The topic of raising your game is one which for me is rather important, because repeatedly I find that it’s an issue that comes up.

It’s not just a matter of some sort of professional world: “I must be more effective at work”; raising your game touches upon just about everything that’s important to us in our lives. 

It’s an interesting thing. You could talk about raising your game in the obvious way of, “I want to be more effective as a manager,” but you could talk about raising your game as far as being able to be more loving goes. Absolutely any area is grist to the mill here.

The way I want to start this is by sharing with you something that I do a lot of. I find it extremely effective, which is why I’ve used it with so many people around the world. It’s a very simple process. I just want to ask you a question about raising your game:

What do you want?

Because what you want is going to be fundamental to determining how you go about the next steps of getting it.

Very frequently, when I ask people, “What do you want?” there’s a kind of pause. I very rarely find somebody saying, “I’m glad you asked me that question; the first thing, the second thing, the third thing…” It’s much more, “Well…” That, to me, is a good sign because it shows a person is actually thinking.

Why is that important to you?

The reason I ask is because there are all sorts of things we can say we want, but the ones that really matter to us, they are important to us for very good reasons.

When we understand what those reasons are, we frequently find that helps us move forward in the direction that we want to take.

So, alright, what do you want? Suppose you don’t know.

I’ve certainly worked with lots of people in that position. Then I guess what we might be saying is, “I don’t know what I want. That’s what I’d like to know. I want to know what I really want to be doing; I want to know where I’m going in my life or what, for me, is the direction I should be taking at this time.” All of those are questions based on: “I want to know something which right now is a mystery to me.” Not a problem, because the answers can be found within.

Author Ian McDermott 

If you want to know more about the practical how-to’s of achieving success, fulfilment and effectiveness in your personal and professional life we have two programmes which can be a great place to start including ‘NLP Practitioner Programme with Neuroscience’ and ‘Mastering the Coach Approach’ Programme.