"My dear friend, clear your mind of can't." | ||
| --SAMUEL JOHNSON, ESSAYIST AND THE COMPILER OF THE FIRST DICTIONARY OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE (1709–1784) | ||
I recently read an article that explained that William Shakespeare had used 17,676 different words in his plays. He was responsible for inventing over 1,700 new words, such as critic, laughable, swagger, envy, elbow room and moonbeam. If you think this book contains the "naked truth", you're using a phrase he created. On the other hand, if you think "it's all Greek to me", well, that's another of Shakespeare's creations.
To show that anyone can invent a word or phrase, football manager Sir Alex Ferguson coined "squeaky bum time" for the pressure that players and managers feel at the end of a season. Iain Dowie, Crystal Palace manager, has also found his way into the dictionary by describing the ability to respond to setbacks as possessing "bouncebackability"!
This idea of being able to invent words and phrases got me thinking. If something can be created and put into a dictionary, then surely words can also be removed. Right?
One lesson all successful people share is the ability to take the word "failure" out of their vocabulary and then behave like it doesn't exist. Ellen MacArthur, the youngest person and the fastest woman to sail around the world single-handedly, said:
"Successful people usually snap success from seeming failure. If they know there is such a word as defeat or failure, they will not admit it. They may be whipped but they are not aware of it. That's why they succeed."
If failure doesn't exist for you, you can't fear it, can you? James Dyson first had the idea of inventing the bagless vacuum cleaner back in 1972, yet you couldn't buy one in the UK until 1992. What was he doing for the 20 years in between? Let him explain:
"Failure seldom stops you. What stops you is the fear of failure. I have never encountered it, as I have only ever had temporary setbacks. Never walk away from these setbacks. On the contrary, study them carefully – and imaginatively – for their hidden assets. If you want to double your success rate, double your failure rate."
After he had finished his playing career, footballer Jimmy Greaves was asked to explain how he had achieved the record of scoring 49 goals in a season for Tottenham Hotspur. He said:
"I also got another, less well-known, record that same season. I got the record for the highest number of goals missed. I got this as I understood the lesson that I couldn't score every time I had a shot but I definitely wouldn't score, if I never even tried."
Golfer Greg Norman had the same attitude. In 1996, after losing the US Open to Nick Faldo despite leading the field for the whole tournament, Norman was expected to sneak away quietly, but instead he chose to face the whole world's media to explain:
"Losses aren't a waste of time. They are an apprenticeship. Real failure is a man who has blundered and not cashed in on the experience; failure is an attitude not an outcome."
Here's a question for you: Do you ever talk to yourself?
As you read this book, listen to the voice in your head that you can hear now. This is what psychologists call your "self-talk".
Here is another question for you: Do you speak to your friends and family in the same way you allow the voice in your head to speak to you?
If you answered "yes" to this second question, answer a third: Do you have many family or friends left who still speak to you?
On average, you talk to yourself around 10,000 times a day. How many of the things you say to yourself are positive messages and how many are negative? How many times do you find yourself saying "I can't do that" or "I'm an idiot"?
This voice in your head, your self-talk, is the key to making you a success and helping you achieve your goals.
Studies have been carried out with children whose parents are working in professional industries and others whose parents are on social security benefits. Up until the age of 4, the children from professional families will have received 700,000 positive comments, such as "well done" and "excellent", and only 80,000 negative comments, such as "stop it" or "don't do that". In contrast, children from families on benefits will, by the same age, have received 60,000 positive comments compared to 120,000 negative ones.
So the "professional kids" hear seven times as many positive comments as negative ones, whereas "benefits kids" hear twice as many negative statements as positive ones. This statistic is a huge factor in determining how successful a child will be in later years.
The great thing is that it's never too late to stop and reverse this kind of attitude. Ask yourself again, what is the proportion of positive to negative comments you tell yourself every day?
Try this technique. Start to monitor what you say to yourself and substitute phrases like "I won't" for "I can't". Can you see the distinction between the two? We're back to the whole matter of choice, which is where we started this book. Stop telling yourself "I'll try" and instead tell yourself "I'll choose to/choose not to".
Think of Yoda, the wise old Jedi master, who when Luke Skywalker expressed doubts about his ability to beat Darth Vader and conquer the Dark Side, told him:
"Do or do not. There is no try."
This reminds me of a story told by England international footballer Jimmy Meadows about a technical course he once attended in a factory:
"A positive something is better than a negative nothing. There were several operators and engineers present for this course and the instructor radiated positive thinking as he spoke and thought, only in terms of the impossibility of failure and the certainty of success."
"We were given a test in what we had learned so far and, as we did it, one or two of us began to discuss the problems we had encountered. The instructor wasn't having any of that and he said: 'Let me make one thing perfectly clear, gentlemen. In the world of TPM there are no such things as problems, only opportunities!'
"There was a pause and then one of the guys in the far corner said, very gently, 'In that case, I wonder if you would give me a hand with an insurmountable opportunity?'"
Start to change your own language.