This is the third in a series on how you can use NLP to create personal or professional goals, including New Your Resolutions!
Article No. 1 is about how to use NLP to create life goals which give us a sense of fulfilment and purpose – a feeling that we really are going somewhere with our lives.
Article No. 2 is about how our goals become meaningful and fulfilling when we use NLP to link our goals with our values i.e. when, instead of being sort of plucked out of the air, our goals are carefully designed to ensure we experience, on a daily basis, more of the feelings which we would like to feel – and less of the feelings which we would like to avoid feeling! And the rest of this series is about how to carefully design such goals.
Time for some day dreaming!
A great way of identifying how you want to feel (and how you don’t want to feel!) is to do a bit of day dreaming – or fantasising – about your Ideal Day. That’s what this article is about; how you can use day dreaming plus NLP to identify the feelings which will guide you in selecting your goals for the next twelve months.
So let’s begin…
Step 1: What do you want?
Take some time to conjure up your Ideal Day in 3 to 5 year’s time. You could go for a nearer date if you really wish but making it quite a few years ahead allows you to day dream a bit less realistically and a bit more adventurously. (You’re more likely to ‘go for it’ and dream a really great Ideal Day for a distant date than for one a mere 6 or 12 months ahead.)
Get lots of detail into your Ideal Day because the more detail you include the more enticing it becomes. Consider such details as
- In which part of the world will you be? What will your home be like?
- Who are you glad will be with you? Who are you glad will not be there?
- What you will be doing – in some detail i.e. begin in the morning and go through the day).
- What other aspects of this Ideal Day make you feel good? What aspects, when compared with life today, make you feel relieved?
Continue to add detail by having this process run in the background over a few days or more. Make written notes if this helps.
Step 2: What will this enable you to feel?
When you’ve got a really attractive concept or image of your Ideal Day your next step is to use this to identify your values.
Remember that in NLP we use the term ‘values’ to mean the feelings that we want to be moving towards (i.e. feeling more of) and the feelings that we want to be moving away from (i.e. feeling less of).
Listing the values or feelings that are iumportant to you is the main purposes of this Ideal Day fantasy since, if it’s an ‘ideal’ day, it will reflect the types of feelings or values which are important to you.
So now imagine you are living your Ideal day – as if you’re there, in it, right now – and come up with two lists:
- All the good feelings that you are experiencing
- All the not-so-good feelings which you tend to experience in your life nowadays but are no longer feeling, or are rarely feeling, in the Ideal Day.
Be sure to write down these lists. Yes, they will be developing and changing lists – that’s common. Some values will become more important and some less important over the days in which you are designing your Ideal Day.
That’s it for now…
There are enough practical pieces in these two steps to keep you gainfully employed for a few days. This does mean that you won’t have your final list of goals ready in time for them to become your New Year Resolutions.
And maybe that’s just as well!
The usual New Year Resolutions tend to be ones which are conjured up late on New Year’s Eve and which normally last well into the second or third day of the New Year!
With this NLP-led approach we’re aiming for something that’s a lot more enduring and life-enhancing – and worth that investment of your time.
The full Goals and Values series
NLP and Goals (1) – http://pegasusnlpblog.com/goals-nlp-the-ouch-factor
NLP and Goals (2) – http://pegasusnlpblog.com/nlp-goals-values-fools-gold
NLP and Goals (3) – http://pegasusnlpblog.com/nlp-goals-day-dreaming
NLP and Goals (4) – http://pegasusnlpblog.com/nlp-rapport-gimme-win-win
NLP and Goals (5) – http://pegasusnlpblog.com/nlp-goals-values-hierarchy
NLP and Goals (6) – http://pegasusnlpblog.com/nlp-goals-avoid-inner-conflict
NLP and Goals (7) – http://pegasusnlpblog.com/nlp-goals-prepare-to-act
Be careful what you wish for;
It may well come true
Happy New Year to Reg the team and all those that are and have been part of the Pegasus learning experience.
Tudor
Wonderfull that by daydreaming gives me the permision to let go and play! Also, had very distinctive sense of calmness afterwords. How many times have I daydreamed, and not paid attention to the messages? Quite immediately a number of values raised above the surface, very clear, some of which I had not thought of before. Interesting that I remember as I child, teachers would sometimes shout at me for daydreaming, therefore I saw it as ‘bad practice’ or a problem with my ability to concentrate, comments such as ‘he’s such a daydreamer……’ I remember realising on Pegasus Core skills, on my word, its actually really useful to daydream, and can be highly creative, and much more, not so daft after all eh…?