June 1, 2010
Issue 157
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In This Issue...
- This Week's Jump-Start
- The Champion Within Article
- Seeds of Greatness
- The Winner's Edge Coaching Tips
- New Release! | Darren Hardy's The Compound Effect
- More Information
1. This Week's Jump-Start
Synergy Creates Energy
Living by comparison is fatal vision, for always there will be those who appear better off and worse off than ourselves at any given moment. In truth, there is no such distinction as superior and subordinate. We all have unique talents that will blossom and flourish when nurtured.
In past decades, there was a more “look out for No. 1” and “don’t bring in people who might want your job” style of leadership. You generally would hire those people who would do as they were told and who wouldn’t challenge your ideas or authority. This type of thinking led to bulging bureaucracies and mediocre middle management that accomplished little. This mindset also created a scarcity mentality that there wasn’t enough to go around: so don’t share ideas, don’t brainstorm with others who might steal your concepts, and above all, don’t help your co-workers or employees succeed. We have seen that this approach clearly will not work in the global marketplace of the knowledge age.
Today the challenge is to establish networks, strategic alliances, synergistic relationships, and ad hoc teams to solve problems and help everyone accomplish their goals. You now look for those people who are not satisfied with the status quo, who are striving for excellence and have talents and abilities that you don’t.
This requires that you “check your ego at the door” and that you don’t get intimidated by others who may have different talents or strengths than you do. This is what synergy is all about. As we value the differences and look at truly working together, one plus one really can equal three or even more.
This week, focus on “working with others” rather than “competing against others.” —Denis Waitley
2. The Champion Within Article
Getting Your Imagination to Work for You by Denis Waitley
Highly motivated achievers find the strength of their motivation in the power of their imagination.
One of the wonderful aspects about human imagination is that it can see things not as they are now, but as they can be; it can foretell the future, based upon our beliefs and expectations, in an almost uncanny way; it can draw the colorful mental images that we hope someday to turn into reality. Imagination is the beginning of creation.
Dr. David McClelland of Harvard University demonstrated this through a series of “projective tests.” In these tests, McClelland used photographs or drawings depicting basic scenes. For instance, in one photograph, a man was lying in bed with his eyes closed. His hand was raised and extended over an alarm clock on the table next to the bed. A window in the background was bright with the rays of early morning sunlight. McClelland asked his subjects to either describe the scene or tell a story about the person in the picture. To be sure that the responses were solely a function of motivational levels, the subjects for each test were people of the same sex, age, social background, and level of education.
This was McClelland’s hypothesis: Since all motivation comes from internal images, the subjects in the study who demonstrated the highest and most active levels of imaginative power would become the most successful in achieving their personal goals. He called these people “highly motivated achievers.”
His experiments confirmed his hypothesis. He found that highly motivated achievers told action-filled, goal-oriented stories about the scenes. People with a lower motivational level generally gave bland, passive descriptions of the images.
For example, after viewing the photo of the man in bed holding out his hand toward the clock, a highly motivated achiever might describe a man who has to wake up early and get back to work on an important project that kept him up late the night before. They would even describe details of the project.
On the other hand, McClelland’s less motivated subjects tended toward a passive interpretation of the scene. Many described a sleeping man who is reaching to turn off the alarm because it’s Saturday and he doesn’t have to go to work.
McClelland was not content to accept the results of the first study at face value. He continued to ask himself the following question: What if individuals don’t start off with a vivid imagination, but their professional position demands a vivid imagination? If, in fact, highly motivated achievers developed their imaginative abilities in response to their jobs, it would mean that their imaginative powers might not have played a role in motivating them to their level of extraordinary success.
In other words, how could McClelland be certain that the vivid imagination of these individuals was a cause of success and not a result of it?
He solved the problem by devising a second study that took 14 years to complete. For four years, he gave his projective test to college students. After giving the last projective test, he compiled the results and divided the students into two groups. The first group comprised those who showed the same traits as the highly motivated achievers of his earlier study, and the second group included those who were of average motivation.
McClelland then waited 10 years before he could complete his study, giving the students time to establish careers. He knew that if those with the most vivid imaginations were the same ones who had advanced furthest up the corporate ladder, he would have proof that vivid imaginations played a key role in helping people advance the furthest in life. He would have proof that a vivid, action-oriented imagination was a cause, a prerequisite in maintaining a highly motivated state, not just a result of success.
Ultimately, McClelland’s findings confirmed his expectations. The highly motivated achievers, those students who told the most vivid, action-oriented stories in the projective tests, had most often chosen entrepreneurial careers involving a large amount of personal responsibility, initiative, and personal risk. The other students gravitated to non-entrepreneurial fields that required much less personal initiative. From the 14-year study, McClelland concluded that highly motivated achievers find the strength of their motivation in the power of their imagination.
McClelland’s research may seem complex, but there’s one principle woven throughout all his studies: The more vivid and real the image that motivates you, the stronger the motivation.
As we hold a picture in the hands of our imagination, the enormous power of our minds is set on achieving it. Soon, depending upon the difficulty and complexity of the image, it is ours... it is a reality, whereas before, it was only a picture in our imagination.
3. Seeds of Greatness
You can be a total winner, even if you’re a beginner
If you think you can you can, if you think you can you can
You can wear the gold medallion, you can ride your own black stallion
If you think you can you can, if you think you can you can
It’s not your talent or the gifted birth
It’s not your bank book that determines worth
It isn’t in your gender or the color of your skin
It’s your attitude that lets you win
It doesn’t matter what you’ve done before
It makes no difference what the halftime score
It’s never over ‘til the final gun
So keep on trying and you’ll find you’ve won
Just grab your dream and then believe it
Go out and work, and you’ll achieve it
If you think you can, you can
If you think you can, you can
—DW
4. The Winner's Edge Coaching Tips
My friend Darren Hardy, publisher of SUCCESS magazine and popular author and keynote speaker, has just released his new book, The Compound Effect. With this new book, Darren proves that common sense—when applied—yields amazingly uncommon results. Follow these simple steps and become who you were meant to be! Enjoy this brief excerpt from the book:
Microwave Mentality
Understanding the Compound Effect will rid you of “insta-results” expectation—the belief that success should be as fast as your fast food, your one-hour glasses, your thirty-minute photo processing, your overnight mail, your microwave eggs, your instant hot water and text messaging. Enough. OK?
Promise yourself that you’re going to let go once and for all of your lottery-winner expectations because, let’s face it, you only hear stories about the one winner, not the millions of losers. That person you see jumping up and down in front of the Vegas slot machine or at the Santa Anita horse track doesn’t reveal the hundreds of times that same person lost. If we go back to our mathematical chance of a positive result, again, we have a rounding error of zero—as in, you have about zero chance of winning. Harvard psychologist Daniel Gilbert, author of Stumbling on Happiness, says that if we gave lottery losers each thirty seconds on TV to announce not, “I won!” but “I lost,” it would take almost nine years to get through the losers of a single drawing!
When you understand how the Compound Effect works, you won’t pine for quick fixes or silver bullets. Don’t try to fool yourself into believing that a mega-successful athlete didn’t live through regular bone-crushing drills and thousands of hours of practice. He got up early to practice—and kept practicing long after all others had stopped. He faced the sheer agony and frustration of the failure, loneliness, hard work, and disappointment it took to become No. 1.
5. New Release! | Darren Hardy's The Compound Effect
Learn to win every time!
With The Compound Effect, you’ll discover the keys to killing bad habits that derail your progress, installing important disciplines for major breakthroughs and much more. You’ll get and stay motivated!
• Download the first chapter for FREE
• Listen to a FREE sample of the enhanced audio program
• Watch a video of Darren Hardy explaining why he wrote The Compound Effect
• Gain access to additional resources, including Life Assessment and Goal Designing worksheets, Association Evaluator and more
• Take the Life Assessment Quiz to see which areas of your life need some TLC
• Order your copy of the book or enhanced audio program or both!
Digital download editions (MP3 audio and eBook PDF) also available.
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Book and Enhanced Audio Program
(6 CDs)
Retail $59.90
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6. More Information
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