DECISIONS, DECISIONS, DECISIONS

Thinking about deciding brought me to a point, actually, about the FREEDOM to decide and how much we take for granted that freedom. The last bastion of freedom we have is our minds and our ability to make choices, etc. These are rights we are all born with and are ours to use.

And, yet, there are people who still want to limit our ability to think for ourselves and to learn for ourselves, and to use our own brains for ourselves. There are still those who want to have the control over thinking and deciding. It's one thing to make the choice to ask someone else for help, it's quite another to learn to help oneself. After all, it is your brain. NLP was developed to make it easier to learn to run your own brain, not to have someone else run it for you. NLP has taken away the mystery of how easy it is for someone to change! It was never based on theories and it is not seated in any other discipline. It is a meta-discipline, that is a discipline of disciplines.

So how do you go about deciding to change yourself? The first and important step is deciding what, if anything, you want to change, and why. Sometimes there is something you want to do differently, sometimes something you want to do better. But consider "why" you want to change. I know there are some in NLP who preach that we are "not allowed" to ask why, but that is so far from the basis of the technology. After all, "why" goes to the reason, the motivation, and the impetus of how strong, or otherwise, you desire the change. What is "your" criteria for your own change? Do you want to change to please someone else, others, or yourself? Think this one through thoroughly. It's one piece that most often isn't considered in the process of change.

Since oftentimes we get feedback from others about our behavior, how do we decide which behaviors to change? Do we change constantly to please everyone? I don't think so. So what criteria do you use to decide? Now this "criteria" piece is actually inside the strategy of deciding whether or not to change for yourself. It's in the T.O.T.E. If the criteria is met, the choice is made and exit the strategy, or go to the next routine. If the criteria isn't met, do you exit, or collect more information before deciding. And then, how much information is enough? How will you know? What is your criteria for information? Where do you get it, from whom, when and how?

I saw an interesting discussion regarding the question: is all perception projection? The interesting part about this that I didn't read, at least as of yet, is they both go in different "directions": one comes in and the other goes out. So which is which and when? If someone else decides to provide you with feedback about some behavior of yours, what is the feedback? is it accurate? How are they deciding that it's something for you to know? Does it require a change and how would you know?

All of these questions connect to decision strategies you have and can be decided by yourself. While I agree that it's certainly useful get additional information from outside oneself, it certainly isn't necessary to rely on others to help you to change yourself. Oftentimes, it may be useful to have someone else assist but only for one reason: they can calibrate your physiology (4-tuples) from the outside better than you can on the inside, but that only makes sense. Then, once your brain learns how to run the routine, you can always do it yourself. That's why we have exercises in training programs.

It's important to remember that the more you exercise your personal freedom, the more you can enjoy it. The more you learn to help yourself, the more you will. The more you learn to be better at something than the time before, the more you will.

©2009 John La Valle