Set goals and make decisions for the rest of 2024

I don't know about you but I get rather restless at this time of year.  Summer is coming to an end, and I have been fortunate enough to spend a month Italy and France this year.  An opportunity to enjoy blue skies and hot sunshine and the chance to embrace new ways of living.  Now back in the UK, I want to reignite my creativity and start working on new projects. But what? In mountaineering, if you're stuck in a bad situation and you don't know the way out, you have to pick a direction and go.  If you start down the path and get it wrong you pick a new path and learn from what has happened.  Alex Korb in 'The Upward Spiral'  (one of my summer reads) says that we tend to focus on the drawbacks of potential decisions which make them harder to make. And, having too many options can in themselves cause stress. In fact, anxiety and worrying are provoked by possibility not certainty.  When everything is up in the air the amygdala in the brain (part of the limbic system or emotional part of the brain) becomes more reactive. So if you tend to worry reduce your options by making decisions as events will start to fall into place as soon as you do.  I love the quote:

'It's in your moments of decision that your destiny is shaped'

Remember though that a decision without action is just a thought.  When you decide on a goal the pre-frontal cortex part of the brain will change the way that the rest of your brain perceives the world.  It's rather like when you change your focus you start to notice new opportunities.  For example, if you make a decision to buy a new car, let's say it's a VW Golf, do you suddenly notice many more Golfs on the road?  Are there more or are you noticing them now since you made your decision? In NLP we also talk about focusing on what you want as your goal not what you don't want.  If I were to say to you right now don't think about a blue elephant. What happens?  Are you aware of an internal representation of a blue elephant?  That's right!  To stop focusing on negative thoughts, we focus on positive thinking or what we want to achieve which is much more effective at changing behaviour.  

So what decisions are you going to make as we move into the next phase of the year?  I will let you know what I decide too! 

If you'd like to find out more about setting goals and making decisions that work for you join our next NLP Practitioner course which starts on the 15th September.  More details can be found here:

https://www.teamnlp.co.uk/nlp-practitioner-course

Have a great week.

Lindsey and the team at Team NLP