Beliefs Affect Results

No matter how tough an economic environment, look around and you will see people who thrive. They innovate, create and persist in achieving their goals.

So what is the critical difference? What predicts success? Beliefs!

Beliefs act as self-fulfilling prophecies. Our experience of life is literally created by our assumptions about the nature of reality. In technical terms, we delete and distort sensory cues for evidence of what we believe to be true. We create ‘proof’ that reality operates the way we think it does. Beliefs are the filtering processes that cause some people to miss the opportunities others see.

Do your beliefs support success or are they holding you back? Monitor your self-talk. When you think about goals or mentally rehearse conversations with others, are the words positive and encouraging, or critical – of you, the situation or others?

Here’s a quick way to test this out. Pick someone you are having a conflict with. For the next week, whenever you think about this person, make a point of switching your internal dialogue. Imagine this person giving you positive feedback and hear yourself appreciating them in return. Use this before sensitive meetings. We call it ‘acting as if’ and the results can be amazing.

For beliefs about self-concept and beliefs limiting your performance Innergize offers the Breakthrough Coaching process.

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Making 2010 your best year yet

There is still time.  So what has to happen?  The last post focused on recognizing  hidden opportunities. This one follows up with a thought provoking question.  Questions can be a powerful tool for activating your internal GPS, your Global Positioning System for achieving success.

• The first question sets your destination. 
• The rest lock-in the most direct path, providing detailed directions,
• and just like using the GPS in your vehicle, questions provide ongoing feedback, a way of checking and adjusting your course from time to time.

So the question is …
What has to happen for 2010 to be your best year yet?

When was the last time you asked yourself a question like that and then thought deeply about your answer?

We may set goals, measure certain activities, even block time for specific tasks. Yet few of us take the time for deep thought about what it will take to get there. (Deep thought is the hallmark of experts.)

If you can, take a minute now and think about how you would answer the question. What comes to mind?  Write your answer down. Seeing it on paper is often an easier way of discovering the deeper meaning behind your words.

• Is what has to happen something you’ll do, an activity or behaviour?
• Is it a feeling or quality, like having more confidence, more energy or less stress?
• Is there a hidden belief in what you wrote? About yourself, the people in your life or your business environment?
• Is what has to happen within your own control? Something you can ‘do, or not do’ as Yoda would say.
• If not, can you break it into smaller bites or contributing elements that you can control.
• When and where will this be happening? How often? Is it something you’ll do every day? Once or twice a week? Monthly?

When you think about it logically and rationally, you probably already have the knowledge, skills and experience required. You know what to do and how to do it, right? And you may even know people who’ve achieved the results you want with less knowledge, fewer skills?

So … what are your sticking points?
What could possibly prevent you from doing what you know?

• Distractions, lack of focus?
• Lack of confidence during critical activities?
• Competing priorities and time pressures?
• Feeling overwhelmed?

‘Sticking points’ whatever you call them, drain your energy.

It’s like driving with one foot on the accelerator and one foot on the brake.  It can feel like you’re spinning your wheels, working longer and harder just to stay in place.

So the question is, what can you do starting now, that will begin moving you through those sticking points and towards your best year yet?

You can clear some sticking points using conscious, logical left brain thinking. For more see the note below.1

What about your deeper power?
There is another option, a quicker and some would say easier way of clear sticking points – by harnessing the power of your unconscious mind and right brain processing.

It’s also more fun. Because your unconscious mind is a wizard at handling competing priorities, reducing stress and handling hot button situations that can hijack your emotions and behaviour.

So if the idea of harnessing the power of your own mind sounds interesting, check out the NLP trainers in your area or look for someone offering Performance Breakthrough Coaching process. 

1 Neuroscience has demonstrated that as much as 95% of our decisions, our emotions and what we do, is controlled by the unconscious mind,  that we simply use our conscious mind to justify decisions made outside of conscious awareness.

A thought from that perennial font of wisdom …
“The road to success is dotted with many tempting parking places.” Anon

And one more …
“It has taken a long time for us to reach the understanding that much of what we do is not under conscious control, even though we thought that it was.”
Michael Gazzaniga, neuroscientist and author of Human: The Science Behind What Makes Us Different

Fuel Consumption And Competent Managers

Connecting the links
This started out to be simply two interesting links from Fast Company, but on reflection … perhaps there is a subtle connection? You decide.

Lower our reliance on oil and have our SUVs too?
Perhaps we can, if vehicle manufacturers would turn their creative energy towards mass producing innovations generated by people like Jonathan Godwin.  Where there’s a will, there’s a way … so what can we as consumers do to assist Detroit and others to discover the will? Interesting thought.

Motorhead Messiah by Clive Thompson
http://trax.fastcompany.com/k/w/mailman/fasttake/20071107/motorhead   

Management behaviours you don’t want to see
This one is worth reading even if you are the manager, since we all self-manage to some extent.  And perhaps discover connections. 

‘Ten Signs of Incompetent Managers’ by Margaret Heffernan
http://trax.fastcompany.com/k/w/mailman/fasttake/20071107/managers

My seven favorites follow, but why not check out Heffernan’s list for yourself.

A bias against action – no action also means no feedback about what will move your forward
Secrecy  – sure way to drain the power and passion from a Vision
Love of procedure – see previous post and think balance
Preference for weak candidates – leaders hand pick teams for excellence 
Focus on small tasks – what are they avoiding and why
Allergy to deadlines – energy and excitement comes from taking responsibility for meeting commitments and achieving goals
Addiction to consultants – avoid the dependency trap by ensuring your own people have time to absorb new skills   

Mental Filters, Unconscious Blind Spots And Motivation

Last week during a sales workshop on influencing motivation, the importance of beliefs came up. As it usually does. Because beliefs play a major role in how we perceive and make mental maps of our experience.  

The cliché ‘I’ll believe it when I see it’ should actually be reversed!  ‘You’ll see it when you believe it!’
 

Synchronicity being what it is, Fast Company (a favorite business magazine) sent out a fast fact link on the same subject, same day.  I shared it with the workshop participants and thought you might enjoy it too. 

The Seeing/Believing Gap | by Marcia L. Conner
What you see may be only a fraction of what’s there. To
learn more, look beyond what you expect.
http://trax.fastcompany.com/k/w/mailman/fasttake/20071010/seebelieve

On a similar note, here’s a quote attributed to Buddha on the subject of judgmental thinking: “There is nothing to judge because perception can only see illusion. Perception is always partial and limited to arbitrary context.”
 

Why Non-verbal Communications Are Critical In Sales

Just finished writing a promotional article for Foran Financial Institute.  Foran provides excellent exam preparation courses for financial services professionals as well as hosting Innergize workshops on accelerated learning and communications.  The article happened to be on influencing motivation—techniques for sales and marketing.  And it reminded me how much we risk when we take take non-verbal communications for granted. 

Take a challenge
Ask your sales people to rate their skill with non-verbal communications.  Have them use a scale of 1 to 10, where 10 is excellent and 1 is ‘you want me to rate what?’  I can almost guarantee you’ll get nothing lower than 7 as an answer.  It’s way too easy to over simplify, assuming that because we earn our living selling that means we must be excellent in all forms of communications.  

During workshops, sales people may even be tempted to brush off the practice exercises for non-verbals “because we already know that.” Yet, like everything else we choose to practice or not, there is a risk and a reward.  

The following insights on consumer behaviour while not new news, are worth considering if you’re working in sales.  And my belief is that we all sell whether we like it or not, products, services, or simply our ideas.

Grounded in Research
First, remember that decisions are based on feelings and then justified with rational conscious thought. And neuroscience suggests that up to 95% of our emotions, decisions and behaviour are a result of unconscious processing.

Three things you may not have considered

1. When asked about product choices, if people don’t know consciously, they will make up salient, plausible and socially acceptable reasons for what they do. (1) In other words, customers will tell you what they think they should want, based on social influences. (A tendency that has led to some costly miss-takes in consumer research.)
2. While features and benefits supply the rational reasons to justify a decision once it is made, the unconscious sensory elements of an experience have far greater influence (positive or negative) on emotions, buying decisions and loyalty. (1)
3. Non-verbal cues and linguistic markers provide the most accurate information about what people want and intend to do, because they are largely unconscious.(2)

Unlocking unconscious communication 
Three skills worth learning:

• How to dig deeper for the real reasons people will buy.
• How to use specific process words and other non-verbal behaviour to communicate your value.  
• How to read the critical non-verbal cues that reveal more than customers can or will tell you. 

Learn more about unlocking unconscious and non-verbal communications. 

(1) J. Le Doux, Center for Neural Science, NYU, 1998.
(2) J. Kagan, Harvard Mind: Brain: Behaviour Initiative, 2002

A Quick Note: For Unconscious Mind Fans

If you’re already certified in NLP, you’re aware of the role the unconscious mind plays in running your emotions, decisions and behaviour.  So you may enjoy the interesting tidbits of new research I found at http://nationaladd.blogspot.com/ in the August 26, 2007 posting.  Priming the unconscious is a facinating subject, especially for those working in sales. We prime our customers’ minds in so many ways and not always in the direction we’d like.