As I replied, the most important ‘secret’ is to know what you really want.

In other words: Know your outcome.

It’s the first step of the old USF (Ultimate Success Formula) or NSF (NLP Success Formula) – Know your outcome, Take massive action, Notice the results and Adjust until you get your outcome. It’s also one aspect of OPA (Outcome-focused, Purpose-driven, Action plan) that Tony Robbins advocates: Know your outcome, Connect with your purpose, and Take action.

And not just the surface of what you want, but your intention.

Nobody just wants to lose weight, or get married, or make more money. Instead, they want what they think they’ll get from having those outcomes and goals – to be more healthy or more attractive, to feel more security or love, to have more fun or adventure. Someone with intense focus on what they really want is immensely powerful because they align themselves behind that outcome in negotiations and in daily decisions, while being far more flexible in finding alternative ways to fulfill their intention and get what they’re after.

Without knowing your intention, it’s easy to get lost or fixated on obstacles. Connecting with your intentions, mission, values and purpose help you remember “why” you are doing something, so that when those obstacles arise, you can enjoy more resilience in overcoming whatever challenges come your way.

So as you prepare for the annual “New Year Resolutions” when you can review the year that has been and the year ahead, I’d encourage you to pause for a moment to reflect, and connect with your intention. And what you want that intention for – not “why” you want something, the reasons, explanations, stories and excuses, but specifically what you think it will give you.

And if you can focus on what you really want, you just might get it…

A few NLP techniques that are relevant here include: Grinder’s Outcome-Intention-Consequences, n-Step Reframe, Well-Formed Outcomes, Core Transformations, SCORE/ Emergent Discovery, Timelines, Outcome Accelerator Pattern…

In our session, we particularly focused on how New Code focuses more on the structure than the examples, renews emphasis on the modeling process so that we might ‘refill the well’, promotes a “content-free” approach and focuses on the state as a leverage point for change. We saw a content-laden and content free version of an exercise similar to the Core Transformations session from last year and experienced the Alphabet Game.

And here’s Dr John Grinder:

More from China NLP after the New Year!

Starting from 2:30pm with More Core Transformations and some unexpected work on overcoming limiting beliefs, we moved into the Christmas Party from about 530 or so.

The Net Circle offered it’s board room for our session and Christmas Party – it’s an amazing space so a special thanks to J and her team!

Sometimes we do things that seem to be a problem. But often, those “problem” behaviours or patterns of interaction actually give us something. They provide a way for us to experience something that we want. So as we look at a “problem” and chunk up to several levels behind the obvious, we can find that we all have hidden agendas.

Some people get angry if the person they arrange to meet at a specified time is late.

Maybe they really want happiness. If you ask them, “what does getting angry give you?” and then ask them “what does ___ give you?” you could discover that they really want happiness. So we might pursue that desire through a series of conditioned intermediate states that lead us to get angry when people are late. Now accepting people being late isn’t necessary the solution – but what if we can be happy while we are experiencing someone being late to meet us.

An old friend was going through a tough time once and said to me, “I’m going to look back on this terrible experience and laugh about it.” What I couldn’t understand – and what I asked her – was, “Why wait?” If you can have the state that you want now, why would you delay it and impose rules that stop you from getting what you ultimately want.

So, for me, Joanna’s session was about getting yourself back in the driver’s seat of your bus…

It was quite similar to some of the New Code (Dr John Grinder) patterns like Outcome-Intention-Consequences that we went through in the Practitioner the previous weekends.

I also appreciated Joanna giving her take on “What is NLP?” and a bit of background into the early development of the field. With her wealth of corporate and NLP experience, it was very insightful.

Thanks Joanna – we’re looking forward to next time!

(Coming up – 14 December at our favourite riverside location… with a Christmas Party!)

Event sponsored by REV - thanks again, Jeff!