fotologic via Compfight

When was the last time you made something that someone wasn’t paying you for, and looking over your shoulder to make sure you got it right?

Todd Henry in Manage Your Day-to-Day: Build Your Routine, Find Your Focus, and Sharpen Your Creative Mind (The 99U Book Series)

To truly excel, you must also continue to create for the most important audience of all: yourself.

Domenico via Compfight

Extract from NLP: The Essential Guide to Neuro-Linguistic Programming Reprinted with permission.

Day 3: Making Your Dreads Into Dreams

Look again at your prioritized list for what you Don’t Want & Have. If this is one of your longer lists, today’s activity will be even more important for you.

When someone has a well-developed away from motivation direction, they naturally pay a lot more attention to what they don’t like and don’t want. While this is motivating, they ultimately won’t experience much satisfaction. As they get farther away from what they don’t like, they get relief and less stress, but not excitement, satisfaction, or achievement. To experience a sense of fulfillment an away-from person needs a orientation of attention. They can tremendously benefit by redirecting attention from what is not wanted to what is wanted. This activity, using the items you already listed, will help you explore redirecting your attention from what you don’t want to what you do want.

Copy items from your newly prioritized Don’t Want & Have list on the chart below.

Next, take each item you Don’t Want & Have and think of a positive phrase that means the same thing to you, but is something you Don’t Have & Want. For example: If you Don’t Want & Have a few extra pounds, what you probably Don’t Have & Want is a slimmer, more muscular body. If you Don’t Want & Have a dead-end job, then you Don’t Have & Want work with more opportunities. Create a transformation for every Don’t Want and Have into a new Don’t Have & Want that is satisfying to you.

Write down each transformation for future reference.

Dreads Into Dreams Transformation Worksheet

Column 1 – Don’t Want and Don’t Have e.g. a few extra pounds

Transformed into…

Column 2 – Don’t Have and Want e.g. a slimmer, more muscular body

Reprinted, with permission, from the new Harper Morrow book NLP: The Essential Guide to Neuro-Linguistic Programming. The book contains the full 21 Day Guide. Available instantly for Kindle  and as a lovely paperback book.

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Extract from: NLP: The Essential Guide to Neuro-Linguistic Programming

Last time you discovered your current coordinates. This time you’ll focus on two of the lists you made: what you Want & Don’t Have and what you Don’t Want & Have. Which list currently occupies more of your attention? Remember the meta-program that describes a person’s motivation direction as away-from or toward (from Chapters 4 and 6)? The Want & Don’t Have list is another way of describing a toward motivation, while Don’t Want & Have is another way of describing an away-from motivation.

Notice which list is more important to you now. Begin with that list first. Review the items and prioritize them. What do you want to change most? What do you want to change next – after that, and so on? Use any ranking system you like.

After you finish prioritizing your first list, do the same with the second list.

Once you have prioritized both lists, consider which change, if you were to get it would make the most difference in your life? It might be one of your top-ranked items, and then again, it might seem be a minor one. For example, how much difference would it make to everything else in your life if you began each day in a good mood? What small, but significant change could you make in your day now that would encourage this – the perfect latte, a healthy breakfast, upbeat music, stimulating conversation, comfortable shoes? Review your priorities again to identify items that seem most likely, once they shift, to produce the biggest change. Star or highlight these items.

Reprinted, with permission, from the new Harper Morrow book NLP: The Essential Guide to Neuro-Linguistic Programming. The book contains the full 21 Day Guide. Available instantly for Kindle  and as a lovely paperback book.

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Extract from NLP: The Essential Guide available at Amazon now. More details below.

Day 1: Finding Your Current Coordinates

In order to achieve anything, you need to know where you want to go, right? It’s also critical to know where you are now so you can plot a course from here to the fulfillment of your dreams.

Almost all of us, probably without ever really thinking about it, have divided our lives into what we like and what we don’t like. NLP cofounder Richard Bandler remarked that while we’re clear about what we like and don’t like, we probably haven’t noticed that we can subdivide our likes and dislikes into the things we like or want, but don’t have – for example, a new car, a vacation or a promotion – and the things we don’t like or don’t want and have – like too many pounds, a quick temper or badly behaved pets.

To begin, consider what you really like about your life. These can be significant achievements – like hitting a home run, receiving your first “A”, or getting an important promotion, and they can also be the simplest of moments – listening to the sound of waves, watching a child sleep, savoring chocolate ice cream. Make your list as long and full as your time allows. To simplify this process, you can use the worksheet on the next two pages. For now, just complete column 1, indicating the things you want and have in your life.

Now to the more expected question: What do you have that you don’t want in your life? Many of us spend a lot of our lives on this question in one form or another. As you consider this question, feel free to include those extra pounds, troublesome habits, being stuck in traffic, days your boss is a jerk, or whatever it is that “rains on your parade”. Complete column 2 of your worksheet, making this list as long and as full as your time allows.

Now to the NLP question: What do you want in your life that you don’t have? This is the time to write your “wish list”. Begin anywhere – with your work, home, love life, finances, or whatever. Include your important dreams and write down at least a few of the everyday dreams, too – like sunny skies, clean sheets, or fresh-brewed coffee. In column 3, write these ideas and make the list as full as your time allows.

The final column is the less-thought-of category: what you don’t want in your life and you don’t have. If you’re like most people, you probably haven’t spent much time mulling over this possibility, so take a few minutes now. There are obvious things like a dreaded disease, crushing debt, a crippled child, chronic pain, the inability to work, etc. There are also many other things that you’ve never thought of wanting, and you don’t want to try them – hang gliding, a prison sentence, a trip to a toxic waste site, etc. Include several of these on your list, too. Capture these ideas in column 4 on the worksheet.

Finding Your Current Coordinates Worksheet

Follow the instructions above to complete each column below.

Column 1 – I want and have

Column 2 – I want and don’t have

Column 3 – I don’t want and have

Column 4 – I don’t want and don’t have (thankfully!)

Take a look at your four lists. Make sure you have at least several items in each column and that each item that you wrote down is real and specific.

Once you’ve reviewed and refined your completed list, answer the questions below.

Looking at your lists again, notice:

1. Which list is the longest and which is shortest?
2. Which list was the easiest to create and which was the most difficult?
3. Which list feels most familiar and which one is least familiar?
4. As you look from list to list, are you comparing items of equal importance, or do you find you have “mountains” on one list and “mole hills” on another?

• Right now, which list currently draws your attention more?
• As you look over your answers, how do you feel about them?
• Do you like the items on your lists, or do you want to change some of them?

As you go to sleep tonight, let your mind wander over how things are, and how you’d like them to be. If anything significant comes up, add it to your list.

Reprinted, with permission, from the new Harper Morrow book NLP: The Essential Guide to Neuro-Linguistic Programming Both versions include the complete 21 Day guide.

Jessica Garro via Compfight

How do you keep your focus on what you want amid the swirl of everyday life?

One way is to begin the habit of a short daily review where you pause and step outside yourself for a moment.

And one way to do that is by using a very simple feedback model which reinforces where you’ve come from and where you want to go. This could take no longer than 5 mins a day and works best if you write it down. It’s a big help if you keep your answers together so, over time, you can see how much progress you’ve made.

Ready? Ask yourself two questions:

First, What went well today?
Note at least three things which went well for you today. Size and scope don’t matter. Nor does the world’s view of your day. Only that you thought it went well and you felt good or OK about it.

• I changed the light fitting in Megan’s bedroom
• I went for a 20 min walk in the park
• I remembered to invoice my customer

Second, What do I need to do differently next time?

• I want to move writing up to earlier in the day, so I write when I’m fresher.
• I want to drink at least another glass of water in the morning.
• Find a book on the Alexander Technique

It seems so mundane but we quickly forget the good which happens and it helps to remind yourself daily of what you want next. Tomorrow is built from today and today is built from the next 10 mins.

You might also notice no soul-searching self-criticism in this approach. That’s because the past has, well, passed. You can only change now and tomorrow. It makes sense to focus on what works.

Where to keep these notes?

This sort of daily feedback lends itself to a diary or journal. I use Oh Life – a very simple idea which I’ve been using for a couple of years. Every day they send you an email asking How’d your day go? and you reply. Over time you build a journal with a collection of your life stories, daily whines or feedback notes.

Imagine how wonderful it would be to read back over a year’s worth of things which went well (3 x 365 = 1,095 pa) and watch as you slowly bring to life the things you want.

And finally…

Most folks don’t do this – and never will. Give it a spin for a week or so and decide whether they are missing out.

Pascal via Compfight

A quick reminder

I can’t get to the cupboard because you are in the way

I can’t have the life I want because [insert reason here]

The “I can’t… because…” speech pattern is typical of the passenger mentality and will kill any attempt to work out what you want.

Passengers:

• search for limits and reasons (it’s easier than taking responsibility)
• invest in problems (always asking ‘Why?’)
• consume stuff made by others

Drivers:

• there are no limits (only way to find out whether you can’t do it, is to do it)
• search for solutions (always asking ‘How?’)
• build something

Rather than summarize the entire talk, I thought I’d just continue to push forward some of the core ideas for ways to make your habit decisions more fail-proof…

Buster Benson on Starting and Keeping Habits – worth reading the whole thing if you want to change something in your life or work.

PhD students at Swansea University working on “The Next 10 Years” – an interactive workshop based on the book. We covered nine of the twelve ways to work out what you want and how to turn what you want into things which actually happen.

D. Sharon Pruitt via Compfight

Before you sweat the logistics of focus: first, care. Care intensely.

Specifically, if you discover, in frustration, that you’re pathologically incapable of doing one thing at a time, consider the possibility that you’ve been unknowingly trying to “focus” on two, twenty, or twenty thousand disparate things that you don’t really care that much about. Just consider it.

Because, in the absence of caring, you’ll never focus on anything more than your lack of focus. Think about it.
Think about those times when you really disappeared into challenging work. You had to tear yourself away, right?

Because, during those happy times you were fortunate enough to find yourself engaged with something that you cared intensely about, you probably started asking a really different sort of question.

A more transitive, muscular question that shows you own the attention that others may see as a bowl full of complimentary Jolly Ranchers, free for the grabbing.

That’s when you ask,

How many things do I need to shed, cancel, defer, drop, shank, or shit-can with extreme prejudice in order to single mindedly focus on this one thing that I love?

Wise words from Merlin