Just after writing the ’10 Questions to Ask for Success’ book I was privileged to have a conversation with an amazing woman who worked in a very prominent position for a very well known media corporation.

She told me a story about how she had been at cocktail party, and noticed an eminent playwright. This was a man who she had been wanting to talk to about a project involving underprivileged kids and the arts for a long time. She was about to go and talk to him when she was suddenly struck by the thought, ‘what would people think of me, for cornering this man and talking about my project? They might think that I was being pushy, or showing off that I knew him, and what if he didn’t want to speak to me?’ and so on.

This stopped her in her tracks. She headed away from where the playwright was chatting, but felt in conflict with herself, part of her wanted to talk to to him and part of her didn’t.

Rather wisely she started to use what I now call the 11th question; she asked herself

‘what really matters here?’

The answer was simple; the most important thing was the welfare of these underprivileged kids. Nothing else, other people’s opinions or what the playwright thought of her, was as important as that in this moment.
As soon as she realised this she turned once again to speak to the man, but to her dismay found he had just left.
She resolved to make sure she always asked herself this question so she could really seize the moment and use every opportunity to make the things that were important to her more likely to happen.
If you pause for a moment and ask yourself right now

‘what really matters here and now in my life?’

You may find that you’re spending too much time doing things that aren’t important, and instead refocus on what you really need to put your energy into…

You can hear me talking more about NLP and how we can use it to change our brains, and lives, on my Essential NLP Podcast here