You’re either on the bus or off the bus

Kind of like the Yoda quote ‘do or do not there is no try’ or like ‘you can’t be a little pregnant’.

That doesn’t mean we are stuck where we are and can never change.  Grace Slick sings in the ‘Crown of Creation’ “life is change, how it differs from the rocks.  I’ve been this way to often for my liking”.  Buckaroo Bonsai put it this way “Wherever you go, there you are”. So ‘the more things change, the more they stay the same’.

What is the point of all this circumlocution?  I am profound?  Am I a buffoon?  Am I trying to be funny?  Am I trying to make a point?

All of the above.

Words can be used to make the point on either side of any argument.  Haste makes waste but A stitch in time saves nine.

Embrace paradox.  Keep moving.  Mind the Gap.  Pay attention.  That means attention is something of value.  It is a medium of exchange.  What we focus on, we become.  The bible says ‘as a man thinketh, in his heart he becomes’.  Punctuation is key to that sentence.  Without the comma, it means what we hold in our heart is what we become, as though we have a hidden agenda.  With the comma it means that what we hold in our mind programs what we feel.  It gives us the key to manifesting through programming our consciousness.

If you want to read another perspective, here is a blog I found while looking for a graphic for today’s post that stimulated more thought on the topic.  Enjoy

Mind the Gap: How to Clear Mind Chatter

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Beyond IQ: 5 Ways To Reframe Success And Smarts | Co.Create: Creativity \ Culture \ Commerce

Beyond IQ: 5 Ways To Reframe Success And Smarts | Co.Create: Creativity \ Culture \ Commerce.

 

This echoes some of the concepts we have been talking about, including reframing and changing negative self talk.

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Using Your Brain for a Change

Credit for today’s post title goes to a great book of the same title by NLP pioneer Richard Bandler.  Here’s a link to Amazon.  I get nothing for the referral.  Check it out because it’s good.

So we left off yesterday on the concept of hacking our consciousness.  A lot of what I talk about regularly and can be found in earlier posts leads up to this discussion.  Baseball players in a batting slump love to watch tape of themselves.  The one’s who get out of their slumps the fastest – are the ones who spend time watching tape of former success, not the ones endlessly analyzing their current failure.

The most powerful tool we have in creating what we want is our mind.  The most powerful obstacle we have in creating what we want is our mind.

Engaged consciously and actively with constant review, editing and updating of our pictures, vision, envisioned outcomes, using affirmations, treasure maps and a thousand other forward looking tools to fully mobilize our creative energy toward the things we want. Editing our code through imagination; our mind is limitless in its power to support our manifestation.  Left festering unconsciously, our negative fantasies, self doubt, counterproductive self talk are pulling us away from our goals like my vector graphic examples from last week.

Remember the quote from WH Murray.  To paraphrase ‘once we commit ourselves, all manner of unforeseen support comes forward’.  Our commitment and envisioning when persisted in, reprograms us.  It’s not magic thinking, ‘oh if I wish hard enough, I’ll get it’  It is that when our vision reprograms our consciousness we see and interact with our environment differently.  Unforeseen, means it was there all along.  It’s just that lining ourselves up consciously without desired outcomes opens up new doors in our perception.

Here’s a way to test this.  Take a small goal of yours.  Something like I want to lose 2 pounds or I want to paint my room or I want to have a romantic evening with my significant other.  Mock up in your creative imagination everything you can about the successful completed state.  Not the steps.  The end.  What does it look, feel, smell, taste and sound like.  Engage every sense fully.  Where are you, what do you look like, who is with you, what are they saying, what are you saying (all positives), If there isn’t a natural smell (like paint or wine or mineral oil) add your favorite smell just to make it richer (if you’re envisioning losing two pounds, don’t pick a food smell).  Imaging how you will feel when it’s completely done to your highest possible expectation.  See yourself pumping your fist in the air or opening your arms wide with your heart open.  Feel appreciation and celebration for yourself.

Do this every day for at least a week, but it might take up to 30 days depending on the goal and the unconscious cobwebs that have to be swept clear.  You don’t have to do anything else, except take the steps that ‘appear’ toward the goal.

If you take on the challenge.  Please post your progress in the comments section.  People get psyched from sharing success.

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Nobody Gets a Lifetime Rehearsal

Nod to the Indigo Girls for today’s post headline.

I was looking at the definition of Practice today:

Practice – Definition and More from the Free Merriam-Webster Dictionary.

One of the synonyms of the noun form is “dry run”.  So are we Doing? Preparing? Both? One of the things I learned from Productivity Practice is that the brain can’t distinguish between are really well mocked up imagining of an outcome and the physical action.  Sports trainers know this.  Top athletes spend large portions of the training schedule ‘imaging in’ the successful result (crossing the finish line, sinking the put, serving an ace) because those imaging literally change the physiology.  I wrote last week about our limiting beliefs.  Our self talk is programming us all the time.  Let’s program ourselves for the outcomes we want.

When I was in college a good friend took the EST training and came home with a little book, attributed to Werner Erhard, called Up the Ass with Aphorisms.  If I remember correctly, each page a quote.  One really stuck with me. I may be paraphrasing but it went “If you’ve got it, you chose it!”.  Wow, that gave me a lot of power.  Do I complain or do I look at what my choices have been.  If I say there I things I want and I don’t have them, how have I not ‘chosen’ them.  Conversely, how have I created the things I say I don’t want through my choices?

So if consciousness is our operating system, how do we hack it to get the things we really want and not just ‘get what we get’ through unconscious and default programming?

More tomorrow.

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No Rights Reserved

Intellectual property rights, especially in the digital age, are certainly a multi-faceted issue.  Questions like; what is intangible property?; what is fair use?; what is the fair value of something that can be infinitely copied and linked?; how do I protect my rights?; which rights do I want to protect and which to I want to leave unprotected?  Art, for instance, often derives its value from scarcity.  Artists who work in etching or lithography number their prints.  How do digital artists ensure their market that the product they offer is scarce, unique and hence of value.  Photographers who publish on the web regularly embed watermarks in the samples they post to prevent copying.  Musicians rely on Digital Rights Management schemes to protect their intellectual property.

When we create original material we expect to retain any commercial value if the material is sold, licensed, reproduced, etc. As a blogger the value I am creating through my writing has more than one parameter.  There is the content itself and then there is the forum for discussion with an engage audience of readers.  But the reader today is not in a consumer only role.  When you comment on , reblog, cross link to my content, you are a creator as well.  Who owns the interactions?  If I write a book from my blog content, how will I compensate you if your comments add to my thought process and enhance the value of my product?  I never got any compensation for the comments I made in class in college, although I know for a fact that my professor ended up incorporating some of my ideas in one of his books.

I have no expectation that the audience should pay for my writing, but I do wish to retain the rights to my original thoughts, images, concepts and so forth.  What I am really building, in a way, is my brand.  I will be of value and ultimately there may be some form of remuneration in the form of paid writing, speaking, coaching, training and consulting engagements.  I share my ideas freely because in doing so I increase the profile and visibility of my ideas.  In a way I increase their liquidity.  They are an asset to be sure, but not if they are locked away.  I can only really increase their value, and my value by extension, by increasing the number of people who access them and share them with others.

But not if in sharing with others, those people profit off my ideas without any benefit to me.  And here is the dilemma.  What is the point of diminishing returns on creative content freely distributed on the web or other media?  At what point have I stopped building my brand and begun giving away the store?  I’d love to hear your opinion.

What about non-commercial use?  Notice at the bottom right hand corner of the page, I grant non-commercial rights to you through the Creative Commons.  Information wants to be free, and frictionless, as long as that is a two way trust.

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Blazing new Frontiers

I was thinking this morning about how I admire people who light out on their own and build something new.  That doesn’t have to be inventing the geodesic dome (but I did watch a YouTube video on Buckminster Fuller).  It could be opening a local wellness/yoga studio or starting an internet radio network.  As I was, I was reflecting on the myth of american ingenuity and entrepreneurialism.  I say myth, not as a pejorative, but in the more classical sense of a story that allegorical, perhaps involving heroes and/or gods, and which is often accurate in encapsulating the culture and worldview of a particular people at a particular time.

So where did the myth of the american trailblazer come from.  It came from a time in our history when most of american ‘civilization’ was on our eastern coast and everything west of the Mississippi River was Frontier.  Actually in colonial time that frontier was western Pennsylvania and it kept moving west as the territories became states.  Beyond the frontier boundary, a different set of laws existed.  A person could go west and shed the restrictions of the established and make it up for themselves.  That of course was a myth inside the myth, but the point is that what was unique about 18th and early 19th century America is that in a tangible sense, if you weren’t making it in Virginia, or Georgia or Maine and later Ohio or Minnesota, you just picked and moved ‘further out’.  It just took guts and hard work and a lot of luck, but you could remake yourself in the New Frontier.

Are the New Frontiers gone.  In terms of physical geography, probably.  I think the Dot Com boom and bust was another version of that cycle playing out in cyberspace rather than geo-space.  In terms of psychography, the frontiers are infinite.  We can imagine anything and create a pretty large subset of what we can imagine.  It just takes the same qualities of guts, hard work and a lot of luck. Myths tend to gloss over the mis-deeds of the heroes.  They tend to glorify attributes that may actually be apocryphal.  They still have the opportunity to teach us about ourselves.  What do I have to summon from within myself, of the wild frontiersman, to succeed in the new territories toward which I embark?  What skills, beliefs, attitudes?  What origin stories?  What resources do I need to muster?  Who will be in my traveling party?  How will I know the destination when I find it?  What maps do I have?  Who can lead the expedition?  What scouting needs to be done?

I might not ever move my body outside a conference room, but can I lead myself and my team to a new frontier?

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Happy Birthday

Special post to honor my partner, in life, Mariza.

Creating in this world is much easier when those closest to us are also our best coaches, collaborators and cheerleaders. When someone believes in us so strongly that it strengthens our belief in ourselves.

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People will Come!

People will most definitely come.

You put your dream out there! You trust it even when there are naysayers and bill collectors. Prepare your inner intention, line up your outer action and people will come!

I have been seeing this show up with such power and frequency in my own life and practice lately.

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Posted in Leadership, personal productivity, Quotes

Quote for June 6th

I think both are equally valuable. The distinction is important so that we have our focus at the right level of engagement based on our role at the moment and the outcomes to which we are committed.

There are too many examples of visionaries who were unable to execute and of brilliant tacticians who failed when elevated to leadership.

caroldougherty's avatarsimplifypersonalproductivity

Leadership is working with goals and vision; management is working with objectives.
Russel Honore

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Turning Negative to Positive – Reframe step by step

If you got a chance to read my post from yesterday, I talked about the limiting beliefs and images we hold and the effect on achieving our goals.

Today I want to give you a tangible step by step process, one you can lead yourself through, to coach you past your limiting beliefs and put your positive self-image to work for you.

Let’s use my example of being averse to selling myself because of the negative association I have with sales and salespeople.  The reason this is a block because my image of myself and my image of a salesperson are at odds with each other.  I am resisting sales because it violates some of my core values.  But does it really.  Of course not.  I can sell and market my services in a way that is in alignment with my core values.  What I have to do is reframe my image of sales.  I have replace the negative associations I have with aspects of my self-image so that they are no longer out of alignments.  How.  First I make a list of all the negatives I associate with sales, then a list of my values.  Finally I make of list of how I can act when selling that reflects my core values and makes the prospect a positive one.  I have run through it below.

sales reframe example

This is a piece of self coaching you can lead yourself through anytime you feel stuck on a project or goal and need to weed out the hidden negatives and use a reframe to create positives.

I have to make a full disclosure that after I walked myself through process yesterday, I got a call from a recruiter who asked me if I was interested in a sales position for a training and development consulting firm. It amazing how quickly the universe responds when we make the shift inside ourselves.

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