Your Mission is …

Are you ready to have some fun?

Are you ready to go beyond enemy lines in the duty for your country?

Ok, ok I know I’m getting carried away – how about completing another confidence building exercise instead?!

Success leaves clues wherever it goes…

Success leaves clues wherever it goes. In order to get the desired confidence levels that you are after it pays to be a copycat!

Another word for this is modelling.

NLP Modelling is the method of recreating excellence. We can model any individual’s behaviour by mastering their beliefs, the physiology and the specific thought processes (that is the strategies they use) that are at the root of the desired skill or behaviour.

It is about achieving an outcome of excellence by studying how someone else creates their own level of peak performance.

A key point in modelling is that you can’t learn by listening only to the person talk about what they do (their behaviour) in the abstract. You need to watch the subject actually do it — or at least pretend to do it.

Non-verbal cues can also be important, i.e. gestures, body movement, facial patterns, etc. When this aspects are observed find out what was going on in the persons mind.   

A lot of the most important stuff is below the threshold of consciousness, so you really have to slow the subject down so he becomes aware of what he’s doing.

It is this art of asking a person questions about their subjective experience that I think would be above all of interest to cognitive psychologists. And I have to concede that it’s the most difficult of all aspects of NLP to learn.

By observing and modelling successful behaviour, i.e. in this case people with high levels of confidence, you can pick up little golden nuggets of tips, techniques and the strategies that they use.

By observing how they walk, talk and act you too can take what they do, put it into your own life and get the same results.

Here’s what John Grinder says about modelling:

Don’t believe me?

Try this exercise out over the next couple of days and see how you feel!

Your mission…

Over the next 3 days I want you to observe other people – pretend that you are undercover!

However, no newspapers with two eye-holes cut out are allowed!

I want you to observe all types of people – confident people, shy people, outgoing people, people talking, people being quiet, how people interact with each other.

Observe people who know one another, people who are strangers – the whole nine yards!

Look closely at what they say and do.

How are they moving their body?

What do they do with their head?

How do they speak?

How do others react to them?

Would you like to talk to this person?

Are they smiling and laughing?

Would you like to be this person?

Below, write down 5 behaviours and things that you have observed over the past 3 days that make you say :

“I want to be like that!”

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

For your next mission, should you choose to accept it…

For the next 2 days, I want you to take just 1 of the 5 behaviours that you have written out above and I want you to act that way for the duration of those 2 days.

Pretend that you have been given an assignment (because you have!) to just act like that for 2 days.

That’s it, no longer, no less.

Pretend it’s a game.

After the 2 days you will soon discover the magic of modelling behaviours.

Then you’ll move onto the next behaviour and the next and the…

By effectively modelling excellence found in others your personal performance with dramatically improve as well as your personal empowerment.

I’d really like hear about your thoughts on this in the comments below.