Archive for the ‘NLP training’ Category

In a comment to the previous post, Em Coste said, “At this stage, I find myself thinking that the relationship one has with potential matters more than potential or accomplishment.”

I totally agree with Em that our relationship with our Potential is critical.  If we fear it, we will pull our punches, keep our head below the parapet and give ourselves permission to believe our excuses.  If we embrace it, then we will open ourselves up to who we are here to be, and learn to live with our magnificence.

I was talking about my ideas on potential with a new group on the first weekend of our NLP Practitioner programme. I compared potential as being like having the front room for high days and holidays, and the back room where all the day to day living took place; or like having a frock or suit for ‘best’ and rarely wearing it even though we feel great when we do.

One of the students queried all of this saying that potential and goals were the fuel of life.  I felt he was confusing potential with ability.  I had a fabulous boss who was the MD of a company I worked in.  He had started as the proverbial postroom boy of a large organisation which was a household name, and duly worked himself up through the ranks to become a director.  He then moved across to our company, which was associated, and  became MD.  He then moved to take up the Big One – CEO at the parent company (our company was disbanded in the process).  Once in post, he fairly quickly went down hill never to really recover.

I feel that potential has to be connected to Identity, Purpose and Mission.  As we learn and grow, so do our possibilities, but not the core of who we are.  Is our potential more a quest to connect with our original blueprint and once we touch this source of congruence and alignment, we can truly say that we ARE our potential?

Enlightenment wasn’t my intended destination point and I sit under the big toe of giants.  Our Learner said “If you have your potential, then what?  There’s nothing else to do!”  Except the next moment, and the next, I expect.

At the same workshop, I became taken with the ideas around Passion, and how it is manifested in people and received by others.

In our unique British way, Passion and the expression of it, is a tad embarrassing.  All that emotion displayed for all to witness.  There is something unseemly about it.  Often when someone has spoken passionately about something, it is followed by the need to shuffle feet, look sheepish and mutter an apology.

Every family conditions its young into what is acceptable and what is not acceptable.  We learn that one individual’s desires can be an imposition on another.  In the process, we may also learn that Passion is something to be curbed, lest we disgrace our community. How much passion for life was expressed in your family?

Curbing our Passion is a recipe for mediocrity.

Hopefully the embarrassment is just over the strength of our feelings, and not the message.  There is a need for ecology and aligned congruence.  Since it is through our Passion that we know who we are and what we’re here for. When we touch our Passion, we generate vital energy.  We can inspire others.  We can collaborate to create something even larger.

Society needs constraints and limitations.  the question is – Can we afford to have Passion as one of them?