What you believe is more powerful than you think : Part 2

November 2nd, 2009

Last time we started to consider how what we believe about ourselves limits our possibilities:

  • I’m just not strong willed enough to give it up
  • I’m not very good with conflict
  • I’m useless at DIY

Every one of these negative beliefs blocks something off. I used to be very poor at figures until I ran my own business. I used to think I was hopeless with numbers. Now I work with numbers all the time and I am pretty good with them. I now believe I am pretty good with numbers. But I could move on to believe that I could be excellent with numbers and that would open up another level of possibility for me. As it happens I choose not to – but that is a conscious choice and my self help workbook, Design for Life™, encourages readers to become so conscious of what they believe that they are in a position to make some choices about what they want to believe.

If you believe you are no good with money then you immediately bar yourself from the possibility of becoming good with money. If you change that belief to ‘I might be able to be good with money’ or ‘I could learn how to be really good with money – if I put my mind to it’, you begin on a road to putting your mind to it and learning something that could change your life.

Do you believe that five portions a day is good for you? Or more than three units of alcohol a week is bad for you? Or that 20 minutes a day exercise will keep you fit? Or not? What you believe alters the way you behave. White bread is terrible and brown bread is healthy isn’t it? The belief drives the behaviour. What happens if some huge and authoritative medical study announces tomorrow that, actually, white bread is best and we have got it wrong for the last 20 years? Once upon a time the medical profession told us that a full frontal lobotomy was a way to deal with psychiatric problems.

Most people regard me a confident and happy individual (and I am) but, when I first went into business on my own account, I didn’t really believe I could be good at it. It took me five years to change that belief and start to really believe that I could take the talents I have to create a business. I often wonder what a difference that belief would have made if I had it earlier. At first I believed that I needed to act like the consultants I had worked with in order to make a living. Now I do what I believe is right and I’m more successful. And guess what – now I believe that my success is accelerating, my success is accelerating.

What beliefs do you have about yourself that are holding you back?

John Cornbill

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What you believe is more powerful than you think : Part 1

October 19th, 2009

I am fascinated by beliefs. Beliefs drive our behaviour – Two beliefs – ‘I don’t believe I’ll get caught’ + ‘They can claim it back on the insurance’ = ‘This crime is OK and I will get away with it.’

Some of our most common beliefs – expressed as proverbs – flag up some interesting issues:

There is nothing new under the sun
What about the wii? Or the iPad? Or every other invention of the last 10,000 years? Every product or service innovation is something new under the sun. It may be a combination of old elements (the aeroplane + no frills = cheap air travel) but it is silly to argue that it is not new.

So clearly we are all going about the world talking illogical nonsense. We should work on this. But it goes deeper than that. Some of what we believe alters the way we relate to other people:

It’s a dog eat dog world
What goes around comes around
These two beliefs express very different views about the way the world is (or isn’t) and certainly alter the way people behave toward each other. Which one do you believe? How does that alter how you behave?

In my self help work book, Design for Life™, I draw attention to a particular category of beliefs which interests me and I dub Limiting Beliefs. More precisely I am preoccupied with limiting beliefs about ourselves. Self limiting beliefs are semi conscious and powerful. They are about how we think about ourselves. It seems to me that positive beliefs about ourselves can serve us well:

  • I am good at DIY
  • I am a good parent
  • I am the sort of person who does not pass by on the other side

But the ‘I’m nots’ work against us:

  • I’m not good at numbers
  • I’m not great with money
  • I’m not creative/Intelligent/academic
  • I’m a poor host
  • I’m a dreadful cook
  • I’m a poor friend
  • I’m a bad son/daughter/brother/sister/parent/grandparent

Visit us next week to learn how to change your mind.

John Cornbill

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Thought for the day

October 5th, 2009

You probably associate Mr Kipling with cakes. And he makes exceedingly good cakes (apparently). I am more interested in the lines from the poem the Elephant’s Child, written by Mr (Rudyard) Kipling. I have tried to memorise it (and failed) but it doesn’t matter because I know enough about it to recall what I need almost every day of the week. It provides the basis of the questioning framework I use to examine day-to-day work issues. You might like to try the same framework when you want to explore a problem or a situation you encounter. It goes:

KEEP six honest serving-men
(They taught me all I knew);
Their names are What and Why and When
And How and Where and Who.

OK it’s a bit old fashioned (like the cakes) but if you get yourself a scrap pad and use these six elements as the basis of questions to explore your problem or situation you may be surprised what might drop out. My question framework runs like this:

  • What is involved here?
  • Why is this a problem? Why has this happened?
  • When is it happening?
  • How is it happening?
  • Where is it going on?
  • Who is involved?

This is a great way of driving out assumptions and forcing different lines of thinking which can give you pointers to potential solutions to your problem and provoke fresh new thinking which can deliver some interesting results. Try it.

John Cornbill

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Self Help Books Don’t Work

September 6th, 2009

This week my attention has been turning to the books and literature which argue that self help, self improvement, personal development books do not work.

A lot of people are cynical about the power of self help books to change lives. I find the ‘books don’t work’ argument very difficult to accept.

The same people who argue this would no doubt readily accept that a fiction book, play or film can change people’s thinking and thereby change their lives. Some of the cynics would also no doubt celebrate that because the change was triggered by ‘art’. Many artists set out to change peoples thinking via their medium. Why are self help writers seen as less noble? In one sense we are more honest. We are not making any attempt to disguise our underlying motives with a veneer of drama.

But a much stronger argument against the ‘self help books don’t work’ lobby is that if that is the case, no books can work. And if that is so, we ought to let all the Universities in the world know that one of their key mediums for learning is no use. Learning from books is a key technique used in schools, colleges and universities the world over. We give people books to help them learn. So if you can learn useful things about cooking, history, sex and investment from books, why can’t you learn about personal problem solving from a book? Why can’t you learn how you can help yourself from a book?

A related argument is that self help books offer easy and instant solutions to difficult problems or at least create that impression. I make no such claims. My position is that more success only comes with effort. However, in my experience, the amount of effort needed to make big changes is probably far less than people think. What often prevents people from taking action is what they believe about a problem. They are regularly put off doing things (taking action, making the effort) by what they believe about the enormity of a problem. What they believe about the size of the problem may not be related in any way to the size of the problem.

Many people are not very clear about what they want and they are even less clear about why they want the things they vaguely want. This is where my self help book really works. Design for Life™ puts you on a journey which will help you achieve some clarity about what you want and why you want it. Your vague goals and poor current understanding of your own motivations will be replaced with clear objectives supported by genuine motivations. This can deliver you some real changes in your life.

That’s why I wrote Design for Life™ – to help people make the changes they want. In the end, whatever arguments people use to say that self help books do not work, although I will consider them, I will always dismiss them, because I know they work for me. And because I know they work for me, I know they can work for you. Why not give them a try? Why not start with Design for Life™.

John Cornbill

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Understanding your motivations is important

August 24th, 2009

In previous weeks I have argued that it is useful to know what you believe, because what you believe sets the limits on what you do. In my view, the second important element in getting forward movement is motivation. If your motivation is strong enough you will take the action you need to take. If it isn’t, you won’t.

Motives are those magic things that induce us to take action, motivations impel us, motivations push us to initiate something. No motivation, no action.

Understanding your motivations is a key part of your wider self awareness. However, understanding motivation and helping readers understand their own motivations was the topic which caused me the most grief in writing Design for Life™. The big question for me was – how can I use Design for Life™ to help people find enough motivation to take some action?

We all know that most of us go through life wanting to do things but somehow we don’t quite get around to making them happen. It seemed to me that this must be largely a motivation failure. In situations where we are motivated (we want to do the thing) but we aren’t motivated enough, nothing happens. There is an underlying choice here (even if it is a semi conscious one). We either choose not to do it or choose to do other things instead.

In sales theory (why do people buy things?) people’s motivations are divided into two categories – rational and emotional. Rational motivations are those things that are underpinned by logic (the saving of time, money, effort) and emotional motivations are to do with us wanting to feel a certain way when we own the product (pride, superiority, satisfaction).

In the writing of Design for Life™ I began to understand that developing an awareness of motivations is not easy. We operate at a semi conscious level most of the time. We are only half aware of why we are doing things: “I’ve simply got to visit my relatives every month” or “I really must clean the house this weekend”. We do these things because we believe (notice that word!) that they are the right things to do. This starts me asking – is your reasoning about what is the right thing to do based on reason or emotion? Try this during the week – write a list of what you are going to do over the next few days. Then go down the list and describe what your motivation(s) is for doing each task. If you don’t have a clear emotional or rational explanation, dig deeper to discover the real reason(s) you do things. Don’t take this too seriously, just have fun exploring what makes you tick.

You can only become fully aware of your motivations (or lack of them) over time. If you had a copy of Design for Life™, you could note them down every day! You can order a copy of Design for Life™ very easily. Just go to the Shopping Basket.

John Cornbill

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Change your Mind – Change your Life

August 17th, 2009

It might sound like an exaggeration, but I believe it is true. Try to follow my logic:

We all go through life with a head full of beliefs about the way the world is or isn’t. “People are so selfish.” “What goes around comes around.” “I’m having a bad patch.” “I don’t have the right qualifications.” “I hate writing reports.” Self Talk. Beliefs.

In my experience, people are inclined to go through life noticing evidence for what they already believe. As a result, they regularly find evidence that supports their beliefs and rarely see anything that might make them believe the contrary. And once we have adopted a belief, we hang onto through hell and high water. We are rarely big enough to change our beliefs and admit we were wrong.

In this way, what we believe creates a blind spot in our thinking. A belief often determines what you see and what you discover. If you are not looking for something you aren’t likely to find it.

This week try and change something you believe. Identify one of your long held beliefs and, for the next few days, seek out evidence that might prove you wrong*. If you are a life long Labour voter, start looking for the sense in the Conservative position on something or vice versa. If your housework is important, start looking for why it might not be. Start to consider how you arrived at what you believe.

There is a Greek myth about a wise ferryman who transports people to a large island off the coast. One day he asks a traveller what he expects to find when he arrives on the island. The traveller replies, “I have heard that the people of the island are unscrupulous and underhand and that travellers should take care.” The ferryman pauses and says, “That is certainly what you will find.” On another occasion the ferryman asks the same question of a different traveller. They reply, “I have heard that the people of the island are kind and thoughtful and that strangers are welcomed.” The ferryman pauses and says, “That is certainly what you will find.”

We warn each other, “Don’t believe what you read in the newspapers.” But we do. Especially, when what we read confirms what we believe. This leads to the fascinating question: do newspapers reflect their readership or does the readership reflect the newspaper? Journalists certainly write with the intention of connecting with the views and beliefs of their readers. They think they know what their readers believe and they write about the world using that lens, because (get this) they believe it sells newspapers. Discuss.

I love asking people two related questions:

1. What did you really enjoy doing as a child?
2. When was the last time you did it?

Are you not playing trains because you believe that “playing trains is for kids”? (Ask the thousands of grown ups who get real joy out of playing with their trains.) Are you not playing Sonic the Hedgehog because it just isn’t cool? What are you not doing because you believe you are too old or you would look silly?

Perhaps those are the sorts of beliefs that might be getting in the way of increasing the amount of happiness in your life. Get yourself a copy of Design for Life™ it will help you to change what you believe. It might change your life.

* I did think about using “all politicians are crooks” as an example in this week’s BLOG. This is a current belief for which there seems to be ample evidence. Surely there are some honest, hard working and genuine politicians. Look for the evidence. Let me know if you find any.

John Cornbill

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Be careful of what you believe

August 10th, 2009

I believe that what you believe is a large determinant of what you achieve. The amount that you can help yourself or improve yourself or succeed is directly related to your beliefs about what is or is not possible.

What you believe is a result of what you have learned from a complex mix of parents, friends, teachers, relatives, heroes, religions, TV, books, films and experience. But what you believe is much more often determined by all the things in that list except experience. We believe what we are told about what is possible or not possible. “Life isn’t like that”.

We can’t test everything for ourselves, so we do have to take some of this on board in order to function. I’m told that Ecstasy is dangerous. I don’t know if it is or not. I hear that smoking can damage your health. I’m not sure if that is true or not. But on the basis that I am not interested in either experience, this information is of only marginal value to me. On the other hand I am interested in a belief like “You can’t change the way a Government thinks” because, if that is true, one of my businesses can’t work!

I am advocating a brand new idea – belief self awareness. Know what you think you know. Understand what you think you understand. In my experience many of our beliefs are built on very flimsy foundations. It’s just that we have lived with them for so long that we have forgotten what is holding them up. It is most likely they are what is holding you up!

Clearly there are real physical and other constraints in every situation. Whatever your aspirations you always have to start where you are. If you want to be athletic and muscular, but you are a couch potato and over 50 then you may never win an Olympic Gold Medal. But never say never. There will be things that you cannot change, the well known Serenity Prayer advises “Grant me the wisdom to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference”. The nub here is the wisdom to know the difference. Recognising what can and cannot be done – deciding what is possible or not is the key decision that determines any level of achievement or success. Columbus decided that the earth was not flat and, as a result, he discovered a new world. Most people believed his ship would fall off the end of a flat earth. This belief must have made them very reluctant to get on Columbus’s boat.

In my view, what you believe determines absolutely what is in your world, it defines what is possible or not. So be aware of your beliefs – the small ones and the big ones. Think about your big beliefs and think about your small beliefs. Do you believe the lawn should be cut once a week? Why? Do you believe people should get married? Why? Do you believe that bacon and ice cream don’t go together? Do you think you are too old, don’t have enough time, don’t have the right people, don’t know the right people? Why?

Start with what you believe. You don’t believe me? That’s probably one of your problems. Buy a copy of Design for Life™. It will help you find out what you believe and how it is affecting what you achieve. Go on. It must be worth a punt.

John Cornbill

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How are you spending your life?

August 3rd, 2009

It is an interesting turn of phrase isn’t it? The underlying idea is that your life is a bit like a savings account – a precious resource that needs to be used to best advantage, spent carefully. If you have savings, you probably agree that you need to take care about what you choose to spend them on. The fact is, your life, energy, potential and possibilities are limited, just like the money in your account, so you need to give careful consideration as to how you use your most precious limited resource.

Most of us couldn’t find the time or the money to be able to visit every country in the world. There is always a trade off when you begin investing life time in something. You are not doing something else. I noticed that this week. I love listening to music. This week I have been doing some research into loudspeakers. I want the best loudspeakers I can get for the lowest possible price (does this sound familiar?). In our family we increasingly rely on what we call Google Geeks. There is always someone out there on the internet who knows what you want to know. How? Because they have decided to invest huge chunks of their existence immersing themselves in something that only catches your attention for a short while. In my view, there is nothing wrong with that; in fact, it is exactly what I advocate. Do what you love. But first, understand what you love. If you want to spend every flexible hour you have understanding speaker technology, great. If that is what makes you happy or gives you pleasure, great.

A couple of months ago we were having some fun with the Maths of Life. We came up with the following figures. Start with the biblical quote (Psalms 90) that it is likely that you will only endure on this earth for three score and ten years (70). We calculated that you will spend about 30% of this asleep and about 10% at school/university/work. If you discount the years it takes you to grow up (we guessed at 20, although some of us may never grow up), when your non working/sleeping time is filled up largely by accident, that leaves you with approximately 40 years where you have some flexible time (surrounded by working life) and maybe 10 years of retirement. That’s approximately 4335 hours or 180 days each year before you retire. How are you spending your 180 days of flexible time this year? How have you spent it in the past?

You can do the maths for yourself. We think the logic is unassailable but, if you can see any flaws, please feel free to let me know by email or leave a message in the Guestbook.

All of this seems to me to be a persuasive case for taking a look at the way you are currently spending your life. It may be that you have got it cracked and that the way you spend your time and effort is exactly the way it ought to be. You can use Design for Life™ to check that. It may be that there is some room for improvement. You can use Design for Life™ to check that. Many people have a tough time breaking out of their usual routines. Some might call those a rut. If you are ‘stuck’, Design for Life™ might be just what you need. You can order a copy on-line today.

John Cornbill

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“It’s not whether you get knocked down …

July 27th, 2009

… it’s whether you get up” – Vince Lombardi

I love the pessimistic quote by Jules Renard, ‘There are moments when everything goes well; don’t be frightened, it won’t last’.

This week I have been giving some thought to the flip side of success – failure. None of us enjoy failing. Most of us avoid doing things because of a fear of failure. We want to avoid mistakes, eliminate errors from our lives and win, not lose. In order to achieve this, we often decide that doing nothing is the best plan of inaction. We all want to know how we can find our way around life’s challenges, obstacles, hurdles or problems and reach the positions we seek, but we often duck the ‘taking action’ part because of the fears generated by our beliefs about the risks involved. Some of us are haunted by past failures. Some people feel they themselves are failures.

We probably have nothing to fear but this fear of failure. Apparently, when the going gets tough, the tough get going. For me, the logic for taking action is unassailable. If you do try you might fail, but if you don’t try, you have no chance of succeeding. If you do try (and you fail) then you will almost certainly find that the failure teaches and you will be in a better position to succeed when you try again. In that way, mistakes and failure are an intrinsic part of success.

We have a string of conventional wisdom and advice to stimulate us into taking action and carrying on in the face of adversity:

‘If at first you don’t succeed, try, try and try again’
‘If you don’t make mistakes, you don’t make anything’

But these fine words do not often push us into taking the action we need to take. This is one of the reasons I included a diary section in Design for Life™ – as a way of prompting users to take the action they know they need to take.

Self Help books are regularly full of formulas to help us overcome our fears. They recommend acting as if you are already successful (I find this tough, but it might work for you), and remembering when you did succeed because that will give you the confidence in your ability to do it again (the latter works better for me).

My approach in Design for Life™ is to advise you that knowing what the obstacles are is a great way to help avoid failures. I don’t know what is getting in your way – it could be your beliefs or knowledge, motivation, lack of optimism or other attitudes which determine your mindset. What I do know is that, once you know what your problems are (in detail), they are half resolved.

Clearly, you can’t win them all (that’s healthy realism). You win some, you lose some. But both losing and failure can be used for learning and for creating steps to future success. One door closes and another opens. Or to quote an old Arab proverb, ‘You learn little from success, much from failure’.

If fear of failure is one of the things getting in the way of your success, then Design for Life™ might help. Before you take actions there is always a question about how much analysis is needed. You can never know exactly how much analysis is needed to guarantee success; on the other hand, detailed analysis clearly lowers the risks of failure and no analysis or plan is probably a recipe for failure or not succeeding. Design for Life™ has been created to help you find a safe path to a different and better future. You should try it.

John Cornbill

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Why do I need a Life Plan?

July 13th, 2009

A life plan is a key technique in self help, self improvement or self development activity.

I think it’s pretty self-evident that some kind of planning is better than no planning whatever we do in life, whether it’s moving house, designing a garden or planning a wedding. Plans help you make sure that things get done, see the potential problems and can help keep you on track.

When it comes to lives, muddling through seems to be a popular approach. Most people’s plan for their lives (their most precious asset) is a half conscious ‘I know roughly where I want to be, but I haven’t got time to this now, let me get to the end of this week …’ kind of analysis. The majority of people spend more time planning their annual holiday than they do designing their lives. Some people have a business plan, but few have a life plan.

How much time do you spend thinking about what you really want out of your life? Or are you too on that treadmill of working, doing the ‘must dos’ and sleep.

I firmly believe that, if you fail to plan, you plan to fail. If you don’t have a plan, its bit like going on a journey without a map or having planned the route. You will almost certainly end up somewhere other than you want to be.

According to research in the USA, less than 5% of people have specific goals in life and less than 3% have written them down. So if you were to spend some time analysing and planning your life, you would fall into a very select group!

How much of a plan do you need? Not much actually, in fact, if you look at (very good) books like the One Minute Manager (by Kenneth H Blanchard and Spencer Johnson), you will see that human beings find it difficult to handle more than a few distinct objectives at a time. We all know why a good executive summary is useful – we don’t have the time or the inclination to do the detail – we need a small number of aims, goals or objectives. To get to those I think some detailed analysis is vital. If you want to come up with a simple effective plan, you need to do the legwork. You need to spend some time analysing so that you understand the terrain and you have sifted the important from the unimportant. That way you won’t waste precious time and effort making the wrong moves and end up regretting them.

Analysis does improve decisions. And making decisions is regularly better than making no decisions. So get on with it. Get yourself a copy of Design for Life™ and get yourself a simple, practical life plan to help you make the improvements you want.

John Cornbill

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