The Power of Choice

Taken from: Meta Reflections 2012 #22 by L. Michael Hall, April 16, 2012

Empowerment Series #9, www.neurosemantics.com

From the four fundamental powers of your personality and your power of response-ability arises another power—your power of choice. You can choose. And choose you do. Consciously or consciously, intentionally or by default, you choose. In fact, you make lots of choices. You may love this power or hate it; you may delight in it or seek to avoid it. Yet this power is yours and if you handle it aright, you will be more fully able to take charge of your life and be the architect of your future.

 Some years ago I began using the term choice point as I worked with people, I might say: “You are now at choice point about what you want to do, so what will it be?” Later when I found this phrase several times in Maslow’s writings, I began to realize just how powerful the phrase is. And especially the impact it has when it is brought to a person’s attention — You are now at choice point. In terms of the Crucible, this is right in the middle of the heat of a fierce conversation (The Crucible, 2009).

 What is the power of choice? How can you more fully experience this power in your life? The power of choice begins with your four fundamental powers of personality because you have the power to choose what to think, believe, remember, imagine, etc. And when you make those choices, you are exercising the power to choose the emotions that you want to give yourself to. Your power of choice includes the words that you choose to use and the behaviors you choose to engage in.

So how is it then that so many people talk and act and feel and think that they have no choice? “I have to do this or that, I have no choice.” And yet they do have choice! Just because there may be a consequence to a certain way of thinking, feeling, speaking, and acting doesn’t mean that you have no choice. It means that you are choosing to not even consider that alternative. Sure you can stand up to your boss who may be doing something unethical or illegal.

“But then I may get fired.”

“Yes, that may be the price you would pay for the courage to speak up. So what is your choice? What will you do?”

 Where there is a form of helplessness, hopelessness, or playing the victim, there is a human being choosing these responses. And that human being is more than likely also choosing to not know that he is so choosing. By keeping oneself blind and unaware, the choice seems to belong to others, to the world, to the markets, to external influences and forces. I heard it the other day when during a conversation someone responded to an idea I suggested by saying:

“I could never imagine even thinking of doing that! I’m just not the kind of person who could ever go there.”

“So you are choosing to not make an movie in your mind about doing that, is that what you are saying?”

“Well, no, not really. You see I can’t imagine it. I’m not that kind of person.”

“So that’s your choice. Hmmmm. So you are choosing not to imagine it and you are choosing to not identify yourself in a new way so that you become the kind of person who would do it.”

“It’s not about choice, it’s about inability.”

“So you are choosing to frame it as inability rather than choice. ... [pause] ... It’s okay. It’s your life and you can do whatever you want ...”

“But you don’t understand, I can’t even imagine being that way...”

“That’s a good one. I had not thought about that choice— to choose to be a different kind of human being, one that eliminates that choice! So your choice is to think of yourself and define yourself as a choice-less human being. Hmmmmm. Very interesting.”

I’d like to report that there was an immediate Eureka! movement, that the heavens opened, that the blinders fell of his eyes, that he suddenly claimed his power of choice ... but alas, it did not happen that way. My guess is that there were too many vested interests, but the person is a friend and what he reported was that he didn’t sleep very well that evening and that I “had bothered him with that disturbing conversation.” I smiled and said, “Yes, I’m so very powerful I can control your sleeping!” He smiled and said that yes, he knows that is one of his powers. Ah, he was beginning to move to choice point!

The power of choice is the power to decide about direction— what direction do you want to go in? What direction would you like to send your brain? What would you like to believe? What frame of mind would you like to live from? What kind of language would you like to use in framing problems, solutions, innovations, etc.?

The power of choice also is the very power by which you truly become the author of your life and of course, as you become the author of your life, you develop your own internal authority. You are the one in charge of writing the script and carrying out the story. You are the author. So what script are you writing and delivering?

Here’s to your power of choice! Make it a good one.

To learn more about how to develop your power of choice click on this link NOW!

Creating NLP Magic! Making the Invisible Visible, Seeing the Structure and Enriching the Map

Creating NLP Magic, Seeing the Structure and Enriching the Map
Snapshot of a presentation at the ICF South Australia, NLP Special Interest Group

What is the difference that makes the masters of NLP use their craft artfully, seamless with ease and create MAGIC? They see structure. The structure of the map of the human experience!

Often the novice and even some more experienced practitioners get lost in the techniques of NLP. NLP is much more than just a bunch of techniques. At the core, NLP is a modelling and communication model. The key question here is “How does something work?” The secret to how something works lies in the structure of how a person has mapped and organised their inner experience about their outer world. This shows up in the way they think, feel, speak and behave.

Learn to see and play with this structure, perform MAGIC! Being able to pay attention to the infra-structure of the mind-body-emotion system - how it is organised, how it inter-relates, its dynamic and energy flow and where the NLP domains live and interact - will allow you to see a person's inner landscape. This will make it much easier for you to determine what questions to ask and what NLP patterns and techniques to apply that helps them to enrich that landscape. And more importantly help your clients’ live a richer life and perform at their fullest potential.

Creating NLP Magic! Making the Invisible Visible, Seeing the Structure and Enriching the Map

ICF SA NLP Special Interest Group
6.45pm to 9pm Monday, 2 April 2012
“The Upstairs Room” Wakefield Hotel, 76 Wakefield Street, Adelaide, South Australia
Fee $10, RSVP to president.sa@icfaustralasia.com by Friday March 30

Interactive Session facilitated by Mike Schwarzer, Neuro-Semantic NLP Trainer

What is the difference that makes the masters of NLP use their craft artfully, seamless with ease and create MAGIC? They see structure. The structure of the map of the human experience!

Often the novice and even some more experienced practitioners get lost in the techniques of NLP. NLP is much more than just a bunch of techniques. At the core, NLP is a modelling and communication model. The key question here is “How does something work?” The secret to how something works lies in the structure of how a person has mapped and organised their inner experience about their outer world. This shows up in the way they think, feel, speak and behave.

Learn to see and play with this structure, perform MAGIC! Being able to pay attention to the infra-structure of the mind-body-emotion system - how it is organised, how it inter-relates, its dynamic and energy flow and where the NLP domains live and interact - will allow you to see a person's inner landscape. This will make it much easier for you to determine what questions to ask and what NLP patterns and techniques to apply that helps them to enrich that landscape. And more importantly help your clients’ live a richer life and perform at their fullest potential.

Come along on the journey to the core of NLP. This session is highly interactive. Expect to participate and have fun learning and developing your NLP skills. If you are a seasoned pro at NLP or an absolute beginner this session caters for all. All you need to bring is an open mind and lots of playfulness, curiosity and glorious fallibility.

In this session we will explore:

• The dimensions and domains that make up the structure
• Your state to elicit and to see the structure
• How to play with the structure and enrich the map
  

About Mike Schwarzer

Mike is a Performance Strategist & Modeler and an Internationally Certified Trainer in Neuro- Semantics and NLP with the International Society of Neuro-Sematics ISNS. The ISNS is a global NLP community, operating in over 40 countries, dedicated to helping people actualise excellence by transforming Meaning into Performance. He is also a leadership team member of the Institute of Neuro-Semantics Australia the Australian branch of ISNS. An experienced facilitator and coach, with an ability to connect and align people and organisations, he helps them to fine tune their performance wizardry to bridge the gap between where they are and where they want to go!

For more information about Mike visit http://www.mikeschwarzer.com/
and http://www.thoughtleadingpeople.com.au/.

Why bringing out the best in people makes your undesired problems go away and your customers jump for joy?

Food for Thought from Mike Schwarzer’ Perls of Wisdom, March 2012

Let’s begin at the end. What is the core purpose of your business or organisation? Helping someone else solve their problems, the problems they can’t or don’t want to solve themselves, right? Generally this someone you may know as a customer or client. Do you agree on this so far? Great! If not, that might ‘cause’ a problem … for you, your hip pocket and most likely for your sleeping patterns, but that’s another story and another problem to be solved.

Problems come in all sizes, shapes and forms. Some are simple and many are complex and require out of the box thinking. Helping your clients solve their problems makes you what? It makes you INDISPENSABLE … to Them! And that generally means return business, referral business and more money in the kitty! Not to forget the reputation that your business reflects that sets itself apart from the other players in your industry.

Here is the problem!

Many organisations are selling themselves short in operating at their full potential. And why is that you ask? Because they are trying to solve today’s problems with yesterday’s thinking. Top down and linear (Newtonian style). They talk about the importance of staff engagement, yet the way they interact encourages to disengage, to switch off and to simply not care. They are stuck in the status quo and mechanical thinking and acting.

How to take the problem out of the problem?

To help your clients solve their problems in today’s world, you need what? A workforce that is capable and focused on solving problems. Problem solving in today’s world, one that is complex, ambiguous and interconnected requires collaboration, curiosity and mental & behavioural flexibility. It requires ‘Environments where Engagement and COLLECTIVE Learning can occur’. Where people … see meaningfulness in their work, have a voice, interact with each other from a place of learning, have engaging conversations, ask great questions, explore together, express their ideas, share knowledge, etc. It will provide your organisation with a greater flexibility and capacity to respond to changing environments, perform in and through challenging conditions, generate new ideas and innovate, and thrive on solving your customers’ problems, And how is that important? Well, think about it … the rest of the world and your competition don’t sleep nor do they stand still ... Do they?

Yeah, yeah, yeah … I hear you saying, we’ve heard it all before! Well, I hope you have. The question is … what have you or what are you actually doing about it? I know, talk is cheap … action speaks louder than words. Many organisations live in ‘talk’-land and not in ‘do’-land. Why is that? Because they don’t actually know ‘how to’ move from ‘thinking’ engagement to ‘doing’ engagement. Because they are missing the wherewithal, the ability to create and take a thought or a matrix of thoughts, a mental model, and manifest that thought matrix into the neurological fabric, the body, of a person and the organisation where it shows up in a natural way of thinking, feeling, speaking and acting.

Where from here?

Where do you start developing this capability and creating environments where engagement and collective learning can occur?

Make a decision!

It all starts with the intention and a commitment to achieving it. If you are serious about creating an environment where your people thrive on collective learning, being creative and solving your customer’s problems than simply make a decision and start walking the talk!

1. Show up in the world in the way you want it to be!
As Ghandi said, “Become the change you want to see!” You mental state is crucial. Your mental state is actually a mind-body-emotion state. Those three can’t be separated, we are beings that can create thoughts and meanings, generate emotions and experience those thoughts and emotions through our body. Our states generate a dynamic energy around you, an energy that can attract or detract. I see many people underestimate the quality of their states. It can open your mind to enormous possibilities and make people swarm to you like bees to honey or work against you, blind you and make people avoid you like the plague! Become the master of your state and not let the state be the master of you!

2. See the world through multiple lenses
The world doesn’t just revolve around you! It also revolves around other people, your organisation and your marketplace. Poor communicators can have a limited perspective and only view the world through their own eyes. Skilful influencers have a fine-tuned perceptual & situational awareness of their surroundings and can see and experience the world through multiple lenses. Through that awareness they can assess situations and gain greater insights on those situations, the people involved, the dynamics of the relationships between those people, the implications of those relationships, and then make better informed decisions based on those insights and position their language to that of the people they interacting with.

3. Meet and connect with others in THEIR world!
Rapport, Rapport and Rapport! There is no resistance only lack of rapport. Rapport is crucial for any engagement and influence to occur. Rapport is not necessarily about liking each other rather than being receptive to each other what we have to say. To build rapport, you want to meet and connect with others in their world, their map. Rapport can be established at multiple levels
and is facilitated by reflecting others’ physiology, holding their energy, speaking their language, supporting and valuing their views, values and beliefs, and speaking from their perceptual position (i.e. self, others, environment, etc). By the way, rapport begins with YOU! To be in rapport with someone else, you want to be in rapport with yourself first. That means showing up in a state and energy that is conducive to creating an environment that others want to be part of.

How do you develop those skills?

These are skills that can’t be learned intellectually. They have to be practiced and honed to be mastered. They are honed by ‘applying these skills to self’. To make a state a state it has to be experienced in the body so it becomes a flow state one that you are fully engaged in. To see a situation from another person's point of view through their eyes it has to be experienced not just thought through. When building rapport you have to experience the connection and notice the difference that makes the difference, in yourself and in the other person. And then you keep refining these skills so they become part of your fabric and daily beingness in the world.

Start practicing these skills and mindset, pass it on to your people and see the energy and dynamic in your organisation transform where undesired problems go away and your customer jump with joy!

Want to learn more about how to develop these skills and bring out the best in people then click on this link!

People come into your life for a reason

Accessing a State of Learning & Engagement

To create environments where learning and engagement can occur we want to access states that are conducive to learning and engagement. When we are fully engaged in those states we experience a strong sense of flow or being in the zone.

Here we begin to make finer distinctions about our environment. Our attention is focused on our enviroment, the people that we interacting with and what we are seeking to understand rather than on ourselves.

When we are in those states we create an energy and dynamic about ourselves that is conducive to others where they feel comfortable and open towards us.



Need to be able to learn quickly and engage others into action? … Then click on this link
now!

Don't Think Different, Think About Different Things - Art Markman - Harvard Business Review

Don't Think Different, Think About Different Things - Art Markman - Harvard Business Review