"Start each day with a smile and get it over with." | ||
| --WC FIELDS, COMEDIAN AND ACTOR (1880–1946) | ||
"There are men in your squad we wouldn't go into battle with," said the Royal Marines senior training instructor and rattled off their names.
"But why? What is it about them? They are clearly great at their jobs. Why wouldn't you go into battle with them?"
"It's not about their skills, Clive. It's about their attitude and their effect on the team. There are hundreds of soldiers who can run for three days, think on their feet and handle a weapon. But some aren't suited to working in a high-pressure team situation. It might be the smallest trait, like a moan when the going gets tough. One wrong team player can sap all the energy from a group."
This was a conversation between Clive Woodward and the trainer, after a team-building exercise that Woodward had arranged to discover who he should recruit to his team to go and win the World Cup. The Royal Marines trainer identified two groups of people in the team, Energy Sappers and Energizers.
The definitions of these terms are as follows:
Energy Sappers – like the verbs to bleed, deplete, devitalize, drain, erode, exhaust, undermine, weaken, wear down. Another way of thinking of them is probability thinkers.
Energizers – like the nouns drive, efficiency, exertion, fire, force, intensity, power, spirit, stamina, strength. Another way of thinking of them is possibility thinkers.
The thing is, not only do you become what you think about most of the time, you also become like the people who you spend most of your time with.
Educator Sir John Jones regularly speaks to newly qualified teachers and he cites one main factor that determines whether teachers are successful. It is not how well they know their subject or how well they can control a class – it is where they sit in the staffroom.
He challenges teachers to think about whether they sit with people who love their job, enjoy the challenge of teaching and love the lifestyle it affords them, or with people who love nothing more than to moan, gripe and bellyache about the job, the management, the canteen or the tea. Sir John calls this second group "dream snatchers", the people who haven't achieved their dreams and will stop you achieving yours.
Robbie Williams wrote a song about one of these dream snatchers, which he included as a hidden track on his Life Thru a Lens album. It was dedicated to one of his teachers who couldn't be bothered to learn his name for six years and who had laughed about his ambitions to be a pop star, suggesting instead that he join the army,
Jock Stein, the manager of Celtic FC who was the first British manager to win the European cup, agrees with the view that possibility and probability thinkers are able to determine your success. He said that the art of successfully creating a great player was to keep him away from the eight team mates who hated the manager and would poison his thinking, and to steer him towards the other two who haven't made their minds up yet!
Now think about yourself.
If you were to list the people who you spend most of your time with, would you describe them as probability thinkers? If you need help in identifying them, listen out for the typical comments that this sort of person specializes in:
"It will be a disaster; it always is!"
Or, to quote Homer Simpson again:
"You tried your best and failed miserably. The lesson is 'never try'."
Are they the sort of people who boast about having twenty years' experience but could realistically be said to have had one year's experience that they've repeated twenty times? Are they people who respond to every idea with the words: "Yes, but . . . "? Are they the kind of people comedienne Victoria Wood had in mind when she said:
"Man invented language only to satisfy his need to complain."
If so, then you're surrounded by probability thinkers.
Or are you in the company of possibility thinkers? They typically comment, "Yeah, sounds good!"
These are people who look on the bright side and try to see the potential in everything. They respond to every idea with the words: "Yes and . . .". Athletics coach Frank Dick calls them "mountain people", because they love to rise to a challenge. Sir Isaac Newton, the man who defined the laws of gravity, referred to them in a letter to his friend when he said:
"If I have seen a little further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants."
Think about yourself. Are you a probability or a possibility thinker?
US sociologist Dr Wayne Dwyer believes that we all belong to a number of different tribes at home, at work and socially. Each tribe operates within certain guidelines and traditions. Some of these are necessary, as they make sure that the tribe survives, but many of its laws can hold the most talented people back, as the tribe moves at the speed of the slowest person and doesn't like one of its members learning something outside its laws.
Four-time Olympic gold medal winner Sir Matthew Pinsent explains how this occurs. He and his three team mates would be wired up to static rowing machines when training and the machines would check that they were all rowing at the same speed and with the same power. When they were all rowing in perfect harmony, the total result was that they were 110 per cent more powerful. If one of the team dropped his rate by a fraction, the other three would subconsciously drop as well, without even noticing. As Pinsent said:
"With a tired or weak team member, a boat will only go as fast as he allows it to go."
The message here is that who you surround yourself with is just as important as your own mental approach.
The next time you are sitting in the canteen and find one of your mates telling you that a task is impossible or that you are wasting your time chasing after something you have identified as your purpose and goal, remember the following example of someone who refused to listen to probability thinkers. Unfortunately, these probability thinkers included the national government and a whole nation, who told him that things couldn't and wouldn't change, no matter what he said or did. He was regarded as a dangerous fool and was imprisoned for remaining a possibility thinker.
"Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? Your playing small doesn't serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you . . . And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others."
Nelson Mandela used those words by peace activist Marianne Williamson in his inauguration speech as president of South Africa.