The Science of Goal Setting with Si Conroy

Can you go from being a "heavily smoking, high-end suburban drinker" to running a hundred miles? It turns out that you can. 

Si Conroy shows us how at The Brighton Summit workshop, The Science of Goal-Setting.

We can make better, more profitable decisions using NLP ('mirroring and modelling' or mind control as Si Conroy called it...with a wry smile!). Take away our senses and we don't exist but NLP allows us to take control. When we talk about planning and goal setting, we can align all our available resources, imagine it happening and it will happen. If we see a problem, we'll create one but if we set goals in a certain way we can 'trick' ourselves into believing that we've already done it successfully and will do again.

Here are the key points from the workshop... 

• Annual appraisals (done away with by Microsoft, Amazon, Adobe, Gap) often don't work. In fact, 607 large businesses analysed the data and concluded that they are actually detrimental. Instead, continuous feedback is most beneficial. What is working and what isn't?
• Life Goal setting is important but the idea that we can be inspired by motivational posters showing someone punching the air is flawed. They have the opposite effect! 
• The science of goal setting means thinking about our consciousness, goal infrastructure is in-built. Our entire consciousness is about achieving goals, we exist to enable these achievements. 
• When we set a goal we choose something that we don't already have, we look for a gap.  We choose to put ourselves under tension which is key. It makes us uncomfortable and that can effect whether we achieve or not.
• There is a direct, linear relationship between the degree of goal difficulty you set and your performance against that goal.
• Self-belief and commitment are key to achieving your goal

The Five Golden Rules?

• Divert attention and effort to the goal
• Activate knowledge, experience and skills
• Develop a knowledge or task strategy
• Effort and arousal is activated in proportion to the difficulty of the goal
• Time you persist with your goal increases as the goal becomes harder to achieve

Si concluded by explaining that we have to overcome the emotional stuff, we need to work out the blocks and the weaknesses. We need milestones and to find our drivers for success. Ultimately, we need to work hard. Don't plan, visualise!

An inspiring session (leaving me with a lot of homework to do!). 

Live blogging by Ellie Dobing - Flaming Nora Media and RadioReverb - at the Brighton Summit
 

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