You will have heard the phrase “Success is Chosen” many times, I am sure. In fact, if you haven’t heard it before, give it some thought for a moment. It’s what so many of the people who rise to the top in their professional arena say.
That’s great news, isn’t it? I mean, we can all choose to be successful. Let’s celebrate that for a second.
It also means that the life you have now, the business you have now, the level of success you enjoy now, is a result of the choices you have made. And that the level of success you enjoy in the future, the business you have in the future, and the life you lead from now on are a direct result of the choices you make and the decisions you take. Fantastic. It’s all in your hands. You have the choice. You can decide.
And yet, in the day to day, hurly burly of it all, this message, this lesson, this whole mantra, gets lost in a deluge of urgency and the “stuff” that’s got to be dealt with , this instant.
So, how can you truly choose?
Now, we aren’t just thinking about the big strategic decisions here. It’s also about the choices you make and the decisions you take at every moment of the day. It’s that web of small decisions to go down a particular route, to use our time in a specific way, to deploy our resources on a certain task. Many of these decisions are made with very little conscious effort, and often they are made almost without a thought. Yet, it’s these little decisions and choices which have a huge cumulative effect on our success, on the life we find ourselves leading. They lead to a life filled with all that you want, or to a life of desperation, trying to get off the hamsters wheel, but never quite managing to do much different than before.
Every moment of every day we generate thousands of subliminal actions… imperceptible behaviours which make up our lives.
Change these in only a minor way, and you change the results you are getting. And the cumulative effect of lots of new results produces major success, especially over the long term.
Similarly, if these thousands of small choices are poorly taken, the cumulative effect can be disastrous.
The effect of bad decisions or the absence of choosing (in many cases, not choosing is choosing not!) is for all to see.
These choices are things like:
> To make business calls / prospect daily or not
> To make that extra call or not
> To eat healthily or not
> To arrive on time or not
> To get organised or not
and so on…
Such choices arise moment by moment throughout the day. Avoiding choosing, or not being aware that you have made a decision, is still a choice to not do something.
But so many people don’t know they have made that choice… they didn’t know they had the choice (in the same way that many people choose penury for their old age without knowing they were making the choice, or that they even had a choice).
So let’s look at how to make those choices of better quality.
Inner Champion v Sub-Cranium Demon
Throughout the day we reach an infinite number of “tipping points.”
These are moments of thought / decision around which you act. They are often little decisions, almost imperceptible.
For example,
“Shall I have a pudding or am I just feeding my guts!”
“Shall I write my book, or just think about it”;
“Shall I mow the lawn or not”
“Shall I get up and exercise or shall I just take a few more minutes listening to the radio from the cosiness of my bed”
“Shall I do some “urgent” admin or some prospecting instead”
Even though these tipping points might be imperceptible, they are still a Decision point.
At each Tipping Point there are a myriad number of possible courses to take. Each has myriad results leading to an infinite number of consequences and a new set of tipping points. So it is impossible to consciously calculate all these options, outcomes and further options. We therefore, default to our habits.
And yet there are some moments of sheer brilliance. This is where your Inner Champion is at work. You know, those moments when you do make the positive choices which lead to success, without actually sensing you have made a decision… it almost happens without thought at all. You recognise these by the gut feeling you have of just having done something well. We’ve all seen the fantastic results of The Inner Champion’s work.
Equally, there are times when the Sub-Cranium Demon is at work. In the same way, you know in your gut feeling when you are letting him win. But he has a canny way of covering his tracks… he creates disguises, and wears a mask. These are the “excuses” we often come up with when we have allowed him to win.
He compounds this by also adding another sour aftertaste in the form of guilt. This guilt tells us we know we have let him win, and not only that but he has the up on us and we are always going to succumb to him. He tells us he has won. And he also tells us we are weak, we are always going to be under his spell, and that resistance is useless. These are all the ploys of our demon to help him win the next fight, to tip the scales in his favour at the next “Tipping Point”. He doesn’t fight fair, of course! He operates in a clandestine manner, and it’s only once you have done his bidding that you realise he has been at work at all.
So we need to heighten our awareness of such “tipping points” so that we can fend off the Sub-Cranium Demon and allow the Inner Champion to shine.
Create and enlarge the tipping points in your mind.
Train the mind to recognise them and manufacture them so you can work them in your favour.
Notice the small tipping points operating throughout your day…
And decide whether it’s the Inner Champion who will prevail, or whether you are going to succumb to the Sub-cranium Demon.
The Inner Champion manifests in Business Courage, for example, around decisions to ask for the business / ask for personal introductions / pick up the phone.
Recognising the choices you have and the decisions you are taking is the first step. You will only recognise the choices when you
> decide on your goals and the vision you have of the life / business you want
> decide an outline strategy of how you are going to get there
> live a life which is congruent with that vision, that strategy, and your values
At all times you need to have your vision in mind of what you want to achieve, and of the success. Live it and breathe it. When you do this, decision-making becomes so much clearer, and you recognise more of the true choices you have. It also gives your Inner Champion the upper hand in slaying your Sub-Cranium Demons, every time!