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Paul's progress
One day Paul decided enough was enough: he decided he was actually going to make his dream
a reality. He’d been researching personal development methods and discovered that a dream
needs to be transformed into a goal otherwise, as he’d come to realise, it will always remain out of
reach.
So he learned to design or ‘qualify’ dreams so they became more realistic and more achievable.
There are lots of techniques for turning dreams into goals. One is the well-known SMART goals
model. Another is our own Pegasus NLP PECSAW model.
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What you do want is quite different to what you don't want. And it's not just about playing with words,
either. Wording it positively creates a quite different mental image - and a more motivating one. For
example, focusing on becoming healthier is very different to focusing on not being unhealthy.
(2) Make sure you can achieve it - on your own
If your goal needs other people to change or to act in some way then it’s just a dream, because
you are not in control of the result.
(3) Know why you want this.
You must know why you want it. The more of these ‘Whys’ you have the more likely you are to remain
motivated and to achieve your goal. (There are three other steps, too, in the PECSAW model).
Paul's progress
Paul has written down the above three steps:
(1) He knows he wants to be healthier.
(2) He knows it’s entirely within his power to make this happen.
(3) And he has listed 14 reasons why achieving this goal is important to him.
He has taken the first 3 critically important steps in making his dream a reality.
Paul's progress
Paul was now fired up. Writing out his 'Whys’, his reasons for wanting to become fitter, made
achieving his goal ‘non-negotiable’! He really got into it and came up with 14 reasons to get fitter.
He then decided was going to settle for nothing less than success.
He set himself a six-month goal. In this goal he designed precisely what ‘fitter’ meant to him - and
wrote down:
- What being fitter would enable him to do that he could not do now
- What he would weigh
- His body measurements
- How he would appear in the mirror.
Then he worked backwards from the six months date to today and identified the action steps he
needed to take.
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He detailed these steps in terms of general daily activity, fitness activity, dietary change, and how
he would maintain motivation whenever the going got tough.
Paul's progress
Paul realised he he must act. Timed action steps are central to his plan. He has detailed when,
precisely, he will do things. For example he knows that tomorrow morning he will get up 35
minutes earlier in order to do some exercise. And that at lunchtime he will leave the office and go
for a walk around the block before eating his lunch-time sandwich.
He has also factored in a ‘non-obsessive’ clause - he can change his plans for a particular day
should circumstances require this but will later catch up on what he has missed. Because he has
decided that in any seven-day span he will still achieve his weekly goal.
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Paul's progress
Paul has a busy work life and has a family. So he decided to do his exercise first thing in the
morning and sometimes during his lunch break. The great thing about early morning action steps
is that they very quickly become part of our routine. If we get up and do them, almost before we
have had time to think about them, they are much more likely to get done and become part of our
routine.
Plus we then have that feeling of achievement for the rest of the day. And Paul was also careful
to make the action steps for the first couple of months less demanding to enable him to smoothly
get into a routine which h did upset his home life.
Because he manages a team of people Paul also knows a bit about motivation. He knows that
the 'little and often' approach to motivation works better than the occasional big motivation
sessions.
To ensure he remains motivated Paul has his list of 14 reasons, his 'whys'. His list includes lots of
detail of what he is achieving as he moves towards his goal. And, importantly, what he
he's avoiding by moving towards it.
And, also importantly, Paul made a point of thoughtfully reading through this list a couple of times
a week.
And, as he did this, he discovered that it alerted him to even more reasons, even more 'whys'. So
his motivation became self-generating.
Over to you…
It’s a straightforward process. The 5 steps or stages are about dreaming a great dream, turning it into
a realistic goal, then making a plan for it, then taking action - and staying on track.
It’s about ensuring that you are doing rather than merely thinking about doing.
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