I hope that you are enjoying the summer? Now is a great time to take stock of how you are progressing towards your 2013 goals and objectives. As you may know, NLP is the art and science of excellence, and I want you to be focussing on developing your excellence for the remainder of 2013. The three key principles of NLP are:

  • Outcomes – Decide on what exactly it is that you want. Picture yourself achieving it.
  • Awareness – Be acutely aware of where you are on your path to achieving your objectives.
  • Flexibility – If what you are doing isn’t working then change what you are doing.

I would like to add a fourth key principle and that is to learn from the best. Get a great coach.

So, have you got your goals and objectives in mind? Are you steadily working towards what you want to achieve? Is what you are doing working? Do you need to change your actions, do something different in order to get back on track to where you want to go?

It is also worth checking to make sure that you are not underselling yourself on your goals. Are your goals big enough, brave enough? Bear in mind that you can have whatever you want in this life. Whatever you want, I mean it! What are you working towards in the long term? If you are not working towards designing your life exactly the way that you want it, then you are selling yourself short. We only get one go at this, so make your goals, big, bold and develop a clear vision of how life would look for you once you have achieved them.

Becoming the best in the world

I have been watching a bit of sport over the last few weeks, July is a great month for top level sport and I am always fascinated in discovering what it takes to get to be the best in the world at what you do, so I have been in my element. We have had Wimbledon, The Tour De France and The Open golf tournament all in the last three weeks or so and each one of the winners has a similar story to tell in terms of how they have managed to get to the very top of their sport.

Wimbledon

Take Andy Murray, winner of Wimbledon. Andy has been obsessed with being a top tennis player (Outcome) since a very early age when he played paddle tennis in his back garden with his brother. His mum said, when she was interviewed recently, that as he was progressing in the sport he was always looking at what the top players were doing in their practice techniques (Awareness), he noticed that lots of top professionals were going over to Spain to learn and practice (Spain currently has 9 of the top 50 tennis players in the world), he demanded that he join them. So, he went to Spain and trained with Rafa Nadal, David Ferrer etc.

Andy worked hard to get into the top 5 players in the world, and rather than sticking with what he knew, he changed coach (Flexibility) and hired Ivan Lendl (Get a great coach) to take him to the next level. He lost his first four grand slam finals and then in his first year working with Lendl he won the US Open.  He lost in the final of Wimbledon last year, learnt from where he went wrong, developed a better attitude, got stronger and of course went on to win Wimbledon this year.

Being at your bestTour De France

The Tour De France winner is Chris Froome. Chris was born in Kenya and grew up in South Africa and spent his early years riding his bike in the mountains and building his strength (Awareness). He has always believed that he had what it would take to win the Tour (Outcome). In 2007 Chris moved to Europe to further his career (Flexibility), and he joined team Sky in 2010. Sky were formed in that year by Dave Brailsford (Get a great coach) with the single purpose of winning the Tour De France (Outcome). Sky won it in 2012 with Bradley Wiggins, Froome was runner up and he learnt from that experience what he had to do in order to win it himself. He spent the last year working at altitude to continue to build his strength and during this years Tour he proved himself as the strongest rider in the race winning two of the toughest stages. The top mountain rider in the race was a Colombian called Nairo Quintana, who when he was young used to ride 18km each way up a mountain to school. There are no coincidences here!!

British Open – Golf

Finally The British Open golf tournament was won by Phil Mickleson. Phil is 43 years old and has been a top golfer for quite a few years. He has previously won two of the other major golf tournaments, but never the Open. His career objective is to win each of the four major tournaments (Outcome). He had previously struggled in the British Open because the conditions, the weather and type of golf course, were alien to him (he is American). He set about working out what he need to do in order to finally get a win over here. Firstly he hired a top coach (Flexibility, Get a great coach), Butch Harmon. Butch had previously coached three other golfers to win the Open and so he had proved that he could bring success to Phil. Next, he changed his schedule in order to play more tournaments in Britain and so to get more practice in the conditions that were alien to him (Awareness). In addition he makes a habit of being one of the first players to arrive at a tournament in order to get the maximum amount of practice, and he is one of the first players on the practice ground every morning.

Phil won The Open with a three shot gap to his nearest competitor, he also won the Scottish Open the week before, in similar conditions.  The only major of the four that he hasn’t won is the US Open, he has been runner-up six times, don’t bet on him not doing it next year!

Time to act

So, now it is down to you. Decide on your outcome, practice hard, have awareness of what is working and what is not working, change what you need to and get a great coach/trainer (that is where I come in!!)

At Excellence Assured we have a range of NLP and Leadership training courses that you can take from home to help you work towards achieving your potential, the courses are fully supported and I also offer personal coaching to our students. I would love to work with you, so let me know how I can help you?

To your success

Anthony