The Second Habit - Begin With The End In Mind

This week, John Goodpaster sent out an article on "the second habit".  In Stephen Covey's landmark business book, "The Seven Habits Of Highly Successful People", the second habit is to begin with the end in mind.

I find this an odd perspective.  Simply put, if you don't know where you are going, you can't focus on getting anywhere.  The other six habits don't do much good.  Let's face it, how do you really know what "Win/Win" is if you don't have a vision of the end game?  Or how do you "Put First Things First" if you don't know what you are really trying to do?

Some of my thinking comes from personal experience, some from observation, and a little from coaching.  I am so driven about the idea though because I saw what it did to my business, and other owners like me, and I don't want anyone to have to experience it.

Years ago when I retired from the Air Force Reserves I took over and built up a business in the Houston Texas area.  I didn't "Begin With The End In Mind".  I just tried to grow a business that didn't have any purpose or direction.  When I built my first business, I knew exactly where I wanted it to go, and how it would help other business grow.  Basically it was a different format of what I do now, same end game.

The Houston company didn't have any of that.  It really was something for me to do, and it was a very very expensive lesson.

When I work with clients today, the primary effort of my work is defining that end game, even if it is a vague image.

To illustrate how this works, I met John through a real estate office I used to be affiliated with.  My end game for real estate isn't to become a Millionaire Real Estate Agent.  Rather, it is to invest in Real Estate and have an inside advantage as an agent.  The truth is there isn't much advantage because sellers are always cautious when you tell them you are a Realtor.

Knowing I would never be the top agent at my last firm, I started looking for a firm geared towards investor agents.  At the suggestion of one of my mentors, I took a look at Keller-Williams.  My license is now hanging on the wall in the local Keller-Williams office.

Knowing what I wanted out of Real Estate helped me make a better decision of which office to affiliate with and it also helped me find an office that wouldn't be trying to send me door knocking for listings.  It also helps to keep me from letting the real estate business side track me from my primary purpose of helping and inspiring people to take responsibility for their lives and make something great.

If you pick up a copy of the Covey Book, Seven Habits, add my little twist and make Habit 2 the foundation that drives the remaining habits.  If you save that habit for last, the other habits are wasted energy and nothing more.

If you aren't sure what your end game is, think about something you wanted to do, even as a child that could change the world, even if only just a little and make something great.  Do That!

Can You Change The Stories In Your Mind?

Active Personal Stimulation (APS)

Just like the phrase APS says, we can actively and personally stimulate the mind.  This is the key to most self help books and the way that using NLP on yourself works.   Affirmations are a method of APS as well.  The reason many people thing it doesn't work is that they use it wrong.

Some people will tell you that you can't predict your next thought and therefore you can't control the mind.  If this were true then all success would be a mistake, and we are just along for the ride, so why do anything at all?

With practice you can day dream, and choose the general feel of the day dream.  When you get "in the zone" you lose track of time and your mind just flows in a direction you want it to go.  No one ever talks about being in the zone doing housework do they?

Just because you don't actively create every thought doesn't mean you don't control it.  At the end of the day is "control" making every single thought or is it moving the mind in the right direction to achieve what you want?  Did Henry Ford build all of the cars? No.  What he in "control"?  If you agree the answer is "Yes", then you probably agree power of the mind is like power in life.  it is control that matters, not the details.

People who try to meditate everything away or maintain a mental center, miss this fantastic piece of knowledge.  You can send messages to the mind and let it sort out the problem.

Have you ever tried to remember someones name and hours later is just pops out for no reason?  That is APS at work.  You actively sent a personal message to the mind and asked it to give you an answer.  Instead of trying to organize chaos, it simply looked through its files until it found the answer, and as long as it doesn’t stumble upon a conflict along the way everyone is happy and moves on.

Affirmations are a form of NLP that you use on yourself.  My favorite method of accelerating affirmations is to look at the associated emotion.  For instance, saying “I will make a million a year by the end of the year”, 4000 times to yourself probably won’t work.  People who do this are those that say NLP doesn’t work.

On the other hand just changing the language might help.  Instead of “I will”, use the present tense of “I am” instead.  Doing this does change your neural pathways quicker because your mind needs to explain something that exists, not an imagined situation it can put off until later.

Also there is some psychology to the “I am” part of the statement that will help you think the right way.  For example if you spend like a millionaire before you are one, chances are pretty good you will never get there.  On the other hand if you invest and work like a millionaire before you spend like one you have a better chance.  

My experience with my clients is that using “I am” steers you the right way more often, and recently I learned a way to accelerate this method.

At the Inside Game, the Colts take it one step further and have you look at your emotions when you make an “I am” statement.  Using some meditation tools, they teach you to eliminate the emotional energy that you associate with the “I am” statement.  I have found this to be a great acceleration tool when used right, the key here is to find a coach to work with you on the tool until you can do it on your own.

One more piece that I have found to be critical is to limit the number of “goals” or “changes” you try to make with APS, NLP or any other technique.  After years of study, I find that having three goals with a specific order works best for me.  I haven't met anyone that has been successful with more than three at once.  I always start new clients with just one goal.  Gary Keller of Keller Williams wrote an entire book about the problems of trying to do too much at once with his book "The One Thing".

I like to list my goals in order with the top goal being the current and most important.  The next two are creating the foundation as they move to the top.  When a goal is achieved, it moves off the list, the next two move up and a new goal can then be added.

Most of the time when I meet people who have made a genuine effort at achieving personal goals and fail, it is simply because the list is too long.  The mind really can’t chew on more than three things at once, and the most successful have the ability to stay focused on just one goal at a time.

The toughest part is deciding what that goal really is.  Most people don’t know what they want, so there is no way to create a single goal to get them moving forward.

When you decide what you really want, you have direction.  When you have direction, you can determine priorities.  When a single priority moves to the top, that is your singular mission until you achieve it and the next one moves up.

What is the story you want to teach your mind and live out?

A New Update To The Whiteboard A Great Life Tool

When was the last time you went out to dinner and everyone knew exactly what they wanted and ordered quickly?  I can't remember a time when someone didn't say "You go, I'll figure it out."  Decision making affects everything we do in life.  Highly successful people are effective decision makers.

As humans we have a deep rooted desire to make our world better.  While this may sound crazy when you see someone tossing trash on the freeway, it is true.  The problem the person tossing out the trash has is their view of the world.  A person with a small view of the world only sees what is right in front of them.  When they toss the trash on the road, their little world inside the car got better, our bigger world got worse.  

There is a middle ground where a lot of people fall.  You might be one of them.  You feel stuck in the asme place in life, maybe stuck where your parents are (or were) or where your friends are.  You might have tried to fix this with self help seminars teaching business success, life success, or personal success.  You might have bought books that offered to help you get to the next level.  And yet, most of the time after you read a self help book or attend a seminar, you start out feeling charged and empowered, only to feel like nothing changed a month or a year later.  

One of my goals has been to change that with my work.  In many ways I had made significant changes and we encountered a different problem.

It Started About Business Success

When I created the Whiteboard a Great Life Tools several years ago,  It started out focused on helping business owners get their businesses into a profit zone they wanted.  It There were simply two columns, "Wants" and "Don't Wants".  Within weeks I would see a change in my clients business.  I called the tools a success.

Many success coaches will tell you to focus only on what you want. This is a big mistake.  I think it is critical to know what you don't want as well.  By simply knowing what you want AND what you don't want, you become a better decision maker.  For instance if you want steak but end up at a place that serves chicken and fish, which do you choose? Do you turn into that person who says "You guys go first..." If you know you want steak and don't want fish, then your choice is set, and you can quickly and authoritatively ask for the chicken.  You have just improved your decision making skills.

Even picking the restaurant might be easier if you know you want steak and not fish and your companion doesn't want steak.  Chicken quickly appears as the middle ground.  

Right now it might sound funny that I use a restaurant analogy for a business tool, but the reality is the Whiteboard Tools are all about making better and faster decisions.  Knowing up front what you want and don't want helps to speed up the process.  This is one key ability of people who get more done in less time.  Simple decision making skills.  Decide and move on.  Life is short.

But What If You Don't Own A Business?

After a while people asked for my help that didn't own a business.  In that case at that time I wanted to find them one or help them find a better job so I wrote "So, Now What?".  After two years of research I began to understand that the "Wants" and "Don't Wants" would come easier if people understood where they were going.  My next quest became helping people understand and visualize their destination.  This is different that a vision board.  A vision board is about stuff.  Visualization is a tool to help you define what impact your life had on the world as if you have already left it.

When you can visualize this, you can start moving towards that end.  Not before.  

Financial Success Was Next

The next Whiteboard Tool became the Financial Whiteboard.  Many people who owned a business that was profitable didn't have a plan for the money so they just spent it.  This is also exactly what I did when I created my first company.  I had visualized the end game for the company, but not the money.  I hadn't thought about my "Wants" and "Don't Wants" when it came to money.

What I saw amazed me.  I had no idea how differently some people think about money.  Some were so paranoid they ended up wanting cash in a mattress, others wanted to put it all on the 00 and let it ride.

This is where conflict and congruency between the "Wants" and "Don't Wants" really started to pop out.  People wanted their money working for them and then considered dividend stocks not aggressive enough, and didn't want to own rental or investment property, nor did they want to invest in startups.  

You could see quite quickly that many people were setting themselves up to fail simply by making all of the "Don't Wants" restrict all of the "Wants" to the point they had no teeth and couldn't make any money.  

The bottom line was they felt guilty finding a way to make money without "work".  This was  a new and fun challenge for me.  They could see a better life and better financial success and were subconsciously blocking their ability to succeed.  

It All Ends With Personal Success

At the end of the day your personal success is the most important mission.  Whatever you call successful is what you should be trying to achieve with these (or any other) tools.  What I call success isn't relative to your life and therefore shouldn't matter to you.  

Maybe it all begins with personal success?  If you start out knowing what you want and don't want, then making the decision of what job to take or business to own should be easier.  If you start with the personal success whiteboard tool first, you might be on the right track to hitting your stride much quicker.

This is where I hit on something.  My wife and I started with the Personal Success Whiteboard Tool 4 years ago when things weren't going the way we wanted and weren't hitting goals in other areas of our lives.  

With all of these tools and many others, using the tools can help you make some big leaps forward in life.  The problem is these tools all have a limited lifespan and need to be revisited.  Once a year is probably good enough.  Twice if you really are moving forward at a fast rate or not moving at all.

I was starting to see a couple of my longer term clients hit similar walls.  Wiping the board clean and starting over helped, but there was still a problem.  A column was missing, that I had never accounted for because I don't have kids.  

Life Has "Challenges"

We added a new column called "Challenges".  It became the weight that makes changes from "Wants" to "Don't Wants".  It also became the column that helped open people up to include a bigger circle in their genuine "Wants" and "Don't Wants".  Hard decisions and difficult feelings come out at this section.

For instance, when my wife and I moved from Texas to California, we created a challenge we didn't realize.  Simply put I handcuffed myself to my house with some pretty big golden cuffs.  Now I also hold the key.  I can sell the house at anytime, and that is the key.  The mortgage is a challenge if I choose to take time away from my business to pursue other activities.

Another challenge is our dogs.  Just like having kids, they change your life.  I can't close my business sell my house and move to a studio in Hollywood to become the next great comic because I have two big and fast dogs that need work and space to run.  If you have kids, getting them to move can really be a challenge.  Asking them to move to a smaller house, will likely end you up in the dog house.

Very quickly we saw the value of the "Challenges" column.  When you stand back and look at all of the "Wants" and "Don't Wants" and then let the "Challenges" cancel out anything and every thing they touch, you have to ask some very tough questions about why you want or don't want something, and what can you do to fix or overcome the challenge?  You could tell the kids we are moving and that's life.  I could give away my dogs if there was some want greater than the connection I have with my dogs.  

The initial outcome is that the dogs stayed on the board and a lot of "Wants" and "Don't Wants" were lined out.  They weren't erased though.  The male dog is older and the lined out "Wants" and "Don't Wants" led to the conclusion and agreement that when his time comes he will not be replaced with a new playmate for his much younger sister.  She will become a really spoiled dog.  

One of the items that didn't get lined out was my big truck and my new car.  The big truck is now hauling dogs for someone else, and as you might already know I got a new Chevy Volt.   There was a tradeoff with the dogs, and for a while the two of them are a little short on space when we take long trips in the SUV.  The tradeoff of getting a new car keeping the challenge of the dogs was longer driving, more stops on trips, and a little less time with the dogs around town.

So if you have a whiteboard started, go ahead and add that "Challenges" column and let me know what you think.

Success Tip: Be Careful Who You Listen To

Success Tips are simple rules that when followed, will help you lead a better life.  At least they help me when I use them and prove to me that I need to use them when I don't.

For years I have had a "Rule # 1".  And now with close friends and family, if they ask a question and rule #1 applies, that is my answer.

I think this is going to be "Rule # 2"

Rule # 2 simply states, Be Careful Who You Listen Too.

I can hear you asking "What does that mean anyway?".  "Be Careful Who You Listen To" means just that.  If you want car advice, don't ask a guy who keeps cars for 10 years and thinks the one he has is junk.  Go find the most knowledgeable person you know about cars.  Rarely is that a car salesman, but there is a BMW dealer near me who has a world champion driver working there as a salesperson.

One of my most expensive lessons in business came when I listened to a banker about how to run my business.  Big mistake.  Bankers don't run businesses, they run banks.  Banks are a very sheltered business protected by the government.  I never asked any of the three bankers I was working with if they had run a business.  If I had the answer would have been "No."  I wasn't careful who I listened to.

When you want to learn Yoga, asking your neighbor that took a class at the park four years ago might be easy, but it won't teach you Yoga.  Find a master.  When you want to learn how to hit a golf ball farther, don't ask the four guys in your foursome unless one is a PGA instructor, or is a touring PGA Player or has a wall of golf trophies.  Even the wall of trophies doesn't mean he can teach.

There is a big difference between doing, teaching and being able to do both.  In any area of life you might become a teacher, a master and in some very rare cases, a teaching-master.  I have a wall of trophies and patches from bowling.  My grandfather was a master teacher and produced several champions.  My aunt was an LPGA bowler for many years.

Last night I tried to teach my eleven year old nephew how to bowl.  I could talk him through the steps and throw a strike each time.  When he tried it looked nothing like what I thought it should and in the gutter the ball went.  I am not a teaching-master bowler.

We always like to ask our friends and family for advice because it is easy.  Like anything else, when you take the easy route you are pretty likely to get the easy payback.  Taking the time to go find someone who really understands what you are trying to do or what you want to learn won't be easy.

If you want to learn guitar, a teacher at the local community college, guitar store or even those DVD's at the big box store might get you started, but eventually if you want to move to the next level, you'll need a real coach, a teaching-master.

The biggest trick is knowing who the real coaches are.  As a retired military instructor pilot and airline pilot, if you came to me to ask about crosswind landing techniques in a piper cub, I might just be the wrong guy.  If you want to learn crosswind landing techniques in a 737, 757 or DC-10, I might be the right guy.

Not having children I have a lot more time than people who don't.  Because of this, I now have a couple of different "jobs".  Not because I want them so much as I am just pretty good at them and I am having fun with them.

In todays home market more than ever, being careful who you listen too can save you a lot of time, money and hassle.  Better yet, it can put you into a better equity position meaning you can make money when you sell, and you'll get a better deal if that is important to you.

I am amazed at how many agents in Southern California are still renting.  How can you tell someone to buy or sell a home when you aren't even in the market?  I own my home and and always on the lookout for deals to invest in for the long term or flip. I am addicted to the game of real estate.  More importantly I have made money as a flipper and a long term landlord.  Not many agents or brokers can say that.  You can get all the abbreviations you want after your name, and still not make money in real estate.

This doesn't mean I can teach real estate.  It also doesn't mean I can't.  It does mean I am in a very small group of people, many of whom don't want you to know how to do it.  This is the tricky part, separating the masters from the teaching-masters.  I'll tell you now, don't ask me about bowling.


Keep in mind that most realtors only make money when you buy or sell your home.  Yes I am glad to take the listing if you live in my area, but I also want to make sure I am doing you a service beyond just selling your home.  I want to help you accomplish something.

I find the stock and financial markets the same way.  Financial advisors approach me all the time wanting to "manage" my money.  When I ask what they own or how big their portfolio is or what there returns are I get some pretty funny responses.  Understanding that their job is to "manage assets" or "sell" stocks, their motivation is clear.  It isn't to make me the most money, it is to make them the most money while keeping me as a client.

Warren Buffet is a master of finance.  I found out the books he read, and I read them.  I also read a book with his name on the cover.  Even though I can't afford to hire Warren Buffet, it doesn't mean I can't still learn from him and follow his strategy.

The first challenge of stepping out of the herd is to accept that you won't be in the herd any longer.  This is very uncomfortable for most people, so they won't push to get better.  Once you accept the price of fame and fortune, then you can go seek experts in areas that you want to learn more about.

Henry Ford was famously called out for being ignorant even though he was one of the richest men in the world during his time.  After failing to answer a series of questions, he finally said something to the effect of "Why do I need to know this when I can push a button on my desk and summon someone who can find the answer for me?"

There is genius in the answer.  First know what you know, stick to what you need to know and surround yourself by people who can do or know anything else that might come up.  A simple mechanic at 40, the richest man in the world at 60.  That is an expert you can listen too.

The Three Sources Of (Bad) Information

Our minds get information from a lot of sources, and of course the basic purpose of our mind is to sort all of the chaos into usable information.  Whenever we get an “easy out” the mind takes it.  What I mean by an “easy out” is pre-sorted information.  

There are three major sources of information that our minds use.  Within this are all the bad and damaging thoughts we have hidden deep in our minds.  My own experience and observing my clients as a business coach, and several very successful people, I think this is a critical piece of understanding, and more importantly a critical learning objective if you are going to have a shot at real change and success in your life.

As kids there is so much going on in our lives we take every “easy out” we can.  We take what our parents say as gospel, teachers and other adults fall into the same group.  Once we accept the information as truth, our minds take the information and file it away for future use. 

As teenagers we start to test the information.  We begin to give more weight to information our peer groups provide than our parents and teachers sometimes.

The trick is to understand the sources of this information, where it comes from and how you can fix it.

The Collective Mind

There is a lot of different thought in this area, and for some even acknowledging the existence will be difficult.  At one end there is pure instinct, knowing how to breath, have a heart beat and blink.  At the other end many believe that we are all connected and that all knowledge exists in the “ether” or the “collective mind”.  

Without a full dissertation on the physics of energy, in simple terms we are all just stored and organized energy.  Everything you see and can’t see is exactly the same thing, stored and organized energy.  Everything is simply energy and space.  All molecules are made of atoms.  Atoms are made of particles and “empty space”.  Many physicists now believe there is more energy in the empty space than there is in the particles.

Look at it this way.  When you burn wood, you change the connection of the molecules to get heat, light and ash.  Gasoline powered cars do the same thing.  When you burn gasoline, a hydrocarbon is split into several smaller molecules like water, carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide among other things.  From a gallon of gasoline you get enough energy to move a car up to 50 miles these days.

Nuclear power actually splits the atom and changes the particle arrangement.  Several thousand times more heat and energy is generated per pound of material used.  

A single uranium fuel pellet the size of a fingertip contains as much energy as 17,000 cubic feet of natural gas, 1,780 pounds of coal or 149 gallons of oil. - NEI.org

Many believe all of the knowledge that ever existed is contained within the energy field that separates the particles of an atom.  For centuries in every civilization there has been an a different way to explain the same thing.  Some say it is communicating with ghosts, or angels.  Others will say “it just came to them”.  Since man can’t mechanically get the information out of the “ether” or see it, most don’t believe it.  

Call it what you want, the collective mind, the ether, god, love or if you are a big Star Wars fan call it the force.    The point is to accept that it exists and your instincts come from it.  People who can stay connected to it, are likely to get much more.  

If you ever work with small children in groups and some just have the answers or know what to do and others don’t, you might be watching the extended instinct ability of the collective mind at work.

If you get information from the collective mind, there isn’t much you are going to change, and in some ways maybe you shouldn’t change it.

This leaves us with the next two, and very important, sources of thought and belief

Your Mind

As we discussed elsewhere, when your mind encounters unknown information, it will do everything it can to sort and store the information in a usable way.  Like a hoarder, your mind has a massive store house of things you likely will never use.

One of the better tools I have seen people use to dissipate incorrect or damaging beliefs is to think through the process and clear the mind of the clutter and cobwebs.

The method goes something like this:

When you are feeling bad about something or things aren’t going your way, ask yourself “What do I believe about that?”  

For instance, lets say I am walking into an interview and looking around the room, I don’t think I can get the job.  I would then ask myself “What do I believe about getting the job”.

My answer is “Looking at the competition, I won’t get it”

Then the next question to ask myself is “Who told you that?”

Finally I answer “The Mind”

The idea is that by saying “The Mind” I shed the thought and can move forward.

The problem is there may be deeper issues and this quick tool won’t get there.

You have to keep drilling until you find that in fact is was the mind and not your parents (an outside source) saying “You’ll never be good enough for a job like that.”  

Outside Sources

This is the third and most important source of bad and damaging information I can think of.  Why?  Simply put, why would the collective mind give you bad information?  Did it teach you to breath wrong?  Did it teach your heart to skip a beat, or did some outside stress or information cause it?

Sadly most children grow up in a very negative household.  Since the 1970’s the news has turned negative and people now look for the “bad news” and not the good news.  Watch any news channel and it is 70% or more bad, scary or negative news.

For most people your outside sources are against your success and they don’t even know it.  It is your job to deflect, change and move on.

For example, if you wanted to be an actor, well meaning parents might say something like “Dear, you can do anything, why would you waste your time as an actor?”  

That piece of outside information gets set in your mind like cement and says a bunch of things all at once.  FIrst it says, “Being an Actor is a waste of your life”, second it says “We don’t know what you will do, probably waste your life”.  It doesn’t sound like that but no direction is the worst direction.

If your parents grew up with jealousy or envy they might say “clean up your act or you won’t amount to anything”.  or “Who are you Mr. Big Shot to do better than your father and me?”.

Those statements set your mind up for failure.  The key to the self analysis tool above is to keep digging until you have a name to answer the question “who told you that?”  The mind normally isn’t the culprit in deep seated beliefs.

Once you know the name, you can then ask, “Who are they to decide that for me?”  Your answer should always be “Someone who isn’t qualified” so you can let go of the belief.  Richard Wetherhill described a similar process it as opening the gates of the mind to let out the false beliefs in his writings during the early and middle 20th century.

Jesus, Buddah and Mohammed all taught similar methods for clearing the mind of false beliefs.  Organizations that surround these teachings have changed the use.

Only when you can clear out all of these negative and damaging beliefs will you be ready to move ahead.

Do You Believe The Stories Your Mind Makes Up?

Last week I talked about the idea of the "new neuroscience" and "outside stimulus".  This week I want to go to the next step in the mental process. 

I don’t know if “Auto Stimulus” is the right term, but I like it for the context here, and will use it. 

When the mind is left alone, it still needs to move electricity.  This is a period I call “Auto Stimulus”.  It might be seeing and hearing or it might just be dreaming.  During this time the mind is organizing everything thing it has taken in through the senses and is trying to apply an explanation to them.  

This is  a bit different than “outside stimulus” because we aren’t actively trying to apply a stimulus or press for an explanation.  The mind is just doing it on it’s own.

The dangerous part here is emotional connections to the thought processes.  Your mind may attach an emotion or feeling of truth to something which isn’t true at all.  This is where questioning everything is so important.  If you don’t actively question the mind, it can take over with all of these false explanations.  

It is generally accepted that emotionally we can’t tell the difference between a real or a created event. At some point those “real emotions” begin to create “real events” that we have a hard time separating from or believing they are false.

The process of Neuro Linguistic Programming or NLP depends on this phenomenon.  If you tell yourself something enough, your mind will believe it and you will become it.

Auto Stimulus is the result of your mind creating the explanations for the unknown outside information, and eventually convincing you that the story is real.  Yes we all believe something that our mind made up.  That is why people are such horrible witnesses.

Is Paradise Really Lost?

Every day we have an opportunity to keep busy and add stress to our lives.  The hustle and bustle of every day living is enough to make you crazy if you don't breathe.  As the old saying goes, take time to stop and smell the roses.  That is the trick, taking the time to actually stop and smell the roses.

In theory we go on vacation to escape everyday life and go to "Paradise".  I use the word "Paradise" because it is an image we can all relate to.  It is that perfect place where we don't have a care in the world, we look our best, eat well and everything just works out right.   There are multi-billion dollar industries designed to make you think they are helping you get to paradise.  

The entire travel industry, and most of the entertainment industry are built on this premise.  

The problem is horror movies and for some people three hour lines at Disneyland become the "anti-Paradise".  I would rather work than see a horror movie, and my step dad would rather work than go to any Disney park.  Golf is a wonderful memory for me.  I learned to play with both of my grandfathers.  The golf course should be paradise to me.  Instead, the first ball hits the water, and paradise is lost.

Starbucks has created a billion dollar business by being your "third place".   The third place isn't home and isn't work, it is a simple escape where you leave the pressure of life behind.  The first time you went in, you probably thought, "What a great place." ordered a beverage and really soaked up the place.  It was a short trip to paradise.  On each of the following visits your trip to paradise got shorter and going to Starbucks became a habit.  Look around the next time you go and see how many people are getting anything from their escape other than a cup full of liquid and a bag full of calories.

In the US, this is our way of life.  We don't take it in, we just take it to go.

This isn't to say that Starbucks doesn't have great beverages and a great business.  Just look at the lines at any airport.  In Dallas there is a place where you can stand and see three Starbucks locations, and I have seen a line at all three at the same time.

I have a good friend who I used to meet at Starbucks on a somewhat regular basis.  We talked about everything under the sun.  As I started losing weight we moved the conversations to Subway and Starbucks lost it's appeal.  I still drink their iced tea on the road because it is great tea, not because I am looking for a little escape.  After all how can I escape at the airport when they don't even have seats at the Starbucks?

We all have some places where the essence of paradise isn't lost.  It might be a commercial place like Disneyland or it might be Yellowstone Park in the wintertime.  For me, the beach is one of them.  I don't ruin it by making a big trip to the beach with tents, and BBQ's and all of that stuff.  While all of that stuff can make for a great family picnic, the stress of getting it all there, hoping everything works and taking it down takes away from the pure essence of paradise.

When I go to the beach, a chair, towel, wetsuit and surfboard are my limit.  I can walk, bike or drive with this stuff depending on the mood I am in.  I know better than to damage my paradise.

Does Your Mind Make Up Stories?

Stimulating “The Mind”

There is a lot of talk in self help and psychology about a “new neuroscience”.  Basically some tests where done that tell us why we make up stories to explain things like the sun and the moon before there was science.

The test is pretty straight forward.  An electrical impulse is sent to the brain and the person reacts, either physically or emotionally.  The emotional responses are simple responses from specific neural pathways being excited.

The interesting part comes in the interview.  When the person is asked why they are smiling, laughing or crying, the left part of the brain goes to work and comes up with a story.  The sensors indicate that the person really didn’t know why.

Much like a child who does things simply to learn and can’t explain why, adults react the same way when pressed for an answer.  They make up a story.

We now that the mind, is there to help us see logic in a world of chaos.  The ocean looks flat so it must be flat for instance. We now know that when you look from space the earth is round.  The difference in the point of view is what gives us a different perspective.

Some people are treating this like a ground breaking change in the understanding of how the mind works.  The most extreme say that everything we do happens first, and we build the explanation later.  I don’t buy this at all, and my experience with several different systems of mind work agree there is much, much more.

Outside Stimulus.

In the case of outside stimulus, much of what I just discussed is true.  The first time people heard a sonic boom. They had no idea what it was and made up stories to close the gap of understanding.  If you go back to Greek Mythology, you can see how a lot of things are “explained” by the mind that we know to be outright false today.

That said, we still don’t know everything about everything and never will.  Every time we have a new experience or discovery, we naturally want to create an explanation.  That is the job of the mind, making order out of chaos.

I don’t know why this is called “new neuroscience” when I think we call can accept the premise simply by looking at the history of science, and how many discoveries lead to a better understanding of earlier discoveries.  

I guess what is new is we have a new understanding of how to make it happen?  

I'll come back to this from time to time, and I think it will make a new chapter in the update to So, Now What?

The Importance Of "The Mind" When It Comes To Success

Earlier this year, I ended up face to face with some deeper challenges both in business and in my personal life.  I hit a road block and it looked like I might be hitting a peak in my business.  Eventually I figured out that the road block was in my mind.  Quite simply, I had become comfortable with where I was.

The bad news is customers could see it, and that isn't good for business.

Once I dug in and found the source of this belief and why I wanted to stay comfortable, I was able to remove it and move on.

Last weekend I took a workshop from another coach whose business is strictly actors.  The key difference was that I wasn't teaching, and my wife paid attention.  You see, I learned a long time agot that teaching her was a mistake.  She doesn't want to learn from me.

That lesson has been a tough one overall in fact.  Trying to teach people who don't want the lesson is a total waste of time, and just irritates people.  Thankfully I have accomplished the first step of the twelve step program for being addicted to trying to help.  If you don't ask, I won't likely offer help unless you are paying me to do it.  Then I feel obligated until you say "Stop".

For the rest of the month, I will be sharing some insights and information that hasn't made it into any of my books yet.  All of the information will be focused on "the mind" and how it can be a key to our success, or the road block that keeps us in our comfort zone.

If you are interested, come back at least once a week, and let me know what you think.