Tip Thursday - The Brain Game

When it comes to the way that we tend to think, there are a number of biases and fallacies we
regularly fall into that have a highly influential effect upon our actions. One such bias is the Optimism Bias, which is a cognitive bias leading us to believe we are less at risk of experiencing a negative event than is someone else.

Smokes believe they are less at risk of cancer than are other smokers, drivers believe they are less likely to be in a car accident than others, traders believe they are less likely to lose money than their peers. The optimism bias influences many of the choices we make over the course of our lives, if not our days. However, overly positive assumptions can lead to miscalculations and poor choices like a failure to save for retirement, neglecting health issues or making a bad investment.

However, the optimism bias can also serve to motivate us and give us hope. As with all things, there is balance. Learning to recognise when our optimistic biases are leading us to make choices that don't serve us in the long term allows us to choose differently - ideally better. Conversely, there will be times when our optimistic tendencies will serve us well and should be allowed to instill us with the hope we need to persevere.

The challenge is in learning to differentiate the two.

Creating Your 'New' Normal

Change is tough.  We know how difficult it is to change our habits... eat less sugar, exercise more, get up earlier... whatever our particular need.  However, perhaps we're making it harder than it need be.

Most changes that we try to introduce into our lives tend to be made in an 'all or nothing' framework.  We want to exercise more so we join a gym and plan on going 3 times a week.  We want to eat less sugar so we cut out all sugar from our diets.  We want to eliminate caffeine so we stop drinking coffee.  Period.

These typically prove to be big challenges for us.  Perhaps too big.  We feel the loss.  We struggle and... we typically quit.  It proves too big and painful a shift for us to make and we therefore revert to our old ways, our comfortable habit patterns.  Perhaps though, it is not the goal that is wrong but the path we've chosen to get us there.

Think of your existing habit pattern as your current 'Normal'.  Think of this like a point you've set on a thermostat.  If you decided you wanted to reduce energy use in your house by dropping the preset temperature by 5 degrees, from the 73F you are comfortable with to a desired 68F... you would walk around wearing sweaters or toting a blanket complaining about the cold.  Instead, reduce it by 1 degree.  Try it for a week.  It will likely prove to be a minor adjustment that you acclimatize to fairly quickly.  In week two, drop it another degree.  Your ultimate goal is to get it down to 68 degrees.  Don't make it all about having to get there all at once.

Leo Babuta, of 'Zen Habits' fame (see below for a link to his book if you haven't read this yet!) speaks about the need to create a 'New' Normal for ourselves.  When he decided to eliminate sugar from his coffee (and he took a lot of sugar!) he didn't do it all at once.  Instead, he reduced his sugar by half a teaspoon for the first week.  At first it didn't taste as good to him, but then it started to taste 'normal'.  At that point, he then reduced it by another half teaspoon.  He continued this pattern until, ultimately, he learned to love his coffee with no sugar.

Don't make change harder than it needs to be.  Introduce incremental changes that move you closer toward your ultimate goal.  If your current normal is to sleep in until the last possible second before you race off to work, but you would like to have more time in the mornings, whether to have a more relaxed start to your day, to fit in a little exercise or meditation, or to just read quietly for half an hour before heading off to work...  start small.  Instead of waking up an hour earlier, start with 10 minutes.  Make that your new set point, your new normal.  When those 10 minutes are comfortable for you, they feel natural and normal... reset your clock adding in another 10 minutes.  Eventually... you will have your hour and, perhaps more importantly, you will have your hour without feeling the loss or sacrifice of sleep had you tried for the full hour all at once.

Creating a New Normal for yourself is perhaps the easiest way to create a new habit.  Who said that breaking habits or introducing new desirable habits had to be a struggle?

Our minds tend to adjust over time.  That's my change process - I gradually adjust what's normal to me      ... Leo Babuta

       

Life-Hacking - Could Yours Use a Little?

Life-hacking.  This is a real term, a real phenomenon.  Popularized by Tim Ferriss, through his best-selling book The 4-Hour Work Week, life-hacking is helping people to redesign their lives, their work, their paths, their approaches.  According to Wikipedia, life-hacking ...

refers to any productivity trick, shortcut, skill, or novelty method to increase productivity and efficiency, in all walks of life; in other words, anything that solves an everyday problem in a clever or non-obvious way might be called a life hack.

Take Alex Day for example.  This young UK singer/musician hacked the UK music industry such that, with no manager, no producer, no agent and no PR help... took his single to #4 on the UK charts on Christmas Day, their biggest day of the year.  Oh... and he did it in 8 weeks.  Unheard of perhaps, but he hacked the system.  He looked for alternatives to the 'typical' processes, worked around the 'way it works' established systems, found a couple of loopholes and...  made it happen.  (see his story here)

Consider musician Amanda Palmer.  In her Ted Talk, aptly named the Art of Asking (here's the link), Amanda describes how, after being dropped by her record producer (because her band didn't bring in enough sales and revenue), she put her album out for free and simply asked people to pay what they'd like for it.  She netted well over a million in sales.

Two recent examples that I have simply tripped over (I didn't even go looking) that both highlight individuals that were willing (and able) to think outside of the proverbial box and try a different approach.  They weren't constrained in their minds by 'how things work' because those systems clearly weren't going to work for them.  Rather than give up or move on or... even worse... conform, they invented a new process, one that would give them the results that they were after.

How might this work for you?

How many times have you limited or restricted yourself from going after something that you want because there weren't enough resources to make it happen?  Because you didn't have the time to invest?  Because you didn't have the skills?  Perhaps all of these would be true if you were following the 'tried and true' approach to the issue but... what it... you reinvented the approach so that you didn't need the money, the expertise, the knowledge the... whatever is holding you back?  You create the rules and... go for it!

Re-invent.  Re-design.  Re-craft.  Re-tool.

When it comes to your life don't hate it... hack it!  The possibilities just grew exponentially!


(and... if you haven't read this yet...  here's the link to go buy it.  Read it.  Learn from it.  Do it.)

The Motivation of "More"

I was working with a client a couple of weeks ago, he must have been all of 35, and we were speaking
about what his thoughts were for his career in the future.  Pretty basic question and, although I don't expect everyone to have a clear defined roadmap of exactly what they want, I would typically expect someone his age to respond with some variation of...  more, different, or other as desired goals.  

I was taken aback then by his response...  'I'm done'!  

35 and... this is it?  

Now, don't get me wrong.  I don't think that everyone needs to strive to be CEO, to own their own business or even want a management role.  That's not my point.  More, different or other don't require a move 'up' so much as they imply that you are open to a change at some point.  A change that perhaps tests out and develops a new skill, gives you the opportunity to try something different, expands your perspectives, lets you learn something new, upgrades your skills... SOMETHING!

But... 'I'm done'?????  A possible 30 more years of working and... you're done?

I consider myself a work in progress.  I reserve the right to be better at something tomorrow, than I was today, to know something tomorrow I did not today and to therefore make better decisions and choices for myself as a result.  I think back to what and who I was at 35 and have a hard time reconciling that with the person I am today, the growth I have experienced, the learning, the development, the career shifts...

Although we all have different levels of comfort with the concept of change, we need to leave ourselves open to even incremental changes occurring, to prevent stagnation.  We can't just simply 'stop' where we are because nothing else around us enters into the same holding pattern.  Life doesn't exist in a vacuum.  It moves, grows, shifts over time, as do the people in our lives.  We too need to move, grow and shift in order to, at the very least, accommodate the shifts and eddies of those around us, lest we be left behind.  

Leave yourself some wiggle room by keeping your options open.  Envisioning a future that is 'more' or 'different' from your current situation does not have any value associated with it as to how 'much' more different it is.  The size of the shift is up to you and whatever your comfort zone will accommodate, but not leaving that opening implies no change at all.  Nada.  This is the very essence of stagnation.  

Live your life with the one true aim of being 'more' each day.  Being more in some small way, each and every day, creates incremental but definitive growth.  This small step of possibility leaves the door open to other possibilities that you wouldn't be otherwise.  No one knows for certain what the future holds, but if you don't leave yourself open to potential and possibility, I can guarantee what your future won't hold.   

Leave a small crack in the door for opportunities and change.  Just the very acknowledgement of wanting 'more' of some kind can be a catalyst for change that you wouldn't have imagined otherwise.  

And... for those of you who dare to be bolder, join me in my preferred vision.  

When my time comes, sometime past the age of 100,  I expect to be dragged off to heaven by angels while wailing the whole way... 

But...  I'm not done yet!

Rewrite your Labels, Rewire your Brain!

We all act according to our personal definitions of ourselves, those labels that we attach to the picture of ourselves we hold in our heads. If your label for yourself says that you're 'shy' then it comes complete with a list of behaviours that you will typically engage in, that epitomize your view of 'shyness'.  But it also comes complete with a list of behaviours that are opposite to your definition that you therefore do not display.  This list looks like a running commentary of impossibilities, each typically prefaced by a statement such as:

• I can't...
• I'm not...
• I don't...

Unfortunately, each of these is also stated in absolute terms.  It's these phrases that form the basis of our limiting beliefs, those beliefs that inhibit us from doing, trying or becoming sometimes the very things that we want for ourselves.

To move forward, we have to challenge these limiting belief systems.  We have to reframe them to more positive statements that at least serve to open us to possibilities rather than cutting us off from them.  For example, 

• I'm not athletic.  [Result - you won't engage in any athletic activity]

Reframe it instead as...

• I am athletic 'enough'.  [Result - it creates the possibility for you to participate in athletic activities.  It frees you from having to be great at them, or even good. You are athletic 'enough' to get off the couch and 'do' it! All too often we stop ourselves from engaging in activity we would enjoy, simply because we think we might not be any good at it. Think instead of only needing to be good enough. Far more open a belief!

Consider the statement...

• I am not good at speaking in public.  [Result - I don't deliver presentations or speak up in meetings, costing me precious visibility within the company]

Reframe it instead...

• I am able to speak convincingly with others, regardless of venue.  [ Result - this sets the mindset that you will be confident and capable of speaking in public, allowing your brain to set you up for success instead of failure! The brain likes to give you what you ask of it.  Ask it to fail and it will. Ask for something positive and specific and it is far more likely to ensure that's what you get]

Now sit down and start examining your limiting beliefs.  Listen for the times in your head that you fail to attempt something because that voice is telling you...  I can't, I don't, I'm not.  Those are your cues to examine and rewrite those beliefs.  Rewiring the way that your brain thinks about certain activities will open you to experience more success in your life.  

Preventative Action

Why does it always take something negative to happen before we take the action we knew we should have taken days, months or even years before?  Case in point.  My life, and perhaps more specifically my two businesses, is on my computer.  For my training business this means over a decade and a half of programs, files, slides and research.  I have had hard drives fail in the past, without adequate back up, and so I have an external hard drive to back things up. 

Now, I must admit that I haven't been backing things up as often as I should... I've gotten complacent.  I've tended to use the external drive primarily as a means of transporting and transferring data from my PC to my laptop for when I need to work remotely.  This past weekend though, I was hit by a trojan virus that appeared to have wiped my PC clean of both programs and files.  Not to worry though... I have my backup files on the external hard drive.  As luck, in particularly mine when it comes to technology, would have it though, I had decided to finally back up my files and my external hard drive was attached at the time of the virus invasion.  You guessed it... those files got wiped out too!

That's it... years of work... gone.  It took seconds.  Much of it I couldn't re-create without significant time and effort and it would certainly have a major impact on the product launches scheduled for January.  With some luck (positive this time!) and the help of a computer genius (previously known as a computer geek but upgraded forever to genius status!) my files were recovered.  However, the lesson was learned.  Not only was a second external hard drive purchased to ensure that a backup would always exist that was not directly attached to the PC, but a second computer as well. 

My original computer was 'older' (okay, maybe hitting the four year mark but in the world of computers it could almost be classified as ancient!!).  My lesson:  the information on my computer is too valuable for me to risk its loss.  I am now doing what I knew I should have all along, but it took the threat of its loss to make me take action.  To take THE action: the action I should have taken from the beginning but kept putting off.

Your lesson?  Certainly, make sure you are backing up your computer regularly but... there is a bigger life lesson here.  What action are you not taking today, that you are putting off, that you know you 'should'...  that you must be taking to ensure that you maintain control over your information, your relationships, your career, your life?

The following list is not exhaustive, but it's a good place to start:

• Have you got an updated resume?
• Do those people that matter in your life know how you feel?  When was the last time you said "I love you" to those that you do?
• Have you been to the doctor for a check up lately?  The dentist?  The optometrist?
• What about that weight you've been meaning to lose?
• How's your car running?  Need a check up to ensure you don't get stranded somewhere? Need a roadside assistance membership?

You get the idea.  Often we put off the 'maintenance' aspects of our lives with the belief that we 'don't have time', that 'we'll get to it later'.  The truth is though, we will be forced at some point in time to have to 'make' time'.  When systems break down, when we lose our jobs, we become sick or our car breaks down, we no longer have the option of putting things off.  Typically, these moments will occur when we least expect them, when we have even less time to focus on or devote ourselves to them but... we will no longer have the choice of timing. 

Learn to manage the timing of these critical moments by taking the preventative action you know you need to, you know you should... NOW.  It just might make those moments, if not a thing of the past, much easier to get through.

Now...  I think I better go call my doctor for a check up.  Hmmm...  maybe my mechanic too...

Living on Auto-Pilot

We are all creatures of habit. Our habits are time and energy savers and, in general, serve us well. We can engage in activities throughout our day, expending little conscious thought in accomplishing these tasks. Our unconscious, habitual autopilot takes over for us and we are able to think of other things while performing these tasks.

• In the shower, we tend to wash ourselves in the same way, same order of body parts, every time

• We dress by putting our pants on the same way, same leg first

• Ever drive on autopilot, coming back to yourself just as your exit comes up? (or...worse still...just as you pass your exit?)

Much of our everyday lives have been condensed into habitual rituals that save us from having to be consciously aware of each moment needed to complete them. This frees our mind to be present for, and focusing on, different things. The downside, of course, is that we can get locked on autopilot for various activities and we then fail to question the 'why' of the behaviours we engage in. We therefore fail to learn or to grow by attempting to do differently.

In organizations we see this all of the time, processes that are running not because they are efficient but because they reflect 'the way it's always been done'. It is only when someone new enters the picture and challenges the status quo that we begin to question these processes ourselves and search for improvements.
How many of these opportunities do we miss for ourselves, those potential moments of possible growth and improvement simply because we live too much of our lives on auto-pilot? Sometimes the biggest thing holding us back from taking a chance on something is our belief that 'it's not the way things work', or that 'it's not how things are done'. Perhaps it is time for us to challenge some of those assumptions by telling ourselves instead... 'that's how it was but it isn't necessarily how it has to be'.

This point came home to me this weekend when I went to see the movie 'Moneyball' with Brad Pitt.  In this true life story, he plays the Oakland A's General Manager Billy Beane, who is legendary for having rethought (and revamped) the way that baseball players are selected.  He faced tremendous criticism (perhaps most notably from baseball scouts) who were all quick to tell him that it 'wasn't how it's done'.

Tim Ferriss, in his best selling book The Four Hour Workweek also gained notoriety for completely shifting the assumptions we had about the way we view and structure 'work'.  Tim constantly explores and challenges 'the rules', looking for ways to reorganise, restructure or flat out work around the way things have been done to get more done, in less time.

Take a lesson from Billy Beane or Tim Ferriss...open yourself periodically to switching things up a little, trying a new way of doing something. You just might find a better path, a new interest, develop a skill or just streamline a process. Maybe instead of not doing something differently because you’ve always done it a certain way, your new reason for doing different is simply BECAUSE you have always done it a certain way.

No... we need to learn to say Yes!

Ít's amazing to consider that a small, two-letter word has such control over the way in which we view ourselves and the world, but the word 'NO' is a significant contributor to our failure to achieve as much in our lives as we are capable of and desire.  Research shows us that the average child has heard the word 'no' over 40,000 times by the time they reach the age of 5.  Now... multiply this by the number of times that a child would likely have said no to themselves, whether consciously or unconsciously, and we are looking at one of the strongest and most heavily reinforced messages...period.

I recognise that we use the word no with children in an effort to protect them.  'No, don't touch that, it's hot' is not designed to undermine their self-esteem but rather, to prevent them from a potentially nasty burn.  It's a direction given out of love and caring.  However, those no's add up creating, very early in our lives, an over-developed 'protective's ubconscious self.

No... don't take that job, you might fail
No... don't do that, people might laugh
No... don't try that, you might get hurt

95% of our waking hours are spent on autopilot - allowing our subconscious mind to direct us.  Our autopilot does serve a useful purpose for us, preventing us from having to consciously think about everything that we are doing.  We don't have to think about breathing, our subconscious mind takes care of ensuring that we continue to do so.  We don't have to think about 'how' to make our muscles work together to allow us to run, we just decide to run and our subconscious takes care of the rest.  Our subconscious mind then is constantly working and is never at rest.

There are elements of the programming our autopilot has received though, that do not work for us as effectively as others.  Certainly, the impact of all of those No's adds up and has our subconscious mind making choices for us that prove limiting in the long-run, often preventing us from achieving and doing everything that we might.  Instead, we need to reprogram some of our autopilot's scripts, shift our patterns of thinking, to open up new choices and paths.

To start that reprogramming process... refuse to say 'No' for an entire day.  This does not mean that you need to agree to everything anyone else suggests, but it does mean you must find an alternative to 'No'.  For example...

• ... I would prefer something else... instead of No, I don't want it
• ... Please do 'X' ... instead of No, that's wrong
• ... 'X' is more preferable... instead of No, I don't like that
• ... I am unable to... instead of No, not gonna

Keep a list of how many times you slip up over the day (if indeed you do!).  A simple little checkmark on a piece of paper will do, using one side of the page to record the number of  'No's' used and the other side to record each 'Yes'.  You might be surprised by the final number of each, especially since you were trying to avoid saying No.  The one-day experiment goes well?  Try it for a week, then try it for a month!

Think you can?  (hope you said... YES!)