Susan Ford Collins
Highly Successful People (HPSs) use their brains more efficiently than others do. Here are three Brain Tips I learned by shadowing HSPs for 20 years and teaching their skills in major corporations.
Brain Tip 1: Your brain, like your car, has a GPS
When you head out, you must program a destination in your GPS… city, house number, street and zip. So too, when you aim for a goal, you must program a destination in your RAS or Reticular Activating System. How? By pre-experiencing your outcome in great detail… what it will look, sound, feel, smell and taste like when you get there. Then your RAS will set an initial route, prompt you to recalculate, and alert you when “you’ve arrived”.
Sounds simple but most business leaders fail to thoroughly pre-experience their outcomes. And fail to thoroughly program their outcomes in their team’s RASs as well. Instead they use old maps and destinations and then find themselves re-experiencing the same dilemmas and disappointments. “It’s not fair,” they say. But, it is. In fact, it’s scientifically predictable!
Brain Tip 2: When “not” is in the destination, you need to recalculate
To the brain, all instructions are positive… even if they contain “not”! We have a Positive Command Brain, one pre-wired to sense/do, sense/do, sense/do without stopping to think. Primitive man needed this brain to survive. But sometime in the distant past the concept of “not” was introduced.
Negative statements are deceptive! To the brain, Do not drink and drive is the same as Do drink and drive. “Not” is an Alert Message to Switch your thinking to what you do want instead. Sad to say most people fail to Switch. Kids are especially susceptible to this “brain error” and its dangers.
Brain Tip 3: Program “do wants” in other people’s RASs too
What negative instructions do you send your employees… in meetings, memos and on signs? What negative destinations do you communicate to your spouses’, coworkers and children… I don’t want you to…, don’t play with matches, don’t drink and drive, thinking our strongly stated “negative destination” will head them in a positive direction. But, no matter how much we prod and nag, it won’t. It’s up to us to SWITCH our communication… and others’ communications to us as well.
About the Author
Susan Ford Collins…“America’s Premier Success and Leadership Coach” CNN… is the creator of THE TECHNOLOGY of SUCCESS, the powerful leadership system used in more than 3,000 training programs in major corporations and organizations, in startups and turnarounds. Audiences begged Susan to write about the 10 Success Skills so after shadowing Highly Successful People (HSPs) for 20 years and coaching them for 20 more, she wrote The Joy of Success, Success Has Gears, and Our Children Are Watching, all now available on Amazon. www.susanfordcollins.com or www.technologyofsuccess.com
