In This Chapter

In a world that constantly bombards us with distractions, temptations, and all things grand as well as frivolous, the discipline of taking the time to pause and reflect, listening to your small, quiet voice, tapping your internal intelligence sources, and visualizing your desired results separates the high achievers from the rest.

When you win the battle for your mind, you can win at nearly everything. Undoubtedly, you have a fine mind, and it has brought you to where you are today. All that you’ve accomplished and haven’t accomplished largely has been a result of your ability to tap your most vital get-it-done resource: your mind.

When you contemplate the challenges that you face and the things that you want to accomplish, have you considered that many other people experience the same kind of quandaries that you do? It’s easy to lose sight of this perspective. The best and brightest action-types among us at work win the internal battles first and then go on to accomplish great things, at which time the results of their efforts become noticeable.

Do you remember the scientific concept of inertia from your seventh-grade Earth Science class? The longer a body is at rest, or more specifically attached or immobile, such as a person, the harder it is to get moving. If you’re trying to break new ground, being rooted in the past is a potentially major obstacle for everyone involved.

Human beings, as creatures of habit, custom, and convenience, often become attached to the conditions around them, the equipment they use, procedures, and how things are supposed to be. This is true even when their surroundings are not pleasant.

John Kenneth Galbraith, Ph.D., a noted economist from Harvard, wrote The Nature of Mass Poverty in 1979. While researching his book, he visited four continents to determine why some civilizations remain poor. He wondered why some groups had stayed poor even for centuries.

Galbraith found that poor societies accommodate their poverty. As hard as it is to live in poor conditions, unfortunately people find it more difficult to accept the hardship—the challenge—involved in making a better living. Hence, they accommodate their poverty, and it lingers from year to year, decade to decade, and even century to century. Organization, departments, divisions, teams, and even small groups, if not careful, are all subject to accommodation.

On a personal level, getting stuck in a rut is no less difficult. Attachment reigns supreme to achievers of all ages. When my daughter was four years old, her mother and I bought her an old, upright piano. It was a little banged up and missing a few keys, but hey, for a four-year-old, it was fine.

To our amazement, she played well. At age six, she began piano lessons. The teacher encouraged us and said that our little girl had a special talent.

Two years later, the piano teacher told us it was time to buy a grand piano for Valerie. It would be quite expensive, but she was now winning awards, so it seemed like the right thing to do.

We went to a large piano emporium and Valerie tried all of them! Finally we came to a piano that proved to be “the one.” She loved it and we bought it. We told Valerie that the piano movers were going to take the other piano in trade, but it didn’t register with her. Days before the new one arrived, we cleaned up the old one, and then talked to Valerie about how that piano would be leaving and the new one would be arriving.

The old one had been her piano from the age of four and she was now eight. In other words, she had been with this piano for half of her life. She broke into a sob—not just a kid crying, but a deep mourning sob, as if she had experienced the death of a parent or a close friend.

“It’s the only piano I have ever known, I have been playing with it since I was four! Why do we have to get rid of it?” Now, trying to be a good father, I started to explain to her that realistically we couldn’t keep both pianos. The house was a good size, but two pianos were a bit much.

We took photos of the piano and we videotaped her playing—we made sure we had it covered. I explained to her that once the old piano departed, she would start to play on the new one and she wouldn’t even think of the old one. But hey, this is not an argument for an eight-year-old. For days she lamented, “Why do we have to get rid of the old one?”

Finally the day arrived. The piano movers came to deliver the new piano and take away the old one. Something in me, I don’t know where it came from, finally got through to her. I was able to communicate with her in a way she could understand and accept. Or, maybe she got there on her own, I don’t know.

After another tearful outbreak I said, “Val, when the piano goes back to the store, then some other parents will see it and maybe they’ll buy it for their little girl. She’ll learn how to play, and she’ll have that piano several years before she gets a bigger one.”

Now, Val’s expression started to change a little. She was still sobbing, but I knew that she was ready to forsake her attachment when she said to me, “Or maybe it will be a little boy.”

To me Valerie’s ability to adapt represented an extraordinary chain of events. Here was an eight-year-old willing to give up her attachment to something she had had for half of her life. In my own life, I have had far more difficult times with attachment. I have had attachments to objects, to people, and even to opinions, as do we all.

I once couldn’t stand Elvis Presley; I thought he was a country bumpkin. One time, 25 years following his death, a TV special about him showed him discussing his acting ability and he said, “If I were as talented as James Dean ….” I stopped in my tracks, I just froze, as Elvis Presley had used the past conditional, “if I were,” which is correct English. Not one person out of 10 knows that this is correct grammar.

Most people would say, “If I was as talented as James Dean,” but “if I were” is correct because he knew he would never be as talented an actor as James Dean.

All of a sudden I was willing to give up my attachment to having Elvis be some kind of bumpkin. A small issue you say?

Further on in the special, Elvis was shown going through 28 takes for one song. Everybody in the studio was saying, “Yeah, we got it, there is at least one take on the reel that is fabulous.” Elvis says something like, “Wait, we don’t have the right version yet.” He went on for 35 takes in all, and later the group selected one of the takes in the 30s!

Are you so attached to the way you do things that when you’re exposed to another way you fight tooth and nail? Do you resist trying another way and gravitate right back to what you’ve been doing, even if it doesn’t best support your quest for accomplishment?

As one passes 35, 40, 45, and 50 years of age, slowly we each become familiar with certain thought and activity patterns that literally form neural pathways in the brain. All the while, we don’t realize what is occurring. These patterns literally become second nature to us although they are not necessarily permanent … unless we allow them to be.

It’s not that people can’t change in the advancing ages, it’s that their neural pathways become more firmly entrenched. Fortunately, you can change, at any age, but it requires effort.

Simply knowing that neural pathways exist and that they can be re-routed helped free me from some of my own preconceived notions regarding work, life, and what I want to get done.

Years ago I set out on a course which I think has paid off and could work for you as well. I take different paths home, hence helping to form new neural pathways. I listen to classical music occasionally, although it is not my favorite type of music. I read magazines that are otherwise outside of my immediate interest area.

I attend movies, plays, and concerts that are not necessarily my first choices. As long as I am exposed to different plots, characters, scenery, sounds, and other ways of seeing the world, I consider the experience to be beneficial. I visit websites that display viewpoints with which I don’t necessarily agree. I read articles by authors whose bias is obvious. I ask young people for their opinion and I ask people older than myself for their opinion.

I know people who will take courses on topics completely out of their field, who try new dishes at restaurants, and who strive to keep themselves open to new ideas. The odd and wonderful thing is, you can do all kinds of new and different activities in your personal life that will serve to stimulate your creativity at work, break free of attachment, and overcome the inertia of immobility when you want to get things done.

Here are a few ideas …

At work:

Away from work:

In general, to develop your awareness:

The ultimate payoff that these types of activities generate is the ability to have a free and open mind, to make decisions on reasonably accurate observations, as well as drawing upon one’s collective experience.

Rebecca Merrill, in Living in Yes, regards effective decision-making as the quintessential skill in life and in one’s career. Merrill says that we make decisions all the time, and “we never get to stop doing it.” It’s vital, she says, to understand that “every new decision leads to more decisions. It’s just a question of how well or how poorly they set you up.”

In this day and age, as discussed throughout this book, it’s increasingly difficult to make effective decisions because of the surplus of information that is available. In many respects, it works against our ability to choose and creates an intelligence deficit. Choose, we must. Merrill says, “With every decision you’ll experience some loss, even, and especially, if you choose to do nothing.”

Since the quality of your life is directly related to the quality of your decisions, it’s well worth your while to learn how to make good ones. Merrill says, “You can only make a decision you are capable of making when the decision is called for.” The paradox of it all is that there are no “right” or perfect decisions. Said another way, “All decisions are a function of who you are at the time you make them.” The more clear your thinking process, the greater the quality of your decisions.

In his book, Thinking for a Change: 11 Ways Highly Successful People Approach Life and Work, John Maxwell points out that since our decisions are largely based on the way we think, it’s crucial to understand the nuances of the thinking process itself.

Maxwell cautions that the biggest challenges that most people face, for example, when it comes to making effective personal decisions, are their feelings. “They want to change, but they don’t know how to get past their emotions,” he says. Maxwell offers a syllogism that helps people readily understand that they are in control:

Maxwell proclaims that if you’re willing to “change your thinking, you can change your feelings. If you can change your feelings, you can change your actions.”

The actions that you take based on good thinking can change your career and your life.

Using one’s intellect for intelligent analysis certainly has its benefits when it comes to decision making. The scientific method first introduced in 1592 by Sir Francis Bacon, an English philosopher, was improved upon a generation later by Rene Descartes, a French philosopher and mathematician, who provided the most fundamental approach to analytical thinking.

Recalling your seventh-grade science class, the scientific method consists of six steps, including observation, asking questions, formulating a hypothesis, experimentation, gathering and recording data and results, and forming a conclusion.

This stuff is pretty cut and dried, so I won’t elaborate on it. However, the list that follows succinctly captures the essence of the six steps:

The Scientific Method

Remember, if your conclusion disproves your hypothesis, it is not necessarily a failure!

Analytic and scientific approaches to decision making certainly are worth knowing and using in many instances. Many people overly rely on such analysis that takes the form of seeking reams of data before making a decision. In an overly informed society—regardless of whether you’re making a purchase, hiring someone, or opening a drive-thru restaurant—you’ll find enough information to persuade you to go both left and right. You’ll find so much information that a clear-cut decision is nearly impossible.

A study was completed on the use of information in making decisions. Two groups of individuals had to make purchase decisions. One group was given data, analysis, and articles—everything they thought they needed. The other group made the decision based on instinct. After a few weeks, the two groups were able to see the results: the group that felt better about its decision had chosen on instinct. More data does not necessarily produce the best answer.

If you are forty years old, forty years of data is brought to bear when you make a decision. Instinct, then, is not based on a moment’s whim—it’s everything you’ve ever learned during your existence. Each of us has the ability to make intuitive choices, but for many, the words “intuition” or “instinct” are taboo. Yet the top CEOs of large companies often make decisions based on what feels right.

When we’re consumed by too many details—too much information—it makes sense to switch mental gears and employ all of our faculties, especially the power of intuition.

Intellect is certainly significant, but so are instinct, intuition, and gut feelings. In fact, recent discoveries have demonstrated that there’s far more to instinct, intuition, and gut feelings than you might imagine.

Robert Cooper, Ph.D., observes, “Gut instincts are real and warrant listening to.” For most things that you want to get done, even highly involved projects, you already have a strong idea as to how best to proceed.

Evidence is mounting that it’s okay to rely on your instincts more often! If you’re figuring out how to accomplish something, it’s often okay to simply start and let your intuition guide you. All the cellular intelligence throughout your body goes into a decision based on instinct or intuition. Your decision isn’t whimsical, random, or foolish.

Decisions based on instinct and intuition rapidly and automatically encompass all of your life experiences and acquired knowledge.