, relevance, and results. Each person has the potential to be a great leader, and this program, through brain-centric methods, will help them break through by understanding their inputs, processes and programs to better motivate themselves and others.
“In an ever-changing world, we need to have agile mindsets and skillsets to help us innovate and create strategic solutions with relevance, responsiveness and resourcefulness,” say the Herreras. “This is based on neuroscience studies on how to stimulate and motivate the brain for better insights and decisions.”
360 leadership
There is a science, model, and pattern for great presentations. Communication can be deemed effective if the transfer of information is seamless and fluid. The best way to facilitate this is to customize the way we speak and act according to the person we are speaking to.
Selling has greatly evolved as customers have more knowledge, resources and a leveled-up palate when it comes to buying.
“We need to understand through brain-centered tools, based on applied neuroscience and NLP, how we can attune better to the needs of our clients and create better, more congruent solutions for our partners,” says Carelle. “When I am in pain I ask myself, ‘What are you teaching me, what do I need to learn from you?’ If I have a person who has a problem in front of me I ask, ‘What is this person teaching me?’”
Adds RR, “With Trainstation I fell in love with it because it can be a destination but it can also be a starting point. Because it is not the train, but that you get off your train because you have reached your destination and that for me is more important.”
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For information, visit Trainstation at 1106 Medical Plaza, San Antonio, Pasig.