*** Change the Conversation

Are you feeling scared in the current economy? Do you wonder how you can keep yourself upbeat – so you can pass inspiration and motivation on at work, to your customers or clients, or to your family and friends?

Change the conversations you are having with yourself, and watch your ability to inspire those around you go through the roof.

In his excellent book Primal Leadership, Daniel Goleman states that there is solid and widespread evidence that emotions at work have a deep impact on the performance of a company. I believe these findings hold true for any group or organization, from businesses to families.

He states that the emotions of leaders have the greatest influence on group climate – how people feel about being involved in the group. He states, in fact, that overall, in business the climate of a company can account for 20% to 30% of bottom line performance. This makes managing your state, as a leader, absolutely critical – and a huge competitive advantage if you invest the time to learn to do it well.

Ultimately, the most meaningful act of responsibility that leaders can do is to control their state of mind. - Daniel Goleman et al, Primal Leadership.

His book does not go into HOW to control your state of mind – but this happens to be the main focus of my work and interest these days, and the subject of this article.

Controlling your state of mind does not mean hiding your anger or frustration, or offering some false happy emotion. There is exciting new cutting edge science around how our unconscious minds function and specific techniques and practices for how we can work with them. These allow you to deeply manage your state, and easily achieve the fundamental resonance that builds strong, healthy relationships, both in business and personally.

This is NOT about affirmations and just thinking positively - it is about physiologically aligning your deepest, hidden expectations with your conscious desires, freeing the energy that is tied up in internal conflicts. This will allow you – and your team – to radically accelerate progress toward your goals, directly impacting your bottom line.

I know that there may be people reading this who do not think of themselves as leaders. If you had that thought, consider all the people with whom you come into contact, and the things you care most about. Think about all the places you make an effort to change the way things are happening, for the better. All this is true whether you're a leader in the office or on the shop floor, in your family or around your friends. How can you be one of the people who impacts performance of those around you by bringing a better, more solutions-oriented attitude to bear on a problem? You are a leader. How can you be a GREAT leader?

If, as Daniel Goleman claims, it's by managing your own state and showing up as the best, most dynamic person you can be, how do you do that?

Largely, by understanding and learning to working with your entire being – both conscious and unconscious. As we move through life, 5% of what moves us forward – our thoughts, actions, beliefs – are under our conscious control. That leaves a whopping 95% of our being that is being run by unconscious programs that are running in the background. The metaphor that I like is that we're like a captain and a crew on a ship – the captain, or conscious mind – calls the shots, and steers the ship. Whether the ship moves in the desired direction depends on the crew. If the crew is in agreement, things will go well. If the crew is not onboard with the decision, or at worse, engaged in a mutiny, the ship will flounder.

You can tell how good the rapport between your captain and crew is by looking at the results in your life. If you want to be in better shape, are you exercising? If you want to make your business successful, are you doing the things that are most likely to make that true?

There are many ways to reprogram your unconscious to operate for better results. I’ll give one example here. In this process, think about a result you are getting in your life that you'd rather was different. This might be that you are having trouble convincing your kids to be willing to make better financial choices, to help the family finances.
Write this down as a belief that feels true to you, that creates or impacts this problem. Write it as a statement. In this case it might be:

"I am not an inspirational person – I just fight with my kids instead of motivating them." Make sure this is a belief that feels true FOR you and ABOUT you.

Next, imagine the question that is probably circulating in your unconscious, to keep that belief in place. "Why can't I seem to inspire people?"

Then switch that question completely around, to create a positive question. You don't have to believe this positive question right now – just write it down. "Why is it so easy for me to be an influential person?

Just ask the question, and let your inner mind do the rest. The reason this is so powerful is because our inner mind does NOT like to be in a state where it doesn't have an answer, so it will go find an answer to your question. Most often, we are in the habit of asking negative, disparaging questions, so our inner mind obligingly finds answers to those. When we turn the questions around to be positive, our mind will work just as hard to find evidence for the positive answer. And with two million bits of information coming in every minute, you can bet that there ARE positive answers. You've just been training yourself, because of your approach to the question, to find the negative ones.

Your mind wants to bolster the argument for whatever outcome it believes you desire – so now it will find evidence that will make your "easy" statement true, and bring new results into your life. Keep these questions handy, and refer to them a few times a day for 10 days, and see what happens. I believe you'll be amazed.

A note about" why" vs "how" questions. The above example is one of the few times that I would recommend using "why" questions – because the responses they bring are reasons and excuses. In general, we tend to ask "why" questions with a negative slant and in that form, they bring excuses which keep us firmly planted where we are. In the example above, they work because we WANT reasons and excuses for a positive outcomes, and they help us find those.
In other areas of your life, any time you find yourself asking "why" questions with a negative slant, try changing them for "How" questions instead. "How can I make this better?" "How can I solve this?" How questions generally lead to solutions and action.

There are many other simple things you can do to start engaging your unconscious mind to work massively in helping you achieve your conscious desires and goals. If you'd like to know more, please read my e-book about how your unconscious mind operates and how you can program it to support your conscious goals, which is available for free download on my website at www.scoutwilkins.com.

I hope that this is helpful to you. If you'd like to have a deeper conversation about this, please contact me.