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It’s All Too Much

Or perhaps I should have said that ‘All’ is ‘too much’.

I’ve found from my own experience and talking with others that the idea of creating a ‘big vision’, a ‘dream’ or even an overriding goal for life is sometimes just ‘too much’ to cope with.

It can become overwhelming, yet this is what a lot of personal development teachers seem to expect us to do.

So what happens?

Many people just don’t do it. They don’t move forward with their lives, they don’t turn their goals, dreams or visions into reality because it’s just ‘all too much’.

Too much information.

Not to take in but to generate.

You see when you and I set our goals, build our dreams and create our vision of how we are choosing our lives to be, we don’t do it by just having one ‘big picture’.

But that’s what most people who embark on this think they have to do, probably because they may not have paid attention to what they were listening to or perhaps things weren’t explained as well as they could have been.

A good way to look at this is to think of a vision board.

When you or I create a vision board it’s not just one picture. It’s a collection of different things, pictures, quotations, affirmations and so on – each one representing a different part of our ‘dream’ or vision, each ne representing a different desire and a different goal.

However much we desire to achieve the ‘whole thing’ we know we’re not going to achieve it all at once, in one ‘big bang’ transformation!

The transformation from where we are now to achieving everything on the board is a journey, and the journey is part of the ‘dream’.

There are ‘stage’ goals on the way, just like I described the learning process as a jigsaw, the transformation process is much the same.

There are different parts to the jigsaw, different things to focus on and manifest at different times.

And even then, we don’t complete all of a particular area of the jigsaw big picture at once. We do a bit, achieve a goal, and then move to another area or domain of life – and then we come back and pick up where we left off. It’s an iterative process.

We can divide ‘life’ into several different ‘domains’. It doesn’t matter how many. Some people say there are four, some five, some seven – but it’s up to you how many there are, and what they are.

I’ve defined these before, more than once so I won’t go into the detail of how I personally see them again.

You have a list of goals you would love to achieve, a list of burning desires. How would you classify your list? How many domains would you identify in your life and what are they?

Here’s the thing – I’ve discovered for myself and I’ve helped clients discover that they are not achieving one or more of their goals because there is a conflict.

An incompatibility between two or more of their goals or even burning desires.

Achieving one particular goal in one domain may make it impossible to achieve a goal in another domain – or at least make it extremely difficult, especially if the desire is to achieve both goals in the same timeframe.

Being simplistic, you cannot go to see the Northern Lights and visit Antarctica at the same time!

Review your goals, dreams and ambitions, check for conflict say between goals in the ‘relationships’ area and the ‘career’ area (which is where the conflicts occur most often by the way).

See if you can align your goals on a timeline – in what ‘order’ do you wish to achieve them?

Are there any that depend on having achieved another beforehand?

Do some goals have less clarity than others and do you need to work on that clarity to make them achievable?

Do you have goals which are dependent on other people, that have to do with being part of a group or team?

There is often conflict between personal goals and collective goals and this can often lead to the ‘dark side’ of goal setting or dream building.

Look carefully at the goals you are working towards.

Are they your goals or are they someone else’s goals?

It happens a lot in organisations where there is a ‘corporate goal’ that everyone is supposed to subscribe to and take it on as ‘their’ goal or where there are a set of ‘grades’ or ‘levels’ that people are expected to achieve.

In these situations, I’ve known very many people whose personal goals, the goals they joined the organisation to facilitate, have been subverted such that they become completely focused on the ‘company’ goals and abandon their own.

Be very careful about goals where your achievement depends on others ‘playing a part’ or ‘contributing’ as it usually leads to disappointment.

You and I are only and completely responsible for the achievement or realisation of our own personal goals. Collective goals only work when everyone is in agreement to take on that goal as a personal goal and work together to achieve it.

Imposed goals may be achieved but do not really contribute to your ‘big picture vision board’.

We take on imposed goals, and yes, I’ve done that in the past, because we are convinced that achieving that ‘company goal’ will facilitate achieving a pre-existing personal goal. It does happen, but it is rare; what usually happens is that we take on the next imposed goal believing it will get us to where we want to be.

Check out your goals, break down your big picture, if you don’t have a vision board make one.

Make sure all the goals you are striving to achieve are yours, not someone else’s and don’t attempt to persuade others to buy in to your goals – all that does is generate conflict through inconsistency.

Get your goals in order, make sure they are aligned with one another and then make a plan and take the action required to achieve your next success.

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Result!

What do you and I look for when we make a purchase or carry out some activity?

What do you and I offer to people when we would like them to purchase something from us or take part in some activity?

We are continually advised, and advised well, not to focus on the ‘features’ of our products, services or activities but on the ‘benefits’ they provide.

The benefits we might get from going on a particular diet, the benefits we might get from purchasing a new vacuum cleaner, the benefits we might get from taking part in a coaching programme – and so on.

Not too long ago it would have been all about the ‘features’.

The components of the diet, what it included, or didn’t; the ‘bells and whistles’ on the new ‘bright shiny object’ we were considering purchasing; the content and delivery of the coaching programme.

And then there would be detailed descriptions of how and why all these great features worked.

As the focus changed, I think most people in the marketing world would admit that it wasn’t too much effort to change the copy to highlight benefits instead.

Start by finding ‘features’ and replacing them with ‘benefits’ – a bit of reorientation and there you have it, brand new marketing material all about ‘benefits’.

But still, as I’ve mentioned before – looking from the inside out.

All about what the providers of the products and services think the benefits are, and still quite a lot of ‘feature thinking’ – “we must explain whet benefit each feature provides – because we love our features, we’ve put so much work into them that we want potential purchasers to see how wonderful they are and what great benefits our features will provide”.

That’s not really about benefits is it? It’s still feature oriented.

Just watch a few TV ads and you’ll see how this happens.

There’s one about vacuum cleaners at the moment which goes to great lengths to talk about the benefits but only really describes the features.

Sure, it’s better to attempt to explain the benefits that a purchaser, in our opinion, might get from whatever it is we offer, but if we continue to work from where we see it as providers it’s not going to make a lot of difference.

Now, let my interrupt myself for a moment.

This isn’t just about business.

We understand business transactions, but everything else we do in life is a transaction (or an interaction) as well.

How we relate to other people.

How we relate to ourselves.

What we choose to do, alone or together.

So what exactly are we looking for?

What exactly are we seeking to achieve in our personal and business lives?

It’s certainly not a feature.

We might think it’s a benefit, but it isn’t.

What we are looking for, not necessarily in, but certainly after every ‘transaction’, is a Result.

Benefits are great, and ‘nice to have’ but they serve us only if they lead to the result we are seeking.

Which is why, when we are considering transacting, or interacting with someone for some reason we need to know the answer to the question “What’s in in for me”, “What result do I get”?

And, if we want this inter/trans action to be successful we also need to understand “What’s in it for them” – “What result do they get”?

Here’s the thing – those answers need to be compatible for whatever is being proposed, to ‘work’.

Consider this before starting to rewrite your proposal or marketing copy.

The person you are communicating with, whatever the situation, is looking for a result. It may be specific, maybe not, but nevertheless what they seek is a result.

A result – achievement of a goal, is created by a solution.

The solution takes them (and you) from where they are now – ‘without’ the result – to where they desire to be.

The solution is the process followed to answer the question “How do I get the result I am looking for”? – “How do I achieve my goal”?

Starting with that ‘how’ question, the answer is that you deploy a solution to achieve the result or goal you are looking for.

Some companies and marketers have got as far as bandying about the word ‘solution’ as what they provide but that is often seen as meaningless business jargon – a bit like the word ‘mission’.

You see, as purchasers in any transaction or interaction you and I really don’t care in the slightest about the features, benefits, answers or solutions.

We just don’t care about the what or the how of getting to our objective – ALL we are interested in is the RESULT.

At least, that’s what we should be focused on, but the marketing industry has done such a good job over the years that we’ve begun to forget our real targets and objectives, the results we seek, and been seduced by the ‘bright shiny objects’ instead.

Right now, because we do it all the time, you and I are on one side of a transaction or interaction or the other, maybe several so we should take a breath and think –

“What are the results I desire out of this, and what are the results ‘they’ are seeking”?

If these are compatible then the transaction or interaction will be successful, if not, talk to someone else!

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The Master Mind

‘Mastermind Groups’ and ‘masterninding’ are becoming part of ‘business jargon’ and people are also finding ways to monetize them by charging people to be members of what seem to be supercharged (n more senses than one) business networking groups.

A ‘Mastermind Group’ (sometimes Master Mind Group or just a ‘MasterMind’) is, according to Wikipedia

“a peer-to-peer mentoring concept used to help members solve their problems with input and advice from the other group members. The concept was coined in 1925 by author Napoleon Hill in his book ‘The Law of Success’, and described in more detail in his 1937 book, ‘Think and Grow Rich’.”

Hill used the term to describe groups of people who had been joining together in the United States for some decades earlier, the most notable being the group of people including Ralph Waldo Emerson, Louisa May Alcott and Henry David Thoreau, in Concord Massachusetts who took part in what became known as the ‘Concord Conversations’.

But the idea of ‘mastermind groups’ had been going for a long time before that – Jesus of Nazareth and his twelve ‘disciples’ could easily be described in this way.

But what is the point of such a gathering of ‘like-minded’ people?

There are several.

Not that long ago before the virus of ‘political correctness’ spread far and wide I used to take part, as an employee and later as a consultant in what we called ‘brainstorming sessions’.

The objective of such sessions was for everyone to throw ideas into the ring in response to a specific question or issue posed by the ‘facilitator’ of the group.

All ideas, no matter how improbable or crazy were accepted and written up on a whiteboard. No-one was allowed to comment on or criticize anything until the time for introducing ideas, or ‘new thought’, was up.

The next step was to categorize ideas, get explanation from the proponents and eventually come up with a list of three to five actions to be taken to resolve the question or issue raised.

These sessions are now usually called ‘masterminding’, but they are not really what Hill’s description of the concept was about.

A second explanation, described by Hill, is the example of Henry Ford and his group of master minds.

Ford gathered together the best people he could find in various fields and employed them to resolve corporate problems. They were effectively his senior management team, his board of directors.

They had different specialties and advised on different aspects of the business, finance, operations, management, marketing and so on.

What was different about Ford was that he did go out of his way to bring in the best people in their fields as Andrew Carnegie did in the steel industry.

In my view this is a somewhat restricted ‘corporate’ idea of the mastermind group and Hill also describes a third type of ‘mastermind’ which is more in the nature of the Concord group of the previous century.

I consider this to be the correct interpretation of the concept – in as much as anything can be ‘correct’.

An effective mastermind group is as defined in Wikipedia (sometimes they do get it right!) as being a peer-to-peer mentoring group.

Members do not need to come from different disciplines, and they should not be part of a single organisation as is found with the previously described groups. They should have something in common however which may be on an intellectual or emotional level or a similar belief pattern.

It still works if members hold different beliefs provided they are not dogmatic about them.

The idea is that when the group meets, one member should present a problem, an issue, or a case to be discussed. Then, rather than following the ‘brainstorm’ ritual or the somewhat similar ‘action learning’ or ‘synergy group’ process, the group will then fully discuss the matter and perhaps argue and debate different aspects or potential solutions.

They may or may not come up with a definitive ‘answer’ but the object of the exercise is to assist the member raising the ‘issue’ with their understanding of it and perhaps its resolution and to provide a level of accountability.

It does take some time. It’s not something that can be done in 45 minutes or even a couple of hours, and sometimes the ‘mastermind’ can continue for additional sessions.

It’s a flexible process.

A Mastermind group is not about networking, it’s about mutual mentoring.

Members of the group mentor each other as and when required, so there is no ‘leader’ as such and a group may be established by anyone either on a temporary or permanent basis simply by inviting the people who they think would be appropriate – people who can help them and who they can help through mentoring in this way

A mastermind group is not the same as a coach led mentoring group where the coach sets the agenda and is the focus of the meeting – there are many of these around and people normally have to pay to be in the group, sometimes going through a selection process first. There are many of these so-called mastermind groups around and costs can vary from around £3,000 a year to 20 times that figure or more!

Napoleon Hill is very clear, as are other authors after him, that you or I cannot achieve ultimate success in our chosen field without interacting with an effective and relevant mastermind group and even if we don’t set up or belong to a ‘formal’ group we will still ‘unconsciously’ interact with a group of people in this way.

The level of success we achieve depends on who we associate with, who we listen to and who we help.

Two questions.

Who are your mastermind group right now? Who do you mentor, who mentors you and to whom are you accountable other than yourself?

Who would be in your ‘ideal’ mastermind group? All you have to do is make yourself known to them and ask!

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Poles Apart

‘Whose side are you on?’

Whatever time in history, be it far distant, quite recent or even current, there always seem to be at least two ‘sides’.

It’s the way we’ve set up our culture and society for reasons which are somewhat obscure and may be difficult to handle, but I’ll attempt to explain.

The answer to the question above is not as simple as it might seem.

Potential answers are:

  • I’m on ‘Side A’
  • I’m on ‘Side B’
  • I don’t care, or I’m not taking sides on this
  • I’m on my side – whatever is ‘best’ for me.

There are possibly a few more but here’s the thing.

There doesn’t seem to be an option to be on ‘both’ sides or on all sides, to take a holistic point of view on whatever is going on, to see both sides of the argument and to support elements of both sides.

If you and I are not supporting Side A or Side B we can ‘sit on the fence’ and observe dispassionately or we can turn our back on the situation and look after our own interests.

It’s only a few brave people who will stand up and look at both sides of the coin – see both arguments for what they are and attempt to mediate the matter.

Independent arbiters like this, referees, umpires and so on are often criticized by both ‘sides’ and ignored as ineffectual by the ‘others’.

It’s easier where there are strict rules of the game as on the sports field but even they are often ‘open to interpretation’ and depend on spur of the moment decisions – hence the increasing use of technology to confirm the decision made by the referee or umpire according to the rules.

But in politics (and I include religion in politics) there are no strict rules that override both ‘sides’ in an argument – each side will have its own rules, its own ‘evidence’ its own interpretation of the ‘facts’ (true or otherwise) about the case.

Arbitration in disputes rarely leaves both ‘sides’ satisfied, let alone happy, because in the end to ‘settle’ the argument or dispute, compromises have to be made and all that does is to get the issue out of the limelight until it rears up again at a later date.

But how have we found ourselves in this adversarial society?

There is only one ‘humanity’

(It goes further than that but that’s another story)

As Neale Donald Walsch explains in ‘Conversations With God’ – “There is only One of Us”.

This is difficult for most people to understand as for you and I and everyone else to experience their own ‘lives’ we have been ‘individuated’ and see ourselves as individual elements making up ‘Us’ – Humanity.

This had led to the paradigm of dichotomy.

The paradigm of ‘right’ and ‘wrong’, ‘them’ and ‘us’ and even ‘you’ and ‘me’.

And it shapes our understanding of the world with ‘far and near’, ‘rich and poor’, big and small’, ‘up and down’ and ‘male and female’.

As a society, as the human race, we are obsessed with this binary thinking – it has to be one or the other.

We struggle with the concept of spectrum – the gradual transition between one thing and another.

Even considering the visual spectrum between ‘black’ (no colour) and ‘white’ (all colours) we have to identify ‘colours’ not as a gradation but as specific points on a scale and it’s the same with everything else.

In three-dimensional thinking and physics, we can just about handle it.

How high, how small, how far, how rich? and so on.

But what about how intelligent? how civilised? how educated? how charismatic? and how male or female?

We have an obsession with measurement, and we become frustrated when there is something that we cannot measure or haven’t discovered a way of measuring.

We don’t like to see the spectrum as it is – we have to break it up into finite chunks and then create artificial boundaries between them.

When ‘exactly’ does yellow become green and green become blue? (Answers on a postcard please.)

Everything is energy and energy is everything so at exactly what frequency of vibration does it change from one thing or experience into another?

Because we, as humans have lost the capacity, not to have an understanding of this, but to turn it into a practical framework for our lives, we have resorted to different levels of ‘black and white’, ‘on and off’ thinking.

Sure, we sometimes recognise that there are fifty shades of grey – but we still have to know ‘which one’ we are in at any given moment or in any given situation.

So we have invented right and wrong, good and evil, and every other bipolar description of our world down to male and female and black and white.

There is no ‘dark side’, there is no ‘wrong’. They are inventions we have created so that we can indulge our obsession with comparison.

That one thing is better than another, some people are good and others bad and so on.

And of course, ‘we’ always align ourselves on the ‘positive’ side of the equation.

Those people who do things that ‘society’ in general has decided are wrong, criminal, or evil – or even just plain stupid, still believe that they are right, they are the ‘good guys’ and everyone else is in the wrong for criticizing or stopping them from doing what they believe is the right thing to do.

I said this might be hard to grasp but as long as we continue to implement this cultural and societal framework, this binary dichotomy paradigm, there is no hope for a further evolution of humanity through the realization that We are all One.

The first step though for you and I is to start to look at things like we look at a rainbow – a spectrum – seeing all the ‘points of view’ merging into one – or at least seeing both sides of the ‘story’.

What’s on your spectrum of view today?

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Growing Pains

There is a huge ‘personal development’ industry, mainly in the ‘western world’ that seeks to assist individuals in their personal growth and evolution.

Back in the day it was called ‘self-help’ and could usually be found at the back of the bookshops next to the ‘occult’ section.

There was a post today in the Mind Valley Facebook Group asking “What is the best self growth book?”

The answer to that question is ‘It depends’ – because growth, development and evolution all have to start somewhere and if you are not sure where you are then it’s difficult, if not impossible, to go, grow, develop or evolve to anywhere.

In order to ‘grow’ you and I must know where we are and that is something that only we ourselves can determine.

It’s quite often a harder question than ‘where am I going?’ because if we don’t know where we are, and we cannot clearly ‘see’ where we are going, we end up lost in a fog.

And there’s another thing.

We naturally tend to think of growth, development or evolution – which all amount to the same thing by the way, as linear.

We see plants and animals, including ourselves, ‘grow’ in a linear fashion.

We grow up, we get bigger.

To be more accurate our physical form is what is growing in this context. Like a tree, over time, we ‘expand’ and most peoples’ concept of ‘personal growth’ – ‘personal development’ – is the same.

We expand our knowledge and understanding over time.

But its not quite like that in two key ways.

First, our mind, our knowledge, and our paradigms (the way we think about things) do not grow constantly on a day to day basis.

It’s not like ‘school’ there’s no ‘timetable’ for personal growth.

You and I have periods when we don’t ‘grow’ at all and periods when we develop really quickly.

We evolve our thinking, or growth, not at a steady pace but in fits and starts.

Sometimes we seem to stagnate and then something happens that causes us to jump into a new way of thinking, a new stage of growth.

Now imagine your life or your mind as a jigsaw – a never ending infinite jigsaw – with no ‘picture’ of what it should look like when it’s finished.

Scary prospect, especially when you consider that your personal development is infinite, that there is no ‘end’, that it will never be completed, not in this life or the next.

But that’s what makes it exciting for those who follow the ‘way’ of personal development.

As you and I progress on our individual growth journeys we don’t follow the same curriculum.

We don’t do the same things at the same time.

This is not personal ‘education’ – there is not set pattern of how we grow, no predetermined subject matter, what elements of ourselves we develop at any given moment or even what we evolve into.

We fill in different parts of the jigsaw at different times and in our own time.

Although we might read the same books, go on the same learning programmes, join the same groups of people engaged in personal growth, have the same experiences, we don’t do these things at the same times in our lives or in the same places in our lives.

London Black Cab Taxi Drivers have to pass a test called ‘The Knowledge’ to show they have an intimate understanding of the London road system. But they won’t all be travelling around and discovering the same places at the same time or in the same order, they’ll fill in different parts of the London jigsaw until it’s complete – until they have ‘the knowledge’.

It’s the same with our personal growth, except that the areas into which we grow are not finite.

But what IS personal growth, or development, or evolution?

What it is not, is acquiring knowledge or learning new skills although these do contribute to it.

Personal growth is about change.

It’s about changing the way we think and the way we are.

As you and I grow, develop and evolve we become ‘different’.

We move away from the familiar, who we are now, and towards the unfamiliar, who we would love to be – as far ahead as we can imagine at any stage of our development.

This is where the ‘pain’ starts because the mind always pushes us towards what is familiar, where and who we are now, and away from the unfamiliar – or who we desire to be.

The growing pains continue as we begin to ‘let go’, as we begin to expand our ‘comfort zone’ or break out of it and most of all as we change our paradigms about life, the Universe and everything.

You and I have to get rid of those paradigms, those mindsets, those frameworks and ways of thinking that no longer serve us or would be counterproductive in our envisaged future, our ‘dream life’.

We have to install new software, new apps, and get rid of the old programs which may have served us well in the past but have now become inappropriate.

We have sometimes to dispose of something that has been or maybe still is ‘precious’ to us. Like the ‘one ring’ some of our ways of thinking have to be destroyed so that we can set ourselves free to move forward.

It’s not a case as some would have it of ‘deleting’ everything, casting out all our paradigms or limiting beliefs because without some of these – the ones that serve to keep us physically safe in particular – we would cease to function correctly, or at all.

If you remove the operating system from a computer, it ceases to operate so we must be sure that when we ‘upgrade’ ourselves the ‘essentials’ are not discarded as well.

You and I are on our journeys of personal growth – what are the paradigms you need to remove, what can be upgraded, and what new ones will you install?

It will be ‘painful’ but it’s worth it.

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The Value in You

I’ve borrowed this title from my good friend Roxanne St Clair who created a pack of 52 inspirational leadership cards with this title.

Several years ago, when I was working as a consultant in the rail industry, I remember a quite appalling meeting that by coincidence took place after a major train crash in which several lives were lost.

Some ‘actuaries’ were attempting to make an argument about cutting back investment in the infrastructure and citing a level of ‘affordability’ in terms of the number of lives that might be lost by not making further investment.

Needless to say, this ‘argument’ was very quickly dismissed as there is no justification in placing any sort of comparative financial ‘valuation’ on life.

We cannot place any form of monetary value on any individual’s life as such, but we can place a ‘value’ on what a person has ‘done’ with their life and is currently ‘doing’ with their life.

Although you and I have heard of the ‘rich list’ which indicates how much certain individuals are ‘worth’ in monetary terms based on the amount of money they have accumulated this is not an indicator of their ‘value’.

Many of the people in those lists have done very little of real value to society as a whole.

What is the ‘value’ in you, or me?

Unlike the ‘rich list’ it’s not about what we ‘have’.

It’s about who you and I are.

It’s about what you and I do and why we do it.

It’s about what you and I give to the rest of society.

Not what we ‘give back’ because we can only give back something that has been ‘given to’ us rather than something that we have ourselves created, learned or earned by doing what we do.

What we are able to ‘give’ depends on who we really are, what we do in the world and why we do it. That is what creates the ‘value’ that we ‘give’ to the world.

Maybe not the ‘whole’ world, but to ‘our’ world, the sector of society with which we engage at the moment.

You and I give out or ‘provide’ to those who engage with us whatever it is that we do, say, write, draw, sing, perform and so on.

We do a ‘job’ and we perform a task.

What it is that we do in this sense depends on our value.

Our value to those we engage with to do whatever it is we do in terms of what we provide.

But there is a Law of Reciprocity which says that we cannot give without receiving – ‘Give and ye shall receive’

What we give depends on our value and so does what we receive.

But there’s a catch.

What we give depends on our value as we perceive it in ourselves, what we receive depends on the value, not of us, but of what we give as perceived by others.

My mentor Peter Thomson says, “Money is the silent applause for a job well done”.

People will give you or I an amount of money in accordance with the value they perceive in what we do or how well we do it.

This is where it gets interesting.

Most people see the ‘value’ to them of entertainment such as watching sports or music or TV as very high, likewise holidays and special events which take them ‘away’ from their real life.

They are happy to see sports and entertainment ‘stars’ appearing on the ‘rich list’ for giving them an opportunity to ‘escape’ their lives for a short while.

On the other hand, they resent paying for some of the things that actually keep them alive, like food, heating and lighting and so on – always looking for a ‘cheaper deal’.

People expect their health to be ‘free’ to the extent that the costs of the health service (in the UK) have to be raised through taxation.

Not everyone, but ‘most’ people.

When you and I attempt to place a value – in monetary terms – on what we give, the products and services we provide, we have to look at it from two points of view.

What it ‘cost’ us in terms of acquiring the knowledge, experience, vision and creativity to develop and provide our unique version of whatever we give – in other words it’s value to us; and then how the value of what we give is perceived by those who are receiving it.

Of course, it depends on what it is we are giving.

Is it the same thing as someone else is providing, or is it something different, something that is unique to us?

It’s probably impossible for two offerings to be exactly the same – let’s take a can of beans as an example.

The can of beans is exactly the same brand, size and price in shop A as in shop B. But shop B is closer to you than Shop A. Which can of beans has the greater value?

And would you be prepared to pay a tiny amount more for the product you can get by walking to the corner store than the same product at the supermarket 10 miles away?

Yes, there are ‘other considerations’, but when you come to ‘pricing’ the value of what you give, then this is part of the algorithm.

What is the value to the purchaser?

Whether it’s products or services that you give – you provide, what is the value in YOU that leads people to engage with you for what you give rather than someone else.

You and I need to know that value.

And we need to ensure that the potential recipients of what we ‘give’ know it as well.

What is ‘the value in you’?

d it.

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What’s Causing the Pain?

This question concerns all the domains of our lives.

We have pain in relationships, one to one and one to many.

Pain in our financial affairs.

Pain in our physical and mental health.

Pain in our longings and discontents about our lifestyle.

Of course, sometimes it’s only minor, but other times it’s a real ‘pain in the neck’!

It can manifest in different ways, physical pain, anxiety, anguish, frustration, even boredom.

But it’s an odd thing, pain.

The symptoms of pain you and I feel are usually not in the ‘right place’.

If you cut yourself then the pain appears at the site of the cut, but if you have a pain in your leg and there is no clear injury such as a bruise, then the pain is really coming from another source – it just manifests as a symptom in your leg.

I’ve recently had sciatica which appeared as a severe pain in my left leg. But it had nothing to do with my leg – the pain was caused by a scoliosis near the base of the spine – but I felt no pain whatsoever in my back or at the site where the MRI scan revealed the problem.

Now this is important.

It’s important because we develop symptoms – or pains – physical, or mental, quite a lot of the time. We feel a pain of some sort and assume that where and how we feel the pain is actually where the problem is located.

We take that pain to a ‘doctor’ and describe the symptoms and what we feel might be the cause.

But it’s only ever the immediate – or superficial – cause.

We often mistake symptoms for problems when they are not, because the real problem is elsewhere in our mind or body.

We ask the ‘doctor’ for something to take away the pain.

Now the ‘doctor’ is not always a medical practitioner.

The doctor may be a coach, a holistic therapist, a hypnotherapist or some other person dealing with the woes of the mind or body.

But what about financial pain, or business pain, or career pain, or anxiety about an examination or inspection of some kind?

We take steps to remedy that pain directly usually with some sort of financial ‘sticking plaster’ that papers over the cracks by injecting more money such as a loan into our personal or business account or taking special measures to deal with what we might think about an upcoming exam or inspection.

More often than not we treat the symptoms rather than the cause.

When we don’t even know what the cause is.

You and I have discontents we wish to get away from and longings we wish to move towards.

Both are an expression of pain.

We do things and buy things in the first instance to help relieve some sort of pain – at whatever level.

Sometimes we think, ‘I just need to get away for a bit’, and book a holiday, sometimes we think ‘I’m feeling a bit down’ so we have ‘nice cup of tea’.

Notice what you are doing during the day. Notice the feelings that come upon you, the longings and discontents, however minor or trivial, and notice your response.

Notice what you are noticing and find a ‘good doctor’.

A good doctor will not give you paracetamol or sticking plaster.

A good doctor will not just give you something to make your pain go away temporarily

A good doctor will find the underlying cause, the root cause, and treat that.

How do you and I recognise a ‘good doctor’?

There’s a reason why senior, experienced doctors are called ‘consultants’ – because that’s what they do.

They talk to you and start to discover, with you, the cause of your pain, they diagnose the problem and suggest a treatment.

As should a good therapist, a good counsellor, a good lawyer, a good business consultant and a good marketer (or if you must, salesperson).

And unlike the conventional medicine system where you go through a triage process if several separate steps to get to the medical consultant, you can find your ‘good doctor’ directly.

Because:

  • You don’t need a doctor or a treatment you need a solution
  • You don’t need a therapy or a therapist you need a result
  • You don’t need a product, brand or feature or even a service, you need a benefit
  • You don’t need to know the questions, you need the answers
  • You don’t need to be controlled, you need to be in control

Look for people, organisations and companies who are offering what you want (or in other words what you don’t have).

The answers, the solutions, the results, the benefits and the control you don’t have – the lack of which is causing you discontent, longing and pain

The people who offer any of these five things will always first offer you a consultation, a clarity call, an evaluation, a diagnosis, or provide some other way of helping you to find the root cause of your pain.

Sometimes they will expect a remuneration for it and sometimes they won’t. Either way what they are offering, identification of the case of your pain, must have a value for you.

But there’s something else.

Just like the GP in the medical profession the people or providers you are looking for will have two characteristics.

They will also be ‘general practitioners’ in their field.

They will not know all the answers (anyone who says they do is to be avoided) but they will have a wide enough knowledge and be experienced enough to identify the potential cause of your pain and identify the best provider of the solution to resolve your particular issue.

Which may not be them or something that they themselves can provide.

They will identify the best possible benefit for you regardless of whether or not you become their client or customer.

Why would they do that?

Because they know, if they do that, if they demonstrate their integrity, you will come back to them when something else crops up and refer other people to them.

Whatever it is you think you need to fix your immediate pain, longing or discontent, don’t go to someone who is offering some sort of universal panacea – ‘this method fixes everything’ – but find s ‘general’ practitioner in the appropriate field who will help you identify the real problem and find the right person to help you with the solution.

That, I know, is easier said than done, but you really don’t want to go to a specialist in your symptoms, you need a specialist in whatever is causing them.

And if you don’t know the root cause, find someone who can help you find someone who can find it.

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The Time Machine

Almost everyone involved in what someone today annoyingly called the ‘transformational space’ (life coaches, therapists and so on – people who help people change), understands and often teaches this concept.

It’s something I’ve referred to before and is founded on the reality that there is no such thing as linear time.

‘Tomorrow’ never comes and ‘Yesterday’ is just a file copy of ‘Today’.

A file copy in your subconscious mind.

‘All our yesterdays’ are there, we just have to access them.

And we do.

Sometimes deliberately, sometimes randomly, and sometimes they just ‘pop up’ out of nowhere – out of the ‘blue’.

Here’s the thing about memories.

We know that they are memories.

‘Good’ or ‘Bad’ – you and I can ‘see’, ‘hear’, ‘smell’ and ‘taste’ what is going on.

And our minds generate the same feelings as we felt ‘then’.

But memories are not actually happening

Even though it may feel like it sometimes.

And sometimes, if we’re watching a movie or a news report, we can also get feelings, sometimes quite strong feelings, about what we see.

But we aren’t ‘there’ – it’s not real.

It may be occupying ‘this moment in time’ in our minds but at the same time it isn’t.

(I can see this is going to get complicated – but bear with me!).

Many people shy away from the idea of hypnosis or hypnotherapy, and so do many conventionally trained hypnotherapists, because they fear going back, or taking people back, to times in their ‘past’ – to memories, that may be ‘upsetting’.

I hear many people on both sides, client and therapist, talking about ‘re-living the past’ and the damage that might cause potentially making existing problems worse.

But when I regress a client, when I ask their subconscious to come up with a scene I just remind them that they will only be ‘viewing it on a screen’, they won’t be ‘there’, it won’t be ‘happening’ again.

Yes, they will recall the feelings and may become emotional, but that’s precisely what they need to do to understand and resolve the ‘current’ problem, whatever that might be.

Unless they have blocks preventing it, which can be circumvented in other ways, most people are able to do this quite easily.

All those yesterdays are filed away neatly in the subconscious, and hypnosis, where I talk directly to the subconscious, is the way of finding them.

Because the conscious mind doesn’t have direct access to the ‘filing system’.

Now take a deep breath and just go along with me for a little because I’m going to talk about doing something similar for the ‘future’.

Imagine for the moment a stack of record cards – each one holding a ‘memory’.

You and I are – today – now – somewhere in the middle of this ‘stack’.

Below us are the records of the past and above us are the records of the future.

The ‘scenes’ to which we can go forward.

If only we can ‘unlock’ them.

Some individuals, Prophets, Clairvoyants and Seers (See-ers) can do this to some extent, but usually only in a general rather than individual sense.

What if, like regressing to our past, you and I could also progress to our future?

Our personal future.

Now some ‘respected’ organs of the Press and the Media would have this as ‘mumbo-jumbo’, ‘woo-woo’ or ‘new age nonsense’. You see they support the idea that humanity has reached the peak of its development when in fact we have hardly ‘started’ on our evolution.

Because you and I can create our future – and not just by carrying on as we are, making random decisions and discovering what ‘happens’.

I have been taught to do this by several different coaches and mentors in different ways, but it all boils down to the same technique.

Joe Vitale calls it the Secret Mirror, Mary Morrissey calls it the Time Machine, Phil Olley and others call it the Magic Wand. Others don’t have a catchy name for it but describe the same thing.

And it’s very similar to the regression technique in that it’s about letting your subconscious have its say.

Without the conscious mind interfering and saying, ‘You can’t do that!’ which is what we are trained to do from very early in our lives.

As children we are told to stop daydreaming, stop imagining and ‘stick to the ‘facts’’; not to be ‘stupid’ and most of all not to ‘rock the boat’ of existing understanding.

To progress as well as to regress effectively you and I must suspend our ‘conscious’ and let our subconscious free.

This is simple but not easy and it will take a lot of practice – and faith.

Go to your stack of memory cards and pick out one ‘above’ you in the pile.

Most people who teach this say 1 year or 3 years ‘ahead’ – any ‘further away’ and the cards become dim and vague – hard to ‘read’.

Pick your card – let’s say this day 3 years from now.

Suspend your conscious thought and let your subconscious tell you what’s written on the card. Who are you, where are you, what are you doing, what do you see, hear, smell, taste? Most of all how do you feel – this day 3 years on?

This is your ‘dream’ in US language, or your ‘vision’ in the English dictionary.

Spend some time reading this card, observing the re-run of this day 3 years ahead – just like you would if it were a memory of the past.

Because this is a memory of the future.

Absorb it, feel it, understand it, live it.

Oh yes, if you don’t ‘like’ what’s written on the card you can always change it by finding out what actions led up to it and changing them.

As always, it’s your choice.

Just change it.

And then let your conscious mind in.

There are two ways to do this.

Joe Vitale and some others propose that you have a conversation with your ‘past self’ (that’s you now in the current year) in a mirror. Mary Morrissey and Phil Olley suggest you role play with someone else (ideally that you don’t know and who is aware of the technique) and tell them all about what you are up to in this ‘future’ time.

As I said, this isn’t easy because our conscious mind puts up very strong resistance.

To make it easier, and to get used to the routine select a shorter period – go down to one year or six months ahead and do it often – once a week if you can.

If you still find it difficult then start with ‘tomorrow’.

Visualise tomorrow, pretend it’s tomorrow today, what are you doing, seeing, hearing, feeling?

But for now, apart from reading my Insight, how is next Wednesday shaping up for you?

See you next week – er, this week, last week?

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In the Zone

A little phrase with a big meaning.

For some this means being focused on what they are doing or working to achieve – especially in sport, but in business as well.

But it has other meanings.

If you live in the Transport for London area the ‘zone’ you live on can have a significant bearing on your public transport costs.

But that’s not what I’m thinking of here.

The ‘Zone’ I’m interested in is your ‘Comfort Zone’.

Or as my friend Phil Olley puts it, your ‘Comfort Dome’, which usefully adds a further dimension to the concept.

I have been talking about change.

But change does not only happen when you venture outside your zone, dome or sphere of ‘comfort’.

It happens inside as well – especially when it is brought about by ‘circumstances beyond your control’ or by other people.

When the ‘rules’ change.

The ‘comfort zone’ is what most people look on as a sort of ‘dome of protection’.

Whatever happens within the zone, it’s ‘safer’ inside than outside.

It’s more predictable.

Note entirely predictable but there’s much less uncertainty than people imagine to be the case outside.

It’s more familiar.

Not entirely familiar but less unfamiliar that what might happen outside.

Within the zone itself the levels of certainty and familiarity increase as you approach the ‘central core’ of your comfort zone.

Where you feel ‘safe’ – or most safe.

There have been some interesting reports from Japan that elderly people without families have been getting themselves arrested and imprisoned.

Because ‘inside’ it’s safe, and there is a ‘captive audience’ or community for them to associate with.

Everything is ‘laid on’ – and it’s a lot cheaper than a care home.

In that sense our comfort zone – our ‘dome of protection’ is not unlike a prison in which we have chosen to confine ourselves.

And that’s often the case within society as well.

Like the crabs in the bucket, if anyone tries to escape, they are pulled back in again.

We are actively discouraged from doing something different, from abandoning or questioning the ‘norm’ and from going too close to the ‘edge’.

It’s a ‘flat earth’ mentality.

We might ‘fall off’ and even worse, we might take others with us.

And that would never do!

Because whatever society people live in, they think they are the ‘best’ or that they have it ‘right’ as opposed to other societies.

And usually that ‘God’ is on their side.

(Failing to understand that ‘God’, Source, the Universe doesn’t and cannot ‘take sides’.)

If someone were to ‘escape’ and do something ‘different’, that could constitute a threat – a concept adequately demonstrated by the Soviet regime of the 20th century.

But if we are to evolve and grow – from an individual, societal or even humanistic point of view we need to do two things.

First to realise that we, as individuals, as a society, as the human race, have not reached our full potential, and second, we have to take the first step by approaching the ‘edge’.

The ‘edge’ of our sphere, dome or zone of ‘comfort’.

But what happens when we do approach the edge and put a foot outside the imagined ‘barrier’ – outside the ‘protected area’?

Sometimes we can get a little way into ‘new territory’ and begin to become familiar with it and more certain about our mission or destiny.

We begin to expand our ‘zone’.

But usually there comes a point where we encounter resistance to going any further.

The point where our belief or faith in who we are and what we are doing ceases to grow.

Because we start to become more uncertain of where we are going and more unfamiliar with the path we are taking.

This is the critical point.

We discover at this point that we have reached the end of the ‘slack’ in the bungee rope that is attaching us to the centre of our comfort zone.

It’s starting to pull us back.

The farther ‘out’ we go, the more effort we have to make.

We’ve reached the point where our abilities, talent and ambition to go on exceed our belief and faith in ourselves to do it.

We have two options.

Let the rope snap us back inside our old comfort zone – usually to a point further ‘inside’ than we were before.

Or get help to bolster our belief in ourselves.

To find a Partner in Believing, a Coach, a Mentor – someone who already exists in the place we want to reach – our expanded comfort zone.

You see, cutting the rope is not an option.

Because the ‘bungee’ holding us back is also an umbilical cord.

Unless we actually do want to cut ourselves off from all that has gone before.

Exile ourselves from our history and who we are.

Go completely ‘off the grid’ and abandon all that has gone before.

What you and I want to do is to expand our comfort zone, enlarge it, grow it and with it grow ourselves, evolving into a new phase of our life.

We don’t want to cut ourselves off from family and friends, society or the human race in general.

We still want to be part of it – but bigger and better.

The only reason why we approached the edge, why we broke through and why we hang on to whatever and whoever we find there is to grow, to develop, to be, do, have and give more – to those who remain behind and those who are ahead.

I’m off to do just that.

How about you?

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Changes – Face the Strange

I thought of this title last week but at the time I had no idea how hard ‘change’ was going to hit me.

Especially as I didn’t expect it.

I had no idea it was coming.

I wasn’t ‘prepared’.

Normally I embrace change – for better or worse – when I know it’s coming.

And usually, in the long run things do turn out better even though it may not seem like it at first.

“Turn and face the strange”

David Bowie in the chorus of his song ‘Changes’.

Because change is ‘strange’ – it’s the whole essence of it.

Change is ‘something different’, something new, and more often than not something ‘strange’ because it’s never happened before.

At least not in the way it has happened now.

Or is still happening because I’m not sure the process has completed or what I perceive as the change in my life is indeed what I think it is.

Or what I fear it is.

Is it a door opening?

Or is it a door closing?

And is that door ahead of me or behind me?

These are the questions you and I ask when we are coping with change.

And of course, it’s different when the change is instigated by us or brought upon us by others.

As we travel on our life journey we continuously pass through these doors.

These changes.

And as we do so we move from the familiar to the unfamiliar – or strange.

And that is never easy because as Marisa Peer explains – the mind constantly attempts to reject the unfamiliar and retain the familiar. It strives to protect us from what is unfamiliar – what is strange.

Which is why it is so hard to change when the change is sudden and unexpected.

Because if it’s our change, one that we make, we’ve had time to ‘familiarise’ with the idea – to move it from the ‘unfamiliar’ to the ‘familiar’.

It becomes something to look forward to – not strange at all.

But when change is thrust upon us – from ‘outside’ – by someone else who we may or may not know then it is going to be strange and unfamiliar and difficult to deal with.

Our ability to cope with it depends on the distance between ‘familiar’ and ‘unfamiliar’.

What I mean is that if a situation is very familiar to us, like a relationship for instance, and that suddenly changes drastically for whatever reason and in whatever way, then it is much harder for you and me to cope – especially if it is unexpected.

On the other hand, if the change is between something we’re not very familiar with or don’t really care about and something else with which we are less familiar, or ‘unfamiliar’ with then it’s not so difficult.

It doesn’t ‘matter’ so much.

It doesn’t hurt so much.

The mind has less to adjust to.

Of course, I’m talking here about personal change – change that affects you and I on an individual basis, not about ‘corporate’ change management or anything like that.

But if we are involved in making changes that affect a group of other people then we have to remember that they are all affected on a personal basis, one by one, and the ‘trick’ is of course to help each individual ‘familiarise’ with what comes after the change, to reduce the ‘familiar-unfamiliar’ effect.

It’s a pity politicians don’t think a little more about that, but then most of them don’t seem to have a clue about what’s likely to happen once their changes have been implemented, as they are usually done on the basis of an away motivation, rather than a towards motivation.

If you are taking people with you through a change then it’s important to remember that they probably won’t all come with you.

Some will just stop and reject the change, and some will go a different way.

‘You can’t win ‘em all’.

So, a change has occurred – that we weren’t expecting.

And we find ourselves thrust into in a different situation.

An unfamiliar and strange situation.

Probably one that at first, we can’t see any good in.

So we have to cope with it.

We have to work out where we are now, who we are now, and maybe what role we play now.

It’s all different, strange, scary, unfamiliar.

And the mind starts to work overtime, to make sense of it, to process it, to get some level of familiarity with it – to protect us – to keep us ‘safe’.

We find ourselves thinking at high speed, searching for some familiarity to hang on to, searching for the ‘good’ in it, or that will come out of it.

For what we often see as a disaster and devastation is often the start of a new blessing, a new ‘reality’ or a new ‘familiarity’.

You and I need to be patient through this process.

To stand our ground – be ‘grounded’

Because as in the story ‘Acres of Diamonds’, what we seek as a result of the change is probably right here.

Staring us in the face.

But just now, it’s unfamiliar and strange, and it will take time for the new situation to reveal itself fully and become familiar before we accept it.

There’s nothing we can do to prevent change being thrust upon us by others, but what we can do is learn to cope with it, understand what is happening in our mind – the transition from the old unfamiliar to the new familiar – and ease that process forward.

Onward and upward.

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