WORD ON WORK - WEEK 2
Quotes Of The Day
10 SUCCESS PRINCIPLES
These 10 success principles are rules if you like to change your reality. The coaching practise behind these principles look at how an individual’s thoughts, feelings, and actions produce the results they get right now. Coaching is used to reach peak performance, overcoming phobias, and building unstoppable confidence to name a few of its endless applications. Understanding these principles can change how you live every second because it is based on the mental software that runs your brain.
Based on coaching principles, we have put together a set of rules we call the 10 Success Principles. They are beliefs that govern how we coach. The presuppositions give you the foundation to understand how you perceive the world and presents you with the opportunity to change your reality. It is not that the presuppositions have been proven, but rather they give us opportunities and freedom to produce for effective living and better communication.
Take the time to think of how these principles can be applied to your life to change your reality and thus your ultimate outcomes and success.
10 Steps to Harness Your Hero |
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Boundary Conditions - Push Past Your Current Limits: Impossible is really 'I'm Possible'!
Our boundary conditions are the conscious limits of our thinking - the edge of our known world. In other words, it refers to the edge of our comfort zone, or the edge of what is familiar.
Remember when you where first given the challenge to tie a knot in the rope without letting go of either end or the challenge of balancing 10 nails on top of the one? You all thought that it couldn't be done until you learnt how it could.... then all of a sudden with the new knowledge and understanding, the impossible became possible.
It is only beyond what we know that we will be able to find what we don’t know.
Sounds obvious, but think about it. Every result we get in our lives is based on what we know.
If we knew how to have a close loving and outstanding relationship with ten close friends, we would create that. But if at the moment we only know how to create 1 close relationship, that is what we will have.
We don’t because it is outside what we know. It is outside our boundary conditions.
To create lasting transformation in any area of our life involves us finding ways to go beyond what we know, to what is unknown. It is only in the unknown that the transformation we desire is available. We must go beyond the boundary conditions of our thinking.
Everything known is known.
Everything unknown is where the magic is.
Remember the 3 stages: In the first level we are comfortable, not challenged and know where we are at. Problems seem large as the answers are either in what we know we don’t know, or in the area of what we don’t know we don’t know. We can’t move the problem into our comfort zone to make it manageable. We must expand our thinking – our boundary conditions – so that what was outside of our realm of possibilities is now inside them.
Once we achieve this, the problem is now inside our comfort zone and manageable.
So how do we move the boundary conditions of our thinking?
EXPANDING OUR THOUGHTS BEYOND THE BOUNDARY CONDITIONS OF OUR THINKING IS ABOUT:
Consider the difference between:
“Why does this sort of thing always happen to me?” or
“What can I learn from this so it will never happen to me again?”
Good questions to use are:
What will happen if you x?
What wont happen if you x?
What will happen if you don’t x? What wont happen if you don’t x?
These questions should be asked in this order and are called Cartesian Questions.
Remember when you where first given the challenge to tie a knot in the rope without letting go of either end or the challenge of balancing 10 nails on top of the one? You all thought that it couldn't be done until you learnt how it could.... then all of a sudden with the new knowledge and understanding, the impossible became possible.
It is only beyond what we know that we will be able to find what we don’t know.
Sounds obvious, but think about it. Every result we get in our lives is based on what we know.
If we knew how to have a close loving and outstanding relationship with ten close friends, we would create that. But if at the moment we only know how to create 1 close relationship, that is what we will have.
We don’t because it is outside what we know. It is outside our boundary conditions.
To create lasting transformation in any area of our life involves us finding ways to go beyond what we know, to what is unknown. It is only in the unknown that the transformation we desire is available. We must go beyond the boundary conditions of our thinking.
Everything known is known.
Everything unknown is where the magic is.
Remember the 3 stages: In the first level we are comfortable, not challenged and know where we are at. Problems seem large as the answers are either in what we know we don’t know, or in the area of what we don’t know we don’t know. We can’t move the problem into our comfort zone to make it manageable. We must expand our thinking – our boundary conditions – so that what was outside of our realm of possibilities is now inside them.
Once we achieve this, the problem is now inside our comfort zone and manageable.
So how do we move the boundary conditions of our thinking?
EXPANDING OUR THOUGHTS BEYOND THE BOUNDARY CONDITIONS OF OUR THINKING IS ABOUT:
- Being self-aware of when we are using old thinking to deal with new and unfamiliar situations.
- Asking different questions that focus less on the problem and more on what we need to learn to be able to manage it.
- Learning that courage can only come through action, it does not arrive by mail or just turn up one day... we must act.
- Recognising that fear is normal, and that waiting for fear to disappear is waiting for the impossible... The fear is always there... but so is courage, and when we act, we feel courage.
Consider the difference between:
“Why does this sort of thing always happen to me?” or
“What can I learn from this so it will never happen to me again?”
Good questions to use are:
What will happen if you x?
What wont happen if you x?
What will happen if you don’t x? What wont happen if you don’t x?
These questions should be asked in this order and are called Cartesian Questions.
Cause and Effect: Living Above The Line: Your either a 'Victor' or a 'Victim'
The question to ask yourself is, “Which side of the equation are you on right now?” . Are you the type of person who is the cause of the things that happen in your life, or are you at the effect of things that happen to you?
And the next question is: “Which side is more empowering?” Is it more empowering to be at cause or to be at effect?
We are either at the effect side of the equation, or at the cause side. We are either causing something to happen or we are experiencing the effects. Even doing nothing is action.
It’s our choice!
We create everything through our actions or through our inactions.
We might want to know how we can possibly create everything that happens in our world. And the truth is, we don’t know. Perhaps this belief ‘cause and effect’ is not true?
Even if you don’t believe it’s true yet, act as if it is. Pretend. In NLP it’s called the “as if” frame. We act as if it is until it is. Regardless of whether our beliefs are true or not. They act as possibility filters. They determine what we allow ourselves to experience in our lives and what we will filter out as not possible.
For example, if someone believes they are at cause for anything in their life, even though they haven’t looked for a job and they spend all their time blaming others for their “bad luck”, they are going to experience a certain type of world. Compare this experience to someone who believes that they are at cause. They will find a way to work: They won’t blame, they will take responsibility. They will be proactive in changing the circumstances of their life.
People who go through life on the effect side of the equation have reasons. They will be able to tell you why they are not successful. “It was my ex-partners fault, my parents held me back, I didn’t get the breaks I deserved, the market, the school I went to, my boss...”
And maybe all of that is true. But the question I care about is: how satisfying is life going to be if you live like this? How much joy, courage, love, empowerment or resourcefulness can someone feel if they live with their stories...with their reasons why they can’t?
The only thing preventing you achieving what you want to achieve are the stories you tell yourself.
People who go through life on the cause side of the equation have results. Believing this gives us maximum power to create the life we want.
Remember the bubble activity? How many ways did we discover to make sure that the bubbles did not hit the floor? I think we stopped counting at 16..... When we first started the activity, you had trouble coming up with whether it could be done or not...... This goes to show there are always choices if we look for them.
Exercise:
Think of a time you have been at ‘effect’ in your life. It you had been at ‘cause’ what might have been different? (remember to be at cause is to take responsibility for all areas of your life.)
Tuning In - Integrity and Intent: The Reason We Do Things is as Important and Speaks as Loud as What We Are Doing or Saying.
Everything we do is about our intent. If we are “kinda” committed to our relationships, others will also be “kinda” committed. If you lack ability in your belief, etc, etc. You can imagine the rest. Everything we do, we need to do in a place of certainty. If we have doubts others will have doubts and respond in a like manner. If we come from a place of certainty about our abilities, others will follow that certainty about our abilities and others will adopt that certainty too and follow our lead.
If we see others as less than whole, then we are not seeing their true magnificence. Everyone has magnificence within them. If we can’t see it then we are not seeing others for their truth. Instead, we are seeing them for what they fear and believe they lack.
Within each of us is everything we need: all the resources, all the possibilities, all the love and all the courage - everything we need. To see others as less than that is to buy their limiting beliefs.
Often we are not paying attention to the skills, gifts and every day miracles and goodness that is in front of us. Remember the activity we did to change 5 things about how we looked and see if our partners could work out what we had changed. For people who knew each other well, this was easy, not so easy if you haven't practised this skill.
When you combine focus, integrity (the quality of being honest and having strong moral principles) and intent (purpose or reason for doing) you have everything you need to form a strong character and be all that you can be.
There Is No Such Thing As Failure, Only Feedback!
When you embrace this principle or belief you become a learning machine. Having the perception that you cannot experience failure allows you far more freedom to be willing to play and to explore and learn and grow.
Everything that happens – including the results we don’t want – is simply feedback. It is telling us we can adjust our choices, our behaviour or our beliefs to get a different type of feedback.
If we choose, we can develop the behavioural flexibility to keep adjusting what we do and what we choose, until we get the results we want, because we don’t take feedback personally.
Remember when we had one person make a basic drawing and then she had to give instructions to the rest of the group, so that they could draw the same thing that she had. She adjusted as she explained things and as she noticed the results of her instructions she started to change the way she gave her instructions. The feedback was already happening. We have to allow ourselves the opportunity of not getting it right the first time to learn.
My mentor told me the more I could fail and the quicker I could do it, the closer to success I would get. I didn't get this at the time, but I have learnt to embrace this principle and have found it to be true.
Welcome feedback as an opportunity to learn more about ourselves and about our world.
The Map is Not The Territory: No two people have the same experience or share the same reality.
Remember our Swamp Maze? As two teams we had to work together to find our way out of the swamp. Wasn't interesting how many times eve though we had seen the path walked, we would forget (delete that information) and go someone else.
This principle tells us that no matter how accurate we believe we are being, we cannot represent the world accurately to ourselves. The best map of Adelaide can only ever be a map - it cannot be the city itself. We can only ever re- represent the world to ourselves based on our own maps of reality, rather than reality itself.
Your thoughts and the thoughts of your friend simply represent reality. They could never be reality itself. Everything is perception.
Your map of the world will be unique to your values, your attitudes, your beliefs, your experiences and your stories. No two maps are the same. Even when we think we are on the ‘same page’ we are still talking about our own unique map.
We cannot make assumptions about what others believe simply because we know what we believe. We cannot assume others like something because we do.
We can’t ‘logic’ someone to change his or her map. We can’t simply see a flaw in someone’s map and point it out and expect them to change. We must treat their map with respect because on some level, their map is working for them. It might keep them safe from hurt, or keep them feeling happy or comfortable. Whatever it gives them it means they will continue with that map regardless of its flaws.
Think about someone who is constantly late to school. They know logically they need to be on time. Yet they continue to be late, day after day. Logic isn’t working. If we get curious about how being late is working for them, we learn much about their map.
If we were late we could ask ourselves, “How is this working for me?” You might discover that whenever you are on time, a teacher gives you too much work, or you hit more traffic coming in, or you believe that people who are on time are losers – and so it goes. The possibilities are as endless as there are people on the planet.
It doesn’t matter what we think of other people's beliefs, or their map. What matters is if that map of the world is working for them. We’ve discovered it is so, now we discover what it is costing them. Same applies for ourselves: Once we fully understand our map around a particular thing we can examine what it is costing us.
We might ask ourselves “What is this choice costing me?” or “What is this choice preventing me from doing?” You might answer that it costs you completing your SACE, a sense of being able to relax, respect, connection with school mates – again the list goes on.
When we look at this success principle, we learn that we have around two million bits of information coming at us every second. Yet we can process only 132 bits, or 7 plus or minis 2 chunks of information. This means that we are constantly deleting, distorting and generalising this information so we can allow in what we consider relevant and leave out what we consider irrelevant.
What we leave in and what we leave out depends on our map of the world.
If we believe the world is a harsh place and people are mean, we will delete evidence of kindness as irrelevant or “not really counting” and we will distort kindness as, “they didn’t mean it” or, “they were just saying that”, or “they wanted something from me.” And we will generalise evidence of hurt as, “All people are like that.”
We are constantly deleting, distorting and generalising to make sense of our world. The question is, “Is what we are leaving out, changing and generalising about working for us?”
Should we be changing what we “filter” out? To get the results we want, do we need to change our map?
Everyone is doing this all the time. We can’t possibly filter in everything all the time or we would be unable to function. We would be absolutely overwhelmed by the amount of information coming at our senses. We filter to protect ourselves, yet sometimes what we filter is what we need.
In the example above, someone thought the world was harsh and people were mean. They filtered the information coming at them to support this belief. What if they changed their belief to, “People are kind and compassionate and have good intentions”? Do you think it would change how they experience their world? Do your think it would alter their map?
Now, they would delete evidence of people not being kind, or distort acts of unkindness to, “that’s not like them” or, “They must be having a bad day” or, “Maybe they didn’t’ know what they said,” and they would generalise an act of kindness to be evidence that they are always kind.
Do you see how powerful this then can be in your life? We are deleters, distorters and generalisers.
EXERCISE:
Recall an event that you really enjoyed or a significant time that you remember well. Discuss this event with another person who was present at the time. How does their memory of the event differ from yours?
This principle tells us that no matter how accurate we believe we are being, we cannot represent the world accurately to ourselves. The best map of Adelaide can only ever be a map - it cannot be the city itself. We can only ever re- represent the world to ourselves based on our own maps of reality, rather than reality itself.
Your thoughts and the thoughts of your friend simply represent reality. They could never be reality itself. Everything is perception.
Your map of the world will be unique to your values, your attitudes, your beliefs, your experiences and your stories. No two maps are the same. Even when we think we are on the ‘same page’ we are still talking about our own unique map.
We cannot make assumptions about what others believe simply because we know what we believe. We cannot assume others like something because we do.
We can’t ‘logic’ someone to change his or her map. We can’t simply see a flaw in someone’s map and point it out and expect them to change. We must treat their map with respect because on some level, their map is working for them. It might keep them safe from hurt, or keep them feeling happy or comfortable. Whatever it gives them it means they will continue with that map regardless of its flaws.
Think about someone who is constantly late to school. They know logically they need to be on time. Yet they continue to be late, day after day. Logic isn’t working. If we get curious about how being late is working for them, we learn much about their map.
If we were late we could ask ourselves, “How is this working for me?” You might discover that whenever you are on time, a teacher gives you too much work, or you hit more traffic coming in, or you believe that people who are on time are losers – and so it goes. The possibilities are as endless as there are people on the planet.
It doesn’t matter what we think of other people's beliefs, or their map. What matters is if that map of the world is working for them. We’ve discovered it is so, now we discover what it is costing them. Same applies for ourselves: Once we fully understand our map around a particular thing we can examine what it is costing us.
We might ask ourselves “What is this choice costing me?” or “What is this choice preventing me from doing?” You might answer that it costs you completing your SACE, a sense of being able to relax, respect, connection with school mates – again the list goes on.
When we look at this success principle, we learn that we have around two million bits of information coming at us every second. Yet we can process only 132 bits, or 7 plus or minis 2 chunks of information. This means that we are constantly deleting, distorting and generalising this information so we can allow in what we consider relevant and leave out what we consider irrelevant.
What we leave in and what we leave out depends on our map of the world.
If we believe the world is a harsh place and people are mean, we will delete evidence of kindness as irrelevant or “not really counting” and we will distort kindness as, “they didn’t mean it” or, “they were just saying that”, or “they wanted something from me.” And we will generalise evidence of hurt as, “All people are like that.”
We are constantly deleting, distorting and generalising to make sense of our world. The question is, “Is what we are leaving out, changing and generalising about working for us?”
Should we be changing what we “filter” out? To get the results we want, do we need to change our map?
Everyone is doing this all the time. We can’t possibly filter in everything all the time or we would be unable to function. We would be absolutely overwhelmed by the amount of information coming at our senses. We filter to protect ourselves, yet sometimes what we filter is what we need.
In the example above, someone thought the world was harsh and people were mean. They filtered the information coming at them to support this belief. What if they changed their belief to, “People are kind and compassionate and have good intentions”? Do you think it would change how they experience their world? Do your think it would alter their map?
Now, they would delete evidence of people not being kind, or distort acts of unkindness to, “that’s not like them” or, “They must be having a bad day” or, “Maybe they didn’t’ know what they said,” and they would generalise an act of kindness to be evidence that they are always kind.
Do you see how powerful this then can be in your life? We are deleters, distorters and generalisers.
EXERCISE:
Recall an event that you really enjoyed or a significant time that you remember well. Discuss this event with another person who was present at the time. How does their memory of the event differ from yours?
Curiosity is Key - Curiosity Didn't Kill the Cat: Overfeeding it did!
'We Get More When We Explore'
The key to successful relationships and indeed anything in life is to cultivate an open mind about how we and others will create change and what the change will look and feel like.
Curiosity is about being willing to question the way things are and then find new ways and solutions.
Ask questions like:
“I wonder.....”
“What do you think?”
"What would happen if?"
The activity we used for this success principle was the helium stick. To your credit, no one got angry or started accusing people of lifting the stick, which is what we often see happen. Instead you worked together to try and work out what was going on. Not everything is as it first may seem and exploring all things with an open mind is the answer to a much happier and more successful life.
Curiosity is about being willing to question the way things are and then find new ways and solutions.
Ask questions like:
“I wonder.....”
“What do you think?”
"What would happen if?"
The activity we used for this success principle was the helium stick. To your credit, no one got angry or started accusing people of lifting the stick, which is what we often see happen. Instead you worked together to try and work out what was going on. Not everything is as it first may seem and exploring all things with an open mind is the answer to a much happier and more successful life.
The Meaning Of Your Communication Is The Response You Get:
We can't assume because we have said something,
that it has been received the way we meant it to be.
It doesn’t matter what you meant to say, the meaning comes from how the listener hears and responds to it. Which also means that your intentions, good or not, are beside the point.
When people first read this they often say: wait, what? – Isn’t communication a two-way street? Aren’t both people responsible? Isn’t it a 50/50 deal?
Well, not really and here is the reason why. You are 100 percent responsible for getting your meaning across in the way you want it to be understood.
The good news is, if each person takes 100 percent of the responsibility for their communication, you could have as much as 200 percent effort going into clear communication! And even if the other person, doesn’t know or embrace this concept, and they think they’re just responsible for 50 percent, you still have 150 percent effort in place.
When you embrace this principle, you are committing to listening to the response and asking for feedback to clarify your communication.
This creates an opportunity for someone to really get you, for you to be truly understood–which can be difficult with this imprecise language of ours.
So now you thinking – But I can’t control anyone’s response! That’s true, and if you want to convey a particular idea, whether it’s a complicated plan, or your feelings for someone, it’s important for you to communicate in a way that the other person can hear and understand you.
You can pay attention to how he or she processes information. You can ask for feedback.
Remember the activity where I drew a simple shape and then got one class mate to have their back to the room and give directions to the other students to form that shape? The shapes can get a bit wonky if the instructions aren't given in a way that the person receiving them can fully understand. This activity is hard, because we don't allow questions to be asked. Asking good quality questions and getting feedback is key.
Persistence Not Perfection - Be the Best You Can Be: Say Yes and Work Out How.
The game of life is about excellence and not about perfection. Being the best means always looking for the next stretch or the next improvement: being the best you, you can be. Those who strive for perfection are actually striving for nothing as there is no such thing and therefore a lot of time is getting wasted on literally nothing.
EXERCISE:
What new things do you need to be aware of or to embrace as you go forward in your journey?
Remember our marshmallow and spaghetti structures? The aim of the game was to make the strongest structure possible. Getting many ideas and trying things out and being open to other ideas is the key to this activity. Always do your best, no matter what you are doing and then be happy with your best.
What We Focus On, Is What We Get:
Mindset = Experience
This principle goes to the heart of the results that we experience in our lives. What we focus on is what we find evidence of, to the exclusion of everything else. We can only experience what we search for, because everything else is outside of our experience.
Carl Jung believed that we can’t see anything outside of us that isn’t us. This means we don’t see things as they are, but as we are. So the external world that we see is through the filtering lens of our personality – of who we are. Two people can look upon the same world and see it differently, based on who they are, what they sort for, and what they expect to find.
If you look at the diagram of the torch and its beam in the above picture, notice it captures within its light what it is focused on. Everything outside of the beam is excluded. It can’t pick up what it isn’t focused on. Our lives and how we experience our world is the same thing. We will simply not be aware of things beyond our focus.
The next level of this is around fear and appreciation. If we focus on something and it causes us to feel fear, what we can’t experience is appreciation.
The two emotions are accessed in different parts of our brain. To focus on our fear is to exclude what we are capable of.
The solution is to focus on feeling appreciation. If we tap into what it is about the situation we can appreciate, then fear fades.
EXERCISE:
Give an example of a time when you focused on something bad happening and it happened?
Then
Give an example of a time when you focused on something good happening and it happened.
Remember our game of Chinese whispers? This principle can be why sometimes we hear something very different then what was being said; because that was what we were focused on hearing. Interesting don't you think?
The point of this principle is to focus on what you want and not on what you don't want.
The Adventure of a Lifetime - 'The Unknown': Embrace Uncertainty
“If you always do what you have always done, you will always get what you have always gotten.”
Be willing to venture into the unknown. Be willing to embrace uncertainty. It is the key to unlocking the future. Be certain about your willingness and ability to accept uncertainty.
Today we did a blindfold exercise and we got you to work in pairs where one person was blindfolded and the other person was leading them and we took you out the side door, through the carpark, thought NASC and back to the platform. You all felt out of your comfort zones, but no one got hurt, you trusted your partners to not lead you astray and you had a new experience.... Sometimes it is through going out side of your comfort zone that you have experiences that will change your life for the better.
The quality of your life is a direct reflection of the choices you make. BE, Do and Have everything you deserve.
Your choice = your success
Your choice = your success
REFLECTION
TO THINK ABOUT (AND FOCUS ON) THIS WEEK
This week, it is important to reflect on what skills, interests and strengths you currently have so that we can build on this foundation. Make sure if you haven't already that you have completed the student questionnaire and emailed it to me at: [email protected].
Please read through the success principles and take notes in your journal. Include in your journal any thing you don't understand and questions that you have for me.
Some questions I asked you to ponder and got you to write down.
1) What currently is your biggest challenge (or challenges)? It can be anything that is holding you back or not as good as you would like it to be. Examples of this might be health, be your ability to keep up with note taking, could be getting to sleep, could be finances.
2) What have you tried to do to overcome it? So for instance if financial was the challenge you have, have you done up a financial plan? Have you seen a financial counsellor? If your challenge is keeping up with school work, have you gone and spoken with your teachers? Have you put a study plan together? etc etc.
3) What are the top 3 actions you can take to improve where you are at with this situation?
4) Which Success Principle are you going to focus on this week? What can you do to work on it this week?
5) How are you like the bubbles? Are you finding that you are floating all over the place with out knowing where you are going? Do you find that you are being stopped before you have the opportunity to fly? If yes, then what do you feel is stopping you? Do you feel like you are going to burst? Do you feel relaxed and like you are floating through life? Something completely different?
Please read through the success principles and take notes in your journal. Include in your journal any thing you don't understand and questions that you have for me.
Some questions I asked you to ponder and got you to write down.
1) What currently is your biggest challenge (or challenges)? It can be anything that is holding you back or not as good as you would like it to be. Examples of this might be health, be your ability to keep up with note taking, could be getting to sleep, could be finances.
2) What have you tried to do to overcome it? So for instance if financial was the challenge you have, have you done up a financial plan? Have you seen a financial counsellor? If your challenge is keeping up with school work, have you gone and spoken with your teachers? Have you put a study plan together? etc etc.
3) What are the top 3 actions you can take to improve where you are at with this situation?
4) Which Success Principle are you going to focus on this week? What can you do to work on it this week?
5) How are you like the bubbles? Are you finding that you are floating all over the place with out knowing where you are going? Do you find that you are being stopped before you have the opportunity to fly? If yes, then what do you feel is stopping you? Do you feel like you are going to burst? Do you feel relaxed and like you are floating through life? Something completely different?