In the first three articles we looked at how to make your goals meaningful by finding out which feelings or values you want to feel more of in your life from now on – and which you would like to feel less of.
We now need to do two things:
- whittle your list down to size and discover which feelings are more important to you and which are less so – so that you don’t waste time chasing minor ones and forget about important ones.
- look at why so-called negative feelings are included in your final list – because, after all, isn’t NLP supposed to be about being positive…?
‘Positive Living’ or Realistic Living
Your list of values is going to be used to create your life goals for the next 12 months or more and these goals need to include plans for eliminating or reducing the unwelcome feelings that you currently experience.
One of the less helpful aspects of the Positive Living movement is a tendency to think that anything negative (such as listing the feelings you don’t want to feel) is somehow a sign of weakness – a sign that perhaps you are not fully on board the Positive Living bandwagon!
Yet in the real world we do experience unwelcome feelings. We worry, feel down, get irritable, have pressures, argue, have doubts, etc. That’s life! And pretending they don’t exist by only focusing on positive emotions won’t make this reality go away.
In ‘real world NLP’ we recognise that it is likely that we will always have unwelcome feelings such as these. And we also recognise that we have the ability to use our NLP insights and skills to ensure we (1) experience such unpleasant feelings less frequently and (2) spend much less time in such moods.
The beginning of your blueprint
In Step 3 you identified, by using the Ideal Day fantasy, how your life can/could be – and the feelings which make for an ideal day. And If you have really given this some thought you’ll probably now have a list of 15 or 20 desirable and undesirable feelings.
This is a great start but attempting to live in accord with a huge list such as this would become quite stressful – not the object of the exercise.
Step 4: Your ‘Top 7′ feelings
To make this complete list of feelings or values workable and practical you’re now going to whittle it down to just 5-7 feelings. Wgich does mean you’re going to have to dump quite a few items. Not completely, of course – they’ll still be desirable, even if you will not be giving them priority so you can, if you like, put them on a lesser ‘it would be nice if …’ list.
But your Top 7 list is the one you are going to be focussing on!
This is your ‘Not Negotiable’ list – the short list of values/feelings that you intend to work on over the next 12 months. It’s the list that you will check every few days to ensure you’re staying on course. And it is list that will enable you, in Step 5 (the next article), to design meaningful, worthwhile and appealing goals for yourself.
So to complete Step 4…
… look at your full Ideal Day list and make some hard choices. Which ones get to stay and which have to go. Select the feelings/values are the most important to you and which you…
- Intend to experience more of (move towards) and
- Intend to experience a lot less of (move away from).
Only allowing yourself to have 7 helps focus the mind on the really important ones. And notice that the word is ‘intend’ rather than ‘hope’ or ‘wish’ – we are going to be creating goals and not dreams.
Finally sort your Top 7 into order of importance – into a hierarchy – so the most important feeling to experience or to avoid experiencing over the next 12 months is No.1 and the next most important is No. 2 and so on.
In the next article we look at how to use this Top 7 to design practical goals.
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
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This is a great series of articles (as usual).
Step 3 and 4 I have sometimes found difficult. If someone is generally on track in life this is probably quite easy, as overall it’s likely to be a series of adjustments in direction they will be making. For some, such as those whos lives are significantly out of kilter with perhaps where they would like their lives to be, it can be hard. In such cases, how do you know what you want when you are habitually in a situation you’re not happy with? It’s too easy to get caught in a trap of away from motivations and can be hard to find the towards feelings and things you want in life.
I recently spoke to someone who said “everyone knows what they want, however, perhaps some find it hard to actually say it, even to themselves”. I think this is a really good point. You have to know in yourself what is congruent for Steps 3 & 4, and you have to be prepared to accept that. Some people seem to find this very hard, as it may mean major changes in life – giving up a job or relationship for instance – which can be an emotional situation they don’t want to go through.
So for me, for Steps 3 & 4, congruency is the key word and there needs to be a level of honesty and integrity to yourself in this – not those around you, not the situations you are in, etc. For some people I have found this can be hard. I don’t know how else to help such people or to explain it any more than that.
Anyone else found this or have a view?
Cheers,
Jamie
Good points, Jamie, and ones I have often come across. There are two keys to Steps 3 & 4. (1) Make the Ideal Day at least 5-10 years in the future – so you can forget about the current realities and simply focus on what would be nice to have going on in your life.
Now, because it is so far into the future you don’t need to be ‘realistic’ and (2) it is so far from you you can just day dream – you know, living on tropical island, your yacht in the bay, perfect health, great company, ideal relationship, etc etc.
It is not the fantasy contents that are important – it’s what they tell you about your values. It’s about which values you’d ‘really’ like to be living
Interesting how I have found myself avoiding the ‘values’ work over the last couple of days. Finally, I decided to go for a walk this morning, and did some ‘daydreaming’.
Firstly I noticed how I started to follow a pattern of ‘you’re not doing this properly Jonny’ I also noticed lots of away from motivations. Curiously I felt quite deflated after sometime, almost as if coming back to the ‘now’ made me aware of what was missing in my life, right now.
I was able to look upon the present with some disassociation, which helps. Having just done another session of daydreaming, I have this time learnt to ‘let go’ not try to daydream, just noticing what comes up. Although I know this stuff, it still helps to remind myself, rapport with yourself Jonny, rapport with yourself!
I have also realised it is helpful to be aware of what status I give to the exercises one does, especially this one! By lowering the expectation, just having a play, some magic moments rise to the top. Great point Reg – make it workable! I have previously mastered the art of creating so much to do / achieve, implementing unrealistic timescales to do it, and battering myself when I don’t hit my goals, all that roled up with some pure procrastination!
So it really helps me to break stuff down, and achieve some things well! I have also set my ‘RAS’ for noticing whats important to me, some interesting stuff coming up throughout the day without even conciously thinking about it. Reg – The series of blogs has really provided some great guidance, prefectly timed and brilliant content!
Jonny
Yes, relaxing into it and thus not pressurising ourselves is a key part of this. Once there’s no stress or rush the inner, or unconscious, mind can do a better job of letting us use the fantasising or day dreaming to identify what really we really value.
Ah yes, it is worth noting the timescales involved and that this is more a fantasy used to unearth desired beliefs, values and feelings. Thanks for that point, that helps unlock the sort of blockers that I brought up.
This is probably a really key point to some people to be aware of. If there are things in a persons life that they are very strongly attached to, yet they are experiencing as a blocker or inhibitor to having the life they really want, then taking time to make this clear to them and that the Ideal Day can be more fantasy should help. I guess there is skill in presenting this in the right way.
So, I’ve done the top seven values. I have found it quite confusing at some points throughout the process. I did not feel ‘definite’ about the values I had picked out as my top seven, almost doubting what I had selected. I questioned whether I was making this stuff up, are they really my values, how do I know?
Also. I ask the question – am I living my values? How do I motivate myself to do so? Working at the top of the old logical levels can’t half be a stretch!
Jonny
The ‘definite’ test, when it come to our emotions, is usually recognised by a feeling that something in some way “feels” right… And that’s about as much ‘definitness’ as we’re likely to get – because this is an emotional rather than intellectual or rational process.
That said, you could take your Top 7 and then fantasise or imagine a day in a few years time when you are engaging in activities that fulfills each of them… If that feels good you’re probably on track.
And remember that you can always change your Top 7 in a few weeks or a few months time – and simply re-jig your goals.
Hello,
Very interesting thoughts and comments which I have enjoyed reading.
I do a fair bit of value elicitation on myself and people I work with and more specifically listing them in a hierarchy of importance, I have noticed that people find this incredibly difficult to do, myself included.
I suppose the question is How do you set about putting your or coaching others to list their core values in order of importance?
Yes, creating the hierarchy sometimes tends to be a bit of stretch.
First thing to remain clear about is that we’re after an approximation i.e. It doesn’t matter hugely if, say, “excitement” is number three or number five – just that it’s in the Top 7 – and that we keep that Top 7 current and simmering by checking in on it once a week or so.
Next, there are two main ways of creating the actual hierarchy: (1) what “has to” be in the Top 7 and (2) what can be jettisoned because it’s not important enough to me to be in the Top 7.
I prefer the first way and that’s why we use this one in the NLP Practitioner Part 2 Programme. (you may remember that’s the one where we used the Genie and the Lamp game to identify the top values…)