This post is quite long but well worth the read! It is an edited extract from a series of three posts by the wonderful Michael Neill whose work I always turn to when facing personal or professional challenges. The link to the series is at the bottom of the extract. At the moment, I have cause to reflect on some personal and professional challenges I faced last week. This extract is really helping me work things through. I wanted to share it with you as I think that many of my readers, like me, work in highly complex settings where we are requested to undertake difficult tasks. I am hoping that the ideas from Michael's posts might help you as much as they have helped me this weekend.
UNDERSTANDING WHAT IT TAKES TO SUCCEED
When it comes to creating results in our lives, most people are pretty much exactly where they ought to be.
Over the years I've rarely seen anyone who consistently outperforms their own efforts. On the whole, life doesn't really lift people up who haven't earned the lift or hold them down when everything else is pointing towards success.
But much as some people would like to believe that investing time and energy is all it takes to succeed (and much as other people would like to believe that investing time and energy doesn't matter at all), there are actually many reasons that contribute to the level and quality of results we produce.
In my experience, a deeper understanding of these reasons can become critical in our own pursuit of success. Here are 7 and there are sure to be more:
1. Starting place
Where you start makes a huge difference. A gazelle will outrun a cheetah every time if the gazelle only has five yards to go to safety and the cheetah is starting over a hundred yards away.
2. Investment of Time and Energy
I know of no way around this one - if you want to produce results and you're not starting at the
3. Strategy
Effort has its limits. "If you're goal is to see the sunset and you're continually traveling East, you've got a significant challenge." (Tony Robbins). An effective strategy is a powerful ally in your quest for success. But the best strategy in the world still needs to be executed effectively. And in order to do that you need to take into account...
4. The level of skill/challenge
Two tennis players are about to play their first match against each other. One of them is undefeated to date, 50 wins against 0 losses; the other is struggling to win any. Which one would you bet on? If you're smart, you'll wait to see who they scored their victories against and who they lost to. 50 wins against school children tells us little; 1 wins against a top seed speaks volumes.
When it comes to creating results, the arena we're playing in is as significant a factor as our current level of skill. Some jobs are harder than others, some tasks more challenging, some fields more highly competitive. Fortunately, skills can be developed, both in and out of the arena we're looking to apply them. But even when we develop the skills to meet the challenges, nothing great is going to happen if we rely solely on our own efforts...
5. Other people
No worthwhile endeavor was ever achieved without a community - a team of other people who are knowingly or unknowingly involved in assisting and offering support along the way. Most of us intuitively recognize this fact, and self-made men and women ignore it at their peril.
Learn to work and play well with others and you're likely to do well in life. But even when you're off to a great start, putting in the hours, following a great strategy an a level playing field with the support of others, there is still something that can make or break your efforts over time...
6. The random factor
The economist Nassim Nicholas Taleb has written at length about the very human tendency to be "fooled by randomness". And whether you call it "luck", "fate", or 'destiny', there is no doubt that sometimes our best laid plans will go astray while even the most ill-conceived idea occasionally comes to pass.
While not looking back to see what we could have done differently limits our learning, spending too long seeking to create predictability in a world of infinite possibility is a problem of a completely different order.Simply put, the mind seems to want to create structure out of chaos, even if it has to bend the truth in order to do it. If we fall for it, we get to pretend we live in an ordered universe where each effect has a single discernible cause and where if we can only figure out what to do and do it right, everything will work out the way we want it to.
If, on the other hand, we embrace the chaos of the unknown, we find that the random factor can be our biggest ally in our pursuit of success.
7. The seventh point is perhaps the most powerful...
In order to get a better understanding of his last and most important point, consider the following scenario: You wake up in the morning feeling a little bit tired. Before you leave for work, your partner reminds you that you agreed to take the kids to football practice and help them with homework after school, although you're pretty sure that conversation never happened and that if it had, you would never have agreed to it in the first place. As soon as you log on to your email at work, you are faced with three urgent messages about three critical projects, all saying that strategic decisions need to be made before the end of the day if not sooner. A quick look at your calendar shows a completely full schedule, and you realize that you would need to stay at work until nearly midnight to get everything done (and that doesn't include leaving in the middle of the afternoon to take your children to football).
How are you going to handle it?
What's will have the most impact how your day goes, how much work gets done, which decisions get made, how high quality those decisions are, and whether your relationships are stronger or weaker by the end of the day?
Will it be primarily a function of:
• How many times you've been in situations like this in the past?
• How hard you're willing to work?
• Which time management strategies you choose to apply?
• How good you are at your job?
• Your people skills?
• Luck?
Or will it be something completely different?
When I consider this scenario for myself, I realize that twenty years ago I would have given up and blamed my day on my inexperience, other people's incompetence, and all-around bad luck. Ten years ago, I would have tried to resolve it with hard work and time management strategies. Five years ago I would have hoped that my work experience and communication skills would carry the day.
But while I recognize all of those things are relevant factors, it is my understanding of this that is key....
YOUR STATE OF MIND
There are three things I know about the impact of state of mind that will guide me throughout the day:
1. Low Quality State of Mind
I know that if I act unchecked in a low state of mind, I'm likely to turn each one of my daily dramas into a crisis. My partner and I will be at each other's throats over the children and we'll each be wondering how the other can be so non-understanding. Each of my work colleagues will become the villains as I try to play hero, working all the hours god sends to save the day whilst simultaneously bemoaning my fate to be surrounded by incompetents.
Our effective intellectual and emotional intelligence is low which means that if we try to move forward from this place (or while those around us are in low quality states of mind), mistakes pile up and relationships founder.
2. High Quality State of Mind
I know that in a high quality, relatively clear state of mind, I'll take each one of these things in my stride and handle them as best they can. I'll recognize the impact of my partner's state of mind on their communication and it will have become a non-issue by the time I get to work. I'll look past the urgency in my colleagues emails and see which projects really need to be acted on today and which will keep until tomorrow or even later. Rather than try to force a decision if I don't know what to do about the kids, I'll elevate that one to the back burner trusting that the incredible resource of innate wisdom will give me an answer when I need one. And I'll recognize that all I can do for now is all I can do for now, and not put additional pressure or stress on myself to play superhero.
In a high quality we are in a state of relative calm, clarity, and well-being, we are at our best. We naturally have access to a deeper creative intelligence that seems to come through us instead of from us in the form of insights, intuitions, inspirations, and common sense.
When we spend more time in high quality states of mind and do less damage in low quality states of mind:
- We worry less about how close to finishing we are and appreciate how far we've already come. (Starting place)
- We spend less time cleaning up our mess or thinking about everything that could go wrong or right and more time doing what needs to be done. This creates higher efficiencies and opens people up to even more creative inspiration as they experience having more than enough time to complete each successive project. (Investment of time and energy)
- Our common sense guides us to follow more effective strategies and to quickly abandon dead ends and wrong turns. This negates the "Who moved my cheese?" effect, where people continue down formerly rewarding pathways long after the reward is no longer available. (Strategy)
- We adapt more quickly to the realities of our situation, dropping both unrealistic expectations ("This is going to be a piece of cake - we'll all be millionaires by the end of the week!") and unrealistic limitations ("This is just too damn hard - I'm too old/young/smart/dumb/experienced/inexperienced to succeed!") This enables us to accelerate the learning curve and master our relevant skill sets with a minimum amount of self-consciousness and self-interference. (Level of skill/Level of challenge)
- We recognize that other people live in fluctuating states of mind as well, and are subject to the same effects as we are. They too will be smarter, more creative, and exhibit more common sense when they are in a high quality SOM; like us they will be more close minded, less creative, and less willing to listen in lower quality SOM. So we're free to adapt our communications accordingly, knowing not to try too hard "to talk sense to a barking dog" and intuitively sensing the optimal moments to have critical conversations. (Other people)
- We begin to see that living in the unknown is our natural state, and spend less time trying to control the random wheel of fortune and more time looking to take advantage of it when it spins our way. We recognize the wisdom in seeing, as Scottish Himalayan explorer W. H. Murray famously said:
- Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation), there is one elementary truth that ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves too
- All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one’s favor all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamed would have come his way.
3. The Nature of our States of Mind
I know that while I don't control my state of mind, it is naturally buoyant and self-regulating. The less I try to do to fix it, the more easily it returns to a place of clarity, insight, and well-being. So I take it easy when my state of mind is low, take advantage when it's high, and don't waste much mental or physical activity on it in between times.
Take some time this week to look deeper at the impact your state of mind has on your performance, relationships, and results. And if you're someone who has put a lot of time and effort into controlling or managing your state remind yourlsef that a higher quality state of mind is never more than one thought away from whatever it is that you're thinking right now.
In Summary
- There are multiple variables that determine the results we produce in our lives. Most of these variables are beyond our direct control.
- The most highly leveraged variable is state of mind SOM - that is, our level of understanding of the workings and effects of healthy and unhealthy psychological functioning on all results-producing activities in which we engage will be the key to our success or failure in most endeavors.
- When we understand this, we can place our attention on SOM and the task at hand and allow our innate wisdom - the incredible intelligence behind our personal thinking - to take care of the rest and guide us every step of the way.
Michael Neill's Latest Weekly Tip Understanding What it Takes to Succeed.
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