Episode 3: The Third Principle of Success: Have Sensory Acuity

Welcome to episode 3 of Extraordinary Living series! I’m super-excited to bring this lesson to you because personally, I’ve had a hard time with it myself in the past.

Quick recap: In the last two episodes, we looked at knowing your outcome well before-hand (so you can focus) and taking action toward your set outcome.

Want to increase traffic to your website? Great. How much traffic? Get specific. Get that on paper. Then, begin taking action.

The third principle of living an extraordinary life is having a sensory awareness or sensory acuity (as it’s called in NLP or coaching lingo) around your life.

Take a simple scenario: You’ve set your goal and are doing the do. And . . . that’s it. You keep taking action, over and over again, putting your head down to work unsure of whether or not your efforts are yielding results at all.

This happens to the best of us. We set out on a goal and we do what it takes but only a few of us really stop and evaluate what’s happening. It takes an awareness of how you’re responding to life, opportunities, synchronicities and the subtle (and not so subtle) signals around you.

Let’s take an example — a sales person sets a goal to sell 15 cars a month. He applies everything he knows to the t. He listens to his superior, reads lot of books about the psychology behind buying and people’s behavior, and does what it takes.

But instead of making a sale, he ends up losing customers. Nevertheless, our salesman goes by the books and continues doing what he’s doing, without getting any results.

One day, he finds the missing piece of the puzzle — his body language! He’s been saying one thing, trying to look confident but his customers smell a rat from a mile away because his body language sends across a completely different image.

He’s got a new awareness. Now he can apply this new-found knowledge and change his course.

It’s way much smarter to stop and see, hear, and feel what’s happening around you than just putting your head down and working.

That’s your sensory acuity at play. It’s a great tool to have in your toolkit.

How to Develop Better Sensory Acuity

You can enhance and practise your sensory acuity or awareness with this quick exercise.

The next time you’re at a meeting, a party or a family gathering, observe how people respond in terms of their:

1. Words
2. Eye movements
3. Tonality of their voice
4. Changes in the colour of their skin
5. Posture
6. Facial expressions
7. Energy levels

This will help you build a better rapport with them, which leads to stronger relationships.

In your own life, look at the day-to-day and long-term results you’ve created. Want to be healthy? Define healthy first. What does “healthy” mean to you: is it a particular weight or more body muscle?

Look at how you’re doing in the health department right now and whether it’s in alignment to where you’d like to be. Are you close to your outcome?

If not, there’s no point in continuing the “best diet ever” that your BFF suggested 6 months ago — because it’s not taking you where you want to go.

Open your eyes (and other senses); apply your awareness in areas of your life to evaluate your choices and decisions. At any point, you can scrap them and start over. That’s way more cooler than sticking to something that delivers zilch.

Listen to this week’s podcast below (~10 minutes) and as always, let me know what you think! 🙂

 Episode 3: Listen here

Missed Episode 1? Listen here. [~8 mins.]
Missed Episode 2? Listen here. [~12 mins.]