Laying the Foundation of Mentality

When you build a house you must make sure that the foundations are made out of the best materials and with the best building practices.

If you would like to build that we generally refer as character or way of thinking what would be its building blocks? What would be the presuppositions of mentality that can lead you to positive outcomes?

There is a plethora of values and ways to see things and every human has its own “set of rules” and in this post, I will present you my own. These are possibly my most core mentality elements and as you will see at the end of the post they are deeply connected to something I am very passionate about.

Respect

You will often hear me saying “I respect your model of the world”. This comes from the realization that every human being is different and unique. We are born and raised differently, we have different experiences and environment. We could say that we are different boxes, containing different treasures.

This means I respect, I acknowledge the differences in opinions or actions of other humans. This doesn’t mean that I accept or agree with them. I can agree or disagree, accept or not accept but I will always respect the model of the world of other people.

I have an opinion and I can share it if I am asked to. I hesitate to give advice, because probably the advice I am giving is suitable for me, but not the other person. I’d much rather help others to find their own answers since I believe we have all the resources needed inside us. Just sometimes they are too deep inside.

Feedback

Jay Abraham a famous American marketer once said that “everything is a test” meaning ( amongst others ) that you can put ideas into test until you find the best one. We say: “No Failure, Only Feedback”. We can try new things, new ideas and if they work for us, fine. If they don’t work, fine again.

Life is too short not to try things, not to have new experiences, not to enrich our model of the world. Go to that dance class you wanted. What’s the worst thing might happen? Laugh at you? Great, you extended the lifespan of some humans. Persevere and they will congratulate you for your progress. Cook a dish differently. If it sucks, just order pizza.

When something doesn’t work out, it means NOTHING for your identity. You’re not a failure, just a course of action didn’t bring the desired outcome. You take your lesson and carry on with your life. Failure is an adult concept. Have you seen a child trying to walk? Sometimes it falls. Doesn’t sits on its butt saying “I am a failure, I will never walk”. Tries again, from another angle and finally succeeds.

This doesn’t mean that you should never quit. Sometimes you should stop trying and say “enough, this is not for me”. You don’t take it personally and go on to other endeavors. And this is a lesson on its own. I tried to learn to play guitar on various occasions. I failed miserably. I am not a failure guitarist. I am just not good a playing guitar. Still, I listen to music, still I enjoy it, no big deal.

Choices

It’s all about creating choices. People get stuck and frustrated when they think they have one or no choices. Keyword here is “think”. It is clearly a mentality issue. When you believe that you have no other choice, will you see the possibilities? All you have to do is keep your eyes and ears open and take advantage of what is coming your way. Think out of (your) box, reframe situations, try new things and you will see possibilities emerging.

Put yourself in situations that you have many choices. There is a law called the Law of Requisite Variety that says the system/person with the most flexibility of behavior will control the system. The more choices you have the better results you will have. You will feel more secure, more confident, more peaceful.

Let’s say you want to open a new business. You put all of your money and effort into building a physical location? Then what? What if no one shows up? Stressful just to think. On the other hand put some of the money/effort in the physical store, some on a web page, some on a social media presence, some on advertising, some a side gig and keep some in store for good measure. When you have choices, something eventually will work out. No one “likes” your Facebook page? No problem. There is Google Ads. Google Ads too expensive? Print some flyers. If you think you have one course of action, you are missing on many opportunities. If you think there are opportunities around you, you will find them.

That was a brief explanation of three of the most important NLP (Neuro Linguistic Programming) presuppositions. The NLP presuppositions are the thirteen building blocks of the NLP way of thinking. These are not exclusive to the NLP nor some kind of a gospel. It’s a good-to-have mentality if you are really practicing this field of knowledge.

Some of you might have seen it coming. Yes, I am passionate about NLP. I want to present it in a positive, serious and objective manner, away from exuberant claims and promises. NLP is not the greatest thing ever, not the cure-for-all, it’s just a set of techniques, a way of thinking and an attitude that can help you understand things and have the results that you want.

Simple as that!

And until we have the results that we want …
Be Healthy, Smile and Steem.

PS : graphics were made with free elements from canva.com