Coaching with NLP For Dummies®

Playing to Strengths

Not everybody wants to do the same job. A world of carpenters and no electricians, or superstar actors and no one to manage the cinemas, would be crazy, indeed. Luckily, one person's dream job is another's nightmare. Yet how often do you meet people who are drifting through their working lives, putting up with what they're doing because they feel they have no choice and that their current jobs are what they should be doing. For many, their jobs are what the world and other people expect of them. They're fulfilling someone else's dream and not their own.

When you hear the language of shoulds, musts and have-tos, you're tuning into a language pattern that NLP refers to as the modal operators of necessity. The counter-questions to this kind of thinking are: ‘Who says you should/must/have to?’ or ‘What would happen if you didn't?’ See Chapter 8 for more on dealing with life's shoulds and musts.

For many workers, their dream jobs always remain out there somewhere, if they could only find them. The real dream job comes to life when people shape and pursue their own careers by playing to their strengths and listening to their intuition. NLP coaching helps people to access these dreams, articulate them clearly and then take action that moves them towards achieving their goals.

Dream jobs are not always about being the next chief executive, high profile figure or ...