Mastering Motivation: Motivating Yourself and Others With NLP

You now have options of course. If the ecological consequences are unacceptable to you, you can walk away and thank your lucky stars you didn't get too motivated and excited. Alternatively, you can refine and refresh the task or opportunity in a way that avoids or minimises these undesirable consequences. In effect you have developed hindsight beforehand and that is very useful to have.

•Energy – Our personal energy is a finite resource and it’s a resource to be considered. What is your energy like now you’ve achieved this outcome?

and, finally:

•Spirituality – Many people have faith or some sort of spiritual belief or practice. What is happening in that area of your life now that you’ve achieved what you wanted to be motivated to achieve?

Are you content with these changes in your life? Are they acceptable to you? Have there been some unexpected effects that actually alarm you or are undesirable?

Activity 13 – Looking Back from the Future

Imagine, in your mind’s eye that you have vigorously pursued the task you were considering. I don't know how far into the future it is - days, weeks, months or years - but you are well advanced in the process. I want you to look around you so to speak and consider what else has changed as a consequence of pursuing this process.

Let's look specifically at a number of domains in your life:

•Health & Well-being - What has happened to your health and well-being as a consequence of pursuing this goal or task?

•Wealth & Finance – What has happened to your wealth, financial status and circumstances as a consequence of getting motivated to do whatever it was you were considering doing?

•Personal development – think of the ways you want to develop as a person. What has happened in that area of your life as a result of pursuing that outcome or process?

•Relationships – what has happened to your relationships as a result of pursuing that process or outcome?

•Home & Family Life – What has happened to this area of your life? Are there any changes?

•Work & Career – Now that you have achieved whatever it was that you wanted to become motivated for, what has happened in the area of your work and career?

•Fun & Recreation – what is happening there?

•Self-esteem – Let’s look at the areas of self-esteem and self-respect. In this future you have achieved the task you wanted to become motivated to achieve. How do you feel about yourself? How is your self-esteem – your self-respect?

•Security – Let’s think about different types of security – physical security, emotional security, financial security – anything else that is important to you. How secure do you feel now, having achieved what it was you wanted to become motivated to achieve?

The final area we want to explore, the final aspect of the intra-personal systemic mix of motivation, is the concept of ecology.

To recap, ecology is an awareness of consequences. It is the appreciation that whatever actions we take will have inevitable influence and impact elsewhere. Our unconscious intra-personal systems are very good at intuitively perceiving ecological conflicts and preventing us from acting in a way that will cause ecological harm.

Activity 12 –Beliefs About Personal Efficacy

Our final set of beliefs refers to personal efficacy. Again, take time to brainstorm some ideas by asking yourself the question:

"To effectively engage in this task or opportunity requires me to be able to..."

and then just Hot-pen it as you did with the previous activities. Write down whatever comes to mind without criticism or pause.

Then, review the list you have created and allocate a numerical score of 1 to 10 to each statement according to how much you actually believe it you are able to undertake it.

Are there any perceived requirements of you that you do not feel you are up to? Perhaps there are statements on your list that you look at and just think “I can't do that.”

If so, ask yourself some questions:

•Are you really sure you can't do that? Or are you selling yourself short?

•Is this ability really required after all?

•Is the ability something you could learn to do or be able to do with support?

•Have you actually done something similar in the past but forgotten about it?

•If you definitely can't do this, is it something that someone else could do for you? Can you buy, beg or borrow the expertise?

You may find that any perceived obstacle in terms of personal efficacy is less permanent, less pervasive and less absolute than you may have thought.

Activity 11 – Beliefs About Permissibility

I want you now to repeat the same process for beliefs about permissibility. Taking a fresh sheet of paper, ask yourself the question:

“What has to happen for this task or process to effectively be pursued and unfold?

Then, once you have completed the process, look at each the belief statements you have written down and score them. By this I mean allocate a numerical value of 1 to 10 to each statement according to how much you actually believe it. Let ‘1’ represent having extreme doubts about whether a certain thing is possible and ‘10’ represent absolute confidence in the possibility of a certain thing.

You may find that some of the things that you suspect have to be possible for the task to be successfully engaged in are things you are convinced are possible. On the other hand, you may find there are things that would need to be possible that you really don't believe are currently possible at all.

The higher the various scores, the higher the degree of Belief Congruency at possibility level.

Look at the items where the scores are low or where they are there exists a degree of doubt that is reflected in an ‘average’ score. This could be where you could do with challenging your beliefs. If there are aspects of the task that you just don't think are possible you might want to examine those further. For example:

•What leads you to believe something is impossible? What is your evidence?

•Is there anyone else who has achieved this 'impossible' thing? If so, perhaps you could use them as a model? How did they achieve something that you consider to be impossible?

•Was there a time in your past when something that seemed impossible was actually achieved by you?

Activity 10 – Beliefs About Possibility

Take a sheet of paper. I want you to think of the task or process you wish to be motivated to achieve and then write at the top of the page:

"To engage successfully in this task, the things that have to be possible are..."

Go ahead, just make a list. Brainstorm it. What has to be possible for you to successfully engage in this task? Allow whatever emerges to emerge. Some people call this ‘Hot Pen’-ing - allowing your hand to write almost as if it is doing so itself.

order to be really congruently motivated to achieve something we suggest that you need to believe:

•It is possible to achieve it,

•It is okay, or permissible, to achieve it, and

•That you personally have the effectiveness to significantly influence it.

Think of it this way:

•How motivated would you be to do something if, somewhere in your awareness, you felt it was simply impossible?

•How motivated would you be if you had a vague intuitive sense that achieving whatever it is would break an important unstated (or even stated) law or rule?

•How motivated to tackle something would you be if you believed that you simply did not have any capacity or ability to make a difference?

Beliefs are extremely powerful influences on our behaviour and, we suggest, our sense of motivation.

For the purpose of this process we want to look at three categories of beliefs:

•Beliefs about Possibility

•Beliefs about Permissibility

•Beliefs about Personal Efficacy