Tag Archives: Knowledge

The Answer You are Looking for is Within

August 30, 2011 12:00 am ⋅ Leave a Comment ⋅

There was a book I wrote as part of the Guru’s Apprentice series called The Good Stuff Nobody’s Telling You. You can still get it as a bonus offered as part of Tom Byrde’s Definitive Money Engine program. Tom is our moderator here at White Dove Books. In the book, I revealed 10 tactics I had discovered and was using as part of my internet marketing mix. As with all lists that I produce, I like to add an extra bonus on the end, so in this book I wanted to add an 11th tip.

The 11th tip I added was the essence of this post i.e. that the answers you are seeking are all within yourself. What I did in the book was reveal 10 answers that had all come to me via this route and then the 11th tip was to reveal how I go about getting those answers. What I have discovered over the years is that if you can ask yourself a very specific question, your brain will often surprise you by delivering an answer.

Answers don’t come immediately. Often, they take days to arrive, sometimes even weeks, but I can be sure to get answers by using the technique. It was something I wrote about here and here when we were discussing how to make a breakthrough in obtaining results and I also blogged about the actual results I obtained here.

So here’s what I recommend you do when you need an answer:

  1. Formulate your question
  2. Get yourself into the right frame of mind
  3. Ask yourself the question directly
  4. Mentally, completely let the subject go
  5. Wait for your answer

These are the most important aspects to this technique. Firstly, in formulating your question, you need to be very specific. As a rule, I have discovered that the more specific your question is, the better quality the answer will be, so bear this in mind when constructing your question.

Secondly, getting into the right frame of mind always helps. I describe this as a quiet and meditative mental state. You don’t actually have to meditate as such, although you could. You could equally well use binaural beats or you could just go and sit, or walk, somewhere quiet and inspiring, for example, by the sea.

Thirdly, when I ask myself the question, I do it very slowly and deliberately. I don’t generally ask the question out loud. Again, you could: they can’t lock you up for talking to yourself and, as Zig Ziglar once said, they won’t do so even for talking back. But if you find yourself having an argument, then perhaps you might need to seek a bit of help

After you have asked yourself the question, you have to let it go, consciously. This is what separates this technique from brainstorming. With brainstorming, you are consciously working on getting the most answers you possibly can onto a piece of paper – looking for quantity and not quality. With this technique however, you are indeed looking for quality and that’s why it takes time.

So, you need to let go of the question consciously and allow your subconscious mind to work on the problem. You will find that answers will just occur to you and they often drop into the conscious mind when you are least expecting them.

When you have your answer, you need to take action, of course, otherwise nothing changes. In the course of moving forward toward your goal, you might well meet another problem to which you have no answer. Well, guess what? That would be time to go through the process again. The more you do this, the better you will get and the more you will buy-in to the idea.

So remember: the answer you are looking for is within!

Posted in: Goals, Inspiration, Life Lessons ⋅ Tagged: , , ,

20 Lessons Learned from Work

August 19, 2011 9:46 am ⋅ Leave a Comment ⋅

As I have recently given up the day job for good, I have begun to reflect on the period of my life spent in full time employment and what I feel I have learned from it. In this post, I would like to share some of those insights.

Every one of the following lessons has been learned as a direct result of my own personal experience over many years of persistent effort. How I wish I had understood some of these important lessons much sooner but, I guess we all need to learn in our own time. That said, perhaps the following list might help some people who are right now in positions of management or leadership within their own organisations.

Here’s what I feel the experience taught me:

1. The person who is the loudest and most confident may be the easiest to hear and the most natural to follow, but that does not mean to say that he has the right answers.

2. When someone appears to take you into their confidence, it does not necessarily mean that a bond of trust has been established between the two of you.

3. Discretionary effort can be very easily lost and a culture of compliance can be much more easily established within the workplace than many managers really understand.

4. There are always two conversations: the one you can hear and the sub-text.

5. Other people don’t think like you, they don’t necessarily share your values and they don’t make judgements in the same way as you.

6. Few people have learned how to really listen to others despite the fact that they think they have, and those that do listen are inclined to do so from a judgemental perspective rather than an empathic one.

7. There is a big difference between head knowledge and tactic knowledge. Head knowledge is easy to acquire, but rarely changes behaviour.

8. Your own view, no matter how well thought out you think it is, is flawed. You can learn a little about how it is flawed by listening to the right people, in the right way.

9. Everyone will have an opinion despite the fact that, in many situations, most people are not properly qualified to give one.

10. Difficult people are there to help you learn what is wrong with your own interpersonal skills.

11. Leadership is not a job, but an important role that anyone in the organisation with enough vision and persistence can fulfil.

12. Most people do not have enough strength of character to admit they made a mistake and so will go to extraordinary lengths to compensate for their own bad decisions.

13. You should never ignore office politics. Always bear in mind that you are very often dealing with people who have a certain amount of influence over an established network of their own informal contacts.

14. Never allow your life to get out of balance. Always bear in mind that the organisation owes you nothing that is not specified in your contract of employment.

15. If you ask for something and your request is refused, bide your time and try again on another occasion. Sometimes it is not the idea that is at fault, but the timing.

16. No matter what their attitude, always do your level best to understand your colleagues.

17. When your work becomes very easy for you to accomplish and it no longer stretches you, it is time to seek a new challenge, not necessarily elsewhere.

18. When you can no longer act as an agent for positive change within your organisation, then perhaps it may be time for you to leave.

19. When you feel you can no longer give your absolute best to the company, the time has definitely come for you to leave.

20. Always part on good terms.

Posted in: Life Lessons, Management & Leadership, Success ⋅ Tagged: , , ,

Escaping from The Matrix

March 30, 2011 9:00 am ⋅ Leave a Comment ⋅

What really changed things for me was escaping from the matrix, so I would like to offer you an opportunity to take the Red Pill in this post.

You might remember the choice that Neo faced in the movie The Matrix. He is offered the option of taking the Red Pill or the Blue Pill. If he chose to take the Blue Pill, he would wake up in his present reality having forgotten all about the experience. If he chooses the Red Pill, he awakens from his slumber, escapes the matrix and experiences reality for the first time.

Because he is seeking truth, Neo takes the Red Pill. The reality he discovers is completely different from his experience within the matrix. It is something for which is entirely unprepared.

There will be some who read this post who will forget all about it, perhaps putting it down to the ramblings of some insane marketer who needs his bumps feeling. That’s really all you need to do to take the Blue Pill. When you refuse to wake up to reality, you condemn yourself to be ever searching for the answer. The answer will never come to you, in the form that you expect, and your search will be an eternal quest for that other pill – the Magic Pill. But there are only two pills available: The Red Pill or The Blue Pill.

So are you ready to take the Red Pill? No. OK, go ahead, hit the Back Button and return to your normality. The thing is, you genuinely may not really be ready for the Red Pill.

When you take the Red Pill, you wake up and you see reality for what it is. You will probably be unprepared for it. It will probably not be what you expect. When you realise that you have been living under an illusion and pursuing a quest that ultimately leads to disappointment, you may also feel angry. But at least you will have your eyes opened.

Reality is that people have needs and the people who are making money on the internet, or anywhere else for that matter, are busy attending to those needs. Did you see the truth there? No? You see how easy it is to miss it? But we are concerned with the Red Pill here, so let me explain a bit more. Let’s look at those needs. We’ll use Maslow. It’s a pretty good statement of the needs of the human condition. According to Maslow’s Hierarchy, all human being have the following needs:

  • Biological and Physiological needs – Food, Water, Shelter etc
  • Safety Needs – Security, Stability, Protection etc
  • Belongingness and Love needs – Love, Friendship, Companionship etc
  • Esteem Needs – Self Worth, Status, Mastery etc
  • Self-Actualization Needs – Life Purpose, Self Fulfilment, Growth etc

These common human needs drive our behaviour, so we are always looking for some solution that allows us to fulfil our current needs and progress to the next level; the next set of needs.

Let’s take making money as an example. Why do people want to make money? That may sound like a silly question, but it’s not. It is a good question to contemplate if you are selling, or attempting to sell make money type products. The answer is that money is a transferrable resource, so in a well-developed society, money is required in order to attend to those needs. That’s what drives people to search for that Magic Pill. But they never find the Magic Pill, so their quest never ends.

The same is true of many other markets. Take for example weight-loss. Why do people want to lose weight? Because it makes them feel better about themselves (Esteem Need) and it, perhaps, helps to attract other people to them (Belongingness/Love Need). But their lifestyle dictates that they will always be fatter than they want to be, so they will always be in search of the Magic Pill which, as we know, does not exist.

In other markets, the problem may be more of a one-off; for example, the get your ex back niche. Why do people want to get their ex’s back? Because of their need for love and companionship. Why did they drive their partner away? Well, there may be many reasons, but a common one is infidelity; and that’s another way of saying that it was an unexpected consequence of attending to a physiological need. There may be some people who offend repeatedly, but generally, for most people, this is probably a one-off problem. Nevertheless, we can see how understanding human needs is a key to understanding behaviour.

Now, if you want to profit from this post, you need to wake up and stop that search for the Magic Pill if you are still looking. Instead, try to figure out how you can help other people who are engaged in a quest to find a solution to one of their basic human needs. The people making money are those who are doing that. They are providing value in the form of goods or services that specifically address those needs.

There are good and bad products all over the web. The good products provide value by solving a specific problem that is difficult to solve. To understand what these problems are, you generally need to become a part of the market yourself. But when you know what they are, you can make money very easily by solving a particular, difficult to solve problem.

Remember where we started? Red Pill or Blue Pill – right? If you take the Red Pill, you wake up, stop searching for a solution that does not exist and instead, start creating products and/or services that genuinely address specific problems, that provide real value and benefit other people.

Posted in: Inspiration, Make Money, Personal Development ⋅ Tagged: , ,