In the beginning... (aka Goal 1 of 10)

I played with rolling out all of my 2009 goals in one shot, yet thought that would steal from the suspense and spectacle of this endeavor. Instead, I'm going to tease a bit and roll out my Quest one goal at a time. Despite my desire to roll this out Letterman style from 10-1, we are going to start with the big goal. The goal that I feel will have the largest impact on my life if all other goals go unfinished.

Goal #1, background and reasoning:
2009 Goal #1 goes back almost twenty years to when I had a fascination with psychology. The brain very much seemed like a total mystery. Fantastic theories on how bumps and depressions were thought map personality traits (Phrenology), or how the theory from one "great thinker" would so greatly contradict another "great thinker". Curious to learn more, asked my teachers questions that they had no way to answer, the science of how the brain worked, had not moved forward enough.At least how it was being taught. I wanted to know how my head worked, why I thought the way I did. What was possible? The theories we were taught, were abstract enough as to be impossible to argue, yet equally as impossible to demonstrate. The explanations and reasoning seemed to fall flat and empty the more I tried to test them. Entering college with Psych as my major, I came to the rather quick conclusion that most of the teachers, and certainly most of the students felt that they were broken, and simply wanted to find the cure. My experience was of broken teachers, teaching broken ideas, to students that thought they were broken. Meh. I only going to put up with 3 of 5 semesters of that. Disillusioned and frustrated, I gave up on psychology, and school in general.

Fast forward a few years and I would find a few interesting concepts congealing. My first true sales job required me to call people that had no interest in talking to me, trying to sell them something that 5 or 6 other people were also trying to sell them. This 'cold calling', can be brutal on your self-esteem, as you are presented with rejection after rejection. A week or two of calling 6 hours a day, and getting shot down every time can lead to the expectation that you will be shot down. Funny thing that. Customers hear that defeat in your voice; you're telling them you can't sell crack to crackheads, and they believe you. It starts in the mind. Simple things like if you are making sales calls, and you smile as you're talking, you will find the conversation will go much better. Or if you have a theme music that you play in your head when you look at phone. "Flight of the Bumblebee", is a personal favorite. These little 'tricks', because that's all I thought they were, kept adding up. Eventually, I had a hand full of tricks, and when I backed them up with some elbow grease, I ended up being Rookie of the Year. Good times. The mistake I made, was thinking that these tricks were strictly for sales calls. When I left that job two years later, I left those ideas and concepts behind.

That was too bad, because those 'tricks' were very much on target for why I was interested in psychology in the first place. Those examples show how we each have considerable control over our minds, and the state of our minds, was right there in my hands. I let it go. I had huge bags of gold in my hands, and didn't recognize it.

Call it fate, or blind dumb luck, but I was introduced to someone that had a depth of understanding of these tricks. This person, ZenLC, introduced me to Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP). NLP, was what I was looking for. How does the brain work, and more so, how can I work my brain.

In the process of defining and deciding my goals, for 2009, NLP popped up again and again as a incredibly beneficial skill to have. In fact, is supports almost, if not every, goal on the list.


Goal #1 is to become NLP Practitioner Certified.

-Maarburg posting from just outside cyberspace