Enhance your Lifestyle with NLP+ © Series: Part 33

By: Shantanu Das Sharma, Senior Associate Editor, ICN Group

Quick recap of what we have covered in Part 32

Reframing: To Motivate Employees

Why Being Rejected Motivates His Team Even More!

Advertising: Reframing the Minds of Millions

How to Overcome Resistance and Counter Objections

Two examples of Reframing when encountering objections

Values Are Your Core Driving Force

Have you ever wondered what really drives you in your life? Why do you do what you do? What drives your decisions and the choices you make constantly?

We said in earlier article (The Secret to Peak Performance) that your behavior is driven more by emotions than by logic. What you do is based more on what you feel like doing rather than what you think you should do. Logically, you know that you should take action and follow through on your goals but emotionally, you may be held back by feelings of lethargy or even fear. For example, logically, you know you should not smoke because it is a waste of money and could kill you and your loved ones who inhale your secondary smoke. Emotionally, you still continue because of the emotions of relaxation or sense of control it gives you.

More specifically, there are two kinds of emotions that drive us constantly. They are positive emotions and negative emotions. Whatever you are driven to do, you do because you want to move towards positive emotions like happiness, security, power, success and freedom. At the same time, you are moving away from negative emotions like fear, depression, physical pain, loss or insecurity.

How We Behave Like Amoebas!

I remember studying about amoebas, those single-celled organisms in science class. When you put food in front of the amoeba, it starts moving towards it. When you place a hot object next to it, it moves away from the heat source. If you were to put food on one side and heat on the other, it would drive the organism to move even faster in the direction of the food and away from the heat. This sounds really obvious but what you must realize is that you behave exactly the way the amoeba behaves. You must know what is the ‘food’ and the ‘heat’ that drives you constantly. Think about all decisions that people make constantly. Are they really logically driven or emotionally driven? Why do people get married? On the one hand people get married because they think marriage would move them towards positive emotions like lasting love and happiness, companionship and comfort.

At the same time, couples decide to marry because they think it will move them away from negative emotions such as loneliness, depression, and insecurity. If this is the case, why are there people who swear never to get married? It’s because they have attached very different emotions to what getting married means. They stay single because they think getting married will bring them loss of freedom and happiness. They avoid marriage because they may have seen some really unhappy marriages (perhaps their own parents’ unhappy union), and they believe that by remaining single they are moving away from loss of freedom, boredom and from ugly quarrels and unhappiness. Do all of us want the same kinds of positive emotions and also want to avoid the same painful emotions? Yes! All of us desire recognition, success, happiness, comfort, security and freedom. At the same time, all of us will do what we can to avoid embarrassment, rejection, boredom, physical pain and poverty. However, in our minds, we place very different levels of importance on these common emotions.

Prioritizing Our ‘Towards Values’ and Our ‘Away-From Values’

The way we value the positive emotions we desire to move towards are called our ‘towards values’, so named because we want to move towards them. For some people, love is more highly valued than success. While for others, success is placed at a higher priority than love. The way we value painful emotions that we want to avoid are called our ‘away-from values’.

Imagine there was a person (Ram) who placed a very high value on freedom and fun as his ‘towards values’. And you compared him with (Rahim) who placed a high value on security and comfort as his ‘towards values’. Would they behave very differently and make very different decisions? Of course they would!

Would they go on the same kind of vacation? I don’t think so. Ram might go mountain climbing while Rahim may prefer cultural tours that take him to museums and art galleries. They would also buy very different cars, marry very different women and probably be in very different careers. Ram would probably drive a sports car and could be an entrepreneur or a salesperson. Rahim would probably drive a Volvo and be a civil servant. Therefore, the way we prioritize our towards and away from values affects how our mind makes decisions and the way we behave.

Now let’s look at how the way people rank their away-from values can affect the decisions they make, and the actions they take. Let’s say Rita ranks rejection much higher than loneliness as her away-from values. What this means is that she finds it much more painful to be rejected than it is to be alone. Chances are, even if Rita met the man of her dreams, she might not dare approach him for fear that she would get rejected. Although she also fears that she would remain lonely by not having a man, the pain of rejection far outweighs the pain of loneliness. As a result, she won’t take action.

Quite the opposite is Mita who ranks loneliness as her top away-from value, far higher than rejection. In short, Mita fears the pain of loneliness much more than the pain of rejection. Placed in the same situation, Mita would make the first move and chance being rejected than do nothing and end up alone and lonely for the rest of her life. It is very important for you to know what your towards values are (significant emotions that we move towards) and what your away-from values are (significant emotions that we move away from).

Understand How These Values Drive You

You are now able to understand why you made certain decisions in the past. You will begin to realize why you are experiencing the life you are living now. And why you have or have not been achieving the goals you have set. For example, if you discover that freedom and fun are valued a lot more than achievement, it would explain why you may not be going very far in your career. But you have stronger relationships with your buddies than someone very driven to succeed.

At the same time, once you know your values, you will be able to tell if they will drive you towards the destiny you desire, or they are in conflict with your goals. We said earlier on that the trouble with most people is that they do not know what they want specifically in life. Well, many people who have clear goals may still not be driven towards their goals because they may know what they want but they don’t know the reasons for which they want it. They don’t feel passionate enough to move single-mindedly towards their goals. And they end up vaguely frustrated instead.

Why Our Life is like a Space Shuttle

To use a metaphor, our life is like a space shuttle.

When you set a clear goal, you are setting the coordinates or the direction you are moving towards. Like the Moon or Mars, for example. But what propels your shuttle is the fuel. Unless you have the fuel, your shuttle is never going to reach your goal. The fuel I am talking about is your life values! The positive as well as negative emotions you value most highly. You have to find out what your hot buttons are. These buttons when pushed will ignite that fire, that burning desire to go for it… as it has in so many highly successful people

When I wanted to find out what drove the top 5% of NLP Trainers in India, I interviewed the top three trainers, asking them what gave them their energy and their passion.

3 Top Trainers – Each Driven by a Different Value

The first trainer remarked that she is driven by the need to be an example to her clients. When she wakes up every morning, she plans her day, makes her calls and follows through on all of them. Her clients are in her thoughts, at the back of her mind. Not distracting her but doing the opposite. She is motivated by thinking of how, doing what she does is going to give them what she never had given before. Her value of setting herself as an example is therefore totally in line with her goals of being successful in her career!

When I asked a second trainer, a man, he said that what really drives him is not the need to be an example to his clients at all; rather it is the thrill or satisfaction of beating the competition and being ranked number one as a Trainer performing excellence installations in the country. This competitive trainer clearly valued achievement and awards, these were his towards values. At the same time his number one painful emotion was coming in second. Can you now see why he was so motivated, all of the time? Like the first trainer, this man’s values are very much in line with his professional goals.

The third trainer was again totally different. She said that every time she sold a training event, she felt wonderful because she knew she had made one more set of people enabled for their growth. At the same time, she would get very worried for any client who has not adequately experienced a breakthrough. She felt a personal responsibility to ensure that her clients got adequate breakthroughs against their current challenges. These twin forces drove her to go on and on, in spite of really hard work and rejection. Like the other two, her values of ‘concern and contribution’ and ‘making a difference’ are also totally in line with her goals! When I worked with trainers who were below average in performance and could never achieve what they set themselves, I found out it was because their values were totally in conflict with their goals.

I had one trainer whose goal was to be the top trainer. Unfortunately, his top ‘towards values’ were freedom and fun. Sure enough, the desire to move towards ‘freedom’ and ‘fun’ overpowered his goal. To him, freedom and fun meant doing what gave him short-term pleasure. So he ended up playing golf and hanging around with friends instead of following through on his goals. At the same time, this trainer’s top away-from value was rejection! The fear of rejection made him procrastinate making cold calls to prospects. He hated being told ‘No!’ Can you see why he could never achieve what he wanted?

Back to our space shuttle metaphor, it is like the rocket is aimed to go to the moon, but the fuel is propelling the shuttle in the opposite direction!

(I facilitate Thought Leaders, Change Makers; Professionals & Business Owners translate NLP concepts into actions to achieve and elicit personal excellence. I conduct NLP Lifestyle Coaching Certification programs for individuals, corporate and celebrity clients. In the next article, you will learn more about Values. And after that you will come to know in subsequent articles, how you can utilize concepts of NLP+ in all walks of your life to replicate the success blueprint of a winner mindset to win through life.  So, stay tuned every Monday & Saturday and fasten your seat belt to ‘Enhance Your Lifestyle With NLP+’)

Shantanu Das Sharma, Creator of the concept NLP Lifestyle Coaching with NLP+ and Founder of Neuromind Leadership Academy is an Amazon #1 Best Selling Author, NLP+ Lifestyle Master Trainer & Coach, Certified Social Panorama Consultant, Clean Language Facilitator & Strategic Interventionist. To explore about NLP+ Lifestyle Coaching you may visit http://shantanudassharma.com/nlp-lifestyle-coaching/