Saturday, February 18. 2006
YOUR MIND'S EYE - See It To Believe it
by David Krueger
The seminar room was packed with marketing executives who came to hear coaching on how to create their hottest market tool: their own book. I stepped to the podium and asked, Have any of you seen a yellow jeep in the last month? They registered disbelief, and finally puzzlement as they realized I was waiting for a response to a legitimate question. Finally one person tentatively raised his hand, as though he were still questioning either my seriousness or his memory.I told them they could see a yellow jeep, now, if they wanted to. I asked them to close their eyes and visualize a yellow jeep, the specific detail of how it looked from different angles, how it felt when they touched it, how the interior smelled.
I asked them to open their eyes, and to call or email me if they happened to spot a yellow jeep. Almost everyone contacted me to report their first sighting in the following week-- most in the first two days.
People see what they look for, and want to make sense of what they see: What does it mean? Where does it fit? What do I do with it? And what they look for-what appears on the radar screen-is determined by belief and assumption.
For example, the most common reason people don't earn more money and accumulate wealth is that they don't see themselves capable of it. Once someone genuinely sees himself or herself as capable of doing it, all sorts of thing begin to happen. The number of yellow jeeps or wealth existing in the world doesn't change, you just code your radar for possibility.
Establishing a vision requires both art and science. Vision crystallizes possibility into a fundamental, articulated idea. Constructing a vision gives hope possibility-a shape and form. You inhabit the experience of your vision as guide to creating it.
A vision serves as inspiration to design ways to realize it. The most successful businesses have a vision that is also ubiquitous for each person in the organization.
- You must construct your own vision.
- The criteria to measure success need to be clearly defined.
- Create positive terms for success.
- Be specific, simple, concrete.
- Be entirely present to your experience of the vision: Being in your body, what you feel, what you think.
Now: form a real vision. Picture yourself as you have just succeeded at your goal at a specific time in the future, such as one year from now. Create this success experience specific to time, place, how you would experience yourself, and your body through all five senses. Hold the energy of the precise outcome you've just achieved, the goals met, and the feelings from it. Imagine the details of the scene of your success inside and outside, engaging all senses, thoughts, feelings, and bodily experience along with details of the scene. For example, for a successful transaction, include the values and needs fulfilled, the money you have made from this, the details of what you are doing, such as shaking hands and ushering someone out of your office.
Carve out a few moments at the beginning and the end of each day to read this vision. You're programming a message for success in your mind by creating the experience of having achieved it. This vision statement related to a goal begins the experience and outline of a new story that you can then live into.
You do not have to be motivated in order to plan and act. You can move toward a vision to create its own motivation. Even professional athletes drag themselves to the gym, get started, and when they get in motion then they access a motivated state. They do not wait for motivation to get moving. To wait until you get the energy to exercise doesn't work; you have to exercise in order to get the energy to exercise.
A number of accomplished, creative individuals were asked how they did what they did. Their response had a common thread: they just got up to do the next thing, and only in retrospect did they recognize how important or how immense it was. Or as one writer stated, "I'm just going to be here at my desk from 8:30 to 12:30 and if anything shows up that's worth writing, I'll capture it."
There are ten scientific, aerodynamically proven reasons why bumble bees cannot fly. Yet they do. The bumblebee has transcended factual evidence and obstacle to be able to fly. The bumble bee does not refute or overcome each of the aerodynamic principles, but simply does not engage them, and sets about flying. Working through each of the problems, each bit of scientific data, to disprove the notions of the inability to fly would not result in flying. Resolving problems to come to the end of the past do not create a successful future.
Like the bee, your design is not outside. It is internal, to be created. Your dream--your vision--directs your journey.
In a Harvard study begun in the mid-1950's, 10-15% of the Harvard Business School graduates fashioned a specific vision for their life in business. Five decades later, those 10-15% had 90% of the assets of the entire group.
David Krueger, M.D. is CEO of MentorPath, an executive coaching practice tailored to the needs of coaches, entrepreneurs, and healing professionals (www.MentorPath.com). He is Mentor and Training Coach at Coach Training Alliance. He is author of 11 books on success, money, work, and self-development.
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