Capítulo 1
Unlocking Your Mind's Hidden Potential
Have you ever wondered why some people seem to effortlessly achieve their goals while others struggle despite equal talent and opportunity? The secret might not be what you think. NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming) offers a revolutionary approach to personal transformation that has helped over a million people worldwide achieve breakthrough results in minutes rather than months or years. Endorsed by celebrities like Anthony Hopkins, who credits NLP-like techniques for his acting success, and embraced by Fortune 500 companies for leadership development, NLP represents a psychological revolution comparable to how technology has transformed our external world. Unlike traditional approaches that work inconsistently, NLP provides reliable methods for creating deep, lasting change in thinking, feeling, and behavior through specific, learnable techniques that anyone can master.
Capítulo 2
The Revolutionary Science of Mental Programming
Your brain operates much like a computer-with mental software that can be upgraded for immediate improvements in performance. This explains why change is sometimes difficult: wishing, hoping, or getting angry won't upgrade your mental programs. You need specific instructions, and NLP serves as that instruction manual.
The name Neuro-Linguistic Programming is purely descriptive: "Neuro" refers to your nervous system and five senses; "Linguistic" refers to both verbal language and non-verbal communication; and "Programming" suggests that our thoughts, feelings, and actions are habitual programs that can be changed by upgrading our "mental software."
NLP's approach to modeling excellence can be understood through the evolution of skiing instruction. Until the 1950s, skiing was considered a matter of natural talent. Then researchers filmed skilled skiers and studied their movements frame by frame, identifying the essential "isolates" or smallest units of behavior that made them successful. When these isolates were taught to average skiers, they immediately improved. NLP extends this principle beyond physical movements to inner thoughts, pictures, feelings, and beliefs.
The core principle behind all NLP is that "people work perfectly"-our thoughts, actions and feelings consistently produce specific results, whether we like those results or not. To change outcomes, we must change these internal processes. Other key NLP presuppositions include: the map is not the territory (our mental representations differ from reality); experience has structure (which can be modified); if one person can do something, anyone can learn it; mind and body form one system; people already have all necessary resources; and if something isn't working, try something else.
Simple exercises demonstrate how easily we can change our experiences. The concept of "associated" versus "dissociated" perspectives shows how being inside an experience feels engaging and exciting, while viewing it from a distance creates calm detachment. By deliberately choosing when to associate or dissociate from experiences, we can enhance positive memories and gain perspective on negative ones. Similarly, adjusting the submodalities of mental images-making pleasant memories larger, brighter and closer, or pushing unpleasant ones farther away-dramatically affects our emotional responses.
NLP began in the early 1970s when Richard Bandler, a mathematics student studying psychology at UC Santa Cruz, discovered he could reproduce therapeutic results by mimicking successful therapists' behavior patterns. When he met linguistics professor John Grinder, they combined their skills to develop a "language of change." Their breakthrough came when studying phobias-they discovered that people with phobias experienced their fears as happening to them directly, while those who'd overcome phobias viewed them as distant events happening to someone else. By teaching phobic individuals to mentally distance themselves from their fears, they achieved instant results.
Capítulo 3
Mastering Motivation: The Engine of Achievement
Motivation comes from either inspiration or desperation. Inspiration drove Dr. Edwin Land to invent instant photography after his daughter wanted to see her picture immediately, and propelled Bill Gates to create MS-DOS after seeing a computer kit advertisement. Desperation motivated Anthony Robbins to transform his life when he found himself washing dishes in his bathtub. Despite motivation's clear benefits, many people struggle to get motivated, even when success seems attractive.
NLP identifies two fundamental motivation directions that profoundly influence our lives: moving toward what we want or away from what we don't want. The "away from" person won't get up until imagining their boss threatening to fire them, won't take breaks until uncomfortable, and won't change jobs until their current one becomes unbearable. The "toward" person wakes excited about opportunities, takes breaks as rewards, and pursues better career opportunities. Both strategies have value-"away from" motivation helps identify problems and escape negative situations, while "toward" motivation drives goal achievement and forward progress.
As a manager, you must recognize both motivation styles in your team. Some people respond to rewards, bonuses, and praise-these are toward motivated individuals who talk about goals and targets. Others barely react to incentives but spring into action when faced with potential problems or negative consequences-these are away from motivated people who excel at problem-solving. The key is matching your motivational approach to each person's natural direction.
Values act as superchargers for motivation, serving as life's measuring sticks that determine what actions we take. When people disconnect from their values, they lose motivation, drifting aimlessly. To connect with your values, ask yourself: What are my goals? What's important about these goals? What do I value about them? What meaning do they hold?
The way we represent experiences in our mind determines our response strength. Using multiple sensory modalities (visual, auditory, kinesthetic, smell, taste) makes experiences more compelling than using just one. Most people's inner voices are weak and uninspiring. NLP co-developer Richard Bandler encourages creating rich internal soundtracks-powerful music, encouraging voices, even confident laughter when facing challenges. This makes experiences more vivid and exciting.
Capítulo 4
Discovering Your Life's Mission
If you advance confidently toward your dreams, you'll experience unexpected success. A mission is a sense of purpose that draws you into your future, unifying your beliefs, values, actions and identity. It weaves together your interests, desires and goals into a cohesive fabric. Those with missions, like Steven Spielberg who "wakes up so excited he can't eat breakfast," pursue their goals relentlessly with fierce desire.
Most people lack a sense of mission, instead having merely jobs or careers they "attend" or "go to." Many experience the discontent Studs Terkel documented-feeling like machines, cages, mules, robots. This creates a split life between what they must do for money and what they want to do for fun. Great achievers transcend this work/play dichotomy by doing what they love. Your mission should pull you with passion, making you tingle with excitement and wake up eager to make each day a masterpiece.
The fundamental lesson from great achievers is simple: do what you love. Susan Butcher exemplifies passion for life through her four victories in the grueling 1,100-mile Iditarod dog-sled race. At age twenty, she asked herself how to create a life combining her two loves: wilderness and animals. Starting with one husky puppy, she built her passion into mastery. Unlike conventional goals with endpoints, Butcher describes her mission as ongoing fulfillment: "We are already living our dream... I made it thirteen years ago."
To discover your mission, begin by tapping your inner excitement by asking what you love so much you'd pay to do it. Inventory your passions, desires and loves by feeling your internal signals of excitement-consider what you'd do with ten million dollars. Focus on people you admire and want to emulate, noticing their similar interests and goals. Then identify your core values by visualizing achieving your current goals and asking "What do I value about this goal?" to identify underlying values like learning, challenge, or excitement.
Create a grand vision for your life by visualizing how your interests, values, and abilities connect to form your mission. Imagine yourself embodying the qualities of your heroes and heroines. Direct an inner "movie" of yourself living your ideal future with vivid, colorful imagery. Ask your inner wisdom or higher power to guide your vision, allowing it to emerge naturally rather than forcing it.
When parts of yourself object to your mission, engage in internal negotiation: Listen to the objection; identify its positive intention; create alternative ways to honor that intention; and agree on a workable alternative. When transitioning to your mission, preserve relationships with those you care about-Fuller got his wife's commitment before pursuing his mission to serve humanity, and Spielberg boldly pursued filmmaking with family support.
Capítulo 5
Setting and Achieving Meaningful Goals
There are two distinct approaches to setting and achieving goals. The traditional outer-to-inner approach suggests "if you achieve x great thing, then you'll be successful and feel good." This approach often disconnects from daily enjoyment and leads to four major pitfalls: the "Vacation Life" (setting goals focused on escape rather than engagement), being seduced by status-based advertising, "if/then financial goals" (postponing fulfillment until after accumulating money from unfulfilling work), and "means versus ends" (when people disconnect goals from their values and use questionable tactics).
The goals truly worth achieving are mission-oriented goals that emerge from your deepest values. Unlike traditional goal-setting, mission-oriented goals flow from the inside out. They arise naturally from the various roles your mission defines, providing identities for expressing your interests, passions, visions, and values. Great achievers find it difficult to do anything except what they love.
Roles are crucial because they shape how you live the life you choose. With each new mission, you take on new role identities-your mission determines your roles, and your roles determine your goals. Life roles can be organized into four primary types: individual roles (artist, athlete, creator, etc.), work roles, personal/family roles, and citizen roles. Your individual roles create the foundation for all others.
To live your mission, select specific goals within your roles. Work on one role at a time, as "nothing ever happens in general, everything always happens specifically." Use the Well-Formed Goal Conditions to develop goals that fit with who you want to become. Ensure your goal is stated in terms of what you DO want, not what you DON'T want-this framing significantly affects your ability to achieve it.
Define clear, sensory-specific criteria for success-what you'll see, hear, and feel when you've succeeded. Create smaller milestone goals to maintain motivation along the way. Be specific about the contexts where your goal is appropriate. Consider how achieving your goal will affect other areas of your life and the people in it. Those who pursue goals at "whatever it takes" often leave behind broken relationships.
To create a compelling future, picture your future environment in detail. See yourself achieving your specific goal in that mental theater-make it close, bright and colorful. Enhance your mental image with special effects-make it vibrant, compelling and emotionally engaging. Develop a realistic plan by working backward from success. Mentally visit the moment of achieving your goal-feel the celebration and satisfaction. Then turn and look into your "past" to see the pathway that got you there.
Capítulo 6
Building Rapport and Creating Strong Relationships
Relationships are our most valuable resource, central to success in any field. Research shows 83% of sales depend on customers liking the salesperson, and people stay in jobs where they feel appreciated. Building relationships requires three key steps: determining mutually satisfying goals, establishing nonverbal rapport, and producing positive feelings in others.
Successful professionals understand they're in the relationship business, regardless of what they sell or manage. Companies like McDonald's and IBM dominated their markets through relationship quality, not just products. When visualizing goals, include the people necessary to achieve them prominently in your mental image.
Considering others' goals alongside your own isn't just altruistic-it makes you more successful. Data from the Strategic Planning Institute shows companies rated highest in perceived product quality (those considering customers' goals as their own) average 30% return on investment versus just 5% for lowest-rated companies. When setting goals involving others, always ask if what you want is as beneficial for them as it is for you.
Rapport is fundamental to all effective communication. When comparing successful versus unsuccessful interactions, you'll consistently find rapport present in successes and absent in failures. The key to building rapport is becoming more similar to the other person through matching their nonverbal behavior. This isn't mimicry but subtle adjustment to approximate their posture, facial expressions, breathing rate, and other physical patterns.
One of the most powerful rapport-building techniques is matching the tone, tempo and rhythm of another's voice. Notice if they speak quickly or slowly, continuously or with pauses, then adjust your speech pattern accordingly. The impact of voice matching is dramatic-a national telephone company with the lowest customer satisfaction ratings trained operators to match customers' voice patterns and rose to second-best within nine months. Voice matching works because it synchronizes your communication rhythm with the other person's thought patterns.
These techniques, when practiced regularly, enhance all relationships and increase your success, achievement, freedom, and satisfaction in life. However, rapport skills must be paired with competence, as no amount of good feelings can compensate for inability to deliver on promises.
Capítulo 7
The Art of Powerful Persuasion
Great persuaders aren't born with their skills-they commit to learning and mastering them. Contrary to popular belief, the best persuaders aren't smooth talkers but exceptional listeners. Listening serves two crucial purposes: it makes people feel genuinely heard (a rare and valued experience), and it reveals what's truly important to them. When you understand someone's needs, you can determine whether your offering fits their requirements.
People reveal their values through their appearance, possessions, habits, and interactions. To uncover decision-making values, simply ask direct questions like "What's important to you about a phone system?" or "What do you value in an employee?" Successful salespeople approach prospects as consultants rather than traditional sellers, focusing on determining whether there's a good match between customer needs and their offering.
Values come in two important types: material specifications (specific requirements like size or color) and criteria (broader values like durability or safety). The higher and more important the criterion you identify, the more persuasive you can be. For example, when selling tires, size is a material specification, but safety is a higher criterion that customers will pay more to satisfy. To uncover these higher values, simply ask "What's important to you about having [previous value]?"
People process information through three primary sensory systems: visual, auditory, and feeling. You can identify which mode someone is using through their eye movements, body language, and speech patterns. Visual processors look upward, speak rapidly, and use visual words like "see" or "picture." Auditory processors look down and left, list points sequentially, and use words like "hear" or "said." Feeling processors look down right, touch themselves, speak slowly, and use words like "feel" or "grasp." Match your language to their processing style to increase rapport and understanding.
Congruence is the foundation that supercharges all persuasion techniques. It means having all parts of yourself in total alignment with what you're doing in the moment-creating a powerful presence that influences others before you speak a word. Incongruence happens when your attention is divided between your presentation and other concerns, causing distracting nonverbal behaviors like foot tapping or strained voice tone. Since approximately 80 percent of communication is nonverbal, these signals can undermine your message even when your words are perfect.
What often holds us back isn't lack of ability but lack of personal congruence. When we have dreams but feel unworthy, or when emotions like fear, jealousy or insecurity interfere, we stop ourselves from taking necessary actions. Simply trying to override these parts of ourselves doesn't work. Instead, we need to respect and welcome all aspects of ourselves into a unified whole.
Capítulo 8
Eliminating Fears and Phobias
Fear is a normal response to genuine dangers like sharks or dangerous neighborhoods. However, phobias are strong avoidances of situations that aren't inherently dangerous-like public speaking, heights, or job interviews. Research shows that while childhood fears typically disappear naturally, adult phobias persist and often worsen without intervention. Everyone has fears that limit their performance, stemming not from actual dangers but from how we think about situations.
We can literally view experiences from different points in space, each providing different information and feelings. "Association" means looking through your own eyes, while "dissociation" means seeing yourself in the experience. This shift in perspective can dramatically change emotional responses. By choosing new perspectives on fearful memories, you'll become more self-confident and effective.
When associated into memories, you experience all the original feelings, pleasant or unpleasant. When dissociated, you have only the feelings of a detached observer. For optimal emotional health, associate into positive experiences and dissociate from negative ones. Depressed people often do the opposite-dissociating from positive experiences while associating into negative ones.
The Fast Phobia Technique builds on these principles, allowing you to transform fearful experiences into detached memories through careful application of dissociation. This structured process involves: 1) Identifying a moderately fearful situation, 2) Imagining yourself in a movie theater watching a still image of yourself before the fear began, 3) Mentally floating to the projection booth to watch yourself watching the screen, 4) Running a black-and-white movie of the fearful experience until reaching safety, 5) Stepping into the screen and running the movie backward in color very quickly, and 6) Testing your response afterward.
Change doesn't need to be slow and tedious-it can happen instantly. The brain learns quickly, and trying to change slowly is like watching one movie frame per day or having a conversation at one word per day. Once thoroughly applied, the Fast Phobia Technique creates permanent change without requiring repeated practice.
Beyond association (self position) and dissociation (observer position), there's a third valuable perspective: other position. This involves experiencing situations through someone else's eyes, filters, history, and physiology-similar to empathy. Taking other position is particularly valuable during disagreements, allowing you to "see it their way" without abandoning your own perspective.
All three positions-self, other, and observer-provide unique insights that, when combined, create true wisdom. As Robert Dilts noted, "Excellence is a passionate commitment to something from self position. Wisdom is the ability to consciously move back and forth between self, other, and observer positions." This mental flexibility enhances personal effectiveness in all situations.
Capítulo 9
Building Unshakable Self-Confidence
Self-judgment and criticism can weaken and derail success as effectively as fears and anxieties. People typically undermine themselves through two mental processes: making internal pictures of failure and hearing critical internal voices. When you picture yourself looking nervous before a presentation or hear "You dummy!" after speaking, you become your own worst enemy.
Every behavior has an underlying positive intention, including your critical internal voice. Ask this voice directly: "What's your intention for me?" or "What are you trying to accomplish?" Common responses include protecting you from embarrassment, ensuring you do what's right, or helping you reach your potential. Keep asking until you find an intention you can appreciate.
The negotiation process with your critical voice involves offering it additional ways to achieve its positive intention that work better than criticism. When you make this offer, clarify that you're not asking the voice to give up its current method, but to explore additional options that might work better. Once the voice agrees, engage your creative part to generate many possible alternatives, selecting three that both you and the voice agree will work better than criticism.
Negative statements force you to think about exactly what you don't want to think about. When you tell yourself "Don't think about how badly you could screw up" or "Don't be concerned about what your boss thinks," your mind automatically creates images of failure and worry. Transform these into positive "I" statements instead of "you" statements, which often sound like criticism from someone else.
Overgeneralizations severely undermine self-confidence through universal statements like "I never do anything right" or "Everybody always rejects me." These contain both hidden negations and universal generalizations that create feelings of hopelessness. Challenge these statements by questioning them specifically: "Really-never? You mean there's never been a time when I did something right?" This transforms vague, overwhelming generalizations into specific situations you can address.
Effective visualization involves a two-step process: first observing from outside like a film editor to create an ideal scenario, then stepping into the experience to rehearse it from within. This second step tests the scenario's effectiveness, allows for adjustments, and programs automatic responses with full sensory engagement.
Transform each day's experiences into growth opportunities by reviewing your day before sleep. When you encounter a scene where you're dissatisfied with your behavior, replay it with improved responses until you find the optimal approach. Connect this new behavior to an environmental cue that will trigger it in future similar situations. This daily practice converts perceived failures into valuable feedback and consistently builds self-satisfaction and confidence.
Capítulo 10
Developing Self-Esteem and Self-Appreciation
Self-esteem is the foundation for peace of mind and personal satisfaction. Positive self-esteem makes you feel like you belong just as you are, gives you energy to tackle challenges, and enriches all your experiences. Most professionals agree on its importance, but few teach effective ways to achieve it. This is where NLP excels-providing specific steps to use your brain to affect your self-esteem and impact your achievement level.
Will power alone cannot create self-esteem-what you need is know-how. High self-esteem comes from your inner representations of yourself, not from reality. Change these internal representations and you change your self-esteem without straining yourself; you simply think differently about yourself.
How we visually think of ourselves determines much of what we feel about ourselves. Both form (visual submodalities like size, brightness, distance) and content of our self-images build high or low self-esteem. A small, dark, distant self-image feels less intense than one that's large, bright, and close. The content determines whether this intensity is positive or negative.
Self-esteem has four variations based on content (positive/negative) and form (intense/mild): 1) Very high self-esteem combines intense form with positive content; 2) Very low self-esteem pairs intense form with negative content; 3) Mildly high self-esteem has positive content but mild form (improvable by intensifying submodalities); 4) Mildly negative self-esteem has negative content in mild form (requiring changes to both). With NLP knowledge, you can choose how to adjust these elements.
Separating who you are from what you do helps recognize your fundamental goodness. Your behavior is simply effective or ineffective at achieving results, but it isn't you. Seeing yourself through the eyes of someone who loves you can transform self-perception.
The Swish Pattern, developed by Richard Bandler, helps replace negative self-images with positive ones. During a presentation on NLP, Tom, a businessman with a debilitating fear of public speaking, volunteered as a demonstration subject. His fear was so severe he couldn't even stand in front of the group. When asked what he saw in his mind before speaking publicly, Tom described seeing an audience with eyes "the size of light bulbs," causing physical symptoms of anxiety. The trainer helped Tom create a positive self-image-a "wonderful Tom"-which he placed into a sparkling dot in the center of the audience image, then rapidly expanded it to replace the negative image. After repeating this process several times, Tom was able to confidently address the group.
Fear of criticism represents one of the biggest obstacles to authentic self-expression. Since our relationships provide our greatest joys and necessities like food and work, we feel compelled to fit in with others. Being criticized feels threatening, so we often preemptively criticize ourselves through negative self-talk-those inner voices warning us of failure or incompetence. This self-criticism serves as a protective mechanism against external judgment but ultimately undermines our self-esteem.
People with low self-esteem typically react defensively to criticism, either by verbally attacking back or feeling devastated. They might even abandon their own values to please critics. In contrast, those with high self-esteem can objectively evaluate others' perspectives without feeling compelled to accept or reject them. They maintain their sense of self while acknowledging different viewpoints.
Capítulo 11
Cultivating a Positive Mental Attitude
NLP trainer Gary Faris exemplifies the extraordinary power of a positive mental attitude. After being struck by a pickup truck while running, Gary was thrown 120 feet and severely injured. Emergency room doctors initially doubted he would survive, and later told him he would never walk normally again, let alone run. Rather than accepting this prognosis or dwelling on negativity, Gary applied NLP principles to his rehabilitation. He studied athletes who had successfully recovered from similar injuries, identifying six distinct mental patterns they all shared. Living the NLP presupposition that "if one person can do something, anyone can learn to do it," Gary not only rebuilt his body through painful physical therapy but eventually returned to competitive running, defying medical expectations through his tenacious mental approach.
A solid positive mental attitude consists of six interdependent characteristics that work synergistically together: Inner Motivation (having specific compelling goals to move toward and consequences to avoid), The Value of High Standards (refusing to accept anything less than your best), Chunking Down Goals (breaking large objectives into manageable steps), Combining Present and Future Time Frames (staying fully present during tasks while maintaining vivid future visions), Personal Involvement (actively participating in your own progress rather than passively following experts), and Self-to-Self Comparisons (measuring progress against your own development rather than comparing to others).
Successful athletes use both "toward" and "away from" motivation simultaneously. They vividly imagine specific undesirable consequences worth avoiding while also envisioning compelling, worthwhile goals that pull them forward. Rather than vague desires to "be the best," these athletes maintain personal, specific visions that propel them through challenges.
Athletes in rehabilitation maintain unwavering dedication to regaining full strength and health as their guiding standard. They consider anything less unacceptable, often aiming to exceed their pre-injury condition. Rather than settling for reasonable improvement, they measure their progress against their highest inner standards, demanding their absolute best performance despite current limitations.
Successful rehabilitation requires mastering two seemingly opposite time skills. First, athletes stay fully present during exercises, giving complete attention to each movement. Second, they vividly imagine positive future outcomes, especially during painful moments, making present discomfort seem insignificant compared to anticipated rewards. The most effective approach combines both-concentrating fully on immediate tasks while maintaining awareness of the compelling future goal pulling them forward.
The more athletes actively participate in their own rehabilitation plan, the better their recovery outcomes. Despite the expertise of medical professionals, neither passive acquiescence nor rebellious resistance leads to excellence. Taking action creates a sense of participation that increases commitment, focuses intensity, and builds determination.
Successful athletes avoid the societal trap of comparing themselves to others, which would be devastating during rehabilitation when they might compare poorly even to amateurs. Instead, they measure progress exclusively against their own development, asking "How far have I progressed since yesterday, last week, or last month?"
Your personal timeline organizes your experiences in time sequence and maintains continuity of your personality. The position of your timeline affects motivation-if your future is directly in front of you, goals are more visible and compelling than if they're in your peripheral vision. By taking the positive mental attitude and spreading it through your entire timeline, you can make it feel like you've always had this empowering mindset and will continue to enjoy it indefinitely.
Capítulo 12
Achieving Peak Performance
Mountains serve as powerful symbols of achievement and perspective in our lives. From mountain peaks, our view is unobstructed, vistas expand, and possibilities seem limitless. The climb itself mirrors life's journey-filled with frustration, fear, elation, self-doubt, trust and triumph, condensing into hours what might normally take years to experience.
Charles Garfield's research into peak performance began during America's moon landing program, where he witnessed average managers transform into exceptional performers in just eighteen months. His studies identified key characteristics shared by peak performers: commitment to a mission larger than themselves, purposeful activity with measurable results, team building, flexible course correction, and change management.
Beyond these tangible skills, Garfield found one crucial characteristic in all peak performers: absolute belief in their own success. Whether rocket scientists or cancer survivors, they all believed they would make a difference. While sometimes triggered by external challenges like Kennedy's moon landing declaration, this quality was primarily internally motivated in outstanding achievers across sports, arts, business and other fields.
Why do so many people feel powerless despite having the potential for peak performance? Dr. Michael Lerner's extensive research across all sectors of American society revealed three key findings. First, economic and political power is indeed unequally distributed. Second, people's perception of this inequality vastly exceeds reality, creating what he termed "surplus powerlessness." Third and most troubling, people deeply identify with this powerlessness, accepting it as inevitable or deserved despite how it corrupts their lives.
Our brains possess remarkable untapped potential, as illustrated by three powerful examples. A college student who mistakenly believed unsolved mathematical problems were homework assignments managed to solve them. In Dr. Lozanov's "Suggestopedia" language classes, students rapidly acquire new languages when teachers create an environment suggesting they already know it. And a woman given only a placebo in an experimental drug trial completely recovered from a serious disease.
While medical researchers work to eliminate the placebo effect to isolate true drug efficacy, NLP's founders saw it differently. Bandler and Grinder recognized the placebo effect as evidence of the brain's natural healing abilities when activated by belief. They realized that what matters most is what we think about, how we think about it, and our beliefs about what's possible.
When we focus exclusively on reaching peak performance, we can forget that peaks are places to visit, not live. Some people build their happiness around achieving perfection in every aspect of life, only to find their happiness lasts briefly before some imperfection sends them sliding back down the mountain of dissatisfaction.
The alternative is learning to be happy regardless of circumstances-managing your experiences rather than letting life happen to you. This means deliberately changing how you evaluate events to see them in more positive ways. It doesn't eliminate "bad days," but ensures the day is "bad," not you.
Beyond peak performance lies what Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi calls the "Experience of Flow"-what athletes call being "in the zone" and musicians call "being in the groove." In this state, everything becomes effortless, time extends, and self-consciousness disappears into the doing. Flow comes when people focus all their attention on the task, free from concern, with a liberating perspective that allows creativity and talent to flourish naturally.
John Grinder, NLP codeveloper, learns a "new game" each year-from flying acrobatic aircraft to technical rock climbing. When learning rock climbing, his instructor evaluated students during a final climb. After an exhausting ascent, students reached what appeared to be the top, only to discover the mountain continued upward. The instructor secretly watched their reactions, selecting for his advanced class only those who looked up with eagerness rather than disappointment. He wanted to climb with people attracted to ever-higher peaks in the world and in themselves.
