There are many ways to model the activity of our minds, and one way is to think of ourselves as a flowing, cascading river of goals – or outcomes.  Our brains are well adapted to the pursuit of goals.  Every living organism, in fact, has its tacit and fundamental motivation away from painful stuff (heat, bad pH, loud noises, bankruptcy, Nazis) and toward pleasurable things (food, sex, rock and roll, visits from the grandchildren).  If we think of our brains as highly-evolved goal-seeking machines, we can deconstruct our real-time thoughts and emotions as being embedded in a matrix of outcomes and the mobilization of our nervous energy (resources) to reach those outcomes.

You may not always be aware that you are seeking something – and since this is just a model, I am willing to concede the possibility that a person can be without motivation of any kind whatsoever.  But on those occasions of emotional arousal, such as anxiety, excitement, enjoyment, irritation and so on, it seems likely that some desired outcome is being pursued, satisfied or thwarted.

The NLP sense of outcomes includes sensory representations that help us “envision” the outcome and provide us with criteria for measuring whether or not the outcome has been reached.  I know, for instance, that when I get home from work, I will be able to drop my burdens (backpack and bike helmet), have some liquid refreshment and begin thinking about what to do next.  I may not think about these exact things as I ride up the hill to my place, but if my progress toward these pleasures is somehow arrested, I will feel frustration.  Even if I am not aware of my outcomes, they are functioning whenever I feel a sense of motivation towards or away from something.

So far so good: we are goal-seeking organisms with the capacity to create a model of a goal and how to reach it and then mobilize ourselves to follow the plan to get there.  So what happens when there are two or more outcomes working simultaneously?  This could be multitasking, which most of us consider to be good, or it could be cognitive dissonance, confusion, stress, paralysis, insanity.  For instance, let’s say you see an attractive person on the street.  You may, without any real conscious decision, immediately formulate the goal of deriving pleasure from gazing on this person, commonly known as cruising or ogling.  On the other hand, you may also want to be well-regarded by them.  Getting these two incompatible goals to co-exist is an art-form that has been developed with varying degrees of success by numerous North American males.  One of the strategies for successfully reconciling these two values is to recognize that the pleasure derived from both looking at and talking to women is a product of the imagination.

The feedback from reality may be different from the imagined result.

Learning to use feedback as information is, of course, a goal-seeking adaptation for which our brains are well-equipped.  The processes that interfere with this can also be related to specific outcomes we may have.  For instance, if I want to tell you about some experience but you keep getting distracted, I might get frustrated.  This will lead me down a different path than if I adopt a new outcome of seeking rapport with you by attending to the distraction along with you.

We normally have multiple outcomes – and even multiple levels of outcomes – running at the same time.  There are the big, global, driving sorts of values, such as learning various skills, building financial security, cultivating a relationship or making a difference in your community.  Within those are smaller-chunk outcomes, cascading down in a hierarchical way to the small, moment-by-moment goals that direct our outward behaviour.  Some outcomes will be active and others dormant at any given time.  Some seem to run in the background and only reveal themselves occasionally.  Some are routine outcomes we use often in pursuit of a wide range of other values, such as “travel from here to there”, or “check the time”, or “get out of this conversation now”.

There is plenty of opportunity for conflict among all these shifting, constantly transforming outcomes that interact with our senses and our conscious minds.  So much of this content is unconscious that we often don’t identify the sources of our feelings, and the perception is that events “cause” feelings.  This is a distraction from the more useful strategy of the Outcome Scan, which is very simple:  interrupt your process for a moment and find out what your outcomes are right now, because these potent little ideas are motivating and mobilizing your energies.

What conflicting outcomes are producing the tightness in my throat?  Am I confused by the conflict between my long-term outcome of building a life and my short-term need to get along with some person?  Has contact with reality made something I wanted before seem unrealistic?  Has the need to adhere to realistic plans and outcomes suddenly taken precedence over cherished dreams?  Are the dreams still there, seeking expression?

Try this experiment for a couple of days:  Program yourself so that whenever you experience an uncomfortable feeling, you will stop and perform a quick outcome scan.  You will be pleasantly surprised at the effect.  You can become so sensitive that you will notice things like how reading words on a page can conflict with your desire to believe certain things.

And, for a chance to practice your other NLP skills, join us for NLP Boot this Monday August 9 at 7 pm.  Email me for details.

TTFN,

cabot@telus.net

Vancouver, Canada