Partnering is what we do best.
If it’s not a life partner it’s a best friend or group of pals. Even our work place is a style of partnering in a job scenario to create results. It’s what we are made for, and it often brings out the best in us.
I have already posted one set of true stories that perfectly prove this last month (see that post here). In this second segment I’ll prove it even further with some of the biggest names in business in the world and how jointly they crafted major success.
Everyone has heard of Nike. The multi-billion dollar sports brand. It’s one of the top five success stories over the last four decades. But less people today have heard of Harris Tweed. The company was once an iconic Scottish fashion mainstay. Everyone from country folk to Royalty wore their jackets and clothing, all crafted on looms on the isle of Harris in the Scottish Islands.
But, times moved on. Fashion preferences changed. People favoured softer fabrics and sexy must-have brands on the up. The traditional tweed seemed dated, a historical throwback confined to times gone by. The market shrank, jobs were lost, and the economic future of the industry looked about to disappear for good..
But, in 2001, along came Nike. Looking for a fresher version of their Terminator trainer, they thought Harris Tweed could help promote the footwear in a specialised way and create a buzz. They ordered 10,000 yards of the cloth. Soon anyone who could weave on the Outer Hebrides islands was hard at work.
The orders flew off the shelves and saved Harris Tweed. Today their mill employs over 70 people and supports over 100 weavers. And they haven’t stopped there. This year Nike and Harris are combining once more for a limited edition Dunk Low trainers.
Such is the power of partnership and collaboration. For hip and cool with historical and elegant.
Top Marks together.
It’s not just one-off associations that form an amazing alliance.
Some have been lucratively in existence for many years.
When a Belarusian immigrant arrived in the North of England in the 1880’s he spoke hardly any English and had little money. He started up a small stall in Leeds market selling small homeware items under the slogan, ‘Don’t ask the price, it’s a penny’. The phrase caught on and soon he was doing well. Meeting a cashier from his wholesale suppliers they joined forces – one the stock purchaser and promoter, the other the credit and financial controller.
The partnership soon opened full Penny Bazaar stores where customers were free to browse which was not the normal custom.
The stores grew and expanded to 12 stores and 24 market stalls in only a few years and they were renamed under their surnames….
Marks and Spencer.
Today they can still be found in every high street in the UK plus 434 stores internationally across the globe. From one penniless newcomer who joined with an everyday local to develop an idea, today the business is worth £7.13billion. Yes…BILLION!!
Now do you believe in the power of partnership?
Penniless power.
You don’t need mass capital. Ideas are free.
They often span out of people with no funds or empty pockets who have to find a way to progress their fledgling concept idea or business. They also lead to joining forces with another person in the same position or with a similar vision. Needs must as they say.
Often it’s when we are stuck and struggling that our best ideas evolve. They are also the perfect moments to co-join with a partner to share skills, contacts, and add twice the manpower to pushing from a bad position to a brilliant one.
So when you have your next awesome idea that you hope will save the day, look also for a companion who can share the load and the road ahead with you. Partner-ships are ones that help us sail into new waters. And they often ensure that the tide turns in our favour.
Ideas are free, partnerships are golden.
If you are wondering what to do next, joining with a partner could be what works wonders for both of you.
Reference – Bbc.co.uk – Nike’s fling with Harris Tweed.
news.stv.tv – Nike and Harris Tweed unite.
Financial Times – www.ft.com – First Person: Donald John Mackay
corporate.marksandspencer.com – Our History.
archive.marksandspencer.com – Timelines – The M&S Story.
Photo attribution – free to use under the Pixabay content license by solmaiororquestra
Superthinking is something anyone can develop. Anyone at all.
Hearing the term Superthinking though makes us believe it’s some specialised ability set out for the luckily born brilliant few. The type of thinking available only to top scientists, mathematicians like Einstein, or those born with some genetic advantage that boosts their brain power.
That’s far from the truth.
In fact, you can start Superthinking TODAY in important key, but easily achievable steps.
So, get ready to superthink by following these three mind boosters.
Step 1 – Cut out the sad sources.
Our mind is fed by two sources of belief and thinking.
The first is from our past, often our distant childhood, creating inherited hang ups and insecurities. They added imprints and influences that still run round our mentality today. We, however, are often aware that our lack of drive to achieve came from Mum’s advice not to risk too much. Or our view we are not smart enough from how we were a late developer at school and others got better marks than we did. We know why we are the way we are in relation to them.
The second is a silent damager to our psyche. Bad sources of information we access on a daily basis. These infiltrate and secretly infect our outlook on life and the world. Rolling news with their awful narratives and images. Social media with its fake presentation of who is up to what and why. Mind numbing TV series of dark thrillers, murder, violent crime, and everything with a heavier edge. They are NOT entertainment. They are like taking a mind poison day after day.
Step 1 – you have to cut out these sad sources that suck the air out of your hopes and possibilities.
Step 2 – Develop a super set.
You step up in step 2.
Nature abhors a vacuum. By removing one source of mental information, you have to replace it with another. You have to find a new fuel for your brain waves.
To do this you are going to create a new super set of thoughts.
This is simply developing a small range of higher belief thoughts and imagined results to match, that you commit to repeating day by day. Ones that can be accessed whether you are in the shower, taking a coffee break, in a traffic jam, or relaxing with a glass of wine after a long day at work or in family duties.
These must be clear, distinctive, and progressive formed of elevated thoughts. Typically they should revolve around personal aims or projects that matter to you. These are NOT affirmations that you say to convince (or con) you that you are going to have a marvellous out of the blue surprise. They represent a bigger future for yourself that represents everything you would love to be and get out of life.
A super set won’t be shallow – wanting just to be a millionaire or a mega influencer so you can feel good about yourself. They are pure personal. Mine would take the form of seeing lots of my popular selling books in the book stores. They would be accompanied by beliefs that I am an accomplished writer who creates unique, original work.
The set can end with individuality – I feel complete living life as this author. I am alive and confident that being myself is fulfilling. And I believe that’s all I ever have to be at all times as I only ever have to be myself. Dedicate some time to forming your own super set.
Step 2 – develop a super set of thinking that fills up your mind with good imagination and energy.
Step 3 – Keep doing the write thing.
How many times have you had a great idea and then forgotten it soon after?
Our minds get so heavy with everything we have to do and remember it gets lost as other required tasks take over. Many of our best notions come and go like this. What’s needed is to record them when they appear.
Any time something cool or amazing or inspiring as a concept, product, or service pops into your head, DON’T LOSE IT. Write it down. Always have a small notebook ready to lay down these out of the blue superthoughts. You don’t need to go into depth yet. Just a quick line with the idea. These can be sub divided into categories if you find you are having ideas on a frequent basis.
Those sub types can be divided by subject (product, business, self career move). They could be recorded under personal rating (such as 3 out of 3 for a option in an area that is a major interest to you, down to 1 out of 3 for a general possibility). Choose a couple for yourself.
Personalising is always the key. They are YOUR ideas from YOUR supermind designed for YOU. Always keep you as the lead soul in everything you mentally produce.
Then, every few weeks keep coming back and reading through them. One or two are going to constantly leap out at you. Even more dramatic is some will trigger your mind to light up major style. THESE are the ones to explore and start the process again. Write how they can evolve. What they or it would look like. Who it would help. What you will need and so on.
Step 3 – keep doing the write thing to get to the right stuff. The stuff of superthinking.
There you have it. The magic 1-2-3. The same three steps that led me to writing my book and creating this site. And what keeps me unfolding even more potential for the supermind thinking future brand. This effectively acts as your proof of life. Your mental proof of how it can all evolve. Because, you don’t need to be an official genius to start superthinking like the best.
You just need to jump in to these three steps to opening up your supermind today.
Photo atrribution – Free for use under the Pixabay content license by geralt.
Ideas are free. We all have them.
Most ideas we have are basic. They are not massive world shifters or life changers for everyone in humanity. They are everyday and simple. But, it’s these very same ideas that can be the most successful and useful that has ever been seen. And ones that are so obvious that it’s amazing they haven’t been spotted and used before!
Swan Vestas were the iconic match company in the British Isles. Founded in 1883 the company was a stalwart of high street shops. The public from all backgrounds used their matches for everything from boiling a kettle for tea to lighting candles on a birthday cake.
But their chief fame was that they were the go-to brand for pipe and cigarette users, giving them the moniker of ‘the smoker’s match’. So much so that estimates calculate the number of matches ever used to be in the billions.
It was a hyper successful company and highly profitable. Creating greater revenue became difficult because most people already used them for every type of daily activity.
But, as legend has it, one pipe smoker employee saw otherwise.
A simple strike.
One day in the 1970’s this nameless pipe enjoying fellow turned up at Bryant and May’s (the owner and manufacturer) stating he could save the company millions with one simple idea. As the company had researched every avenue before to achieve this, they seriously doubted his claim. He persisted and they agreed to pay him £1m if he could, indeed, match his statement.
Swan Vesta boxes had two strips of glass paper on either side of the box that matches were struck across to ignite them. He noted generally people favoured one side to the other (most likely to being either left or right handed). He provided a number of boxes he had collected that showed this to be true.
Bryant and May had double the cost in providing a striking zone that was effectively rarely used. His idea was to have only one on one side, halving that cost instantly.
They did further checks. The pipe genius was right. His keen eye and simple suggestion proved to be a winner. Swan Vesta matches began being produced in one edge only boxes. The public barely noticed and few complaints were received. Bryant and May made millions, and our simple genius walked away with a million of it.
Put that in your pipe and smoke it!!
Scoot to success.
Dominic McVey was 15 when hit started making it simple….and big!
When misspelling on an internet search he discovered collapsible metal scooters. They were cool, simply cool, and he wanted one. In fact he believed other teens would too. Unable to afford one he cut a deal with the American manufacturers to buy five (through clever fundraising – disco events, trading on the stock markets with his Dad’s credit card etc) and get one free.
He sold those five (including his) in days. Then next week he sold ten more. He knew he was onto something. This portable, lightweight, fun transport was the perfect toy/transport in one. With further bravado he won the European distribution rights and two years later his sales topped 11 million units! Even the Queen called him a pioneer in entrepreneurism.
Today he’s worth over £7 million. A millionaire from a few pieces of metal and a lightweight frame.
Don’t think simple is vital? Just take a look at You Tube and see how many people view videos on how to make an omelette, wire a plug, teach a dog to sit or wallpaper a room that has unusual angles.
So used have we become to using technology to solve complexities and do advanced things, we’ve stopped using simple as the tool for making life work.
How simple can you be?
Some of the greatest ideas ever have been simple.
Simple because they make it easy for us to live our lives well or efficiently or enjoyably.
The three point seatbelt, sliding doors, the solar light bulb, and of course one of my all time favourites, The Post-It note, to mention but a few. They simplify, streamline, and work.
So, what’s your simple?
Your simple need that you find an answer for could be the one EVERYONE wants the answer for. Or, like the metal scooter, knows it’s something they would love.
If you have an idea for a product or service (who ever thought dog walking for other people would take off!!), don’t dismiss it because it seems too basic. In this mega busy, fast paced 21st Century, there are more and more things that would support our living. Simple things.
Keep it simple and you can be super successful.
References – aestheticons.wordpress.com – Swan Vestas Matches.
https://inspireip.com – A simple idea that made millions.
https://uk.finance.yahoo – Just how did Dominic McVey make his money?
Photo attribution under free content license – https://pixabay.com/photos/women-idea-university-students-1687853/ by melyserna.
Did you know you may have an undiagnosed condition?
It’s one that tens of millions of other people the world over suffer from too. It’s not diabetes. Nor is it high blood pressure. Or any stress related maladies. It’s repetitive self-sabotage syndrome.
You’ve not heard of it before? Well before you go checking out symptoms on Google there’s a reason you’ve not have come across it previously. I made it up! The name that is, not the actual ‘condition’.
Self-sabotage shows up when we reach a point of attempting to be better or happier, richer or re-visiting a scenario that we failed at or upset us before. Rather than soar and excel, we unconsciously (i.e. we’re not fully aware that we do it) trip ourselves up. This can be through poor self talk telling us not to bother. It can be through reminding ourselves how badly it went before. Or the classic sign of self-sabotage -procrastination. Ah, got it now??
Yep, we’ve all put the blocks on ourselves at one time of other. Even Tom Cruise has. Well kinda.
A trickle to a flood.
Cole Trickle is an up and fast coming young NASCAR driver. His career is on the up until one day at Daytona he is involved in a serious racing crash. When his racing adversary and now friend Rowdy Burns is then also found to need brain surgery Cole re-evaluates his racing.
He is given a chance to get in a car again but he’s a shadow of the old fearless kid who won races such a short time before. After one race where he retired the car, his chief car builder Harry sees that Trickle deliberately blew the engine. His accident and his pal’s health worry got in his head. He self-sabotaged himself.
But you see, as in this film, life often makes us face ourselves again. In his final chance race at the Daytona 500, Cole is trailing last. His short career seems over. Then there is a big smash on a turn, exactly like the time he was hospitalised in the same such incident. Cole slows down, the self-sabotage begins. But Harry breaks into his head space and tells him he can do it, he can get through this.
Cole listens and trusts, and powers up and through the wreckage, and defeats his demons. He goes on to take victory. I know it was only acting from Tom Cruise, but the manner in how he played that character, I’m sure he has suffered from self-sabotage himself in the past. Yes, really!!!
Maybe you are beginning to recognise it in yourself now?
In your mind how the past keeps coming back to haunt you in certain situations? Or that your business ideas or big plans never seem to get off the drawing board again and again?
It feels like a mountain to climb to get anywhere. But YOU are that mountain!!
The Mountain is you.
The art of self-sabotage is one many of us have perfected.
So adept are we at it that we put ourselves in situations that look like mountains to get out of. We end up stuck, blocked, isolated, alone, or trapped and blame it on these very mountains holding us where and how we are. But, WE are the mountains. We are the very thing in our way.
In her ground breaking book about this, ‘The Mountain is You’, Brianna Wiest reveals all the schemes and thoughts we construct to then pretend we would move forwards, upwards, into money, into love, and into freedom if we didn’t have too much to climb to get there.
She magnificently wrote, ‘ The mountain is often less a challenge in front of us as a problem within us’, and that, ‘There is nothing holding you back in life more than yourself’.
Where Cole Trickle destroyed the engine to avoid facing an old fear, we do the same through inner beliefs and insecurities that rise up like Everest.
- We start a business idea but leave it sitting there because we think we are not good enough to make it work. Or that being successful means things can only go downhill from there.
2. We don’t have any true committed relationships because once we get close to a partner they will see we are flawed and not worth loving.
3. We don’t allow ourselves to ever explore having more money because we have the warped idea that wealthy people are hated and users.
Recognise some of these echoed in your repeat struggles? Now you can perhaps start to see that the only thing keeping you from you desire is your self-sabotage hijacking it.
No rock, no hard place.
In each occasion of our own just like those above (read Brianna’s book to discover yours!!), we open up our inner mountain and stick it slap bang in our face. We can no longer walk our path, or win our race be that to be an artist or to win Daytona. I’m asking you now to face your self-sabotage skills and finally see when and where you have always used it. Your missing career, life partner, financial success etc will be where to find it. Where you always put it when a shining life can be won. Your mountain instead of your mojo!
Just make sure you don’t end up like Cole with a glittering future ahead of him but so held back by what’s in his head he says, ‘You got me here, now what?’ Don’t be someone who blames everything and everyone else any more. Don’t look up at mountains that are not there.
It’s time to no longer be stuck between a rock and a hard place.
Photo attribution – Pixabay.com – https://pixabay.com/illustrations/ai-generated-man-stress-mistake-8993806/ by Graphixmade under free use content license.
References – Days of Thunder – Paramount Pictures 1990.
The Mountain is You – Brianna Wiest – Thought Catalog Books.
If you were to think of exercise, like most people you would probably imagine some physical activity.
And with that perhaps a sport or definitely some exertion on the body.
Very few would ever first link to exercise with the mind. Nor would they ever believe that the best exercise we could do for ourselves isn’t physical, it’s mental. And yet, developing the mind is the prime way to begin powering up almost every area of your life. One day it could serve you very well indeed.
Hugh Glass needed an incredibly fit mind. Why? Because his body was almost totally out of action.
Glass was a frontiersman and trapper working on a trail up the Missouri River in 1823. One day when scouting for game near where the Grand River forked he surprised a mother grizzly bear with her cubs. Protecting her brood the bear attacked and mutilated Glass so badly internal body parts and bone were visible. His fellow trappers eventually left him for dead believing it was impossible for him to survive even for a short time.
But what the body is incapable of, the mind can be alive as ever and incredibly capable. Waking from unconsciousness with no weapons or equipment he realised he was abandoned in the freezing wilderness. Plus he could hardly move.
Death seemed inevitable.
The mind can go far.
Glass knew his only hope was to crawl and keep crawling. For all the extreme pain that flooded his body, he set his mind at making it back to civilisation and life. And that he did. He famously crawled inch by aching inch some 200 miles and even crafted a makeshift raft so he could float downstream to Fort Kiowa.
Six weeks after his seemingly fatal attack, Hugh Glass reached the fort and a place in the history books. It’s also the story behind the Hollywood Oscar winning movie, The Revenant, starring Leonardo DiCaprio.
This story typifies that physical effort was not enough. Pure mental fortitude and willpower was required to have any chance at all. Luckily that is what he possessed in bucket loads. How many people today could honestly be able to achieve the same feat with their minds???
One type of person in modern life can experience such mental toughness. The ultramarathon runner. They can typically run hundreds of miles in events on all types of terrain and face every type of weather. The Moab 240, for example, is a 240 mile (386km) ultra event with over 31,000 ft of elevation through the baking heat of Utah where daytime temperatures can hit over 100 degrees and with night time drops to below freezing and even snow.
How do runners cope with such punishment?
Champion ultra runner Courtney Dauwalter has developed a mental exercise called her ‘pain cave’ to push through immense exhaustion and various bodily ailments in her 100+ mile runs. When she can’t physically take another step she goes to a space in her head and makes that space bigger in her vision. This space is where she has the determination to keep going.
It works because this one time biology teacher when she started ultra running has won pretty much every prestigious ultra race there is and set course records everywhere in doing so.
Which leads me to this question.
Do you exercise your mind….at all?
I would wager two truths now.
- That virtually everyone will say, ‘No’.
- That virtually everyone will say, ‘I don’t know how’!
It’s common as I’ve already noted that exercise = physical movement in some form to the majority of us. Trouble is that some of the best and highest achievers of all time haven’t been Olympian athletes except in their mental work. And you can join them starting NOW! Here’s how with a mini starter list on how to exercise your mind –
a) Read more. Not social media posts but plain old books. This will cause your mind to start whirring into action imagining the scenes, the characters, the plot and what can happen etc. It’s the first great place to start mental movement.
b) Read more mental books. Follow on from that by reading books on the mind by the best writers. Not meditation books but ones on better thinking, greater focus, developing ideas etc. Check on that genre on Amazon or in your local bookstore. There’s plenty their to feed your mind.
c) And rather than include a slew of other suggestions I’ll simply add the following – practice imagining better for yourself, push yourself to learn a new skill, make your future plans and create ways to develop them, try crosswords in the paper, commit to one hour in the morning and one in the evening dedicated to progressive thinking and positive expectation as but a few.
The world has gotten very comfortable with making physical exercise an integral part of its daily lives. But it plainly fails in the mental department when that very effort to develop the mind shifts life in major style.
That’s not the bear on the trail, it’s the elephant in the room. We need to be fit and strong in the head not purely for good mental health, but for the sheer power it injects into our life to improve ourselves, believe better and higher, and to generate new possibilities. The mind is the seed and our life is was it feeds.
So start your mental exercise regime today.
Then you will lose the weight off your mind and be dripping in mental muscle that will wow everyone.
References – www.brittanica.com – Hugh Glass.
Wikipedia – Hugh Glass.
www.bbc.com – Courtney Dauwalter – Step inside the pain cave.
www.destinationtrailrun.com – Moab 240.
Photo attribution under free use content license – https://pixabay.com/illustrations/ai-generated-man-strong-gym-8706770/ by Hansuan_Fabregas.
Are you aware of the amazing power of questions?
Yep, a question itself to start with. Well, that’s deliberate. Most people only ask questions when they’re incredibly stuck. Usually it’s for directions or someone’s phone number or what a particular shop’s opening times are. But, we generally don’t ask enough of them because we (incorrectly) believe that, if we do, it suggests we are stupid or people will think less of us.
So let me dispel this myth. Those that ask questions are usually numbered in the most shrewd, progressive, sharp, and versatile people on the plant. Questions build knowledge, perspective, understanding, and awareness among others. Without them we own one viewpoint and limited judgement and can be easily influenced or refuse to budge from our fixed position.
The real key to questions is what they lead to. And certainly what they solve.
In certain situations they might seem like they could ever make any difference. But, a good question put the right way can turn things 180 degrees round.
Questions can be life savers.
Chris Voss is a life saver because he uses questions. He uses them calmly and skillfully. And very, very deliberately.
He’s no in depth political interviewer. He’s not an elite level recruiter. Nor is he some Ivy League professor or a veteran counsellor. He was perhaps the world’s no.1 hostage negotiator. The FBI’s finest. And if you were ever unlucky enough to find yourself in such a situation, Chris’s art of questioning probably will have kept you alive and escape unharmed.
Now a best selling author Voss was an experienced police officer in the New York joint terrorism task force who worked his away up to be the FBI’s chief international hostage and kidnapping negotiator. After three decades of high level crime and terrorist situations, dealing with 150 international cases alone, he shared his insights in his worldwide hit book, ‘Never Split the Difference’.
The book featured using a style of questioning that focused on understanding the criminals perspective in their mind, build rapport and elements of respect with them, and ultimately to calm the situation towards a mutually beneficial end point. Effectively he got the terrorists/gangsters/kidnappers to open up and feel heard and validated. His questions led them to reveal their priorities and desired outcomes from the highly charged scenario, but also their personal worries and concerns. Now who had ever done that in such depth before?
All with the power of a) questioning them and b) questioning them in the right way. He moved them from blame and threat upon their life, to collaboration and a kind of alliance. It was brilliant and he alone saved hundreds of people’s lives as a result.
Now do you believe questions aren’t that important?
A life changing question.
I want to share a story with you from my life about how a question changed someone’s life.
About 15 years ago I was working with a large private school specifically with their older pupils on a life enrichment programme. The teacher who was head of year often sat in on our sessions as he was curious and intrigued about my course content. In fact he seemed to turn up for most classes for a good while every week.
Weeks later after the school had wrapped up for the Summer break he called me with a dilemma. He had worked solidly for nearly two decades to reach his position at this high quality establishment. Then, out of the blue, he was offered a role in a more remote part of Africa. This really appealed to him but so did furthering his career aspirations and he was torn on what to do. So, he asked if I could help him at all.
I told him I’d give it some thought (always a good thing) and call him back the next day. That’s exactly what I did and I simply asked him ONE question. Which was,
‘Have you been waiting for this opportunity all your life’?
I told him not to answer me then and there but to give it time to sink in and come back to me. Six days later I heard from him and he was going to Africa. The question had got to the heart of what mattered to him. He went and made a massive success out of it. And even more special – some years later he was able to hand his work over to someone else and he returned to develop his career from where he took off.
One question = one life changing answer.
Start with one.
Maybe you are in the same quandary as well?
Multiple choices or too many woods for the trees to know clearly what decision you should make.
Bring in the power and truth of a question. One question. Practice asking yourself one question at a time and then sit on it and see what stirs in your mind. In no time one particular question will stand out and hit home. One self enquiry will touch base with the absolute answer that will shift the whole darn shebang.
You don’t need to be a skilled negotiator with your own conflict. You just have to ask questions to self understand and unlock the best route forwards based on who you are. That’s how they work. They draw truth out in the form of answers.
The best minds use their minds to ask questions that unlock major doors.
Doors to freedom like Chris Voss’s captives or my teacher friend’s next big move.
Which leaves only one important question to ask,
‘Why aren’t you using questions more to create the freedom you badly need?’.
Reference – Chris Voss, ‘Never Split The Difference’, published by Random House Business.
Photo attribution under Pixabay free content license – https://pixabay.com/photos/man-thinking-doubt-question-mark-5723449/ by Tumisu
