Short notes

One of the most useful distinctions I learned from neuro-linguistic programming (NLP) was the one that differentiated between moving towards goals and moving away from goals. The former describes goals that are chosen as desirable; the latter describe what we don’t want to happen, what might be described as our ‘not-goals’.

In a fascinating newsletter yesterday, Alex Olshonsky discussed Malcolm Ocean‘s coinage of two simple terms to describe this distinction – towardsness and awayness (although I prefer the term towardness).

At the heart of the OE framework is an understanding of the importance of towardness goals. It’s much easier for individuals and organisations to be clear about what they don’t want. It’s harder to start defining what you actually want but that’s usually where real progress begins.