Happy Thanksgiving

In my way of thinking, Thanksgiving should be one of the most important and most celebrated holidays of the year because if you’re reading this newsletter, you have so much to be thankful for. And, as I will discuss in a moment, being thankful is the key to having a great life and a great company.

But it seems to me that we almost gloss over Thanksgiving in the USA. Halloween, at the end of October, is the second biggest holiday event in the USA and do you notice that the Christmas trees and Christmas decorations are already up. I’m looking forward to Thanksgiving but mostly people are already gearing up for “the holidays.”

So why do I think Thanksgiving should be a really important holiday?

The law of cause and effect and teaches us that our thinking is the cause of EVERYTHING in our life. I hope you believe me when I say that because there is now an amazing amount of scientific evidence that it’s true.

In the 1970s, the Andrew Carnegie Foundation funded the largest research study ever done to determine what makes a successful individual. They surveyed more than 300,000 people in four employment sectors - business, industry, education and government. The findings speak for themselves. It was found that only 7% of your success is determined by the knowledge you have, only 12% by the skills you possess, and 81% of your success is determined by your attitude! So let’s look at this thing called attitude.

How the law of cause and effect relates to you is: you are like a magnet that will attract to you that which is consistent with your feelings/emotions/attitude.

When you are at the lowest of possible emotions, when you have the worst possible attitude - fear, anxiety, depression, powerlessness and despair - you attract to you circumstances and events which support you in being fearful, anxious, depressed, etc. I doubt you’d call this a formula for success.

Here’s a pretty common attitude at work: blaming, criticizing, condemning, judging, and thinking badly of. Know people that do this? Do you do it? If yes, guess what you’ll get?

The attitudes which will literally guarantee your success are love, gratitude, appreciation, thankfulness, joy, bliss, excitement, enthusiasm, passion and the like. Why? Because you will attract to you and your company, events and circumstances to support you in experiencing gratitude, appreciation, thankfulness, etc.

And here’s the most important point of all. What are those things? Where do they come from? Well they are neither the circumstances of life nor do they come from those circumstances. All of those things are attitudes. They come ONLY from you. They need to be generated.

In so many ways, we live in an upside down world. We are so programmed to believe that we get our attitude, our feelings, and our general sense of whom we are and how our life is from the circumstances of life. It just isn’t true.

Circumstances are just circumstances. They don’t inherently mean anything. You can be incredibly poor and truly happy or fabulously rich and miserable. How you choose to interpret the circumstances of life makes all the difference in the world. And now I hope you see how critical that choice is to your success.

This week is Thanksgiving in the USA. It is supposed to be a time when we pause to give thanks for all our blessings. How about using the opportunity this year to start giving thanks every day, maybe even every hour of the day, for all of your blessings? Start generating an everyday attitude of gratitude, appreciation, thankfulness, enthusiasm, passion and joy. You might just come to discover how truly blessed you are. And, given the law of cause and effect, you might just find yourself being showered with blessings!

Several years ago I recorded a program entitled Living a Life You Love. It looks at each of the areas in our lives and gives guidelines on how to make the choices that will bring you success in your finances, relationships, career and attitude. If you haven’t yet gotten your copy, you can order it today at http://www.unshackledleadership.com/online-store/. It might just be the perfect Thanksgiving or holiday gift for yourself or a loved one.

Negative Emotions Can Be A Gift

In my last post, I stated: whether you’re a student of quantum physics, the law of attraction, Think and Grow Rich by Napolean Hill or any of the other hundreds of books written on the subject, the simple and irrefutable fact is that we are the creators of our experience. How it works is that we have thoughts, our thoughts create feelings and emotions, and those thoughts, fueled by the feelings and emotions, get planted in the fertile soil of creativity and ultimately manifest. 

I then concluded by saying that so many people spend their time complaining about and thereby focusing on what they don’t want and that’s the reason why they don’t have what they want.

So this week I’ve been wondering why this is true, if it is. Here’s something that occurred to me. Someone explained to me the difference between feelings and emotions, which is something I never thought much about. What they said is that feelings are the natural response we have in the moment about something that happens. Someone compliments you and you feel good and smile. You get an unexpected gift and you’re happy.

But emotions, on the other hand, are much deeper reactions that we have to events that happen. Someone cuts us off on the highway and we get really angry and want to retaliate. We don’t get the promotion we hoped for and we’re sad and frustrated for days. We don’t get the sale and we beat ourselves up all the way back to the office.

What might not be obvious from those examples is that emotions trigger within us something that happened in the past and, more importantly, something that happened in the past that never got “complete.”

I’ll give you a very practical example of what I’m talking about. To make a long story short, I grew up in a family where I received little or no acknowledgement and lots of criticism. It seemed like nothing I ever did was good enough. I have just gotten in touch with how angry that made me and, to make matters worse, I had no permission in my family to express my anger. If I spoke up inappropriately, I was even punished. Can you relate to that? Did something like that or similar occur for you?

I’ve done a lot of work to release that anger but I’m clear that some of it is still there. How do I know that? Because any time anyone expresses disapproval of me or criticizes me for something I’ve done, up comes that anger. The result of all of this is that we all carry within us unresolved emotions like guilt, shame, anger, frustration, regrets, resentments, etc.

How I think this all relates to the law of manifestation and creation and why so many don’t have what they want is this: most, if not all, of these unresolved emotions are negative; frustration, anger, guilt, shame, resentment, etc. If we’ve never released those emotions, they will keep coming up over and over again and cause us to create and manifest circumstances to produce more frustration, anger, guilt, shame, etc. What produces the things we want in our lives and our businesses are positive thoughts and positive emotions like joy, passion, excitement, happiness, etc. And, it’s tough to generate those positive emotions when we carry around all that negativity.

So here’s your action plan: don’t run away from those negative emotions. They’re a gift, designed to show you something you’re incomplete about.  Every time one comes up, use it to see if you can find the source. Dig deep into the experience and see if you can get to the bottom of it. If you can tap into the source and experience the emotion that was never expressed, you can ultimately free yourself of it.

There are many techniques to do this work and I suspect I’ve done all of them, from working with a therapist, attending emotion clearing workshops, working with an EFT practitioner and working with a coach. All of that work has been a real gift to myself. Don’t hesitate to take advantage of what’s available to you and if you want to discuss this with me, shoot me an email at scott@UnshackledLeadership.com and we can set up a time to talk.

Learn to Acknowledge Others

In my last two posts, I stated that as long as you’re here, you’ll always have an ego. One of the nastiest realities of your ego is that it tells you you’re not good enough, you’re not worthy and/or you’re not loved. The result is that all people have, to one degree or another, an issue with their self worth. And it should be pretty obvious that if you don’t feel good enough, worthy or loved, you won’t allow yourself to have the things you want in life. You just don’t see yourself as worthy or deserving of what life has to offer.

Another one of the consequences of this comes from the reality that we see our reflection in other people. What I mean by that is that other people literally function as a mirror, reflecting back to us our thoughts and feelings about ourselves. When we see someone we like, we’re seeing in them the parts of ourselves we’re happy about. When we see someone we don’t like, just the opposite is the case and we’re seeing in them the parts of ourselves we’re not happy about.

So how can you use this to your advantage? Learn to look for the good in everyone and learn to acknowledge people, especially if you’re a manager. Look, it’s really easy to find fault with people. True or true? And one of the biggest reasons for this is what I discussed earlier. So stop doing that and stop criticizing people. People already feel bad about themselves and you criticizing them just has them feel worse.

Instead, look for the good in people and work on catching them in the act of doing something, anything, that you can acknowledge them for and then do so. It will make them feel good about themselves and make you feel good about you.

To complete this, we have to distinguish between expressing appreciation and acknowledging people and most people haven’t a clue about what the difference is. We express appreciation for the things people “do.” “You did a great job on that report.” “thanks for bringing me a cup of coffee,” “thanks for picking my kids up at school.” We’re all usually pretty good at that.

But we acknowledge people for who they “are.” Appreciation lives in the domain of doing, acknowledgement lives in the domain of being. So, a manager might say to a worker something like: “I want to acknowledge you for the extraordinary commitment you bring to your job. You do everything with a smile on your face, no job is too big or too much for you, you do everything with a high degree of integrity, you dot the I’s and cross the t’s and don’t stop until everything is done completely. You’re a model for what I would like to see in everyone in this company.”

When you take the time to acknowledge people like that you produce several results. First, you’ll make a huge contribution to the others self esteem and they will begin to perform at an even high level than before. Equally as important, you’ll feel great about yourself in seeing the impact you’ve had on another and the acknowledgement will boomerang back on you and impact your self esteem.

We’ve spent far too long beating each other up. And, whether you believe this or not, there is no such thing as constructive criticism. Take your game up a notch by learning to acknowledge people.

To Succeed, Make Up a New Story

In my last post, I stated that as long as you’re here, you’ll always have an ego. One of the nastiest realities of your ego is that it tells you you’re not good enough, you’re not worthy and/or you’re not loved. The result is that all people have, to one degree or another, an issue with their self worth. And it should be pretty obvious that if you don’t feel good enough, worthy or loved, you won’t allow yourself to have the things you want in life. You just don’t see yourself as worthy or deserving of what life has to offer.

I concluded by saying: Whether you’re worthy or not is all a made up story. No one stamps you worthy or not, only you do that. If you say you’re worthy, you are. If you say you’re not, you’re not – and many of you say you’re not. Life is this big game you’re playing and it’s your game. And you can re-set it up anytime you want.

So what do I mean by that? Well, it starts with the fact that human beings have a hard time accepting a fundamental truism and that is: nothing inherently means anything! Life is neutral. The only thing anything means is the meaning we give it. And, starting early in life, we give meaning to everything and make many decisions based on the meaning we give to the events of life.

So, by the time we’re 5 or 6 or 7, we’ve pretty much made up a whole story about who we are, how life works, what’s right and what’s wrong, how we fit in, etc etc etc. Because of the work of the ego, the unfortunate reality is that most of that story is negative and that’s where the I’m not good enough, I’m not worthy, and/or I’m not loved story begins. To make matters worse, we then start collecting evidence to validate the story and it gets more and more solid as we grew older.

For far too many people, the story is so rich and so real it’s hard to imagine it’s just a made up story. In fact, you may actually be insulted that I would even suggest that. If that’s the case, I apologize. But it doesn’t change the fact. It’s just a story.

Here’s a simple demonstration of the validity of my point. Most of you have heard me speak someplace. If I was speaking in a room set up for 300 people and people started coming into the room, where would everyone sit? Where would you sit? It’s extremely unlikely you would sit in the front row, right? I say that because nobody does. When I ask people to sit up front, the standard answer is always: you’re not going to call on me are you?

People live in absolute fear of embarrassment and will do anything to avoid it, all because of their self worth issues. Got the point? Can you see that you do this?

Again, you made up this story when you were 5 or 6 or 7 and you now live in it as if it’s the truth. It’s not. It’s just a made up story. Here’s the best version of the truth I have ever found: You can find this on page 152 of Unshackled Leadership in a chapter devoted to this issue. It’s a quote from Marianne Williamson’s book, A Return to Love. Here’s a part of the quote. Please read this as if it’s the truth about you:

“We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented and fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God…We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone”

After meeting and working with hundreds of thousands of people, I can absolutely say, with confidence, that you are a whole, perfect, complete, talented, remarkable, fabulous and amazing human being. You really are. That’s my story. Wouldn’t you rather live in that story than the egos? What the truth is doesn’t even matter. It’s all just a story. Just think about how much more fun life would be if you lived in my story about you. And the next time you attend one of my presentations, or anyone else’s, you might just walk in and take a seat right in the middle of the front row. How cool would that be!

Choose to be Happy

As I complete this series of posts, I remind you that they started with me saying: in the everyday struggle for you to accomplish the things you want in your life and in your business, I offer you a possibly new strategy to accelerate the process of manifesting your desires: focus on your feelings! Specifically, I suggested that you focus every day on being happy, which is really all most people want anyway.

I then pointed out the unfortunate statistic that for the average person, 80% of their habitual thoughts are negative and that is the root cause of so many being unhappy. Again, the real problem with being unhappy is that it just causes you to create circumstances to support you in being unhappy. Then, when those circumstances occur, you use them to justify your unhappiness and the vicious cycle continues.

As we wrap up, here’s something to think about. If you are reading this, you have a computer, you likely have a home to live in, clothes to wear, food in your frig and money in your pocket. If that’s the case, you are one of the lucky ones on the planet. Yet, do you wake every day saying “another day in paradise!” Likely not. Do you leap out of bed ready to tackle another amazing day? I also suspect likely not. It’s crazy. 25% of the people in the USA are depressed. There are more anti-depressants and drugs sold in the USA than the rest of the world combined. So if you’re not thrilled with your life and you’re tired of the price you pay for that, consider the following:

80% of the people on the planet live in poverty, 70% are illiterate, and 50% suffer from hunger and malnutrition. 90% of the population has an annual income of $25,000 US or less, 1% has a university degree and only 1% own a computer. One billion people each day do not have access to clean, fresh water and unbelievably, 2.4 billion do not have access to a toilet.

If you have never experienced the horror of war, the solitude of prison, the pain of torture, were not close to death due to starvation, you are better off than 500 million people who have experienced some or all of those things.

If you can go to your place of worship without fear that someone will assault or kill you, then you are luckier than 3 billion people. If you have a full fridge, clothes on your back, a roof over your head and a place to sleep, you are wealthier than 75% of the world’s population.

So, stop complaining. No more blaming, criticizing or moaning. Those activities turn you into a victim. The ONLY way to have a great life and a great business is to realize that you already have a great life and a great business and if you understand the statistics I just quoted, you’ll know why I say that. As Barbara DeAngelis says in her wonderful book Real Moments, “happiness is a choice you make in each moment about how you experience that moment, not a state you one day achieve.”

If you can use some help getting on with being happy, you might want to get a copy of my audio lecture “Living a Life you Love,” available at www.UnshackledLeadership.com. Also, if you would like a wonderful PowerPoint presentation containing all of the statistics I quoted above, send me an e mail at scott@unshackledleadership.com with “global village” in the subject line and I’ll send it to you.