by Anastasia Astridge

Created on: January 06, 2009

There are days when we spend time contemplating and discussing future prospects and plans with the only person we really trust, our beloved self unfortunately these conversations don't always lead to a tangible result that forms real life actions.

However help is at hand! Here is one technique you may want to use when for example you are trying to establish if you want to change your career...

This technique is called Timeline and comes from Neuro Linguistic Programming; it is also used quite often by NLP practitioners, life and career coaches and even councillors. It can be quite elaborate and complex and will yield results that may shift a lot in your life. But I want to demonstrate its shorter version so that you can use at home without any professionals being involved

All you need to do is to ask yourself a series of questions and spend long enough time answering those questions in a lot of detail. Let's say you would need about 30 minutes of undisturbed time when you give it a go for the first time.

Sit down in a quite place and have a cup of tea, coffee, water whisky what ever helps you relax.

Question 1: In ten years from now, when I am years old, how would I like my life to look like?

Replace "life" with anything else you may want to explore, but try not to narrow it down too much, asking just about your future job may limit your options at this stage.

Describe in a lot of detail what you are imagining! This is quite important as you will see later.

For example; you see yourself sitting in a nice house with a cup of coffee in your hand, dog sleeping at your feet and you feel calm and content. Good start.

Now we need more details. What exactly does the room look like? What kind of furniture? Colours, textures, architectural details? What breed is your dog? What is that makes you feel calm in ten years time? Are there any people who are part of your life? Do you have a family, kids? How old is your partner? How old are your kids? What do they do? (Does your partner work? Do your kids stay home, go to nursery, school, moved out?) What is it that you do day in and day out in ten years time?

You cannot know the answer to most of these questions from where you are now. And that is why there is no a right or wrong answer!

There is also no such a thing as "impossible", "never going to happen". If you are not a psychic you can not possibly know what will happen to your life even in the next couple of minutes. You can limit or enhance your options but you can't KNOW

Our

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