If one man tells you a horse, he’s insane

if three men tell you you’re a horse, there’s a conspiracy

If ten men tell you you’re a horse, you need to buy a saddle.

- Chinese proverb

I stared in disbelief at my Regional Manager. I could no longer hear the words coming from his mouth because all my attention was turned inside in a torrent of abuse aimed at him, the company, the industry, and of course, myself.

How could this be happening to me? How could I be turned down for the management development program when it had been de facto promised to me if I hit certain goals. Goals that had all been reached and most smashed.

As my brain scrambled to make sense of what was happening I heard him say one final thing  before the meeting came to a close and I was suddenly out in the cold, both figuratively and literally:

“You’re just too negative and pessimistic mate. Work on that and we can talk again in six months when the next round comes up.”

I’m A Realist, Not A Pessimist

Too pessimistic, me? Was he being serious? I wasn’t a pessimistic person at all I was a realist. Sure I was the guy at meetings that pointed out the down side of things. But every business needs employees that can be objective, point out flaws, and not just agree to everything suggested by senior management.

It just so happened I was that guy, and proud of it!

Over the next few days, and rather ironically considering what I had been told, I whined and complained to everybody and anybody that would listen to me about how poorly I had been treated.

The responses didn’t quite pan out as I thought though because I didn’t get anything like the sympathy I expected from such an obvious travesty of justice.

In fact just the opposite in many cases, with people shrugging their shoulders and a couple even laughing out loud in a “What did you expect?” manner.

Seeing Myself As Others Did

I was stunned, I mean really stunned. I was starting to see myself as others saw me rather than I thought I was.

Leaving the whole Myers-Briggs thing to one side and speaking very broadly, people tend to think of themselves as belonging to one of three different personality types. They either see themselves as being an optimist, a realist (pragmatist) or a pessimist.

When I speak to groups I will often kick things off by asking people to raise their hand to indicate which group they think they belong to. The split is usually along the lines of 50% feel they are optimistic, 40% realistic and 10% pessimistic.

Those figures are probably skewed somewhat as I suspect few people like thrusting their hand in to the air to announce to their peers and employers they are pessimistic. In my experience, it’s seldom a good career move.

However, it’s really a trick question, because to my mind there are really only 2 groups of people, optimists and pessimists.

Realism Is For Accountants

Take a glance around you at the moment and I guarantee you can see any number of things that at one time in the past were considered totally unrealistic and beyond the pale, including the device you are using to read this post.

Every single major breakthrough in the history of the human species was at some point in time considered unrealistic. Every single one.

History is littered with legions of realists lining up to ‘help’ the doers and the optimists by pointing out the error of their ways and assuring them they are wasting their time.

Fortunately for humankind optimists tend not to listen to other peoples version of reality Otherwise we’d still be living in caves, clubbing our dinner to death each evening and wearing furry underwear.

I’m okay with the furry underwear bit, but I’m not so keen on stalking my dinner or hanging out in bat-ridden, bear-hiding caves thanks very much.

If you’re still not convinced and think you are a realist let me take it a stage further.

How Realistic Are You Really?

Think of the last 5 things you worried about. How many came true? My guess is if you are anything like the vast majority of my clients it’s either 0 or 1.

And even if it’s 1, I doubt it was as serious as you feared and you obviously dealt with it because you are here reading this post.

So how realistic is it, spending most of your time worrying about things that, on the whole, never happen, and when they do you deal with them?

Shortly after my setback I picked up a copy of ‘Learned Optimism’ by Martin Seligman and started to read and things started to make sense.

I realized that my form of realism wasn’t just draining on people around me and a millstone around the neck of my career, but it also had a host of negative psychological and health issues connected to it.

Optimistic people, get sick less often, they are more successful in their careers, they make more money, they’re happier and they tend to live longer.

Not only that, but even though about 50% of our happiness levels are set at birth by our genes, the wiggle room in the other 50% is so great that (psychological issues aside) anybody can learn to be optimistic and thus happier.

If that is, the will is there.

How come nobody ever told me this at school?

It’s over 10 years since I had that conversation with my boss and barely a day has passed when I haven’t done something to help me move toward being a happier and more optimistic person.

I would be lying if I said it has been a smooth upward curve to a state of permanent blis, because life doesn’t work like that.

However, I’m pleased to say that I’m now the guy that looks for solutions and not the one that looks for problems and I’m grateful that my manager helped me realize I needed to buy a saddle because even though I didn’t believe it at the time, there really was no conspiracy.

Tim Brownson is a Life Coach, NLP Master Practitioner and writer. Originally from England he now lives in Orlando and is currently involved in a project to giveaway 1,000,000 copies of a book he co-authored called How To Be Rich and Happy to good causes.

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We all have a voice inside our head that chatters to us constantly about the day-to-day situations we find ourselves in. It’s one of the three primary ways that we interpret external data by constructing conversations internally with ourselves.

Although we all have a voice (or quite often several different ones) we have our own particular versions some of which can be more helpful than others.

Does your voice support and encourage you when things aren’t going quite as planned or does it become aggressive, whiny, rude, pessimistic and thinks nothing of tearing a strip off you?

Is it often far more hostile and abusive to you than you ever would be to other people, even people you don’t actually like?

I once heard this voice likened to that of a bad tempered, miserable, old duck! Yes that’s what I said, a duck. Close your eyes and you can hear the voice in your head now quacking away at you.

The Duck

You may not have noticed it’s duck-like aquatic qualities before, but now you can. Do you know why you can? It’s because inside your own head you can hear whatever you want to hear. You can of course hear your own voice in whatever tonality that you care for. Or if you’d prefer you could be advising yourself in the dulcet tones of Jimmy Stewart or James Earl Jones or even Oprah Winfrey. The options are as limitless as your own imagination.

I regularly have clients tell me there isn’t any voice inside their head. I usually respond with “So you’re dead then?” The fact is we’ve had years to perfect our quacking and it happens so quickly and so unconsciously that many people have stopped noticing it.

We mess up at something and the voice is sat there in the background ready to chime in “Quack, you are a failure, you never do anything right, you are an embarrassment” Even when something goes well it can still undermine with “Quack, you just got lucky, wait until they find out you’re an imposter”

It’s so insidious and so good at its job that its barely noticeable but the over all negative effect on your emotional wellbeing can be enormous. It has a drip-drip effect that serves over the course of time to make you believe that what it’s saying is true, which in turn makes it so.

So it starts to set your own reality for you. Yes! That’s what I said; a duck sets your reality for you. How scary is that?

Stop the Quacking

Maybe it’s about time to shut the duck up, or at least make him or her a little bit more friendly and supportive. You do need a voice inside your head, so let’s pick one that you like. You can drop the duck or whatever you have now and choose a voice that makes you feel good or maybe even brilliant!

You still want to be able to hear the message, so don’t make it so chilled and laid back that you never take any notice of it. You can even choose 2, 3 or as many voices as you want for different occasions. Your voice should always support you, always be helpful, never aggressive and it never puts you down.

Wouldn’t that be great, a voice that treats you with the respect that you deserve, the kind of respect that you like to offer to other people? If you perfect this, and it does need a bit of practice to start to become more aware of your thoughts, then I guarantee you will feel a great deal better about yourself.

Not only that, but you’ll start to realize you’re in control of what goes on inside your head and nobody else. How brilliant is that?

This article was written by Professional Life Coach Tim Brownson. Tim is owner of A Daring Adventure and if you’re so inclined you can read more of his ramblings at ‘The Discomfort Zone’. This post is taken from Tim’s book ‘Don’t Ask Stupid Questions – There Are No Stupid Questions’. Tim has agreed to make available 5 free copies to the first people that leave a comment on the topic. If you are in the US or Canada he’ll even mail you the hardback version if you prefer that to the E-book.

If I could offer you free of charge 5 questions guaranteed to improve the quality of your life, make you happier, less likely to get into arguments, more likely to reach your goals and be more popular with other people, would you be interested in hearing them?

Of course you would, who wouldn’t? After all, they’re free and it doesn’t get much cheaper than that.

Well actually there is a slight catch. Yes they’re free and yes they’ll do all I claim and more, but only if you commit to embedding them so deeply into your neurology by constant and conscious repetition that they become second nature.

Then and only then, will they allow you to make the kind of quantum shift in your life that has your friends thinking your body has been invaded by a very clever, charismatic and slightly easier to get along with space alien.

1. What Else Can This Mean?

As a human being you have developed your own way of looking at things. You see the world through a filter or lens built up and fine-tuned on your beliefs and values. As such you only ever see your own reality, never reality itself.

It’s taken you years to build up your own filter and because of that you’ll often try and hang on to it for grim death, sometimes in the face of overwhelming contrary evidence.

It’s not that you’re an unreasonable person because everybody is the same to a greater or lesser degree. Every single person has their own filter and has their own difficulties accepting that they are one of over 6 billion realities.

You can separate yourself from your automatic repetitive way of thinking though by asking yourself with a genuine sense of curiosity, one simple question.

“What else can this mean?”

That one question forces you to look for alternate ways of viewing things.

Your partner being late for a date may mean he hates you and doesn’t respect you, or it may mean he got stuck in traffic. That headache you’ve had for 2 days may be a tumor the size of a grapefruit, or it may mean you’ve been overdoing the caffeine.  That abuse that your boss just hurled at you may mean you’re a worthless piece of garbage, or it may mean his wife has just left him and he’s taking it out on you.

Often we don’t know what the reality of the situation is. Think of how many times in your life what seemed like a terrible event turned out to be a huge blessing in the fullness of time. What if we treated everything (within reason) like that and kept asking, “What else can this mean?” “What else can this mean?” “What else can this mean?” until we find an answer that makes us feel good?

Some people say that’s not realistic. I say what’s realism and if you can set your own, why on earth wouldn’t you want to?

“Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.”  ~ Albert Einstein

2. Who Can Help Me?

In terms of setting and achieving goals, too many people get wrapped up in the “How can I do this?” mode of thinking. That can be useful and I know many people have reached their goals by purely taking that approach.

However, there is an easier and quicker way and that’s to ask yourself, “Who can help me?”

Whatever it is you want to do, it’s almost certain that somebody has done it before (or at least something very similar). Find out how they accomplished it and model them. Speak to them if possible and learn from their successes and their mistakes. If there is no option to speak directly (always tricky with dead people), read up on them and talk to people that may have known them.

There’s no need to reinvent the wheel just remember, the quickest route to success is to follow a beaten path.

“Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so.” ~ Douglas Adams

3. What Am I Grateful For?

Try and stifle that eye roll and yawn for just one moment. I know the whole attitude of gratitude thing has become more clichéd than a drunken Oscar winners acceptance speech, but there is a reason for that. It’s because it’s incredibly, awesomely, stunningly (insert over the top adjective of your choice here) powerful.

I once requested a client’s wife to ask her husband at least 10 times a day the question “What are you grateful for?” He was to reply with a different answer every time. “How long should we do it for” she asked me. “For at least 40 years” I replied.

I was being a bit glib, but not that much because there was a serious message behind what I was saying. If you can’t think of 10 new things each day to be grateful for you’re not looking hard enough because they’re out there.

The act of searching our minds for things that we’re grateful for is a brilliant state changer. It will improve your mood, make you feel more resourceful and stop any thoughts of self-pity that can lead toward developing a victim mindset creeping in

“He who does not thank for little will not thank for much.”  ~ Estonian Proverb

4. What’s My End Game?

Would you set off in your car with no idea where you were going, why you were going there or when you were likely to get back?

I suppose you may do that once in a while for a bit of spontaneity, but it’s not something many people this side of sane do on a regular basis.

Yet we often get drawn into situations with absolutely no idea of what we want to achieve. For example, have you ever been in an argument intent on proving the other person wrong? Did it ever pan out like you hoped it would? Did they thank you afterwards for making them look like a complete idiot? Did they go on to compliment you on your dazzling intellect, rapier like wit and mention how lucky they were to know you? I suspect not.

I have been a soccer for fan for almost 40 years. In that time I have seen hundreds, if not thousands of games either live or on TV. More times than I care to remember I have seen players surround a referee after a penalty kick has been awarded. They jostle, intimidate and harass in an attempt to get him to change his mind.

The really weird thing is that I have NEVER seen a referee do a volte-face. Never heard of one saying, “Thanks for pointing out that I have the visual acuity of a mole guys. Now I think about it I think you may be right and the ball was out of play before the tackle. Let me change my mind and award a goal kick instead”

Yet even bearing that in mind, the protests go on.  If each one of those players asked themselves what their end game was (to get the penalty overruled) and then realized they would never achieve it, they might save some breath and get on with the game. On the other hand, these are soccer players we’re talking about and not chess grandmasters, so may be not.

Next time you find yourself about to get involved in a disagreement, ask yourself “What’s my end game?” You’ll probably realize it isn’t to spend 2 hours quarrelling about who invited the in-laws round for dinner, resulting in you saying lots of things you don’t really mean, the net result of which is you spending a night on the couch.

“If you wouldn’t write it and sign it, don’t say it.”  ~ Earl Wilson

5. What Can I Learn From This?

In my experience one of the things that separates the super-successful from the rest of us mere mortals, is the ability of the former group to learn from their mistakes. In fact I’d go further than that and say it’s not just to learn from them, but also to embrace them.

They see a failure as feedback. They know that it’s impossible to be really successful without failing a lot, so they want to fail and fail fast.

Think of any negative situation you have been in recently that didn’t go your way. Now ask yourself “What can I learn from it?”

In any situations there will be something that you can learn and if you can take those lessons forward and avoid replicating them in the future then you have extracted a positive from a negative.

Never leave the scene of a ‘failure’ without taking a positive from it and the good news is, they are always in there if you look hard enough.

“You always pass failure on your way to success.”  ~Mickey Rooney

This article was written by Professional Life Coach Tim Brownson. Tim is owner of A Daring Adventure and if you’re so inclined you can read more of his ramblings at ‘The Discomfort Zone’.

Image by Sir Mervs.

The brain has great difficulty in distinguishing between what’s true and what’s imagined. There is an oft-cited example of an experiment conducted by Australian Psychologist, Alan Richardson. He took some basketball players and split them into 3 equal groups. One group was told to practice their free throw technique twenty minutes per day. The next group was told to spend twenty minutes per day visualizing, but not attempting free throws, and the final group wasn’t allowed to either practice or visualize. At the end of the test period the group that had done nothing remained as they were, but both the other groups showed similar degrees of improvement. The people who only visualized playing basketball were able to perform almost as well as the ones who had actually practiced.

“How can that be so?”

Firstly, the people practicing would miss some shots. Each time they missed they had in effect, practiced how to miss. The people that were visualizing would be hitting every basket so they were building up the feelings and memory of how to be successful.

Forging a Path Through a Meadow

Imagine walking home from a new job. You suddenly realize that there is a meadow of long grass that will cut 20 minutes off your walk. If you live in New York you’re going to need a great imagination for this one.

The first few times you can barely see which way you had walked the previous day. However, after 10 or 20 times you can clearly see a pathway starting to form, and after 100 times all the grass is worn away and there’s a farmer with a shotgun and large dog waiting for you at the end. Let’s presume our gun-toting friend is a big softie and he allows you to use that route as long as you want. What are the odds that next time you try a slightly different direction? Slim to none would be my guess. After all, you know this way works and you have a lovely easy path.

On the other hand, if Farmer Giles starts taking pot shots at you and sportingly lets the dog try and shoot you too, before releasing it to sink its gnashers into your rear end, then you’ll probably find a new way home once you’re released from hospital.

The next time you’re walking home you opt against reacquainting yourself with Fido and spot another meadow further along the road. The same process then begins to take place only this time the original path you made has started to grow back.

How We Create a Path in Our Mind

That is what happens when we form thoughts in our mind. The first time we have a new thought it is a weakling of a thought that has sand kicked in its face by stronger thoughts and beliefs. Each time you re-think it though it grows in strength as the physical pathway becomes more and more well defined. Not only that, but if it is a belief that contradicts one you already hold, the older belief starts to atrophy and die.

This also explains why we have the same thoughts over and over again and why people have difficulty snapping negative loops of thinking. The pathway has been established and it’s just easier to continue following it than trying to think about something new and form a new connection in the brain.

Making Visualization Work For You

Visualization is an incredibly successful and simple way of speeding up the process by fooling the unconscious into believing that you have already done something before you have. That’s what the basketball visualizers were doing, fooling their own unconscious into thinking they know how to hit basket after basket. Of course this in and of itself will not turn you into an NBA star, you do actually have to practice as well, but it will help you succeed more quickly.

All you need to do to be successful at this is to visualize yourself doing something, as you would like to do it. Profound stuff, huh? Seriously though, that is all there is to it. How long you do it each day will affect the speed of change and it’s really not advisable visualizing your success for 20 minutes per day and then spending 10 hours worrying about failing and replaying negative stuff in your head. It kind of defeats the object.

You can also incorporate the ‘fake it till you make it’ method in with your visualization to help speed up the process. This is simply a matter of pretending you are already proficient at something before you really are. Again, it’s simply a way of tricking your unconscious and getting it to do what you want it to do.

Some people have difficulty with this process and tell me it’s being unrealistic. Well yeh, maybe they’re right, but who cares? If you want to be shackled by the chains of realism then go ahead, knock yourself out, but let me tell you this. There are few highly successful people out there that haven’t used this method or visualization at one time or another. In fact, successful people don’t care too much for reality; it just gets in the way and slows them down. What about you?

This post was adapted from part of a free eBook called Know Yourself – Change Yourself written by Professional Life Coach Tim Brownson. Tim is owner of A Daring Adventure and if you’re so inclined you can read more of his ramblings at ‘The Discomfort Zone’.

Image by Gregor Y.