Well-Formed Outcomes

Success is a lifestyle. It is not something you get automatically. It has to be something you want so much that it makes you start living in a completely different way. Success is a guide, a motivator, and an incentive to work.

Successful people (like the best traders) did not wake up one morning and simply start being successful. To become successful, you have to work hard, and the way to do this is by setting “Well-Formed Outcomes (WFO).” Imagine a kind of SMART goal (just like you read in the post “Rules you should follow”), but to the nth degree.

Well-Formed Outcomes come from Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP), an approach developed in the 1970s by Richard Bandler and John Grinder. I am going to show you the questions you need to ask to build Well-Formed Outcomes, alongside some useful tools that will put you on the right track to getting the life you deserve.

Brian Tracy, a Canadian-American motivational public speaker and self-development author, said: “you cannot control what happens to you, but you can control your attitude toward what happens to you, and in that, you will be mastering change rather than allowing it to master you.”

When you decide to focus your attention on results rather than goals, you exploit the power of NLP and significantly improve your chances of success. Think about it for a second. When you hear the word “result,” you immediately think of a real conquest, perhaps even one that has already been achieved.

The word “goal,” instead, seems very distant, and subconsciously, you might even consider it as something that is unattainable. If your goal is not clearly formed in your head or if you cannot see it clearly, then it will be very difficult for you to reach it.

The first stage in effective decision-making is to make sure that your outcomes are “well-formed.” Well-formed outcomes are produced by working through a set of questions.

A well-formed outcome has the following key components, which enable you to identify your desired outcomes effectively:

• state the goal in positive terms (according to NLP, our subconscious does not process negatives well);
• specify the goal in sensory-based terms (the outcome must be testable and demonstrable);
• specify the goal in a way that you find compelling;
• run a quality control (ecology) check on the goal to ensure balance in all areas of your home/work life;
• ensure that the goal can be self-initiated and maintained;
• state the context of the goal;
• state the resources needed to achieve the goal;
• state how you will evidence success.

Let’s take a look at the Well-Formed Outcomes questions you have to ask yourself.

WHAT (present state to the desired outcome)

• What is the desired outcome? (Remember to be positive)
• What will the outcome look like? And how will you feel?

CONTEXT (identify the goal in your private and professional life)

• When do you want to reach the goal? What date/period?
• Where will you be when you reach the goal?
• Do you need to work with someone else to achieve your goal?

PURPOSE (the reason why you want to achieve your goal)

• Why do you want that result? Why do you want to achieve the goal?
• What does reaching your goal mean to you? How will achieving this outcome benefit you?
• How will you feel when you have achieved the goal? Is this something you want? What are the benefits? And the disadvantages?

PROCESSES (the steps to reach your goal)

• Do you know what to do?
• Is it self-initiated and maintained?
• Can you do it?
• Have you done it before?
• Do you know the steps and stages?
• Do you have an action plan?
• Do you have a way to monitor your progress?
• Do you have a way to deal with interferences?
• Do you have the resources, internal and external?

CHECKS (make sure your goal does not conflict with your other desires or beliefs)

• Ecology? Are you in alignment with yourself?
• Why do you want it? Is it compelling?
• Have you made a decision? Are you ready to get involved?
• What will be the evidence, the element that lets you know that you have achieved the outcome?
• What are the immediate tasks you need to take action on?
• What are you learning?

Now, here is an exercise for you. You have to answer all the above questions. Keep repeating this exercise until you can answer all the questions satisfactorily. Whenever you reach a question that you cannot answer positively, you must review the outcome statement and refine it.

In conclusion, our mind gets bombarded with negative thoughts which stop us from doing things we really want to do. Luckily, we have a process of reframing which can help us to live our desired life and business.

Reframing is about changing the meaning or the context of the present problem we are dealing with. The frame is a perspective, and reframing is about looking at the same situation from a different perspective.

Well-Formed Outcomes are a little bit like SMART goals, except that they go a little deeper and look at the possibility and accountability elements of the goal that you want to set.

Goals are often called targets. And this is for an excellent reason. Goals and targets are like destinations, and they give us something to reach for or head to. Having no goals in life or business is a bit like jumping in a car and driving: you will end up somewhere, but not where you wanted to go, just somewhere, because you did not decide where you wanted to go.

At this point, if you answered all the questions satisfactorily, it is time to bring your Well-Formed Outcomes to the next level, integrating them into your trading plan.