Praise & Chips, Giving is not just for Christmas...

What is Christmas really about?

PRESENTS!!! I hear my 5 year old daughter shout - and receiving them no doubt.

According to my very loose, non academic piece of research (which consists of just asking a load of people) tells me; if you ask an adult that same question their answer is also likely to be 'presents' - this time though - GIVING them.

There is no doubt that as a kid I just couldn't wait to open that present under the tree. Nowadays I am more excited about a great present I have bought someone.  I cant wait for them to open it and see the look on their face...  Giving is receiving.  Give something that is really appreciated and you receive more than any present could provide.

This was demonstrated by the actions of my 2 year old son at a birthday party. I was filming as he sat with the other kids eating their party tea.  He reached over to his neighbour's plate to pick up a chip when he had finished his own.  I thought I was going to have filmed evidence of daylight robbery.  He did something that caught me by surprise.  He lifted the chip off the plate and held it out to feed her.  A small, insignificant act of kindness.  (It didn't even cost him one of his own chips!!)

She gave him the biggest smile I have ever seen and he looked up to the camera and did the same.  In her he had a fan for life (if not certainly the rest of the party as she stuck to him like glue!)  He still talks to me about it today.  In that small act, at just 2 years old, he learnt more about how to engage with people AND feel good about yourself than anything I could ever teach him.  Giving is receiving.

The nice thing is - Giving doesn't have to cost a fortune.

Praise is something you can give.  Try giving someone a really specific, appropriate and timely piece of praise and see what it does for them.  More importantly, see what it does for you.  Just like giving a great gift - it feels wonderful.  Your esteem will grow, your influence will grow and your mark on the world will in some small way too.

Giving is not just for Christmas, its for life.

Ridiculed, Opposed... Pioneers Need a Little Resilience

Pioneers are few and far between.  Rosa Parks and the civil rights movement.  Steve Jobs combining beauty and technology.  Cliff Young running without sleep for days.

All of these, and more, had to endure what most pioneers have to put up with.  When they want to change the norm - to upset the status quo, others around them go through an interesting process.  The same could be said of any organisation or team going through change.  Think of a football club going through a 'transitional' period and changing the way they play.  Think of a business implementing a new system.  All change comes up against people who's view of the world is somehow threatened by it.

Change is often at first ridiculed.  People laugh and mock.  That will never work; It will never last; It will never catch on; Said with a smirk, a smile and a condescending tone.

When ridicule hasn't put the pioneer off, then nay-sayers turn to opposition - the extremity of which will depend on how seriously and significantly they believe this change will affect their world.  That opposition can even turn violent.

If the pioneer persists and their approach appears to pay dividends, people then start to accept that change as the norm.  Some come along more quickly than others - some refuse to ever reach the third stage, doggedly sticking to their guns (sometimes literally).

This short video highlights one (less extreme) example.  Roger Bannister ran the first sub 4 minute mile.  Listen out for the comment by the (very BBC sounding) commentator about half way through...  In order to do what many thought impossible, it required a 'pioneering' approach.  Bannister suffered ridicule and criticism for his training and racing methods.  His methods soon became accepted as the norm though.

Bannister's day in the wind and rain

Next time you are pushing the boundaries, be prepared for a bit of ribbing, then some opposition.  With a little resilience, soon you too will help others to accept it as the norm.

Is it our eyesight or is it our focus?

Sport can be a very interesting representation of life in a wider sense.

An old friend of mine once told me an interesting story of his long running battle with chipping from around the green in golf.

He was suffering from a total breakdown in his action once he came within 20 yards of the green itself, fluffing, thinning and duffing shots and this became a downward spiral that began to depress him whenever he even thought about the game.

I remember a round when he had chipped surprisingly well.  He was discussing it in the bar after and couldn’t put his finger upon why he felt more confident during the round.  That evening he discovered that he had been wearing the wrong glasses that day.  He usually wore a certain pair for golf but had forgotten them.  There was his answer.  He felt more confident because actually he could see the ball better with his other glasses.

Easy and logical.

Sometime later he was playing a round and chipping the ball beautifully.  One thing was strange though.  At the end of the round he discovered he was wearing his original glasses that had been causing him problems.  This came as a shock.

It appeared therefore that the equipment wasn’t at fault, just his confidence!

We can be fooled by our own potential; and often are.  When I began this business I left a ‘secure’ job.  One thing that had held me back for too long was the sense of security I had in my monthly wage.  Interestingly, that sense of security was misplaced.  If I hadn’t sold anything my job would have been under very real threat.  The money was my metaphorical pair of glasses.  Once removed, I realized it had only affected my perspective, not the actual facts.

We need to take those glasses off every now and then and realise that it isn’t our eyesight, it’s our focus that will help us realise our potential.

Perception or Reality? Is that even the right question?

I was running a session this week where the classic debate took place.  As it gathered pace, people focused upon some of the facts that are holding them back from achieving their true potential as a team.

I heard the classic comment 4 or 5 times from different tables around the room.  “Ah, but is that perception or the reality?”

I can understand this question in the context.  We were focusing upon how perceptions don’t always match the reality and can therefore lead to communication difficulties, inappropriate behaviour and misunderstandings.

The truth is, we always behave according to our perception of the reality so some would say the question doesn’t matter.  Whatever the reality is, it’s the perception of it that would need to change in order to drive a change in behaviour.  To do that we can either look at the same facts from a different angle (see Blog number 1 for the brain as a protractor) or we can change the facts in order to drive a different base point for the perception to form.

Either way; to shift behaviour we must shift perception.  As it’s behaviour that ultimately drives the reality, and perception drives behaviour, it’s the perception that therefore shapes that reality.

So maybe we should ask ourselves a better question.

Rather than 'is that perception or reality?'; perhaps the question should be – “how is my perception shaping that reality?”

It Is What It Is - It Was What It Was.

Walking up the 10th hole this week, I had a moment of clarity.  The 10th hole on the Carrick Course at Loch Lomond that is.  Perhaps one of the most spectacular views in all of golf (or so claims the blurb).  It truly is magnificent.. See the picture and you'll get an idea.

I had just received an email that was - I have to say - a tad frustrating.  My game had gone to shreds as a result as I was finding it difficult to concentrate.  Given that I spend most of my time developing people's self awareness, high performance thinking and a winning mindset, the most annoying thing about this was that I knew exactly what I was doing to myself.

I turned to my playing partner and expressed my frustration - explaining the situation to him.

"It is what it is"... I said to him in a genuine effort to put it into perspective.

Then it hit me..while the 'it' was there, it would remain.  I had to do something rather than just try to forget it.  'It is what it is' had to become 'it was what it was'.  Simply saying it differently shifted the issue in my mind.

To really overcome something, must we not (at least in some way) put it in the past?  Some facts are not great - that is plain.  We can live with them and battle their gnawing effects - or we can DO something and put them behind us properly - and in the process find a solution.

What will you DO to make 'It is what it is' - 'It was what it was'?

*In the end it turned out to be a misunderstanding.  Something that need not be worried about at all.  Isn't hindsight wonderful?  Indeed hindsight is only possible when something IS in the past - sound familiar?

Superstitions May Not Be So Suspicious.

Always put your left sock on first. Walk onto the pitch last.  These were just two superstitions that I used to swear by during my rugby playing days. 

People avoid walking under ladders, salute a single magpie or wear their lucky undergarments to name but a few. Some cast these off as quirks that have no relevance in the real world – that affect nothing and are therefore useless.  However, the opposite can be argued.

On a recent course a delegate revealed she had passed her driving test at the fourth attempt.  When I asked 'if you had failed it that fourth time instead of passing it, would you have retaken it a fifth time?'; she said 'of course she would, however, probably would have to move straight to the sixth attempt to pass because she has a thing against odd numbers.' (At least that's how I remember the conversation).  Luckily the room took it in the spirit it was intended and everyone had a good belly laugh, including her I might add.

My Grandmother truly believed that bad things happen in 3’s.  A statement I have heard regularly in the past.  If we think about this – although it may not be helpful, it may not be so illogical either. 

We have a filter in our brain that allows us to take in the information most relevant to us at any particular time.  This is why you notice a certain car drive past you on the road once you decide you are going to buy that model.  This is why you are able to ‘ignore’ all the other cars on the road to concentrate on the things that are important (such as potential hazards to avoid).  You filter things in and out according to your perceptions and beliefs.  After witnessing the first ‘bad thing’, my grandmother would spend the rest of the day focusing on finding the other two.

If someone sets a goal to run a marathon, they begin to notice runners out on the street.  Those runners were there before; they were just filtered out as being less important than something else at that time.

Superstitions work in the same way.  Someone wears their lucky pants for a big meeting, their mindset is just that little bit more positive about how their big meeting will go as a result.  They feel more confident and therefore stand a better chance of behaving more effectively.  Someone walks under a ladder, they spend the rest of the day focusing on any negative they see and attribute it to this arbitrary event (if that is what they believe happens as a result).  The same negatives may have happened anyway, but if we don’t focus on them they won’t define our day in the same way.

A superstition therefore DOES affect the outside world.  Through a shift in an individual’s focus and what they filter in and out, it drives different perceptions, emotions and therefore behaviour.  Our behaviour then affects the outside world - indeed it is the only way we do affect the outside world.

So superstitions aren’t so suspicious.  They are perfectly logical in the way they work – it’s just that we need to make them work for us rather than against us.

And yes - in case you're wondering, my Grandmother always completed the set in the end.

Pay Attention! It might just help your memory.

Incredible memory skills are usually attributed to people who have learnt some kind of special technique to recall a large number of things in a certain order - either that or people claim it comes from some freakish natural ability.

Memory is driven by the attention you pay to something and the emotional connection with it.    Most memory techniques play on both of these.  They make you pay real attention to it and they help you add the emotive connection.

Cast your mind back just a week or so...to the Olympic Opening Ceremony to be exact.  There was a a section of the ceremony dedicated to the theme from Chariots of Fire, played by The London Symphony Orchestra, with a cameo appearance from one of Britain's favourites - Rowan Atkinson.

Think about Atkinson's performance, what do you remember of it?  Try to recall it.  Try to do this as well as you can before you read on....

Do you remember the single repetitive note he played?  The look of boredom and disgust on his face as he played it?  Do you remember he took a photo on his smart phone? Do you remember him sneezing and trying to find a tissue and using all manner of props to keep the repetitive note playing?  Do you remember him closing his eyes and imagining running on the beach in an all white strip alongside the other runners from the famous scene in the film?  Jogging away from the pack to re appear in a car? Driving ahead to take the lead and then getting out of the car to continue running and win the race?  Do you remember him opening his eyes again to find that in his daydream, the music had finished and he was still playing his solitary note alone?  Do you remember he then played a mad little flurry of notes as his grand finale?

How much of this did you recall before I reminded you?  Or rather my 4 year old daughter did.  It was her that reminded me.  She recounted this story to me tonight.  I was astounded as to how much she remembered compared with me. We had let her stay up to watch the opening ceremony and this was the level of detail she remembered of it.

This was emotive for her - she paid real genuine attention to what she was watching and hearing.  How often can we really say that as adults?  Children live in the present tense more than adults who tend to be distracted by the past and the future much more readily.  How much attention was I really paying to the ceremony?  How distracted was I even on this most 'important' of evenings?

How much of life passes us by when the example we should be following is right there in front of us - demonstrated by a 4 year old.....

What Doesn't Kill Us Makes Us Stronger

What doesn't kill you makes you stronger.  A phrase that is rolled out all too often when the facts around us appear to be negative.

I'm pretty sure that Adam Scott may have heard that phrase, or a similar version, over the last couple of days.  Four shots clear after four holes?  That has got to hurt.

Another golfer who suffered a similar fate was asked if he ever thought about the shot that lost him the Open.  His reply was; "Not really, sometimes I go a whole ten minutes without thinking about it."  

Emotional strength is something that we can work on on an ongoing basis.  How we deal with the facts drives how we feel about them.

Rory McIlroy went straight out and won the next Major Championship after his disaster and Im sure that eased the pain somewhat.

Its a lot easier to say 'what doesn't kill you makes you stronger' once we are back on the road to recovery but the paradox is that to get on the road to recovery we must have some iota of belief in that statement itself to begin with.

In the moment, Im sure its difficult to see the woods from the trees (no pun intended) so we must try to build that emotional strength on an ongoing basis - putting some cash in the emotional bank account for times when there is a Major withdrawal.

It will happen to everyone in their own context - the question is - have you deposited enough to make sure you don't go overdrawn?  I truly hope Mr Scott has.

Please Don't Confuse Subtlety with Significance.

Please don't confuse subtlety with significance.

Language is a very subtle thing.  However, just because it can be subtle, that doesn't make it insignificant. The words we use say everything about us.

I recently asked a friend 'How life was treating them?'  Just an insignificant question designed to break the ice after a few weeks without contact...right?  Only partly.  The wording has more significance than may first be apparent.  The question demonstrates the belief (however deep rooted) that life is in charge of you, not the other way around.

Now - people may scoff and say - "Calm down, its just a question" - but if we hold true the understanding that our behaviour is driven by our beliefs either consciously or subconsciously, perhaps it would be worth re-thinking the wording to be less fatalistic.  The significant part of this process is the 'thinking' about it.  As I think about it consciously I develop my belief system accordingly.

I, for one, would find it awkward to turn the language around completely.  I wouldn't ask; "How are you treating life?" However, I'm sure there is a phrase that I can find that would work for me - and probably one that is already commonly used in greetings around the world...

There are many examples of how language can reveal the deeper held beliefs of an individual.  "Its only me" - implying I'm not important; "Take Care" - implying the dangers are many and you must avoid them.  These are everyday sayings that we use without conscious intent - however, if we consciously think about them, we may want to make a different point.

So many of these statements we make are negative in their nuance.  We become so used to them that it has become a part of our everyday accepted language.  We don't have to invent new outlandish phrases to counter this - we can just think about our language more carefully, think about what belief it implies and in the process of doing this, work on our belief system as a direct result.

With regards to shifting our belief system, building self esteem and 'thinking positively', subtle changes can be significant  - we don't have to change the world to change the world.

Playtime & Success - Who says you can't have it all?

“ The only place success comes before work is the dictionary.” Vidal Sassoon.  


It’s a quote I’ve seen before and saw again this morning.

It may be true – I think we all understand the sentiment.  However, I did start to think about something that comes before both of those things – in the dictionary as well as in life. 

Play.

I tweeted a phrase my Dad used to share with me recently; “Find something you love doing Simon and you’ll never work a day in your life”.  What he meant was that work can be play – and if you make it so then it doesn’t feel like work anymore.  What is interesting though is the by-product of this – when work is play – it often breeds success.

Think about it.  Think about something you love; Something that when you do it you lose track of time; You get into a state of flow; Something that when you wake up early to do it you are excited and you can’t put it down at night.

It could be gardening, golfing, guitaring, gaming, gyming, grilling, galloping, guffawing or any other activity for that matter (it doesn’t even have to begin with with G).

If you really enjoy it, you’ll dedicate time and energy to mastering your art (or science), and as a result its likely that you are going to get pretty good at it.

It may be that you can’t just become a pro golfer – but there are lots of other opportunities to work in the world of golf.  The same goes for any activity.  If you love it enough, find a way to play and work at the same time.

It will make for a happy working life – and lets face it we spend a lot of our life at work.

Playtime and Success – Who says you can’t have it all?

You are the Cause; Luck is the Effect

"You need a bit of luck in a tournament like this."

I’m trying to think how many times I have heard that statement over the past few weeks.  Every single person that has been asked about England’s performances in the Euros has said the above statement.

Does luck really exist?  There are two ways you can look at any situation involving what might be called ‘luck’.

England were lucky not to concede against Ukraine when the ball had clearly crossed the line.

 John Terry put himself in the right place at the right time to put enough doubt in the 6^th official’s mind.

This is luck at its most basic – a perception.

People who tend to be luckier just think differently about opportunities. They also think differently about their failures.  This process can be so powerful it can even filter out opportunities staring them in the face.

Last week a salesperson called our house.  He asked for Mr. Clarkson so my wife put our 2-year-old son on the phone.  We giggled as our little lad jabbered away.  When we took the phone back off him the salesperson had hung up.  We may not have bought anyway, but now there was no chance. 

However, if that salesperson had still been on the phone, and had shown a sense of humour – I would have heard him and his sales pitch out.  You never know – I might have even bought.

He might have considered himself lucky if I had but the truth is, it would have been him making his own luck by giving it a chance. 

He probably considered himself unlucky so put the phone down.  The truth is – he was unlucky BECAUSE he put the phone down.  Its just a case of cause and effect.

You are the cause – luck is the effect.

So come on England – do the right things and the world can think you are lucky.