An intention is a frame of mind that drives action, when you have a clearly defined intention you gain a laser like focus and begin to take action. Effective execution occurs when intentions are transformed into well thought out behaviours.

People can often read your intentions but the world rewards your effective execution. Here are four questions to ask:

• What is it you want to do?
• What actions do you need to take?
• What will be the effect of those actions?
• Will these effects be in line with your intention?

Here is a short video on intentionality when it comes to public speaking:

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Now while I never present the genius state as a hypnotic process and state, it absolutely is.  When you experience this naturally occurring state (and everybody does at some time), it seems to happen to you, to come upon you, and when you look back on it, you typically remember it as a wonderful experience.

What induces it?  Usually something that’s very important to you, something that you actively engage with and when you do, you get lost in it.  You become thrilled and absorbed in it.  It could be reading a book, it could be walking in a Redwood forest, it could be gardening, it could be playing catch with your dogs, writing, watching a great movie, having a fantastic conversation with a friend, making love, climbing a rock wall, playing a video game, and on and on the list goes.

The key is absorption in something that you care about, an absorption that pulls you into it so much so that you can get lost in it.  Then, in that moment when you are in that “flow” state, you are not multi-tracking.  You have lost all of your meta-mind awarenesses about all of the other things you need to do and track and you have become of one mind about the absorption.   Now in that moment, you won’t realize this!  If you were aware of it, you would be double-tracking.  But you’re not.

It is only later when you look back on the experience that you realize that you during that time you were all there— fully and completely. And during that time you realize that many of the central factors of your consciousness disappeared.  Time disappeared and you were lost in the now, this moment, and your awareness of time just vanished.  So did the world and others and even your self vanished.  These facets of the matrix of your mind were still there, but you lost consciousness of them.  You became self-forgetful, time forgetful, world forgetful.  All you were aware of was the subject of whatever the focus was about.

Athletes experience this as when a gymnast disappears the audience and they are there alone with the high bars or the floor.  A baseball pitcher similarly disappears a whole stadium.  In their focus-flow-genius state all that is there is the ball and the batter.  When an athlete goes into this special state, they typically call it being in the zone. And a couple years ago Tim Goodenough and Mike Cooper, two Meta-Coaches modeled out 13 distinctions from top South African athletes (Olympiads and national champions) in their Neuro-Semantic book, In the Zone.

In the field of NLP the first work on the prerequisites of the “personal genius state” was developed by John Grinder and Judith DeLozer (1983- 1987).  The processes that they came up with were interesting, but quite convoluted and therefore ineffective.  They were fooling around with meta-levels as they were trying to figure out how to utilize the guidance of Gregory Bateson and his principles of the higher levels.  And they even wrote that they knew the secret would tie in somehow with managing the meta-levels.  They got thta from Bateson, they just didn’t know how to apply it.  That came later after I created the Meta-States model (1994).  One of my very first applications of Meta-States was to the genius state prerequisites and that brought about the Accessing Your Personal Genius state or induction (and hence the APG training).

What Meta-States was able to do as a process, and as the ultimate hypnotic state, was to set the required meta-levels (as meta-states or frames) over the primary state so that you can let go of the meta-awarenesses and be fully present in the primary state. Doing this commissions the higher meta-states to operate as an out-side of conscious awareness structure.  It’s paradoxical, as is many hypnotic states.  To release the multi-tracking kind of consciousness, you learn how to embrace your meta-level states and use them so that you are freed for letting them go— from your immediate awareness.

Then you can be all there— with all of your resources available for the flow or in-the-zone state.  Then when you read, you fully comprehend because you are there (and not elsewhere!).  Then when you write, you don’t suffer the dreaded “writer’s block.”  Then when you are there with a client or loved one, you are there and they can feel your full presence. And now you know why we use the APG training to create your genius coaching state, genius training state, genius writing state, wealth creation state, etc.  It is the ultimate Neuro-Semantic state for operating from your highest and best.  So that makes it a self-actualizing state.  And now you know why APG — Accessing Personal Genius— is the flagship training of Neuro-Semantics.

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In 1990 Peter Senge published a book that has become a classic, a book that most people in leadership and management roles in business, most who consult or coach within organizations, and those who seek to stay on the cutting edge of business have read.  I’m speaking, of course, about the book The Fifth Discipline. The theme and central focus of this book is on learning to think and work systemically.

Senge was convinced that the key to business success rested in five disciplines, which when synergized by leaders and managers, will launch an organization or business into a creative mode and take it to a whole new level of effectiveness.  Like the five critical component technologies that came together in 1935 for the McDonnell Douglas DC-3 and which ushered in the era of commercial air travel— Senge argued that the five components he discovered would create great companies.

What are those five components?  Systems thinking, personal mastery, mental models, building shared vision, and team learning.  Together “each provides a vital dimension in building organizations that can truly ‘learn,’ that can continually enhance their capacity to realize their highest aspirations” (p. 6).  Then unlike most contemporary organizations that are reactive, companies can become responsive or even generative.

Senge focuses on enabling companies to become “learning organizations.”  He writes about organizations going beyond the old traditional hierarchical structures to an enlivening vision, people collaborating and experiencing team learning, a whole new level of openness, and leadership that evolves beyond being politically power oriented.  Now does that sound like self-actualization or the self-actualizing leaders and companies that I describe in Unleashing Leadership? That’s what I also thought!   The Fifth Discipline is about self-actualization in organizations.

Yet because Senge did not use the term self-actualization or frame things in terms of moving beyond Theory X to Theory Y of management, I did not make the connection.  In spite of not using the language, throughout the work the vision and premises of self-actualization psychology informs his argument for the emergence of a whole new kind of organization— self-actualizing organizations.

In fact, for Senge “systems thinking” and “personal mastery” are two of his expressions for self-actualization.  What I suddenly now realize in re-reading The Fifth Discipline is that “personal mastery” in this model is what we call “self-actualization” in Maslow’s model!  Here’s my evidence.

Senge described “personal mastery” as a high level of proficiency in an area that deeply matters to you.  And to develop that level of mastery, you need to do two things: 1) Clarify what’s truly important to you and 2) See current reality more clearly. (p. 141).  Senge says that personal mastery goes beyond competence.

“It goes beyond spiritual unfolding or opening, although it requires spiritual growth.  It means approaching one’s life as a creative work, living life from a creative as opposed to reactive viewpoint.” (p. 141)

In an amazing paragraph where he described people of personal mastery, Senge’s description sounds very, very similar to how Maslow described self-actualizing people.

“People with a high level of personal mastery share several basic characteristics.  They have a special sense of purpose that lies behind their visions and goals.  For such a person, a vision is a calling rather than simply a good idea. They see ‘current reality’ as an ally, not an enemy.  They have learned how to perceive and work with forces of change rather than resist those forces.  They are deeply inquisitive, committed to continuing seeing reality more and more accurately.  They feel connected to others and to life itself.  Yet they sacrifice none of their uniqueness.  They feel as if they are part of a larger creative process, which they can influence but cannot unilaterally control.

“People with a high level of personal mastery live in a continual learning mode.  They never ‘arrive.’ … Personal mastery is not something you possess.  It is a process.  It is a lifelong discipline.  People with a high level of personal mastery are acutely aware of their ignorance, their incompetence, their growth areas.” (p. 142)

“People with high levels of personal mastery are more committed.  They take more initiative.  They have a broader and deeper sense of responsibility in their work.  They learn faster.  For all these reasons, a great many organizations espouse a commitment to fostering personal growth among their employees because they believe it will make the organization stronger.” (p. 143)

And systems thinking?  Senge describes this as “contemplating the whole as a pattern,” being able to see the unity of snapshots of isolated parts and how they work together.  He describes the building blocks of systems thinking as feedback loops and delays in the system and from there the recognition of patterns that arise that indicate specific kinds of systems (archetypes).

When we apply systems thinking to human beings, we recognize that our experiences are made up of multiple systems—our mind-body system, our meaning-making system, our neuro-semantic system.  And within these systems are reinforcing processes, limiting processes, balancing (stabilizing) processes.  And as in a business or political system, we also experience problems at various levels.  Some of our problems are mere symptoms of the system rather than the fundamental causes.  That’s why the symptoms keep resurfacing over time.  That’s why “solutions” which work at one level or for the short-term, never actually takes care of the real problem.

So what do we discover when we “contemplate the whole” and look for patterns in human beings?  We discover that there is within us an inner drive to self-actualize and that this is itself our most fundamental inner dynamic system.  This is our primary system for growing, developing, and actualizing our highest meanings and performances.  And Self-Actualization Psychology is the psychology that describes this whole.

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NLP is a model of how humans think, feel, behave and communicate. When NLP was developed in the 1970’s by Bandler and Grinder it was a radical departure from the field of psychology, which at the time was focused more on human dysfunction than peak performance.

Today, with the acceptance of positive psychology, NLP appears less radical can be viewed as an excellent framework for learning to communicate effectively, to model people and systems and to design strategies for peak performance. Learning NLP can improve the performance of athletes, sales people, business people, coaches, trainers, teachers, therapists and parents.

NLP for Consulting, Training and Coaching

I use NLP and NeuroSemantics in my consulting, training and coaching and I enjoy sharing the technology through public programs that I hold in Singapore and other parts of SE Asia. You can get a list of the upcoming programs by clicking here. I highly recommend NLP Communication and  Coaching Essentials which is the first 3-day of a NLP Practitioner program and covers how to communicate and coach effectively plus we are conducting  a full NLP Master Practitioner training in October.

NLP  Association of Singapore Video

If you like watching videos on YouTube then you can watch part of my presentation to the Singapore NLP Association.

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Together with Executive Coach, Dennis Heath,  he will facilitate a debrief a video of masterful coaching by Meta Coach Michelle Duval.

If you are in Singapore and want to see how masterful coaches, build rapport, ask questions, probe for meaning, and co-create new behaviours and reinforce resourceful thoughts and actions, then come along. Details here.

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At our self leadership programs we emphasise the importance of turning ideas into action or closing the ‘knowing-doing’ gap. Zurina is the embodiment of this principle and once again she has demonstrated her commitment to transform thoughts into reality.

Zurina loves taking photographs and one year ago decided that she would like to make her passion a career – not a new concept but the difference is how she executed this idea. In April 2009 she charged for her first professional shoot, today (12 months later) she is a busy photographer and is having her first gallery exhibition, ‘Shades of Pink’. The exhibition showcases 30 pieces of her work around a theme and for the benefit of the Breast Cancer Foundation;  plus, 150 people have bought tickets for tonight’s charity launch!

The exhibition was put together in 3 months during which time Zurina was also a mother of 2 toddlers and a director of Self Leadership International. When I asked Zurina to share with our blog readers her secret for being able to manifest so quickly, she answered that she uses many of the steps of the NLP Well Formed Outcome Pattern. Here are the steps she used:

1. Visualise the big picture – what will the end result look like.
2. Cover off the details such as; pick a realistic but ambitious date for the exhibition, locate a suitable venue, come up with a list of topics to photograph.
3. Identify the required resources such as; sponsors for the event, volunteers and subjects to be photographed.
4. Take action – start shooting and editing.
5. Make Adjustments – when things do not work out quite as planned make changes and then take action again.
6. Be consistent – do a bit or a lot every day.
7. Create excitement about the project – this translates into the marketing which resulted in paying customers whilst maintaining relationships.

There is of course a ’secret’ ingredient that she believed it could be done. It is my experience that many a good idea never reaches frution because of a lack of self-belief, planning and action. Do you have a good idea locked inside you?

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