By: Shantanu Das Sharma, Sr. Associate Editor-ICN Group
Quick recap of what we have covered in Part 14
How You Create Your Beliefs
‘I Am Lousy At Math’…How I Formed that Idea at Age 7
How I Started Collapsing this Limiting Belief
From Math Bloke to a Math Genius – Starting with Just a New ‘Belief’
What Limiting Beliefs Do You Have?
Steps to Change Any Belief
SECRET OF PEAK PERFORMANCE
Your Action is the Driving Force that Produces Results
KOLKATA: Are the most successful people the ones with the most knowledge, the most intelligence or with most academic brilliance? Of course not. If this were true, then everyone with a PhD or from MENSA would be a multibillionaire. The irony is that many people who do extremely well academically usually end up working for those who were average performers in school.
For a while think about this. Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Oprah Winfrey, Steven Spielberg, Larry Ellison, Soichiro Honda and Richard Branson all do not have a college degree. Yet they have built billion dollar empires run by extremely well qualified managers and professionals, many with Harvard MBAs. Why? Simply because they were individuals who took massive action. Action is the driving force that makes thing happen. When you take consistent action towards a specific outcome, you definitely produce results. You either get the results you want (success), or you get the results you don’t want (feedback). By changing your strategy and consistently taking even more action, you will eventually get the results that you want. You see, knowledge, intelligence and capability are not ‘power’. They are only potential forms of power. It is only when you take action that these resources become truly powerful. Success is defined by how much action you take and not defined by how much knowledge and capability you have. Knowledge can be learnt and capability can be acquired. But action is one resource that you have to unleash within yourself.
Apparently ‘Ignorant’ Henry Ford was Smart Enough to Hire People Smarter than He!
Henry Ford, the inventor of the automobile, was very often labeled an ‘ignorant man’ as he did not have much formal schooling. He did not know much about accounting, engineering or literature. Despite this, Ford founded the Ford Motor Company, which today is a billion dollar global business. In reality, he did not even have the necessary skills or talent to invent anything. He was just a man who kept taking massive action backed by an unshakeable belief that ‘nothing was impossible.’ His secret was this. ‘Hire people who are smarter than you and put them to work.’ That’s exactly what Ford did. He went out and hired the best brains to work for him. He then tasked them to invent the Ford-T, the first automobile. When these scientists and engineers said it was impossible, he said, ‘Do whatever it takes, and you will find a way’, ‘Don’t give me a problem, find a solution.’ Eventually, with all his pushing, the first model T was introduced to the world in 1908.
The same thing still holds true today. Many intelligent, well educated people I know with MBAs and PhDs never accomplish much because, although they may have the intelligence and knowledge, they don’t take sufficient consistent action. On the other hand, there are many millionaires and business owners I know who never went to university or dropped out of college, and yet they have created phenomenal results, simply because they kept taking action. Very often, it is because they have nothing to lose… so they take lots of action to make up for it. Yes, unfortunately, while book knowledge and tertiary education can be extremely valuable assets, too much of it can become a liability. I have found that when people have excess knowledge, they spend all their time over analyzing and thinking of WHY ‘it cannot be done’, so much so that it paralyses them and they end up never taking action. When you are highly academically qualified, you tend to be more risk averse. So you tend to take less action. I am not saying that knowledge and education are not important. They are extremely powerful resources. But taking massive action is the key to unleashing your personal power. People who combine knowledge with massive action become unstoppable in achieving any goal.
As Emotion Drives Action
The most common reasons I hear are: ‘I lack motivation’, ‘I’m too lazy’, ‘I don’t feel confident’ or ‘I am afraid that…’.
Is this true for you as well? If you are like most people, you would probably be nodding your head. If you think about it, ‘motivation’, ‘fear’, ‘confidence’, ‘inertia – expressed as procrastination’, are nothing but emotional states we experience. You see, it is not primarily logic that drives our actions. It is our emotions. Very often, we know that logically we should do something, but we don’t do it because we don’t feel like doing it.
For example, you know that you should start exercising three times a week, but you put it off because you feel lazy. As a salesperson, you know you should make ten cold calls a day, but you don’t do it because you don’t feel like being rejected. You know that public speaking will help your career, but you don’t get on stage and face the audience because you feel the fear.
At the same time, there are many things we do, knowing full well that we shouldn’t! But we still do it. Why? Because we feel like doing it. For example, you know that eating that extra piece of delicious chocolate cake is bad for your weight and health but you still do it because you feel greedy. You know that you shouldn’t go back to sleep when the alarm rings, but you still lie in because it feels so good. It is truly our emotional ‘states’ that drive our actions and behaviors all the time. How we feel truly determines what we do and how we do it. Emotional ‘states’ like ‘excitement’, ‘passion’, ‘confidence’, ‘happiness’, ‘exhilaration’ get us to take action and perform at our peak. At the same time, states like ‘fear’, ‘anxiety’, ‘stress’, ‘inertia’, ‘depression’, ‘tiredness’ hold us back.
Have you ever experienced a day when you managed to get a lot of things done? When your ideas flowed, when you made the best decisions and you were absolutely in form? I am sure you have. Well on those ‘top of form’ days, you were in a series of resourceful states. Then again, have you had days when you couldn’t get anything done? When you couldn’t do anything right? You said and did the most stupid things? How could this happen? You were the same person and had exactly the same resources available to you. The difference was that you were not in a resourceful state. People who take consistent action and produce great results do so because they experience many more resourceful states on a daily basis. It is these empowering states that allow them to get the best out of themselves. So what states do you experience on a daily basis? Do you find yourself in empowering states frequently or are you usually in an un-resourceful state? I want to you grab a pen and take the time to do this next exercise.
Find The Checklist of Your States
In your diary, I want you to list the 10 most common emotional states you experience on a daily basis. Think about it. From the time you wake up in the morning to the time you sleep, what are the states you experience most frequently?
Be completely honest with yourself and do it now.
Top 10 Emotional States Experienced Daily
Example: How do you feel when you wake up? When you walk into the office? When you meet your clients? In the middle of the day? When you arrive home? When you are faced with a challenge? When you are faced with tough deadlines? When things do not go your way?
Have you done the exercise? If you haven’t, please go back and do it! It is extremely important.
Now, assuming you have a list of your top ten states, I want you to put a tick next to those states which you find are extremely resourceful. What are the states that get you to take action and perform at your peak? Do this now.
Next, I want you to put a cross next to those states which hold you back and stop you from taking action. Cross those states that are un-resourceful for you. Do this now.
Look at your list again. Do you experience more empowering states or more lousy states on a daily basis? This list is normally an accurate reflection of how successful you are at producing the results you want. I have found that people who are extremely productive and successful have a lot more empowering states than lousy states.
Below is a typical list from a high achieving individual. This is not to say that they do not experience ‘inertia’, ‘fear’, or ‘depression’. It’s just that they experience it far less frequently and when they do, they are able to get out of these lousy states much more quickly. They don’t wallow in their unproductive ‘state’.
Top 10 Emotional States of a Successful Person
1 Motivation
2 Excitement
3 Passion
4 Energy
5 Confidence
6 Stress ✗
7 Anger ✗
8 Worry ✗
9 Happiness
10 Curiosity
On the other hand, take a look at the list of a typical individual who is not as successful as he could be.
Top 10 Emotional States of a Typical Person
1 Frustrated ✗
2 Fear ✗
3 Laziness ✗
4 Procrastination ✗
5 Excitement
6 Anxiety ✗
7 Happiness
8 Tiredness and sleepiness ✗
9 Boredom ✗
10 Depression ✗
Does this make sense? You may be the smartest and most intelligent person in the world. But if you constantly experience un-resourceful states like ‘fear’, ‘frustration, ‘inertia’ and ‘lethargy’, you simply cannot perform at your peak. This is what happens to most people I see.
Are You in Control Over Your States?
Let me ask you another important question. Are you in absolute control over the states that you experience from moment to moment? When you got depressed, did you tell yourself, ‘I think I will feel depressed now!’ and get into that state? When you are in a state of confidence, did you direct yourself to get into a confident state? Most people don’t consciously direct their own states. Very often, they find themselves just moving in and out of different states, and their emotions affect how they feel and how they perform, without them realizing it. For example, have you ever been in a positive state and then suddenly, during the day you feel lousy for no apparent reason? Or you feel extremely motivated at first but after a while, you lose your motivation and fail to follow through?
You see, if we don’t consciously manage our states, our brain will run on auto-pilot and shift us into different states. Worse still, after a while many of these states become habitual patterns, which we keep experiencing over and over again. Like every time we get out of bed, even after seven hours of sleep, we feel sleepy and lethargic. Or the minute we step into the office and look at the work piled up, we feel frustrated and overwhelmed. All these limiting patterns have been programmed into our subconscious and formed through our neuro-connections. That is why many people feel that they are not in control over their emotions, and their lives.
At the same time, many people allow their states to be controlled by external events. For example, when they close a sale, they feel motivated and confident to do more. When they experience failure, they get so frustrated and depressed that they quit. When someone encourages them or when they attend a motivational seminar, they get excited and motivated and take action. When someone passes a negative comment, they get upset. These people tend to operate from the ‘blame frame’ we talked about in an earlier article in this series. That is, when they feel lousy, they blame something or someone else for getting them into that lousy state. ‘He makes me so upset, I can’t get anything done’ or ‘Because of what happened, I don’t feel confident anymore’ or ‘My boss does not motivate me enough.’
Does this mean that successful individuals who experience more empowering states do so because they experience more positive events? Do they have fewer problems? Do they have people who encourage them all the time? Do they achieve their goals often and never fail? We know that is not true! They may experience the same lousy events in their environments, but they are able to remain in powerful states like motivation and confidence that continue to drive them to take more action until they get the desired result! How? They are able to take charge and consciously direct their states from moment to moment. Unsuccessful people, on the other hand, find themselves constantly at the mercy of their (bad) habits and their environment. So, you must start taking charge of your states and learn how to get yourself constantly into resourceful states that allow you to perform at your peak. The first thing you must understand is that…
(I facilitate Thought Leaders, Change Makers; Professionals & Business Owners translate NLP concepts into actions to achieve and elicit personal excellence. I conduct NLP Lifestyle Coaching Certification programs for individuals, corporate and celebrity clients. We will discuss in detail ‘How We Create and affect Our States’ in the next article and after that you will come to know in subsequent articles, how you can utilise concepts of NLP+ in all walks of your life to replicate the success blueprint of a winner mindset to win through life. So, stay tuned every Monday & Saturday and fasten your seat belt to ‘Enhance Your Lifestyle With NLP+’)
My #1 Amazon Best Selling book ‘Awaken The Incredible Within – Incredible Is The New Giant’ is available at Amazon in English at http://bit.ly/Awaken-The-Incredible-Within
Shantanu Das Sharma, Creator of the concept NLP Lifestyle Coaching with NLP+, Founder of Neuromind Leadership Academy is an Amazon #1 Best Selling Author, NLP Lifestyle Master Trainer & Coach, Clean Language Facilitator & Strategic Interventionist.
