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“Do not let yourself be a slave to chance, but let your dauntless mind shape the triumphant future you choose.”

~ Chandell Labbozzetta (paraphrase of William Shakespeare)

You: A Walled Fortress

In one of her essays, Simone Weil, Jewish-French philosopher and holocaust survivor reflects on the role of walls in our lives. When I read her thought-provoking reflection, I was reminded of many clients I’ve worked with over the years. Some used walls as an excuse to hide, others used them to communicate, still others smashed the walls wide open.

This is a paraphrase of Weil’s thoughts applied to people I know and clients I’ve worked with – including the ones who choose NOT to CHANGE.

When you are shut up in a row of cells, there is a wall that separates you from the prisoner in the next cell. Sometimes prisoners develop codes for communicating with other prisoners, creating a sense of community in their suffering, Sometimes ,prisoners are able to tunnel under the walls and communicate secretly, but more extensively. Sometimes, a miracle happens, the walls disintegrate, sunlight enters, and the prisoner is freed.

When that happens, the question is: how will the prisoner respond to freedom?

My goal (and the purpose for which I built LifePuzzle) isn’t to ‘influence’ people.

It’s to create change!

I’ve seen too many people who had all the resources, gifts, talents, and time they needed, choose to stay inside the walls of their self-confessed prison to think that ‘influence’ will be enough.

The Cost of Security and Self-Protection

For a prisoner, a wall can be frustrating as it stops them from building relationships and achieving their dreams.

So… Maybe you have built walls around you like a fortress, for protection from your fears. Unfortunately, the walls that shut others out, also shut you inside and stop you from achieving your dreams – or even setting your feet on the path toward them.

I’m not suggesting that you ignore precautions and recklessly go out in search of danger. Fear is an appropriate response to danger. The challenge lies in learning to trust yourself enough to distinguish between the fear that tells you to run from danger, and that which you need to over face and conquer.

The Call of Freedom

The history-makers of this world – those dauntless men and women who refused to be tamed by fear, bullied into silence or suppression of their gifts are the ones who are free. Free to serve others, free to share with others, and free to change and grow.

There is a price to be paid for that tantalising prospect of freedom. That price is CHANGE.

Do YOU want to be free?

Like anything else that is worthwhile, the price is high.

I train people to speak in public as well as providing sales training. In the context of developing both of those skills, I frequently share the statistic that over 70% of the population fear public speaking more than they fear death.

It’s an interesting contrast… because both of those dreaded outcomes involved a willingness to change, to grow, and to face the unknown. Neither of them ignore the reality of fear, but they both involve applying dauntless courage to that fear and moving forward in the face of it.

That is the cost of freedom.

Dauntless: Overcoming Fear

What is stopping you, from being, doing, and having everything you want?

It’s usually fear. That might be fear of:

  • failure,
  • others’ mockery or criticism,
  • yourself,
  • hunger, misery, poverty…

BUT… Imagine what YOU could accomplish if you were dauntless – experiencing fear, but not letting it tame you.

  1. What goals would you set?
  2. What risks would you take?
  3. What tasks would you accomplish?
  4. What would change?

And finally…

What is stopping you from being that person and doing those things?

All it takes is a willingness to step out and be yourself with dauntless determination.

“Momentum is what makes an avalanche so dangerous, a galloping horse so unstoppable, and social movements so powerful.”

~ Chandell Labbozzetta

Your Three Minds… the Key to Your Success and Achievement

In Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) we illustrate the concept of your three minds with three intersecting circles shown below:

The3minds 768x744

The 3 Minds

As shown these three minds are the critical faculty, the conscious mind, and the unconscious mind and at the intersection of these is our true self which grows and develops in accordance with our decisions to trust and honour ourselves (which leads to growth) or to distrust ourselves (which leads to diminishment).

Any time you successfully harness the power of all three minds in your efforts, you create a degree of momentum that virtually ensures successful completion. So, the question becomes…

How does each of these three minds contribute to my success, and what steps do I need to take to shift from striving to achieving?

Your Conscious Mind: Goals, Plans and Actions

Setting goals has to do with vision and it’s helpful if your goals have a sense of inevitability. An avalanche heads downhill, following the line of least resistance until its momentum is exhausted. A galloping horse runs for the horizon until it can run no further. A social movement grows in noise and power until it achieves its object. In the same way, your goals, plans, and actions provide you with a destination and a path to follow.

The biggest reason why people don’t make progress toward their goals is that they lack a clear picture of their destination and path.

This leaves their conscious mind without direction and makes them easy to distract.

Your Unconscious Mind: Motivation and Emotional Connection

Have you noticed how much harder you are to distract when you are intent on getting an answer or achieving something you really care about?

One of my colleagues is always jumping around and never seems to get anything done when you ask her to submit reports and complete administrative tasks. However, put her in front of a room of c-suite executives to sell her ideas, or ask her to prepare a sales presentation and she is focused, insightful, and 100% engaged.

What’s the difference?

The difference is the emotional connection between her actions, goals, and effort. When she is preparing a presentation or delivering a sales pitch she is totally invested in engaging the audience and delivering a result. Admin is just a chore.

With her permission, we decided to run a test and create an emotional motivational connection between submitting those reports (which are tied to her presentations and sales results). The difference was phenomenal!

Your Critical Faculty: Formed and Filtered by You!

Psychologists tell us that until the age of seven our minds uncritically accept whatever ideas they are fed. After that we develop the ability to filter ideas and decide what to accept and what to reject. However, we are still dependent on the outside world to present ideas to us.

You’ve probably heard people talk about the echo-chamber effect – which can be exacerbated by AI on the internet. Facebook uses this extensively and it is the reason why you see more of certain people and related ideas and less of others. Every time you respond to a post, you increase the probability that you will see more posts and products along those lines. The problem with living in an echo-chamber is that your critical faculty is being conditioned to only accept certain lines of thinking.

This also presents an exciting opportunity for you to determine where your thinking will take you. The more you present yourself with material that affirms your goals, supports your belief that they are both possible and desirable, and directs your course of action towards them, the more probable (even inevitable) it is that you will achieve them easily and effortlessly.

Your True Self: Integration of Desire and Reality

Fantasies are fun to indulge… But Fairy Tales are even better because they could actually come true.

When you harness the power of your three minds, deliberately set out to design your success and create a path that leads to that success, you are creating your own fairy tale and making yourself deliberately lucky.

You have more control over your future… and even your present… circumstances than you imagine.

What will you make of them?

“It’s easier to turn a moving ship, but if you’re heading for an iceberg that may be the wrong response.”

~ Chandell Labbozzetta

Don’t ‘Just Do It’!

Speculation about the sinking of the Titanic in 1912 is unending. One recent documentary hypothesized that if the helmsman had not turned the ship, but had hit the iceberg head on the ship would not have sunk.

I don’t claim to be an expert on that particular strategy, but I do have personal experience coaching people who have taken a firm stand on Nike’s ‘Just do it!’ slogan and then sought my help to get them out of the personal or business mess they’ve ended up in.

My advice to you is: Think and plan before you take any action!

Here’s why…

Before You  Deepen the Rut Any Further...

Habitual actions are like well worn pathways for the brain. It’s usually easier to walk along a pathway than over untracked wastelands where you can trip and fall so before you start a new course it’s important to ask some questions like:

  • Will this take me where I want to go?
  • What are the unintended consequences of this course of action?
  • Is there a better way?

This is not the same as analysis paralysis, it’s simply setting aside some time to examine your strategy and roadmap before you set out on a course you may regret.

You probably know someone who habitually reaches for M&Ms or other sugary treats to beat the 3pm energy slump and stay productive… And maybe that person has a weight problem as result of that habit. Many smokers gain weight because they swapped the habit of smoking for the habit of snacking or nicotine for drugs – partly because they didn’t think far enough down the track.

Even if you are starting a positive habit or stopping a negative one, it’s worth asking yourself the questions above so that you can strategically develop your plan for substitution.

An equally important question is:

  • What is stopping me (or has previously stopped me) from doing this?

If you’ve ever tried or watched sports like acrobatic snowboarding or BMX, you’ll know that heading for an obstacle can be dangerous – the faster you are going and the more momentum there is driving you, the greater the risk of a nasty accident.

This is just as true with personal and business growth as it is in sports.

That’s why it’s important to…

Review the Past

Look back at your previous attempts to change or grow in this area and see what you encountered.

In my business and sales coaching, I’ve noticed that people who don’t take a look at their results and outcomes over the past quarter and year before they plan the next one, frequently keep making the same mistakes.

The same is true when it comes to reaching personal goals like exercise, flexibility, weight, career development, skills improvement and so on… When you look back and determine what derailed your efforts in the past, you can often find different strategies or ways to remove the barriers, so you don’t hit them at speed next time.

Every quarter, Alison set herself a sales goal and every quarter she failed to meet that goal. As a result, she was disappointed in her performance and embarrassed when she had to say to her manager, “My goal was $x and I only managed to close $y.” As a result, she was constantly beating herself up mentally and emotionally. When Alison and I sat down to talk about what was going on, it was immediately clear that she never asked herself the critical questions about why this kept happening, she just kept right on following the ‘Just do it!’ method.

We were able to identify the barriers that had derailed her performance and discover ways to remove or work around them, but that wouldn’t have happened without our review.

Review the Past

Look back at your previous attempts to change or grow in this area and see what you encountered.

In my business and sales coaching, I’ve noticed that people who don’t take a look at their results and outcomes over the past quarter and year before they plan the next one, frequently keep making the same mistakes.

The same is true when it comes to reaching personal goals like exercise, flexibility, weight, career development, skills improvement and so on… When you look back and determine what derailed your efforts in the past, you can often find different strategies or ways to remove the barriers, so you don’t hit them at speed next time.

Every quarter, Alison set herself a sales goal and every quarter she failed to meet that goal. As a result, she was disappointed in her performance and embarrassed when she had to say to her manager, “My goal was $x and I only managed to close $y.” As a result, she was constantly beating herself up mentally and emotionally. When Alison and I sat down to talk about what was going on, it was immediately clear that she never asked herself the critical questions about why this kept happening, she just kept right on following the ‘Just do it!’ method.

We were able to identify the barriers that had derailed her performance and discover ways to remove or work around them, but that wouldn’t have happened without our review.

Reset and Remove

Every time you do something you create pathways in your brain and muscles that make it easier to follow the same path again. This means that if you want to change your habitual patterns of thought or action it gets harder the longer you’ve been following your current path.

Your mind is like a piece of paper that has been written on and erased so many times that there are little pathways going in every direction. That’s why a reset is so important: it’s like taking a fresh sheet of paper and starting again.

After you’ve done your review and identified what barriers might be in your way I use a variety of NLP, Time Line Therapy®, and other techniques to release emotional, mental, and physical hindrances and barriers so that you can set out on a fresh journey that is less likely to be derailed by your past actions and experiences. I help my clients do this as well and it’s often the difference that makes the difference.

Without this reset and removal process it can be hard to envision a different outcome, let alone plan and sustain your journey to the goal.

Quest for Your Best

Every day I work with people just like you who are sick of mediocrity and are on a quest for their best. I don’t believe that January 1st is a magical date, but I do believe that having time-based intervals for achievement is a proven and powerful tool.

Actually, I break my year up into intervals and I schedule time each day and week for mini-review and reset breaks because that enables me to catch myself up quickly and stay on track. I also include bigger reviews and planning sessions on a quarterly and annual basis to set the direction against which I can measure my progress and make sure that my sights are set on the appropriate target – sometimes targets change based on life-circumstances and opportunities that arise.

If you’d like to experience my Quest for Your Best process in person you can join me for a 4-hour journey in which we…

  • Reflect on where we have come from and what needs to be learned, strengthened, or changed;
  • Revisit our personal wins and integrate them into who we are and who we are becoming;
  • Regroup and Reset by releasing our past failures, disappointments, and disasters and giving ourselves a fresh start;
  • Refocus on our goals and ensure that they are still sufficient for where we are today;
  • Refresh our plan and design the actions and habits that will unerringly take us toward our goal.

I will lead you through my own proven process and share the tools I use including the activities and exercises I use to eliminate friction and give me a fresh canvas that keeps momentum and enthusiasm high.

If that sounds interesting… Go to https://lifepuzzle.com.au/business-development/quest-4-your-best/ 
for more information and to reserve your spot or take advantage of our special Christmas offer.

“If your habits don’t line up with your dream, then you need to either change your habits or change your dream.”

~ John Maxwell

Too Big, Too Small, or Just Right - Why Size Matters.

Recently, I was reflecting on a comment that Brittany Smith, a cognitive scientist with ADHD, made about habits that reinforced something I had already realised.

If your ‘habit chunks’ are too small, you don’t see any change and give up.

If your ‘habit chunks’ are too big, you get overwhelmed and discouraged.

BUT…

If your ‘habit chunks’ are just right… you get results that keep your motivation high and find yourself kicking goals week after week!

I see this frequently with my coaching and training clients:

Right habit chunk size = SUCCESS

Wrong habit chunk size = FAILURE

So, how can you know if you’ve picked the appropriate chunk size for each of your habits?

Signs that Your Habits Chunks are Too Small:

Habit chunks that are too small are usually related to pre-existing habits in any area of our life. We all have habits that drive how we act and react in every area of life and these are so much a part of us that we are hardly even aware of their existence.

The beauty of these tiny habit chunks is that when we decide we want to change something we can simply expand the habit we already have in place no matter what it is.

***

Sandra was extremely frustrated because she was trying to grow her referral program and couldn’t get the traction, she wanted so she started looking around for yet another tool or strategy to help her.

When we looked closely at what she was doing to generate referrals it was clear that she didn’t need to start over, she simply needed to amplify her existing referral strategy with one additional step. Once that was in place, the referrals started to flow.

***

It happens in every area of life:

  • Exercise programs;
  • Diet & nutrition;
  • Learning and retention;
  • Budgeting and saving;
  • Productivity…

If you feel frustrated with the results you are seeing and know that your strategy has worked for other people, then you can often see the transformation you want simply by amplifying the habits surrounding it.

If Your Habits Chunks are Too Big, Then...

…You’ll probably quit before you see results!

Oversized habit chunks are usually part of a new habit that you’re trying to establish to reach an important goal. Many habit-tracking apps will alert you if you consistently miss your goals and suggest that you edit the habit in order to succeed and you should pay attention to these alerts.

***

Al read the book Shorter and decided that he wanted to restructure his workday and test the hypothesis because the idea of accomplishing more important work in 30 hours than he was currently doing in 60 hours appealed to him.

He plugged the habits he wanted to establish in order to accomplish this into his habit tracker and got down to business… only to discover that day after day he was failing to check off half of the components he’d identified.

When we pruned those habits back to a smaller milestone goal and he was accomplishing them all, Al’s sense of accomplishment and confidence grew and he was soon ready to add another chunk to his habit, and then another.

The habit of success motivated him far more than his failures had and now he does have all the components of that original habit chunk in place.

***

When Your Habits Chunks are Just Right, Then…

Like Sandra and Al, you experience success – not just in achieving the outcome, but in the personal satisfaction of accomplishing a goal. This gives you the same kind of dopamine hit that some people get from checking Facebook, the news, or drugs.

Skipping your habit one day isn’t a disaster, but looking at your week and realizing that you’ve skipped more days than you’ve executed creates a negative neuro-feedback loop that actually saps your motivation to stick to your habit. That’s why you want a habit tracking mechanism that allows you skip days that you choose to without giving you a sense of guilt.

Contrary to popular practice, guilt is a terrible motivator. It’s when you feel good about your accomplishments that confidence grows – and with that confidence the ability to achieve even more.

Habit Transformation Challenge

Habits are such an important aspect of building lives and businesses that serve our goals. Habit-creation tools are one of the most powerful aspects of NLP because once established, habits run on auto-pilot and enable us to progress towards our goals faster and with less friction.

At LifePuzzle, we consider habit transformation so important that it is a part of many of our courses and trainings (both paid and free) including:

  • Periodic 5-Day Habit Transformation Challenges
  • NLP Mastery Academy Group program
  • NLP Certification courses
  • Confident Conversion Sales Academy
  • Outsourced Sales Manager and In-House Sales Trainings

If you are interested in our habit transformation resources, fill in the form below and we’ll let you know when we are running our next course.

I’m Interested in Habit Transformation

“When we are no longer able to change a situation – we are challenged to change ourselves.”

~ Viktor E. Frankl

3 Keys to Commanding Your Success

I’ve been thinking a lot about success and ways to control it recently.

The events of the past six months, have shaken many people to the depths of their being and caused them to re-examine their values, dreams, goals, health and relationships – every aspect of their lives, really. Forces outside our control including the actions of governments tempt us to cede even more of our autonomy than is technically demanded which is where I turned to Viktor Frankl. As you may know, Frankl was a Jewish psychotherapist who was sent to a Nazi concentration camp – and, if you remember much from history, you’ll know that there wasn’t much left that you could control under those circumstances! I’m not comparing our situation to his, but it made me ask the question:

What if we accept the challenge to change ourselves before we are unable to change our situation?

As I’ve reflected on this and coached people through the past few months, I’ve seen very clearly that although success is not a one-dimensional affair – as people whose career or travel or relationship plans were disrupted realised – and although everyone has different definitions of success, there are KEYS to SUCCESS that every person can control.

#1 Building Helpful Habits

Did you know that there are scientific studies about the affect of habits on your outcomes in every area of life – including your health, fitness, grades, relationships, career and income prospects?

Some of their findings when it comes to bad habits are pretty scary, too!

I was reading one study that talked about a common habit that most people aren’t even aware they have, that causes their brain function to fluctuate by up to 40% over the course of an average work day and that is often linked to insomnia and other sleep issues. What this means, is that your unconscious habits are controlling and may be silently undermining your goals. If you don’t pay attention, by time you realise what is happening it may be too late.

You see, a few weeks ago, I was talking to one of my favourite clients on Zoom, and Martin told me about a focus habit that he had developed unconsciously that almost landed him on daily insulin injections. He was struggling to follow his doctor’s orders to avoid that terrible fate so we identified the habit that was tripping him up and set up an alternative pathway. The other day I talked to him again and his doctor was SHOCKED!!! to see his numbers in such good shape. Insulin is no longer in his immediate future, but he’s sticking to the new habit chain that got him off the hook.

The thing I love about focusing on habits is that once you get them set up they’ll carry you in the direction you want to go easily and effortlessly until you decide differently. Watching people implement my NLP-powered habit formation technique and seeing the changes they experience is always extremely exciting.

#2 Cementing a Positive Mindset

A person who truly understands the principle that “Energy flows where attention goes;” will focus on positive goals and outcomes and consider the tasks and milestones that will get them to their destination. That person won’t ignore the obstacles standing in their way, but will recognise their ability to figure out a path and surmount them.

You cannot ‘affirm your way to success’, you need to work your way there. If you focus on all the problems and things that might go wrong and might derail your progress, then the work you need to do becomes crushing. There is research on olympic athletes that documents their path from mere excellence to gold medal status based more on their attitude transformation than from any new training regimen.

Cultivating a positive, optimistic, outlook doesn’t remove problems from your path, but it means that you are hyper-focused on solving those problems and reaching your goals. Honestly, I’ve never heard of a pessimist who was also a success because ultimately pessimism saps your will to persevere and diverts your focus away from your goal.

#3 Deciding to Take Control

Ultimately, the choice is yours: You can either let other people control your life, attitude, and outcomes, or you can take control yourself.

Granted, there are things you can’t control, but the things that you can control are the gamechangers.

Here are 3 questions to help you make that decision, and take action to solidify your results:

What does success look like?
What do I need to do to create that success?
What obstacles are standing in my way?

If you feel like you’ve already ‘made it’, here’s a quick tip: studies suggest that people feel happier and more successful when they have a challenge to surmount, so set your sight higher and focus on the positive actions you will take to reach your new goal.

If all you can see is road blocks and obstacles, then it’s time for a positivity check: What is one positive thing you can focus on and one positive action you can take that will move you closer to your goal.

If you do this, I promise that you will feel more refreshed, motivated, and energised and ready to keep pursuing your goals.

NLP Mastery Academy

NLP Mastery Academy meets fortnightly (with a few exceptions over the holidays) to learn, review, and apply NLP techniques in your life. The personal interaction is a fantastic opportunity to explore how these techniques can be used in relationships, personal growth, career and work settings, parenting, and much, much more. If your interest in NLP is more focused on its power to create lasting change than on certification, then this may be the program for you. 

Click HERE to start your application process today!  

N.B. Because of the nature of this program, we have a rigorous screening process.

“Whenever the goal is to improve the quality of life, the flow theory can point the way… By stretching skills, by reaching toward higher challenges, such a person becomes an increasingly extraordinary individual.”

~ Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

Coping with Uninvited Change

When Anna’s boss told her that she wouldn’t be getting JobKeeper because in the face of circumstances he was closing the business she was devastated. How would she support herself now?

Like many business owners, Mark had done the math and decided that it simply wasn’t worth the risk of relying on government to sustain the business. He gave her some sound advice along with the bad news:

“Anna, you’re a fantastic worker and you have more potential than you’ve ever let yourself realise. I’m stepping back to re-evaluate my life and work and determine what I could learn to make my next venture shock proof. I think you should do the same. Take the time that your redundancy pay gives you to think and study before you search for the next opportunity.”

Anna listened.

She carefully calculated what she needed to live on, cut back some expenses to stretch out her window, and invested her time in her own learning. We did one session together to explore her talents, interests, and potential and then she immersed herself in learning and developing the skills we had identified.

Each week she set aside some money to invest in her development and certification, but she waited to spend it until she had clear direction based on her research.

Within six weeks she landed a role that is providing her with experience in her chosen field as well as growth opportunities. Her new employer said that he selected her because she had demonstrated her willingness to invest her own resources in developing in that area and that success leaves clues… In her case a willingness to challenge herself rather than wait for opportunity to arrive on a platter.

#1 The Habit of Investing in Yourself

“Success leaves clues.”

One of those clues is your personal investment in your own professional or skill development. It doesn’t matter how long you’ve been in an industry, or whether you are a business owner or an employee, it’s easy to get absorbed in your daily work and forget to look outside your own business, industry, and current competency.

Developing the habit of setting aside time and money to invest in enhancing existing skills or developing new ones will ensure that you never become the ‘dinosaur in the office’ – the person who isn’t even aware of new trends, possibilities or technologies. You may not adopt them all, but you will have good reasons for your decisions and be able to explain the benefits of your choice.

When you have the mindset of growth and development, you will be prepared to meet new challenges and find new ways to add value.

#2 The Habit of Stretching Higher

Ordinary people coast along and rely on past achievements.

Extraordinary people reach for the stars.

Not only does an unending openness to ‘the next thing’ serve you well by keeping your idea bank fresh and full during stable times, it also prepares you to meet change and to act constructively in the face of challenge.

There are always more things to learn and do, new ways of meeting old challenges, and different avenues to explore. Developing the habit of growth will deliver you from mental and emotional boredom and sclerosis and help you maintain a youthful energy and enthusiasm.

#2 The Habit of Stretching Higher

In his famous book on Flow, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi talks about increasing the value of the time you invest in learning or acting by removing distractions and other sources of friction. He also reminds us that flow is a habit that we need to cultivate, one that improves with training.

Here are four essential disciplines that will enable you to define and develop new habits and make them last – even when your world is falling apart:

  1. Definition: you know what it’s like to start a new habit – you set out bubbling with enthusiasm and certain that this is going to transform your life then reality sets in and you wonder if it will make a difference after all. If you define the habit and your expected outcome in advance, and refer to this definition regularly it will bolster your motivation and action.
  2. Commitment: set yourself a minimum timeframe to practice the new habit (66 days is apparently ideal) and don’t let anything come between you and your habit during that time. At the end of the 66 days you may want to re-evaluate the benefits and measure your results against your definition.
  3. Chaining: In the book Atomic Habits, James Clear talks about the power of linking a new habit to an existing engrained one eg. Get out of bed -> go for a run; stand up -> drink water -> deep breathing. This sets you up for success because you are already doing step one, and step two will quickly become a logical successor.
  4. Linguistics: The language you use to describe your habits and your relationship with them matters a great deal. When you are constantly using words that reflect compulsion or necessity (should, must, have to, ought to), you are programming your unconscious mind to find these things distasteful and difficult.
    That’s why 1. Definition is such an important part of creating and maintaining productive habits. Your definition will help you focus on why you are implementing this habit, and the outcome you expect and create a positive attitude towards your new habit.

Transforming Your Habits, Transform Your Life!

That’s not actually an overstatement.

Making and executing decisions takes an enormous amount of energy, will power, and brain power so it makes sense to conserve that power for key decisions and not fritter it away on everyday matters. Your habits become the path of least resistance and take over when you are busy, tired, or stressed… Why not create habits that support your life goals, rather than ones that undermine them?

Habit development is such an important topic that it figures in many of my business development and sales programs as well as my coaching and NLP training. I also run habit transformation programs a couple of times each year.

If you’re interested in how to build constructive habits and eliminate ones that no longer serve you, use the link below to join my email list and you’ll be notified when my next Habit Transformation challenge is scheduled.

Join My Email List

“Each problem that I solved became a rule, which served afterwards to solve other problems.”

~ Rene Descartes

Critical Thinking and the Statement of Your Problem

Sally had just received a warning that for the third week in a row she had missed her sales targets and was required to attend a coaching session. Her boss had hired me as the outsourced sales manager because as she put it, “I can monitor sales results, but I don’t seem to be able to change them. I need someone to train and manage my team for me, without having a full time employee.”

Sally was feeling defensive when we started our session. She had a list of reasons why she hadn’t achieved her targets:

  • Offices were closed and people working from home;
  • Economy was tight and uncertain;
  • Everyone else’s sales were also lower;
  • Struggles of working from home;
  • Personal issues…

It all added up to: “None of this is my fault.”

I could see her point. Actually, that was a large part of the problem. She was bringing her emotional perspective into the problem rather than thinking critically about what her real problem was, and how to solve it.

Andrew had a similar problem except, in his case as the business owner, it wasn’t a question of an external reprimand that kept the problem top-of-mind. The problem was reflected in his bank balance and cash flow issues. He came to me and said, “The clients I get argue over every item on the bill and there just aren’t enough of them to cover my costs and make this worthwhile! What am I going to do?”

Notice that Andrew, as a business owner, was looking for a solution, where Sally (the employee) was mostly complaining about how unfair it was to be held to account for her performance in tough times.

BUT… They were both looking in the wrong place for the solution.

Exploring Solutions Means Analysing the Problem

In another blog IF You Can’t Solve a Problem with the Same Thinking that Created It, THEN… I talked about the reality that you cannot solve a problem with the same level of thinking that created it. In this one, we’ll dive down into specifics.

When I asked Sally some questions about her situation and her sales results I discovered some interesting information.

  • She only knew about her sales rates when she received the weekly sales statistics;
  • She was feeling somewhat isolated and abandoned working from home and missed the face-to-face interaction and daily encounters of office life;
  • She had no clue how any of her colleagues were doing;
  • She had a lot of things going on in her life at home;

However, the key to her problem wasn’t any of those things…

The real issue lay with the actions she was taking (or not taking) on a daily basis which were reflected in her sales results. That gave us a clear plan of action… IF she wanted to change because the problems we needed to address were UPSTREAM from the presenting problem of too few closed sales.

Andrew’s problem was very similar, he started out looking for ways to remove clients’ resistance to paying appropriate prices for his services and realised that the problem lay in his process for attracting clients.

Openness to Change

You’ve probably already identified the real challenge that comes when you correctly identify the problem and track it to its source: Resistance to change!

When I talked to Sally and her boss (and the other team members) about ways of highlighting both activity and outcomes so they had ongoing feedback, they weren’t sure about that kind of change.

We plotted the sales process and highlighted the activities that preceded the sale – looking at percentages and numbers: the change felt uncomfortable.

We talked about alternatives for creating interactions while working out of the office, and different possibilities for making sales presentations. There’s already so much change that we can handle any more…

Andrew had a similar response.

He had a steady stream of clients coming from his existing efforts (even if they did all pressure him about prices, complain constantly, and pay late). He was afraid that any change would upset that balance.

Eventually, they both agreed that the price of stasis was higher than the price of change so they took action.

Formulating an Effective Solution

In the process of working through this, both Sally and Andrew learned how to use some important questions and critical thinking tools that they could use in other situations.

The process of digging beneath the superficial presenting problem to find out more about it became a rule that they were able to apply to refine their approach to personal problems and other business problems.

Realising that the problem they were facing might not be the problem at all, but just a symptom of another problem provided a whole new approach.

Confident Conversion: 90 days to More Cash, More Clients, More Impact

Some coaches like to view their client’s problems as discrete issues to be solved one by one. My approach is different. I like to empower my clients by giving them the tools and skills to apply the process from one problem to another.

In high school trigonometry, I was stumped by transformations.

When my teacher helped me work out an equation using cos, sine, and tan and explain how all the equivalencies worked for one problem, I was stumped when the next one looked different. It was years before I realised that my problem wasn’t that I couldn’t do the mathematics, it was that I didn’t have the right questions to step me far enough back to identify the core similarities and apply a process to them.

Sure, some kids could instinctively see the patterns and work out the transformations, but there were plenty like me who couldn’t do that.

One of the goals of my Confident Conversion: 90 days to More Cash, More Clients, More Impact program, is to give you the tools to solve the business and career problems by sharpening your critical thinking skills. You may choose to have a coach as well (I highly recommend that), but you will also find that suddenly, when you solve ONE problem, you can see the way to solve a handful of OTHER problems that you had thought were unrelated.

If you’d like to learn more about our new self-study program, go to https://bit.ly/CC-90days

“One reason that it’s helpful to talk about your problems with someone else is the unique perspective they bring to bear on it. Did you know that you can teach yourself to do this without the help of someone else? You can. It’s one of the most useful skills I teach.”

~ Chandell Labbozzetta

You Need to Discover New Ways of Thinking and Defining Problems

You may have heard the story about the group of people who were blindfolded, then taken over to an elephant and asked what they thought it was. As they crowded around the elephant, each person described it based on the particular part they could feel. Even though they were all accurately describing the element they were close to, they did not have a clear picture of the whole animal.

Problems in any area of life are like that – including business problems. We see the problem from our own perspective, and we feel it’s effects, but we can’t see all round it. In addition, we’re also often caught up in an emotional response to the existence of the problem in itself.

We’re often just like the people with blindfolds on who were confronted by the elephant when it comes to problem-solving. We see one part from one perspective. Often, that perspective is the reason the problem exists in the first place.

For example, Jim struggled to get his employees to arrive at work on time. He called me and invited me to help him solve this problem. As he described the problem, people were always arriving late, shifting deadlines, making excuses, and generally not acting responsibly.

We arranged to meet at a café at 8am to discuss the situation before heading into the office. At 8:10am he called to tell me he was running late and would be there in 5 minutes. At 8:45am he received a message on his phone from Sam, his accountant: “See you in fifteen minutes.” A quick check on his calendar revealed that he was double booked.

I looked at him as I stood up to leave. “I’ve just solved your problem, Jim. Your staff members may have a problem. You most certainly do, and I’m willing to bet they’re just following your example. Until you sort out your disorganisation, I don’t think you can ask much of your staff.”

Jim did not have a clue that he had a problem until I pointed it out to him. Even worse, as long as he was misdiagnosing the problem, he didn’t have a hope of solving it. When we met the following week, he looked at everything from a completely different perspective.

Calling a consultant or coach doesn’t have to be your first step in finding a solution. You can start to identify the problem yourself using the steps that follow.

Chunk Higher...

People naturally approach problems at varying levels of abstraction. You may be a naturally abstract thinker or a naturally detailed thinker. There’s no right or wrong about it, but you want to be aware of your own tendency because it will affect the way you:

  • Perceive Problems
  • Define Problems; and
  • Solve Problems.

Many people focus on a specific problem (like Jim’s frustration with unreliable employees). As long as Jim was focused on the behaviour of his employees, he missed a fundamental part of the problem which was his own elastic approach to time and appointment commitments.

By asking the questions:

  • For what purpose? And
  • What is this an example of?

you can discover more about what is really going on and where the cause of the problem lies. If you are naturally an abstract thinker, then there is a high probability that you will only discover what you already know, so you need to…

Chunk Lower

Some people instinctively frame problems in universal abstractions (like ‘world peace’, and ‘climate change’, ‘racism’, ‘gender stereotypes, etc). When you do this it’s very had to find solutions at a day-by-day level.

The other side of Jim’s problem was that he was looking at a soup pot of all his employees, every day, in every way. As we dug into his problem later on, it was clear that there was a subset of his employees who meticulously fulfilled their obligations, and a growing number of employees who did not. In order to solve the problem, we needed to delve into the details and ask questions like:

  • What or whom specifically are we talking about? And
  • What are specific examples of this?

These answers will help you identify the extent of the problem more accurately. If you already think in a detailed fashion then you may become overwhelmed and need to chunk higher to uncover the insights you need, or even…

Chunk Sideways

You’ve probably heard of lateral thinking and its modern founding father, Edward do Bono. Looking at problems from the side, or chunking sideways, is one of the most challenging approaches for most people.

As we looked at Jim’s problem with organising his own time and honouring his commitments, he realised that it showed up differently in many areas of his life as well. It wasn’t just a question of switching calendar apps or time management tools or activating louder and more persistent alarms. Nor was it a question of changing just one kind of unreliable behaviour. It was showing up in multiple areas of his life.

Jim had an unusually powerful desire to please people, so his first response was always “yes.” In addition, he was incredibly optimistic about how quickly he could accomplish tasks and how much he could fit into his life.

It wasn’t until we asked the questions:

  • What are other examples of this? And
  • Where else does this show up?

that we realised how widespread the problem was and what it would take to solve the problem.

The really exciting part is that once Jim grasped this approach, he was able to use it to solve several other problems that had been bothering him for years. In fact, a few months later, he was able to help his daughter apply the same approach to her schoolwork and transition from a struggling C-student, to a stellar A+ student at the top of her class.

Confident Conversion: 90 days to More Cash, More Clients, More Impact

This cornerstone program isn’t your standard business growth course that focuses purely on tactical and strategic elements. In addition to those essential elements, our goal is to provide you with the mindset and thinking tools that give you new ways of analysing and solving problems.

You can discover more about it at https://bit.ly/CC-90days

“Let’s go.”

“We can’t.”

“Why not?”

“We’re waiting for Godot.”

~ Samuel Beckett

Paralysis by Analysis and Other Related Problems

I remember my frustration in high school when we had to study this play.

I mean, the chap doesn’t do anything.

He just waits… And waits… And waits… Who acts like that?

Oops! It happens all the time in business and sales and it is incredibly destructive.

Don’t get me wrong…

  • Analysis is important… Especially after you have results to analyse;
  • Quality affects your reputation… But it’s not only measured in one way;
  • Timing is everything… Not yet is deadly.

There’s a popular business quotation: “You cannot manage what you do not measure.”

It’s true. Even more true is this variant: “You cannot manage if there is nothing to measure.”

Let’s use your introduction as an example of how this works because it’s just as true when you are face-to-face with someone at in-person or virtual networking events, connecting with someone on LinkedIn, or calling someone on the phone. Without a consistent introduction (which may vary depending on your context and audience) you will never really know why people don’t pay attention to you.

It’s not until you have a framework that you use consistently that you can evaluate:

  • What interests people about you and your offer;
  • Whether the appropriate people are interested;
  • How you can increase their interest;
  • What the outcome of that interest is likely to be;

This is especially important to growing businesses who want to take control of their growth.

The Bait Trap

There are a couple of key problems you could face with your introduction and this is just as true whether your introduction is verbal, written, or some kind of lead magnet or attraction tool:

  1. Fishing Trawler Syndrome: Casting a great big net and collecting everything in your path is expensive and demotivating. Just like a trawler, you fish until the net is full, then you come back to shore full of excitement, but when you sift through the catch there are only four or five fish that are worth keeping. If your introduction is designed to appeal to ‘everyone’ you’re simply making your work harder.
  2. Wrong Bait: Investing in an exciting new conversation-opener, lead magnet, tool, or opportunity only to discover that the people you talk to aren’t interested at all can be demoralising. It’s even worse when put all your faith in that one thing and don’t stop to check if it’s working by measuring your results.
  3. Wrong Audience: Talking to people who can’t afford or don’t need your solution is frustrating for anyone. If you don’t have a consistent way of introducing yourself, or set aside time to analyse the outcomes you cannot tell whether you are talking to the right people or not.

Once you have a framework, a plan, and some data, you’ll be in a position to analyse the results. Until then, focus on taking action.

I was working with an in-house sales team last year and once we’d covered this 5 of the 8 team members suddenly realised that they could predict the outcome of any conversation within a few minutes. This was especially powerful at conferences and networking events and suddenly their sales commissions sky-rocketed.

Two of the others were struggling to refine their introductions and wouldn’t commit to consistently testing so they could discover what worked. They were frustrated by the success of their colleagues, but couldn’t find the discipline to stick to the process. The last member of the team was fixated on creating the ‘perfect introduction’. At least, that was what she said. For whatever reason, what did was virtually nothing… And her results reflected her inaction.

Commit or Quit

If you have fishing trawler syndrome, then it’s time to QUIT that practice. You can’t afford the financial or energy-sapping drain on your business this causes. What you lose by focusing on a single market (type of fish), you gain in profitability, simplicity, and results. You can add markets later, once you have a system running in the first one.

If you have a bait problem it’s easy to take it personally, but that’s a dangerous road to go down. Make sure the people you are offering it to really are your ideal clients. If they’re not interested determine whether it is the thing itself, the way it is presented, or the hood you’re using that is the problem. Based on the information, you decide to tweak or QUIT your bait.

It’s easy to misdiagnose an audience problem as a bait problem. At one time I thought that mothers who were returning to the workforce would be a great target audience for my Confident Closing course. They certainly had a problem that the course solved, many of them had an interest as well. But they weren’t interested in investing in a solution. When I QUIT trying to talk to the wrong people about the course, I realised that I had had an audience problem. However, I’ve talked to others who completely rejigged their product in response to an audience problem and then discovered that it didn’t help.

When you COMMIT to the research and reinvention it takes to slice and dice your market, find irresistible bait, and focus on the audience who is looking for your solution you transform your results. In today’s world, it’s more important than ever to manage and measure your lead flow and sales outcomes so you’re not dependent on government regulations or other forces outside your control.

What Can You Control

How you introduce yourself and attract attention is particularly important right now. You can’t control the entire sales process, but you can control how you introduce yourself so that you make yourself especially attractive to your ideal prospects and are either ‘interesting’ or ‘repellant’ to everyone else…

Do it right and your ideal prospects will put up their hand and respond to you so that you don’t have to do the chasing…

That changes everything. It means that you no longer have to wait for Godot – or anyone else. You are in control and you can adjust the flow through your sales pipeline however you wish!

What if…

You used existing data to determine your actions so you could quit guessing and commit to a course of action that got results.

When was the last time you looked closely at the way you introduce yourself in a business context and actually used data to test your opinions?

If you’re like many people, it has been quite some time.

Here are a few questions to ask yourself:

  • If you’re honest with yourself, does your elevator pitch create curiosity and interest… Or just a polite response?
  • Do you actually have a pitch prepared…Or do you just create a response on the fly
  • Can you tell me, with accurate certainty, how many of your introductions lead to appointments, and what the ratio between appointments and sales is?

A powerful elevator pitch is just one of the critical elemental that can transform your ability to attract your ideal clients easily and effortlessly and dramatically accelerate your profitability and business satisfaction.

Stop waiting for the right people to find you…

Set the right bait…

In front of the right people…

And watch the magic unfold.

“The greatest discovery of our generation is that human beings can alter their lives by altering their attitudes of mind. As you think, so shall you be.”

~ William James

Are You REALLY Getting Closer to the Life of Your Dreams?

Time is one of the most powerful creative forces… And one of the most powerful destructive forces. It all depends how you use it.

I could dive deep into the philosophy of growth and decay… But I want to focus on the change you can control so I’ll just say it briefly:

“Every day, you are either moving closer to your dreams or further away. It all depends on the direction in which you are heading. Time can increase the effect of your choice, but you control the direction.”

If you are letting the days slide by without taking deliberate actions – both large and small – to move in the direction you choose then time is not your friend. You know it’s true. You can see it reflected in your:

  • Fitness
  • Weight
  • Education
  • Career or Business
  • Income
  • Wealth
  • House (maintenance and cleanliness)…

You get the idea. If you just let any of these areas go, they usually decline.

The same is true when it comes to building the life of your dreams: it won’t happen without discipline and direction.

Do You Even Know What You Want?

I was talking to a friend the other day about this. Ellie is a successful VP who is earning a great salary, has lots of perks, plenty of room to move up the ladder, a partner who adores her…

BUT when she looks at her life she says to herself, “Is this all there is?”

I asked her what she really wanted and she shrugged and said, “I don’t know. I just know that what I have isn’t enough. You’re probably going to say that I ought to be grateful for having so much and stop complaining… Or write in a gratitude journal or something, Chandell. Please don’t.”

Now that’s a problem!

We’ll come back to Ellie later, but first I want to tell you about Seth. Seth had truly made himself a success. He was the first person in his family to go to university (his father was in and out of prison while he grew up) and he completed his Law degree with high honours. He quickly rose up in his top tier law firm  and he was on the fast track to partnership (a long-term goal of his).

One day he looked around at all he had made for himself: career, relationship, wealth, opportunity, hobbies, respect… And said, “Is this all there is?”

And… one of Seth’s hobbies is hiking. Not just anywhere, but hiking in the mountains where the distant view is always more alluring than the near view.

Seth applied that understanding to set a next goal for himself – not an ultimate goal, but a next goal. He could have said to himself, “I’ve arrived and it’s not all it cracked up to be.” But he didn’t. Instead he took control of his future and the attitudes of his mind.

You Don’t Need to Stay Where You Are!

Wherever you are today and however you feel about that, you don’t need to spend the rest of your life in that place (and I’m using ‘place’ to cover mental, physical, emotional, and spiritual options). You can change and you really don’t need anyone to help you (although a mentor or coach is often a tremendous benefit.

You don’t even need to relocate physically to create momentum and direction in your life. You just need to make that mental switch from a ‘victim’ (with a long list of reasons why), to a ‘victor’ with a short list of things to do and an even shorter list of attitudes to cultivate!

It’s NOT (Just) About Gratitude!

Don’t get me wrong – I’m not against gratitude journals and I think about things I’m grateful for every day and usually write them down. Gratitude won’t help you reach for the stars, though. It’s more likely to keep you earthbound unless you are careful because energy flows where attention goes and if you focus too much on being grateful for what you have, you won’t take the next step.

As Ellie and I continued our conversation she realised that she simply wasn’t all that interested in the next step on the corporate ladder. It wasn’t that she couldn’t do it, it was just that the higher she climbed the less she was involved in the parts of her work she loved.

By the time we finished that conversation she knew what she wanted… And she had a plan to get it… And her enthusiasm and vigour were back in full force.

Externally, nothing changed for Ellie. The change in her attitude has already started to bear fruit.

What About You?

Ellie went through a process called a H.O.W.T.O. Session with me. It’s a 90-minute paid session that brings clarity and helps you focus on what you really want so that you can make the decisions you need to make. In that short time, she was able to articulate and recognise what was really bothering her and do something about it.

If that sound like something you need you can book a session using the button below.

Book Your H.O.W.T.O Session

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