Do you go all anxious when you see a spider? All weak at the knees and heart pounding?
Especially when you were a child?
I know I was. Their shape and weird legs freaked me out. So too the Crane Fly a.k.a the Daddy Long Legs. All gangly and buzzy flying around.
Maybe you did (and still do) what I did then. I gave them a big whack and flattened them solid. Once they were dead they could do me no harm. Of course now I’m older and wiser I know they wouldn’t have done me any harm anyway. My mind believed otherwise. It got scared, created a narrative (you might die) and so I lashed out in fear.
I killed what I was scared of. That’s what us humans are very good at in life. We try to kill (or do kill) what we are scared of now and in history.
On a stormy night near Hartlepool in the north of England during the Napoleonic Wars, a French ship floundered off the coast with all hands. Apart from one. The ship’s mascot – a monkey. Locals had never ever seen a monkey before, nor a Frenchman either. The chattering of the monkey they took for French and their mind began to work overtime in terror.
They decided then and there on the beach to hang the monkey as a spy.
That’s the story in local folklore but it’s the story of human minds in general.
Going off the rails.
Most fears are unfounded. They are constructed on some incorrect fiction and blown out of proportion. Individually it can cause us to overreact, but collectively in can form mass hysteria.
The early 1800’s saw the wider development and usage of trains in Britain. Previously travel and transport of goods was through horses and canals. The advent of trains appeared hyper fast and caused many to worry if the human body was capable of withstanding the speeds they would go (barely 30mph in those days).
Irish Writer, Dionysius Lardner, wrote in 1830, ‘Rail travel at high speed is not possible because passengers, unable to breathe, would die of asphyxia’. Not to be outdone authors Edwin Fuller Torrey and Judy Miller wrote in ‘The Rise of Mental Illness from 1750 to the Present’, that trains were thought to ‘injure the brain’.
These above beliefs took root in the psyche of many travellers. The rolling and clanking of the train cars over the rails sent many people off them. The newspapers were often reporting individual cases of “railway madness” in the 1870’s. One Scottish aristocrat reportedly stripped naked and began leaning out of the window ranting in a crazed state.
The mind had been disturbed by something it had become scared of….that just wasn’t true. But, that’s how fears work, right?
Killing our best.
The historical stories above typify what is still about in today’s world. Namely, that we kill what we don’t understand, or through gossip, or from our own plain anxieties.
That may always remain so. There is, though, the more personal killing we all have participated in over the years. Killing our best.
How many great ideas have you had that you have ‘killed’ in your mind? Ones for a business or a lifestyle change for yourself that you ‘got rid of’? This is due to your deep inner fear that you will end up disappointed, losing, or most of all, embarrassed as it and you fail.
So, rather than letting it ever see the real light of day, you kill it in your head first. Often before any other human on the face of the Earth ever knew about it. I think we all have done that at some time or other.
It’s lunacy now to look back and believe a monkey could be a spy or train’s could stop us breathing. And that’s the call of this post – look back at YOUR history and see what you have killed that never deserved to be. Something that fear made you want to get rid of rather than welcome it and see what it really could be.
It’s time to get that monkey off your back and yourself back on track by no longer killing what could open up your whole world forever.
If you need to kill anything, kill the fears that won’t let your dreams live.
References – atlasobscura.com – ‘The Victorian Belief That a Train Ride Could Cause Instant Insanity’.
Hartlepoolunited.co.uk – ‘Hanged Monkey’.
Have you ever planted a seed in your garden? And then watched it bloom into something wonderful?
Well doing the same in life to match a need you have, can be life changing. And just as blooming beautiful.
If you do you won’t be alone. You will be in very good company.
In 1976 a Brighton housewife in England needed to earn some income for herself and her two daughters while her husband was away travelling in South America. Being a keen environmentalist she opened a basic shop (between two funeral parlours) with only 25 simple, natural skin care products in refillable containers reducing cost simply because she didn’t have enough bottles to use. It ended up being what others needed too and within six months a second shop was opened.
The woman was Anita Roddick and this was the launch of the world’s first environmental high street brand, The Body Shop. When she sold the business in 2006 the price tag was £652 million. One seed met her need and did so for others too. And that’s often how it works.
Does that ring a bell with you? Maybe this will help.
Ringing up the profits.
Some of the most amazing ideas and products have come out of pure need.
Jamie Siminoff was a self confessed tinker. Taking gadgets and tinkering with them to see if he could add something new. Or creating his own version in his garage at home for pleasure. Hidden away creating in his den he kept missing deliveries because he couldn’t hear his doorbell. Frustrated by this he decided he needed to build some form of wi-fi doorbell that would solve his problem as nothing existed on the market.
So in 2012 he set about creating the bell and decided to also add a camera so as not to waste walking round to the front of his house for some everyday delivery that could be left on his porch. He hammered out his prototype creation on his workbench and called it the Doorbot. As a result she tried out the device in their home. She loved it telling him she felt safer now she could actually see who was behind the door without having to open it. It was the famous lightbulb moment.
The US investors TV show Shark Tank also heard about it on the grapevine. The Doorbot subsequently featured in front of millions of viewers who wowed at how the doorbell improved home security. He renamed the product Ring and immediately sales went through the roof selling 170 million within three years. Just six years after putting together his contraption in his garage to help fulfil his own missed delivery need, he sold the company to Amazon for $1billion. Perhaps the quickest growth of any business from nothing in history.
Needs must.
Often we see a need as a problem. An issue or challenge that’s stressing our life. Not so Anita and Jamie. They dropped a seed into something to fulfil their need and turned them into gold.
View your need or reoccurring snafu in the same vane. Take a logistic approach in your mind.
What skill do you possess you could put to use to meet that need?
Is there an interest or background knowledge you have that might be your route to a big breakthrough?
What need is actually your invitation to put something about you to good use?
We always assume amazing life change comes via a lottery win or a tragic event. Something unexpected that flips life 180. Therefore when an issue blocks us we don’t see that as the very opportunity we have waited our life for now showing itself. A need that we already carry the seed within to beat.
Take another look at your so called need. Maybe it’s what you always needed to discover how amazing you are.
What need in your life now needs what’s in you?
References; Anita Roddick – various sources, see mostly https://brightonmuseums.org.uk/discovery/history-stories/dame-anita-roddick-entrepreneur-activist-and-campaigner/.
Ring – Jamie Siminoff – ‘The Secret Genius of Modern Life – BBC TV.
Have you heard of a Mission Statement?
It’s the corporate equivalent of a big vision for a company or product. A giant, bold phrase that acts as a powerful aspirational target. It also helps embed a huge slice of meaning and purpose. It brings the whole endeavour alive and dripping in focus and possibility.
There are many well know examples. Let’s start though with one of the most famous in history.
In 1975 a small computer based start up was founded in New Mexico, USA to explore the potential of building small computers generally for business use. Combining the words microcomputer and software, Microsoft was born. The fledgling industry was in its infancy and growth was minimal. Five years later in 1980 joint founder, Bill Gates, decided they needed an overall vision to drive thinking and planning for the future. It was then that the famous mission statement was coined that would define their work and development…
‘To have a computer on every desk and in every home around the world’.
Mega bold and perhaps somewhat crazy in those days when there was no real personal computer market. But that’s what it was designed to do. To set their minds on actually creating a computer that would create that market. One where they would be the leaders.
Roll on a few decades and what name is synonymic with the personal computer? And found in homes all around the world? Yep, Microsoft. Mission accomplished.
The guiding mental light.
The Mission Statement acts a guiding light to the mind. It zeros pure focus and attention onto the final outcome it states. No going off at tangents. Not wasting thinking on the irrelevant. Silly airy fairy planning gone. There’s the aim. Mentally and physically get it in your sights and go after it.
Other highly successful companies have also won through employing a defined Mission Statement.
Coca Cola chose something (unsurprisingly) sweet – ‘To refresh the world’.
Nike took a different leap by making us all equally athletic – ‘Bring inspiration and innovation to every athlete in the world. If you have a body, you are an athlete’.
McDonalds chose instead to drive the experience that their food creates – ‘To make delicious, feel good moments easy for everyone’.
And finally take a look at online used clothes/items platform Vinted‘s brash, confident statement – ‘To make second hand the first choice worldwide’.
Each one very different but perfect for them and for their chosen market. But the Mission Statement doesn’t just have to be uitilised by the business community. It’s a first class mental tool for adding meaning, purpose, and streamlining the mindset. And it also gives a life going nowhere a very big somewhere to end up.
Your mission is…
Companies have a chosen sector – finance, automobiles, cakes, gin and the like. Take a cue from this and choose your sector for your mission. For example mine could be writing, or blogging, or books, or very simple psychology which stimulates my mind to drill down and be exact at how or what I want to be/achieve within it.
My Mission Statement therefore could be – ‘To be the world’s foremost writer on the power of the inner mind sharing how anyone can create an extraordinary life for themselves through their thinking’.
It states writing (which I love), the mind (what I write about) and two end results, world’s foremost writer, and anyone creating an extraordinary life from reading my words.
Therefore each post I write must encompass these on every occasion. Anyone anywhere can read and understand them and put them to instant use in their own mind.
So, over to you. What life sector matters to you that needs a PERSONAL Mission Statement? A pure individual life aim or major plan that captures fully who you are. To complete and fulfil yourself. Small and basic won’t do (to learn how to bake a lovely cake isn’t going to change your world).
That’s your homework here. Zero down to where you want to accomplish something of a deeper nature. A self realisation at your very best level come true. Set that higher bar and then craft your Mission Statement to capture it in bold words. Words that will instruct your mind the only direction you are going to go from now on. Meaning becomes a mission becomes your mastery.
Just like Gucci who embeded their thinking into this – ‘To become the leader in the luxury market at a worldwide level’.
Life itself is a mission, so make the most of it and turn it into your statement. YOUR MISSION STATEMENT!!
Words are everything
They are how we communicate. How we get what we need, asking for help, connecting with others, and solving problems to mention but a few. Without them we would never understand each other. And, most telling, ourselves.
The words we speak have HUGE meaning. It’s not just what we say but how we say it.
And words have even helped bring down Governments and altered the balance of power. That’s precisely what happened in the UK at the end of the 1970’s.
In 1978 the British economy was struggling with over 1.6m people out of work. The ruling Labour government itself was struggling to stem the tide. The opposition Conservative party wanted to appeal to the nation in a big way to win back power as a General Election was predicted by 1979. It chose to employ the creative minds at the Saatchi & Saatchi agency to come up with a memorable campaign idea. They did this amazingly in a clever and brilliant reframing of words.
In an infamous poster and series of magazine ads they featured a long snaking line back into the distance of jobless people queuing for their dole (unemployment) money with the slogan ‘Labour isn’t working’. A stunning double meaning in one.
The result? The Tory party swept to power in 1979 with a 43 seat majority under Margaret Thatcher. The genius reframing of words also reframed the mentality of the public because we all think in words more than images. But with the two combined together, no-one could forget it.
Reframe for gain.
I am an avid runner. And runners often play the reframe game. Not to show off, but to encourage their inner thinking about their achievements and spur them on to even better results.
Recently my running club took a trip to Benidorm for their half marathon. It was humid and a tough little course and even though my time was decent it was a little way off my usual. But I was proud of it given the conditions and route so I happily announced to all who asked how I got on that ‘It was my International PB (Personal Best)’.
Sounds good, huh? Well, I had never ran an international event before so whatever my finishing time, it was bound to be a PB. But that’s the point. I reframed it to feel good about the result. It also fosters self-encouragement, and to harness determination to achieve faster on the next one abroad. No harm done and a win-win in mindset and spirit. It’s how many club runners roll.
And that’s how the reframing works. Its paints a different picture in your mind. To take situations and to reposition the outcome or scenario in a way that introduces the beneficial flip side out of it. Not to mention the fact that it might even drive you to what you should be doing anyway. Take a look below to see this at work.
How to reframe.
Here’s a couple of reframing examples for you that show you how it’s done.
- You have been turned down again for promotion. REFRAME – It’s proof that it’s time to recognise you are far more adept and talented than where you currently work, and now you are going to go after that dream career move you really want.
- Another wrong relationship ends. REFRAME – no longer will you date girls/guys just to have a partner, from now on it’s only the ones you are really attracted to that you haven’t had confidence to get to know before.
- Bank account all empty again at the end of the month. REFRAME – You are worth so much more as a person but first you are going to spend less on things that don’t matter and grow some investments with big goals at the end of them.
Effectively this is the turn around factor. Like the Conservatives turning around something bad (they were not in Government and the unemployment levels were growing) and making into some thing good for them, and soon after for the nation itself. You can mirror that too. At the same time you reset your words on a given situation, you will be resetting your mentality as well. The first automatically updates the second.
It’s said the mind plays tricks but it can also be tricked. Reframing is the trick to play. A winning trick.
Change the words, changes the thinking and perspective, And that changes your small beliefs into bright new elevated ones.
Reframing is retraining for gaining the good times back (and yes, a double meaning for my running intended!).
To boldly go where no man has gone before.
The words of Captain Kirk at the start of every episode of the original Star Trek.
His and his crew’s boldly would be to undertake a five year mission into the deepest uncharted areas of space to discover new worlds. A trek that had not been achieved before. While that is just a TV series, achieving the previously unachievable truly is mind over matter. Or anti-matter if you are on the Starship Enterprise.
Mount Everest stands 8,849 metres high. The highest mountain in the world. To date 7269 climbers have summited at the top of the world on the mountain. But, it wasn’t always this way. Prior to the first time it was conquered there had been some 14 expeditions that had attempted to reach the top but all failed. It was considered too difficult, too dangerous, and unachievable.
Then along came Edmund Hilary. He was having none of it. On May 1953 he achieved the unachievable and became the first person to successfully climb the highest peak above sea level on Earth.
People were amazed. He was asked many times not just how he did it but most of all, why. His immortal reply, ‘Because it was there’. The comment was in honour of British climber George Mallory who tried to mount Everest in 1924 but was never seen again. He had been asked the same question back then and gave the same and original response.
Why aim to achieve the unachievable in anything? Because it’s a personal belief that a) it is possible and b) that they are the person to do it.
Shoot for the Moon.
There is another famous belief quote from Norman Vincent Peale which goes, ‘Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you will land among the stars’, In short, have huge thinking and belief in it and yourself.
That was something flowing through a young student at Purdue University in Indiana, USA in the last 1940’s. A teacher had begun asking students gathered in class what they aimed to have as their career when they completed their studies. The usual replies (for the time) centred around becoming a bank manager, setting up a restaurant, opening a haulage business and other accepted ‘good living’ roles for the future such as lawyer or real estate agent.
Finally the question arrived at the young student. His reply…..
‘I’m going to land on the Moon’.
The class broke out into heaps of laughter. The other students ridiculed the young man and the teacher rounded it all off with the words….
‘Neil Armstrong, you have to learn that if you want to have any sensible future at all, you will need to come back down to Earth pretty quickly’.
Imagine hearing that. To most people this public humiliation would have ended their goal then and there. But not Neil Armstrong. In his mind that unachievable feat was very achievable. Just because 1940’s contemporary minds and technological know-how had felt it beyond human capabilities, Armstrong strongly believed it was only a matter of time in the years that followed that the answers would be found. And he was going to be right there involved so he could lead the way.
That school laughter turned to worldwide cheers and admiration when he touched down and walked on the Moon surface twenty years later. All that his mind felt true HAD come true. The unachievable to everyone, had been achieved as he said it would. As the old adage goes, ‘If you can believe it, you can achieve it’.
So, maybe it’s time you climbed your own metaphorical mountain in life. Or reached for your own moon.
Because that IS what achieve-meant!
PS; The story about Neil Armstrong was actually told to me AT Purdue University on one of my two visits.
When answers are needed to a situation you often hear the advice to join or connect the dots.
The thinking is that if you take a good look you will see clues that relate that can put together the puzzle you face. Random occurrences are then pieced into one bigger picture to make sense. You often see this in crime detection or academic studies on specialist subjects.
It effectively says, ‘this has been what’s going on the in the background of X that resulted in Y’.
It appears a well thought of argument and system.
Well, not for some who took a 360 degree approach.
Step forwards Steve Jobs. The co-founder of Apple and pioneer of the personal and home computer revolution.
And he was also revolutionary in his thinking, Thinking that chose not to connect the dots, but connect the people. Why? Because he knew that we can’t connect the dots looking forwards. You can only connect looking back which means you’ve made mistakes, got stuck, gone in the wrong direction, or plain misunderstood something. But what you can do, and he did in a big way, is connect the people.
When designing the layout for the Pixar HQ (the company he bought from George Lucas in 1986), he built in only one set of toilets in the atrium (the large open aired front of a building). This required all employees to have to walk from all floors and areas across the building to use the facility. This seemed time consuming and thus would effective output. It didn’t. Jobs knew most workers remained in set smaller sized offices in their teams and departments which resulted in restrictive creativity, a ceiling on inspiration, and a block on outside ideas. By making everyone travel about the building they would begin to talk to others in various roles more often, share what projects they were engaged in, and fuse new relationships and cross creative suggestions. Of course, it worked.
The dots joined themselves after, they were connected in the people to begin with. Success could be assembled at the outset rather than from the ruins of failure later.
Cracking the code.
During World War 2 connecting the dots was apparently badly needed.
The Germans used an encryption device to share secret messages and manoeuvres which changed each day with special code books operators used to reconfigure the words and numbers into fresh message keys. The Enigma Machine. Despite the best efforts the Allies could not crack it. Connecting the dots was yielding blanks.
The British needed to break it or face losing the war. They asked mathematician and early computer scientist Alan Turing to help. He knew that one brain, no matter how specialist, could not break the code. Connecting the dots on the mass information available was too vast a task and would not work. He chose to connect a team instead to act as one bigger mind.
And that team was not simply more Alan Turing’s. He needed variety of thought and an ability to look at it from other angles. Therefore into the famous Hut 8 at Bletchley Park came crossword solvers, linguistics, translators, a chess champion, an Army Intelligence Officer, a historian, and a papyrology expert (study of ancient manuscripts and texts).
He connected the people into a team with one critical task – decoding Enigma. Each brought a skill and ideas and insights and shared them with their colleagues so that all minds had a collaborative expansion of what they knew and therefore could consider, focus on, and of course solve. Which they famously did in January 1940. It’s true to say that without it the Germans would have won WW2 in the end.
Connecting minds.
That is the power of people connection. Minds coming together in unison to float questions, points, problems, ideas, creativity, stories, discoveries, and concepts into one major result. A result that started BEFORE it was too late, not after. It picks at their individual mentality rather than picking up the pieces at the end when it’s all fallen apart.
A team or network of different and diverse minds acting as one mind is a massive creative force. It CREATES the dots themselves. Whether by the water cooler next to the company toilets or in a cold barren hut in wartime.
Next time you need to build something memorable or beat something blocking the way, connect the people so you can connect yourself to amazing outcomes.
References: Steve Job – ‘Rebel Ideas’ by Matthew Syed.
Enigma machine – widely available online. See www.bletchleypark.org.uk.
