Have you ever noticed that some people seem to have more of some things or everything than others? More fun, stuff, friends, success, money, influence, achievements, wisdom, peace, harmony, freedom, just to mention a few.

Why is this? During the years I have observed hundreds of people in all walks of life. As a speaker I am privileged to meet thousands of people each year in my programs. One thing I have seen is a wide ranging array of attitudes, feelings and beliefs. It is interesting to note that of the people I have met that have the greatest degree of peace, joy, harmony, life balance, friends and success (no matter how you chose to define success) are people who live with a great deal of gratitude in their lives.

Some of you might believe that you have nothing to be grateful for. Life is just -same stuff different day, or just a bowl of pits, or not fair, or whatever.

Here are a few things we have to be grateful for that many people take for granted.

1. Air to breathe.
2. Food to eat.
3. Books to read.
4. People who care about you.
5. Bodies that work.
6. Hearts that pump 2,500,000 a month.
7. Minds that can think.
8. Work that is satisfying, or challenging or contributes to our growth.
9. Friends who are there when you need them.
10. Pets who love us no matter what.
11. The right to believe what we want.
12. The ability to control what we feel and think.
13. Water to drink.
14. The ability to feel.
15. The ability to express love and receive it.
16. The ability to share with others.

There is more.

Why not add some and create your own - I am thankful for - list.
Refer to it often. Refer to it when: you are feeling sorry for yourself, you have failed, been let down, lost your way, you feel like quitting, you are feeling good, you are feeling bad, you are sick and when you are healthy.

Today’s leadership is far more complex than just ten years ago. Customers’ expectations have risen, and with higher expectations come the need for organizations to meet those expectations. Thus, leaders now have a greater responsibility to perform and to manage higher levels of performance. Organizations need to not only promise, but to deliver greater service, more innovative products, and better quality. Leaders must influence their people beyond skill to the very core of their human needs and values in order to be a part of that promise. For an organization to deliver on their promises (their brand), their people must live the values that the organization expresses in their marketing and branding. People need not just to do their job, but to become a self actualizing, innovative part of the organization and its promise. This task falls on the leaders to accomplish but is hardly easy when each person has their own agenda. It also creates additional stress on both leaders and subordinates whose results are no longer just based on getting the job done, but in being a certain way when doing it.

The authoritative hierarchical corporate culture that has traditionally been based on seniority is successful in getting people to take action in their jobs. The question is “How effective is that action?” It’s not surprising that recent surveys have shown that 6 out of every 7 people dislike going to work. Not because they hate their jobs. In fact many enjoy what they do, but there is something about their work or environment that doesn’t fulfill their needs and it’s not just about money.

If we feel good about work, if our fulfillment goes beyond the need for having a secure job, then we can be more enthusiastic, more willing to go the extra mile, and more innovative and productive. To positively influence the corporate cultures we exist in, we must align the values of our employees with the values of our organization. We must create an environment that fills the psychological needs of the individual through the attainment of the corporate mission. We must cultivate our employees to direct the emotions and attitudes of their peers. And we must nurture our leaders multiply their strength through contribution and not significance.

The revolutionary leadership stance is one that guides people through psychology and deals with cultivating the best characteristics and attitudes in each individual to create empowered teams, then replicate those attitudes throughout the organization. Only through awareness of the human condition and culture management can leaders have the influence necessary to accomplish this task.

Only through revolutionizing our organizations can we create an environment that directs our vulnerability to emotions in a positive and personally fulfilling way. Because no matter what changes around us, the one thing that remains constant is that we still live in the human condition and act and react to the stimulus around us. So as leaders we can direct it or we can leave it to chance, which would you prefer?

The science of Directive Communication™ (DC) is the newest breakthrough in the psychology of organizational peak performance designed to deliver the emotional, mental and physical tools that will make the difference in the alignment of individual and organization. It is a foundation for relationship enrichment and how it relates to the brand promise of an organization, its productivity, leadership, sales/marketing, and customer service. It is the combination of weapons that we need to revolutionize the way we thing and feel about ourselves and others in a work and personal environment. The approach uses combinations of persuasive psychology, the genetics of brain processing and its relationship to competency and emotion, verbal and nonverbal and internal communication, and strategies from US Special Forces PSYOPS to create a chain reaction change within an organization.

Currently many Asian companies assume that more seniority means more experience and therefore more competence. They try to attain more productivity and profitability by training skills without the psychological foundations for their employees to excel in those skills. Teaching skills without psychology is like growing a tree with no water. Imagine skills as seeds and soil. These remain motionless until they are watered and transformed with the help of the sun (its environment). DC is the water that primes the psychology, and helps the tree (competence and passion) grow into the sunlight (a fulfilling and productive corporate culture). According to a Stanford University study, skills only represent 14% to 22% of what makes a top achiever in an organization, the rest is attitude and the individual’s psychology. A leader versed in DC is armed with the tools to direct this psychology.

To create change in attitudes in your organization, you have to begin by shifting the personal beliefs of the core group in the organization. To literally align an individual’s personal identity and self serving ideals with what the organization is promising to its customers or stakeholders. This starts with awareness. By becoming aware of what triggers our nonproductive emotional patterns like frustration, anger, dissent, or helplessness, and by reflecting upon what our strengths and weaknesses are at the core of our genetic and psychological makeup, we have a good foundation to maximize our human potential in our professional and personal lives.

But for revolutionizing an organization, the individual is only the beginning. That individual must be able to communicate and influence others within the organization.

The number one reason for lack of productivity is the lack of communication between departments, and the frustration when dealing with individuals who have a different “Mental Language” than we do. it is a human tendency to overlook the fact that the same words or actions have completely different meanings to each person because we perceive the world around us through our own beliefs of what it and other in it should be.

According to the DC discipline, the way we think is represented by colored glasses that we wear. Imagine if you wore glasses that were tinted green. As you look at everyone else who was also wearing glasses, their glasses would also appear to be a shade of green regardless of what color they were really wearing. As a leader, if you were able to remove your glasses, and see the different colors, the ways that others think while knowing your own color and brain processing system, your mental flexibility, and ability to interact with and influence others, would be dramatically impacted.

Imagine your brain as a computer processor, some may have a PC processor, others may have a Mac processor. Each of these processors can run similar applications such as Microsoft Excel or Adobe Photoshop, and while these have the same function and similar appearance, each requires different software to do so and each runs them differently. For example, a PC will run Excel in a very direct and speedy manner, but will run Photoshop in a slower and roundabout way. The Mac on the other hand is just the opposite. But, if you try to run Excel for Mac on your PC, it won’t work and vice versa. Our brains act in a similar way. If you are a green brain (random, interactive processing) trying to do a red brain (linear objective processing) function, you will have a great deal of difficulty doing it in the same way that a red brain person does. It then becomes essential for getting your red brain outcome to do it in a green brain way.

Traditionally, the problem has been those red brain outcomes (for example) have been taught by red brained people. So green, blue and purple (the other colors represented in DC) brained people usually have to work harder to achieve the same results, and then the results are often not as good as those red brained people that hardly worked at it at all. But, if a green brained person has awareness of being green brained, this allows him the ability to use his natural green talent.

To get specific information on the colored brain processing characteristics, email to: admin@carmazzi.net

Throughout your life you may have naturally found ways to do this through trial and error. This has developed your brain flexibility. Yet you may still be struggling with being more creative or being more analytical or more systematic or more sensitive to others… etc. Here is where awareness sets precedent to effortlessly accelerate the process. For example if you are processing as a green brain, it is unnatural to analyze something without taking action toward it, yet many situations require a red brained linear and more analytical process. Rather than sitting down and impatiently attempt analysis (like everyone says you should), you would take a hands-on active approach to it like talking to others that may have similar experience and doing small scale tests of a larger project. This approach would be much easier to interpret by a green brain and your analysis would be more accurate than trying to do it in a red brain way.

A leader armed with this acuity can not only maximize the abilities of others and help them to achieve greater results, but improve his own leadership competencies.

Directive Communication™ colored brain technology can be used to determine core genetic competencies as well as environmentally attained “Brain Flexibility” through the CBCI (colored brain communication inventory) tool. This foundation of understanding is used by leaders to motivate staff by more easily satisfying each individual’s core needs including security, significance, growth, and connection. But this is not enough. To enroll others to the cause of creating a fulfilling environment to maximize innovation and productivity, we must also understand how people fill their basic human needs in a work and personal environment. Then and only then can we build the army that will revolutionize our organization. And the heart of this motivation, of any action or lack of action is the meaning we associate to these eight basic human needs, but we will leave that for part 2 of this article.

Arthur F. Carmazzi is the principle founder of the “Directive Communication™” discipline, the author of “Identity Intelligence” and co-author of best seller “The 6 Dimensions of Top Achievers”.

Arthur is the developer of the CBCI (Colored Brain Communication Inventory) profiling tools used for “Psycho-Productivity” management. This tool has been implemented across a variety of HR and Leadership disciplines by numerous multinationals to generate greater efficiency of human capital.

Arthur’s current area of concentration is in the creation of highly productive organizational cultures. His work in applying the Directive Communication discipline to organizations has enhanced departments in Multinational as well as local companies through attitude enrichment as it relates to productivity, leadership, sales and customer service. Using psychology to inspire ownership within the individual, team, and organization.

You can find out more about Arthur F. Carmazzi at http://www.carmazzi.net or about the Directive Communication methodology at: http://www.directivecommunication.com

Q.: I’ve always been sort of cynical about all this motivational stuff. Lots of rah-rah but no how-to. Now I see all these commercials that talk about no limits, no boundaries, etc. But there are real limits, and I think this stuff misleads a lot of people. What do you think?

A.: You are absolutely right on at least two counts.

Most of the motivational stuff out there is too much rah-rah and not enough what-to-do.

You are also correct in saying there are limits in our lives. Gravity is one. You can ignore it, not believe in it, or act like it does not apply to you, and gravity won’t care at all. There are limits. I’m not going to lose 20 pounds in a day, barring amputation.

Where you are stuck is in the difference between limits and limitations. A limit is a physical restriction, an unchangeable part of life. A limitation is a psychological restriction, a changeable part of life.

We get stuck when we believe that our changeable limitations are unchangeable limits.

Here’s an example:

An elephant is a large and powerful animal. But a baby elephant can be tethered around an ankle with the tether firmly staked into the ground. Over time, it learns that the tether will hold it and behaves accordingly. A mature elephant could easily break the tether or pull up the stake, but it believes in the limitation that it cannot.

For the most part, people are smarter than elephants. Unlike elephants, we can get past most of the limitations in our lives. Here’s how:

A limitation is nothing more than a firm belief regarding something about yourself. For our purposes here, a belief is merely a feeling of certainty about something.

Think of a limitation as a tabletop, and the beliefs that support the limitation as the legs that hold up the table. If you knock the legs out from under a table, it will fall. In the same way, if we knock the beliefs out from under the limitation, the limitation will fall, too.

Let’s say you believe that you could never go to a fitness center because you would be too embarrassed. The beliefs that support your limitation are:

(1) You are too out of shape and everyone else is in great shape;

(2) everyone else will look at you;

(3) your dad told you that you were not much of an athlete.

Let’s tear down those beliefs:

(1) Thinking you have to be in shape before you go to the gym is sort of like saying you have to know how to drive before you get behind the wheel of a car. You learn by getting behind the wheel with someone more experienced than you. Gyms are for people who are out of shape.

(2) Most people are too busy looking at themselves in the mirror to pay much attention to you.

(3) Your dad was wrong.

Once you tear down the lies of a limitation, you can put up some truth in their place. The truth is that fitness centers were made for people like you, and all you have to do is walk in and join.

I challenge you to take a hard look at some of the limitations in your life, knock out the false beliefs, tear down the lies and put up some truths. After all, it’s not what we don’t know that hurts us as much as what we know that is not true.

Visit SecretsofGreatRelationships.com for tips and tools for creating and growing a great relationship. You can also subscribe to our f*r*e*e 10 day e-program on how to enrich your relationship today, from relationship coach and expert Jeff Herring.

Did you know that fewer than 10% of people who set New Year’s Resolutions actually achieve them? How can you ensure YOUR success? Try using the Top 10 Tips below.

1. Write Them Down. It’s a fact: writing down your goals gives you a higher chance of success.

2. Commit. Move beyond the land of “good ideas” to promise yourself to show up for your goals. Perhaps you can do a ritual or ceremony to symbolize your commitment.

3. Tell People. Let your biggest fans in on your new commitments and goals for the year.

4. Get Accountability. Even better than just letting others in on your “secret” dreams and goals-get some accountability. Meet for lunch once a month with a group that will ask you, “So, how’s it going with your goal?” Hire a Life Coach. Talk to your best friend. Get some support!

5. Make a Plan. Ensure success with a step-by-step plan. Electric Kites loves to work backwards by starting with the end vision of where you want to be and working backwards to where you are today. You’ll find an easy plan to make your goal a reality.

6. Do a Goal Check-In. Before you decide on what you’ll take on for the year, make certain you can answer, “YES!” to the following questions: “Am I the primary reason for setting this goal (vs. your mom, boyfriend, wife, boss, society)? Do I feel alive and energized by this goal? Is this goal in line with my life purpose or mission?”

7. Get Real! If you’re contemplating putting a goal down that you always put down and never achieve, take a second look. How will this goal end DIFFERENTLY this year? Is this goal something you need to let go of? What purpose is it serving you each year?

8. Focus With Reminders. Once you’ve got your goals and plan in place, figure out ways to remind yourself. Some Electric Kites’ clients post their goals in their bathrooms or cars. Others put reminders in their palm pilots or cell phones. Figure out what works for you.

9. Believe and Visualize. Do you know the story about the group of basketball players who spent one hour visualizing making baskets, while another group actually practiced? The visualizing players had better seasons! So visualize yourself on New Years Eve 2005 with all your goals achieved. What would that look like? How would it feel? Visualize once a day and see the difference it can make in your life.

10. Get Your Butt to the ReCHARGE Workshop! All of the above steps (and MUCH MORE!) are outlined in depth at the Electric Kites ReCHARGE Workshop in Los Angeles on Jan. 8th and the SF Bay Area on Jan. 22nd Imagine the difference it will make to take just one day out of your life and focus on yourself, your dreams and your goals. You deserve it! It is an investment that is guaranteed to bring success. (Electric Kites clients won big in 2004. Go to our website to see how: www.ElectricKites.com!)

May 2005 be the year that your goals and dreams reach full flight! Check out more articles and the Electric Kites website at www.ElectricKites.com

Amy is an International Certified Life Coach with clients in both the US and abroad. She has over seven years combined professional experience as a life coach, sales executive, actress, and teacher. She holds a BA from the University of California, Irvine in Drama and earned the CPCC (Certified Professional Co-Active Coach) designation from The Coaches Training Institute.

Contact: Amy Ahlers, CPCC
Co-Founder, Electric Kites
323.276.1864
LifeCoachAmy@yahoo.com
http://www.ElectricKites.com

Time management, make to-do lists, use a daily planner, learn to say no to people when you’re busy. These are all items that you’ll read when learning the ins and outs of time management; but what does it really take?

Finish what you start! That may seem easy, but let me tell a little personal story. I was sales rep for a very large territory, I knew my product, I was good with people, and figured I’d be very successful. What I didn’t expect was with this big territory came a lot of phone calls, quotes, and inquiries. Something I wasn’t used to or prepared for I guess.

So I found myself with more work then I was used to. I was starting a quote getting another phone call moving onto something else. Basically putting out fires as they arose. As time went on I found I was always busy but nothing seemed to get done. I was always on the road the phone was ringing off the hook, but I wasn’t closing any deals, and worse I wasn’t making any money. So what did I do?

Simple I started finishing the task I started. When I stated a quote I’d finish it before moving onto the next one. I’d answer the phone if it rang, but I wouldn’t stop and start checking my email, or move onto another quote, or get up from my desk and tour around the office. I’d finish that quote then move on.

So why is this such an important point in regards to time management? Think about your own office life, or personal life. Do you find you’re involved in lots of things but none of them are coming to completion? Or you’ve got lots of stuff on the go but nothing finishing up? We can be busy but accomplishing nothing, and that can be worse then doing nothing at all. Moral of the story, we can make all the lists, plans and prioritizing we want, but finishing what we start is the first step towards accomplishing as much as we can with the time we have.

Find more information and tips here on how to improve your time management skills

The Pareto Principle is known by many names and seems to be an almost intrinsic law of nature. Amongst its other names two in particular pinpoint what it is about: the law of imbalance and the 80/20 rule.

The principle can be expressed in many ways and has been used in an enormous variety of circumstances. In time management terms it reminds us that there is a great imbalance between effort and results. If we just do what everyone else wants us to do, if we do not prioritise well, then around 80% of what we achieve will come from just 20% of what we do — the 80/20 principle.

It’s like saying that in the equivalent of just one day a week we achieve the bulk of what we do that is really important. The other four days merely add a bit more. It’s an appalling statistic but, generally, it has a big core of truth.

Look at it another way and say that only a crucial few things are really important, the majority are not. So where should you invest the bulk of your time, on the crucial few or the less important many?

This fact of a natural imbalance is all around us, but we do not have to tolerate it. In practice, if you are being reasonably successful at work you are probably already instinctively beating the Pareto principle. But, with some thought, you can probably improve much, much more.

So who was Pareto and what did he discover that was worth attaching the word ‘principle’ to?

Vilfredo Pareto (1848-1923) was an Italian economist. In 1897 he studied the distribution of wealth in England and found that, not all that surprisingly, relatively few families owned a disproportionate amount of the wealth of the country. There was an imbalance.

Specifically, he discovered that about 20% of families owned about 80% of the wealth. He then found that half of those owned roughly 64% of the wealth (80% of 80%) and half of those owned roughly 50% (80% of 64%). A very unequal distribution! He even found that this appeared to be universal in whatever country or age he looked. The 80/20 rule was born.

The Pareto principle seems to be endemic. Other examples often quoted include: about 80% of the wear in your carpets at home is in roughly 20% of the floor area (the doorways and corridors); 20% of criminals commit 80% of crime; 20% of staff cause 80% of personnel problems and so on.

Often it is more extreme than 80/20. In a football match the action that matters (scoring goals) occurs in a tiny fraction of the game. When a match goes to a penalty shoot out after extra time the outcome is decided by just ten kicks taken in a few minutes of melodrama after a game in which the ball has been booted around for 120 minutes. (That must be a 99.9/0.1 rule!)

In a light bulb only a few percent of the electricity used is converted into light, the rest is wasted as heat (95/5 rule). Publishers say that only a few percent of books make a profit, those that do subsidise the rest. The same probably applies to pop records. You could go on, but instead of piling up more examples, let us turn to using the rule to help us to get better use of our limited time.

Once you accept that the productivity of your time is unbalanced you are part way to doing something about it. As usual in time management, we come back to priorities. Reduce time spent on the wasteful many and give more time to the crucial few.

Every moment you spend on tasks of low importance, whilst higher importance tasks are waiting, you reinforce the 80/20 rule of shame. Whereas every time you drop a low-importance task to make way for something more important then you are smashing the 80/20 rule and making your way to higher productivity.

Of course, you are not aiming for 100/100, where every single moment is fully accountable and totally productive. You are not a machine. For example, if your organisation is to move forward then some time must be spent speculating on what ifs. That is good use of your time, even though 80% or more of it will eventually lead to nothing, but maybe 20% will.

Be aware of the reality of the 80/20 principle. Do not feel guilty about it but use it sensibly, not blindly, to help you to judge priorities and to judge if you are using your time as well as you might. It can help you to make a difference and help you to improve your productivity. That is no bad thing.

Author: Tony Atherton
© Tony Atherton 2005)

For an in-depth look at the Pareto Principle see ‘The 80/20 Principle,’ by Richard Koch, Nicholas Brealey, London, 1998. ISBN 1-65788-168-0.

About the author:
Tony Atherton is a freelance trainer and writer based in England. He has had four books published and about 90 of his articles have appeared in various magazines and journals. After an earlier career in industry he now runs in-company training courses in business writing, report writing (including technical reports) and taking minutes, as well as negotiation skills and time management. Over 6000 delegates have attended his courses. For details of his time management courses see http://tony-atherton.co.uk/timemgt.htm or for general details see http://www.tony-atherton.co.uk.