The beginning of a new era

I've done my first week as a full time employee in over two years and I absolutely loved it.

If someone had told me that only 3-4 months ago I would have laughed at them, but as circumstances change, the same situations can quite suddenly have a very different feel to them.

Return to work. Have the same salary you had when you started 11 years ago. Be happy about it.

Those statements above don't look like seeds that can grow into happiness, but for me they did. It is almost as if I feel like I should have done this a long time ago, but I wouldn't have been ready for anything like this until just recently.

If there is anything I have learned this week it is that things change, and our attitudes to a specific proposition changes when outside influences changes. I can see why someone with their back against the wall make great success stories, to put it that way.

Reframing can come from so many different things and it can happen at varying speeds. The reframing of "work" as the worst possible thing for me took time and MLM indoctrination. The controversial opinion, at least in IM circles, that a paid job is in deed a good thing came to me rather suddenly. I suppose it took me about 3 seconds to snap out of the "Jobs are for losers" attitude when it became apparent that google ads was not a reliable way to make a living.

Can I put a disclaimer on here? I'm not like everybody. What currently works for me is unlikely to work for anyone else because you guys think differently from me, but also because you are in a different situation from me. So what is right for you has very little to do for what is right for me.

Can you think of a time when your opinion of something or someone has changed VERY suddenly?

Cheers,
Jon ( still progressing )

=Every Day In Every Way, I'm Getting Better And Better=

Don't Think Happy Thoughts

Or at least, what ever you do - don't think about a blue tree.

Can't help yourself can you? ;o)

In case your wondering, my very own personal NLP coach dropped by this week for a one to one. I say that, but he's not really my coach as such. He is a friend that just so happens to know a whole lot about the power of thinking.

The conversation I had with Andy fits right in with my comments last week ( and Gary's reply) and that conversation really made a difference.

- if it wasn't for me, Andy would not have gone to the London Lunch. He would not have known that it was on otherwise. So I know HE got something out of the chat.

- if it wasn't for Andy I wouldn't have been able to find out why I don't like buying cut flowers ( hate is a word that is almost good enough to describe my feelings towards buying flowers, but it is not quite strong enough. . . ) and I also found out why it is that being around some people we have known for a while, always seem to cause us to feel a certain way.

Oh and I managed to identify my only two priorities for the rest of the year; my publishing business and the pursuit of an opportunity related to parenting. I'm deliberately vague.

Another thing that was discussed relates to my management and coaching experience, but I am not going to let it take up too much of my thoughts. That idea / opportunity doesn't need to manifest itself until January.

This weekend is the last weekend of my "retired" life. Come Tuesday I am coming out of retirement and will be back in "normal" employment. I say normal but I will be working in a call centre with 38 women and 4 other men. The last time I spent time with a group this dominated by women I lasted 2 weeks and had to quit the job. Thankfully this time the women are good looking ;o)

So I am off to enjoy my last weekend as.. well technically unemployed.. and We'll speak together again next week.

Cheers,
Jon ( still progressing )

=Every Day In Every Way, I'm Getting Better And Better=

Feelings VS. your comfort zone

A friend of mine publishes a printed monthly newsletter about self improvement.

I find it an interesting read because it makes me think about how I think about things. And I find that I am increasingly disagreeing with some of the things he says. Or at least find that there are additional points that needs to be made.

There are two main things that I have gathered from Gary Vurnums www.obviousstupid.com newsletters;

• Feelings reveal how you think and is therefor the best way to find out if you are doing what is right for you. If you feel bad about it, my understanding is that the decision or action may not be the best one for you.
• Challenge your comfort zone in order to grow. You have to do the uncomfortable to have a chance to grow.
  

Now, look at those two statements. I read them to mean "make decisions that make you feel comfortable but you must also make decisions that make you uncomfortable".

See the oxymoron? It seems completely contradictory doesn't it? does to me. Or at least it did when I started to write this blog post.

Are there situations you could do both? Or am I mis-reading what Gary is saying? Knowing how I think, chances are I misunderstand. I'm thick like that.

Or are there simply a collection of fundamental flaws in Gary's thinking? Possibly. at worst. At best it is simply missing a few bits.

Ok, taking the "feeling as a compass" point first.

The paradox, to me, is that your feeling "compass" is completely dependent on the "magnetic pole" of your thoughts. The needle of a compass always points to the magnetic north, which is slightly to the east of the actual North pole.

The problem with using our feelings to indicate if our direction is the correct choice for us, is that our thought patters are not a fixed magnetic point. We can think in both a negative way and in a positive way. There are always at least two views you can take on any given event that happens to you. If you decide to feel good about a situation, the different choices you have in front of you will feel different to you than if you decide to let your less desirable thought patterns dominate.

I never know if this makes any sense to anyone other than me, or if I am simply stating the obvious (!), but this to me makes it crucial to recognize how I am thinking before I let my feelings make my decisions for me. Simply "decide on the thing that feels best" is not good enough. It is more complex than that. Or at least it can be.

Just look at the oxymoron I started with. From a positive point of view, challenging your comfort zone is a good thing, but by its very definition it is going to be uncomfortable to do so. So how can you possibly use your feelings in this situation to decide if the decision is the right one or not?

Does this mean that the thinking-feeling-decision theory only works while you are inside your comfort zone? I'm sure someone smarter than me knows. I'm still too unsure about the "feeling compass" theory.

Clearly your emotions play a part, but I don't agree for a second that it is the most important guide.

Here is a case in point.

You have two options in front of you. They both have things you like and dislike about them and you are unable to decide which way to turn. One of them feels uncomfortable because it is out of your comfort zone and the other "feels" better because it is INSIDE your comfort zone.

You are absolutely and completely split down the middle about which way to go. There is NO preference of one over the other when it comes to how you feel about them. The thought of walking down either path makes you both excited and apprehensive at once.

How would you decide?

How do you know without long and detailed analysis, that you are thinking right, or feeling right?

My feeling about the thinking - feeling - deciding theory is that if you think wrong, your feelings will identify to the wrong decision as the right one. And you may not be able to know exactly if your thinking is coming from a point of lack or from a point of abundance.

Personally, and I think Gary agrees, this whole decision making process is a whole lot easier if you know your purpose. If your goals and ambitions have a "higher purpose" and you know what that purpose is, then the paradox goes away.

And the "feeling compass" has been relegated from the top spot.

Cheers,
Jon ( still progressing )

=Every Day In Every Way, I'm Getting Better And Better=

P.s - I only found my higher purpose as a result of thinking about this paradox, and a particular decision making process / situation that has arisen in my personal life lately.

and my purpose is to help those that want to be helped. This should apply to everything I do. and it made my decision pretty easy.

Facebook violence

I think the fairest assessment of this week is that it was completely filled with the school start of my son.

Funny how getting him out of the house has slowed down my progress so much, but I think it had more to do with the fact that I took time out to clear some of the clutter that has built up around the house lately. Besides my mother was visiting from Norway so that she could be here on his first day of school.

Other than that I have been wasting time trying to figure out why facebook is so popular. sod knows it's hardly a place to make money.

I think I might get bored with sitting at home, doing research, writing articles and browsing facebook now that my son is off to school every day.

I might just take a part time job or something just to get out of the house.

Although I should really get cracking on those sodded xsitepro templates.

I re-read that sentence and know full well that unless I put checks in place to make sure that those templates are my focus there is no way that it will get done.

So do you want a tips that I am learning to apply? (a thank you goes out to my PA, who I shall be calling ET from now on. )

I can't believe it took a simple instruction from ET to get me to apply this, because it is so incredibly obvious. Actually you may think it is so obvious it won't work, but it actually does.

The most powerful element in any kind of adventure, business or otherwise is focus. I think someone smarter than me once described it as "focused and determined action", but I will just call it focus.

The second element is time. As long as you give any given length of time a specific focus point you will progress towards it with the help of taking determined action to take you in the direction of what you are focusing on.

I have always had a problem with setting long term goals. I think I have just had a light bulb moment when I wrote "give any given length of time..." because it dawned on me that I can use the same principle on long term goals; what is the ONE thing I want to achieve this month, year, 3- year period? At the moment I am only using it on a daily or weekly basis, but there is no reason why it can't work on longer periods of time. In fact I know it does, because I can think of two people who every year decide to learn ONE new thing, and decide to learn it well.

I've digressed a little bit from what I wanted to share, and that was this lesson;
give every single day ONE overriding topic/focus/action point. Or in other words ask yourself:


If I can only achieve ONE thing tomorrow, which thing should it be?



Cheers,
Jon ( still progressing )

=Every Day In Every Way, I'm Getting Better And Better=

PS - Oh, and make sure you write that ONE thing down in your diary! that is what ET told me to do!

It's not an easy thing to "just do it" when you think about it.

After a rather unusual week I didn't feel like posting anything about my progress yesterday.

I'm not going to go on about it, but rather get on with the task in hand; my weekly update.

The coolest thing that happened to me this week was that i found out Kirt Christensen agrees with me when it comes to focusing on one thing. Try for more than one and it won't work.

Easily said.

The challenge for me is that I really don't have a proper plan with what I do. When I do focus on a project like the success interviews, then things do get done, but I never know if what I do is good enough, or if people are satisfied with it.

Apparently though this blog is a good thing. At least two people ( who I am not related to) have told me they like it.

Anyway, back to this focus thing. Kirt was answering a post on an internet marketing forum where the poster "Rob S." was asking for opinions on his own blog. I didn't read the post to be honest because I've got Rob on my twitter so I kinda knew what he was up to.

I'm sure he won't mind me saying this but Rob has a habit of asking people what he should do.

He's had a bundle of suggestions and considering he has a natural talent for writing and photography, there are a number of ways he could make a living off those two things alone.

Yet he doesn't seem to think so.

I ask the same questions Rob asks. ALL the time. I'm 36 and I STILL don't know what I want to be when I grow up. Worse yet, I can't think of a single talent any right minded person would pay me to share it with them.

To me this constant need of approval and confirmation that I am doing the right thing is a lack of confidence. It is a lack of confidence in my abilities. It is a lack of confidence in my proficiency or mastery of any particular "talent" and it is a lack of confidence in the "systems" I try.

Which in turn could be coming back to a lack of planning. I'm beginning to see the outline of a vicious circle here which could explain why I can't quite decide what the core cause is.

it might be obvious to everyone else, and THAT is frustrating.

Almost as frustrating as someone telling me I have the talent and the knowledge, and that I should just DO IT. If I was confident that I knew what I was doing then yeah, I would.

But most of the time I can see so many different ways of realizing a product or service that I have no idea which one is the best one to go for.

The "reverse Migrant" (aka AndyH) has told me before that I have to find out which solution is most likely to be enjoyed the most by my target audience.

I know that part. Then I start to doubt myself as to where I could find out those things. Which is weird because I have a mind map that Andy, Paul and I worked out a couple of years ago and it is still true that in order to find out how to deliver a product to a market, you need to know the market, and in order to know the market you need to know where they hang out and you need to go there and find out as much as you possibly can about them.

but I never / rarely do. I do wonder how much time people actually spend learning their market. I certainly don't do enough of those things.

There is a whole bunch of stuff that I know how to do, but don't do enough of, and I think that contributes to my lack of confidence. And maybe the same problem is causing Robs eternal questioning of his direction and his choice of projects. or maybe I am projecting my problems onto him.

I'm not completely useless though. I have one talent I am absolutely 900 per cent confident in; If I put my mind to it I can motivate a boulder to go for a run! As a coach and team leader in IBM I seemed to do a good job of it - the reviews on linkedin certainly seem to suggest so.
When I was doing my MR accountability part in the niche service station back in 2005 the feedback was also good.

It is something that no one else is doing in the IM arena, or at least not making it as available as we did, but other than Phil Wiley, no one has ever thought it was a good idea to offer this as a service.

Maybe I have been asking the wrong people.

So those are my thoughts for this week. Online projects are being left alone at the moment. I still need to restore the templates for my xsitepro based websites, but I am also reviewing my plans, my goals and my direction. I think it is about high time I give my planning some focus.

Any thoughts, just send me a comment.

Cheers,
Jon ( still progressing )

=Every Day In Every Way, I'm Getting Better And Better=