One of my favorite tenets of NLP is the principle of always knowing your outcome. Take for instance my little adventure yesterday. I happen to live in one of the most beautiful places on earth, Santa Barbara, Ca. When I take my afternoon break I have my choice of going to the beach or heading to the local mountains to hike. Yesterday I decided on the mountains. A short twenty minute drive and my wife and I were surrounded by deer, quail, and gaggle of wild turkey (I have know idea what you call a group of wild turkey).
We had decided to go on a short three mile hike with a steep incline. Normally this would have been a like a walk in the park. But after being in Texas for four days home for one day and then off to Sacramento, I was tired. Besides that I had eaten absolutely nothing that even resembled a healthy meal on my travels. Suffice it to say I was STRUGGLING up that hill. Every step was agony, after the first 20 minutes of climbing. Every bend we came to I was hoping the trail would flatten out. Nope, it didn’t. My wife started asking me, do you want to turn around? I think she wanted to go back as well but we’ll come back to that later.
“Know where your headed,” is not some cutesy magnet quote that you hang on your refrigerator door. From what I have learned studying NLP and hypnosis, knowing where your going is actually a program for your unconscious mind. Like a computer program, without a clear destination, your unconscious mind will automatically cause you to fail. Why, because your unconscious mind is hardwired to do as little as possible to reach your goals. This more primitive aspect of your mind allowed our ancestors to conserve precious energy.
So here I was with my mind screaming at me to turn back. Telling me that it was totally useless to keep going up this hill. I could come back next week of course and get this hill done. So what did I do?
I sat down and I imagined being at the top the hill. How good I would feel. I imagined what it sounded like and what the view would be like. I painted a picture for my unconscious mind of the goal I wanted to achieve. I would love to say at this point the rest of the hike was simple. Far from it. But I did make it. The view was spectacular and it did feel incredible to sit at the top of the hill and just relax. And as my wife told me later “The best part of hiking is coming home and taking off your boots.”
So obviously in sales you need to know exactly what your outcome is everyday, every week and every month. Without knowing your outcome, your unconscious will focus on conserving energy. So use NLP and hypnosis to really paint a picture of sights, sounds, smells, tastes and feelings of where it is you want to go. Of course we’ll get into more of how to do that in later posts ; ).
And here’s one more tip for you, with a caveat. Only put this tip into use if you absolutely want to get things DONE. The tip is to have an accountability partner. Someone who you report too. And no I’m not saying some nice cheerleader coach. I’m talking about a friend of yours who really respects you enough to hold you accountable. Do what I do, I have an accountability partner that will charge me $500 if I don’t do what I said I’ll do. Believe me, this will get you up that mountain every time!
Let me know what you think.
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