Gaining a Personal Vision from a “Future Self”

At the 2020 NLP Conference I presented a session with the title ” Can models and theories co-exist” where, to cut a long story short, I made the argument that yes – indeed they can. In my Advanced NLP Coaching course I combine NLP Timelines with processes from Transactional Analysis in a process called re-scripting.
How did this process come about?

Around 22 years ago, before I had started in NLP – my business was really taking off, but my physical and mental health declining. My father who had been my mentor and I loved very much had recently died prematurely and I recalled a quote from Stephen Covey, “How much did he leave? – He left everything..”

I decided to have a mini-retreat in a nice hotel and armed with Covey’s work (and that of his business partner, Hyrum Smith) – I spent a few days considering my roles and values so I could write a personal mission statement. Many at home thought this was strange at best, but I look back at that time as some of the most important in my life: I moved from urgent to important – from watch to compass.

I would like to share a passage from Stephen Covey’s 7 habits which sum up why this process is so important:

‘Because I am self-aware, because I have imagination and conscience, I can examine my deepest values. I can realize that the script I’m living is not in harmony with those values, that my life is not the product of my own proactive design, but …I have deferred to circumstances and other people.
And I can change. I can live out of my imagination instead of my memory. I can tie myself to my limitless potential instead of my limiting past….
To begin with the end in mind means to approach my roles in life, with my values and directions clear.
It means to be responsible…..to rescript myself so that the paradigms from which my behaviour and attitude flow are congruent with my deepest values and in harmony with correct principles.
It also means to begin each day with those values firmly in mind.
Then as the vicissitudes, as the challenges come, I can make my decisions based on those values. I can act with integrity.
I don’t have to react to the emotion, the circumstance. I can be truly proactive, value driven, because my values are clear.’

Although rereading this year’s later, fundamentally I agree: we can either choose to live out of a sense of vision or out of our programming. Personally, I find my programming hasn’t disappeared, and I still get upset and feel angry and hurt some of the time. However, I recover much quicker and I have fundamentally learnt a deep optimism that things will work out.

In my Advanced NLP Coaching course I have combined these approaches with NLP timelines to provide a way of summarising roles and values into a guiding sense of vision – I don’t necessarily believe that Mission Statements are strictly necessary, as they are words – the key is to find a way to connect to that moment when you have a feeling of alignment around your roles and values which can be remembered – this can be done in a variety of ways which is personal to each individual. Following this with my Rescripting Process, people learn to honour their past so they can elegantly start down a new path.

This course is my way of giving back from what I learnt: finding a way to become your true self. Paraphrasing Covey again, a mission is not something you create, it is already within you – you just need to lean detect it.