First Edition
© 2020 Hannu Pirilä, Flow Mentaalivalmennus/HPA Consulting Oy
July 2020
Publisher: BoD – Books on Demand GmbH, Helsinki, Finland
Printer: BoD – Books on Demand GmbH, Norderstedt, Germany
The NLP techniques and exercises presented in this book are used with the generous written permission of Dr. Richard Bandler.
Edited by Hannu Pirilä
Illustrated by Hannu Pirilä
Photo of the Author: Jarmo Österman
ISBN: 9789528090847
©Copyright 2020, Hannu Pirilä/HPA Consulting Oy. Hannu Pirilä/HPA Consulting Oy. All rights reserved. Reproduction in any form without the express written consent of HPA Consulting is prohibited.
It goes without saying that I have received quite a lot of help, support and guidance from a lot of people during the course of my life. Here, however, is a special appreciation and thank you to some special people who have influenced to the creation of this book:
First, I want to thank my family for their patience and ”silent support” which has, on the whole, made it possible for me to write this book. I am well aware that my retreating into my study for long periods of time has required acceptance and flexibility on their part.
A huge thank you also belongs to my good friend, client and cooperation partner Timo Räkköläinen for long-term co-operation and inspiration. It is obvious I could not have completed this journey and this book without his support.and example. Besides being a constant example of a person who fulfills his own dreams and does exactly the kind of work he loves, he also influenced significantly on the title of this book.
I would like to thank Ilkka Rajala for teaching me the basics of NLP, Anders Piper and Tina Taylor for deepening many of my specific NLP skills and, naturally, a GIGANTIC thank you and appreciation to Dr. Richard Bandler and John & Kathleen La Valle for their aid in developing my NLP skills to a whole new level. Without the teachings of Dr. Bandler this book would never had even crossed my mind. And this journey will continue a looong time ever more.
Another special thank you belongs to late Bill Harris. In addition to having received a lot of benefit from his Holosync meditation programme, he has also taught me a lot about NLP and about the functions of my mind and brain.
I would also like to extend a big thank you to my international colleagues on the team of assistant trainers for Dr. Richard Bandler’s seminars. It is a great privilege to be part of that wonderful group, in which we help each other to continually evolve and be better in our work.
The NLP techniques and exercises presented in this book are used with the generous written permission of Dr. Richard Bandler.
I must start this by saying it is a sincere pleasure to write an introduction to a book by Hannu Pirila. He has been first a student then my assistant in training for so many years. Now he has done something truly special, writing “YOUR OWN BLUE OCEAN“.
A new book that gives you, the reader, the tools to change the very direction of your life. While many of the tools here come from my work, the package of how Hannu has assembled them is both unique and delightful. He has kept the simplicity I have always striven for and also presented a package for the reader to learn how to look beyond their own limitation to the very horizon of possibility.
-Dr. Richard Bandler, co-founder of NLP, author of
more than 30 books and creator of behavioral
technologies
May 15, 2020.
Ever since my childhood, I have been quite competitive and succeeding in different things has been important to me. In the beginning it could be seen in my studies and grades at school, but when it all turned out to be too easy and did not offer me enough challenges, my attention turned mainly to sports. During my adolescence my pursuing of goals diminished for a while and approximately a year was spent predominantly just drifting around. Then sports started to gain more interest again, until my goals turned to work and career. My career goals stayed on top of my list of desires for quite a while, until the whole pursuit of career started to bore me. At the age of 40 I jumped out of the rat race and tried entrepreneurship for the first time – with pretty lame results. Returning to paid work for a few years, strengthened my desire to be my own master and in 2009 I made my definitive – at least for now – leap from the paid job and decided seriously to become an entrepreneur.
Since I realized quite early on that goals were important to me, I started to get more interested in goal setting and self-development somewhere in the early 1990’s. During the years that followed, I read some books about self development until in the beginning of this century, when my interest grew to a new level.
During the 2000’s I have read a pile of books on personal development, attended several seminars and bought countless number of internet-based educational programs. From all of these I have learned something more and they have all taken me forward – in one way or another – in my path of self-awareness and personal development.
However, one thing bothered me for a long time: All the self-development ”gurus” did provide some good pieces of advice and insights, but none of them were able to provide any actual tools on how to make the changes they suggested were necessary. In other words, they told me what to do but they failed to tell me how to do it all.
Until I got acquainted with NLP, Neuro-Linguistic Programming. Pretty fast I realized that here I finally had the tools and techniques that were required to change my thoughts, beliefs, operating models and – if I so wanted – even my whole life.
Several years ago, as we were working on new strategies and trends for Hipko (Self-Defense School of Helsinki) with its owner Timo Räkköläinen, Timo introduced me to the Blue Ocean Strategy by W. Chan Kimin ja Renée Mauborgne. I was immediately enchanted by their model because it described almost perfectly my own way of thinking about how a company that is willing to develop and grow should see the market and its position in it. I especially liked the idea that companies should always act according to their values and principles. In other words, there should be nothing in a company’s strategy that is against their values.
The same applies to us humans on our individual level. By living our lives in ways that contradict our own values, we live in a constant battle with ourselves and other people, running in our own rat race, never really getting anywhere. By finding Your Own Blue Ocean you can live the life you want to live. This also describes pretty much the way I think about what success and happiness mean to me.
Finding Your Own Blue Ocean does not equate to loneliness. On the contrary: it means finding your own place and your own peace in the world that swells around us, which also offers us immense opportunities.
Success and happiness, in my mind, are therefore substantially connected to what finding Your Own Blue Ocean means. On the other hand, the question is also: how do we define success and happiness and what do they mean to us?
In my studies on success and happiness I have noticed that there is a kind of formula or a path that leads to achieving them. When certain things in our lives are fulfilled, and mainly in a certain order, success and happiness are practically guaranteed in our lives.
Quite a bold claim, I know. I believe, however, that after you have finished reading this book, you will realize that this path, and the steps that are related to it, are well within the reach of everyone and that they will inevitably lead you toward greater sense of success and happiness in your life.
These eight steps to success and happiness are:
I will also introduce a number of exercises in this book. Their purpose is to help you understand these things better and also to help you achieve the exact things that you want to achieve in your life.
Although this book is not a book about NLP, per se, I will use and provide a lot of the learnings I have gained from it. Therefore, most of the techniques of this book are either NLP techniques or some kind of spinoffs of NLP – and they all work. That is why I wholeheartedly recommend that you really do all the exercises I present in this book. That is the only way you will get the full benefit of this book.
In addition to the exercises presented in the book, I have created three audio exercises, which are available on the internet in the form of MP3 audio files. As a reader of this book, I am offering you these audio exercises for free. You can get access to them on my website at http://hannupirila.com/blue-ocean-audios/. (Note: This offer is only available for a limited time and will be withdrawn at some point in the future. I do not guarantee that the exercises will be available for years to come.)
Some of the NLP techniques and exercises that I present to you in this book are easier to do and more effective when done with the guidance of a skillful NLP practitioner as a significant part of some of the techniques come from watching and observing the responses of the other person. This often requires observations and guidance from another person. It is worth noting, however, that the NLP techniques are not difficult to perform and, when certain details are paid attention to, they can produce amazing results. As the co-founder and developer of NLP, Dr. Richard Bandler, puts it: “You can study NLP from books, but to get a full benefit of it, you have to experience it.” And that is best achieved in the courses, seminars or coaching certified by the Society of NLPTM and Dr. Bandler.
I have included in this book exercises that you are able to perform by yourself. You don’t have to perform all the exercises in this book, neither do you have to do any of the additional downloadable exercises. If you are totally happy with all aspects of your life, then I congratulate you. It is perfectly okay to be content with your life and what you have here and now. It is natural for humans to crave to develop themselves to become better, at least in some aspects of their lives. I also believe that since you have this book in your hands your intention is to read it and you want to make your life better. As such, I strongly recommend that you do all the exercises I present in this book, even if some of them don’t seem totally relevant to your life at this very moment. Only by doing the exercises in this book will you get the full benefit of the book.
Whatever ways you want to develop yourself and your life, I believe this book and the related exercises will prove to be very useful to you.
It is also a good idea to get a notebook or a booklet to write down some of the exercises in this book and perhaps for other self-development purposes, as well. You might also want to write down all new ideas, thoughts and insights you get while reading this book in your notebook or booklet. In this way on your ideas, thoughts and insights will literally be inside the same covers and you will find it fun and exciting to go back to them every now and then.
My first book, The Little Book of Personal Development, Success and Happiness, was written primarily to evoke new thoughts and insights within its readers. The purpose of that book was to awaken an interest in the reader to go and explore the things pertained in personal development, success and happiness, not so much to give answers and/or tools to resolve those things.
The purpose of this book, on the other hand, is specifically to help you achieve those things in your life that you want to achieve. My aim is, above all, to give you more answers to those questions and also to introduce you to some exercises and techniques that will help you travel forward more easily on your path to happiness and success, towards Your Own Blue Ocean.
In the same way as W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne said in their book Blue Ocean Strategy, the ideas in this book are not for those of you whose aim in life is only to survive and get by in their daily life. That is not the purpose of this book nor mine. If you are satisfied with that only, then please do not bother to read further. The purpose of this book is to help you live a more fulfilling life. A life that inspires you and the people around you.
Happiness and success are, in my opinion, the birth rights of every human being. We just need to learn how to find those things, tools and resources within ourselves that make it possible for us to achieve them.
My father was an alcoholic. Not by any means violent, but every night, for as long as I can remember, he retreated to the fireplace room of our home and opened a bottle. There he then drank in front of the television until at some point he passed out on the couch and at some point, somehow crawled into his bed.
This continued for decades. Two or three times his bowels failed, and he was hospitalized for a day or two, but once he got out of there, the same habitual drinking continued. For a long time, he apparently did a decent job at the bank, but even though, as far as I know, he didn’t consume alcohol during his working hours, at some point that kind of daily alcohol use must also be reflected in his work. So, as he approached sixty, he was pretty much forced to retire early.
With retirement, the same thing continued, perhaps with the difference that the starting time of that evening grog was a little earlier. This continued until he literally drank himself into a coma. He was kept alive for two to three days with the help of a ventilator and other medical equipment.
It was really sad to go see him in a coma in the hospital. There was my dad, who had once been successful in the banking world as a young man, but who had begun to make bad choices somewhere along the way. Over time, these bad choices became a daily occurance. As we all surely understand, making repeatedly bad choices will not bring us success or happiness, but, instead, leads to a worsening life.
What is success and happiness, after all?
In order for you to pursue happiness and success, and Your Own Blue Ocean, first we need to define what we mean by those words.
There are many definitions for success and a common meaning for the word is probably “the achievement of goals.” A lot of people also connect the word success with happiness. Thesaurus.com gives us synonyms for the word “success” as “favorable outcome,” “achievement,” “progress,” “prosperity,” “realization,” “achievement,” “accomplishment“ and “happiness,” among some other words1).
What is interesting, then, is that the word “happiness” is often connected with the word “success.”
If we then look for the synonyms for the word “happiness” we can find words like “satisfaction,” “bliss,” “contentment,” “enjoyment,” “exhilaration,” “optimism,” “peace of mind,” “well-being,” “enhancement,” “hopefulness” and so on.
What does all that tell us then? It tells us, among other things, that a connection exists between the words ”success” and “happiness.”
However, many of us try to achieve happiness through success. Although I believe that success can bring a short-term sense of happiness, when you think your life in the long run, the equation works the other way around:
“Happiness fuels success, not the other way around.
Simply stated, success doesn’t bring happiness;
happiness brings success. -Bruce H. Lipton2)
One of the best definitions for success and happiness in life that I have come across is the one by Deepak Chopra:
“Success in life could be defined as the continued
expansion of happiness and the progressive
realization of worthy goals… Moreover, success is a
journey, not a destination.” 3)
Deepak Chopra’s definition is so multi-layered that I think it requires to be examined somewhat deeper.
First of all, our attention is drawn to the impression “expansion of happiness.”
The human mind has a tendency to get bored if we don't at least in some ways progress and develop. Or as Dr. Richard Bandler and Garner Thomson put it in their book “The Secrets of Being Happy”: “Things do not stay the same. If you are not moving forward, they get worse.” 4)
Many of the personal development coaches and mental trainers tell us that we should be satisfied with the present moment and the things we already have in our lives. I agree. The challenge, however, is that we have by nature an unconscious desire for change and development. For some people this desire is weaker and for some, on the other hand, it’s stronger. And luckily so, because if we didn't have this need humankind and the world that we live in would not have developed to the point that it has. I know there are a lot of people who say to this that the world has gone in a worse direction. Although it is true that not all the development we have had has increased the happiness and well-being of humankind but on the other hand I believe that as a whole everything has its purpose and that in a wider perspective the development has been very positive.
It is true, however, that there is only one moment in our life when we can feel and experience happiness, and it is always this very moment, here and now. That is why it is extremely important that we know how to enjoy and be grateful for what we have here and now. However, if things don't change within a time frame and we don't develop, we are unsatisfied. Therefore, I think it is essential that we experience our happiness as constantly expanding and developing. And as Chopra said it, the constant expansion of our feeling of happiness is a part of being successful in life.
Then what about Chopra’s “worthy goals?” As I stated before, a very common definition for success is successfully reaching our goals. But what lifts our success and happiness into a whole new level is indeed that the goals that we work for are valuable to us. Sadly, many of us work, day in and day out, to achieve other people's goals or they work on things that do not have much of value for themselves.
We spend our time someway anyway. How we spend our time substantially influences what we achieve in our lives and also on how happy we are. When we spend our time on things that are worthy of our time and lives, we achieve things that are, in one way or another, valuable to us. For example, which of these two things do you think would bring you, especially in a long-term, more satisfaction and happiness: Working for the well-being of yourself and your family or just lying on the couch watching some reality shows on TV?
When we work on goals that are important and valuable to us, we also gain a whole different motivation for our actions.
“If the goal is not my own it might be difficult to
achieve the sufficient commitment for the goal.” -
Terttu Grönfors & Trygve Roos 5)
The third thing that is worthy of paying attention to in Chopra's definition is the “progressive realization.” In the same way as the “continued expansion of happiness” these valuable goals of ours should also grow as we grow and achieve our goals. In Finland there is a saying that the more you eat the hungrier you get. But in my opinion, this is a matter of something even bigger and noble. As we reach our goals, we find ourselves growing and achieving something remarkable at the same time. And that, if anything, feels good!
All of that equates to the journey that Chopra is referring to. If our objective is always just to achieve a certain goal, then what happens when it is achieved? When our goals grow progressively as our journey advances and at the same time we constantly achieve something valuable, we can also experience our happiness to constantly expand and gain new dimensions as we go on. After all, it is important to ultimately enjoy that journey. If we always just think that after I have achieved this and this goal then I will be happy and then I will experience success, then my question is: why wait? If we always just postpone the experience of happiness and success, then when is the time for it? Why not enjoy those feelings right now, today in this moment?
When we are on our way towards something that is important and valuable to us, all those things that happen along the way are a part of that process and therefore are all valuable. So why not enjoy every step?
When observing Chopra’s definition, it is important to realize that it is, after all, we ourselves who define what success means to us. We ourselves define what success is to us. And when we define it ourselves, we can also enjoy it ourselves.
Therefore, success cannot be measured by money or by the amount of accomplished publicity, unless you yourself want to define it like that. Success doesn't necessarily need to be defined by the number of Olympic or world championship medals. A person who evolves constantly in their sport and experiences new moments of success constantly, can experience being even more successful – and happier – than a world champion in the same sport. In the same way a cleaner who is producing better and better outcomes can experience being more successful and happier than a stressed-out CEO of a cleaning company.
So the questions to ask are: what do you want, why do you want it and what are you willing to do to achieve it? These are the subjects that we will delve into in this book.
“Being successful is about achieving whatever the
goals are that we set for ourselves, whether they are
material, spiritual, or simply living a better life.” - Owen
Fitzpatrick 6)
The key points of this chapter:
1) thesaurus.com
2) Bruce H. Lipton: The Biology of Belief, p. 143, Hay House, 2015
3) Deepak Chopra: The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success, page 2, Amber-Allen Publishing and New World Library, 1994
4) Richard Bandler & Garner Thomson: The Secrets of Being Happy, p. 257, I.M. Press, Inc., 2011
5) Terttu Grönfors & Trygve Roos: Mitä on NLP, s. 76, Facile Publishing, 1997
6) Richard Bandler & Owen Fitzpatrick: Conversations with Richard Bandler, page 11, Health Communications, Inc., 2009
Years and years ago, as I was approaching forty, I began to feel a growing sense of dissatisfaction and did not really understand why. Basically, I was doing very well; I had a very good job, a good salary, family and I were healthy. Nonetheless, something made me feel this growing sense of dissatisfaction.
I wanted something else, but I didn't really know what.
Then something happened that I eventually thought was as a real stroke of luck. The company I worked for merged with another company and, as is often the case with mergers, several overlaps were found in the new organization. After various negotiations, I was offered a 'golden handshake', meaning I was offered a package with several months' salary without any obligation to work.