“When I was five years old, my Mom told me that happiness was the key to life. When I went to school, they asked what I wanted to be when I grew up, I wrote down ‘happy’. They told me I didn’t understand the assignment and I told them they didn’t understand life.”
~ Unknown
Since the advent of the smart-phone, the day of watching and enjoying our children playing sports has been replaced by filming every action they take. It’s not the videos, it’s what the videos are focused on. Ask any parent or player, ‘what’s the purpose of the video’ and with a smile they quickly respond, “To see what they are doing wrong!” It’s the same in the business world. It’s what we focus on versus the dynamic ability of todays smart phone or computer.
So, let’s pause the video taking and note taking for a second and recognize that our brains are success driven organs! With one goal in mind, to “make us successful!” Regrettably, Success is a relative term we define.
Yes, I said regrettably! It is because most of us have forgotten our brains are success driven organs and through knowledge, we get to identify what we view as SUCCESS. Instead we use the Smart Phones and computers to enhance our ability to smudge our view of success. With each negative video and/or documented fact we post, we clouded our vision of success and completely forgotten the fact, what we see is our choice.
How we interpret/view hiccups is our choice. Our brain just wants us to be happy. So doing well or doing poor is vision we create, the brain is just happy to create it, and both are considered successful.
The key is to paint a clearer visual understanding of how our brains fail to differentiate positive or negative. Glenn Moore, author of “Success for Young Athletes,” provided a very useful visual in his example where he told us to, ‘NOT DO SOMETHING.’ An exercise that helps us understand that our brain really does view everything as successful. It is our choice to decide what we want to focus on; punishing or improving. The key is Focusing Our Picture on the Right Things, versus smudging our pictures with video identifying “…what [we] are doing wrong!”
So here’s what I want you to NOT DO.
“Don’t think of rattlesnakes!”
Even though we were told not to, a picture of a rattlesnake is visualized in our mind. No matter how many times we are told, “NOT TO THINK of a Rattlesnake, the opposite occurs. In fact the vision of a rattlesnake becomes more clear with each command. Now imagine when we listen or view being told over and over what we are doing wrong. We become MORE Successful performing what we are being asked NOT to DO. The opposite of what our intent is, but as they say, the fact remains.
Here’s the simple fix: Improve what we are focusing on!
- Create a Mental Picture of HOW and WHAT is the correct way to perform something
- Be “happy” and enjoy what you are doing versus focusing every minute worrying about what you or your children are doing wrong.
Remember success is relative, the choice is ours and I am guessing it is better than:
Until next Blog Improve what we are focusing on,
Al McCormick
