A few days ago my friend Joe Brodnicki sent me an article on the dangers of soda consumption. It was quite shocking…this stuff is evil! http://tinyurl.com/6xlmb97

If it’s as bad for me as the report says it is then not only am I basically drinking fat when I drink high fructose drinks but the caramel colour is actually carcinogenic (it can cause cancer). Add the Aspartamine (brain tumors and birth defects), Phosphopric Acid (softening of teeth and bones) and Sulfites (potential death) then why the hell would anyone tip even an ounce of that poison into their bodies?

However, I would be a total hypocrite if I said the thought of a ice-cool cola with a fresh-baked hot greasy meat pizza didn’t set my mouth watering. And there-in lays the problem. I (and maybe we) have confused pleasure with goodness.

Our bodies are designed to produce endorphins when we are engaged in pleasurable activities but because our brain has no built-in quality control mechanism (at least our stomachs vomit out poison) we have few ways of telling whether they are good for us.

Taking certain drugs is certainly pleasurable at the time but if they’re so good for us why are there rehab clinics? Hmm?

When we engage in ‘pleasurable’ activities our minds focus in and then – and invite us to do more of them. They become what are known as ‘attractors’ and they do just that – attract our attention more and more.

Then as time goes by we develop habits and suddenly the things we do become familiar and comfortable which we also tend to equate with good. In his book Mastery: The Keys to Success and Long Term Fulfillment George Burr Leonard calls this process ‘homeostasis’ and says that it is basically the enemy of progress because our bodies want to maintain the status quo.

Avy Joseph (Cognitive Behavioural Therapy) agrees and his approach to change is basically to keep cheering for the new belief until it becomes ‘magnetic’ enough to take over and become the new homeostatic attractor ie. The more compelling of the two beliefs.

There was an interesting experiment I read about. A researcher put a cat into a room and rang a bell. The cat’s ears flicked the first few times but when it realized there was no danger from the bell it started to ignore it. This is called attenuation.

I, you might say, had attenuated myself to cola, pizza and a few other things (although I am officially about two months without chocolate now and not missing it!)

To some extent it’s not hard to understand why we find ourselves in this situation.

We live in a “if it feels good do it” message society and we see the destructive signs of that all around us. Please don’t think I’m claiming to be better than anyone else – I can just see the signs like anyone else who looks.

Obesity is rife in the States (I think Texas was the ‘fattest-state’ winner according to the documentary Super Size Me) and it can only be because people are confusing tasty with good for you’ and ignoring their body’s signals in favour of something that’s finger-lickin’ good… these people are literally killing themselves with food.

Sexual diseases are on the increase almost every year in the UK (and maybe the States). Why? Because people are having unprotected sex with multiple partners or with persons who have been with multiple partners. Why? Because sex is enjoyable and is good per se … but sex without responsibility can and does lead to this, and unwanted pregnancies and even worse, abortions. Ask a crack-baby how good it feels?

Reading, for many kids, is no longer the thrilling pleasure it used to be. Okay, I used to be hidden under the covers with a Stephen King book, hardly healthy, but I did also enjoy the classics like Robin Hood and Paradise Lost (Treasure Island was boring, sorry!) and I know how to learn from books.

I spoke to a friend’s child recently who seemed quite unconcerned that he never read but spent most of his free time playing PS3 (and I do like games!). A friend my age said he just didn’t enjoy reading so didn’t do it – he plays games instead …seeing a pattern?

I do understand – flashing lights and explosions are, physiologically, a greater and more immediate  ‘hit’ than diving into words but what happened to ‘winners are readers’? These people could seriously curtail their chances of success if they don’t know how to profit from reading.

Perhaps they never got the chance or the encouragement to learn how to enjoy books. And then, because reading feels ‘strange’, ‘boring’, ‘bad’ etc they stayed away from it. I am not saying video games are bad in and of themselves (although I do think games where you stomp on people’s heads can’t be healthy for growing minds) too much of a good thing can be a bad thing, right?

And this brings me to my next point.

To resist certain pleasures because you know they are not good for you is a mark of deep maturity in my books. Read that again, memorise it and mutter it to yourself at 3pm in the afternoon (the time you are most likely to eat ‘bad’ things)!

To do ‘good’ (read healthy and moral) things in the face of conflicting emotions is also a sign of maturity.

This raises three questions:

• How do you know what’s good for you?

• How do you de-pleasure your ‘bad’ pleasures?

• How do you re-pleasure the un-pleasurable things?

1. How do you know what’s good for you?

I realize in this Postmodern and multicultural society we may have wildly different ideas about what is ‘good’. But here are some reasonably sensible guidelines:

Sources of wisdom and knowledge

Timeless books like the Bible are sources of wisdom and good principles for living. Steven K Scott claims in The Richest Man who Ever Lived that he got rich living the Proverbs on a daily basis. Man hasn’t really changed so books that have remained around for thousands of years often have something profound and useful to say about our natures.

Parents and elders

Someone once said:  “Maturity is doing what is good for you – even though your parents said so.”

Your parents have lived longer than you. Fact. They have probably made more mistakes than you. Possible fact. They almost certainly have learned some of what NOT to do. Fact. If you have a talking relationship with them, ask their advice and why they are giving it. Elders are far more revered in other cultures. Yes, you may have to try and sort out the good from the bad advice but you’ll get perspectives based on time and experience.

Modelling projects

In the field of NLP some people have engaged in modelling projects which are essentially psychological and physiological breakdowns of how someone achieved a result.

So, in Inside-Out Wealth, Michael Hall modelled how numerous people got rich, and used that strategy to amass over a million dollars himself. (If you are interested in an interview I did with him, let me know and I’ll inform you when I release it.)

You can also model the results of people who get healthy fast. You can tell by looking at them (clue) and just ask them what they did.

Now we are perhaps straying outside of the region of ‘good’ because you can read The Prince by Machiavelli and learn how to hold onto power at all costs (not good) but as long as you are sensible you can find out how to do good things as well.

Biographies are also less formalised ways of finding out how successful people think. I am reading about Roosevelt and Churchill at the moment.

A rather important point is this: you have to learn to go against your ‘feelings’ and think about the principles you want to live by, and the results you are currently getting – you can find more information about this in the Articles section of my site at www.livingwords.net/articles

This may involve a complete redefinition of what emotions are for (clue: it’s not infallible guidance – L) and my audio product: Change your Concepts: Change Your Life is an excellent resource for redefining what things mean to you. http://www.livingwords.net/change-your-concepts-change-your-life-mp3-course

2. How do you de-pleasure the bad pleasures?

At the heart of all pleasures is meaning. That’s right – the meanings you give to a feeling can increase the pleasure AND the meanings can give pleasure in and of themselves…

You may have heard the term ‘sex is power’ – so for all those people in power out there who have got caught out in their extramarital dalliances – just so you know: it was the meanings that got you intro trouble as much as the hormones.  I believe Tiger Woods said something to the effect that he felt that the rules didn’t apply to him. What a meaning.

There is such a thing, therefore, as a ‘too meaningful’ experience.  But if we learn how to take meanings AWAY from the things we over-value then food stops becoming comfort (but chocolate will always be ‘love!) and becomes what it is, nutrition and fuel, sex stops being power, and he who dies with the most toys just…dies…rather than wins…!

There are a number of ways of demeaning something (geddit?):

The classic NLP patterns such as the Compulsion Blowout, the Swish Pattern can work – or you can use a Neurosemantics Pattern developed by L. Michael Hall called The DePleasuring Pattern. It’s unfortunately not available online but if you buy The Secrets of Personal Mastery book (http://tinyurl.com/6f5aa2c) it’s in there. I recommend this one because if the classic patterns don’t deal with the higher frames of meaning in the mind, you could just get reconnected to the pleasure or substitute it for something else. Before I knew this I once worked to help someone give up smoking and they started eating more chocolate. You can also find the Over-Valuing Pattern in the NLP Users Toolkit on Amazon Kindle for PC.

3. How do we re-pleasure the things that are ‘good’ for us?

You can use the Godiva Chocolate Pattern developed by Richard Bandler – just Google it and use it or use Michael Hall’s Pleasure Pattern (the opposite of the first one).

A simple method though is to deliberately look for evidence and reasons why you want the good thing. Inititally, you may feel like you’re ‘going against the grain’ and looking for something that isn’t there but that’s just your mind trying to hide contrary thinking from you (it does that!)

If you look for evidence you’re likely to find it! As the saying goes – what we focus on grows and ‘energy flows where attention goes’.

You can also spend some time doing the thing that is good for you – heck, you might find you enjoy running, reading wisdom literature, or dare I say it…eating vegetables…

To your highest and best.

Update: Please click on this link for more information about The new Mind Alchemy course. All the links to the downloads have now been removed. I would like to thank all 800+ readers who expressed an interest in this course and for everyone who completed the course the first time round, it is becasue of you I could make the course better.

Before we start

A few readers are now blogging about their experiences on the course, and it would be great to lend your support:

Stacy Claflin – Grow With Stacy

Marty BoneIdol – Living Life in Chapters

Derek Breuning – Tech Life

Stephen – New Life Starts Here

Read the interview I have done with Angela Artemis from Powered by Intuition

Watch an interview I made with Suzie Cheel on Mind Alchemy

Mind Alchemy Day 15

Today we are going to be looking at the questions we ask ourselves day in and day out.

I had originally planned to put this topic into the course, but then took it out in favour of ‘Affirmations’.  However as I was reading over the course again I realised that the topic of ‘The Questions we ask ourselves’ is a much more powerful exercise and, is much more effective in changing our thoughts.

Personal development means absolutely nothing unless we are ready to change. We can read a hundred books, attend a hundred seminars, read a million blogs but it still won’t change us unless we are ready to change. A lot of us are looking for answers but we still haven’t formulated a question. Questions are key to solving anything whether it be a mathemtical problem or your own life.

James Dyson asked the question; How could I get rid of the bag in the hoover (vacuum) without losing suction?

Richard Branson asked the question: How can I compete with the big airlines?

Robert Scoble asked the question: How can I change Microsoft’s public image?

Darren Rowse asked the question: How can I make money blogging

Once you’ve formulated your question how do you know it’s the  right question?

The answer to that is: when it moves you toward a positive outcome for the good of yourself and harms no other.

I have a friend who has been been trying to get out of his current job for 2 years. The benefits and salary are the key things that hold him there. I have asked him several times ‘If you left your job just now, what would you want to do?’, to this day he still doesn’t know what he wants to do. He knows if he seriously asks himself this question it will be a step closer to making a decision and leaving the company. So if he doesn’t ask the question he can go on with his life and complain about his job.

It takes balls to ask the right question

There are many people in the situation I described above and many people who  have still not asked the right questions and deep down don’t want to. Questions drive us forward, right questions change our lives.

Think about this scenario and the questions we could ask:

You’re overweight and you want to lose a few pounds. You’ve lost a few pounds and are quite pleased with yourself and your progress. You are looking in the cupboards one day and see that packet of biscuits that the kids have not seen (rarely ever happens, but it could). What questions do you ask?

Will one biscuit really do any harm? It’s only got 100 calories, surely that’s not going to harm me? I’ve done so well I should have some reward? Are these the right questions to ask.

Any overweight person knows, deep down, they are not. The right questions to ask in this situation could be:

If I have this biscuit will it disrupt my program? Will this one biscuit throw out all the good work I’ve done? Will this one biscuit lead to another one? I’ve done so well, it’s crazy to stop now isn’t it?

Asking the right questions takes guts.

Changing your questions

If you are stuck in a situation and you have been asking yourself questions which are not driving you forward in some way, try asking a different set of questions.

Todays exercise

Download a copy of todays exercise here

Download an example copy here

How to change your questions to change your life

Break your outcomes down

If you have big outcomes, break them down. For example if want to lose 30 pounds, start asking how you could lose 2 pounds. Do this 15 times and you have reached your outcome. Sound too simple, that’s because it is, it’s our thinking that makes it hard.

Think of 5 questions for each problem

We can’t solve problems with the same questions we asked when the problem was first created.

We often ask ourselves the same question over and over again. Ask 5 different questions to a problem you might be stuck with and start answering them all.

Ask questions all the time

Ask yourself questions in every area of your life. How can I make my kids happier? How can I free up more time for myself? How can I work smarter? How could this process be improved? How can I become more organised?

When you ask questions in all areas of your life, you will gradually learn to ask good questions and filter out the bad questions. Practice is the key to changing your life and asking questions is a great skill to have.

What do you want to change in your life today?

Ask yourself this question often as we often get stuck in our life and stop
thinking about what would make it better.

Tomorrow

Tomorrow we will looking at organizing your life to organize your mind.  Until tomorrow my fellow Mind Alchemists……..

Action follows a thought…

This course is about taking action, and to become pro active in changing your life.  Take time to do this exercise and really think about it throughout the day.  You don’t need to wait until tomorrow to take steps to improve your ‘Wheel of Life’, but with the support and encouragement from all the members we can help each other and support each other, but ultimately ‘you have to bring something to the table!’

Your thoughts

As always it’s good to talk about your experiences and share it with the rest of the members of the course, so let us know how this exercise went for you and if you gained any insights or had any revelations about yourself or your life.

You can share your thoughts at Mind Alchemy Facebook Group

You can Tweet using the hashtag #MindAlchemy

Or of course you can leave a comment below

It’s started!

Your future has just begun, the moment you read this sentence.  With each passing word you read, your future possibilities changed.

Doesn’t that blow your mind? The fact that because you stayed to read just a millisecond longer that your future changed it’s path.

Right now, this very second, your future is getting prepared, eagerly awaiting your arrival, waiting for you to come and claim it, waiting for you to welcome it with open arms and shout ‘It’s me, I’ve arrived’ – What frame of mind will you arrive in?

Are you going to journey to your future complaining about the rest of the world?

Are you going to reach your future with a heavy heart and slowly drag yourself through the rest of it?

OR

Are you going to run and scream into your future, singing, whooping, thanking the world that you made it to your future, excited, ecstatic by the possibilities that this new place brings, your mind races with the possibilities, the endless possibilities – a new love, a new friendship, a new book, a business, rekindled love, your family join in the celebrations with you as they can see your future is a bright one, one that is infected with the possibilities of a new way of doing things, a new way of thinking, and an old way of happiness, forever following you.

Failure, depression, lost dreams, forgotten love, hatred, and anger all go with you to your future but each time diminished by the thoughts of a new future.

Your future asks you to let go of your inhibitions, stop trying to please others, dump falseness, drop the protocol, open up the person inside, the person that wants to say ‘Fuck it’, this is me, this is who I really am – I want to be genuine, I need to be passionate, I have finally met my authenticity.

Your future awaits you!

All it asks of you is:

Honesty!

If you want to read that article, click here:

But if you want a secret to the implementation and usage of the personal development material you are using – here it is: you need to personalise the change you want to make for yourself. A little later I’m going to show you a very powerful method of doing so.

I want to briefly define ‘implementation’. Implementation is where you make the things you were planning actually happen. It’s where the rubber hits the road. It’s where you start pedalling and the chain gets engaged and you go somewhere. Only for some of us, we pedal and the bike doesn’t move because the chain’s come off….

Why might this be? Let’s go back to childhood for a minute. (We won’t stop long!)

Have you ever seen any normal child suffering from lack of motivation to explore and implement? There is a reason we move objects off the low shelves, cover plug holes and use rubber door stoppers!

What I’m trying to say is that we naturally want to learn by doing and by doing so we naturally learn. We play, and we learn. To alter a phrase by the great inventor Thomas Edison (who made the light-bulb and telegraph) we are not squeamish about exploring because we realise that all of life is a great experiment.

Have you ever seen a two year old not wanting to try something new out? So what happens? Well, it varies but for many people their natural curiosity gets blunted by adult indignation: “Don’t touch that!” “No”.

I’m not saying it’s all our parents’ fault (although I did go through that phase) but that older people around us, (mostly because of their own problems and lack of nurturing) tell us things we believe because we don’t know any better. And those things are usually limiting and toxic.

If the ability to implement could be thought of as a conduit from mind-to-muscle then for many of us it is clogged up worse than the kitchen sink. If you keep tipping ‘yuk’ down a sink eventually the water won’t go anywhere. If you keep stifling the desire to take action that comes from great thoughts, neither will you…!

What does it really mean to ‘know’ something?

Secondly, here in the West we seem to have a strange delusion about what it means to ‘know’ something.

In the Ancient Far East the Aramaic speaking peoples’ word for ‘word’ meant a simultaneous combination of thinking and doing. This is well expressed by a statement of Jesus who said to the people around him: “If you are truly my disciples (learners and followers) then you will obey my teachings. Then you will know the truth and the truth will set you free.” (John 8:31-32)

Pick that apart a bit. Essentially Jesus said: When you take the actions and think the way I command you to do, that doing will reveal the Truth to you. And then the Truth that you now know (because you experienced it) will set you free. No doing, no experiencing – no real knowledge – and no Truth or freedom.

Some of us Westerners, when asked about a subject we are familiar with, say, “I know that” – and we mean, “I’ve memorised a fact about it”. But I suspect, if you have been into personal development for a while, that you know a few people who can tell you far more about the subject than they can demonstrate has actually turned up in their lives.

You might be one of those people. I certainly was, and have a lot of catching up to do from 15 years of reading… but I now have some decent implementation methods now, methods that get from mind-into-muscle and start producing real behavioural changes.

Making the change ‘personal’

Personalisation is one of those methods. Here, we are using a particular method called ‘identification’. This is something we do all the time when we say:

“I am a man/woman/coach/lawyer etc.”

These identifications – ‘I’ = some concept, are usually not harmful unless our conceptualisation of these roles are destructive. For me, I am a man, a husband, a father, a Christian, a coach and trainer and a lot of other things.

Identification is one of the most powerful change-creating frames of mind. Who we ARE affects our perception of our entire being and how we act. Michael says “…identifying sends commands to your neurology to consider the two “the same” and “real”. (p124)

Basically, we are more likely to act in a way consistent with who we think we ‘are’.

This, of course, has a negative side as well…

When we say ‘I am’ a failure, worthless, stupid etc. then we identify our one level of our selves (the ‘I’) as being absolutely equivalent with the concept. And the effect can be to frame out any positive ideas about ourselves completely. We need to be careful what we identify ourselves with!

So if we want to create radical shifts we can deliberately identify ourselves with an idea and it will often pervasively affect our thinking and behaviour. The trick is to do it on purpose.

As L. Michael Hall notes in his book Achieving Peak Performance “once you set this [identity frame], violation will generate one of the greatest pains we humans experience – the pain of being untrue to ourselves. It leads to feeling incongruent…inauthentic…hypocritical… wrong etc…”

Up front I will say I trust you will identify with an idea that is healthy for you and those in your life. That’s the ecology check done…!

The Personalisation Pattern

This pattern is adapted from one in Achieving Peak Performance.

The Pattern:

Choose a frame (idea, belief, state, emotion, value etc) that you want to identify with. This will be ‘x’.

1)     If you were to choose something you would consciously like to identify/equate yourself with, what would it be?

Example: I am a business man

2)     As you imagine what it would be like for you to be x  does it fit in all areas of your life? Does this personalising have the kind of quality that you want? What happens when you personalise it by saying “This is about me?”

Example: well, I want to make sure I am an ethical business man so I need to adjust this description a bit – “I am an ethical businessman.” When I say “this is about me” then it seems ok but I’ll need to work it into my identity as its not yet.”

3)     Imagine something that you truly own, something that you would not let anyone take away from you (body parts are good for this) and when you fully feel the state of ‘mine’, think about this x, and claim it by affirming loudly ‘mine’, ‘mine’, ‘mine’ until you feel the sense of ownership settle into your body.

Example: I own my heart. No-one can take this from me. It’s MINE!

4)     Identify yourself with the frame by recalling a time that you had the experience of being so connected with something it seemed like part of you. It could have been a toy, a pet, a boy or girlfriend, a town or city. As you think about this thing, NOW think about the x you desire as part of your identity. I have found completing the description “I am someone who…”

Example: I am someone who thinks in terms of systems, profits, adding value and so on.

Imagine how you would look, feel, speak and act. Make it bright, colourful, vivid and dramatic. ‘Try it on’. Enjoy the ‘me’ with this frame of mind.

5)     Now notice what it’s like as you imagine moving into the days and weeks to come with this self-definition…do you like this? Is it ecological for all your relationships?”

Example: Yes, as long as I confine doing this to the areas of my life where I do business, it’ll be fine.

There are numerous implementation techniques around. The NLP swish pattern can act as one as well but I advise you to use this technique wisely. If you have any concerns, get a professional (like me!) to work with you.

One other way to kick start the process of implementation is to do what William James, the father of psychology said: “Never leave the scene of a decision without taking some action, however small.”

Translating what we ‘know’ into what we ‘do’ is important as it underscores our entire personal growth. I urge you to study this important subject as a fundamental life-skill. Mastering implementation can enable you to become an exemplar and a leader in your field – and you can.

God bless

Doug Cartwright

]]> http://www.stevenaitchison.co.uk/blog/want-real-change-this-time-it%e2%80%99s-personal/feed/ 19 http://www.stevenaitchison.co.uk/blog/this-skill-will-provide-infinite-returns/ http://www.stevenaitchison.co.uk/blog/this-skill-will-provide-infinite-returns/#comments Tue, 18 May 2010 17:08:54 +0000 Stephen Borgman http://www.stevenaitchison.co.uk/blog/?p=2503

“Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower.”  Steve Jobs

Dr. Silver Spencer, a scientist at 3M, was singing in his church choir.  He noticed that his bookmark would often fall out, causing him to lose his place.  Ever attentive to new ideas, he went to work on this problem, and came up with a concept called Sticky Notes.  The rest is history!

How much do you think that idea was worth?  How much do you think 3M has been reimbursed for that idea?  How much success do you think it brought to Dr. Spencer and to his career?

Seth Godin, in his prolific writings, challenges all of us to become thought leaders.  It’s not enough to mass market yourself; it’s not enough to parrot what everyone else is doing.  People around us, employers around us, and customers around us are all hungry for people who will stand up and generate new and fresh content.

“Innovation is the central issue in economic prosperity.”  Michael Porter

Would you like to achieve career prosperity and security?  Develop your skill of being an innovative thinker, and you will be well on your way to achieving your goal.

Here are some key success factors to becoming an innovative thinker, employee, and/or business owner:

Change Your Mind!

This has been my number one stumbling block.  “I’m not creative.  I’m not original.  I can’t think of anything fresh.  There’s nothing new under the sun.”  These are the automatic thoughts that come to mind when I see the terms “thought leader” and “innovator.”  It’s ok to have those thoughts, but then ask yourself, “Are these thoughts taking me to where I want to be?  Are they producing the results I want in my life?”  I don’t think so!

Get used to gently or forcefully challenging those negative thoughts and beliefs with new ones: “I’m creative!  I have a beginner’s mind!  I am open to new ideas, and they come easily to me.”

As Henry Ford, inventor of the automobile, stated, “Believe you can.  Believe you can’t. Either way you’re right.”  In other words, are you going to choose to listen to your automatic thoughts, or are you going to cultivate new ones?

Cultivate Curiosity!

Here are some practical ideas for becoming curious in your business or industry:

Listen to your customers!

Listen to the happy ones, who are telling you what you are doing right!  Listen to the unhappy ones, who are telling you what you are doing wrong!  Listen to the creative ones, who are telling you what you should be doing!  You can do this by using polls (SurveyMonkey is a great resource for generating surveys you can send to your customers: there is a free/basic option, and a low cost option) on your blog, or on your main website.

Expose yourself to different industries, books, opportunities. How often do you attend conventions within your industry, so that you can ‘rub shoulders’ with your competitors.  How often do you read books that are totally outside the sphere of your normal industry/niche?  Do you read fiction sometimes, if your preference is non-fiction, and vice-versa?  The idea here is to mix it up: see if there are patterns from these different sources that you can incorporate into your own business or niche.

Keep a Journal

A great resource I would recommend is called the Artist’s Way, by Julia Cameron.  Ms. Cameron is an award-winning poet, playwright, and filmmaker, and was a professor at Northwestern University in Evanston, IL, for a number of years.  She believes that writing your thoughts out by hand have a way of building creativity.

If you prefer typing, I enjoy utilizing Evernote to store all kinds of information.

Keep a creativity box in which you can put an assortment of objects, article clippings, etc. that will help you develop your innovative side.

Escape!

When was the last time you took a day off from your normal routine?  Get relaxed, go on a walk, sit alone in a room, play with your dog (or cat).  Create some rituals to get into a ‘creative zone’, whether that is sipping a cup of warm tea, taking a relaxing bath, or practicing yoga.  Some of my best creative energy comes when I am going on a long run.

Learn from Benjamin Franklin!

This founding father of the United States of America did two things that largely contributed to his creative state of mind.  Mr. Franklin started the public library system and the postal system in the United States.  He read books, he read books, and he read more books! For a period in his life, he did not participate in any ‘fun’ activities other than studying his books for at least one hour per day.  In time, he felt a need to get together with other businessmen to discuss ideas, and out of this came many business ideas, public service activities, and other discoveries.  In essence, he formed a mastermind group of creative and studious types who, together, were much more creative than any one person alone. 

This patchwork of ideas is just a beginning.  I hope that you will put on your creative thinking cap and start developing your innovation muscles.  Because when you do, the world will benefit from your thinking!

Reality

Your reality is totally different from my reality, and my reality is totally different from 6 billion other peoples reality – Why is that?

Without going too much into the neuro-biology of how external information from our five senses are processed, sufficed to say that the electrical signals are passed to various areas of the brain to give us feedback on how we should interpret the world around us.

So, we can therefore break it down like this

• Reality is the world in which we live
• The world in which we live is interpreted by our five senses
• Our five senses are essentially the same as every other human being in the world
• If all humans have the same five senses (some have lost some of their senses, but we mostly have the same 5 senses) then it stands to reason that there is another factor, which differentiates us,  between the processing of our five senses and the feedback of that processing.

That factor is:

Past experience

Past experience

Our past experience, beliefs, emotions, and thoughts are what makes every one of our realities totally different from one another.  So our perception of the world, or our reality, is shaped by our past experiences.

Since the past is the past, and we can’t go back and change it ,is it possible to change our reality and our perception of the world?

I think there is a way with a 3 step process called Redesigning Your Reality.

Redesgning Your Reality

Step 1 – Grouping

Using the example that you often feel intimated by certain people whilst in their company.  I’d like you to, on a piece of paper write down all the names of the people you have felt or feel intimated by.  Try and get a list of ten people if you can.  Now write down roughly when and what your situation was when you felt intimidated and why you feel intimidated.

So for example:

Name: Ann Hartley (just a name that sprung to mind)

Situation: At work

Date: Every day

Why: She is much more intelligent than me and makes me feel stupid

Step 2 – Re-Label

Now what I’d like you to do is to put a label on how you would like to feel around these people – e.g. You might want to label yourself as ‘Intelligent’ when you are around these people.

Re-Interpreting

Now imagine you are in a movie theatre and it’s just you sitting in the middle. Now for each person you have on your list go back to the past in the movie theatre of your mind, and talk to the people involved and imagine yourself having intelligent conversation, it doesn’t matter what you say it’s all very intelligent and the people are really interested in what you have to say because you are really intelligent. Make the movie extremely vivid with colours, sound, smells, use all five senses here.

Do this with every person on your list and do it as often as you can, possibly daily for the next few weeks until you start seeing the difference it makes in your life.

Now whenever you have a thought or a picture in your mind of feeling intimidated, shrink that image, to its smallest size, make it black and white and make it disappear from the movie screen in your mind and replace it with the movie of you feeling confident, having intelligent conversation with the person and make it as vivid and use all the five senses.

I think this concept is a powerful one as it gives us the ability to change our interpretations of past events in our lives and assign new ways of thinking.  Since we are re-labelling the past, the brain will assume that our re-labelling of the past is our actual past, so our past experience has been given a new look, so to speak.

I think this exercise has the potential to change a lot of aspects of our lives which we feel we want to rid ourselves of such as old beliefs, negative thinking patterns, unwanted emotions etc.

There are many reasons we want to change in some way: to get more money in our jobs, to feel loved and start a new relationship, to feel good about ourselves and lose weight, to be part of something and join a club, to move home to accommodate our family, to start a new business to escape ‘cubicle nation’.  These are only a fraction of the aspects of our lives in which we are looking to change.

The top three reasons why people find it difficult to change

• We don’t know what we want
• We don’t know how to make the change
• Fear of the unknown

Here’s a few typical scenarios:

Scenario 1

Your friend tells you he hates his job, even though it pays great money, affords him a good lifestyle, and allows him and his family to stay in a home they love.  He speaks about all the things he hates about the job and a few of the things he likes, but mostly he dreams about getting out of this job into something else.  That’s all very well, there are millions of people in that situation.  However, when you ask the question: What do you want to do instead? his face goes a bit distorted as if he has never even considered the question and the inevitable reply is: I don’t know!

Scenario 2

Your friend knows what he wants to do with her life, she wants to go to Africa to save the Silky Sifaka Lemurs.  She knows her stuff as she has been studying endangered species all her life and her particular passion is the plight of the Lemurs.  It outrages her that these animals are being hunted to be eaten by local people, and driven from their natural habitat by loggers.  So she is very clear on what she wants, the only problem is she doesn’t know how to get it.

Scenario 3

Your other friend has secretly fantasized about starting his own business as a business consultant.  He has studied for years and dabbled with a few things and even has a few gigs at the weekend.  He really knows his stuff and he gets great testimonials from clients.  The only trouble is he has a family and his wife doesn’t earn enough for him to leave his current job and he still has a few doubts about his ability to run a business with all that entails as he doesn’t really know what it would be like.  So he knows what he wants, knows how to get it but has the fear of changing because it would be unknown territory.

Your two selves

I believe everyone has two aspects to themselves: Their ‘core self’ and their ‘ideal self.’

Core self

Your core self is the persona you live in your everyday life.  You have, roughly, the same persona at work, at home, with friends, and with your family.  There might be some slight variations as you don’t feel as comfortable being your true self at work, but essentially your morals, principles and values remain the same.

Ideal self

Your ideal self is the person you really want to be.  Bob the builder secretly dreams of being a property tycoon, postman Pat secretly dreams of running for election of his local town.

Both your core self and ideal self has lots of little circles around it, called aspects,  which represent the aspects of your core self e.g. your job, your relationships, your spirituality etc.

Changing from your core self to your ideal self.

When we talk about changing we don’t need to change our essential core self we are only looking to change an aspect of our core self so we then have to bridge the gap between our core self and our ideal self.  So it’s within the bridging gap where the answer to ‘How do I change’ lies and where are a lot of people lose their way.

The Change Code

To be able to bridge the gap between your core self and your ideal self you need the code to be able to do it.  I believe there are seven steps to the Change Code:

• Know yourself to know what you want – You’ve got to dig deep and ask yourself lots of questions about what you want out of life, we don’t ask ourselves enough good questions.
• Predicting your future - Know what you want and see yourself doing activities as your ideal self.
• Stop making square wheels - Copy what other people have done in the field you are interested in changing.
• Chunking the change - Break the change down into much smaller steps so you gain confidence with each step you take.
• Clearing the weeds from your path – Look for potential obstacles and get rid of them before crossing the bridge and making the change.
• Creating rituals – Create good habits in your life that will make the change easier.
• Talk to the three parts of your brain (Logical, emotional and spiritual) – Have you ever felt that something was ‘right’, you don’t know why but it just felt right? I think that’s because you have spoken to all three parts of your brain, the logical part, the emotional part and the spiritual part.  (This is obviously a topic to discuss in another article).

So if we were to use the Change Code on the top three reasons why people find it difficult to change:

• We don’t know what we want
• We don’t know how to make the change
• Fear of the unknown

You can see how the Change Code will help with all three.  It’s still hard to know what you want in life.

Knowing what you want

If you don’t know what you want in life then obviously you don’t want anything in particular.  That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but it does mean making the most of what you have got.  That might have come as a bit of a shock to some readers and I am sorry about that.

If you don’t have some kind of passion in life, something you are deeply interested in, something that drives you outside your daily work and it could be anything like reading books, watching nature programs, being a good parent, being the soap queen who knows everything that’s happening in the soaps, being the next big internet marketer.  If you don’t have something like this in your life, and you are unhappy because you don’t know what you want, then start looking and asking yourself lots of questions because pretty soon life will pass you by and you’ll berate yourself when you are older and the opportunity doesn’t exist any more.

This is obviously a huge topic and is at the heart of what I am currently working on with the Alter Your Jacket program, but I hope it has given you something to think about whilst thinking about the changes you want to make in your life.

We have to make a concerted effort to change parts of our life. Most of us want to change some aspect of our life, but find it difficult for one reason or another. Change means doing some work on yourself, it means growing as a person, and maybe discovering a few things about yourself you would rather not know. This is the reason a lot of people live within their comfort zones, it’s easier than having to challenge yourself and make the changes necessary to live a happier life.

Forced change Vs desired change

Forced change, however harsh, can be easier than desired change, as the change is taken out of your control, you have no choice but to change your life in some way. For example, if you lose your job you are forced to change your life in some way, if you get divorced you are forced to change. Desired change is like a dream, it seems a nice little daydream that you can think about as you drive your car to work, unless you have just begun to drive in which case you will need to concentrate on the driving as you won’t have time to daydream: experienced drivers can of course drive unconsciously. Seriously, many people view desired change as a pipe dream.

What you have to decide in your life is: Do I like the pipe dream simply because I like having something to dream about or do I really want the pipe dream in my life?

Here is where we can talk about changing any aspect of your life. It’s called the three pillars of change.

The Three Pillars of a Quantum Leap

Desire

One of the first things you have to ask yourself is: is my desire to change strong enough to make an effort?

Only you can answer this, however, here are a few questions that should help you answer that question:

* How long have you wanted to make this particular change?

* Have you done anything about it up until now?

* What are you willing to sacrifice to make the change?

* Is it going to affect others in a significant way?

* What would it be like when desired change happens?

You can’t measure desire on any kind of scale as it is purely subjective, but asking yourself the questions above will at least give you some indication of how strong your desire is. The questions will also help you look at the desired change in an objective way – but you have to be 100% honest with the answers.

Belief

Belief is a strange creature, without belief we would not be the person we are today. Our whole life has been shaped by our beliefs from a very young age. The subject of belief is my passion and it amazes me how many people don’t question their beliefs about their life, from religion to why they listen to a certain radio station. A lot of our beliefs have been instilled in us from an early age and we saunter along quite happily not questioning them, until the day comes when we are forced to question them.

Beliefs are a powerful force, this is why Hitler was able to get into power as he installed his own beliefs into millions of Germans, it’s how big brands like BMW can ask, and get, us to pay $100,000 for a car, it’s how some of us are extremely confident and some of us have very low self esteem. We have all been led to believe certain things as we have grown up and some of the beliefs are outdated.

If you want to change an aspect of your life you have to really believe you can do it. Once you know you have the desire and you want to go for it, you have to install the belief pattern to make the change.

Installing a belief

This might sound a little crazy: how on earth can we install a belief? well, if you think about it all the beliefs you have at this very moment have been installed in some way. There are two steps to install a belief: rote learning and evidence.

Rote learning is basically when you tell yourself over and over again that something is true. However, this is not enough to install a belief, if it were, I would be able to fly without the help of British Airways. The other part of installing a belief is evidence: you have to find evidence to make the new belief believable.

For example, for years I used to believe I wasn’t intelligent, my report cards said so, my teachers said so, my friends said I was a bit slow, I was no good at English, Maths or any other subject. I had lots of evidence to prove that I wasn’t intelligent and I looked for more and more ways to confirm it. It didn’t occur to me to look for evidence that I was intelligent. That didn’t come until I was about 17, when I questioned my beliefs. I then found evidence to support my new belief: I was good at history, I loved reading, I loved writing, I loved having conversations about how the mind worked, people were telling me that I was good at using computers, etc etc.

So installing a new belief really is simple, all you have to do is repeat the belief to yourself over and over and then go out and find evidence to support the belief. Think that’s oversimplifying it? try it for yourself.

Passion

Once you have the desire and you have installed the belief, the passion will come a lot easier. When you have the passion you will have the drive to keep going, you love what you are doing, and it doesn’t seem like hard work even though you may be putting in eighty hours a week to make your desire happen.

Passion can’t be learned, but it can be harnessed. The simple fact that you love doing something and love learning as much as possible about it will keep your passion alive as long as you want it to be alive. There might come a time when the passion burns out and leaves you altogether but that will be a choice.

Conclusion

 

Think about something you’d love to change about yourself, look at the three tenets above and work your way through a new belief you want to install. Do it for only 1 belief at a time to start with, and then progress from there.

Are you willing to take a quantum leap?

We trust that the spirit of the New Year will guide us towards success, only to find ourselves in the same rut we were last year… and the year before that… and the year before that. It’s this never ending cycle that refuses to let us go. Or in other words, we refuse to let it go.

The culprit of ineffective change

There’s a name for this cycle. It can be commonly referred to as routine. The actions that we perform day in and day out fall under this cycle, for better or for worse. It helps us get through our daily lives, feed our families, and stay current on mortgage payments. Or it keeps us in a never-ending chain of boredom, forcing us to constantly watch TV, stay safe by living too much within our means, and not bother stick to our weight-loss program.

Why is routine so hard to break?

Simple. First, start by asking yourself how we get into routines in the first place. Most of you will answer that, well, you simply got used to it. The actions in a routine become second nature. It got comfortable. And this, my friends, is the reason.

When we get comfortable, we get lazy. Routines tell your mind and body that there’s no need to change. It is because of this that when we do something different (mostly in the form of a New Year’s resolution) we tend to drift back to our routines.

Can I have some “change”?

There’s no easy way to say this, but the only way to start changing who you are is to practice free will. You have to actively choose to change. That means back it up with perceivable action. For example, if you’re trying to lose weight, you might want to keep a diary and record how many fruits, vegetables, and junk food you’ve been eating. You’ll want to keep the fruit and veggies count high, and the junk food count fairly low. It’s a simple yet effective way to gauge your change in diet.

Change is not easy

Mind you, change is hard, especially when been in a routine for many years. But you have to find ways to make the changing process fun if you want to be successful at it. Be creative. Don’t see “being more outgoing” as a long, sweaty slog through awkward conversation. See it as a learning experience. You’re meeting new people. Get happy! There a ton of different ways to start changing yourself, but it doesn’t start with a mere vocal commitment.

It starts with YOU.

“Nobody can go back and start a new beginning, but anyone can start today and make a new ending.” – Maria Robinson

“Tension and discomfort are necessary feelings in the process of achieving your goal. In fact, if you do not experience them then the goal is not important or not what you really want.” Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, Avy Joseph (p114)

Marines train their minds to over-ride the pain impulses of their bodies. They can survive under torture, and out in harsh terrain in ways that would kill the rest of us.

People have willingly died for their beliefs – and survived because of them.

Victor Frankel got through a German concentration camp in horrific conditions because he believed there was something worth living for on the other side. He faced beatings, starvation and disease to extremes we can barely imagine.

This means that pain can be experienced to an outrageous degree but the people involved managed to live, get through it, and do what they needed to do to achieve their mission, or make it to the end of their confinement.

We in the West live in a society where life is ‘easy’ compared to most of the rest of the world. We medicate ourselves every time we feel a twinge, and dose ourselves with food, sex, drugs, and entertainment whenever we feel unhappy.

We run away from discomfort and tell ourselves we can’t stand the problems in our lives. See the examples above. As if we really know what ‘problems’ are!

As Avy Joseph says in Cognitive Behavioural Therapy:

“We all experience problems in many areas of our lives but don’t always realise that our minds and bodies respond to how we rate them. Evaluating a difficulty as unbearable is not only flawed but it also triggers images and feeling that fight against goal achievement (p31)”

I think we think we ‘shouldn’t have to experience ‘pain’ on the way to our success. Think again!

If you’ve ever watched the violent and satirical sci-fi film Starship Troopers you’ll see the drill sergeant spear a recruit’s hand with a knife and then announce (as the recruit screams) : “PAIN – is in your mind.” I think it probably felt quite real to the person with the knife through his hand!

Nevertheless, the idea is that it’s not just the feeling but what you tell yourself about it that determines whether you’ll get through it. In other words, it’s the meanings we choose to give to our ‘discomfort’.

Why we don’t stick with change

They tell themselves that they can’t stand the feelings that come with it as if the feelings shouldn’t be there. I know. I did this for years.

Here’s a revelation I had which is changing my life:

• those ‘feelings’ are completely normal. Yes, completely.
• They are as normal as hunger when you haven’t eaten, sadness when you loose something valuable to you, and breathing hard if you’ve run a lot. They are as part of you as sexual desire (although we don’t usually enjoy them as much!)
• They’re hot-wired into your mind-body system so they’re not going anywhere anytime soon.

All this time you may have been rejecting the natural tensions that come along with changing the status quo. Isn’t that kind of like hating yourself for breathing?

This is partly why Susan Jeffers said :”Feel the fear and do it Anyway” because fear seems like a stop sign but is actually just neurological-kinaesthetic information reporting to you how your perceptions are measuring the gap between what you have, and what you want.

But the experts say we are engineered for change? So why do we feel tense and uncomfortable?

Well, the simple explanation is this. Your mind is designed to reinforce what you already believe. It has too, or you could not live a life where you doubted every element of your existence. If you did, you could not function. You’d be too scared to step out of bed in the morning in case the floor ate you. Or the bed!

So when you attempt to change your mind and body resists. It sends out waves of discomfort. It ‘says’ Stop! The status quo is under threat. This, is completely natural.

And maybe you have stopped. Too often?

But now you KNOW those feelings are natural, they’re just part of the process of change where old beliefs fight for their existence, you have the first piece of what you need. I don’t deny that this is a hard piece of truth. But it is true.

If you believe that God made you, then you believe that every part of you that is made is ‘good for purpose’, even if we don’t always use/feel it so. If you believe you just evolved, then these signals are simply that – signals from a body and mind about itself and its environment. They’re not instructions, and I genuinely don’t think they’re an infallible guidance system as some personal develop writers suggest. If they are, mine must be broken…!

So if we are often going to feel uncomfortable with the process of change (and I acknowledge there are plenty of times when change is fun) then what will help us stick with it until the change is made?

• A goal we want
• Healthy beliefs
• Healthy self-talk
• Reasons to persevere

Exercise

So what is the thing you want to change? What will the outcome be when you have got it?

What difference is the change going to make in the ‘real’ world that is worth fighting for? How will I know I am different when I have made the change? What will be the improvements in my attitude and performance.

Grab a piece of paper write it down.

Now ask yourself what you currently think about making that change. Write down all the worries, fears, griped and ‘I can’t’ statements.

The next thing to do is to create a healthy belief about these feelings. It helps to write out a paragraph of what you want to believe instead.

Avy Joseph says a healthy belief = what you want + keeping it real (p98) unlike an unhealthy belief that usually demands the world ‘must’ and ‘should’ conform to its demands.

Let’s say that you were struggling to overcome your feelings. Let’s say your goal is to experience the remote control of power within you. Why a remote control? Well, if you hold it – no-one can push your buttons! You have some idea of what it will be like to see, hear and feel that.

After writing your negative thoughts, you might come up with something like this for a healthy belief:

“Labelling emotions as unbearable, too difficult, cannot override them, feel helpless in the presence of them, is definitely going to fail because of them are all ways of giving commands to your nervous system to create goal avoidance and away from motivation. (1)Removing these labels and downgrading them to ‘don’t love but can stand’, uncomfortable, I have the power to choose etc really helps me.

I can totally refuse (2) to use those labels and instead replacing them with ‘perhaps difficult but not unbearable’ or ‘in a different category to the comfortable emotions’ or even ‘all emotions are useful’ and ‘usefully produce discomfort in their message’ or ‘discomfortable messengers to prod me to alertness or to pay attention to something in my experience’. “

What I have done here is given new meanings to the feelings I had (1) and used statements where I acknowledge my ownership and control of the meanings I use (2)

Next, you will need to make a list of what you’ll get if you use the healthy belief as a reminder to push through the uncomfortable feelings – until they change.

Write out as many benefits as possible.

I’ll be more in control.

I’ll feel more empowered

I’ll be able to go on that date, ask that owner for referrals etc.

I’ll have more peace.

Etc

Now, you are armed and ready to go. You can repeat and affirm to yourself your new belief in the mirror. Claude Hopkins in the Magic of Believing recommends this.  When you feel like you need reasons to go on, read your reasons to go on!

When you’re self talk criticises you, take it down pro-wrestling style! Albert Ellis in his wonderful book: How to Stubbornly Refuse to make yourself Miserable about anything ever again – yes anything!” says you really need to passionately and aggressively dispute your inner talk.

“Really?

According to WHO?

You and whose army?

Oh! So I have to feel helpless. Who decided that? Me. Well, I can decide OTHERWISE can’t I?”

Think about a couple having a humdinger of an argument. Then have it with your self-talk.

I like to think of changing the things that make us stuck as ‘psychological knots’. To undo a really gnarly knot my involve a lot of huffing, puffing, walking away in disgust and coming back again with a renewed determination. Changing your meanings and beliefs can sometimes be like this.

But persevere and you’ll get there.