I’m Rick Sessinghaus. What influences you in your life? I know that’s a big question but, things influence you in some positive ways and some negative ways. Maybe it’s people, places, things that really changes how you look at things. For me, when I look at success or what is brought the troubles in my life and successes, there’s been influences that have come around. I want to share with you in this video and the coming videos of what’s influenced me and I also want you to start thinking about what’s influenced you.
One of the first things that’s influenced me was something that came from psychology, which is something called neuro-linguistic programming or NLP for short. Often with psychology, we talk about what’s wrong with somebody. Abnormal psychology, “This is wrong with them. They need to fix it.” NLP looks at it a little different way. It’s actually a study of excellence, why is somebody producing great results and let’s copy that.
I’ve had some previous videos where I’ve talked about the recipe for success and self-talk and certain things like that and I was influenced by NLP. One of the first key tenants is your communication in and of itself. I’m not always talking to someone else. I’m talking about your internal dialogue. Well, in NLP, your self-talk is basically creating your reality.
We all have a different reality, depending on how we look at it and how we perceive it and how we can keep on talking and talking and talking about it. We have to be very, very careful of what are you saying to yourself, how are you saying it, is going to really create your reality. On a future video, I’m going to talk about victimhood, for instance, is that victims are fantastic at creating a self-talk that is about blaming. That’s their internal dialogue. I want you to start to think about what’s your internal dialogue that would create success and positivity/
Next thing with NLP is this idea of communication from an external standpoint. Now, they didn’t come up with this but I certainly learned it through NLP, which is, our communication to the outside world is only seven percent words. That’s it. If I’m having an in-person communication with somebody and talking to them, only seven percent of what they’re taking in is words. 38% is the volume I say it, the tone I say it at and then 55% is actually my physical posture and gestures. Obviously, as a speaker and a coach, I had to realize that my words were just a fraction of how you could influence others.
I needed to make sure that my words matched my body, matched my tone of the message that I wanted to come across. NLP has a lot to do with internal and external communication. The other huge takeaway from me at NLP was this idea that we all, at any one moment, are doing the best we can. Some people say, “Ah Rick, what are you talking about? There are lazy people.”
With the resources you currently have, you are doing the best you can. Now, maybe you need new resources, maybe you need new tools to help you upgrade and deal with let’s say, anxiety or stress and certain things like that but, we are running with the best that we can at the moment. Why that’s helped me is because, I’ll be honest, I used to be judgmental of other people.
“Oh my gosh, they’re all screwed up. Da, da, da, da, da.” Years ago, until I said, “Wait a second. I don’t know what’s going on in their world, I don’t know what the tools that they have, they’re going to have a completely different reality than myself so now I look at it as a model saying, “Huh, they’re doing the best they can with what they’re dealing with.” It’s helped minimize my judgment of others and it’s helped me be able to deal with when people maybe aren’t in the greatest moods or they don’t do their work and stuff like that and just go, “Okay, they’re doing the best they can.”
Now, it doesn’t mean I have to agree with it. It doesn’t mean that I have to accept it forever but in the moment, it’s minimized my frustration in how I view the world. Next thing is this idea of how we operate is, for the most part, a lot of people operate from just what we think their conscious beliefs are.
If I just think a certain thought, everything’s going to be fine. Unfortunately, our actions are only delivered by 5% of our conscious, 95% of our subconscious, what’s going underneath the surface; our beliefs, our attitudes, all those things that make us who we are, are really running the show. That software program is running the show.
You may think it’s, “No, I got complete control.” You don’t. Part of NLP is that, how can you shift those beliefs, shift those attitudes so now the subconscious can work for you instead of against you? The last takeaway that influenced me from NLP was modeling, which is basically the premise of if somebody else accomplished a goal that you want to accomplish, learn from the exact steps they did so now you could implement those things.
Kind of a recipe for success. Now, a lot of you say, “Well Rick, if Kobe Bryant is the best basketball player and you want to be just like him, you just copy.” Of course not, he’s got a different skill set that I am never going to have because of my size. I get it. There’s a mentality about NLP, what is he thinking about? How is he preparing himself? What’s the self-talk? How is he visualizing it, that we can now uncover from people to now copy that type of thing?
That’s where that mindset of principles of modeling is so important. It can actually minimize your learning curve that, if you knew what the best are already doing, wouldn’t you want to know that? That’s called modeling. The neuro-linguistic program has helped influence me, not only as a person in my growth but also as a coach because I start understanding communication better, modeling better, appreciating how somebody else is coming to. I want you to start thinking about what influences you to perform for success.