Weekly Discoveries #1 - 28/4/2008
You are 100% Responsible For Your Life!
Dear Reader,
It was great to meet some of you at Pete Godfrey’s seminar on Saturday. I hope you learnt as much as I did and will start implementing some of his strategies.
I just want to briefly share with you one concept that I learnt a while ago that is absolutely vital to a successful business. It is called Speed of Implementation. Basically, the faster you implement what you learn by testing and measuring it the faster you will benefit from the rewards. Those successful entrepreneurs tend to implement new ideas faster than everyone else. The rest just procrastinate or get caught up with day to day business. Pete said to me on Saturday that the title of my weekly publication Weekly Learnings needs to change and after speaking to a few of you I was given the new name Weekly Discoveries from Rebecca and I have implemented it immediately, not only that but I wanted to get this first communication out to you immediately too.
Weekly Discoveries is intended to give you one or more information discoveries or ideas or lessons to learn or topics to motivate you. These will come out every week.
Have a great week
Warmly
Steve & Silvia
This can’t be true. This must be a load of rubbish. After all there are things that happen to me that I just have no control over. In fact stuff keeps happening to me on a regular basis and it’s everyone else’s fault.
Does this sound familiar to you? Are you one of those people who seem to get the raw end of the stick, are dealt the wrong card or pick the shortest straw more often than not? Or does your business partner, team members, life partner or kids sound like this?
It is no wonder we seem to be so negative when you consider there is so much negativity in newspapers, on the TV, radio and listening to our friends and colleagues using us as sponges to absorb their negativity.
The law of attraction states that “What you think of you manifest.” I would like to go one step further and say “What you say or think of and really feel and believe is true (emotionalise) you will manifest.” If you truly believe that you are unlucky and deep down believe that you deserve these ill tidings then guess what, you will continue to receive them. And I am not just talking about severely negative people. The same is true for those who are generally quite positive but in one or more areas of their life or business life they hold negative beliefs.
Think about how many times a day you think about something negative such as “The courier is always late, I am going to miss getting this important document to my solicitor on time.” or “Look at my staff, just lounging around all the time, no wonder why we aren’t getting things done on time.”
Therefore to make a change in what you receive in life you must change what you say, think and feel, and you must convince yourself through repetition that you deeply believe it. You could change the above examples around to “I have a feeling in my bones that the courier is going to come early this time.” and “Gee, it’s great to see my staff relaxing for a few minutes as they have been working hard all morning and being so productive.” Say this a few times with meaning and you will feel the difference immediately.
If You Don’t Get It (understand/believe it) You Won’t Get It (the rewards)
That’s right. If you don’t really understand or believe what is being said here then you will miss out on the gem of wisdom that I am trying to get across.
Just consider how often things don’t go right for you and how often you think negative thoughts about those things during the day or at night before sleep or what you say to your business or life partner on a regular basis. Just consider how all this negativity that you are saying to others and to yourself may be effecting you.
Only you can make a change for the better. And guess what, today is the best day of all to begin to swap the negative comments, thoughts and feelings with positive comments, thoughts and feelings. Just catch yourself when something negative pops into your head and instantly replace it with an opposite positive. Turn this into a game and count how many times you can catch yourself. You will be amazed at how many times we all think negative thoughts.
Also consider those around you. You may not be able to choose your family but you can certainly choose your friends, business associates and staff so if everyone around you is negative then do something about it.
Are You Above or Below the Line?
Do you know what the metaphors Above the Line and Below the Line means?
If you imagine you are at the beach and instead of drawing a line in the sand the surface of the sand itself is the line. So the warmth of the sun, the cool sea breeze, the lovely scenery and smell of the ocean is above the line (very desirable) and all of the sand underneath the sands surface and anything else that is buried under there (broken shells, rubbish, syringes & needles etc.) are below the line (not so desirable) . Alternatively, you can imagine an iceberg that looks safe because you can see it clearly above the water line but is very dangerous below the water line (remember the Titanic).
These metaphors are often used to describe peoples actions when it comes to taking responsibility (above the line) and blaming (below the line).
Whenever a situation doesn’t go to plan or goes south then do you a) take responsibility for the situation and quickly make the necessary changes to fix or resolve the issue (above the line); or do you b) blame others for the issue or outcome (below the line)? It’s your choice how you react but you will get back what you give so give it some thought.
Stop Blaming and Complaining and Start Entertaining Responsibility
If you normally act below the line and blame everyone else except yourself for your business and personal issues, failings and messes then you are creating a self perpetuating situation. By blaming you are taking away any possibility to learn from the mistake or issue. As soon as you start blaming others you not only lose the respect of that person and anyone else who knows what has happened but you also lose the gem of wisdom that is just waiting to be learnt.
If you have to blame anything then instead of blaming a person or group of people try thinking of it as a systems failure. This takes the emotion and personal blame out of the situation and your team member or their manager who is responsible for that system can simply review the system that failed and make the necessary changes to ensure it doesn’t happen again.
Try it, next time something goes wrong, instead of blaming the person who did or didn’t do it refer to it as a system failure and say “It looks as though our systems need reviewing. Jeremy, please have a look at the system and the documentation and see what is needed to prevent this happening again.”
How powerful is that? I takes away the emotion and blame. Try it for yourself.
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