So, you know where you are heading, you have written your goals. It’s good to write goals, isn’t it?  Goals give us direction in life, a purpose. But wait, have you considered ecology? Are your goals ecological?

From experience I can tell you that, in the majority of cases people set goals without fully exploring what life will be like once they have achieved them.

Since ecology in NLP is a study of consequences then it makes sense to examine the consequences of achieving our goals:

  • What do I need to give up (If anything) to achieve it? Is that ok?
  • What if I have it. What will life be like? Is that ok?

Are your goals really what you want? Will they be useful for you in terms of your life as a whole and for others around you? We often fail to check the ecology of our goals.

Now, here’s the interesting thing about ecology.  There are basically four things to do with ecology.

  1. Firstly, does it work for you?  So, ask yourself “what will happen to me if I achieve this?”

If there are some negative things that will happen to you then you will not be so congruent in achieving your outcome. Congruent or congruency is when all your systems say go.  If you think of all your internal representations and they give the outcome of your goal the green light then you will be congruent.

So, do you have a full set of green lights?

2. The next thing is that we need to look outside of ourselves.  Because, it is not just about whether we are ok, what about the people around us?  In business this would be the people in your organisation and outside of business this would be your family.  Whats going to happen to them if you get your goal?

3. Also what is going to happen to society if you get it?  What about society as a whole?

4. Finally, I think that we should be paying attention to the global aspect of your goal, what would happen to the planet if you achieved it.  Is it positive to the planet? If a few more people had done that over the years, then we would all be better off!