304 Part V: Integrating Your Learning
Knowing your modelling outcome
NLP takes you from being stuck in a problem to achieving outcomes. When
you know your outcome in any scenario, you focus your attention on what
you want, for example ‘I want to be a better dad’ or ‘I’d like to appear confident
when I go speed dating.’ Being specific about the capability that you want
to model is helpful; for example, ‘playing with my children when I come
home from work’ or ‘taking a keen interest in a person when I meet them’.
This focus is especially useful in modelling to help you know when to stop,
because you recognise that you’ve achieved your outcome. You always learn
more when you practise what you discover about, and from, your exemplar.
This attention to the outcome is much more important than being overly
precious about your methodology at this stage in your learning.
Create a well-formed modelling outcome by going through all the steps we
outline in Chapter 4 and summarise in Appendix C. You may be modelling as
part of an NLP training course or to develop your own NLP knowledge, to be
better at your job, develop a skill such as a new language, or become better at
your business.
Identifying your exemplar
When choosing an exemplar, you’re looking for one and often several examples
of people who do precisely what you’d like to do well in the same or similar
context. Your exemplars may well have reached the stage of being
unconsciously competent at whatever they do well: they’re so skilled at what
they do that they find ‘unpacking’ the details when others ask for advice
hard; they simply say ‘I just do it,’ so you need to do some detective work
to retrieve the information. For example, for your exemplar you may choose
someone who is successful at the following:
✓ Building an active social network
✓ Coaching clients through divorce
✓ Creating a warm and welcoming home environment
✓ Displaying an aptitude for learning new languages
✓ Finishing DIY projects
✓ Formatting clear documents
✓ Franchising businesses
✓ Raising money for charity
✓ Staying healthy while looking after others
