When you put your mind 100% behind a goal, achievement becomes possible. I had the pleasure of seeing 
Mark Colbourne MBE speak at an event recently.
Mark’s story … going for gold, winning with mindset
Mark won a gold and two silvers at London 2012 – what an achievement! A British Paralympic Cyclist who overcame the odds to win and is now inspiring people to make changes in their own life. Mark broke his back as a result of a paragliding accident where his canopy collapsed and he fell 40 feet to the ground and then when it re-inflated he was dragged a further 80 meters. Air Ambulances to hospital, he spent nearly 100 days staring at the hospital ceiling lying on his back. He had a choice to make – was this it for Mark, or did it present a new opportunity?
Winners never quit, and quitters never win – Mark Colbourne MBE
Mark knew that if he wanted his life to change, he had to change. Mark was inspired by the wise words of his Dad – “if you have a dream never give up on it”. Mark had in earlier years enjoyed cycling and through a series of opportunities with Disability Sport Wales and British Cycling, Mark found a goal he wanted to strive for – a gold medal at 2012. He says for him it was about turning nothing into something ….
What happens when you align everything behind a goal?
We all know the types of goals that don’t come to fruition – the half arsed goals that we think we ‘should’ go for, yet aren’t fully committed to (those goals where we get blown off course relatively quickly). When 
you set a goal and give it EVERYTHING, you know you’re onto something. When you invest time, energy, money and more into a goal you don’t let yourself give up. as Tony Robbins says ‘if you want to take the island, burn your boat’ – so there is no way back – then you’ll make it work.
Sheer grit, determination, blood, sweat, tears and a whole load more went into Mark’s training. He told stories of how hard he and other pushed him in training to ensure he was able to reach his goal – training that not only got him gold, but a World Record too!
Mark cycled for hours, day in and day out, in snow and all the other weather that can be thrown at people. He told a tale of going to see Dr. Steve Peters (the psychiatrist for the British cycling team – and credited with helping Chris Hoy and Victoria Pendleton). Steve was so impressed with Mark’s mindset Mark was in and out of his appointment within minutes (rather than the long appointment he’d been told to prepare for). Steve did however talk to Mark about love – and the need to have it around him – for him to love others and for him to feel the love from others too – it was something that was critical for Mark’s success.
Mark made sacrifices, personally and professionally for the achievement of his goal – he dug deep even when he felt he had no more to give … he was inspired by his goal – something inside him was driving him … was it his love for his farther, his undeniable need to win, wanting to make his parents proud, wanting to prove to himself he could do anything he set his mind too … it could of course have been none of the above, but something was driving him towards his goal …. he got what he went to London 2012 for – his gold medal …
What gives us that determination, that drive?
In NLP we know that motivation comes from our Values. Values are what determine what is important to 
us, determine what we spend time on. Are Values are held at the unconscious level and unless we elicit them with the NLP Values Elicitation process we won’t know for sure what yours are (we teach you how to do this on our Masters Programme).
If our values are not aligned behind our goals our values will blown us off course (our unconscious minds need to fulfil those values and will find a way to fulfil them). If the fulfilment of our values is in a different direction to our goal – they unfortunately our goal misses out. Having listened to Mark speak, his family values were very important to him, his desire to ‘do it’ for his Dad – these values no doubt had a huge impact for him.
Are you motivated Towards what you want or Away From what you don’t want?
Within Values we have ‘towards’ and ‘away from’ Values. Let’s use the Value of money as the example here – if at either end of the spectrum you have ‘Money’ and at the other ‘Poverty’ it’s clear to see that some people will be motivated towards money, and others could be motivated away from poverty – away from what they don’t want (often away from are born out of fear). There are of course people who are a combination of the two- but let’s stick to the extremes for the example.
When looking at the performance of people with ‘away from’ values their performance is often inconsistent, but with ‘towards’ values performance increases incrementally the closer to the goal they get. Most people in the general population are full of ‘away from’ value (I was too before I entered the world of NLP). The good news is that with NLP we can get rid of the ‘away from’ values and create towards values – giving us more consistent performance towards what we want/our goal.
Goal setting is critical so that any goal you set works for your unconscious mind and conscious mind – if you’ve missed the blog about this click here. If you’ve read my blogs before you will recall the blog I wrote around goal setting (click the link if you missed it and want to catch up). By setting goals that work for both our conscious and unconscious mind we significantly achieve out ability to attain our goals.
If you’d like some tips on improving your motivation right now, check out this blog where I share 3 tips you can use straight away.
Want to learn more about motivation and goal setting that works?
If you’d like to find out more about our 7 day certified NLP Practitioner course, where you’ll learn how to set goals that come to fruition, get rid of what is holding you back and increase your motivation, as well as a host of other techniques check out our NLP Practitioner video here.
If you’d like to find out more about any of our NLP courses – from our introductory 2 day NLP Business Diploma, or 7 day certified NLP practitioner course or becoming a certified NLP Coach get in touch by emailing: [email protected] or call us on 02920 023311
