The honeymoon effect
By Jurriaan Kamp
Editor-in-Chief, Ode Magazine


Biologist Bruce Lipton on how to use the creative wishes of the conscious mind to lead a healthier, happier life.

I want people to understand 
that we are creating this world. That we are creating our own lives. That our realities and experiences are not accidents.”

At the end of a long conversation about cell membranes, evolution and (sub)consciousness, I ask Bruce Lipton what his most important message is. The response comes without a moment’s hesitation, and with his characteristically enthusiastic voice, he sounds like yet another self-help guru or motivational speaker. But he isn’t.

Bruce Lipton is a stem-cell biologist who taught at the University of Wisconsin’s School of Medicine and performed pioneering research at Stanford University before writing his bestselling book, The Biology of Belief, in 2005. His message does not come from quick pop interpretations of quantum mechanics but from work with cell cultures in a lab. These experiments showed that environments and circumstances not genetic makeup, dictate how cells behave. For Lipton, genes don’t control our lives; our environment does, and more importantly, our perception of that environment.

Preparing for my meeting with Lipton, I was struck by various reports in newspapers and magazines about pharmaceutical companies developing drugs that target mutations in specific genes and about collaborations between big pharma corporations and biotech startups promising a new growth market for medicine. The message was very different from Lipton’s: Now we’re cracking the genome; we’re about to discover the causes of many diseases. The time for even smarter—and even more profitable—medicines has come. Lipton call this “the central dogma”: DNA controls all biological life as we know it.

“I used to embrace the central dogma, and I taught genetic determinism at medical school,” says Lipton. The argument, first stated by the English molecular biologist Francis Crick in 1958, swung the pendulum in the nature-versus-nurture debate decidedly toward nature. It was a depressing concept to Lipton. “We don’t pick our genes. Genetic determinism basically says whatever happens to us is a consequence of the genes we received at birth. That means my fate is not in my hands anymore. We become victims of our genes.”

Apart from that fatalistic outcome and despite all the pharmaceutical claims of individually based genetic medicine, genetic determinism may have had its day. Lipton’s research shows a different perspective. He took genetically identical stem cells and put them into separate Petri dishes and then changed the environment. He saw cell cultures crashing in bad environments and instantaneously recovering their health when they were moved back to good and supportive environments. Identical cells developed in different directions when the environment was changed. Different information led genes to evolve in different ways. So genes don’t control life; they respond to information.

“It’s the environment, stupid,” Lipton writes of his experiments in The Biology of Belief. Lipton’s discoveries are part of an emerging new biological paradigm that presents a radically different view of the evolution of life: epigenetics. Epi means “above” in Greek, so epigenetics means control above the genes. “It turns out that as we move from one environment to another environment, we change our genetic readout,” Lipton says. “Or if we perceive that our environment is not supporting us, then that perception also changes our genetics.”

The implications are profound. Change your environment, and you can change how you think. “We are not locked into our fate, because we have the freedom to change the way we respond to the world,” he explains. “We are masters of our genetics rather than victims of our hereditary traits. Our fate is really based on how we see the world or on how we have been programmed to experience it.”

When he fully grasped the meaning of epigenetics, Lipton’s life took a radical turn. He left the lab and the academic world, wrote his book and began to teach. He realized that whereas the scientific community is gradually embracing epigenetics as an alternative to the “central dogma,” the general public is largely unaware of the impact these new insights could have on our daily lives. “The media worsens the situation by misleading the public with a neverending onslaught of stories presumably identifying a gene that controls this cancer or that malady,” Lipton writes in The Biology of Belief.

So Lipton is on a mission to explain how our realities are created by our beliefs. “We know from science that our genes don’t control our lives, but if we believe that they do, they do,” Lipton says. To change our reality, we need to change our beliefs. That’s why the subtitle of The Biology of Belief is Unleashing the Power of Consciousness, Matter and Miracles. That’s also why Lipton operates in a field seemingly populated by self-help gurus who talk about the New Age “law of attraction,” which states that focused positive thought will lead to the desired outcome. Same message, different—non-scientific—inspiration.

The challenge of changing beliefs has become a key part of Lipton’s work. He talks as much about consciousness and the mind as about his past experiments in the lab. “The function of the mind is to create coherence between our beliefs and the reality that we experience,” he says. “So whatever we have programmed into our minds, those beliefs will shape not just our genetics but our behavior to conform to those beliefs as well. If we have positive beliefs built in our minds, then our behavior and our genes will lead us to health and happiness.”

Still, the way to health and happiness à la Lipton is more than positive thinking. “We generally perceive that we are running our lives with our wishes and our desires,” Lipton continues. “But neuroscience reveals a startling fact: We only run our lives with our creative, conscious mind about 5 percent of the time. Ninety-five percent of the time, our life is controlled by the beliefs and habits that are programmed in the subconscious mind. You may hold some positive thoughts but that has very little influence on your life because of the limited amount of time you actually run with your conscious mind.”

Even though we may embrace the message that we can change our reality by changing our beliefs, it is hard for us to change our beliefs because we mostly run our lives on autopilot.

Lipton explains that there is a good reason for the automatic “playback” function of the subconscious mind. As children, we learn to walk. While we do so, our lives are determined by the process. It takes all our energy and attention. The same happens when we learn to drive later in life. But once we have acquired these new habits, the subconscious mind automates the procedure. Whatever seemed almost overwhelmingly difficult at one point now is simple. We don’t even think about it anymore when we put one foot in front of the other or drive home from work.

However, we don’t just record simple motor functions like walking or driving. In the same way, we also record perceptions and behaviors. And we do most of this recording in the womb, during the second trimester of pregnancy, and during the first six years of our lives. “The fundamental programs in your subconscious mind are not your own wishes and desires,” Lipton points out. “They are behaviors you copied from other people, primarily your parents and your family and community. Your beliefs are actually their beliefs, their wishes and desires. You are ‘playing’ behaviors that were downloaded into you when you were a small child. And it is not very likely that these behaviors are what you are looking for today. You are sabotaging yourself!”

This is, of course, not a new discovery. Sigmund Freud used psychoanalysis to uncover these programmed patterns. Psychoanalysis and psychotherapy may have brought a better understanding of why we behave as we do, but people rarely succeed in fundamentally changing their lives through these methods.

Lipton points to the different ways in which the conscious and the subconscious minds learn. The conscious mind learns through inspiration: reading a book, going to a movie, having an exciting conversation with a friend or a teacher. The subconscious mind is not creative and it automates procedures, or forms habits, at low frequencies in different parts of the brain. “You can talk to a tape recorder all you want; you won’t be able to change the program. You have to re-record to change the program,” Lipton says. This explains why insights one may gain from a good psychotherapy session do not necessarily translate into different behavior, different fundamental beliefs and therefore a different reality. Its insights speak to the wrong mind.

The good news is that more and more promising techniques to deal with the subconscious mind are being discovered at this moment. Lipton speaks about good results with hypnosis, subliminal tapes and “super learning” techniques. He dedicates a special section in his book The Biology of Belief to a simple energy-psychology technique called PSYCH-K that personally helped him undo “self-limiting beliefs.” All these techniques feed information directly into the subconscious. “Using these modalities, you can rewrite beliefs that you may have held in your subconscious mind for already 45 years in a matter of just minutes,” Lipton explains. “In 15 minutes, you can change a belief that has been affecting your whole life.”

The impact on medicine is profound. “Our health is really based on our perception and our beliefs and attitudes,” he says. “When we find ourselves in a negative environment, or we perceive ourselves in a negative environment or we are running from behavioral programs that are self-sabotaging, these beliefs generally contribute to disease. If you want to recover health, you don’t need to add medicine. You actually have to return yourself to a supportive, healthy environment. I have seen in the lab that cell cultures can crash and then recover when their environment is improved.”

To illustrate his point, he adds that research has shown that 90 percent of the cases of cancer and heart disease, the two biggest killers on the planet, have nothing to do with genes but everything to do with lifestyle. “A lot of medicine comes down to adding chemicals to support unhealthy lifestyles,” Lipton argues. “It is not about healing people but about helping people to maintain a lifestyle. You don’t need these drugs. What you need to change is your lifestyle. You don’t need a doctor; you need a coach. That’s what the new medicine is all about.”

Yet that radical vision faces a major obstacle: A pharmaceutical company with a mission to improve health through techniques that cannot be patented would not be very profitable for its shareholders. “Theoretically, medicine is a compassionate practice; it is about helping people,” Lipton says. “But in reality, it is not. Mainstream medicine generates profits from sick people. That is by definition inhumane. Medicine has to be nonprofit. Once you put the profit motive in there, then healing people would minimize the profit of the corporation. Obviously, money doesn’t create healing. It’s the opposite: Money prevents healing.”

A conversation with Lipton is more like a high-speed monologue. A simple question unleashes a torrent of words from his brain. Although we speak over Skype, I can sense the urgency with which he wants to tell the story of how we can lead healthier and happier lives.

He tells about the day he was 7, when he peeked through a microscope in the classroom for the first time. Afterward, he ran home and begged his mother to buy him one. Lipton had seen his future. More important, he had seen a tiny world bursting with life. What he saw through the microscope was not a “thing”; it was a community, with endless elements and pieces moving together.

“Even the most primitive organisms on the planet, bacteria, all live in community,” he says. “They are always in communication with each other. Organisms don’t live alone. The more complex systems become, the more sharing of the workload, you see.” He pauses briefly. “You are not an individual. You are not a single entity. That is a misperception. You are a community of 50 trillion cells.”

Lipton’s second book is called Spontaneous Evolution: Our Positive Future (and a Way to Get There from Here). Darwinian biology, with its focus on the survival of the fittest, has led us onto the wrong path, according to Lipton. “When you start talking about the survival of the fittest, you start talking about the individual. Nature doesn’t really care about individuals.” From the perspective of evolution, it is not about the individual human being; for Lipton, it is about humanity. “We are not individual entities; we are one giant collaborative superorganism,” he says.

Lipton argues that a revolution will occur when we recognize that each human being is a “cell” in the same body. “We may learn that killing or terrorizing each other or our environment is self-destructive. In fact, there is a name for what we do. When the cells in our bodies fight each other, we call that ‘autoimmune disease.’ What humanity is going through right now is a very bad case of autoimmune disease.”

Yet Lipton is optimistic about the future. “I used to be a pessimist,” he says. “When I started to understand the nature of evolution and how everything is powered by the formation of community, then I saw that the emergence of the Internet is doing exactly that—it allows all the cells to be connected. We are beginning to see the coalition of human beings from around the world recognizing that we are all one. That’s our evolutionary destiny.”

Lipton takes hope from what he calls the “honeymoon effect.” We all remember moments when we were deeply in love. We felt healthy and energetic. Life was so beautiful it was like heaven on Earth. “That honeymoon effect was not an accident; it was a creation,” Lipton argues. “You personally created that.”

When we fall in love, our conscious minds, with our wishes and desires, are running almost full-time—not 5 percent of the time, but 95 percent. That condition can be life-changing. “The only difference between heaven and hell on this planet is the difference between running on the creative wishes of the conscious mind or running on the sabotaging, disempowering beliefs of the subconscious mind.”

Lipton pauses, then raises a question. What if you programmed or reprogrammed your subconscious to contain the same wishes and desires from the conscious mind that created the honeymoon experience? “At that point, we would all be living in heaven on Earth all the time.”

Jurriaan Kamp has always believed in heaven on Earth.

Reprinted with Permission. Article Source: Ode Magazine

Top 6 Meta Patterns Why People Don’t Make More Progress On Their Goals (& What To Do About It)
                                                                                                    By Tom O’Connor

Here are the top 6 meta-patterns frequently found when people fail to reach on their goals. Accompanying these are the corresponding NLP-based solutions.

These aren't the only 6; there are many more. But when you consistently sort for these five, you'll make a quantum-leap forward in your ability to produce important goal-oriented results on time - every time.

1. Lack of clarity, defined in sensory based words of what they want

Getting clear, really clear on what you want and what it will take to get it takes effort. Often people overlook the need for clarity and settle for abstract fuzzy language about what they really want and therefore have a difficult time achieving it.

Solution:
Take twenty minutes to guide yourself through a set of clarifying questions about what you really want. Put yourself into a relaxed determined state.

You can use the NLP-outcome-model and Meta Model to help you get clear on what you want. Make sure you write it down and you pen and paper to clarify your thought process.

Many people try to plan their goals or overcome problems by “thinking it out” in their head. They fail to take the time to write it out. This is a big mistake. Writing it out acts as a dissociative process and allows you to see the BIG PICTURE more easily. It also helps you see how different component and pieces fit together.

Do it. Write it out. You'll find it will greatly help.

2. Ambivalent feelings about doing the task

Ambivalence, feeling indifferent or non-motivated/stuck is a common feeling many folks will describe when telling you why they haven't yet taken action (after they typically first tell you a shaggy dog story about all the superficial things they have done that we each fool ourselves into thinking is progress).

If this applies to you, you'll often find yourself saying "I want to x". But when you examine the pattern of your behaviours, you'll find that you don't actually take any meaningful actions to move forward. And you haven't been for a long time. Everyone has one or more areas of their life where this applies. The idea is not to get trapped inside justifying your situation or why you haven't taken action, but rather quickly shift gears to what you need to do to get the task done.

Solution:
Use pen and paper to Meta Model your thinking about the issue.

Thoughts and feelings of ambivalence or “can't get motivated to…” arise from a specific set of thoughts and repeated actions. The more you practice this (instantiate the pattern) the more your brain allocates that as THE way to act whenever the said topic comes up.

For example, whenever you think about doing X project, your internal dialogue says “Awwww, I don't know what I should be doing there, I'm too tired now and besides I've got that other thing I need to get done”… and quickly your brain switches channels (you distracts yourself) and bingo… the thought train disappears from your consciousness.

After you've unpacked how you are using your mind-body to create this state-response, shift your focus and condition your brain-body with how you want it to act instead.

Re-orient your thinking so that taking action towards the goal results in you feeling better - each time you make some progress towards it.

Make taking action a fun rewarding process so that the more you do - the more eager you are to finish it.

Depending on your character you can find any number of ways to make this naturally work for you. For example, if you are competitive you might make taking action a points-based game where you challenge yourself to “score” better each week than the week before or some variation.

3. Fail To Scope The Task Adequately

Anytime we undertake a goal that has more than one step to it, it's very useful to sufficiently scope out each of the major tasks involved quickly and ensure we can gather and arrange the resources required to fulfill them.

Unfortunately when the path to the goal is unfamiliar or new, many people fail to outline the key tasks involved. And, so, the achievement of the goal almost immediately falls into peril. (Typically the results of this inaction don't show their heads till much later, by which time the consequences have already occurred.)

Solution:
The NLP toolset gives us a powerful array of models that when internalised, and well practiced, would greatly help any manager or leader responsible for producing results.

Using the Meta Model, the NLP TOTE model and the Michael Breen's Framing Tool well will give you everything you are likely to need to quickly scope out any size of project. Of course for projects that go into virgin territory for you, you'll need to engage the input of others but knowing what questions to ask will save you a huge amount of time.

Many people's goals are abstract statements like “I want to be healthier” or “I want to be financially free”. These free floating statements have nothing identifiable in the world that a video camera can zero in on, and so neither does your brain. Without a timeframe your brain doesn't get the benefit of feeling the deadline draw closer, and so often there is no internal signal to act because at a sub-modality level you keep pushing the picture further away.

Avoid this problem by scoping out what needs to get done in sensory specific actions and set deadlines for every important goal. Once you do you'll see a rapid increase in your progress.

4. Fail To Carry Out Frequent Checks

Even when you know what you want clearly, you've considered the scope, resources, set a timeframe and have a good plan, many people forget to build in frequent external checks… and so weeks, months, years go by and still no meaningful progress occurs.

Solution:
Take the time to schedule in frequent reviews each week and month on your most important goals. The more you measure the quicker you can identify when you are “off course” and make a few critical adjustments that can make all the difference on whether your achieve your goal or not.

5. Fail To Act!

Failure to act is another common pattern for not hitting your goals.

Often people don't have more of what they want because they got caught up in talking, thinking and spiraling around a topic… but never acting and following through.

Usually when I dig under the surface reasons as to why they haven't taken any significant action before it arises that one of three things are present:

• They don't believe achieving the goal is possible for them.
• Emotionally they are filled with fear, uncertainty and doubt about the goal.
• They don't really want it, it's really someone else's desire for them or they have some level of cross-motivation occurring.
• They haven't defined the criteria adequately to figure out where/how to act.

 
Solution:
Act more, talk less.

Use the NLP toolset to think differently, think better and transform any negative self-talk so you take action each and every day toward achieving what you want. Measure your performance and very quickly you'll realise if you are generating elaborate stories about why you aren't taking action. If you are - become curious to discover how you are thinking to produce this result… then change it (where appropriate).

6. We Let Ourselves Get Stopped

Hard coded into the DNA of NLP is the attitude of having a tenuous resolve when in pursuit of an outcome.  It's fair to say that the field is unlikely to have gotten as far as it has without the commitment and willingness of Dr. Bandler and John Grinder to move beyond the opposing opinions and obstacles of the early days.

Whenever we fail to achieve what we want what is usually missing from the narrative is “I let myself become stopped” or “I choose to stop because…” Typically what is expressed is how several legitimate and sometime not so legitimate external obstacles (money, time, knowledge etc) stopped them. They ran into resistance (or what they perceived as problems/issues/challenges) and they stopped.

Solution:
In yourself – condition a resourceful “never give up” attitude. Temper it with intelligence and wisdom so you can be identify those few occasions where it makes sense not to ride a bad idea into the ground.

How can you condition in a resourceful attitude?

There are many ways but one of the quickest is to act “as if”… you have the resolve to see your goals through whenever obstacles arise. When you act as if, you shift your focus to doing the behaviour you want… until it becomes your new habituated way of being.

You can also build an internally driven propulsion system to keep you moving when times get tough. You can do this by using well-targeted questions on yourself to identify what are all of the positive things that will happen for you and what are all the consequences if you don't. Amplify and anchor your states. Use sub-modality exercises to stir up your resolve and use anchoring so that when obstacles arise rather than getting side tracked and off focus, your brain instantly goes “this problem is gone… it just doesn't know it yet!”

Then act.

OK, that's all for now. Review your own goal performance this year and for any goals you didn't make “enough” progress on so far. Identify which pattern or patterns are affecting you. Then resolve to change them today. Act with a sense of urgency and put into practice the solutions I've outlined above and you can make a huge leap forward in the results you achieve in the months ahead.

The process isn't difficult, but it does require some quiet time, focus and tenacity.


NLP Times – one of the web's leading resource for learning NLP online. Discover free articles, videos, techniques and more at www.nlptimes.com

 
There is an adage that says, "Show me an excuse, and I will show you a failure!" Emmy-award winning actress Kathryn Joosten certainly wasn't someone wallowing in excuses!

Some of us can learn quite a few things from this woman of action!

                               Treasures in the Creative Unconscious
                                                                                          by John G. Johnson

And just what is creativity anyway? What is your definition? There are individuals out there believing creativity is just for the gifted, meaning they either have it, or they don’t. Then there are others living with the thwarted conclusion that even though they have a flickering of “it,” at random times, they need to “wait” for inspiration to be creative. Nothing can be further from the truth. Those are beliefs. And beliefs can change easily.

Everyone has the power to be creative and – at the moment of their choosing. Persons with this *choice* - to dynamically express themselves at any given moment - in time, throughout time, or in-between times, know how to access the appropriate altered states of mind to give them this ability. Once these states have been accessed, resources the individual needs to render their desired results are at their beck and call.

Your unconscious mind is constantly learning, storing, and associating new and interesting bits of information at a breathtaking rate. And as such, it is a vast storehouse of rich and creative treasures, all yours for the taking and sharing. If you are curious to find out what’s “in there,” so to speak, then the next question might be, “how do I get access to these treasures located in the secret recesses of my mind?”

One way to do so is through Stream of Consciousness writing. Stream of Consciousness writing is a time tested method used to persuade the creative explorer’s mind to reveal its precious secrets, those captivating ideas residing inside. The explorer, having found a provocative topic(s) that arouses his/her interest, then further investigates it, i.e. via research, contemplation, etc. Off he/she goes on their quest, energized, motivated to turn this spark of an idea into a dazzling flame. In short, they have written their mind alive.

The Stream of Consciousness writing technique is simple, and works like this:

1 Have paper and pen handy.
2 Set aside several minutes of uninterrupted writing time, i.e. ten minutes, twenty minutes, etc. 
3 Choose a topic, a theme, a subject, etc. and write it at the top of the paper.
4 Start writing. DO NOT lift the pen from the paper. WRITE, WRITE and WRITE until the time you've allotted yourself is up. As you are doing the exercise you will notice that most of what you are writing makes no sense. This is perfectly fine. The more it makes no sense the more you are unlocking the doorway and stepping into the subconscious – the vault where your creative treasures reside.
5 Once your time is up – YOU STOP, take a break.
6 After your break, review what you have written, and notice what sparks your interest.
7 Whatever holds your attention – investigate it, and build on it.

So, whenever you are feeling, “stuck” for an idea, whether it’s for a topic to write about, or to find a creative solution to a current problem, try this method. It works – wonders. Remember to…remember to…trust yourself, and your “other than conscious mind!”


© Copyright – John G. Johnson 2012 - All rights reserved! Subscribe to our mailing list for workshops, newsletters and events. Go to:www.nlpsuccessbydesign.com

                                 Believe is Believing


Whether you are aware of them, or not, whether you perceive them as useful, or not, beliefs exert a tremendous amount of force upon our lives. They shape and influence our behaviors, dictating how we live.

Thinking of the beliefs you are conscious of as things - you are believing – does several things: It changes them from a nominalization (noun) into a verb, thereby allowing you to experience and realize that what you are believing isn’t static – it has movement. And as such can be altered, strengthened or weakened

Information, be it: resources, personal metaphors/meanings, emotions, images, sounds, etc. contained in our memories (past experience-s) and/or in our future plans (hopes and dreams) cyclically interact with our reigning beliefs to strengthen them. For example, an athlete with a healthy, successful history of winning in his or her chosen sport will most likely have a current belief (believing) co-operating with their illustrious past. This combination acts as an additive, aiding this athlete in winning their next competitive event. Seven-time Tour De France winner Lance Armstrong comes to mind.

This looping effect is also true for someone without an enriched past, but has a compelling and attractive future collaborating with their present beliefs (believing). The phrase, “you have a bright and healthy future in front you” comes to mind.

The reverse is also valid; elements contained either in our past and/or in our future can weaken our beliefs. For example, a person can possess a firm belief, believing that they can be an incredible public-speaker. However, if they allow what they perceive as negative and unhealthy images, sounds, emotions, etc. from their past and/or future to constantly interfere with what they are believing, they will have difficulty making their goal a reality. In short, if a belief and its support contradict each other the belief short-circuits itself.

To strengthen beliefs and their support various techniques abound. One such technique is reframing. Simply put, reframing is taking what is interpreted as a negative experience and looking at it from an empowering point of view. This technique also aids in transforming disempowering emotions into useful (use fuel) ones.

This reminds me of the skilled boxer who had a string of successful bouts. He eventually lost one of his fights. Instead of looking at this experience as a true loss, this swift pugilist saw at it as - an opportunity to further learn and to further improve – upon his technique for subsequent matches – which he eventually won. In short, this boxer was mentally agile to reframe his ring experiences and use them to fortify his beliefs for future fights. The Greatest of all time comes to mind.

Reframing may be used in any type of interpersonal communication and relationships, i.e. sales and customer service couples and friend’s relationships, etc. In sales clients sometimes get in their own way of something that is good for them because of an unpleasant past sales experience. Reframing the client’s past experiences also assists in freeing the positive emotions that are then used to procure a win/win sale.


© Copyright – John G. Johnson 2012 - All rights reserved! Subscribe to our mailing list for workshops, newsletters and events. Go to:  www.nlpsuccessbydesign.com

                                                                       Go For Your Goal(d)-tip number 02
                                                                               “Mobilize Your Resources!”

USE THE RESOURCES you are in control of.

You know what it is you want; you know what it is you feel the desire to achieve.The next thing to do is ask yourself, “What resources do I have that will assist me in getting it?” If your current resources are insufficient, then ask yourself this: what resources am I in control of that I can use to get the additional ones I need to achieve my goal?” In short, you - already possess the tools you need to make your objective a reality. Use them!

You will be amazed, once you realize, how easy it is to access your resources. One of the issues is this simple: In order to access those resources, it's necessary to be able to "be in a position" to access them. Taking this literally, "being in a position means just that . . . and "the" position is one where you can dissociate from your timeline so that you can access the past, which is where resources "come from." When we are "in time", meaning associated, we may not be able to access the past as easily or as quickly, or we may not even consider that as an option at all, simply because we are "in time", and the idea of "remembering to access the past, is a resource in and of itself. It is, however, both a resource and an option.

So, manipulating your timeline(s) in ways that enable you to access your resources easily and quickly, is important to creating success . . . for yourself first!

Go For Your Goal(d)!

© Copyright – John G. Johnson 2012 - All rights reserved! Subscribe to our mailing list for workshops, newsletters and events. Go to: www.nlpsuccessbydesign.com

                                                                          Go For Your Goal(d)-tip number 01
                                         "5 Ways People Sabotage Themselves...And How To Avoid Them!"
                                                                                           By Bob Hatem

PEOPLE SABOTAGE attaining their goals in many ways. The following five examples are just random possibilities. None of these is more important than another, although many of you reading them will “feel” that one is more important... why? Because that one may be the way in which you sabotage yourself!

First, having a time limit in which to have the goal accomplished. Allow yourself the time necessary to get everything done.

Second, having a goal so large that it can become overwhelming. If your goal is too large, - divide it into smaller, easier to handle pieces.

Third, depending upon others to “do it for you”. Own your goal; take the initiative to get it done.

Fourth, procrastination. Adjust your goal if necessary and crank up your motivation.

Fifth, goals that have components contrary to your beliefs or values. Work with someone who knows the process for setting achievable goals. Working with a “consultant”, you will have guidance to make sure you have all the necessary “components” and have an observer who will check if you are giving unconscious
hints that something is not quite right.


© Copyright – John G. Johnson 2012 - All rights reserved! Subscribe to our mailing list for workshops, newsletters and events. Go to: www.nlpsuccessbydesign.com

                                                                             Go For Your Goal(d)


HAVE YOU EVER focused your mind to achieve an outcome, only to fall short, or a long way from it?Around this time most people attempt to fixate their mind and attitude towards the goal or goals they wish to achieve for the year – and probably beyond. Some engage in this behaviour even earlier. Either way you look at it, orienting your mind to achieving your desired outcome is something that can be done – anytime – not just at the beginning of a calendar year.

WHAT IS interesting is that a significant amount of these “goal setters” fail to get what they want, allowing their dream or dreams to fall by the wayside, blaming environment and circumstance(s) for their failure(s). I've heard it often said, “show me an excuse, I'll show you a failure.”

ONE OF the ways you can look at this thing called “failure” is that it is actually “feedback.” Looking at your unintended result from this vantage point allows you to ask yourself one of many well-defined questions, allowing you to find the “missing link(s)” that will assist you to get your goal(d).

WHAT COULD this critical persuasive factor, or factors, be that's causing one, possibly you, to fall - just arms length of your life's ambition? Attaining your successful goal requires various persuasive ingredients. But, for our purposes here I am going to let you in on three often overlooked secrets to success.

GOALS MUST BE stated in the positive and be specific. This makes perfect sense because our minds are direction-oriented. For example, let‟s say your goal is simply to buy a car. Constantly saying, “I don't want a truck, I don't want a van, etc.” is counter-productive, a waste of your personal persuasive abilities. Instead, it would be easier and more persuasively productive to state your intent in the positive. “I want to buy a car,” OR something that is positively directionally oriented to what you –specifically - want. The clearer you make your language match the image you have of what you want, the better off you will be. To continue with the car example, saying you want a car is not specific enough.

WHAT type of car do you want? “I want a Jaguar XJS!” And even more specific, “I want an ebony black Jaguar XJS, etc! Get the point, yes? Have you ever heard the axiom, “watch your words?”

MAKE SURE your goal is sensory based. You and I know that human beings have five senses. (Yes, an argument can be made that there are more. But that is for another discussion). Your goal must be represented in at least three of the five senses, (Seeing, Hearing, Feeling, Tasting and Smelling) Again, seeing that our minds are forward seeking, imbuing your senses and your "other than conscious mind" with what you want - engages all your inner resources to seamlessly drive you in the appropriate direction.

Let's take the car example again, or should I now say “the ebony black Jaguar XJS.” What will you see, hear and feel? What does the ebony black Jaguar XJS look like? How do the sun‟s rays glint off its chrome features? Can you see yourself in an open top or a closed roof of the ebony black Jaguar XJS? How does your dream car‟s engine purr as you ignite and tease its engine alive? How do you react to the smell of
the interior, the fragrance of a new car? How does the Italian leather bucket driver seat the feel as you float down securely and comfortably into it? How do your hands feel as you wrap your fingers around the steering wheel? How does this ebony black Jaguar XJS handle corners as you take it for a drive? ENGAGE YOUR SENSES. Wash your mind, your senses in your dream!

YOU MUST INITIATE the goal and maintain it yourself. Far too often people depend on some external factor, or factors, to make their dream come alive. (“oh, so and so "might" do this for me;” “I  hope that these things fall into place soon;” “I'll wait  for inspiration;” blah blah blah…)Yes, there could be circumstances that calls for such things, but those are not of what I am speaking of. Ask yourself this; “To get my goal what resources are under my control?” Let‟s take the car scenario we have been using  so far.

The person wanting this ebony black Jaguar XJS can get a job, allowing him/her to save money towards purchasing this car. This person has the ability to seek out dealerships that will offer the best price, etc. If this person wanting this ebony black Jaguar XJS said, “I'll sit and just hope to‟ win the lottery,” or “I'll wait until my rich relative passes on," or what have you, then the probability that he/she will get this car goes way, way and way down.

SIMPLY PUT – Take action; yourself - take charge! There is no need to wait on hopeful factors that are not under your control! Be the Master and Commander of your dreams so they can come blazingly alive; let your healthy ambitions resonate through every fibre of your being! Coagulate your resources!

THESE ARE SOME of the distinctions, the ingredients that make the difference between getting your bronze, silver or gold!


© Copyright – John G. Johnson 2012 - All rights reserved! Subscribe to our mailing list for workshops, newsletters and events. Go to: www.nlpsuccessbydesign.com