How I achieved a 10 year goal in 6 months using NLP
Posted on August 23, 2016 by Richard Hutton, One of Thousands of Life Coaches on Noomii.
This is the story of how I escaped the boundaries of the problem I created. You cannot solve a problem at the level of thinking you've created it.
Since the age of 17 (now I’m 20) I’ve been going to seminars, reading books and studying success in general. My life looks very different from what it used to be yet there is still a lot more to learn.
In 2015 I was trapped in a problem I didn’t realise until about one year later. It was called “false hope syndrome”. What that basically means is when a person sets a big goal for themselves, they get all excited and start working towards it, but then when the initial burst of excitement runs out after 2-3 months they abandon the goal and set another one. This happened so many times it’s not even funny, and it happened in all areas of my life.
However the reason I didn’t notice it sooner is because it was covered up by clever rationalisation. I had reasons why the new goal was a better idea than the previous one which made it ok to change course as long as I got closer to my true outcome.
I’ve reached a point where I said enough is enough, if I was to keep this up I would fail in everything, because what it essentially was, it was a lack of persistence. Any worthwhile lofty goal would take years to achieve, which meant it would require A LOT of persistence. So I said to myself: how about I pick one big goal and I would stick to it, not because that what the best idea I had at the time or the most appropriate, but simply to build persistence.
I picked drumming since because I enjoyed it and started playing from the age of 12 (although haven’t practiced much overall) and I set out the 10,000 hour goal. If one reaches that number of hours practiced in an intense, focused manner, they would become a Master in the field.
All this was intended as a side project, requiring 3hrs a day, I would still have time to pursue my coaching career.
This was at the beginning of 2016.
Fast forward 2 months and as I was walking along one day, an idea came to mind. If I wanted to get persistence, I would need a strategy for it. Specifically in NLP a strategy is the order in which you arrange your images in your mind to get a result. The way to get a strategy is by modelling: copying someone who does it naturally very well. But did you know you can model yourself? So I thought back to a time when I did naturally persist in something. I can’t remember what the event was, but the order of images I wrote down immediately, here you go:
when a “better idea” comes to mind to replace your current goal
imagine you see a giant “NO!” in front of you
crumple up the new “better idea” like a piece of paper and throw it to the side
now flood your mind with images of your desired outcome of the goal you were working on initially
There you have it! How to do persistence 101, it really is that simple. Not surprisingly a months after that I had the opportunity to use it. I watched some videos and movies about chess Grandmasters and I said to myself “WOW that is sooo cool, what if I did that??”→ if you haven’t figured, this is the time to unleash your persistence strategy.
Still there was something missing. I wanted to get something else from drumming too, a boost in self esteem. I wanted to be able to call myself a Master in something, and I though “well you gotta put in 10,000 hours for that” (by the way that would mean 3hrs a day of practice… for 10 years)
Take decades of study in the field of optimal performance psychology. Study the greatest minds and find out their exact way of doing what they do (strategies). Now compile it down to scripts that anyone can use to produce similar results. Compile the scripts to a manual and teach a course. That is how NLP got created. That is how you can compress decades of wisdom and knowledge, into DAYS!
It took a while for me to understand, wait a minute, I am a Master Practitioner of NLP, do I really need 10,000 hours before I can feel good about myself?
Of course not. Will I still put in the work to get constantly better? Always! Are we done with this drumming gimmick? Surprisingly, yes.
6 months into my journey, I went down to my basement for my usual morning practice session, got warmed up, sat down at the kit and I thought “I’d rather be studying NLP now”. It still fulfils my values: it will push me to grow, it’s a phenomenal way to help others and it makes me prosperous as well.
If I had a coach back in early 2016, all this could have been solved in half a week.
Why don’t you get a coach now.
