When learning meditation, one of the fundamental things to learn is not to attach. When doing virtually any other type of self discovery, the importance of goals and outcomes are usually brought to attention. So what to do? Set goals, attach and introduce unhappiness or let go of everything, find a cave and be happy. Oops, even finding a cave is a goal it seems! Slowly I'm learning that there is a subtle third alternative.

I have been doing an intensive course in NLP where we have been working with outcomes. Sedrick, our trainer, has a way of combining deep wisdom and years of experience with practical NLP. NLP works with outcomes, well formed outcomes (WFO). Now on the surface this might seem like a goal. Especially if you read most descriptions of a WFO, it seems like a fancy word for a goal. Yet in practicing it in the elegant ways demonstrated by Sedrick, it morphs from a longing for events in the future to creating a state of being right now. Accessing this state has the power to induce future reactions which leads to courses of action and so to external events. The proof of a successful WFO (and in most cases an appropriate NLP process that cements access to the new state) is that the results flow, in elegance, inevitability and with internal congruence.

Why is this so fundamentally different from your normal garden variety goal? Goals are things you don't have now. In order to reach them you need to constantly fight with what is to bring it closer to an imagined ideal. Setting goals means focusing on the external, the place where you have least influence and everything takes time. Creating an outcome changes the now, changes me, the only thing I really can change. External reality then has to run to catch up.

Does "no attachment" precludes exercising the choice to change? Not if the process becomes: Become aware of issue or opportunity. Change it in the now. Live the changes. Et Voila! Change without attachment. In this scenario you do not constantly measure yourself against a goal, rather you welcome all feedback from your environment, other people and your awareness, decide if it is appropriate to change something, create the outcome, do the work and continue living the changes.