Fiery Balls of Goalness

I remember for a long time having trouble setting time aside to set goals.  I still, from time to time, forget about the incredible difference it makes to your outlook on life.  I put goal setting to the back of my mind, tell myself I’ll ‘do it later’ before a distinct lack of direction and focus prompts me into rectifying the situation.

When I speak to people on courses one of the things I find is people don’t set goals because they’ve never been shown how to.  It’s easy to get demoralized when you set goals and they don’t happen or because you set goals that you don’t really care about.

So thinking about that, and since 2009 is really only warming it’s tyres at the moment, here’s a few things you can do to make sure this year is the year you get closer to your dreams.

1. Know what you want - Be clear on what you want.  Do you want more money or do you want a new job?  Do you want a better relationship or do you want to be loved?  Do you want to join a gym or do you want to be healthier?   Although each of these sounds the same they are all subtly different and it’s those subtle differences that make the difference between goals you get and goals you don’t.

Be absolutely clear on what you want before you start.  Dedicate some time, usually 5 minutes will be more than enough, to make sure you know what it is your aiming for.

2. Do something about it - The secret to getting every goal you set is taking immediate and dedicated action to move you towards it.  A goal cannot achieve itself, yet many people still set goals and sit back and wait for the universe to deliver it to them.  “If it’s meant to be it will happen”, how many times have you heard that?

Here’s a new way of thinking about it, if you want it to happen then go do something about it…NOW!  Ask yourself this question “What is the one action that, when I take it now, will move me closer to achieving my outcome than any other action I can take?”.

Now…go do it!  (And just notice how amazing you feel when you do)

3.  You cannot fail - We live in a world with an expectation of instant perfection.  We get fooled into believing that overnight success is the norm rather than the exception.

Success comes from making good decisions, good decisions come from experience and experience comes from making bad decisions. One of the defining characteristics of successful people is the ability to learn from their mistakes.

“What we call failure is not falling down but staying down” _{Mary Pickford}

Thomas Edison had many attempts at inventing the lightbulb before he found the successful formula.  Imagine how would the world be different now if he’d chucked it when his first attempt went ‘POP’?

What about a small child learning to walk?  How far would any child get if he or she just gave up on the whole walking business the first time they fell flat on their face?

If failure isn’t an option, what will you do first?

4.  Be ready to change - The world is not a complicated place yet sometimes the world likes to test you to see how committed you are to getting what you want.  Getting your goals depends on your ability to adapt to the ever changing landscape that we live in.

Our landscape at the moment is dominated by financial upheaval on a global scale and once the crisis is over the media will turn their attention to the next crisis to befall us, won’t they!

So do you stop?  Do you wait for it to pass before going for your goals?  Do you hell!

If you can adapt your behavior to the landscape you live in you will get success.  Stop waiting for the landscape to be perfect because the perfect landscape is already here.

5.  Be Excellent - The final part of getting your goals is to always strive to be the best you can be.  Excellence is not

Jake finally secured C3-PO's autograph

about being beyond reproach and it is not about perfection.  Excellence is about being aware of what you are doing and changing it if it is not working.

Imagine the world’s best athletes.  To be a true champion an athlete must work hard every day to increase and build their fitness.  To be world class an athlete must study their craft and maintain a dogged focus on their goal.  To get the result an athlete must stay 100% committed to being the best they can be and doing everything in their power to maximize that potential.  To be a winner an athlete doesn’t stop until the race is over.

When you are going for any goal, whether it be big, small or somewhere in between, always BE world class, always BE a champion, always BE a winner and enjoy the results.

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Goal Setting is not an exact science.  The best we can do is to make it more probable that we will get the goals we set by behaving in ways that attract success.

The question…now you know what to do are you ready to make your dreams happen?

Hi All,

Apologies for the gap in posting, I promise to get back on the ball now.  Been juggling a few too many balls recently and got some great stuff coming up for you now.

Some information for you on the Glasgow & Renfrewshire Practice Group and a thanks to all of those who attended the first meeting and assisted us with defining exactly where, why and how the group will move forward.  

Thanks also to our inaugural guest speaker, Les Morgan, who provided an insight into the world of HeartMath.  Something I believed I knew nothing about before he started speaking and then discovered all the times that I’ve came into contact with it over the years and just didn’t know what it was called!  A really good talk on a very interesting topic so thank you for giving us some of your time.

The practice group meet on the first Monday of every month and the next meeting is therefore coming around really soon.  Remember the group is open to EVERYONE regardless of your NLP experience.  Please come along and try it out and you can be assured of a warm welcome and loads of great information.

Here’s the details for the next meeting:

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Date & Time: Monday 2nd February  - 6:30 - 9pm

Venue: Reid MacEwan training Centre Erskine

Cost: £5 (to cover room hire, tea and coffee)

‘What Is NLP?’ evening facilitated by Brian Costello of HeadStrong NLP  

 Find out more about the  NLP model, how it works and why it is gaining global popularity  and then participate in a short NLP workshop and learn a simple NLP pattern that can help in your day to day life (workshop is suitable for all regardless of NLP experience).

Doors Open: 6pm for networking, workshop begins 6:30pm

If you are in the area, wanting more practice, or just want to dip your toe in the water of NLP then please drop in and try it out.  You never know what you might find!

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We are already in discussions to bring in some truly inspiring guest speakers from the world of NLP and Personal Development over the coming months and the group can only go from strength to strength as it attracts more people interested in NLP and learning the best strategies for success.

The door is open, come and join us.  There’s even a cup of tea and a biscuit in it for you!

If you want more information before joining us then please email me (brian@headstrongnlp.com) and I’ll answer any questions you may have.

Yours

Brian

So how acute are your senses?  Are you good at spotting things?

Watch this video and put it to the test.

What have you not noticed today?

Brian

So again I find cause to point my will to scribble my musings towards the mainstream science community and cheer as they begin prove the  goings on of the brain.  Albeit the goings on in the brain that many therapists have been working with since at least the early 1980’s if not long, long before that.

Here’s what I’m talking about.

The boffins at Oxford Uni have run a series of experiments on pain and pain response.  One of these experiments involved a group of people with chronic hand pain looking at their sore hand through a pair of inverted binoculars (binoculars round the wrong way).  Incredibly they found that the subjective pain response was greatly reduced and the amount of swelling was also reduced due to the fact that the sore hand now appeared to be much smaller.  (Source)

This is great research and for anyone out there with chronic pain - or any pain for that matter - as all you have to do now is get used to navigating your world through those darn binoculars and all your pain will begin to shrink and may eventually disapear!  Or is there an easier way than walking around with your binoculars every day?

I point to another piece of research that I recently came across and this I find truly innovative and a great way of merging cognitive and medical science.

Scientists (or should I call these guys uber-boffins) at Omneuron in California have turned pain control into what I can only describe as a game.

Here’s how it works; imagine someone with chronic pain.  When that pain fires an area of the brain connected to pain control, fires at exactly the same time.  The guys at Omneuron have designed a piece of software that measures that ‘fire’ in the brain and turns it into a virtual flame.  The more pain, the bigger the flame; less pain, smaller flame - you get the idea?

Our imaginary chronic pain sufferer gets put into a MRI scanner -the big coffin like scanning machines you’ll have seen on telly - wearing a pair of special virtual reality goggles.   These goggles then show the client their own unique, real-time ‘flame of pain’ as measured by the MRI scanner.

Here’s where it get’s even better, the patient is then talked through various visualisation techniques such as imagining the area being flooded with soothing chemicals or being fixed by armies of little helpers and watches as the flame gets smaller and smaller until, after some practice, the patient is easily controlling the flame and therefore their own pain. (Source)

How cool is that!

I must admit the man in charge, Dr Christopher deCharms (not kidding!), then loses it a bit by saying that ‘in time a patient could evoke the effect without the machine’.   Aaaahhh…

Of course a patient can invoke the effect without the bloody machine!!  It’s nothing to do with the machine.  It’s all our own doing.

Feelings, including pain, are just feelings.  Yet because all our senses are part of one large cognitive net we can use one sense to ‘talk’ to another sense, i.e. we can use visualisation to affect our sensory feelings.

Here’s a wee trick for you that will save you a lot of money on paracetamol.  Next time you have a headache ask yourself “If this headache was to have a colour what colour would it be?” and see what comes up for you.  Is it a blue headache, a fluorescent yellow headache, a boiling red headache, a deep black headache?  Whatever colour it is, imagine turning it white.  Imagine a flood of brilliant soothing white entering your head and taking away all the old colour.

Try it.  What have you go to lose?

If you suffer from any other type of pain you can use a similar technique:

1. Close your eyes and get ‘in touch’ with the pain

2. Ask yourself ‘If this pain was to have a shape what shape would it be?’ (accept whatever comes up e.g. circle, square, cloud, raindrops, spiders, snakes, pins, fire.  Always work with whatever your mind wants to imagine.)

3. Ask yourself ‘If this shape was to have a colour what colour would it be?’

4. Now if that pain was to be totally gone now, what shape would complete freedom from pain be?  And what colour would that shape be?

5. Use your imagination to completely change the old painful shape into the new freedom shape and notice what happens to the pain.

6. Do this for 5-10 minutes every single day for a week and notice the results.

This is only one way to do it and you can use the soothing medicine or the army of people example if that works better for you.

Before I go here’s a couple of resources or you if you are interested in finding out more about how your mind can affect your body.

Dr David Hamilton is a leading expert on the science of how the mind affects the body and his book
It’s the Thought That Counts: Why Mind Over Matter Really Works is a fantastic read packed full of scientific study and research into the affect your mind has over your healing ability.

David also has a new book out How Your Mind Can Heal Your Body which I’ve still to read.  I would say, having met David a couple of times and having read ‘It’s the thought that counts’, that it will be also packed full of the science of healing with the mind.

I would, of course, be failing miserably if I didn’t also recommend the classic Quantum Healing Exploring the Frontiers of Mind /Body Spirit by Deepak Chopra.  One of the most insightful and incredible books I have ever read and a must for anyone interested in the power of the mind.

Anyway, enough from me for today.  I’ll be back soon to give you some tips on how to forget the crappy New year’s resolutions that some of you (and you know who you are!) are already not keeping and help set some truly empowering goals for 2009.

‘Til then, happy thinking.

Brian