Just Seven Things

Exploring why and how we do what we do, and how we can do it better

Archive for the category “Game Playing”

23 Nov 2010

Questioning Yourself as a Higher form of Talking to Yourself?

So a personal sea-change moment? A shift in beliefs?

Search for ‘vision and goal-setting’ on this blog. Look at my ‘About’ page and you will see, ‘my long-term passion is to investigate the relationship between the conscious mind and other-than-consciousness in relation to vision and goal-setting.’ I was driven to start blogging through a belief that there was something very powerful in strong self-affirmations. Create the vision of success, get your other-than-conscious aligned and off you go. Job done. So what is making me question this?

Jonah Lehrer in the Frontal Cortex describes an anagram-solving experiment by Ibrahim Senay and Dolores Albarracin which compares “interrogative self-talk” with “declarative self-talk”: so the apparently weaker ‘will I solve these anagrams?’ compared to the stronger ‘I will solve these anagrams’. I’ve always thought of myself as an ‘I will’ kind of man. I’m clear on what I’d like from my future without being blind to the randomness of fate. I’ve always thought this to be the best way of operating.

In the experiment however, results confound this expectation as Lehrer explains, Read more…

Posted in Conscious and Unconscious, Game Playing, Learning, Mindfulness, Vision and Goal Setting and tagged , , , | Leave a Comment
26 Sep 2009
1 Comment

Run a Business Like Making a Movie

Films are successful only if everyone, from key grip to leading actor, shares a common understanding of what the end result must look and sound like.

Harvard Business Review’s Bendapudi & Bendapudi use Limited Brand’s CEO’s Les Wexner’s citation of Sidney Lumet’s book Making Movies to make the point about the role of leadership; to use language that employees get to get them to achieve things together.

The idea of leader as director and the company’s strategy as a movie is fantastic. The role of communication and engagement of the participants in the creation of a future reality (what consumers will buy) is a wonderful mindshift of the normal things leaders consider important.

Add to FacebookAdd to DiggAdd to Del.icio.usAdd to StumbleuponAdd to RedditAdd to BlinklistAdd to TwitterAdd to TechnoratiAdd to Yahoo BuzzAdd to Newsvine

Posted in Communication, Creativity, Focus, Game Playing, Leadership, Vision and Goal Setting and tagged , ,
27 Jun 2009
1 Comment

Talking to Myself Again

Yep. I’m talking to myself more and more these days. I’ve even started emailing myself. The onset of madness, or management for a healthy mind?

In fairness, I’ve not yet got to the stage that others I know have. I’m not giving myself pep talks or motivating myself with inspirational statements. I’m not even really chastising myself for thinking unproductive/damaging thoughts.

No, it’s more of a pressure release valve. For the last year or two I’ve been trying to listen to myself. I’ve been trying to get good at picking up on the signals (for me, normally tension or lightness in my middle chest: the place you feel when you breath in deeper than you normally do….)

Why am I doing this? Mainly because I’ve realised that I’m a very simple creature. I’ve spent the last few years putting in place trusted systems, and learning some perspectives and processes (plus the pop-neurological background….), that have enabled me to strip myself back to my kind of core ‘operating model’

Sounds a bit up it’s own arse I know. It’s just meant to highlight my view that certain things work for certain people. For me, if I take an action when the middle chest place feels blocked or tense, I immediately get back to lightness in that place. That lightness stops me being distracted from the here and now. And as long as I make sure I spend the here and now doing as many of the things that I really want to do, then my happiness is optimised.

The actions I need to take to alleviate the tension are invariably for the future, rather than immediate. Using the trusted systems, I give myself an action, send myself a message (or send someone else a message or action)

So. My advice? Talk to yourself more often.

Posted in Control, Game Playing, Happiness, Mindfulness, Psychology, Stress and tagged , ,

Post Navigation

← Older Entries
Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.