Work-Life Effectiveness: Expanding One-Dimensional Success with NLP

by Peter Fleming

Until last year, I had been working as an employee for 20 years—starting out as a qualified accountant and ending as a Regional VP of a “Big 5” Management Consultancy. Although very successful by most people’s standards, I was not reaching my full potential. I was improving bottom line results but not changing people’s lives for the better, which is where I can both excel and get a high level of satisfaction.

Then I started my own business.

I was pursuing what I always wanted to do as a passion, namely empowering others to achieve their fullest potential. I had already authored a book “Do What You Love, Love What You Do” and had learnt many skills through the school of hard knocks and had a lot to share.

At that time I did not have any particular “qualifications” in the field of personal development other than the experience gained over those 20 years of interacting with many people from 60 countries and traveling to more than 40 countries, meeting just about every type of person imaginable both on their good days and their not so good days.

While being working and travelling actively with work, I had embarked upon my own inner journey.

My journey of self-discovery began in 1994 and had been growing over the years with time spent with some of the world’s leading “self-development” gurus including Anthony Robbins, Deepak Chopra, Bob Proctor, Jack Canfield and many others. I had invested lots of time and money into these “life lessons” and never regretted any of it. I literally transformed my way of thinking from a rather cynical, go-it-alone state of mind to a new mindset of helping others, discovering along the way my own purpose in life.

In the second half of 2002, I was fortunate enough to find a certification program in Career Coaching.

It was something I had been working around for several years and indeed the core topic of my book. Several techniques in the Coaching piece of that course referred to NLP, something about which I had heard little at that time. There was a discussion about more effective ways to relate to people, to build rapport, to get a better understanding of what a person was really saying and ultimately to provide interventions to help those people. All of this seemed interesting and highly relevant to my own pursuits.

When I received an invitation from a friend (my former boss in fact) to attend a dinner and speech with Robert Dilts, one of the big names in NLP, I accepted without hesitation.

At that event, I discovered Mind Transformations and decided to join the 12-day certification course to be held in Batam in November/December 2002. A month after that, I also added the 3-day Hypnotherapy and Time Line Therapy courses to the base.

Those 12 (15) days were among the most memorable of my life as I immersed myself into the subjects.

All the time, I was thinking how this could best be applied in my own business (life and career coaching as well as training) and in my life. Seven months later, I have materially improved my own ability to build meaningful communication rapidly, to listen and to help others.

My client focus in this field is on senior executives whose lives are out of alignment.

Most senior managers are outwardly “successful” (fancy title, nice home, plenty of money) and are almost all out of alignment in some major way, whether it be in their relationships (too much travel and too many late night conference calls), their health (stress-induced illnesses, poor weight management and lack of awareness about general good health practices) or their inner self (a never-ending search for inner peace). This lack of balance very often spills over into the areas of their lives that were previously under control.

A divorce or a severe health problem can jeopardize the career that had been the main area of “success” up to that point.

Similarly, a loss of job can be devastating when such a disproportionate reliance had been placed upon it. I know all this because I myself was one of them. I can fully relate to the downward spiral that accompanies this type of one-dimensional “success”.

It is therefore in this area of work-life effectiveness that I specialize and since the Career Coaching and NLP techniques have been engaged, the number of favourable client testimonials that I have received is proof that I must be doing something right for them.

NLP is powerful and will improve your communications with others and, perhaps more importantly, with yourself.

We communicate more with ourselves than with others, yet we seldom give ourselves favourable comments or encouraging words as we often do for others. NLP will provide clarity in what we want in life and provide a roadmap to getting it. Identifying blocks (both real and perceived) and removing them is a wonderful tool to be able to carry around in your personal “life management” toolbox. NLP is a vast topic and I am looking forward to enjoying the rest of the journey.

Thank you Barney and team for the opportunity and best of luck to everyone heading through the same wonderful journey we call life-long learning.

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