From our guest blogger Sarah Makinde!
As an NLP practitioner the words I use in coaching are so important both to me and my clients. During a recent conversation, when my client mentioned that they had achieved their goal before their deadline, something inside me didn’t feel right.
I was very happy for them, as the goal was identified by them as something they would like to do to help them move forwards in their business, but this word ‘deadline’ stuck in my head.
I decided to investigate why this word didn’t resonate with me and found the following…
Did you know, the word ‘deadline’ has been defined as “a narrow field of time, or a particular point in time, by which an objective or task must be accomplished”. Quite accurate, right?
What would you say if I told you that this word is believed by many to have “originated from a term used in prison camps during the American Civil War, when it referred to a physical line or boundary beyond which prisoners were shot” – how do you feel about deadlines now?
There are later references made to this word, however all have very negative connotations: From 1917 – “a guidelines on the bed of a printing press beyond which text will not print” (1917), up to today (2020) “if not completed by the deadline, this may adversely affect employees performance rating”.
No wonder it didn’t feel right! Especially when we were talking about something so positive and exciting, like personal and professional goals.
In NLP the power of language is so significant that change can happen just by looking at the words we use and replacing them with more empowering words.
How often do we use the word ‘deadline’ when talking about day to day tasks, work based projects and our goals?
How would you feel if you changed the language and started working towards your ‘goal-lines’ opposed to your ‘deadlines’? Would that make a difference in how motivated you were to achieve them?
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