Setting New Year’s Resolutions using NLP – the structure of Well Formed Outcomes
At this time of year many will be looking forward to 2011 with the hope for positive change and greater success than before. The conventional way to do this is through making New Year’s Resolutions. Most of us will have made such Resolutions in the past with perhaps mixed success but NLP gives us ways of setting Well-Formed Outcomes that maximise the likelihood of achieving success.
Well-Formed Outcomes are simply goals that are conceived and stated in an effective manner and the process of creating them follows a number of simple rules that we will look at:
1. Stated Positively: It is often said that the mind struggles to process a negative statement, such as “Don’t think of a kangaroo!” I imagine that in order to make sense of the last sentence you had to form a representation of a kangaroo first and then do something to mentally get rid of it. If I had wished you not to think of a kangaroo it would have been wiser, perhaps, of me to suggest that you think of the first car your family ever owned or your best friend (unless, of course, your best friend is a kangaroo!). The same principle applies to goal setting. If you set a Resolution of “I will stop eating cream cakes” your attention necessarily directs itself to cream cakes. A better alternative would be to state a positive goal, what you do want rather than what you don’t want, and resolve “I choose to nourish myself with healthy and balanced foods.” The mental representations you create, the blueprint for action that you are giving your inner mind, is of a very different character. There is an old law in hypnotherapy called the Law of Concentrated Attention which tells us that we tend to create what we give our attention to the most. The same principle is advanced in Eastern philosophies in the statement “Qi flows where attention goes.” So be sure to state your Resolutions in the positive – what you do want, rather than what you don’t want any more.
2. Stated in Sensory-based Language: When people set outcomes they sometimes tend to do so in rather abstract terms that are not easy to measure or assess. For example, if someone makes a Resolution that they want to “become more sociable” what exactly does that mean? In NLP we suggest setting outcomes in Sensory-based Language, that is language that describes clear evidence criteria for your outcome in terms of what you will see, hear, feel, taste or smell when you get your outcome. For example, the goal just mentioned could be better expressed as “I will be going out for social activities at least two evenings each week and will have expanded my circle of friends by three people by the end of June.” This outcome is measurable and progress towards it can be assessed because it is expressed in sensory-based terms with clear evidence criteria.
3. Self-initiated and Self-controlled: If we set an outcome that can only be generated by the actions of others we make ourselves hostage to fortune and the whims of other people. It is also well recognised that a good way to generate anxiety (even depression) is to take something that it is important for us and ensure we have no control over it happening. Well-formed Outcomes are outcomes that the individual has power to initiate and continue to strongly influence towards realisation. A classic example of a poorly constructed outcome in this regard is “I will get [insert name] to love me.” Well, no-one controls another person’s emotions or responses to this extent so the outcome set will necessarily be an uncontrollable one for the person seeking the other’s love. Let me give another example. If a person sets an outcome of “I will win the lottery this year” that is clearly beyond anything more than the tiniest influence of any person. A more self-initiated and self-controlled outcome would be “I will buy a lottery ticket every week and check the winning numbers consistently.” This is, at least, within the power of the person setting the outcome.
I suggest that you start to run any fledgling New Year’s Resolutions through these principles for Well-formed-ness and I will be posting some further Well-Formed criteria very soon.
The process of setting Well-formed Outcomes is just one of the fundamental NLP skills that we cover on our NLP for Business courses in Cheshire and London.
Tags: New Year Resolutions, NLP
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