Constantly battling with negative emotions? Wrestling with thoughts and behaviours you can’t change? Do you try and fail to beat self-defeating habits?
What is more difficult than changing human behavior?
We all know that changing behaviours, kicking bad habits and putting an end to negative thoughts and emotions is one of the most difficult challenges we face. We know what we are supposed to do, but we can’t seem to do it. We want to achieve more wealth, health and abundance, but there are so many obstacles on the path to success.
If you don’t subscribe to the belief that success is the result of chance, it seems evident that the results you produce in life arise from your behaviour: if you make the right decisions and do the right things, you get the results you want. Logically we can then deduce that if you want the right results, all you have to do is do the right things.
Psychology has focused on helping us find out why we have a problem, but insight rarely leads to change. You can know all about why you have a problem, what happened in childhood to cause it, and still have the problem.
Coaching claims to help by telling us what to do, but it’s not always easy to do what you are supposed to. It’s not always easy to make the right choices and engage in the right behaviors. How often has it occurred that you knew exactly what to do but you didn’t do it? How often do you know exactly what not to do, but you do it anyway? We want to boost our income, but we put important things off until later and enjoy the temporary relief of watching TV. We want to lose weight but we just can’t resist the chocolate cake. And I am sure you have countless personal examples you can add.
Ever tried to kick a habit or change your emotions? It’s hard because emotions and behavior don’t just come out of nowhere. They are the effect of some cause. To change emotions and behavior you have to get to the source.
But what is that source? What is it that lies behind behavior? What lies behind superior performance and success? What makes the difference between star performers and the rest?
The answer is in the mind. Performance is the behavioral manifestation of aspects of cognitive functioning. Your behavior and the quality of your life are a result of what’s going on in your mind, the factors underlying behaviour: drives, thinking, attitudes, emotions, values, beliefs, assumptions and perceptions.
If you plant a tree and are not happy with the fruit it is producing, do you climb up the tree to see what’s going on and try to change the fruit, or do you go down to the roots? Most of us spend our lives climbing up the tree, pulling on the fruit, yelling at it and wondering why nothing changes. This is not exactly a strategy for success.
Our thoughts, values, perceptions, beliefs and drives lead to emotions and behaviors. It is what is behind the scenes, those aspects of who we are that are out of awareness, that lead to feelings and actions. For you to experience any emotion or produce any behaviour, what is going on behind the scenes must be perfectly aligned with that result.
The mind is a system, each aspect influencing the others. Change your thoughts and you change your emotions. Change your values, beliefs and perceptions and your feelings and behaviors change. Alter just one aspect of the system and the entire system changes; different beliefs, thoughts, perceptions and drives lead to different emotions and behaviours. Different behaviours lead to different results.
The key to success is in the mind, but what is the mind? Although it sounds like a “thing,” the word “mind” really refers to a dynamic process of thinking, experiencing and feeling. The mind is never static. It is a constant flow of thoughts, images, words, ideas, perceptions and emotions. Mind is an unending dance of information. The question is, is it an expertly choreographed dance in which the dancers move in perfect harmony, or is it a mess of utter chaos and disorder?
The secret to producing results is to have the right things in your mind so you produce the behaviours and results you want effortlessly. Since performance is the behavioral manifestation of your drives, values, beliefs, mindset, and emotions, by optimizing and aligning elements of cognitive functioning, you can program your mind for desired behaviour and results. When what’s in the mind is optimized and aligned, desired behaviors and results come naturally.
Trying to change behaviors and emotions without determining what is causing them is like trying to fill a leaky bucket. You can put in all the effort you want, but you won’t accomplish much until you get to the root of the problem.
Since mind is in a state of constant flux, it’s easy to make changes to the dance of information. The first step is to take on your role as choreographer.
Coaching with NLP and Neuro-Semantics facilitates the development of the mindset, attitudes, beliefs and practices for superior results and performance. More and more individuals are realizing that if they want to live the lives they want, they need to change their minds, literally.
What have you got in your mind?
