62 Part I: Introducing NLP
Fast-forward through the years and look back at your life as it is now. Make a
list of the dreams you’d dare to aim for if you had all the money and influence
in the world and knew you wouldn’t fail.
You may decide that you want material things like a huge nest-egg, a big
house, and nice cars, you may want a home and family of your own, or you
may decide you want to be influential in the political arena. Your life is your
choice. Working through the following section, and flicking to Chapter 5 to
read about values, helps you to discover the reasons why you want the goals
you do and find the hot buttons that drive you.
Becoming smarter than SMART: Creating well-formed outcomes
SMART goals were all the rage a few years ago in the corporate world.
According to the SMART model, goals need to be Specific, Measurable,
Achievable, Realistic, and Timed (hence the acronym). This approach is a
great discipline so far as it goes. NLP, however, allows a better way forward
by adding sensory-specific information, which can help you modify your
behaviour or seek help in the form of extra resources, including guides and
mentors.
NLP makes SMART goals even smarter by helping you work out what you
want using the well-formed outcome process. NLP builds on the SMART
approach by making you use all your senses to design a goal, and to fine tune
it to be more than just Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Timed.
This process requires you to answer a series of questions that really help
you explore the hows, whys, and wherefores of your desired outcome. By fol-
lowing this process you begin to understand your true motives for wanting
your goals, and you can weigh up the pros and cons of success versus failure!
A fairly common example of a well-formed outcome may be to want a better
paid job.
When your desired outcome meets the following criteria, NLP says that it
satisfies the well-formed conditions. For every result you want to achieve, ask
yourself the following seven questions:
- Is the goal stated in the positive?
- Is the goal self-initiated, maintained, and within my control?
- Does the goal describe the evidence procedure?
- Is the context of the goal clearly defined?
