When Someone Else Believes in You (WT514)

When Someone Else Believes in You (WT514)

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WT514 When Someone Else Believes in You

At times, we don’t always believe in ourselves and this can hold us back from achieving our full potential. 

I remember years ago, when Ross’ supervisor was promoted, he wanted to nominate Ross to take over his position. At first Ross was hesitant.

“No thanks. I just want to do my work. I don’t want to supervise anyone. I’m not management material,” he protested.

With a little encouragement from me, he reluctantly took the role. 

When he began, he had few leadership skills and zero experience. He joined one of my Leading Yourself and Leading Others experiences and immediately started applying what he learned and within a short time, became an exceptionally good leader.

The guys he supervised complimented him and remarked how much they appreciated his loyalty to them. 

A few years later, it was Ross’ turn to nominate someone to take over his position. Sadly, his choice didn’t believe in himself and wouldn’t borrow Ross’ belief, so he turned down the opportunity. Six month’s later, at a work reunion, he shared how much he regretted that decision.

In the past few weeks, I’ve witnessed a similar scenario where upper management have offered the opportunity to participate in our Leadership experience to some of their middle managers who disappointingly declined the opportunity.

Upper management believed in their people and were happy to invest in them. They were shocked when one employee attempted to negotiate for the training investment to be spent on technical training which would have benefitted the employee, not necessarily the company or the team they lead. 

If you find a similar thing happening in your workplace, ask yourself whether you need to give your people the benefit of the doubt and teach them the rules of the game or encourage them or find out whether they fit the category of those who really do not wish to be managers.

It’s been an interesting couple of weeks.

When you have someone who believes in you, say ‘Thank You’ and accept the opportunity. 

In the meantime, know that I believe in you.

If It Doesn’t Feel Good… (WT513)

If It Doesn’t Feel Good… (WT513)

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WT513 If It Doesn’t Feel Good

Firstly, a big shout out to John Lizzio for correcting my reference to Steven Covey’s story about sharpening the saw in last week’s thought. “In Covey’s story of the two lumberjacks, one worked through. The other sharpened his saw for 10 minutes each hour. And cut more.” Thank you, John.  

This week I’d like to look at your feelings. Your feelings or our emotional guidance system can signal to us that our thinking is off.

Here’s an example. I recently provided some online training for clients. At the end of the training, I collapsed back in my seat and started to criticize myself.

“Oh, that was hopeless.”

“There was no connection.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“No-one is interested in learning this stuff.”

“They were only there because they had to be.”

On and on and on went my inner critic. As I listened to myself, I felt worse and worse. I was disappointed with myself, frustrated with myself and feeling hopeless.

I was in the primal state. The state of fight or flight where I’m not able to come up with creative solutions.

I did my best to move myself out of this state into the creative, joyful powerful state, but it didn’t work. My critic was having a field day. I decided to go for a walk to clear my head.

When I got back to the office, I was so surprised to see some text messages and emails showing me the graphic summary that one of the team members had created after the training. 

“Wow! They had gotten something out of the training. Wow! They did understand the message. Wow! They enjoyed it and were grateful.”

What a classic case study for what we teach. According to David Bayer, if it doesn’t feel good, it’s not true. This was certainly the case for me. It didn’t feel good and when I examined my thinking, and the positive feedback I received, I could see that what I was thinking was absolutely not true. I moved back into the powerful state.

With all that’s going on at the moment with COVID-19, please remember that if you’re not feeling good, whatever you are thinking is not true. Life is always working for you, even if it doesn’t feel like it in the moment. If you’re not feeling good, look to your thinking and look for the evidence of the opposite. If it doesn’t feel good, what you’re thinking is not true.

Are You Getting What You Wanted? (WT511)

Are You Getting What You Wanted? (WT511)

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WT511 Are You Getting What You Wanted?

With all the doom and gloom, and fear and stress around COVID-19 at the moment, I’ve been fascinated to see that many of my clients are actually manifesting what they want.

Have a look back over the past year or so and recall the things that you said you wanted to be, do, have or feel and see if some of them haven’t actually manifested through COVID-19.

Here are some examples to show you what I mean:

  1. 12 months ago, I said I wanted an online business. Boom! Overnight a few weeks ago that’s what I got. All of my face to face consultations and training events were cancelled. Online business manifested.
  1. One of my clients wanted to be a stay at home Dad for (wait for it) 4 months. Boom! His wife has just gone back to work in the health industry and he gets to stay at home and look after the baby. 
  1. Another client wanted to have at least a 2 week holiday with his entire family where they all stayed together and enjoyed breakfasts and evening meals, etc. Boom! The lockdown meant his kids came home and they will be together for at least 2 weeks. 
  1. Another wanted to present her new program on Mindfulness. She missed out on a scholarship and ended up presenting for the very people who funded the scholarship. 
  1. Finally, another had been saying for 12 months, I’d like to just shut the doors. Boom! Guess what she had to do recently? 

If you look closely, it’s not all gloom and doom. 

Recalibrate your Reticular Activating System (RAS) and change your perception. You might be surprised to see that on some level, you are actually getting what you wanted.

It’s all about perception. Start seeing what you haven’t been seeing and start focusing more on the things you want, because even though we don’t know the how, Life is Always Working for Us and we eventually get what we really desire.

Stay safe.

Be the Client (WT510)

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If you’re struggling in business right now, be the client you want to attract.

This was something I learned years ago from Lisa Sasevich.

What does it mean?

It means showing up how you want your clients to show up.

For example, paying your bills on time. If you want your clients to pay their bills on time, pay your bills on time.

If you want your clients to respect you, respect your suppliers.

If you want your clients to show up and invest, show up and invest.

Now more than ever, we are being tested to walk our talk.

Our integrity is on the line.

Here’s what I’d like you to do.

Make a list of all of the things that are important to you when it comes to attracting and working with your clients.

Next, read over all the characteristics or behaviours that you want to see in your clients and (hand on heart), place a tick next to the ones you know you fulfill or achieve or do.

Take a look at those you don’t and consider whether the way you show up is a reflection of the people you are attracting.

Let me know what’s on your list. I’d love to know.

What is Everyone Else Doing (WT509)

What is Everyone Else Doing (WT509)

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WT509 What Is Everyone Else Doing

This week, I want to talk to you about a concept called “Social Proof”. It’s a psychological construct. In his book, “Influence”, Robert Cialdini describes it in great detail but I’ll give you the brief version here.

Stick with me, it’s very relevant to what’s going on in the world today.

“Social Proof” in this context refers to people checking to see what other people are doing before they take action. We’re not talking about “Social Proof” in marketing where you get a third party to endorse you and give you a testimonial, although I can see where that came from when you look at the psychology.

Cialdini references some shocking events like the “Jonestown Suicides” in South America where 909 individuals died, all but two from apparent cyanide poisoning, in an event termed “revolutionary suicide” by leader Jim Jones. The disturbing thing about this is that the majority of the people voluntarily took the poison, reportedly in a peaceful and ordered way.

This event led to psychologists asking how this could happen, which leads us to the construct of “Social Proof”. We look to others to see what they are doing, so that we know what to do. The odd thing here is that we believe/expect that the other people actually know what the right thing to do is.

I found this fascinating when I became aware that I too was looking for social proof at a caravan park. I wasn’t sure whether the garbage bins were divided for recycling so I looked inside to see “what everyone else had done”, assuming of course, that they were correct and they knew the right thing to do.

This type of behavior was further researched when in 1964, a 28-year-old woman known as Kitty Genovese was stabbed to death across the road from where she lived in New York and although lots of people saw and heard what was happening, not one person even called the police, let alone went to her aid.

How could this be?

It was “Social Proof”. We look to see what everyone else is doing as a reference point for our behavior. Since the research we now know that you are better off if there is just one other person available if you get into trouble rather than a group, because in all probability the group will stand back waiting to see what everyone else does (it’s known as the By Stander Effect).

So, why am I writing about what seem to be such morbid stories?  It’s because we’re in a time of crisis with the current situation and I want you to be aware that if you follow everyone else and look to others for “Social Proof”, be mindful that “everyone else” may not know the right thing to do either and they may just be waiting for you to step up and be the leader and show them what to do.

Don’t assume that everyone else knows what to do.

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