What do you want?

"The indispensable first step to getting the things you want out of life is this: decide what you want."
- Ben Stein
Actor, writer, commentator, lawyer, teacher, humorist

How often do we wait for things to happen, wait for someone else to do something, wait to see what’s happening around us before we make a decision?

How many opportunities have we lost because we haven’t thought about what we want out of life, like a ship that sets sail without a destination in mind – it will get somewhere but where is a whole different matter.

One of the fundamentals in NLP is knowing your outcome, knowing what you want – this can range from getting your weekly food shop to changing the direction of your life – and everything in between!

So you have decided what you want, what next….. make it real, really step into it, go into the future and see what’s happening around you, what are you doing, what are other people doing, what are you saying to yourself and others, how do you feel?

By being really clear about what we want means we can start to see all the opportunities around us to make it happen. I have a friend who people call 'lucky', he always seems to land on his feet, even when things around him seem to be going wrong, or not going in the direction he wants to go – by keeping in mind what he wants he can stay open to opportunities around him as they happen and take those that, at first glance, may not be a direct path, but will be a step in the right direction.

How do I use this, well, you can see me put this into practice very specifically in my first running blog.

So what do you want at work, at home, with friends and colleagues, for the short term, for the long term and what are you going to do to start making it happen?

As a final note, if you’ve made a decision as to what you want and as you get towards it you realise that perhaps it’s not what you thought it was or what you really want then stop, re-think it and then go for it – you want to follow a path that takes you where you want to go. Be careful of following a path through stubborness!!