NLP Podcast Extract : John La Valle on Motivation

John La Valle is a Licensed Master Trainer of NLP™ & DHE™, who has been in the training & development field for almost twenty-five years and who has brought NLP™ and DHE™ into the business arena for the past 20+ years.

"My name is John - last name La Valle, of course. And I work closely with Richard Bandler, co-wrote a book called Persuasion Engineering with him. And I guess I have been involved in the field of Neuro Linguistic Programming for coming-close-to Twenty Five years now, mostly in business applications."

"I also run the Society of NLP, that's the certifying body."

"That's a big question I guess. Let's see. There are a lot of things that people want to do, and when we talk about motivation, what comes to my mind is "How much do they want to do what they think they want to do."

"If I think about it from a language point, if somebody wants to do a particular activity, how much, or to what degree is their want or their willingness to do that activity?"

"So its a thing where some people want to do certain things, but how bad do they really want to do those things? That's the way I look at it."

"There are a lot of things, and they all work in conjunction with each other. Motivation is an interesting thing - there are certain things, like, are you able to do certain things? Are you mentally capable? "

"I always look at the capability factor - are people able to do what they want to do? And if not they need to go off to learn that. And the second part of that is that they really have to believe that they can do that - but there are a couple of other sub-routines if they will. Its not just that they believe that they can do it, but lets say that they don't believe that they can do it to the extent that they want to do it, and they want to rearrange their beliefs, or enhance their beliefs - and build the belief that its possible for them to do it."

"Firstly they have to have a belief that they can change their beliefs, so they have to have a belief in themselves that they can change what they believe about themselves, or their own capabilities. So they have to have that first of all."

"And the second thing is, that there are these - linguistic structures, really - that people would call them their "Values" or "Their life criteria", basically the things that are important to them, lets say. So where those things are on a list, lets say, would determine how they do a particular activity. "

"I'll give you an example. Lets say that someone wants to be able to run their own business. I would be interested in what is important to them about that, or find out where those things are on their list of priorities, because that's really what motivation comes down to - a list of priorities - so the hierarchy of importance."

"I have a friend of mine who's probably around Fifty years old now, somewhere around there. And he's always wanted to become an astronaut. And lo and behold, the guy has had an absolutely phenomenal career, or should I say careers, collecting very expensive autographs, to marketing things, marketing campaigns."

"And lo and behold, at whatever age he's at now - he's probably about Fifty-ish - he has just passed the first leg of a test to become an astronaut."

"So, it's not like he didn't want to become an astronaut before - he did - but the hierarchy of what was important to him must have been, I'm not sure - If I was to say it was number five or number six on his long number of things that he always wanted to do - he's finally getting around to doing that after doing what he always wanted to do."

"I'm not sure how much that things that are on the outside can effect us. Because to me that is the environment and we can change how the environment will effect you. Obviously if you want to do X activity and it requires one million dollars to invest in, or half a millions pounds - I guess to some degree, you'd have to have access to that kind of money - but that's not the only way to achieve that activity, even if you had to make that investment, there are other ways of getting access to that type of money."

"So I don't know. I am sure that there are things that people perceive in the outside world that could stop them. To me the mind is the last bastion of freedom that we can have. So we could do lots and lots of things if we put our minds to it."

Read or listen to the full John La Valle transcript and podcast on Motivation.

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Liam Beale

Business Development Manager

PPI Business NLP: NLP Training and NLP-based Business Training