Get Back On Track
Are you ‘on track’ for succes … or simply working hard and not achieving your goals.
By Kerry King | Prudent Partners Consulting Pty Ltd

About a year or two ago I was pondering what I would do with the rest of my professional life. At the time I happened to be in a seminar called ‘Break Through to Success’ experiencing my first contact with techniques derived from Neuro- Linguistic Programming (NLP). The seminar presenter (trainer) was Christopher Howard.

The thing that drew my attention to NLP was that I was searching for the reason why, as an experienced accountant and advisor to small business, I could not create significant and lasting change in the success of many of my clients. Those particular clients always seemed to revert back to the same space they were in (metaphorically speaking) before I met them. I now believe that I have the ‘secret’ to this perplexing issue.

When we are born our minds are like a sponge; we just soak up everything that goes on around us. Nothing is overlooked or rejected. We don’t develop our ‘critical faculty’ (sorting filter) until after about age 7. In his book ‘The People Puzzle’ Dr Morris Massey termed this period in our life as the ‘Imprint’ period.

And so life goes on for us and as our mind and thinking processes develop we are influenced by everyone we come in contact with mostly family and friends but as our ‘social circle’ grows others (e.g. teachers, also influence how we think, code and store information).

It is around this point in our lives that our destiny has been pre-determined. We are programmed for either success or mediocrity based on who we associate with, what they say and what they do in their own lives.

Don’t despair if you feel that you’ve been given a mediocre program in order to achieve success. The good news is that all this can be changed.

We can actually reprogram our minds (our thinking process) so that we can replicate the achievements of successful people. We don’t have enough space in this article to go into this subject in depth apart from giving you some of the concepts that will allow people to make massive change in their lives.

Cause and Effect
I believe that we are responsible for everything that happens in our lives both good and bad.
Cause: “I have created what is in my life …”
Effect: “I would have done, been, seen, succeeded etc., but …”

Being at cause in life is simply a way of looking at the world that will support you in being empowered. When you are on the cause side of the equation, you take responsibility for the things that occur in your life and take action to make a change for the better.

Everything is your responsibility, nothing is your fault. We create everything in our experience either through our actions or through our non-actions. At some level, we have chosen everything that happens in our experience, whether consciously or unconsciously, for a grander purpose.

This may not seem immediately apparent to you but if you think on it for a moment you will begin to see what I mean.

Don’t ask, “Why did I create this?” Instead, ask yourself “How did I create this reality and what do I want to create instead?”

Einstein said, ”We are boxed in by the boundary conditions of our thinking.”

An example of this is a quote from Charles H. Duell, Director of U.S. Patent Office, 1899 when he is reported to have said, “Everything that can be invented has been invented.” How wrong was he? Over the last century man has seen more new inventions than were created in the 1,000 years before.

So if you’re thinking that your business is not capable of being improved or your life will never be any different, this is you allowing yourself to be boxed in by the boundary conditions of your thinking.

Who sets the limits on your success?
Here’s a question: Is it possible for you to double the profitability of your business? Of course it is, all you have to do is think of a dozen ways by which that can be achieved and then go and do it.

Here’s another: Is it possible for you to have the best business in the world (your world)? Again the answer is yes. The only person preventing this is you. One of the main reasons people don’t achieve all that they dream of is because of ‘limiting beliefs’. So what are ‘limiting beliefs’? Here are a few examples:
1. It hasn’t been done before
2. I don’t have the money.
3. I can’t get good staff
4. Economic conditions are affecting business

Let’s look at number 1. Do you remember Roger Bannister, the man who broke the 4 minute mile barrier in May, 1954 and what happened as soon a he did? Another half a dozen people around the world did the same thing in the following 12 months – no more limits.

Now number 2, the world is awash with money in fact it has been estimated that approx $13 trillion is ‘floating’ around at any one time. When asked by one of his disciples when a plan was being made to build a healing centre ‘where the money was going to come from’, the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi simply said “from wherever it is at the moment.” No limiting belief there!

So if you think about it for moment, there is always a solution to whatever limitation you believe you have. “For things to change, we must change”-Henry David Thoreau.

In my NLP training I learned how to help people overcome limiting beliefs that they were holding on to. When these are removed, it creates massive forward propulsion towards individual goals. I know this from personal experience.

George Bernard Shaw said, “The reasonable man adapts himself to the world, the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.” When we dare to go beyond our own internal boundary conditions, we discover a whole new world of possible futures for ourselves.

Goal Setting
There are many ways to determine and set goals but I’ve found that the best way for achieving a goal is to set the goal in the first place. Have you done this? “If a thing is humanly possible, consider it within your reach.” - Marcus Aurelius, Philosopher and Roman Emperor, 121-180 AD. Christopher Howard recommends the following criteria for setting goals based on NLP techniques. He calls it C.R.E.A.T.E. your future.
C - Clear and concise
R - Realistic
E - Ecological
A - As if now
T - Timed and toward to what you want
E - End step / evidence procedure There are other criteria for setting goals which you may have encountered which is fine but remember, the key element of goal setting is setting the goal(s) in the first place.

I use a process called Strategic Visioning™ to put a goal out into the future. We don’t have to know how the goal is going to be achieved through the process of Strategic Visioning™ our unconscious mind will guide us toward the achievement of that goal.

The key is to convince the unconscious mind that the goal is already yours and will be delivered at the time you set in your future. This is the holistic universe working for your benefit.

So if you want to get on track for success you will have to:
1. Move to the ‘cause’ side of the equation and take responsibility for where you are today,
2. Identify and remove any limiting beliefs that you have that may be holding you back , and
3. Start setting goals that will lead you to the success you know that you deserve.

Kerry’s Gift:
The first 5 people to e-mail me on kerry@kjkaustralia.com will receive two tickets (valued at $895 each) to attend Christopher Howard’s ‘Break Through to Success’ 3 day seminar as my guest.

Kerry King is a Certified Master Results Coach, Performance Consultant and principal of Prudent Partners Consulting Pty Ltd, based on the Gold Coast, Queensland. His contact number is 07 -5575 9329.