Flexibility – The Key to Behavioural Success

 

Thinking about the difficult discussions we sometimes get involved in I thought it might be useful to think of how we might help ourselves be more effective.

 

One of the main elements of NLP is Flexibility and this aspect of behaviour is useful in helping us achieve our outcomes. 

 

If in any situation you are not getting the response you want, then take a different approach, don’t change your outcome.  Instead be flexible.

 

Ø  If you only have 1 choice  - you are a robot

 

Ø  If you only have 2 choices - you have a dilemma

 

Ø  If you have 3 choices - you have flexibility

 

The person with the most flexibility is the one in control.

 

I am reminded of a favourite quote of mine

 

“If you always do what you’ve always done you’ll always get what you’ve always got.”

 

In order for us to be flexible we need to change the way we think and to do this we need different stimuli.

 

Ways of enhancing flexibility

 

Ø  Interrupt old patterns - drive to work a different way

Ø  Make a list of your habits for a week - change them for a week

Ø  Do something you have never done before

Ø  Look at the world through someone else’s glasses - your neighbour’s perhaps.  Pretend you are 17 or 93 for one hour

Ø  For one day leave everybody you interact with in a better state than when you found them

Ø  Switch your channels of perception.  This is Visual, Auditory and Kineasthetic. 

Ø  When you notice you are acting inside a ‘should’.  Change role models for 3 minutes - be someone else, someone who wouldn’t take notice of the ‘should’ way of behaving.

 

Personal Power

 

Another basic tenant of NLP is Personal Power, which is about being Proactive rather than reactive and about taking action Now.  Personal Power is Habit 1 in Stephen Covey’s 7 Habits of Highly Effective People which is being Proactive.  There’s a quote I like that fits this well

 

 “If you knew you couldn’t fail and could only succeed what would you do?”

 

This is about taking the fear of failure away from us and it is often this that stops us using our initiative and being proactive.

 

Sometimes we stop ourselves from achieving what we want, from making changes.  A good exercise to do for this (which I have modified from Sue Knight’s book, NLP at Work – which is a good read):

 

  1. Write a list of the changes you would like for yourself, this can be skills you want, relationships, lifestyle, using your time in a different way. 

 

  1. Once you’ve got your list choose just one and now write down how you stop yourself achieving this, your favourite ways of procrastinating – both physical and mental.  This can be imagining all the difficulties you would face in doing it, talking to other people who would be happy for you to stay as you are, etc.

 

  1. Next you look at each of your stoppers and ask yourself whether this is the real thing that is stopping you from achieving your outcome.

 

  1. When you have found your real stopper go back to the change you wanted to make and do an ecology check on it.  Is having the change going to cause harm to you or others, is it worth what it will take to get it?  Can you turn your stopper into an outcome that dovetails with the original change you wanted.

 

  1. Write down what you really want instead of where you are at now.  Make sure this is a well formed outcome (as described in the 1st NLP update).

 

  1. What actions do you need to take to achieve your outcome?  Map this out in steps and do a timeline for it.  In my next update I will take you through a process I call Strategic Mapping, this creates a timeframe of actions to achieve your outcome.

 

 

Susan Lock

Key Consultants Ltd

susan.lock@keycon.co.uk

www.keyconsultants.co.uk