When I was in Grade 11, my dad retired from the military and moved us to a small town in northern BC called Fort Nelson.
The population was 5,000, including cats and dogs.
My dad had an old army buddy who got him a job. (Thanks, Dad!)
As you can imagine, moving in the middle of my Grade 11 year was not high on my list of goals.
To say I had a bad attitude when I moved there is an understatement.
I felt like I was moving to the sticks, which I sort of was, but I also looked down on the people in the town.
My belief was, this place is terrible, the people are terrible, and I'm too cool to be here.
I had heard of another guy, whom I’ll call Mike, who moved to Fort Nelson around the same time as me.
I ended up bumping into him in the town grocery store.
I asked him, “What do you think of this place?”
I was fully expecting Mike to jump on my bandwagon so we could both trash the town.
However, he didn’t. He said he loved it. He said that people in small towns were so friendly. He had been invited out boating and quading, and was having a blast.
Mike was experiencing small town charm.
At the time, I thought he must have cracked his head. There is no way he could really mean that. I left feeling superior, and thinking that poor Mike had somehow been duped.
It wasn’t until many years later that I realized I was the problem. More specifically, it was the story that I told myself about the town that affected my experience in the town.
I share this story to highlight one of my favorite NLP frameworks, which I learned a few years ago.
The framework is as follows:
Story → Feeling → Action → Result
The story we tell ourselves affects the way we feel, the way we feel affects our actions, and our actions affect our results.
If you are not getting the result you want in an area of your life, it is likely because the story you are telling yourself is leading to the wrong emotion.
The wrong emotions will always lead to the wrong actions.
If you want to change a result, you first have to change the story.
My story was, “This is a hick town and I am a cool kid from the big city.” (I was not, in fact, a cool kid in the big city, but that was my story.)
Mike’s story was, “Small towns are full of friendly people, and there are so many fun things to do.”
Guess who had the better experience?
Definitely not me.
In one of my previous podcasts, I break down this NLP framework in a lot more detail. You can check it out below.
If you end up trying this strategy, I would love to hear your feedback at ask@brxmortgage.com. It has been a game changer for me.
PS Imagine the fun I could have had in Grade 11 if I had learned this framework earlier. : )
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