Pony food and NLP

"Mum?"
"Yes?"
"Do you know what I'd feed my pony on?"
"But you haven't got one"
"Yes, but if I did have one..." I don't know how many conversations I've had with my beloved daughter on the way to school (and on the way home from school, and on the way to riding....and on the way back... you get the picture) about this one.  I was trying to listen to an interview on radio 4 about tomorrow's election, but the combination of hypothetical pony food, a broken radio aerial and visions of a hung parliament involving various MPs about to dangle from the rafters of the Houses of Parliament - I won't say which MPs for the sake of diplomacy, but it was quite enjoyable - rudely interrupted my ability to concentrate.
"Mum!"
"What?"
"Do you think we'd get bran or oats?"
"I've just bought you the Coco Pops Rocks you asked for".
"No! Not for me!  Anyway, what does congregational mean?"

The point of all this is to comment on my children's amazing focus on what they want.  My daughter thinks incessantly about ponies; my son thinks incessantly about the next piece of ultra expensive sports equipment he 'needs' (at the moment it's a wildly overpriced tennis racquet).  They talk about their focus of interest ALL THE TIME; I'm guessing they think about it all the time; and, actually, they seem to get us to spend a lot of our spare family time helping them to follow these interests.

What do we spend time thinking about as adults?  I think we often think about the things we don't want, the things we want to stop doing.  It's like the election - certain parties tell us we need change, but what to?  They aren't very specific about what exactly they would do differently, or perhaps more importantly how.

Children are so great at knowing what they want - and often how to get it.  As we become adults our thoughts get confused with what we think we ought to do, instead of what we'd really like to do.  Obviously we have to learn to think about how our actions affect others, but we can get so worried about other people we forget to just do what we want - for some of the time, at least.

I'm going to have a different conversation with my daughter on the way home from school this afternoon.  It'll still be about ponies, but this time I'm going to enjoy her total absorption in her interest and learn from her how I can re-create that overwhelming enthusiasm in my own interests again, which I'm sure I also had as a child. 

NLP is all about modelling excellence - being able to bring back into adult life that fantastically blinkered child's focus on what you are striving for is definitely worth having a go at.  Remember the idea that you get what you focus on?  See the nearest child for details....