The Anatomy of Trapportunity

A trapportunity is a trap masquerading as an opportunity. It is not a real word. It was coined by the CSD Africa research team during the development of the Uptimetrics® training program. We were looking for a label for this phenomenon that even though so common, was difficult to define. What you cannot define is difficult to fix and our intention was to find solutions to the problem.

Clearly the phenomenon is a two part entity with each component quite self -sufficient. A trap can stand on its own (or can it?) much like an opportunity can stand on its own. But we see in practice that traps need the image of an opportunity (evil needs to mimic good). A mouse trap needs the aroma of meat much like the hook needs the covering of bait. No fish wants to sallow cold steel of course. So that one must come to the terms with the expression; not all that glitters is Gold.

With this understanding then, everything must be checked for substance regardless of how good they look. This is also the exact story of fakes and originals. The need for due diligence then is well placed as we will find that things very often must go through a certain process in order to be authentic. It is nature’s way. As soon as we detect the need to skip processes or laid down procedures that are designed to check trapportunities, red flags must be raised. For eveil by its very nature is incapable of doing the right thing. It must deceive. What trapportunity really does is to derail a goal, slow it down by misleading and many are they who have suffered major setbacks that have impacted negatively on their performance.

Some traps are so bad they will hold you forever. You feel like you are in a spiders web; helpless as you are being drained of your very essence. They come in different forms and shapes too. Sometimes it’s a person, other times it’s a job. It could even be a car. Frankly it can be anything that takes you of your course. Whiles it may be possible to get out of literally any trapportunity, the magnitude of effort often required for the recovery process can be painfully expensive and is best spent on the goal itself.

Trapportunties can occur on both macro and macro levels causing problems for your occupational and life performance alike. As we have seen, the micro things determine the outcomes of the macro things. So that if you suffer from trapportunituies in your daily activity, it will accumulate into a major setback in your quest to maximize your larger existence. This is then is how trapportunities can affect performance. The easiest way to avoid trapportunities is to stick to the procedure and always let systems run their course. Easy short cuts and superficial evaluation of things will not allow you to see beyond the bait and you will become the hook’s victim.

A person with a great future ahead of him who by some action based on what seems like an opportunity ends up in prison for the rest of their life has fallen for a trapportunity. There is a clear difference between trapportunity and self sabotage of course but I shall save that discussion for another post. In the meantime look out for the trapportunities, they are all around you. Joseph faced one in Portipher’s wife but luckily, knew what to do.

Read More

The Uncertainty of Success

So everyone wants to succeed these days. Not that it wasn't the case with previous generations but ours for reasons I cannot phantom just seems a smidgen more urgent. We are the Brian Tracy and Anthony Robbins generation after all. We have more motivational speakers than any other generation can boast of and we love them apparently. Absolutely nothing wrong with that except many of us just seems to think we can do it by being normal. Normal is fine but it doesn't make you that outstanding person you would like to be. Normal here refers to performing at an average level being like most people.

How much you put into something determines how much you will get out of it. That’s like life’s little law you cannot break. No one is exempted. For this reason success must begin with performance. Those who are the best at what they do are likely to be successful. Most of the people we call successful are not simply people who set a goal and reached it. Most people here refer to those who are doing things beyond what most people are doing and that’s a very few number of people. Think about this very carefully.

Most of the people who set SMART goals and reach them you never really hear about. Many of the people you see flying high have probably not even reached the goals they have set yet. In between these two, there are a variety of others. So that the high performing guy/chic is really the one people look at when they think about success. The guy who makes doing something looks easy. The one people point to when they look for the best or one of the best at something in particular. That’s the person you want to be and you want to be that person BEING what you know how to BE best. If you can be that thing, your success is well on its way. I hold the view that perhaps the term peak performance itself maybe a fallacy as it is not possible to know how much more a person could have done when they pass on. I am sure most people will agree and that such men like Steve Jobs and Bob Marley could have given the world more. Yet were they not outstanding men of their days with plans to achieve more in the future?

Upshot; it doesn't really matter what success means to you. I say this because in my work as a performance coach my interaction with people on a daily basis reveals something different every time. So I have to agree with those who hold that success is simply deciding on something to achieve and actually achieving it. Size doesn't really matter at this point although; there is quite a room for further discussion. If it’s about money, you get that when the demand for your service goes up and that happens simply because you are that good at what you do. If it’s about changing the world and making a difference I can assure you; that will not happen by you doing average things. Change comes only by doing more than the usual. Regardless of what you think you want, performance is what counts in the final analysis. Here is a cold fact: nobody hires anybody for their certificate. They hire you because the certificate means you have had some training that means you can give them what they want. Which high performance in a particular activity or they won’t bother with the interview. Even if they hire the first guy who shows up, they have made a case of punctuality. Once you are hired it is all down to performance or you won’t have that job for long. To do well in your life you have to do well with whatever is in your hands at any given point in time.

Your employer wants you to be the best, your God wants you to be the best, your parents want you to be the best. You must want to be the best. All you have really is your life and God gave it to you for a reason. Don’t be like the last servant in the parable of the talent who buried his talent in the ground when others where making profits on theirs. Be the best you can be! SPiD-UP® is here to help you achieve that. 

Read More

Contextualizing your performance

The context of performance idea was born out of the many questions I received when I posted an early version of my book performance awareness online critique. The exercise forced me to rethink some of the ideas in the book which in fact contains the core of what I teach in the Uptimetrics® foundation class. In the end I had to add two new chapters one of which covers the context of performance.

Performance cannot be measured in the same way for any two people as no two people are the same even if they demonstrate strength in the same area. For this reason it is necessary to provide key indicators that will help decide when a person has done enough based on their nature. An employer might list the specific number of things that must happen within a certain period to determine whether an employee is performing or not. Whiles this criterion might be set for a specific role, he must understand that no two people will deliver it in the same manner.

There are some individuals categorized as cheetahs and I am not referring to professor Ayittey’s Cheetahs in his Hippos and cheetahs idea. The cheetah is the fastest land animal. Yet it does not run consistently as a horse will. The cheetah runs in short bursts. This 

means it run and stops intermittently. For the untrained mind, a person of the cheetah character is easily misunderstood as one who is not consistent. However the cheetah character is among the highest performers once we put their performance in the right context.

Context of performance is dependent on three things; Character (nature), Circumstance and Capability (I christened them the 3 Cs). Character here refers to the nature of a person. Since people are at their best when they are more of what they already are, we must quickly see the important role of character in reaching one’s best. We could use a pocket knife to cut bread but like any kitchen neophyte like me knows, it is best done with a bread knife on a flat surface and never in your palm. But pocket knives are best used in certain situations and we deprive them of peak performance if we use the otherwise. It is a question of the right tool for the right job.

Being human is easy… or is it? There are some things we can all do as basic. But there are those who are the best at those things due to their very makeup. This will become clearer if I put you and Husein Bolt together in a 100m race. We are each built for something and functioning out of that role does not allow our best. But you already knew that didn’t you.

So whether in a current occupation or in your larger life (don’t forget the two must seamlessly integrate for best output) there is a context in which you can be your best. These days, businesses hire people based on their nature and not necessarily qualifications. They look for a kind of person they believe will fit the role. That should tell you a thing or two. For a person to ensure they are their best, self-awareness is of extreme importance. When we understand our own context of performance, we know how to fit into any situation and what to do even if it is not the right one for us.

Read More

Loose the pain to keep the job

Most people start a new job with great enthusiasm but change within a few months when they have settled in. They become familiar with the environment and get used to the culture. They have left the primary need zone and now they want more than being able to feed, clothe and shelter themselves. A new set of eyes open and they soon start seeing the negatives of the job and the environment. All of a sudden the attitude and management style of the boss is so bad they will take the next opportunity to leave. At this point, performance stagnates or begins to drop. You know you have been there.

Well this is not exactly surprising at all as most people choose jobs simply because they want to meet an immediate need. The need for survival means they will work in any environment and even accept a low salary ignoring all the warning signs that kept screaming; “you will be unhappy in this job”. They literally walk into “trapportunistic” jobs. This is the downside of working for money only. I am not about to reecho the ever popular “do what you love”. In fact I think it is getting boring; although it is the single most useful advice anyone can give you. Also, many people set dead-end goals. An example of which is simply to get a certain job or join a certain profession. Jobs and professions are vehicles (means) to be used to achieve something specific(end). It is this something specific that must drive the choices we make regarding occupation. This kind of motivation is of the intrinsic kind. When you are motivated from inside, the bad boss, low salary, and time spent commuting to work, your unfriendly colleagues all fade into the background and the most important thing really is what you do and how it makes you feel. In fact if you can get what you do right, it will fix all the so- called problems you have that affect your performance as you will engage wholeheartedly ignoring everything else. Nobody ever did a good job half-heartedly.

Read More

Nkrumahist know not the Philosophical Consciensism

From a performance perspective, Kwame Nkrumah represents self-belief; a key asset in any high performer's toolbox. He was a genius of a thinker and a quintessence of the application of thought (a rare thing in our part of the planet). This he appeared to have done consciously;

“Theory is empty without practice and practice is empty without theory”

“Revolutions are brought about by men, by men who think as men of action and act as men of thought”.

In a recent exercise on Facebook, I observed keenly as many of our learned Ghanaians listed their top ten books. None of them mentioned the philosophical conciensism as an important book. On occasions like today when the discussion of Nkrumahism has been the focus of the media, I have thrown questions from the book to the so-called Nkrumahist and returned zilch. It appears nobody wants to discuss the one book that captures the very crux of Nkrumah's philosophy. For the most part, the discussions revolve around the fragmented outward manifestations of his thinking.   It beats my imagination how a nation like ours expects to develop without the slightest understanding of the every thought framework that gave birth to it. This is comparable to Richard Dawkins studying God’s creation without understanding God. He will never run out of questions and he has no real idea where he is headed.

The one thing that caught my attention as my untrained mind wondered through the maze of a very complex philosophical framework was structure. It seemed Nkrumah was a fanatic of structure and this was expressed in his very methods. Once he had laid a pipe, he doesn't depart from it.

“We face neither East nor West: we face forward”.

Anyone who has spent some time on this blog already knows how I feel about structure. In a coming article I shall explore how structure was birthed at the very beginning of God’s creation. If my proposition is correct, then Nkrumah’s legacy was built on the Christ performance methodology- the very essence of which is the Structure theory.

In the meantime I shall point you to another blogger who obviously has done more detail work on the Philosophical Consciensm. 

http://consciencism.wordpress.com/consciencism/mcclendon-on-consciencism/

http://www.autodidactproject.org/other/nkurumah-wooten.html

Read More

A short tribute to time

It is a fact that we do take time for granted. That is not surprising at all; we do that with one of vital gifts life has provided for us. Everything with a beginning must have an end or must it? Time certainly has a beginning that is in fact unique to everyone. It starts form the day you were born and “sort of ends” the day you pass on depending on how you choose to see things. So that at the end of this period that you will be dwelling on planet earth, it becomes possible to determine how much time you have spent and what you did in that time. This can be measured as you probably already know; down to the nano-second. Our seconds, minutes hours and days all the way down to years provide a structure with which we can understand and measure our existence. This being the case, it cannot be hard to see that it is among the most valuable resources available to us all in equal measure. Its importance to our very existence (something we all cherish above everything else) alone tells us that an effective use of this valuable resources is the means by which we can maximize our existence.

For those who’s intention is to make a lot of money, they must begin to measure how much they are making per hour or second in order to understand how much they can make in a year. This will then make it possible to determine how much one can make in a life time.  This kind of clarity can make it easy to understand where you are in order to determine where you want to be. The goals you set therefore have a relationship with where you are now and the gap between the two, is filled by good old time.

God in his infinite wisdom has ensured that regardless of where we are on planet earth, we all have twenty four hours which breaks down into 86,400 seconds—Justice at its best. If your intention is to make money, it is not difficult to see where you are in the process when you compare yourself to the likes of Bill Gates (Sorry I didn't mean to make you sad). Yep he has twenty four like you. The difference is how you use it.

I do not know what you are involved in but one thing is for sure. It is how much of it plus the quality you produce within the seconds, minute and hours that will make sure that you maximize your days, weeks, months and years. There is also decades and centuries but since I really do not know how long you intend to live, I won’t venture into the millennia zone.

To understand this is to understand that every single second is an opportunity waiting to be maximized by you and that; what your hour will be is directly dependent on what you do with your seconds. No seconds, no hours, no years and no existence of course. It is your time and unique to you only. You determine what it can be by what you do with the seconds for within these seconds lies your opportunities for maximizing your existence. Clock is ticking. Maximize the seconds and maximize your life.

Here is another piece that supports this train of thought

Read More

Money grows on trees

So I managed to convince you (or did I) a few articles ago that; clichés-- well some of them, are not very useful for your performance as they tend to have limiting effects.  The temporary solution was to discard them or better still; avoid cliché thinking no matter how deep seated they are. But that is easier said than done and I totally agree so I have been working on a better solution based on the Uptimetrics® platform. There is always a better way of doing something; you just have to find it and find it is what we did at the CSD Africa. So here is what you do:

Turn the cliché upside down  

Extract the useful information that is hidden within

Reason the useless information into something more useful

Three easy to practice to deal with clichés.  By doing this you actually correct (repair) the program (and that is what is- a program) instead of trying to remove (uninstall)it. The advantage is comparable to demolishing a house and building another one in its place as opposed to modifying a house into what you want. So let’s see it in action:

Your parents have been telling you all your life that money doesn't grow on trees and somehow you have allowed it to sink deep into your subconscious and even all the way down to your cells. And now you are acting it out before you get the chance to think about it. Experts agree that such information gives you a limiting perspective of money and negatively affect your relationship with it. (Look up money beliefs on the net. You will be amazed at what will come up)

This Cliché which in fact becomes a program in your mind (Mindapp®) is invoked every time you have asked for money to spend on some trivia (bearing in mind that your parent’s idea of trivia has never been the same as your own and that in fact they have been wrong many of the times. Let’s face it, sometimes they abuse their privilege to use such Clichés and the result is that you develop negative emotions in relation to money.)

Turning “money doesn’t grow on trees” upside down will give us

Money does grows on trees (and this is not only true, it is a super useful too)

Now reason your way to a positive end by answering the How (This is done with a tool called PSR—Positive Speculative Reason). Well we do have such things as cocoa trees that in fact produce cocoa that is sold for money. Actually cocoa along with other plants are referred to as cash crops and those who plant it do it as means of earning money- yep they literally grow money on trees. The more cocoa trees you have, the more money you have as the value of a cocoa farm is measured in money. But here is the beauty of this idea: cocoa is not the only money making crop that grows on trees. You will find (when you start thinking this way) that there are a limitless number of trees that can produce money. By doing this you have transformed a negative and limiting Mindapp® shrouded in cliché gear into a more a productive one.  

The first thing to do is to find out what information you are running on. They range from what parents and teachers have said repeatedly (sometimes whiles you are being punished) to something you picked up from a book or from conversation with friends or even people you admire. The sources are limitless and you might not remember all of them at once but they are there. Fixing such limiting Mindapps® improves your performance significantly as you are more forward and open to more options. The more blind spots you remove by using this method, the more options you open up for yourself and the more opportunities you make available to yourself. Perhaps your blind spot with regards to how trees produce money is gone. Feel free to look at trees differently from now on- they do produce money depending on how you choose to think about them.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Mindapps® are small applications that run in your mind much like the apps on your Ipad or Iphone. Many of them like the malicious worms that crawl your computer have been installed there without your awareness yet are determining what you believe and shaping the way you behave subconsciously. If you have a belief or Mindapps® that’s you recognize as limiting, send us an email at spidup@csdafrica.com We might be able to help you.

Read More

Undo the limiting effects of goals

In a recent workshop a young lady asked me a very simple question that turned out not to be so simple to answer if I was going to make sense.

What if I don’t want to perform at my peak? All I want is a very simple life that’s all”.

Husband, house, care and some children is all she wants. She doesn’t want to change the world or go to Mars or any of those things people dream about.  Have I taken this peak performance thing a little too far? We don’t all want to change the world. On Facebook, a discussion started when a young lady posted on her wall:

“my goal in life is just to become a wife”.

She had met a young man she is so in love with; the most important thing for her now is to be his wife—that’s it. Now a comment like that is bound to attract some attention in the very Jean-Paul Sartre/ Simone de Beauvoir world we live in. And it did.  Well everyone is reading Napoleon Hill and listening to Brian Tracy these days aren’t they? So it is almost standard for us to call that kind of thinking limiting. After all we are the “the sky is your limit” generation. Ok, in case you haven’t heard, we have gone beyond that actually. Now it is more like“the sky is not your limit”.

Recently a pastor friend of mine also made a comment in a radio discussion about, not needing goals as it might be best to leave it all to God. We just have to do his will and everything should be fine- we become like Moses (a performing personality of course). Moses didn’t really start life knowing he was going to be leading some Israelites to a new land did he? After all God is our biggest fan and is probably the only one who truly has your best interest at heart so why don’t we just leave the goal thing to him.

If you have been reading my work, you probably already know that I am the guy behind the dead-end goals idea. Lately I have been exploring the question of whether goals (whether dead-end, smart or intelligent) in themselves can be limiting. The answer is a scary one indeed. In my line of work, we place a lot of importance on setting goals and rightfully so- we need the structure it brings to things. No one hits a target that doesn’t exist. BUT the plain truth is; some people have hit targets they did not really predetermine. But for those who set goals there is a question regarding whether they could have picked a better target or not. Really how are we to know? I am going to avoid discussing what the experts’ theories say about setting goals for a minute and deal with the issue on a more practical level.

How can we determine with some precision what the exact possible ability of a person is? Could Michael Jackson have given us more? How do we know that he really did reach his peak and that there wasn’t any more room for improvement? Did Bob Marley reach his peak? Could he have done more in his thirty six years he lived? The answer is YES! But that is easy to decide for someone who passed in their prime. Can we say the same for a person who passed at 80?

I have been toying with the idea that the term peak performance itself could be limiting. For example, I have no way of knowing what a client is ultimately capable of in my work as a performance coach although I might be able to understand  to some degree what is achievable as per what they have. It cannot be pre-determined. Perhaps it will be wiser not to place a ceiling on where we can reach or what we can be. Setting a life goal as most are doing these days can have this limiting effect.

This is where my pastor friend might have a point although it will need exploring further. For those for us who believe in a God who has a plan and purpose for us, our goals can be limiting but only if they are out of sync with his purpose for us. This is why having a God is useful because it gives you an all knowing personality to turn to for answers. And while you might set goals, it will be based on his will and hence you will benefit from his guidance and direction. None one creates a thing and wants it to under-perform. Having a God also brings some structure to our lives giving it a direction that we must travel in. This is extremely important because in that direction we can set goals with a high degree of certainty. And when we reach it, we can always set another one as long as it is in the same direction.

For my lady friend who just wants to be a wife, there is such a thing as a good wife and a bad wife. Both are indeed wives. When we say the goals is just to become a wife we haven’t really said much. But if it is to be the best wife there has ever been, or perhaps even the best wife in your family, then we can immediately see a threshold that makes your goal S.M.A.R.T in more than one way but yet still limiting in a sense. Wife is a position that is meaningless until we use it to accomplish something.

We might be able to find the best wife there has ever been but why would we assume that there cannot be a better wife in the future and that in fact that could not be our lady friend. We don’t stop living when we reach something and since the sky is not the limit, where does it end. A person must then keep performing till he passes on, it is then that we can look at what they did with what was available to them. We must also remember that as we grow older, capabilities may change and that will influence the context of performance.

In search of a solution however, I believe that my idea of intelligoals may be the practical way to go without necessarily stepping too far from God’s will. Well I am still performing so I am likely to bring clarity to the matter before I pass on and when that happens, you will be the first to know J. 

Read More

Confuse thou not the branding

So the branding thing has really caught on. Almost everyone is talking about branding yourself especially motivational speakers. The idea is to make yourself unique enough to be spotted from the crowd. It also helps narrow yourself down to a target group that identifies with what you represent. This then makes it easy for you to sell because you will have the right product, with the right customer- that’s a good mix.   Unfortunately like everything else the whole idea has been perverted. Whiles the branding idea is part of the marketing philosophy; it predates any subject of study but that’s another story for another day.

For the safety of the neophyte not to shoot themselves in the head before they have started out, I shall present two ways to look at the branding thing. Inside-out (positive) and outside-in (negative). As the terms implies one is when you start with the looks and attempt to work your way to the substance. It will take effort you probably cannot afford and promises nothing but a struggle to match an image you have created. This is outside-in branding. Inside out on the other hand follows a natural flow of things and requires very little effort. You paint yourself according to what you already are. You are magnifying and polish what you are so people can identify the substance by the looks.

Mention the word branding and you will hear a lot about labels and images. Well labels give you an image don’t they? So a seemingly good advice often given is to make sure you label yourself the “right” way. Present yourself the right way so you can attract the needed attention. While, this is true, you might also want to stop and ask; if you get it wrong and that happens a lot more than you might think. And it starts when you brand outside-in: i.e deciding to make yourself what people want or want to see. Saying what they want to hear and such.  This is negative branding and its results are short-lived. Ever bought a product because of the way it looks only to be disappointed with what’s inside? Don’t judge a book by its cover apparently still holds and that’s made real using the outside-in method.

A brand is something you already have whether you accept it or not. People know you for one thing or another whether good or bad is irrelevant here at this point. This is because that’s what you are. No matter how you color yourself, they will soon see through to what you really are. You are what you are and what you are then is the best place to start your branding. Your effort must go towards the best way to present what you are and not a change. If you are a terrible dresser, you will never out dress the person who is naturally a good dresser. Maybe once or twice but you will soon relapse into green shirts and red shoes. You just do not have it unless of course you hire someone to take care of your wardrobe. I am not implying that you don’t make an attempt at looking good. I am saying that it is best not to be known for your dressing as you cannot back it up all the time. It’s just not you. If fashion is your thing however, you must certainly be known for your dressing and let the no-sense-of-fashion people like myself come to you for advice.

From the bright side of things however, there is something about you that some people will find useful. Notice I said some people. It just means not everyone wants what you have. They may actually prefer the nice dressing guy and that’s fine. People must get what they want not something that looks like what they want. You want to be what they want and when you show up you must look like what they want- so yes color yourself but to match what you really are inside. Inside-out branding is then the more useful one as it’s allows what is inside to reflect outside. So that those who want you will find it easy to identify you knowing that what they see is what they will get.

Having the wrong spouse and fighting to keep them has never helped anybody. Yet very often we present ourselves in a way that others might find attractive so we can win them over. That takes a short period to accomplish and but takes a life time of struggle to maintain. This happens in all relationships either work or love. r you.

What does this have to do with performance? Everything! I suggest you also read the blurred line between walk and talk.

The following questions help you make a valuable assessment.

Is there a gap between how you present yourself and what you really are? Describe the difference.

Recall a specific situation where you have said you could do something that you knew you couldn't?

What was the motive behind your action?

Have you ever been disappointed when you came near someone you admired from far?

What was different about them compared to the image you had about them from far?

Email the answers to  spidup@csdafrica.com to join our no-obligation,  one month free performance coaching program.

Read More

Take the pain out of the job

Most people start a new job with great enthusiasm but change within a few months when they have settled in. They become familiar with the environment and get used to the culture. They have left the primary need zone and now they want more than being able to feed, clothe and shelter themselves. A new set of eyes open and they soon start seeing the negatives of the job and the environment. All of a sudden the attitude and management style of the boss is so bad they will take the next opportunity to leave. At this point, performance stagnates or begins to drop. You know you have been there.

Well this is not exactly surprising at all as most people choose jobs simply because they want to meet an immediate need. The need for survival means they will work in any environment and even accept a low salary ignoring all the warning signs that kept screaming; “you will be unhappy in this job”. They literally walk into “trapportunistic” jobs. This is the downside of working for money only. I am not about to reecho the ever popular “do what you love”. In fact I think it is getting boring; although it is the single most useful advice anyone can give you. Also, many people set dead-end goals. An example of which is simply to get a certain job or join a certain profession. Jobs and professions are vehicles (means) to be used to achieve something specific(end). It is this something specific that must drive the choices we make regarding occupation. This kind of motivation is of the intrinsic kind. When you are motivated from inside, the bad boss, low salary, and time spent commuting to work, your unfriendly colleagues all fade into the background and the most important thing really is what you do and how it makes you feel. In fact if you can get what you do right, it will fix all the so- called problems you have that affect your performance as you will engage wholeheartedly ignoring everything else. Nobody ever did a good job half-heartedly.

So what can one do when they are already in a job they hate? Reverse the do what you love idea. Well you already skipped the opportunity to do what you love. love what you do is the only way out. No; I won’t tell you to quit because that can be a problem in itself. You do that by finding all the possible good things about your job no matter how small and believe me they exist. Since you function by your lower needs, allow your mind to start seeing how this job feeds, clothes and shelters you. Balance that against how your life will be if you didn't have the job. Think about how it helps you to indulge in something you really like doing-- now that’s a healthy bridge to build. Your performance should be influenced positively.

Why this works is simple: your thoughts create feeling which triggers behavior. This exercise will help improve your feeling and that will improve your attitude towards your work.  You will soon see; that your boss may be bad but really not the worst one in the world. In fact you might learn that you two actually have something in common and that his wife probably went to the same high school as yours. Whiles this may improve your performance, it is only a temporary measure as you will never be happy and fulfilled in any job unless you are made for each other. What you need is a job that doesn’t require effort just to engage and you need to do it for a reason that is more inspiring that feeding and clothing yourself.

So now you know what to do if you are trapped in a job you chose without thinking: build a bridge between where you are and a place you want to get to. Create a transition plan. You cannot be your best when you are unhappy with what you do or people you do it with or for. You can’t change the people or the environment but you can change how you think about them. Of course there are many other factors that come to play if you want to be your best. In the meantime read “try true love” . Have a high performing day.

Answering the following questions is a great way to start.

How does your current job make you feel?

What could be different if you actually loved your job?

What needs to happen to improve your affection for your job?

What do you dislike about your job the most and why?

Is this a solvable problem and who’s responsibility is it?

Read More

A bag full of confidence

A bag-full of confidence

The lessons I have learnt from the man Usain Bolt since he got on the track is mind blowing if you consider the fact that all he has done really;  is run a race that lasted for less than a minute. This also demonstrates the quantum of meaning that can be captured from a single event. It demonstrates the infinite nature of life and learning. Nothing really has limits because within those seconds of sprinting lies a wealth of learning- I must not stray too far. This one is about confidence-- one thing Mr. Bolt has never been short of as far doing what he does best is concerned. My warning though is that this article will disappoint you if you are looking for the usual discussion on confidence.

The titans of performance theory insist that one of the key influences on performance is confidence. It is born out of the belief that one is capable and that one is doing the right thing based on the right choice. Confidence sits comfortably at the very foundation of any achievement. Now if we take away belief from most of the great achievers in the history of mankind, it is possible that the world as we know it will come crumbling down into something significantly different. Belief triggers action and confidence ensure engagement with certainty and power. So if confidence is so important why is it so lacking. Is it a deficiency from birth? In my work as a performance coach, I have had the opportunity to peek under the hood working with some individuals. Knowing that it is generated by various elements of our very being makes it almost shocking that it is in such short supply. It appears though that, we all start off with a bag-full but somewhere along the way, some loose theirs whiles others grow theirs. The factors responsible for this are both internal and external.

With confidence, you have won before you have started - Marcus Mosiah Garvey

Information is a key trigger that releases confidence. When we see somebody with extreme confidence we must begin to ask; what does this person know or perhaps a more loaded question will be; what he or she is thinking? On the part of the honorable Bolt, being raised in a country that produces more world class sprinters than most nations is a key driving factor although not the only one. He has the benefit of many forerunners. Besides that he also has feedback from his trainers, friends and family that ensures his certainty about what he is involved in.

In a documentary I saw recently, Bolt made a profound statement about how having a capability like his can help him play his role in society. The depth of his awareness was interesting given he was only twenty three years old when he made the statement. Most importantly it seems he understood the idea of “Autonomy within integration”. Does this build confidence? The untrained mind could easily be fooled into saying no. But the kind of power such an almost esoteric idea holds is incredible if you understand it correctly. I shall address the matter in a later writing but here is what it means to have confidence based on your integration with a larger whole.

To get the most out of ourselves, we must first understand that:
We all have roles to play and we do need to identify this role in order to fulfill the grand mission that though we are a part of, is beyond us (please do not say this is confusing). We need to acknowledge the unity of all things and how the whole is greater than ourselves- an idea which was captured beautifully by Ken Wilber’s and his Holons idea. This demands that we have a good understanding of ourselves as units of a larger whole with a purpose we must serve in order for the whole to work. This makes us important instantly. Any level of distortion in this area will lead to ambiguity and confusion; and confusion saps confidence and negatively affects performance. We need clarity of purpose, and an awareness that transcends everything else in order to formulate the basis of our very existence. Knowing what power we posses and how to use it; builds confidence, self appreciation and the self esteem we need to engage with power. Confidence rest within the bigger picture of thought in which there is such a thing as internal dialogue. So that what we tell ourselves plays a role but its true source of power is knowledge of ourselves and the larger system we are a part of as well as the certainty of our roles in the larger scheme of things. This is what I have broken down in my writing as occupational and life performance.

If we truly understand the nature of our being as spirits in material bodies, we will know what we are capable of. This is an experience like no other. If we lack confidence therefore, we need to know that it is an absence of self knowledge, and that we are capable of correcting this by changing the images we have of ourselves.

We also need awareness of the much talked about incredible power that lies within and what it is capable of and how to activate it. We need to know the mechanism we posses that can enable the expression this power. We need to know that the use of this power is not just about us; but feeds into a larger picture. And that we are interconnected with everything else as we are made of the one substance. And that our reward depends on the extent to which we have served our purpose in the grand scheme of things as it comes from the larger entity (please do not say this is confusing either).

We need to know; that our very existence depends on the existence of others and as such, there is no need for losers. That we are not here to serve the same purposes, our unique combination will depict a unique mission very different from the next person and therefore we cannot be in competition with each other. Instead, serving each other is where our survival truly lies. Goals must not in any way go against the progress of humanity as a whole as it will mean defect and the effect cannot be a good one. In order to reach high performance therefore, we must live a mission that serves the larger purpose. Living a mission in my experience makes life painless and almost effortless, for every single step you take feels good because it is purposeful. The mission must excite you enough to wake you up in the morning on the right side of your bed almost every day. Your attitude towards this mission must be outrageous in a good way and your high level of discipline must be almost by default.

People around you must be amazed because they cannot understand why you can be so into something they might consider worthless. They don’t understand why walking in the forest all day can be a sensible thing to do. They don’t understand why a certain river is of such concern to you. They don’t understand why a grown man can spend so much time with children. They don’t understand why that building fascinates you so much. Of course they don’t.  They can’t. Yet your confidence that the one thing you must do is spend all your time studying one building must remain intact courtesy internal dialogue. Nothing can shake it. No one can see what you can see. It is a lonely yet exhilarating journey full of certainty.

It is then and only then that the building will begin to reveal its secrets to you. It is then that any occupation will start rewarding you with its treasures. The more you get out of the building or the occupation, the more your confidence will grow. Many only saw the Bolt when he ran in the Beijing Olympic. He has been running much longer than that. He has faced many challenges including loosing races he was expected to win. Some people lose their confidence at that point.

If you have trouble believing how delicate this confidence issue can be, scan through the list of world class athletes, politicians, and others you think of as great people. Find out how many challenges they have had and how their confidence has failed them in the most crucial moments. And how they have had to be rescued by those who understand what is happening to them. Anthony Robbins is in possession of such a list. There is a reason why you are weird and you understanding of it will give you the confidence you need.

Read More

The Cain and Abel of the Expectation bloodline

Expectation has two offspring; disappointment and confidence. As with any family there is always a favorite which ironically happen to be disappointment in our scenario. Strange you might think—well it is in fact the case that we spend more time on our disappointment than its older brother.  Confidence is the first of the two and disappoint is the last; you know what they say about last babies. Disappointment gets the most attention for most people and there is a reason why. People tend to remember the bad things more than the good ones. Like most last babies, too much attention breeds some sort of a negative behavior. 

If you have ever been disappointed you know it is because of your expectation. You also know that your expectation has given you confidence either to do or not to do something in other situations. Disappointment themselves are not always a bad thing so you may want to consider not throwing out the proverbial baby with the bath water. Very often, we find later that the disappointment we cried about was in fact, a blessing in disguise.  Go through your list of major disappointments and you will find a few that will make you feel foolish for crying. It is not everything we think we need that is the best for us. And it is not true when we decide to think we cannot live without someone or something. Spousal disappointments are probably the most devastating and I have had a few of my own.  There are many stories about people who have ended up in mental hospitals because of non-conforming spouses. The depression list is much longer. Of the many women I know who have suffered this; most have later decided that they didn’t really need him anyway. They are in fact better off without the man they wanted to die for. They soon learn that there is a better man and a world of new possibilities awaiting them.

In the final analysis, it is expectation that is the root of the problem. Even when the signs are as clear as day light, we choose to hope for the best. That’s the other one— HOPE is an accomplice in this matter. Well the signs are always a warning of what is coming but we choose to ignore them; not necessarily because we want to give the benefit of the doubt—that will be more purposeful. But more because we are comfortable leaving the work to others and we do not really want to shift from expectation’s comfort zone.

Humans love predictability. If we didn’t, prophets won’t have a job and they do get a lot of clients I can tell you that. People go to very serious lengths to be able to know and control the future. They want to shape it to meet their expectations.  We are more comfortable and confident when we think we can predict what will happen next. So we expect a spouse to do this and that. We expect staff to do this and that- after all what are you paying them for? We expect a friend to do this and that— yeah what are friends for? We expect good customer service— doesn’t the book say we are entitled to it. We expect everything and when they fail, the emotional price is quite high if we do not know what to do. Disappointment is on the loose and he is no easy child to control. His cuts are deep and almost impossible to forget. Since our lives are full of expectations (and we need them), it doesn’t appear to be something we can get away from. This means that we are going to experience a lot of disappointments and you probably have a few stories of your own. The emotional price can take a very heavy toll on your performance in your occupation and larger life. Don’t forget to run the race, you must shed the weight. Emotional baggages are among the worst kind and they without a shadow of doubt force low performance.

Think of a team member who is depressed all the time because his wife is cheating. Or maybe his children won’t do what he wants.   This person might not give their work all the attention it needs forcing team members to do more to fill the gap. Some people even have the wonderful talent of turning their problems into other people’s problems forcing the whole team to slow down. They infect others with their emotional viruses. One depressed person can depress a whole team with their negative thoughts and its attendant negative attitude and before you can say Nkrumah, one kiss refused at home has evolved into a corporate disaster.

So how do we maintain performance in the face of the endless network of emotions that surround any environment with human beings in it?  The solution starts with being aware of emotions themselves; how they are generated and how they affect performance. This helps to develop a management system. There are only two kinds of emotions and they are both generated from the two kinds of thoughts—negative and positive. Like generates like. Knowing what to think to generate the right emotions that will result in the right action is emotional intelligence (EI). The creator of EI (Daniel Goelman) asserts that success becomes more certain for people with high emotional intelligence. The person who is high on the EI scale also exhibits very good social intelligence and hence is socio-emotionally competent. He knows how to navigate around people to ensure they don’t become obstacles and ensures that an emotion doesn’t slow his performance. This also means he knows how to manage others well enough to ensure their emotional baggage are not transferred over. Since people are the key actors in the performance of organisations, we must see how this issue is important for organizational output. Machines are only as good as the people who man. This makes it prudent to invest more in people than in machines to ensure high performance.

To finish off, here is a promise I can make you with my head on the line: You will experience countless disappointment in all aspects of your life. Even in your bedroom. In fact you have already experienced so many already, it is shocking you are not used to it. The solution is to develop a way of managing expectations and its trouble child while maintaining your confidence. Emotions are the results of thoughts and they express themselves in our actions. No bearer of negative thoughts is able to give their best.  EI therefore is a major influence on both occupational and life performance. By all means, have expectation; in fact engage her to Hope. Because without them, you might be discouraged from taking action and we don’t want that.  No one does something for nothing and that includes you. To improve your performance however, you must learn to manage disappointment with big brother confidence. It is how you will be able to identify the famous hidden opportunities that hide behind the notorious disappointment. Like any spoilt child, he is not all bad- listen carefully to what he has to say and choose wisely or he will take you off your performance track.  It is no coincidence that the two are from the same source and you must understand the source very well. Emotional intelligence makes you more powerful and makes your success in your occupation and larger life more certain. The uptimetrics® training program includes Socio-emotional competence testing and development as part of the information management module. Join us in our next training program for more.

Answering the following questions is a great way to start.

Email the answers to  info@csdafrica.com to join our no-obligation,  one month free performance coaching program.

Recall a major disappointment in your life?
What was the feeling that came with it?
How did it affect friends and family?
How did it affect your performance at work?
How would you handle things differently if the situation repeats itself?

Read More