The Lies of Psychology

I am on a mission.

I want to prove that what we think we know about the mind, behaviour and change is wrong. I want to prove that our most common problems can be resolved in record time. I want to prove that we can achieve more than we thought possible, live happier more productive lives and push the boundaries of what is possible.

My vision is to help create a world to which people want to belong, in which people are living their highest visions, accomplishing what they want and contributing at the highest level.

What would it be like to live in a world where people were free, empowered, living lives of meaning and purpose… living the lives they want and giving back.

My mission is to help create a self-actualizing by self-actualizing individuals.

It might sound like a pretty lofty vision, but it can be done, and here’s how:

You wouldn’t use a telegraph to send a message – You’d pick up a phone or send an email. We jump to have the latest technology, but when it comes to the mind and change, society clings to outdated methods.

Most talk therapy, counselling and psychology is all about talking. Talk, talk, talk about a problem as if by talking it will go away. If your car stops working, do you talk about it for a hundred dollars an hour… or do you do something about it? The answer is clear.

Change is easy. The question is, How do we keep ourselves from changing?

As humans we have the capacity to change. We have the capacity to change, to free ourselves of what holds us back and to achieve the most incredible things. Look through human history at the countless things people have achieved… things that defy all odds. If you think we cannot change quickly and accomplish incredible things, you’re not seeing reality.

Not only do I know this because I help people prove to themselves everyday that change is possible in minutes… but I know from personal experience.

My nickname in high-school was prince of darkness. Yes. Prince of darkness. I was depressed and in despair for most of my life. I lived in a dark world – I was a master of unhappiness, a master of limited perception and self-sabotage. I was stuck, I was desperate and I began a quest. I began a quest to find the keys to change.

If you have met me, heard me speak or watched my videos, it’s clear that I am no longer a prince of darkness. I didn’t reinvent myself by talking. I tried EVERYTHING, read EVERYTHING, studied EVERYTHING. And guess what I found: Most of everything in psychology and change all theory… but theory doesn’t create change.

We can crush the obstacles that hold us back with ease and speed when we stop looking for why we have problems and when we stop digging into the past. When we understand how a problem works, how you maintain it and sustain it and focus on how you can change, change becomes possible.

If we value science, then we have to listen to what science discovers.

The most recent developments in psychology, linguistics, cognitive science and neuroscience have led to methods and systems such as NLP, Neurosemantics and Meta-Coaching that make the impossible possible. The latest findings from the field of neuroscience proves that the brain is actually plastic, able to rewire itself with each experience that we have.

In his book, The Brain That Changes Itself, Norman Doidge, MD, calls Neuroplasticity "one of the most extraordinary discoveries of the twentieth century."

Why don’t people know about these advances and the methods that put them into practice? Why don’t therapists and psychologists use them? The reason is that most people have bought into the idea that change is hard and painful. We are victims of social conditioning and it’s tough to break free. We have been hypnotized by our culture to believe something that each of us knows inside simply isn’t true.

Have we been told a lie?

We have been led to live a lie. We have been told and taught that if we have a problem we need medication because in this world a pill is the solution to everything. We are told to be realistic and that problems are because of chemical imabalance or genetics and we buy into it. We argue that we are the way we are because of our parents or our experiences or our genes or the weather. But it's a lie... only true as long as you believe it.

Almost everyone has that inkling inside, that deep knowing that they are capable of more, that they have potential waiting to be unleashed, that they can do more, be more, have more… but they don’t know how to unleash it – then we wonder why we aren’t living at a higher level.

It’s time to put the past behind us and embrace a brighter future.
Abraham Maslow advocated that our most natural drive as humans is to self-actualize. We believe the same, and our mission is to show people how to do it.

The Secret to the Quality of Your Life

Ever wondered what causes one to live a life of joy and success, and another to struggle and suffer constantly? I think I figured it out.

A unique capacity all humans have is the ability to make decisions. In nearly every moment of our existence we are making decisions. We decide what we are going to wear, what to have for breakfast, which way we are going to drive to work, and on and on. Although it is out of our awareness we are also constantly deciding what to focus on, what to think, how to respond and how to feel.

In order to make decisions we engage in a mental process that runs through a number of steps until the decision is made and action is taken. For each of us this sequence or decision making strategy is mostly out of our awareness- it goes on behind the scenes and under the radar. Also, for each of us this process is highly individual- we each make decisions in our own unique way.

But besides decisions in the now, we have been making decisions all our lives. As soon as our mental and intellectual capacities begin to develop, the unconscious decision making process gets underway. Without even being aware of it, at a very young age we begin to decide what we want, what to value, what things mean to us, what to believe, what to think and feel and how to respond to various circumstances. These early decisions become set and when we are older we find ourselves thinking and behaving in preset ways and wondering why. Even the way in which we make decisions was set with a decision.

The quality of our lives is a direct result of our decision making strategy. Some people live extraordinary lives filled with love, abundance and happiness while others struggle for these things day in and day out. I believe that the difference that makes the difference in the quality of people’s lives is the quality of the decision making strategy that has guided each one of us through every day of our lives.

Here’s why. Throughout life, whenever we are faced with new circumstances or challenges, the mind runs a process to decide how to respond. The mind begins to shuffle through possible responses until it settles on one that is appropriate. Your mind has done this ever since you were extremely young. Once it settles on a response it thinks it appropriate, it puts it into practice. The responses it chooses become habituated- we end up with habitual ways of thinking, feeling and behaving. So what makes the difference in the quality of life?

Some people have excellent decision making strategies. When this process runs, the end result is empowering and enables the individual to respond to situations and circumstances in a way that enhances life. But there are those whose decision making strategy is flawed. The responses chosen at the end of the sequence leave them disempowered and at the mercy of their thoughts, their emotions and their life circumstances.

Today, many in the field of psychology and personal development agree that whatever we experience is, on some level, a choice, whether conscious or unconscious. If someone experiences depression, for example, this was likely an unconscious choice of how to respond to a given set of circumstances. The person’s mind ran through the possibilities of how to respond to challenges and the best possibility it found was the one it implemented. When the decision making process ends with such a disempowering result, I would say the strategy is flawed.

So what makes the difference between someone who ends up with resilience and empowerment and someone who ends up with the opposite?

There are two vital factors. The first is creativity. As the mind shuffles through possibilities, how creative is it in generating options? Does it just consider old default options that didn’t work in the past or does it generate new possibilities that might work better in the future?

Imagine going through life constantly making decisions with no access to your creative resources. You will constantly react out of old patterns and end up with the same results you have always ended up with. As you go through life you gain wisdom and experience, you learn from others around you and even have options and possibilities presented to you from books, television and movies. All these things can be drawn on to increase your creative potential for responding to different circumstances.

The most important aspect of the decision making strategy is what I call anti-virus software. When a decision is made and an appropriate response is settled upon, does the mind run a quality control check to make sure this is really the best response? In strategies that lead to disempowerment it does not and there are negative consequences. If the strategy ends with, “Ya, this will do” without a bit of “Hm, what might be wrong with this? Is there anything better?” life will be pretty rocky. This final step weeds out responses that disempower like depression, worry, anxiety, frustration, stress, overwhelm etc.

I realized one day as I looked back on the past on how I had become who I had become that in my own decision making strategy all throughout life there was both a lack of creativity and a lack of quality control. This left with responses to the challenges of life that were less empowering. I had to update my internal software and program in a new strategy that would enhance the quality of my life from that point on.
If your life isn’t the way you want it, take a look at how you have been making decisions about how to respond to life. You can always choose new and better ways of responding to what life sends your way.

How to Cure Depression and Anxiety

It's all over the news. Almost every news site, TV station and newspaper in Canada has reported on the recent findings in the latest edition of The Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry: 15% of pre-schoolers are affected by high anxiety and depression.

According to the study by Montreal researchers, such children have mothers who are afflicted, and this is the second most important predictor of whether the child will suffer from the same problem.

The findings of the study raise the question: Are anxiety and depression passed down genetically, or learned?

Stats Canada recently reported that Anxiety is the most common mental health problem in Canada. The Statistics Canada Community Health Survey of Mental Health and Wellbeing revealed that hundreds of thousands of Canadians suffer from anxiety disorders the same survey reported that Canadians struggle to find adequate treatment for their anxiety.

When I was a child, I was extremely depressed. For a while I bought into believing that I had a chemical imbalance and that my problem was genetic. But then I decided to consider some other perspectives. What if it wasn't genetic, but learned? What if I learned this growing up and it was a thinking style I was continuing to repeat?

I wondered... if it was learned, it can be unlearned. When I was about 13 I decided that negativity and depression were something I learned, and that I was going to everything I could to change. And I did. If I had bought into the idea that they were genetic, I would still be stuck and suffering, years later.

What most people are not aware of is that both anxiety and depression have a structure. You have to do certain things with your mind in order to experience anxiety and depression. I see them as results we produce with our minds, and not conditions we suffer from.

The latest science supports this view. According to Cognitive-Behavioural Psychology, our emotions are the result of our thoughts. How we feel stems from how we think. In “Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy,” a book which clearly explains the cognitive model of psychology, Dr. David D. Burns, an eminent psychiatrist and expert in mood disorders explains; “The first principle of cognitive therapy is that all your moods are created by your ‘cognitions’ or thoughts. A cognition refers to the way you look at things –your perceptions, mental attitudes, and beliefs. It includes the way you interpret things- what you say about someone or something to yourself. You feel the way you do right now because of the thoughts you are thinking at this moment.”

In order to conquer my own demons, I set out to learn how the mind worked. Now, using what I learned, I am able to guide a client suffering from total panic to perfect Zen. In seeing the mind as a system and accepting that emotions result from thoughts, I have shown clients how their mind worked to produce anxiety and how to reprogram their minds to produce something else. I have yet to find a case of anxiety I could not completely resolve in 12 hours. I am so convinced that anxiety is curable that I make the following claim to everyone I meet, speak to or present for: "I Will Completely Eliminate Your Anxiety and Panic Attacks for Good, 100% GUARANTEED Even if Nothing Else Has Worked for You."

If we see depression and anxiety as genetic, we doom ourselves, and our children, to taking medication, medication that in my view, treats the symptoms and not the cause. Not long ago, a woman suffering from depression and anxiety came to see me. She said her problem was the results of a chemical imbalance, but she also said she was very negative. So I said, "You know, you can take all the medication you want and if you're negative you won't be any happier." Her response? "I hate it when you're right."

Just today I was reading an article in the Montreal Gazette about research being done on rats to understand human gambling... and develop a drug to treat those with gambling addictions. In our society, we want to solve everything with a pill. If you have a headache, take a pill- no need to bother to find out why you might have a headache. If your child has a learning disability, give him ritalin. If you are overweight, take a pill. The same is true in the case of anxiety and depression. But what if not every solution comes in a pill?

If parents do not resolve their own mental and emotional challenges, our kids are in trouble. Children are voracious learning machines, just think of how effortlessly they learn to walk and talk. If their role models are aggressive, anxious and depressed, how can we expect them to grow up and learn confidence, peace and empowerment?

You can read more about the structure of anxiety in my article, From Total Panic to Perfect Zen, which will be published in the October edition of the Quebec magazine Vitalité.

Hypnotic Influence with the Instruction Manual for the Mind

Find a “born” salesperson, a top performer or a sales superstar and ask them how they do it. Their answer? You’ll hear it every time. “I don’t know,” they say. It never surprises me. But the truth is, they’re right. They don’t know, consciously. They have mastered the art of influence to such an extent that they do what they do with effortless ease, naturally and automatically. For years, researchers sought to reveal the keys to masterful influence and persuasion with little success...until now.

The world’s top sellers, sales superstars and masters of persuasion have a secret. What is it? It’s simple; their communication is... hypnotic.

Masters of sales and influence use the subtle powers of hypnosis to captivate and hold the attention and interest of prospects and clients, stir their listener’s emotions and win their hearts, minds and wallets. They are able to garner instantaneous trust and command immediate respect and confidence. They are able to melt resistance with ease, overcome objections with grace and close sales effortlessly. Best of all, their clients are delighted! Why? Because those who use the secrets of hypnotic selling are able to understand their clients at the deepest level, communicate with them in a way that is maximally effective and create win-win situations that keep them coming back for more.

Masters of sales hypnosis are able to use their voice, gestures and words in a way that is, well, hypnotic! Their charisma is contagious, their communication compelling and their presence is mesmerizing.

It wasn’t too long ago and I had done everything perfectly to make the sale. Yet, he gave the famous objection. "I'll have to think about it." I looked at him and told him three things. Then I repeated his words, "Now you need to think about it." His answer? "No, I'm ready to do it." I can’ tell you how many times I have repeated that same scenario.

How about this one: She wanted thousands of dollars up front, or she wouldn’t give speak at their event. It was a nightmare, because they really needed her and she was the only one for the job. She was asking for too much, and she wouldn’t budge unless she had what she wanted. I got a call in desperation, begging me to help. I picked up the phone, called her and asked her one question. She immediately replied, "I'm in." One well-crafted sentence saved us thousands of dollars and got us what we wanted.

Recently one of my business partners looked at me with an inquisitive eye and said “David, you speak and people throw money at you. How do you do it?” And so I taught him everything I know. The result beginning just 2 months later? He now outsells and outperforms me every month with a 90% close rate and gets referral after referral.

The subtitle of Dr. Frank Luntz’s book Words that Work says it all: “It’s not what you say, it’s what people hear.” He’s right. Unless your communication is masterful, what people hear won’t be what you intended and influence will be far from effortless.

The hypnotic salesperson’s most important skill is mastery of language. Top sellers recognize the magic inherent in language and their words cast a spell on their listeners. “Words were originally magic and to this day words have retained much of their ancient magical power,” said Sigmund Freud a hundred years ago. He knew that words can and do mean the difference between success and failure.

The hypnotic salesperson uses artfully crafted and powerfully effective language to influence a client’s thinking, feelings and actions. To really grasp how they accomplish incredible feats of effortless influence, you need to understand how the mind works. As a salesperson, entrepreneur or leader, how would your life change if you understood the workings of the mind?

Most would presume that the mind is infinitely complex, but it’s actually incredibly simple, as you are about to find out.

The brain is an information processing unit. We take in information through our five senses and process it through various filters; beliefs, expectations, memories and values. Once processed, the information is transformed into thoughts - ideas, perceptions and images in the mind.
Our thoughts then lead to feelings and emotions. What we think determines how we feel. Our feelings and emotions then lead to actions. How we feel determines what we do.
Thoughts –» Feelings –» Actions

Understanding this model of the mind can absolutely transform your sales results. As you speak to a client or prospect, everything you say is being processed through their perceptual filters and translated into thoughts. Those thoughts lead to feelings and eventually their decision to buy or not to buy.

When communicating, most people have no idea what perceptual filters may stand in the way of a buying decision. But when you know what your clients’ filters are, when you know their core beliefs, values and thinking styles, you can adjust your communication so it has the desired effect. Without this information, you can only hope to make the sale.

As you present your product and service to your client, you can adjust your communication to put the right pictures and perceptions in their mind. You can communicate in a way that changes the way they feel, putting them in state of trust, excitement and motivation. In order to make the sale, you have to change their state.

What happens when you have a deep understanding of your clients and how their mind works? Your communication becomes hypnotic. You speak to their deepest interests, their highest values and you use their most deeply held beliefs to show them how your product or service can give them what they want.

Most sales people are far from hypnotic. They bore the client with a canned approach and little understanding of their client’s true wants and needs. When you can uncover what you client really wants, needs and values, you can make your selling hypnotic. When they feel you understand them at the deepest level, have their well-being at heart and know what they want and need, you will have their trust.

Most of the time when I go to buy something, the sales person fails miserably at winning my trust and helping me solve my problem. And trust me, I make it so easy for them! I tell them what I want and what my concerns are right up front. But somehow they don’t seem to be able to tune into what I want and what I need help with. I only wish more sales people would be hypnotic! If they understood my deepest wants, communicated with me in a way that really got through, my life would be so much easier, and theirs as well!

Why do we choose to buy from someone? Because they win our trust, they are tuned in to our wants and needs and they speak to our interests and values. When you can do this for the people you serve, and when you can do it hypnotically, prospects and clients will buy from you time and time again, and they’ll send their friends too!

Does sales hypnosis give you an unfair advantage? Absolutely! And it’s an advantage that you need if you’re going to make it in a business world that is more and more competitive and a tough economy.
In the future, it’s not those with technical qualifications that will make it in business. Those who are masters of communication and influence, who can motivate, inspire and win the hearts of listeners will succeed while others are left only wishing.

Attend my workshop
Hypnotic Selling: How to Seduce and Persuade with Only Your Words.
Visit www.e2connect.net for details or to register.

The Magic Minute of Sales: Mind Reading Your Clients and Prospects

What if you could listen to someone speak for just one minute and know so much about them that you could match your presentation to the way their mind works? What if you could give them information in their own language, so it really gets through? What if you could tell them exactly what they need to hear so they do what you want to do? Well, you can… if you know how.

We all have a different ways of receiving and processing information. We each have an individual thinking style, our own perceptual filters and different belief and values. We have a unique way of making decisions and we each have our own “hot buttons.”

As a result, we each have our own mental language. We have different ways of expressing ourselves, use different types of words, different sentence structures, we focus on different things and we each prefer to be communicated with in a certain way. Sometimes we hear things that resonate and we feel motivated to act because we what we heard was said in just the way we needed to hear it- it was in our language.
What happens when you can speak the mental language of your clients? The answer? They do what you want them to do.

Imagine two friends having lunch. They are in rapport, speaking the same language and they feel deeply connected to one another. When a salesperson speaks to a prospect, this kind of rapport is absent… unless he can read the client quickly and enter into their world.

In order to really read someone, you have to know the building blocks of human experience. What is thinking made of? How do people process information and make decisions? What are the elements of the human mind? When you have this information and you can fill in the blanks when it comes to your clients, persuasion becomes easy.

According to studies, 7% of face-to-face communication is made up of words, yet we try to persuade with words alone. The other 93% of communication is non-verbal; tonality, volume, body language and sentence structure. A person will reveal everything you need to know about them in just minutes through the other 93% of communication. If you fine tune your senses, it will be as if you can read their mind.

For example, people think in terms of the senses. Some people are highly visual while others are more auditory or kinesthetic. This is revealed in language. If someone is in the market for a new stereo and tells you he wants one that “looks good” and you focus on how it sounds, he will tune you out. If someone tells you what you are saying doesn’t feel right, you haven’t said what they need to hear to have a good feeling about what you have to offer. The ability to notice one’s preferred sense and use it transforms the communication.

There are salespeople who have a 97% close rate. Yes, 97%! How do they do it? They have honed their perceptual skills to be able to read their clients, understand the way they think and communicate with them better than someone who has known them for years. In fact, when you do this, they will feel like you have known them for years! Is that how your clients and prospects feel with you?

When you speak to clients in a way that matches their thinking they light up! They feel you understand them and in turn, they will begin to like you and trust you. And soon the sale is made.

There is something absent from sales… and it’s called listening. So many sales people skip this step. They fail to gather information and jump right into a canned approach. How many times have you gone to a salesperson who gave you all kinds of information you didn’t care about or want to know? And what did you do? You bought from someone else!

All too often when I go to buy something, the salesperson proceeds to tell me about the product. They tell me all about what they think is important… without taking a moment to ask me what is important to me. If they took just a moment to do this they could match the presentation to my values, hot buttons and decision making strategy. They could frame what they have in a way that makes me see why I need it.

I recently bought a new computer. I told the salesman what my concerns were and he immediately began to give me the specs on a computer. He didn’t listen to a word I had said. I couldn’t believe it. I am sure that all the computers they have are far more powerful than I need. I don’t care about the specs. So I went elsewhere where someone paid attention to my concerns.

Salespeople are decision engineers. Your job as a salesperson is to help people make the right decision and make their lives better. People are paying you to help them make a decision. When you are talking to a prospect, they want to be sold to, otherwise they wouldn’t let you talk to them in the first place. If you help them make the right decision, you provide a win/win situation and you get satisfaction instead of buyer’s remorse. People come back to you and they bring their friends. Because they know you can help them make good decisions.

Recently when doing one on one sales coaching, I taught my client how to listen for a prospects perceptual filters and understand how they think. Once he could notice the way his prospect was processing information, he could speak to them in their language. The difference in his sales conversations was drastic! All of a sudden his clients felt understood, and they bought far more frequently. After all, who wants to buy from a salesman who doesn’t understand them and can’t speak to them in a way that they understand?

If and when salespeople take the time to gather information, they miss most of the information they are getting. When your prospect speaks, they will reveal all kind of things about themselves through their gestures, tonality, and eye movements and their language. Language accounts for only 7% of face-to-face communication and yet, people reveal their secrets through the language they choose. Through the words they use and the structure of their phrases they will reveal how they think and how you need to speak to them. They will tell you everything you need to know to help them make a decision.

Consumers want to be sold to but they want someone to care about them, to understand them and they want to deal with someone they feel they can trust. When you can read your customer and piece together how they process information, they will feel understood and come to like you and trust you. How much more effectively will you be able to produce results in your own profession when you can make use of all the information your clients and prospects are giving you instead of letting it slip by the wayside?

Attend my workshop Hypnotic Selling: How to Seduce and Persuade with Only Your Words on August 4th. Visit www.e2connect.net for details or to register.

Leadership Redefined and Leaders Redesigned

In changing times, questions of the future of leadership and management seem to be at the top of the list. Inspired by the latest edition of the Harvard Business Reviewa, a special issue dedicated to "Managing in the New World," I have begun exploring questions of leadership and management more thoroughly. In the process I stumbled upon the story of Paul Fireman, an individual whose accomplishments prove him to be what I call an Englightened Leader.

Paul Fireman was looking for a business opportunity. It was 1979 when he discovered a product that intrigued him and that had enormous potential: a handmade track and field show. At that time, Reebok was making 400 pairs a year. Fireman bought Reebok out in 1984.

But shortly after, the company slid towards bankruptcy. Fireman borrowed $75,000 and redesigned the company. Just years later, Reebok had won 43% of market share, business doubling every six months, and surpassing Nike in 1987.

Not long after, Fireman left Reebok in the hands of professional managers. The result was that the empire that Fireman created began to crumble. But Fireman was able to “put the bounce back in Reebok.” Guided by a new vision of leadership, a sense of the need to involve others in the company at various levels and to empower employees with accountability and ownership, Fireman rewrote the future of Reebok. In 2005 Reebok was sold to Adidas for $3.78 billion.

Take a look around and you will see that the world has transformed. The rise of instant communication technologies made possible through use of the internet, such as email, texting and IM, sites like YouTube and social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter have transformed the world. People are more informed and more sceptical than ever and they trust corporations less and less. People are more connected and more empowered that ever before. A customer’s experience with your business can be on Youtube and broadcast to millions across the planet in just seconds. Traditional marketing and advertising methods no longer work – today marketing has to be interactive, experiential and brilliantly innovative.

The composition of the workforce has dramatically changed. Generation Y is eagerly moving up the professional ranks bringing along the search for instant gratification and a sense of entitlement. They have high expectations from the workplace and want to make their jobs fit their lives rather than adapt their lives to the workplace. Gen Y wants more: more feedback, more responsibility, more involvement desire to make a difference.

Juxtaposed to them are the Baby boomers, the largest growing segment of the workforce. Many refuse to retire or businesses want to delay retirement. Their knowledge and expertise is needed to keep companies alive, but can they adapt to the rapidly changing economy? How will business deal with the generation gap between boomers and Gen Y?

Add the recession- the worst global recession since World War II. Businesses around the world have disappeared from the landscape, hundreds of thousands have lost jobs and millions have been lost in investments and revenues. As we emerge from the economic downturn, the only certainty is that there will be no return to normalcy. In the post-crisis world there will be what the Harvard Business Review has called “a restructuring of the economic order.” The world of business will be redefined and redesigned. The economy will be reconceived and reinvented and in the process, our lives will continue to transform.

The only constant in this world is change. To survive the rough waters ahead, organizations will have to adapt. But to thrive, they will have to do much more. The altered business landscape will leave both consumers and employees behaving differently, and organizations will have to follow suit. In a world where what once worked is now proven to fail and what was once proven to fail may be the only thing that works, what will make the difference between companies that perform and those that plummet?

In the new economic order consumers and employees behave differently and organizations will have to adapt, adjust and transform. To survive and to thrive, organizations will have to reinvent themselves and to take on the challenge, a new model of leadership will be required.

The new future of organizations rests in the hands of leaders, but the skills of leaders won’t be sufficient to handle the challenges of this new economic order. The leaders of the future will need far more than leadership skills. The leaders in the new world will require the power to rewrite the future of a group, company or perhaps even a country. In the future, a leader will be one who inspires, awakens and empowers, one who can win the hearts of employees, stakeholders and clients. Leaders will not only have to lead, but they will have to lead others to greatness.

In the past, leaders were leaders because they had risen up the ranks and earned the right to direct others. Their job was to guide and direct employees, to establish policies and procedures and have them followed. In the new world, seniority won’t be enough. To lead in the future, leaders will need to empower others to participate and share in decision making and in creating the organization’s future. The new model of leadership will be one that has everyone talking, giving ideas, suggestions, proposals and sharing concerns. Creating a vision and trying to get buy-in will be a thing of the past as leaders empower other will the power of ownership and authorship. Leader in the future will create and strengthen communities that work together to invent futures that didn’t previously exist.

What is it that makes a Barak Obama, a Winston Churchill, a Martin Luther King Jr. or a Mahatma Ghandi? “Cicero talks, and people marvel; Ceasar talks and people march,” said Warren Bennis, a pioneer in the field of Leadership Studies. In The Three Laws of Performance; Rewriting the Future of Your Organization and Your Life, a groundbreaking work that reveals powerful principles for leadership in a changing world, the authors place the above quote to demonstrate the most powerful tool of a leader: language. Leaders of the future will be masters of language. Like the Obamas, Churchills and Ghandis of our world, their words will move others to action. When they speak, they will touch others, transform their perceptions and guide listeners to living a someday future in the now.

Transforming an organization begins from the top down. To have a self-actualizing organization first and foremost requires self-actualizing leaders. The leadership of the future will need to be what I call Enlightened Leadership. Guided by values such as integrity, authenticity, contribution and a deeper understanding of human behaviour, organizations will move beyond simply aiming to profit. To survive in the new future, organizations will require leaders that lead them to contributing to society on a deeper level, helping employees be their best and tap into their potential. Since employees want more, leaders will have to be more.

Emotional, social and ecological intelligence will outrank technical skills and education as the new leadership emerges. New ways of thinking will lead corporations, companies and governments into the new future. Think in the ways of the past and your organization will fall behind. Move to the future and if you write a future worth living, people will follow.

How can the leaders of the future produce extraordinary results when faced with what is seemingly impossible? To meet the challenge, Enlightened Leadership is the only way.

Attend The Empowered Entrepreneur Event July 14th in Montreal to hear my presentation, The Instruction Manual for the Entrepreneur’s Mind. Visit www.e2connect.net for details and tickets.

The Instruction Manual for the Entrepreneur’s Mind

Paul Graham is the perfect example of an Empowered Entrepreneur. The acquisition of his earlier company, Viaweb, by Yahoo for $49 million and 145 start-ups since have made him somewhat of a hero to techies and entrepreneurs who dream of translating their ideas into some of the red-hot Web 2.0 companies Graham has helped launch.

In a suffering economy, few would think it possible to create bundles of wealth, but according to Graham there is opportunity everywhere in the world of software. His new company, Y Combinator, advices and funds 40 start-ups per year. His idea was to create a start-up machine by innovating the start-up process. His guiding principle is smaller, cheaper, faster, precisely those factors that lead to the innovation that fuels successful entrepreneurship. Graham has proved that even the process of innovation can be innovated.

According to Inc. Magazine, which features him on the cover of its June issue, “Graham’s system generates scores of ideas, churns out dozens of new companies, and creates hundreds of jobs – for a lot less than you might think.” Graham’s accomplishments prove that even when the economy is in decline, there is room for innovation and that innovation can be highly profitable.

What about the story of Millennium Music. With sweeping changes to the music industry and the sale of online music, Millennium music’s profit had declined by double digits each year. Kent Wagner and his partner Clayton Woodson did what any great business mind would do: adapt. Instead of folding up the business, they decided to transform it completely.

Although the focus of Millennium Music was around record and CD sales, the store also featured a used music section which allowed customers to trade used CDs for store credit. Wagner and Woodson used this as the basis for the company’s future and in 2006 launched FeedYourPlayer.com

By 2007, the site has brought in almost one quarter of the company’s total revenue. And the entrepreneurial pursuits of the two don’t end there.

What is it that enables Graham, Wagner, Woodson and others like them to turn even the most difficult challenges into opportunities for profit? Few would claim that the phenomenal success of these three is due to chance. There is a secret to success, and that secret is in the mind.

Behind the entrepreneurial results individuals like Graham have produced is the mind of an entrepreneur. Hiding behind the scenes are beliefs, perceptions and mental strategies, the very mental strategies that lead to extraordinary results.
If so, just what is hiding behind the scenes?

I define performance as the behavioral manifestation of aspects of cognitive functioning. Put more simply, the results we achieve in life are a product of what we have in the mind- our internal programming. How we get from the stuff of mind to results in life functions based on a simple formula: Thoughts lead to feelings which lead to actions which lead to results. You can try to do what Graham did, but without his beliefs, mental strategies and perceptual filters, you will quickly fall short.

What are the beliefs of an empowered entrepreneur? In working with and studying the mind’s of successful entrepreneurs, I’ve found a common theme, an idea they swear by that gets them up in the morning and inspires them to do what they do with unrelenting focus. What is it? Opportunity is everywhere.

They run this idea like software of the mind. The program acts like a driving force, pushing them to seek out and uncover hidden opportunities in the most unlikely situations. While opportunity passes by all those who believe that times are tough, the economy is in a slump, and now is not the time to be investing or taking risks, some entrepreneurs are seizing up opportunities and delighting in the returns.

Despite all the risks and difficulties involved, what is it that leads individuals like Graham to devote all their time and energy to starting a business (or 145 of them)? The belief that founding a company is the most efficient way to create wealth. Average individuals think that if you need money, you get a job. And that’s precisely how the successful entrepreneur sees it: If you need money get a job… if you want wealth, build a company.

But beliefs aren’t the only secret to success. In the back of the mind of the empowered entrepreneur are mental strategies that lead to success. To produce any result in life, whether its poor performance or impressive results, there is a strategy operating in the mind – a sequence of thoughts, perceptions and ideas that lead to decisions and actions. A strategy is like a recipe- when you combine all the ingredients in the right amount and in the right order, you get the desired result. What are the ingredients of a mental strategy? Thoughts, ideas, perceptions, and feelings.

The mind of the stunningly successful entrepreneur is filled with great questions. Bright questions lead to bright results, and questions are the first step in the mental strategy of the world’s most impressive performers. Questions direct thinking. Most people ask themselves poor quality questions. “Why do I always fail?” “What’s wrong with me?”

The interesting thing about the mind is that it will search for and find an answer to whatever question you ask it. If you ask poor quality questions you will get poor quality answers and poor quality results.

Running behind the scenes in the mind, individuals like Graham ask themselves first-rate questions, questions that lead to superior results. What’s the secret question that fuels the innovation behind successful entrepreneurship? How can I make this better, faster, cheaper? Brilliant business minds like Graham ask themselves this question as if it held the key to life. They might not come up with an answer right away, but it doesn’t matter. They plant the question like a seed and water it with continued focus. They ask and ask and ask as if they were chanting the question like a mantra until the seeds begin to germinate and answers begin to arrive.

The right questions lead to a flood of creativity that can lead to innovation. When you ask the right question, the mind becomes filled with images, snapshots and movies of ideas, possibilities and opportunities. Bright questions lead to bright ideas.

And the mind of the entrepreneur is filled with many more secrets. July 14th at the Fairmont Queen Elizabeth Hotel is The Empowered Entrepreneur Event. Some of Montreal’s brightest business minds have teamed up with local Entrepreneurial groups to connect, share and learn with the aim of fueling the economy by empowering entrepreneurs. I will be kicking off the day by giving the secrets to running your brain like a Paul Graham, Warren Buffet or a Donald Trump. What could you do with The Instruction Manual for the Entrepreneur’s Mind?

Become an Empowered Entrepreneur at The Empowered Entrepreneur Event July 14 at the Fairmont Queen Elizabeth Hotel. Visit www.E2connect.net for details and tickets.