Archive for January, 2006
Take a look at your desk; is your inbox piled with paper and your desk covered with clutter? I know personally keeping on top of the ever accumulating stack of papers being delivered to my inbox, and keeping my desk clear is a constant struggle.
In our new modern world we’re deluged with email (I average 80 actionable email messages per day at work) as well as being bombarded by an unending stream of paper too.
The promise of the 21st century was a paperless work place, but most people still have to process as much paper as ever plus electronic communications to boot!
It’s extremely easy to get behind in the sorting, processing and handling of this flood of information. Once you’re a little behind the gap between where you are and being “caught up” gets a little wider every day. Pretty soon the gap is a chasm and you don’t see any way to build a bridge and get back to being “caught up.”
What you need is a fresh start, but how do you get a fresh start when you’re buried and the backlog keeps getting bigger every day?
The first thing to do is realize that there are tools out there to help out. If you’ve not picked up and read Getting Things Done by David Allen, I recommend you start with it. One of the best ideas I took away from Getting Things Done (GTD for those “in the know”) was the process to work through your backlog and get caught up.
David recommends you do this for every aspect of your life; gather up all of your loose ends and then process them to completion. This is a big challenge. If you’re already overwhelmed and buried, trying to get your entire life’s loose ends gathered and in one spot for processing will just overwhelm you more.
I recommend you segment your life into chunks, triage the areas that are the worst or that you’ll see the biggest benefit from fixing, and then working only on one single area until you’re caught up.
The first step is to get a fresh start. Once you’re behind this is critical because if you don’t draw a line in the sand, you’ll never be back on top.
Here’s what to do:
1) Get a big inbox that’s empty; I use a legal-size beast that’s 6″ deep).
2) Put every single paper on your desk in it! No cheating, gather them all up and put them in your empty inbox. Your desk should be squeaky clean when you’re finished.
3) Once your desk is clear, turn the inbox upside down on your desk and work through the stack one time only! You want to use the three “Ds” when you work through; Delegate it, Defer it, or Delete it.
4) Delegate whatever you can to others. Put these papers aside so you can go hand them out when you’re finished.
5) Defer anything that requires action on your part. These papers go back into the inbox.
6) Delete as much as possible; send it to the “round file.” If you’re like me, you probably get a large amount in your inbox (email too) that just doesn’t need your action or delegation to staff. Throw it away! Make your motto, “When in doubt, throw it out!”
7) Put your deferred items (which should be only a fraction of the original total) aside, stick them in a drawer, just get them out of the way for a moment. You are trying to get a fresh start.
Congratulations, you should now be the proud owner of a clean desk and an empty inbox; the challenge is now to keep it that way! Now you have to commit to staying on top of your inbox; process it at the end of each day before you leave. Your goal should be to go home with an empty inbox on your desk.
Now you have a fresh start, but what do you do with the “deferred” pile of papers? You need to create a separate plan to handle them. Handling your backlog is now a project, and you schedule it and assign resources just like you would any other project you have to accomplish.
For this project you need to set a time-line to finish handling all of your deferred paper. You need to plan and schedule time to work on chipping away at your backlog. You need to manage yourself just like you would for any other project on your plate.
You will find that your backlog will start to dwindle even more, and if you’re keeping on top of your inbox on a daily basis you’ll stay “caught up.”
To speed things up even more you should figure out whether you’re “a filer or a piler”. I am most definitely a piler; spending all my time organizing papers into files sends shivers up my spine. I’ll do it when I have to, but for most of my needs a “piling system” suits me just fine.
You can now pause and enjoy being on top of at least one area of your life. To truly achieve balance you should repeat this process for your home office or anywhere else you’re buried in clutter and information. Once you get “caught up” you should enjoy the feeling, but you can’t rest because once you do things will start piling up around you again.
Don’t let the backlog “gap” come back!
January 13th, 2006
How often to you batch your tasks for greater productivity? Do you cluster tasks that require similar energy and do them all at once to get better performance? You should think about your day and your tasks with a batch-oriented mentality to achieve more in less time.
My employer uses a sophisticated software package to run its business. This software operates on the principal of batch processing. A lot of our users initially try to fight this principal of operation their productivity suffers and they complain they can’t use the system to get their work finished. They’re not used to thinking in batches.
When they finally embrace a batch-process work-flow a change happens. They can get more done, in less time than they thought was possible. Suddenly it’s not a problem to process 2500 invoices. Suddenly it’s not such a burden to print 800 checks. They get to a point where a minimum input on their end produces a maximum output by the system.
Applying this type of thinking to all aspects of your life can transform your productivity too.
Anywhere you can compile like tasks, and save your effort to finish those tasks until you can do them all at once, you can save time. If you pack a lunch to eat at work are you packing a lunch each night?
How long does it take to get the bread, get some lunch meat, make a sandwich, get some fruit, pack a bag of chips and put it all in a bag for the next day? What part of the process is setup and what part of the process is production? Now multiply the setup time by five days. If the setup time runs even 3 minutes per lunch that’s fifteen minutes per week spent just getting ready to make lunch!
How much more efficient could you be if you spent your three minutes setting up for lunch on Sunday night and then made five sandwiches, packed five pieces of fruit and five bags of chips? All you would have to do is grab a bag from the fridge each morning on your way out the door. If nothing else, you saved twelve minutes per week just on setup time.
Twelve minutes per week saved adds up to ten hours per year. That’s time you used to spend just preparing to make a lunch. Think about what your time is worth and then figure out what your “cost” savings is; it will surprise you.
This is a very simple example to be sure, but the idea scales to other areas of life too. You can also batch your tasks for times when you feel at your peak.
For example, I am not a writer by nature. I enjoy writing, but it doesn’t come naturally to me - I have to work at it. There are times however when I feel like I can’t stop writing. Those are my peak writing times.
When I experience a peak writing moment I take advantage of it. I keep a notebook with ideas for articles and essays and when I’m in a writing mood, I write! I cross out the ideas as I’ve executed them, and if they’re articles for my web site I schedule them in advance to appear automatically at a future date.
For this web site I will typically have three to five articles in the queue, ready for publication and usually at least one article “in process” that I keep working on until I’m happy with it.
I’m able to take advantage of my peak times, and by batching my tasks I end up getting a lot more done in less time than if I sat down every other day and forced myself to write an article. I wouldn’t necessarily be in a peak state, and I wouldn’t be using my time efficiently.
It can be tricky to get used to thinking like this if you’ve never thought in a batch-oriented mentality before. We are so used to real-time processing that it’s our default habit.
To get used to the switch, we have to think about efficiency and optimization. When faced with a task - especially a repetitive task - you have to constantly ask yourself, “How could I handle this in a more efficient manner?” Your goal should be to turn yourself into a factory - streamlining operations and steps as much as possible to achieve greater output.
* Try to setup your environment so when you tackle tasks you can do multiple steps at once and use the results at a later time (minimize input, maximize output).
* Work to recognize and mentally flag those times you notice you’re in a peak state for any given activity.
* When you feel that peak state “click” in the future, try to maximize the energy and results you can get out of it (you’ll get more done and it will likely be better quality than “normal”).
* Think in terms of long-term time savings (months or a year) and challenge yourself to find ways to save time in the long run - you’ll find something else much more enjoyable to fill that time.
* Realize that effort and output don’t have to be directly linked. It’s easy to feel some guilt when you realize that you’re getting tremendous output with less input than you’re used to. It may take a little time for you to adjust and be comfortable when your productivity goes up. We get stuck in a feeling of “I should be doing more right now” mentality and we rush to fill it with “something” - even if that “something” isn’t a great use of our time!
Once you get used to batching your tasks you’ll wonder why you didn’t start doing it sooner. When you can work on tasks in a peak mental state you’ll be amazed at how much you can get accomplished with seemingly no effort (or minimal effort) on your part.
When you learn to think and work in a batch-process mentality, the time will fly by, your production will be up, and your quality will be great. That sounds like a pretty good reason to think in a batch-oriented mindset to me!
January 11th, 2006
How many ways can you save time each day? One easy way is to really take a long look at your daily drive.
I suspect that most people have more than one possible route they can take to get to their daily destination. If so, are you sure you’re using the most efficient route when taking into account the time of day and traffic levels?
I have two primary routes I can use to get to my office. I’ve always used one in particular because it seemed faster; there was always less traffic because it led me through quieter streets. It’s peaceful. The other route, which I never really used, kept me on the highway longer and then directed me through an industrial area with nothing to look at on my drive but huge, grey, concrete buildings.
If you look at a map and trace out these two paths the first route - through the quiet neighborhoods - looks like the clear winner in terms of distance and time. The second route takes me farther and through busy, industrial areas.
But I wondered if my assumptions were true; was my preferred route to my office really the quicker route? I decided to put it to a test; I drove each route for a week while I timed the trip.
A strange thing happened; I realized that my assumptions were completely incorrect!
My preferred route actually took an average of 7 minutes and 25 seconds longer to arrive at my office. Further, this time was pretty stable whether I was headed to my office or to my house. I was spending fifteen minutes more in the car each day than I needed.
I know what you’re thinking, “Big deal, you saved 7.5 minutes going to work and another 7.5 minutes going home. That’s not so much.”
You’re right, it’s not much. But think about that time in bigger terms; If I continue to take the longer route over the course of a work-week it’s an extra hour and fifteen minutes I’m stuck in the car. Over the course of a month it’s an extra five hours in the car. Over the course of a year it’s an extra sixty hours stuck in the car. I don’t know what your time is worth, but for me sixty hours lost costs me a lot of money.
If you’re earning $75,000 per year, losing 60 hours “costs” you $2163.60 - think in terms of what each minute lost costs you and you’ll quickly learn to seek out and eliminate lost minutes.
I also suspect there are a lot of places in my day I can shave additional minutes that will add up to extra hours in a short amount of time; I’m willing to wager this is true for you, too. Additionally, this “recovered time” not only gives us the freedom to spend it elsewhere, it also reinforces the skills of productivity, efficiency and resource management - skills we should all be practising at every opportunity!
Every lost minute reclaimed is an extra minute you can use to do something you want, or use to continue to build wealth and work to achieve financial Independence.
If I can save a few minutes a day, that time adds up quickly. Anything that gives me a few extra minutes of my day back without taking any additional effort on my part is exactly what I keep myself open to.
I challenge you to find your own ways to “shave and save.” What will you do with the extra time you reclaim?
January 10th, 2006
I really hate pushy salesmen - the ones who use high-pressure tactics and try to “hard sell” me. Because of salespeople like that I always wanted to distance myself from sales. I never thought of myself as a salesman, and when I did have to wear that hat as a business owner I always tried to let my product do the work for me. I didn’t like “selling.”
But as I got a little older, I came to realize that the old saying, “Everyone in this company is in sales!” isn’t true. The saying should just be, “Everyone is in sales!”
Everyone is selling all the time. If you want to go to Outback and your friend wants to go to Red Lobster, one of you will be sold. When you meet new people you’re going to have to sell your personality. When you want a new job you’re going to have to sell your potential employer on your skills and experience. Everyone is always selling…always.
And what is the number one question you’re asked across all facets of your life? The number one question that starts all the selling in the first place? That question is; “So, what do you do?”
That’s the lead-in question asked when introduced to new people in social settings. That’s the lead-in question asked when you meet new people at business conventions. It’s the lead-in question people ask. And it gives you a perfect opportunity to sell without selling. It gives you an opening to present your “30 second commercial” to get their attention.
Why do you want a 30 second commercial? What will it do for you? How do you write one? Great questions! Let’s start with why you want to have a polished 30 second commercial ready to go when meeting new people.
Why 30 seconds?
Studies show that most people form their first impression of you within the first thirty seconds of meeting you, and first impressions are tough to change. So you want to keep your introduction short - enough to pique their interest without boring them.
If you’re brief, articulate and present some interesting “pain hooks” in your introduction, they’ll ask questions and keep the conversation moving along. They’ll also likely create a favorable impression of you as someone who’s “with it” and “put together.” In business, this can make or break a relationship.
What will a 30 second commercial do for you?
If you’re well rehearsed you will appear extremely confident and poised. You can sum up yourself and your product or service in just a few sentences, many people just ramble on and on and on and on - boring! Even if you’re not feeling particularly sophisticated and confident, this is the appearance you’ll give to others.
It’s also a great way to present your services (or your company’s services) in a way that’s easy for the other person to absorb, digest and respond to. You’ll give them two or three things that can prompt further discussion. If you’ve done your job well, the other person won’t be left scratching their head at your response, while an awkward silence lingers between the both of you.
Your goal should be to give them enough information to keep the conversation flowing smoothly and to make them want to get to know you better.
How do you write a 30 second commercial?
As promised, here are five easy steps to use when creating your 30 second commercial:
1) Start by creating five or six “pain hooks” to use as a starting point. A pain hook is designed to elicit a pain response from your listener (emotionally). It should make them reflect on some business or personal pain they’re currently experiencing.
We try harder to avoid and move away from pain. This drive to avoid pain is much stronger than our drive to find pleasure. If someone has a business pain, your pain hook should make them think about that pain and show them how you can solve their pain.
2) Once you have your pain hooks, you need to find the thing you do that can solve all of them. You might have multiple ways of solving the problems, but you have to make sure you can solve the problem.
3) Pick your top three pain hooks - the strongest ones - these will be the base of your 30 second commercial. These should be the pain hooks that the people you meet most likely encounter.
4) Work your pain hooks into a professional sounding sound-bite and write it out. Keep it shorter than you think you should, when spoken it will take you longer than you think to say everything and you don’t want to sound rushed.
5) Rehearse your 30 second commercial until it feels and sounds natural, and rolling it off your tongue is second nature. You don’t want to sound like you’re reciting a memorized script - you should ad-lib as needed and adjust it to the people you’re presenting your 30 second commercial. Be loose, be fun, but be prepared.
You should get into the practice of using your 30 second commercial whenever you meet new people; they will inevitably ask, “So, what do you do?”
Five years ago I ran an Internet company. We sold dial-up, high-speed, web hosting, web design, application design, and more. Our informal motto was, “If it touches the Internet, we do it.” Of course, most people are not highly technical, and lots of buzz words would make their eyes glaze right over. So I had to have a good 30 second commercial to not confuse people when telling them what we did.
My 30 second commercial sounded something like this:
I own Qserve Internet. We’re a small Internet company and we service both home and business users. A lot of our customers like us because we don’t have busy signals. Others like us for our reasonable web-hosting rates. But I think our biggest advantage is our commitment to quality. We work to maintain a high level of quality so when you do get connected, you stay connected! Plus when you call us, you always talk to a real, live person, not a machine.
In my 30 second commercial I had 4 pain hooks; they were:
“No busy signals” - Our geographic area in the late 1990s experienced an explosion in Internet usage. A lot of the local Internet companies couldn’t keep up with the growth, and busy signals were common. We always worked hard to keep our user-per-line ratio favorable without generating busy signals. It was a metric we monitored like a hawk, and while we didn’t “guarantee” no busy signals, we rarely had them. It was one of the main reasons our referral business was so good.
“Competitive web-hosting rates” - At the start of the Internet explosion web hosting rates in our area were sky-high. As competition came to town the prices came down, but there were a lot of places where the price was much higher than average. We focused on being competitive, but offering a good deal for our customers. We had a lot of customers who moved their web site to our company for this reason.
“Staying connected” - Being in a Midwestern state, we had a lot of rural areas we served. We invested heavily with the phone company to have all digital lines back to our main data center. We had a very good reputation for keeping calls connected, while our competition was only “so-so” at this. It was a big pain-point for a lot of people in our area, and solving it won us a lot of business and a lot of accounts.
“Talk to a real person” - We always answered the phone. We believed that it made a difference since our biggest (and bigger) competitors used auto-answer phone systems. Over the years we received a lot of compliments, email and letters from our customers because of this. We also got a lot of business, and it was not uncommon to get an account solely because we were one of the only companies in town who answered their phones.
I would also tailor my message depending on who I was speaking with. If I was talking to someone on the street, I would emphasis home-service pain hooks and mention business pain hooks. If I was in a networking group, or a business meeting, I would emphasize our business pain hooks and depending on the group I might not even mention home service at all.
The key though was that I was prepared with a handful of pain hooks that I could use. I was also rehearsed and I practiced my 30 second commercial often enough that I sounded very natural, confident and “put together.”
Today I work in an entirely different industry, and I have an all new 30 second commercial. My position isn’t directly involved in sales, but I still use my 30 second commercial and work in pain hooks when answering that oft-asked question, “What do you do?”
I challenge you to create a 30 second commercial for yourself. It might not land you that million-dollar account, but it will certainly make you stand out, sound poised, confident and in control to everyone with whom you’re introduced!
January 9th, 2006
I love the saying, “If you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always got.” It’s memorable and true, and often very overlooked in life.
I’ve always been a video game fan; I like the big, epic tales involved. Over the long, New Year holiday, I picked up a game on which I had read rave reviews. So with some free time to myself I decided to give it a try. I readied by character for battle and I plowed into a group of monsters - I was happy to be hacking and slashing away! My zest for adventure didn’t compensate for my character’s weaknesses as a new player in the world; the group overpowered me in moments and without much effort on their part I was dispatched back to the bone yard.
I recovered myself and tried again, “Have at you!” was the battle-cry running through my mind. Again, moments later I found myself back at the bone yard. I tried again and I found myself dead just as quickly.
In my excitement to try out the game and become a fierce warrior I had let myself fall prey to repeating the same, unsuccessful patterns over and over. I was doing what I had always done (rush into the mob), and I was getting what I always got (a quick trip to the graveyard). About thirty minutes into charging, dying, recovering and charging again I realized I was stuck in this pattern. Once I recognized this, I was able to apply myself differently - by drawing out the monsters one by one - and I handily defeated the mob.
Do you do this in real life? Do you rush in, always doing things the same way, but expecting a different outcome? If you don’t pay attention, it’s very easy to slip into this behavior.
We are pattern machines. Our brain loves habits because they feel comfortable. It’s very easy to experience a little success performing a behavior and it’s very easy to expect we can always get that result. Our brain is also very hopeful - it wants us to have the best things, the perfect relationship, or be amazingly happy. This combination of loving habits and wanting the best can lead us to expect that we’ll get better and better results from the same action, every time we perform the action.
The action of wanting to lose weight is a great example. Months ago I cut out non-diet soft drinks from my diet because I didn’t want to keep consuming all the empty calories. An unattended side effect was that I lost a little weight in the process. Jumping ahead several months, I caught myself drinking the full-calorie soft drinks again. I made another effort to stop, thinking that I might even take off a few more pounds and be able to put on some old clothes that were now too small. Again, I lost a little weight, the same as before, but I didn’t lose any more weight. At first I was a little upset, then a little angry with myself. It was only when I stopped and realized I had expected a different outcome from the same behaviour.
You should keep in mind that your brain wants to perform its habits - when it does you feel comfortable. You also should keep in mind that if you’ve tried something several times and were unsuccessful in achieving your desired outcome you shouldn’t keep trying to achieve your desired outcome the same way - it won’t work. You also shouldn’t expect that you’ll suddenly achieve significantly more than you did doing the same thing.
I know for myself it’s not always easy to keep this in mind. It can be a habit (a good one) to just remember to check your assumptions when asking why you’re not getting the result you expect or want. It’s easy to slip into old habits of trying the same thing over and over while expecting to achieve more or different results.
Try some of these ideas for a week and see what shaking up your patterns can do for you:
- Wake up 30 minutes earlier than normal. You would be amazed at what an extra half-hour will do for you in the morning.
- If you’re an office worker, don’t check your email until mid-morning at work. Trust that nothing is so critical it can’t wait for 2 hours before you reply. If something really is that critical, they’ll find your office and tell you. You can get a lot more accomplished when you don’t spend your morning checking and replying email.
- Read a book or a newspaper in the evening instead of watching T.V. - If you already do this, listen to an audio program instead.
- Challenge yourself to make one new introduction a day. If you’re in the grocery store, introduce yourself to an employee you recognize. You never know when it will pay off big to know that person.
These are just a few ideas to force you to shake up your patterns and hopefully make you realize that by doing things just a little differently you’ll get a new result, not the “same-ol-same-ol” you might be used to achieving!
January 7th, 2006
Have you ever thought to yourself, “I can’t do that because…” - if so you might be letting your limiting beliefs hold you back from achieving your full potential.
Limiting beliefs are negative thoughts and images that have been drilled into our heads by friends, foes, loved ones, and society. Our brains are big computers, so we install them right along with positive or empowering beliefs.
Once a limiting belief has taken hold you don’t notice it often, but when it shows itself it’s power is surprisingly strong.
So how do you let limiting beliefs get installed and what can you do to uninstall them?
Many of our limiting beliefs don’t come from ourselves, they come from well meaning people who don’t realize they’re setting up a negative association. A parent who cautions a child, “If you don’t get a college education you’ll never get a good job!” is well meaning, but without follow up and support they can inadvertently install a limiting belief that there is no good job available for the person who didn’t attend college.
A friend might install a limiting belief by telling you, “You can’t make a living selling your artwork.”
A spouse might install a limiting belief by telling you, “Are you crazy? You can’t quit your job and start your own company. We can’t lose your steady paycheck!”
Pretty soon, if these statements are reinforced over and over, you’ll start to believe them whether they’re true or not!
You might even self-sabotage if you find yourself in a situation that isn’t congruent with your beliefs. If you do quit your job and start your own business, but you believe that it’s crazy because of a limiting belief, it’s possible you’ll subconsciously work against yourself so you eventually get back to a place where your situation is congruent with your beliefs.
If you do something when a limiting belief is telling you the exact opposite of what you’re doing, one of three things is going to happen:
1) You’ll self-sabotage your success and when the business fails it will reinforce your limiting belief, creating a self-sustaining feedback loop which makes the limiting belief even stronger!
2) You’ll get sick because your reality and your beliefs are not congruent. You will get yourself into a state where you’ll physically be ill and you will work to get yourself out of this state.
3) You’ll realize that your liming belief is self-imposed and not really such a limit after all. You’ll break through your belief and be successful. You might even install a new belief that says, “Working for myself is great! I don’t have to be chained to someone else’s schedule and I decide when and how I can earn money.”
Number two is the worst option above; I speak from personal experience. About three years ago I was presented with a business opportunity that looked great on the surface. It involved spending nearly 100% of the partners’ time on the phone, selling. I had done cold-calls in the past, and I wasn’t uncomfortable on sales calls; it looked like a good product and a good business idea. So I started calling, and calling, and calling.
But I had a limiting belief that said, “People don’t like to get bothered with sales calls.” I certainly didn’t like receiving sales calls, and I figured no one else would either. In this case I had a self-inflicted limiting belief.
I was uneasy the first two weeks of making calls, but I told myself that I just needed to get used to dialing and hearing, “No!” all day long - I would get better. By the fifth week I knew I was in trouble. I still wasn’t comfortable with 8 hours of rejection and I wasn’t okay with making sales calls; my reality was way out of line with my beliefs! I was physically sick to my stomach at the thought of getting out of bed and facing another day of making calls. I would sit at my desk and my hand would shake a little as I reached for the phone. It was awful. The business which looked so good on paper wasn’t working out quite like we thought it would, and I wasn’t able to mentally rectify my beliefs with my reality and it was making my ill.
My partners and I talked about it, and I told them I couldn’t do the job. They asked me to step out and I did. The moment I was “out” I felt a huge weight lift, my life was once again in balance. I no longer had to struggle with my reality out of line with my beliefs.
With this opportunity I wasn’t able to make the break through, step out of my comfort zone and realign myself to overcome my limiting beliefs. You can also see that in this case my limiting beliefs completely held me back from achieving my goals.
What limiting beliefs do you have that are keeping you from realizing your potential? I know you have some, everyone does. A better question is, how do you get rid of these limiting beliefs?
A belief is any cognitive content held as true. Beliefs can be based on fact and truth; I believe I will not fall off the Earth because I believe in gravity (which has been proven scientifically). Beliefs can also be based on conjecture and feeling; I believe in a supreme being because it makes me feel “good” inside (which cannot be proven scientifically).
So to change a belief you just have to change how you view that cognitive content; simple right? If only it were! Our brains are computers, but they’re pattern-based computers. Our brains love to find patterns in everything, numbers, shapes, beliefs. You name it and we pattern it. Our brain physically changes as these patterns get reinforced; new neural pathways are formed and our beliefs are literally hardwired into our brains! Our beliefs become habits and just like it can be difficult to change a habit; it can be difficult to change a belief.
Logic can help a little. Take for example the belief some have, “If you don’t get a college degree, you won’t get a good job.” Really? If you have this limiting belief, I can guarantee you know someone with a good job, maybe a great job who doesn’t have a college degree. So it’s not true in reality that you have to have a college degree to get a good job. Logically this belief is flawed - why not just get rid of it?
Logic isn’t nearly as powerful as emotions to humans. We tie emotions deeply to everything we do and experience. We also want to avoid pain and gain pleasure. If you have a belief you want to eliminate, logically knowing it’s false is a good start, but if you can tie emotional pain to the belief you stand a much better change of eliminating it.
You have to reach a point where you get your belief and reality so incongruent that the pain of keeping the belief is more painful than not keeping the belief. You need to use visualization and logic and experience and other, positive beliefs to build up this pain around your limiting beliefs. You really want the limiting belief to fester and boil just below the surface of your conscious, and you want to keep pressure on yourself that the belief is invalid and needs to be replaced.
And you need to be ready with a replacement belief that’s positive and uplifting! When you finally apply enough pain to keeping your limiting belief and you finally get incongruent enough your brain will just let it go. It wants to experience that relief you get - that weight lifting - and the only way to get it is to remove the belief. When this happens, you’ll have a void where your belief was and your brain will be ready to stick something into that void.
If you’re not ready with a positive and beneficial belief to fill that void, chances are you’ll end up with a new limiting belief!
You have to get clear on what you want before you get rid of what you don’t want. Your replacement belief might be, “I use my unique talents to make myself attractive and valuable to employers.”
Because beliefs are installed just like habits, you need to keep reinforcing your new belief. If you only plant the seed your new belief will probably not take root. If you spend time for at least thirty days reflecting on your new belief as you review your goals, you’ll not only plant the seed, you’ll water and fertilize it too!
Steps to remove a limiting belief:
1) Identify how the belief is flawed. It’s only a belief because you think it’s true. Figure out a way to think it’s false.
2) Tie emotional pain to keeping the belief. By nature we move away from pain as quickly as possible. Make sure that keeping the belief will trigger large amounts of emotional pain for yourself!
3) Be crystal clear on a replacement belief! Once you’ve tied enough pain to your limiting belief and your mind lets it go, it will be looking for a new belief to replace the pattern. If you’re not clear on a positive belief to fill this void you can end up with another limiting belief!
4) Constantly review your new, positive belief. Just planting a new belief isn’t enough, you need to spend time (at least a month) reviewing your new belief on a daily basis to make sure it “sticks.” A good way to do this is to write your belief on an index card and read it aloud twice a day; in the morning when you get up and in the evening before you go to bed!
January 5th, 2006
Anthony Robbins - former king of the infomercial - has some free tools available on his web site to help you get started setting your goals for the new year. You can visit his web site for more details.
He is offering a free workbook in PDF format, “7 Steps to a Fulfilling 2006″
The seven steps he outlines are:
- Get Clear.
- Get Certain.
- Get Excited.
- Get Focused.
- Get Committed.
- Get Momentum.
- Get Smart.
Also available is an audio program (MP3) called “The Power of Clarity” with a PDF workbook that accompanies the audio program.
If you’re new to Tony’s approach his material is based on the principal of neuro linguistic programming (NLP for short). NLP is the study of how people interact with the world (visually, aurally through sound and hearing, or through touch and feel). Tony’s approach to improvement employs NLP to tie all three together to get you to not only visualize your desired outcome, but also hear and feel it as well.
If you pick up any of Tony’s books or have a chance to listen to his audio program you’ll see more how NLP works.
For today go grab the materials on his web site and start getting your goals together for 2006!
Have a prosperous 2006!
January 3rd, 2006
There is a fancy sounding term I like; reticular activator. You have one, I have one, everyone has one. It’s a little part of your brain that focuses in on the things you tell your mind to pay attention to. It’s your mind’s filtering mechanism. When you consciously (or subconsciously) think about things, it’s your reticular activator that filters out examples of what you’re thinking about and brings them to the front of your conscious.
If you’re thinking about buying a new car and you’re really drooling over a new VW Beetle, you’ll very likely notice them everywhere you go. If you just bought a new leather jacket you really wanted, you’ll very likely notice everyone else seems to be wearing leather jackets too.
If you’re sitting at home reading in your living room, you’re probably aware that your kids are playing with the dog, that you wife is in the kitchen and that the TV is on in the den, but you’re not really focusing on any of these inputs - they’re filtered out. Though if your daughter falls and starts crying you’ll be instantly aware of it.
This is your reticular activator at work. It can not only help filter in, but it can filter out as well. If you understand how it works, you can use literally use what you think about to shape yourself.
Years ago there was a sign hanging in the computer lab of my high school; it read “Garbage In, Garbage Out” and was there as a reminder that a computer was only as good or as “smart” as the person putting data into it.
We don’t think about it much, but our brain is really just an incredibly powerful computer running software we call our mind. If we ask the right questions we’ll rarely fail to get a good answer from our mind. If we input bad data, our mind will process it and produce bad results. We too can be the victims of “garbage in, garbage out.”
And this garbage will literally drag your personal performance into the trash (no pun intended).
How? When you put in bad data you mind starts to setup limiting beliefs. When someone tells you, “You can’t start your own business, you’re too young.” or you hear, “You can’t get a promotion, you don’t have a degree.” you’re getting garbage as an input. If you don’t use your reticular activator to focus on other, positive inputs your mind will happily work on processing the garbage.
Then it spits out a result - a limiting belief - and suddenly you believe you really can’t start a business because you’re too young!
So how do you use your reticular activator to focus on good inputs to your mind and eliminate bad inputs?
The first step is to start “feeding” your mind with positive material; information that will help you develop new skills or reinforce skills you already have. For me, the easiest way to “eat” this positive material is through books. Audio programs are a good way to bring positive and useful material into your routine. I usually alternate between talk radio (I’m an NPR junkie) and audio books when I’m in the car.
The second step is to be aware that people will feed you “garbage” without meaning to. You need to be aware that this negativity exists out there and be ready to stop listening to it when you notice it. Again, use your reticular activator to tune out negative inputs.
The third step is to create positive inputs and suggestions that you constantly review. There are a lot of books out there that will tell you to write your desires over and over or to use positive talk to achieve your goals. I don’t believe that either of these processes alone will cause you to succeed, but when used in conjunction with good (written) goal setting and the regular input of positive material these positive suggestions can help you enhance what your achievements already are telling you.
Using these tools, and being aware that your mind will readily work on any input you let your reticular activator focus on, you can “think” yourself into becoming what you have outlined in your goals and focused your mind towards.
January 3rd, 2006
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