Letter Published in April Edition of Management Today

MOCCASIN TEST

I'm with the 'female business grandee', commenting on the venom being directed at Sir Fred Goodwin ( Editor's blog 06-March-09)

It reminds me of my father's reaction to, recently turned 60 pop idol, Lulu - "She can't sing for toffee!" That was about forty years ago and the fact that she was presenting her, prime time, Saturday night TV show to millions of viewers, seemed to have passed him by.

Sir Fred Goodwin, Gordon Brown, George W Bush, Margaret Thatcher; it appears that almost everyone will tell you how useless they all are or were. We, the public and the media all seem to find great pleasure in negatively criticising almost everyone else, be they Chief Exec, Politician or Pop Star. 

I haven't a clue whether it's entirely Sir Fred's fault that RBS are in their current position or that Gordon Brown is wholly responsible for the economic state of the nation. I don't have all the information to make that decision; just as, I can't support the negative criticism of a friend who has recently left his wife. Who knows what goes on behind closed doors, be it No 10 or RBS Headquarters.

What I do know is, that put all those critics in the job, be they Joe Public or Opposition politicians, then things won't necessarily be better. Of course, people have to pay for their mistakes and we have to learn and move forward.

However, we'd all do a great deal better if we concentrate on the factors we can influence rather than criticise what other people do or don't do.

 Let's not vilify everyone and anyone without, to use an old Indian saying, "walking a mile in their moccasins."

How to Change Your Beliefs and Expand Your Comfort Zone

I was listening to, TV presenter, Fearne Cotton being interviewed on breakfast television last week. She was talking about a nine day trip, made recently by herself and eight other celebrities. They climbed Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania, Africa, and raised over £3 million for charity. In the weeks before the trip, they trained hard, but it was a gruelling climb and some of the people in the team suffered badly from altitude sickness. Fearne was one of the ones to receive injections for the sickness; however, she made it to the top along with all the others. Well done and good for her!

When asked by the interviewer, "what happens next?" She talked about a similar challenge, still to be finalised, later in the year.

What's happened here is that, Fearne, who has done nothing like this in her life, has now expanded her comfort zone.

You may not want to climb any mountains, cross any deserts or explore the Amazon jungle, but I'm sure there are other goals and objectives, that you would like to achieve in either your business or personal life.

Think about what you're doing each day and ask yourself –

"Is what I'm doing now getting me to where I want to get to?"

If the answer is "No" then do something different. Change your beliefs and expand your comfort zone

The psychologist Abraham Maslow said –

"If you deliberately plan to be less than you are capable of being; then I warn you that you will be unhappy for the rest of your life. You will be evading your own capabilities, your own possibilities."

I hear people saying; "I'm too old, I don't have the qualifications, it's not the right time!"

It's never too late to make that change

There's the famous story of Ray Kroc, the founder of McDonalds. He was over fifty when he started making money. Kroc was a paper cup salesman, who obtained the marketing rights to a multi-mixer invented by Earl Prince. He criss-crossed the US for seventeen years selling these mixers until he met up with the McDonald brothers. Dick and Mac McDonald ordered eight of his mixers and had them churning away all day. Kroc was entranced by the effectiveness of the McDonald's operation and started thinking about building McDonald's restaurants all over the US. He thought he could then sell more multi-mixers. The McDonald brothers weren't too keen on the idea, so they franchised the restaurants to Kroc. He ultimately bought out the McDonald brothers, and as they say - the rest is history.

Ray Kroc's belief in himself was unshakeable, as he noted later – "I was 52 years old. I had diabetes and incipient arthritis. I had lost my gall bladder and most of my thyroid gland." Kroc didn't allow his age or his physical condition to hold him back. Are you going to allow anything to hold you back?

Listen to the negative things you say to yourself and the beliefs you have about yourself – DO NOT allow them to hold you back.

If you do have negative beliefs about yourself, here's a way to change them.

Your subconscious will always attempt to move away from pain and towards pleasure. So start to associate massive pain to your negative belief.

Think about how it will hold you back and stop you achieving what you're trying to achieve. Think about how miserable you'll feel if you don't even try.

Old people rarely regret what they've done in their life, but they do regret what they haven't done. So think forward to when you're 75 or 80 years of age and imagine how you'll feel if you've never tried.

Then start to think of the pleasure you'll receive in fulfilling your beliefs. Think about how good you'll feel when you achieve what you set out to do. If when you're older you look back and think about things you didn't achieve, at least you'll be able to say – "I tried, I gave it my best shot and I didn't sit on the sidelines."

So start thinking big – the size of your success is determined by how big you think. If you think small you'll have small achievements. If you think big – you'll have big success and that's just as easy, if not easier than small thinking and small achievements.