NLP Workbook: A practical guide to achieving the results you want. Joseph O’Connor

What is good about the present situation? What do you want to keep? Losing valuable aspects of the present situation is the greatest cause of resistance to change both for individuals and organizations.

      

What else could happen when you get your outcome? There are always secondary consequences and sometimes these become more of a problem than the initial situation. (King Midas’s golden touch comes to mind…)

      7 Identity: Is this outcome in keeping with who you are?

       You can apply this at both the individual and organizational level. First the individual level. Suppose you want to manage a project. Being involved with this project might mean a great deal of time away from home. It might mean dropping other projects. It might take you away from your main career path. Although you would like to be involved, on balance it just does not suit you. You might ask, ‘What does working on this project accomplish for me?’ If the answer is to gain valuable experience, then there may be other projects, or training and consulting might be preferable.

      The same is true at the organizational level. Each company has a certain culture and a set of core values that define its identity. Company outcomes need to be aligned with this corporate self. Many companies come unstuck through diversifying into areas in which they are inexperienced and which do not fit their identity.

      Many a company has a strong identity that is characteristic of its founder and this can work to its advantage. Richard Branson of Virgin started an airline, which was very different from his original music business, but he and Virgin are identified with innovation, so the move was profitable.

      8 How do your outcomes fit together?

       How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.

      If the outcome is too large, list all the obstacles that prevent you from getting it and set smaller outcomes to get over these barriers. Ask, ‘What prevents me from achieving this outcome?’

      When you are knee deep in crocodiles, it’s hard to remember you went in to drain the swamp.

      When the outcome is too small to be motivating and you feel bogged down with details, ask yourself, ‘What does this small outcome get for me?’ Connect the details to the larger, more motivating outcome of which it is part.

      9 Action plan: What to do next?

       Once you have put your plan through these questions, then you are ready to act, or perhaps delegate. When delegating in a business project, give your people the wider picture, so they can connect their tasks with the larger project. Make sure they know how to think outcomes through for themselves. This will ensure that their tasks are aligned with yours.

      Remember the story of the two builders? Both were asked what they were doing. The first said, ‘I’m laying bricks.’ The second said, ‘I’m building a wonderful building.’

      Guess which builder was more motivated and worked better?

HUGGS

      Some outcomes are more important than others. I like to call the most important ones HUGGs (Huge, Unbelievably Great Goals). Not all the outcome conditions apply to HUGGs. They are large-scale outcomes and cannot be specified exactly.

      HUGGs have the following qualities:

      

They are long term (5–30 years).

      

They are clear, compelling and easy to grasp.

      

They connect with your identity and core values.

      

You feel strongly about them. They engage your emotions – you feel good when you think about them.

      

When you first set them, they seem impossible. As time goes on, they start to manifest more and more.

      

They do not involve you sacrificing the present moment for a possible future, however good.

      HUGGs can shape your life. Because they are long term and aligned with your core values, you will often achieve them in unpredictable, even paradoxical ways, or they will almost seem to ‘fall into’ your life like magic.

      HUGGs often have an ‘away from’ element. If you do not achieve them, it hurts. This makes them more motivating. They often have an edge to them, too, like a deadline or set of conditions. For example, one friend of mine left his job to start a company of his own. He gave himself five years to make it a success. If it did not work out, he would find another job in his old profession.

      The most powerful HUGGs often involve removing elements from your life. Sometimes the biggest leverage comes not from doing things to achieve them, but from stopping doing things that are in your way.

      Examples of HUGGs:

      

become a published author

      

establish your own successful company

      

start a charitable foundation

      

move to another country

      

win a gold medal at the Olympic Games

      

become a millionaire

       HUGGs are creative. They produce ongoing effects and they express your values. You create them, they are personal, you do not copy them from other people.

      Keep track of your goals and review them regularly. Reward yourself when you get them and enjoy those times. They are what you have worked for and you deserve them. Enjoy the achievement and enjoy the journey. Collect those moments like beautiful pictures for a photograph album or press cuttings in a scrapbook. Go back to them. Use them to motivate yourself in the future. Let them be a source of inspiration, learning and pleasure. Never be in a position to think, ‘I’ve worked hard to get where I am … Where am I?’

BELIEFS

      Beliefs are the rules we live by. They are our best guesses at reality and form our mental models – the principles of how the world seems to work, based on our experience. Beliefs are not facts, although we often mistake them for facts. We have beliefs about other people, about ourselves and about our relationships, about what is possible and about what we are capable of. We have a personal investment in our beliefs. ‘I told you so’ is a satisfying phrase because it means our beliefs were proved right. It gives us confidence in our ideas.

      Some things are not influenced by our belief in them – the law of gravity, for example, will not change whether we believe in it or not. Sometimes we treat other beliefs – about our relationships, abilities and possibilities – as if they were as fixed and as immutable as gravity, and they are not. Beliefs actively shape our social world.

      Beliefs