Life Skills in 3 days?!!! – Part 1 – Robert Dilt’s Logical Levels….

Well we can definitely get you started….

When a client of mine asked me to do a “LifeSkills” workshop for their recent management
graduates, I was lost about what I should consider to be a part of the training. Afterall, Life Skills take
a lifetime to learn and I can hardly pack enough into 3 or 4 days. But as with all things, the more I
thought about it, the more I was able to crystallise my thoughts and zero down to some essential
skills which could at least my participants thinking about what they would like to develop in their
own professional and personal lives.

Here are some of the things we covered in the workshop:

We focussed the workshop around Robert Dilts’ Logical Levels which is always a great framework for
holistic introspection and development – for products, change management and ultimately it turns
out for Life itself. Below is a simple representation of the model.

What am I here for? Do you know what your purpose(s) in life is? As with everything we begin by
helping people think about what their purpose is? In previous generations in India, this has never
really been a problem. Society and family had defined our purpose for us. We studied till we were in
our early twenties, then we got married, raised our children, helped in raising our grandchildren
 saved up money bought a ghar and then a gadi and then drifted
into the spiritual before we died. In modern cosmopolitan India
these regular structures have been disrupted. You can buy your
house and car before you hit 30. You may choose to marry or
not, have children, or not… and then… what am I really here
for? None of us has only one purpose, we all serve and have
multiple purposes and it is crucial to identify these different
purposes and nurture every aspect so that we are able to live
whole and fulfilled lives. Using a simple yet thoughtful
approach to identify our passions, mission, professions and
vocation.

Identity – Who are you? Once we’ve identified the various purposes we have in our lives we then
move on to the different Roles we play. Mother, father, brother, wife, subordinate, trainer, coach.
Which of these roles is most important to me? If this is the most important role, what am I doing to
fulfil the needs and obligations of this role. Using NLP and biofeedback techniques we explore and
examine how each role feels to us and where we feel most comfortable. We resolve any leftover
conflicts between different roles in our lives.

What do you stand for? What do you think is right? Throughout our lives we make decisions and
judgements based on these two parameters, our values and our beliefs. But are we always sure of
what we stand for? Do we know how we make judgements, are we sure that this always serves us?
Once we understand our values and our belief systems we can explain and rationalise the way we
think and how we feel and why things upset us.

These are the areas that deal with your own development and growth. The Second element that we
deal with is our interaction with others and with the environment. Our skills, knowledge behaviour
and environment

What do you know? What do you need to know? In his book “The Leadership Pipeline” Ramcharan,
one of the greatest social scientists and management gurus of our time points describe the changes
in Skills, knowledge and attitudes you need to make at every stage of growth in your professional
life. He calls these leadership passages. In our personal lives as well, we need to identify the areas in
which we need to develop skills and knowledge whether they be soft skills like better
communication or hard skills like managing your finances.

I am what I repeatedly do – What are the behaviors that I repeatedly display, whether consciously or
sub consciously. Are these behaviors useful, do they serve my purposes in life? If not, can I work to
change them. Using the new beahvior generator, we can purposefully generate new and more
effective behaviors to increase our productivity, happiness and health.

And finally how do I manage my environment? Do I keep myself open to environmental influences
allowing myself to be moved around on the whims of others or am I able to work with a strong base
of self confidence aware of what is happening in the environment but not allowing muself to be
swayed by these…

If we can begin by harnessing the power of these logical levels and their application in life, we can
begin our journey towards health and happiness.