Excerpts
The Visionary Leader: How to Inspire Success from the Top Down
Chapter One - Leadership
How often do you experience your sales falling below a predetermined amount? In Maxwell Maltz's book entitled Psycho Cybernetics, he states that we all automatically adjust our performance to our self-image, just like the auto-pilot mechanism in an airplane will adjust if some turbulence should move it off course. For instance, let's say there is a sales representative who routinely sells $2,000,000 of products a year. One month, this person could bring in a big sale worth $500,000. However, what will happen in the subsequent months after this great effort? Their performance will drop until they are back in alignment with the cybernetic setting.
Although many people will talk about fear of failure or fear of success, I'd like go a step further. In my opinion, individuals automatically sync with their self-image. This is as true with a student's grades as it is with a person struggling with their weight. Yes, people are stuck. They are conditioned to do what they do, just like a thermostat that is set at seventy-two degrees. It may vary one or two degrees, but it will quickly resynchronize itself.
I've learned that there are simple, effective ways to get "unstuck." First, however, you must have the understanding to know where you are currently. Then, you have to make a decision to change. These steps need to be closely and constantly followed by persistent behaviors.
In his famous text Walden, Henry David Thoreau writes, "The mass of men live lives of quiet desperation." Though Thoreau was writing in the midnineteenth century, the same truth applies today. Look at how many people are walking around afraid to make mistakes and think that by doing nothing, they can avoid making them. Meanwhile, they are making the biggest mistake possible. It has been said that the greatest risk in life is the one not taken. Indeed, by not making any decision or movement in the direction of a goal, people miss out on the full joy of life. Life isn't about taking the safest route, never taking any risks. Life is meant to be lived, enjoyed, and should reflect the fullest expression of ourselves.
Certainly, we've all experienced failures or shortcomings since we were children. Failure is normal! Unfortunately, too many of us didn't have anyone to instruct us with the lesson that we had not failed as long as we kept moving toward our goals. Instead, from the time we are children, we were allowed, even perhaps encouraged, to give up on our goals as soon as we experienced our first failure. But there's a better way! Failure doesn't have to be permanent. Instead of quitting, take the lesson from the "failures" and learn how to perform better the next time.