Monday, February 24, 2014

The Six Elements of Success

Success in never a coincidence, they say. Unlike most forms of therapy that seek to understand the reasons why we feel bad or why something is not working for us, NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming) focuses on what works. NLP is a model of success and its developers have studied extensively what the most important factors of success are, regardless of how you define success.
After studying countless studies and models, I have come to realize that success in practically anything in life can be crystallized on six elements. The six elements of success are, in fact, perhaps best understood by questions that you can ask yourself: 
1. Where are you?
  • How happy and successful are you right now? What kind of thinking and what kinds of actions have taken you to where you are at the moment?
  • What are your assets and liabilities? Make a list of them and take a good inventory of your current state.
  • From now on, rather than thinking how far you still have to go to reach your goals, enjoy the distance you have already travelled.
2. What do you want?
  • What is the worthy goal that you want to achieve? How do you know when you have achieved what you want?
“If you do not know where you are going, any road will get you there.” – Lewis Carroll

3. Why do you want it?
  • Do you have a genuine motivation to work on your goal? Is the goal coming from within you or is it, in fact, set by an outside authority? Does your journey toward your goal enhance your level of happiness?
”The most successful people are those people who truly ‘believe’ in what they do. Not that they just say they do. They have a passion for what they do.” – Richard Bandler & John La Valle
4. What stops/has stopped you from reaching your goal?
  • What are your limiting beliefs? Do you have all the necessary resources to reach your goal?
”Beliefs shape the way we feel, think, and act.” – Mandy Evans
5. How do you reach your goal?
  • What is your strategy and, above all, what kind of action and behavior is required from you to reach your success?
  • What is your first step toward your desired outcome? When will you take it?
  • Take action.
“Without action there’s no possibility of success.” -Richard Bandler & Garner Thomson
6. How are you doing?
  • Remember: there are no failures along the way, only feedback. If one way of acting is not getting you the results you want, act differently.
  • Keep refining your actions until you get what you want.
“Doing the same things in the same way will only get you the same results. If you want different results, something has to change.” – Hannu Pirilä

The formula for success is, after all, quite simple, and it can be executed by anyone. Some of us have found the formula and its elements by themselves. For most of us, however, figuring out the things listed above, can be tricky (if this wasn’t so, most of the people in the world would define themselves as being successful).
NLP based Success Coaching helps the client especially with these six elements. It contains, however, also a lot more when needed. We all define by ourselves what success means to us. The purpose of Success Coaching is to not only help the client to define that, but also to provide them with assistance and insights to figure out how to achieve the success they want – and to enjoy their journey.
”When you make great, big goals – whether you get to them or not – the things that happen along the way are what makes life wonderful.” - Richard Bandler


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Tuesday, January 14, 2014

Values and Meaning – What Is Important and Why?

In the business world, values and mission statements have been discussed for a long time already – although in many cases they have been more like just plain words and a part of the company image, than actually guiding operators of action. If we, however, really give them some actual focus, they can have a huge significance in our lives, especially in a long run.
Very few of us have considered these things on our own personal level, though. This is a pity, since values and meanings play a remarkable role when it comes to achieving personal success and happiness.
“Knowing what your values are is excellent, because happiness comes from living your values every single day, regardless of how close or far away your goals may seem to be.” - Paul McKenna

Consideration of this subject is good to start by asking yourself: “what is important to me?” – and wait for the answer. As you ask yourself this question, you will probably get a small list of values like money, love, happiness, success, kids, work etc. These first values are usually more or less obvious and therefore we should not necessarily settle for them only.
We should go and examine this first list a little deeper. You can do this by asking yourself: “what is important to me about money?” or “why is love important to me?” and so on. Ask these questions regarding every value on your list.
Now you probably start to get some different kind of answers, like “with money I can feed my family,” “with money I can improve my quality of life,” “being loved makes me happy,” “having someone to love means that I care for other people” or perhaps something similar or maybe something totally different.
You can continue asking these “what is important to me about…?” and “why is (X) important to me?” questions for quite a long time per value. This way we can very often reveal some deeper values that are, in fact, more important to us than the values that first come to our mind.
After you have listed a total of about six to ten values, it is important to put them into an order of importance. This can be achieved by comparing the values in pairs.
So, take the first two values on your list and ask yourself, which one is more important? After you know the answer to that, take the one that is more important to you and make the same comparison to the third value on your list. For example, if the first two values on your list are money and love, ask yourself first: “which one is more important to me, money or love?” Let’s say that you find love to be more important of those two and the third value on your list is happiness, you then ask yourself: “which one is more important to me, love or happiness?” Again, take the more important value from these two and make the comparison between that and the fourth value on your list.
Go through your whole list of values this way, all the way down to the last value. Whatever value “wins” the last comparison, is your most important value. Write it down on a new list as your Number 1 Value and strike it out from your original list.
Now go through the comparisons again with the rest of the values on your list. Whatever value “wins” this round is your second most important value. Write it down on the new list as your Number 2 Value and strike it out from your original list. Keep on working this way until you have put all your values into a value hierarchy.
Next it is time to examine your value hierarchy a bit closer. Are there any value conflicts present? A value conflict may be born when one value, in one way or another, prevents the fulfillment of another value. For example, let’s say that you have “freedom” as your Number 1 Value and “family” as your Number 2 Value. Now, in some level, you might feel that having a family prevents you from achieving the freedom in life that you desire and that might be a remarkable value conflict for you.
Value conflicts are quite common and they can significantly prevent us from achieving the success and happiness we desire. A value conflict can in fact very well be the key issue there.
Another thing to look for is if there are any values in your hierarchy that are based on avoidance of something. This is important because if there are values that are based on avoiding something, it means that your focus is then on the negative, and every time you focus on something that you don’t want, you’ll feel bad (you can read more about this subject in my blog article "Feeling Bad vs. Feeling Good."). For example, if the importance of family is based on your avoidance of being lonely, it means that at least part of your focus on family gives you, in fact, bad feelings.
What has been explained above, is a rather simple way of finding out what is important to us in life. When we examine the questions long and deep enough, we might find an answer to as big a question as what is the purpose of our life.
Whether you find your purpose of life through defining your value hierarchy or not, it would be quite beneficial for you to write your own mission statement, based on your values. A mission statement is a compressed, one or two sentence long, description of what is most important to you. It could be something like: “My mission in life is to help in a best possible way my children to start their own independent lives and live my own life to the fullest.”
Okay, that might not touch you, but do write your own mission statement!
As I have stated earlier, companies have declared their mission statements for ages already. Microsoft, for example, states that their mission and values are the following: “At Microsoft, our mission and values are to help people and businesses throughout the world realize their full potential.” As another example, Nike’s mission statement is “To bring inspiration and innovation to every athlete in the world.”
So why is finding out our values and mission or purpose in life so important? Values and purpose give us a direction. Without direction and purpose, our life – or in a company’s case, their business – will easily drift to areas that do not bring us satisfaction, not to mention happiness. Values and purpose, along with well-formed goals, will help us keep the right direction in our lives and in our actions. And when we keep moving toward a direction in our life that brings us the most satisfaction and pleasure, then life itself will be worth living.
To bring that business aspect along a bit more, just imagine how it would feel like to work in a company that has a clear direction and that has products or services that really matter?
“Effective mission statements have three qualities in common: passion, purpose and direction.” - Richard Bandler & Garner Thomson


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Sunday, December 22, 2013

Feeling Bad vs. Feeling Good

Most of us would rather feel good than bad. Bad feelings are normal and it’s OK to feel bad sometimes. Constantly bathing in bad feelings, however, is practically never good for us. Bad feelings are in connection with bad thoughts and bad thoughts and feelings produce bad actions and behaviors. So therefore, it is usually a lot more beneficial for us to feel good more often.
Bad feelings – whether they come in the form of worries, fears or even panic attacks – are based on one, and only one, thing: Our attention at those moments is focused on things we want to avoid. Every time we think of something we do not want in our life, we feel bad. Sometimes the feeling can be mild, but sometimes the feeling can be even overpowering.
The process of feeling bad and feeling good is basically the same. Our thinking is mainly based on internal pictures and internal sounds (= internal representations). If we, in our mind, look at pictures of unpleasant things – things we don’t want in our life – or we talk to ourselves in a negative tone of voice about negative things, these thoughts cause us to feel bad, even physically.
If, however, we look at pictures about things we like and enjoy and want to have more in our life, or talk to ourselves in a pleasant tone of voice about pleasant things, the effect is the opposite: we feel happy and successful.
When you add to this our body posture – closed and hunched posture vs. vigorous and open posture – we pretty much have the whole package put together.
An interesting question then arises: who is in charge of our thoughts and body postures?
The answer is, of course: we are.
But is it really that simple?
During our life, we have learned a huge amount of different kinds of habits, conditionings, anchors, beliefs, strategies and who knows what, that have all, at the moment they were created in our mind, served or protected us. Some of the habits and beliefs, that once were useful for us, might not necessarily be that way anymore in other situations in our life. Still, we might have formed, in our unconscious mind, a resemblance or equivalence between things, even based on one single experience. These habits and beliefs might then have become limitations to us, limiting our freedom of choice on what and how to think. And all this is usually happening automatically, guided by our unconscious mind.
When we want to get rid of the worries, fears or even panic attacks, we need to teach our brain to think in a new way. There are numerous techniques to do this, but in the end, it is really all about that one thing: Instead of thinking about what we don’t want to happen, we should think about what we want to happen.
I had a client who got a panic attack every time he thought about crossing a bridge by car. In fact, he had had it for about five years. He created his panic by creating in his mind pictures of how he loses the control of his car and crashes down off the bridge. I first taught him to neutralize the sense of panic by changing these images he saw in his mind from what he did not want to happen to images about what he wanted to happen (ie. him driving safely across bridges). Even by doing only this, he reported a week later that he had been able to drive across several bridges without a hint of a panic attack! In the next phase we then concentrated to direct his thoughts even more toward the things he wants in his life. As a result, he learned to have a lot less bad feelings and instead, a lot more good feelings in his life.
Even though the difference between whether we feel good or bad is very simple, making the necessary changes by ourselves might be a bit challenging. Luckily, NLP offers amazingly effective methods and techniques for making the appropriate changes. In my profession, mastering these techniques has produced me the most rewarding experiences one after another, bringing me an ever growing enthusiasm to keep on doing what I’m doing. And those thoughts bring me very good feelings.

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Friday, December 6, 2013

Success and Peak Performance

Peak performance is not a sole right of peak performers. Also other people than the top athletes and world famous performers need experiences of their own peak performances.
We all need our own, even small, peak performances to bring enjoyment, excitement and push to our life. Without these small or big moments of peak performance, we can easily feel that there is “something missing” from our life. Without our own moments of peak performance, our life can easily become boring, benumbing and dull, won’t it?
Success at almost anything requires at least some sort of peak performances. There are moments in our life when we all would like pull out our best performance. To some, it could be at any kind of competition at any level of sport, to someone else it could be at any kind of performance in front of an audience, yet to another, it could be simply managing to get promptly, efficiently and successfully through the daily tasks.
Peak performance is not an accident, either. It requires skills and practice, but in addition to that, you also need a right kind of challenge and an optimum mental state, in which you can seize all your know-how in the best possible way.
Whatever your needs, goals or circumstances are, all peak performances require two extremely essential elements:
  1. The right kind of goal, and
  2. The right kind of emotional state


The Right Kind of Goal

When aiming for a peak performance, a state of flow can almost without an exception guarantee at least an excellent execution – and by the state of flow, I mean the ideal state of performance, where performing feels extremely effortless and smooth.
Mihály Csíkszentmihályi, who is the former head of the department of psychology at the University of Chicago, is probably the most famous researcher of flow. Csíkszentmihályi has defined the factors that contribute to the flow, and as the most important of them he finds to be the right balance between the goals and available resources.
As I have already noted in several of my other articles, goals in general are a key factor in any kind of success, since they control our actions – either consciously or unconsciously. When our goal is challenging enough, but yet not overwhelming, it gives us just the right kind of value in reference to our performance and success.


The Right Kind of Emotional State

Our emotional state determines at large extent the kind of actions and behaviors we generate. Our emotional state, then, is affected mainly by two factors: our physiology and our thinking (thinking = internal representations).

The optimal state for a peak performance requires the right kind of physiology (for example the postures of the spine and head, eyes upwards, chest out etc.), since the right kind of physiology sends the right kind of message to our brain and nervous system – say, the message of self-confidence.
Our thoughts, on the other hand, are formed mainly from our internal pictures and internal sounds. What kind of internal dialogue and in what tone of voice we say them, greatly affects our feelings. And so do the internal pictures we look at: are we looking at pictures of success or perhaps pictures of failure?
So, only by having the right kind of goals and the right kind of state of mind, we can improve our performance tremendously. Of course there are also other factors that are present in any peak performance. However, all the factors mentioned above, as well as many other factors involved with peak performance and success, can be enhanced and practiced surprisingly fast with NLP techniques and exercises.
The above mentioned elements and exercises are also a substantial part of the NLP based Peak Performance Coaching, which is developed to help people to achieve the success they want at practically any area of their life.

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Friday, February 25, 2011

Why Do We Need Personal Development to Be Successful?

In order to really answer that, we need to define what we mean by personal development. In my opinion, personal development is:
  • Growth as a conscious human being
  • Activities that improve self-knowledge and identity
  • Development of talents and potential
  • Development in different areas of life
  • Building of human capital and employability
  • Enhancing the quality of life
  • Contributing to the realization of dreams and aspirations
  • Is not limited to self-development but includes formal and informal activities for developing others
  • In the context of institutions, it refers to the methods, programs, tools, techniques, and assessment systems that support human development at the individual level in organizations
  • (hard) work that requires discipline, determination, consistency, patience, time, courage, forgiveness


Let’s then take a closer look at some of these bullet points in correlation to success.

Improving your self-knowledge and identity means, among other things, that you become more aware of who you are and what you want. Knowing what you want and where you need to improve yourself in order to achieve what you want are essential parts of success.

If you have already achieved success you cannot stay put if you want to remain successful. The world and other people around you are constantly evolving; therefore you need to keep on developing your talents and potential further. Otherwise, your success will remain short term.

Depending on your goals, you need constant development in different areas of your life, not just in one. Some of these areas might include health, finances, relationships, emotions, habits and beliefs, to mention a few. A good health will ensure that you are able to do what you want to do. It is obvious that you can do a lot more as a healthy person than you would lying sick on a bed. It is obvious, in most cases, that you can achieve more and free yourself from some of the worries when your financial situation is stable. It is obvious that you can achieve more when you have sound relationships with supporting and loving people to back you up. And so on.

Having activities for developing others, in addition to developing yourself, is really what gives you the final boost for success. The old saying “what goes around, comes around” applies here quite well. Helping other people succeed will ensure that they willingly help you in return. It is much, much more difficult – and in most cases even impossible – to achieve success just by yourself. You can’t be the master of everything. And you shouldn’t even try to be. Concentrate on doing well what you love doing and let other people help you in the areas that they love doing. Help others develop themselves and they will help you develop yourself. That is for everybody’s benefit.

Finally, understand that long lasting success does require work. At times, it can even seem to require hard work. But once you have found what it is that you truly love doing, the work doesn’t seem that hard anymore. But it will require discipline, so that you keep your focus on your goals. It will require determination because there will be a lot of people who’ll try to talk you out of your dream. It will require consistency because you will encounter many obstacles along the way and you’ll have to be consistent to work your way through and around them. It will require patience because the bigger your dream, the more it will take time. It will require courage because you will move toward something that is unknown to you. And, maybe most of all, it will require forgiveness because you will have to forgive yourself for all the mistakes you have made, and will make, and you must also forgive others who have hurt you, so you can move into the future with a clean slate.

And that is all part of the road to success.

Written by Hannu Pirilä, one of the leading Personal Development and NLP Coaches in Finland.
http://hannupirila.com/
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