SUPERORDER AND HIGH PERFORMANCE YOUR LIFE
By Michael Kelly, Esq. , February 2010
One of the essential characteristics for high performance and exceptional gain in life is the control of one's emotions and personal habits.
Many highly talented people with outstanding personality traits, a good understanding of what is happening around them and years of hard earned experience, completely destroy the possibility for outstanding performance by failure to control their personal habits and their emotional responses.
The same lack of control and insight destroys exceptional life performance. Exceptional performance in any endeavor requires that the individual be able to deliver a better performance than their competitors over a longer period of time with a more focused delivery. There is no difference between the personality characteristics that an attorney or a business executive must master, and those of an astronaut or super-bowl athlete. It is impossible to fail to notice that football games on Sundays are won or lost by 1/2 an inch, by one point, or by three seconds.
Joe Montana is one of the finest examples of concentration, poise, and excellent long term excellent personal habits, all of which allow him to deliver under high-pressure situations, game winning passes, week after week, month after month, and year after year. Life is exactly like that--it is only the last 3 to 5% of performance consistency that makes an exceptional life instead of an average one.
The personal characteristics necessary for excellence in football, war, or tennis, and those which give an astronaut the capacity for exceptional performance on the Hubbel Space Telescope, hundreds of miles above the earth, are the same personal characteristics necessary for success in the real world.
As in all forms of conflict, the mind in business, relationships, and life in general, is an individual's most important competitive advantage.
Parts of the mind can be inherited, such as a high I.Q., but many parts of the mind are subject to the individual's own control and training. Personal habits that can affect the quality of thought, such as the consumption of alcohol, lack of adequate sleep, substance abuse, overeating, and poor physical conditioning, will all influence performance in a negative fashion during periods of high stress, at a time when the individual needs high performance abilities the most.
Lack of emotional control, unfocused thoughts, and the failure to choose clear goals in specific time frames will all haunt an individual at the worst possible time.
One can choose to control anger; they can choose to control hysterical reactions to situations; they can be at choice with their reactions. One can choose not to drink, one can choose to eat moderately, and one can most certainly choose to engage in the discipline of some physical conditioning, even if it is as simple as walking on a tread mill, a stair-stepper, or a stationary bicycle. Disciplined personal habits give the mind a certain inner strength that says "I shall not be beaten."
That thought is not easy to come by; it is a hard-won over years of education, discipline, concentration, and hard decisions. There are no lasting overnight successes. You see many fine actors who say, "Yes, I was an overnight success . . . after 20 years." The same is true in developing the traits, knowledge, and discipline necessary to be an exceptional person.
The questions one must ask are:
- "Am I willing to pay the price to be an exceptional success? Am I willing to not drink?
- Am I willing to make the thought 'I am a winner,' a reality by developing stronger will power, greater discipline, and deeper knowledge of a field than my competitor?
- Am I willing to make myself and my life, into the standard for others?
- Am I willing to develop the habits of personal discipline that will make me calm and focused in crisis, similar to Joe Montana when he leads a last-minute winning drive?
- If you think that football is complex, think about the enormous number of traits necessary to be successful in life. In the National Football League, there are 24 teams.
On any given Sunday, there are fifty players on a side and several coaches. In any given minute, a team can field 11 players. For example:
- How many competitors do you have in your business field?
- Hundreds? Or perhaps thousands?
- How many coaches and books and tapes and seminars are available in your business, which will improve your performance?
- How many have you used or attended?
- How easy do you find it to reward yourself with a martini, a glass of wine, or a fat steak after a hard day, instead of working out? Reading a book?
- Looking at the balance sheet?
- Working on a new brochure?
- Planning a marketing campaign?
This observation is not meant to be comforting; it is actually meant to challenge the context or framework within which you hold your personal performance. Were you the class president
Were you the homecoming queen? Were you the quarterback of your football team? Were you a state champion long-distance runner or wrestler? The world of business gives you the opportunity to be a champion in an arena that lasts far longer than high school or college athletics. It gives you an opportunity to succeed for decades and leave a legacy for centuries.
Competitive Advantage:
Genetically, human beings can have two or three competitive advantages compared to other human beings. One, an individual can be blessed with physical beauty, or athletic dominance. These gifts from the genetic lottery can, if used wisely and acknowledged by the possessor of them, carry the individual to success in life.
One cannot change oneself from 5'2" to 6', no matter how intelligent they are, nor can they turn a homely physical appearance into great beauty. Individuals are given the opportunity and the chance to enhance the gifts from their maker or the genetic lottery, depending on their belief system.
In one of my writings, I say that "your mind is you most important weapon."
It is more than you most important weapon; if you have a good one, it is a dominant competitive advantage, and must be cared for exactly as you would a fine computer or good body.
My observations regarding the human mind only refer to its raw computing power, analytical ability, data storage, and retrieval capacity. The mind must be adequately rested and fed. The human mind works far better when not placed in the condition of overload with useless data input. Examples of useless data input include:
Mindless arguments, romance novels, television sit-coms, etc., it is unquestioned that television sitcoms are written for people with an eighth-grade education, vocabulary, and outlook.
Canned laughter is added to the sound track to elicit a humor response from the watcher. Thousands of hours are wasted on television, which could have been utilized to train the mind to be more effective in its analytic capacity. Information could be gathered in order to give the particular individual a competitive advantage in life.
In striving to be a high-performance individual in anything that you do, it is essential that not only are you physically, mentally, and psychologically prepared--you must be emotionally prepared.
My observation is that if your emotions are not under iron control, they will destroy your ability to think and analyze in any situation you are in.
To put it another way, if you are analyzing a business situation with revenge in mind, versus a cold analysis of a situation on its own merits, your analytical powers will be blunted, diffused, or blurred.
If you are attempting to create a business from a survival mode versus an "I shall not be beaten" mode, the survival drive will, to a certain degree, diffuse the cold analysis of what you need to do.
Almost all of the people you can think of who have been significant business successes, and almost all of the stories of people who have been significant successes in their lives and living, have had the ability to use uninterrupted time to focus on a problem, concentrate, and had an analytical ability honed by clear and concise thinking.
You cannot analyze a problem without having significant data about the field of the problem, which you are looking at or thinking about. Thinking about a situation or a business without a significant amount of experience in the specific business or circumstance, will eliminate the possibility of a sure decision.
Many brilliant people get into financial deals or business deals they should never be in because they are brilliant; they believe they can think their way through the conversation or deal points structured by an individual who knows everything about a particular deal.
Donald Trump is an excellent example of that. Ivana Trump's lawyers thought they could think their way through the financial real-estate trap that Donald set up for her, and she ended up with about $20 million instead of $100 million. In other business transactions, the joke "there has never been a real-estate deal put together that a doctor couldn't understand" is only partially a joke, and probably true most of the time.
When I analyze successful men and women, controlled emotions are the heart and soul of their success. Such emotions are not triggered by past failures, past wounds, past hurts, or past insults, whether real or perceived.
If you are living life with your emotions either out of control, or available to be triggered by circumstances that you live in, it means you emotions will be driving your life, as opposed to your life driving your life.
Or in other words, your emotions will be misleading your life rather than having your consciously chosen goals directing your life. That is true in living, in loving, and in business. It is most certainly true in law.
The second clear specific performance item (including defined goals, objectives, and standards), is the condition of your mental and physical being. Your mind is your most important weapon, to the extent that it is interfered with by alcohol, substance abuse, emotional outbursts, or other negative things that will hinder the laser sharp perception of the situation.
The only question is, how much will you be impaired? This particular analysis may go even further: when your body is in as good a condition as it can be in, and you are certain that you picked the right food to fuel your body and your mind, you get a certain competitive advantage.
If you make certain you get enough sleep, as opposed to doing other activities, you gain a certain competitive advantage.
On the other hand, should you choose not to take excellent care of yourself, you take away from your competitive advantage each and every time you abuse yourself.
It has been proven that alcohol abuse, substance abuse, overeating, and failure to get enough rest will all affect you emotionally. Bad emotions make for bad decisions. Uncontrolled emotions are bad for relationships between human beings.
If your emotions are uncontrolled, you will become untrustworthy to the person with whom you are interacting. A certain extent of predictability is crucial in any relationship.
If you meet someone's expectation of you for predictability, then you earn long term trust and an ability to build personal and business relationships.
On the other hand, if the manner in which you react to situations time after time, is random (one time the reaction is good, one time the reaction is bad), you become untrustworthy on a level that is unacceptable to anybody who is looking to be a highly functioning individual.
Being partnered with a business partner or a life relationship partner who is emotionally unstable, or who is emotionally driven by past failures, wounds or hurts, is a dysfunctional way to live.
The expression "what do you want" does not allow your own agenda to have priority. Your logic is not understood by a person who has their own reasons as to why their emotions are uncontrolled. If you are a result driven person, then you must control your own emotions in order to produce a good result on a consistent basis.
Consistency is what customers are looking for, what clients are looking for, is what friends are looking for, and what lovers are looking for;
Consistency, consistency, consistency.
There are many different kinds of fidelity.
Sexual fidelity is just one of them. Emotional fidelity, being true to who you are and true to who you are trying to relate to is another one that is as important as any other kind of fidelity. If your business partner or life partner cannot trust your reactions to situations, and you cannot trust how they will be, it will, sooner or later, fray the relationship or fray the thought about the relationship, which is all you have in the first place.
A low tolerance to frustration is another fatal flaw in living, lifestyle, relationships, and business. One must have extraordinarily deep patience in order to succeed. When you see an individual who has a low tolerance for frustration, you see an individual whose emotions are triggered by events.
Life just happens, and if you can't handle life without being frustrated by it, you will guarantee yourself continued failure, and a long time of being unhappy.
When you are flying, it is not good enough in a crisis, to give your best analysis--you must give the correct analysis--or you will die. Life is exactly like that. Your best analysis, but the wrong one, is as fatal as a totally wrong analysis, determined without giving it your best effort.
Air Crash Principal Applicable to Divorce
There is a principle, which is taught to pilots and espoused by the NSTB (National Safety Transportation Board) after investigating thousands of airplane crashes. The principle is as follows:
FATAL AIRPLANE CRASHES ARE ALMOST NEVER CAUSED BY A SINGLE OVERRIDING PROBLEM SUCH AS HAVING AN ENGINE FALL OFF.
FATAL CRASHES ARE ALMOST ALWAYS THE RESULT OF A SERIES OF UNRELATED SMALL PROBLEMS DEVELOPING THAT ARE DEALT WITH IMPROPERLY AND ESCALATE INTO AN IRREVERSIBLE FATAL CRASH.
The principle can be clarified as follows:
A SERIES OF SMALL, UNRELATED, IMPROPERLY DEALT WITH PROBLEMS WILL SYNERGIZE INTO A LARGE, POTENTIALLY FATAL PROBLEM AND BECOME TOO LARGE TO BE EFFECTIVELY DEALT WITH.
In divorce cases there are a large number of unrelated small problems that, left alone, will develop into a significant problem for the person going through the divorce.
The only person who has the talent and ability to identify the problem, choose which sequence of actions is best to deal with that particular problem, and prevent the unrelated small problems from escalating into a difficult situation--is a highly experienced divorce attorney.
Parties in a divorce are almost never in the mental condition necessary to see the problem, sequence the response properly, and select the proper action.
Supplement to the Air Crash Theory:
I am operating on two theories regarding organization. The first, is that you must be operating on a road map also known as a Vision Statement. The second, is that you must be clear about excluding things from your life that do not support your Vision Statement, Mission Statement, or Goals.
You must view your life as a continual organizational task, and the degree of success achieved, is related to the degree of organization, task sequencing, and order that you are able to impose on it.
The degree of certainty, which you exercise precision, certainty, accuracy, predictability, and using this strategy, both financially and physically, is essential. This includes certainty regarding the location of your documents, your possessions, your tools, and the everyday objects necessary to support your life: from bills to pots and pans, and from legal wills to paper clips, etc.
The second principle that I operate on is as follows:
I read a science fiction book, quite a while ago, and there were short stories in it. One of the short stories in it is called "The 9,000,000,000,000 Names of God" (author Arthur clarke); and the story based itself on the following.
There was once a computer genius in San Francisco, and several high-ranking Monks from Tibet came and talked to him about buying a super-computer; they asked him to generate a program to say the 9,000,000,000,000 names of God, so that you had a program that repeated all of the small variations of Krishna, hare krishna, hare rama, etc.
What the Tibetan Monks didn't tell the computer genius was their religious belief that when the last name of the 9 billion names of God was repeated, the universe would cease, and all would become nothing.
So the computer genius bought them a super-computer, and then he and the monks figured out that it would take about a year and a half for the 9 billion names of God to be printed out by this computer.
And about one year and a half later, minus one day, the computer genius figured out that when the 9 billion names of God had been printed, the universe was going to end. And as he looked out the window after he had this particular revelation, the sun started to dissolve in front of him.
Now, how I relate this story to high performance is by the following: if you are ordering your universe, and revealing obstacles to success, as you get closer and closer to order, you become more and more empowered; but if there are 1,000 things to be ordered, and you have ordered 999, your life is still essentially out of order.
So, the effect is nowhere near as great at 999, as it will be when you put the last 1,000th thing in place, in order, or in sequence.
I am thinking about how to take the living circumstances of people and order them, or the living circumstances of my clients, and order the circumstances to such a degree that the orderliness of their lives gives a different force to their part of the confrontation, or the contest, or the dispute.
It is interesting to me that if 999 out of 1,000 things are ordered in your universe, the effect is not very great, although there will be some effect; but at 1,000, there is a transformation (the 100th monkey syndrome); so it is necessary to identify the living tasks, sequence them, take a look at them, to see what it is that you really need to deal with.
What I know from my contact with Est, the forum, and self-expression leadership program, is that some leaders did not have to do anything other than think about fine problems. So there are a few people in the world who can allow their creativity to be, to a certain degree, unleashed. For the most part, they do not have to think about anything except those specific issues and items that came up, momentarily.
Incredible and remarkable results came about because Werner Erhard had some of the very finest thinkers and people around him in life, so that the results actually came out of this synergy, which existed in two ways.
One is, they were very direct, intelligent people who had very specific tasks that they were accountable for, and there would be consequences if they did not accomplish them. Secondly, there were specific measurable results to be accomplished within a set time-frame. That strategy just happens to be how General Motors also runs.
When you take an industrial paradigm about what makes Hewlett Packard great, or Motorola great, or Xerox great, and you take those principles and apply them to human endeavor, versus an endeavor to manufacture cars, manufacture chips, etc., you can get an extraordinary result, because humans are more malleable, and they aren't stamped out like automobile fenders.
When people get into a confrontation or event where everything they have in life is at stake, ("everything" means children, your life, your emotions, your money, etc.), then you have the potential for a breakdown of monumental proportion.
The event is unmanageable in general. The fog of the anxiety, fear, and risk of emotion clouds individual's judgments so much, that they actually deteriorate the situation beyond how much it would normally be deteriorated. This is because they are not ordered, they do not have tasks, nor do they have sequences called "get up, brush your teeth, get a breath of fresh air, then read an affirmation," or whatever else they choose to do.
That technology also works for the garage or other room of the house, where they are going to fix things; this includes the concept of "the screwdriver is in drawer five." It is a simpler version of the fact that Werner Erhard never had to know where the screwdriver was, and there was a period of years when he never drove, but everybody else did. Lastly, if you take a look at the time of absolute brilliance that was exhibited, it was then.
In our current time, Microsoft is an excellent and far-reaching organization. Please note that it gets attacked because it is being excellent; because it is the best in the business. People can't stand that.
Bob Dylan said a great thing in song . . . he said, "People are always trying to get you down in the hole they are in, instead of trying to climb out of their hole."
I have found this piece of wisdom to be a great insight, particularly through operating with people in the middle of a relationship breakup; this major stressor gives them the opportunity to super-ordinate their lives through this event. When opportunity knocks, the brilliant people see the paradigm shift, recognize the opportunity as being an opportunity, and open the door.
Assumption and Fact:
When a person is giving you a report, or relating to you his or her version of what happened, on any specific item, event, or condition, the questions you need to ask are these:
- Is the observation an assumption?
- An assumption has no basis in fact; an assumption is what somebody thinks or feels.
- Is the observation a fact?
- If it is a fact, what evidence are you drawing on to make certain the statement is a fact?
- An example of fact and evidence is as follows: It is daytime outside; I can see the sun.
- What agenda does the person have in reporting the item, condition, event, or complaint?
- When you are looking at the agenda of someone, are they protecting an already entrenched position, protecting their territory, or are they putting out a version of what actually happened that will either get them the position, the rule, or the job that they want in the future? Will it eliminate work for them in the future?
What is the motivation of the person in giving the report? The purpose should hardly ever be ascribed to what the person says it is for. Some examples of this are:
- "I want to tell you this, man to man."
- "I want to tell you the truth."
- "I am only telling you this for the good of Mr. Jones."
- "I am fully for the firm, and it is hard for me to tell you this, but I am going to tell you this anyway."
- "I have come to a realization, and I need to share it with someone."
If you are not looking for unalterable facts versus events that have various versions available in the reporting, then you will not be able to give deadly accurate advice and analysis. When three people see an automobile accident, there will be three different versions.
It is very hard to make decisions (based on that kind of personal observation) about an event that can be interpreted with emotional overlay, self-interest, or ignorance of the topic.
If someone has an opinion about a principle, we should ask:
"What are you basing that principle on?" You must determine what evidence you are looking for in order to make the decision regarding what tactic or activity you are going to recommend or undertake.
I am sure that when we are talking about situations that exist; there are overworked, overemotional, under-informed, and incompetent observations, which, when all mixed together form a brew called "I think this is what ought to happen."
Accurate Analysis Demands Assumption Versus Fact Decisional Critera:
It is essential that you verify what the individual (who is communicating the information to you) did to verify the accuracy of the statement or data.
It is essential that you not only verify the authenticity, but ask hard questions about the experience of the individual in the field, or in interpreting data, to be certain that it is accurate or consistent with what their experience is in that area of business or life.
It is essential that you get hard evidence to verify the success of the individual in the field, or the acknowledgement by other individuals who have an excellent reputation in the field, that this person is an expert; that there is hard evidence by way of written papers that have been acknowledged as accurate; successfully closed business transactions that indicate the individual is successful in that field of endeavor.
The difficulty with analysis of information is that quite often, people who have had absolutely no educational courses and no experience in a field, attempt to understand information transmitted and make money, value, or time commitment judgments in areas or businesses in which they have no experience whatsoever.
Individuals rarely acknowledge their lack of understanding analysis and/or their lack of information in any field.
Individuals simply "speak" and "pass on" incorrect, fuzzy, inaccurate, assumption-driven information. Individuals do not have, as their own personal standard, the refusal to pass on any information, which has not been verified by them as accurate; or that the source they got the information from has been verified with hard evidence or unalterable facts.
This self-imposed standard of what should or should not be passed on is based on what you would be willing to live and die for, if it were true or not true. It is based on an understanding that when you communicate something as being true and accurate, without verifying it, you are participating in misdirection and confusion.
If one wishes to be a person who makes a difference and a person of consequence - a force, in and of themselves - they must be certain that all of their utterances be true and accurate, or they must not make them.
To say "John is a nice man," after having just met him, is not accurate. An accurate communication is "I have just met John and he was nice to me for the 10 minutes we met."
Promoters, producers, and entrepreneurs all have, (as their basic stock in trade), their most important characteristic: the ability to communicate assumptions, hopes, and dreams as if they were real and unalterable facts; and as if they were rock solid, hard as steel, impermeable, and written in accordance with the laws of the universe. Nothing is ever further from the truth than that.
Unsophisticated people take information given from careless, commission-driven individuals as if it were true; as if the promotion or product works; as if 3% of the population of (fill in the blanks) North Dakota, the United States, England, New York City, will purchase the product, and you will make .5% of that.
There is a reason there are so few billionaires and millionaires out of 250,000,000 people in America. The pinnacle of making $150,000 per year, out of the 250,000,000 in the United States is small--maybe 1/10th of 1% or 1/20th of 1%. There are no instant overnight winners, except in the random choice of the lottery.
No one ever puts person A with person B and makes a million dollars.
One cannot live their life based on the concept that all you have to do is have the idea, put the idea together with the right person and then you'll automatically strike it rich.
The way to check your specific business ability is look at your personal benchmarks such as your:
- Bank account
- Tax return
- Car you are driving
- Soles of your shoes
- House
- Living circumstances
- Luxuries
- Monthly life-style
- Quality of the overall people whom you are doing business transactions with on a regular basis
- Net worth
- Gross worth
- How many employees you have
- What professional acknowledgement has been given to you in your field
- Look at whether or not you are considered a teacher in your field (most importantly, not a self-anointed leader, a self-appointed teacher or self-promoting speaker)
It is an unrelenting, remorseless, deadly accurate assessment of your own ability, professionalism, intellect, and education; to assess the specific information given to you that you are being asked to either transmit, pass on, or make a decision upon.
The major failure of individuals in analyzing incoming information is they do not step back and examine the examiner; or to analyze the analyst.
The question you must ask yourself is "What is the basis for my personal ability to accurately analyze this data?" The major problem with that question is that hardly anyone will say, "I do not have the proper education, professional experience, specific experience in this field, or intellectual capacity to make an accurate analysis."
All promoters, producers, and transaction purveyors are highly skilled at sounding as if they know what is true about the data that the sellers are transmitting. There was a famous statement made about ten years ago that people should get into gold stocks, because gold was going to sell at $642.13 per ounce in six months, based on the current condition of the economy. Never happened, did not happen, could not happen, and will not happen...not in this century.
One should check to see what it means when someone says, "I am the President of the United States Gold Standard Company." The immediate question should be:
- How long have you been involved, exclusively, in the sale of gold?
- What are your company's revenues?
- Where are your reserves?
- What professional organizations, regarding gold, are you a member of?
- What professional qualifications do you have that let you deal in gold?
- Give me five people with whom you have dealt in gold with in the last year, who will give you references.
- What is the name of your banker?
- Will you allow me to contact him for a reference? (Bankers now only give references only at their peril if the information is inaccurate.)
- What is the name of your attorney?
- What is the name of your accountant?
- Will you give me a release so that I may talk to them about your qualifications to handle the transactions that you are proposing I invest my money in, my time in, or pass this information on to my friends, clients, or acquaintances about?
The major impediment to accurate information processing is not allowing the thought"I don't know anything about this at all...I cannot truly understand it...I don't understand the vernacular of the transaction"; I need to have a professional analyst review it.
Doctors, lawyers, and wealthy people all have lost billions of dollars by failing to assess and acknowledge their inability to truly understand the intricacies and subtleties of almost any deals.
It is also essential to clearly ratify (and get in writing!) the authority held by the individual to whom you are speaking.
Will the principles of the proposed transaction be bound by the individual who is giving you the presentation, the sales pitch, and the conversation? Do you think for one moment that you ever have the ability, to analyze a contract with boiler plate phrases in it, that may be perfectly clear to you as a lay person, but that has significant legal meaning which is completely unrelated to the actual words you read?
I am a highly experienced litigator, and have been for 34+ years. I don't handle contracts. I have been teaching at the USC Law School for more than 10 years. I do not consider myself to be the appropriate person to analyze any contract. If I don't, then you shouldn't.
Require that the presenter of the data, facts, or deal, qualify himself, and that you are granted the authority and release to check the individual's qualifications, so that you may see how financially successful they have been in their life.
I know that when highly speculative, or questionable deals are constructed, they often take 50 or 100 people who are going to sell the deal, put them in a room, and educate them as to how to communicate the deal in the most attractive possible terms; educate them about what they can and cannot say, and then turn them loose.
After the presenter of deals or transactions are turned loose, there is absolutely no regulation on what they say with regard to words, because they are not written down, they are not recorded; and there are always two versions to what they mean.
Beware of P.O. Boxes, individuals who work out of their home, people who cannot afford a secretary, individuals with answering services only, presenters who will refuse to take you to their living quarters, etc. Look at their clothes, their shoes, and look at their car.
What is the motive for the person giving you the information? It will always be to move you to do something, either to part with time (which is money in a different form), or to part with money itself.
What is the gradient of the relationship, or the quality of the relationship you have with the individual? How well do you know them? Do not be misled by people who say they love their wives; by people with children, or by people on school boards. These are meaningless and, at times, protective colorations and disguises.
Beware of people, at all times, asking you for your friends' names and telephone numbers.
Remember, if you are a person of consequence, an individual of quality, one who makes a difference, when you give a person the name or phone number of a friend of yours, you are putting your stamp of approval on the person who will be contacting them.
They will say, "I am a friend of Jane's." "I am a friend of Bill's." "They gave me your number because I have something wonderful to tell you."
They fall on unsuspecting or unsophisticated ears, and that is not a responsible thing to do.
Many people have false, deceitful resumes and printed background histories. You must, in any deal, verify, that someone was Class of '71 Harvard; Class of '68, Miami Law; Class of '58, Stanford Economics (with courses in economics, etc.) People are improperly in awe of educational backgrounds.
Verify all representations; double-check 'unalterable facts'.
The reason it is so difficult to get into the habit of writing down appointments, telephone calls, what you did day by day, is that the mind knows that you will reveal its sabotage, and that is the last thing it wants you to do. Accurately written time-dated contacts, tasks, and observation records uncover your daily and weekly activities.
A personal review of these activities will allow you to track your effectiveness, your competence, and your habits; all of which are the last thing that the imp who lives in your mind wants you to do.
This is also why you must have your tape recorder and a notebook. The mind will absolutely conceal any revealing thoughts you have, when and as they occur, as fast as it can.
This disappearing act overrides hard knowledge that one may have from courses, consciousness exercises, etc. The mind is a better hider than the self is a confessor.
One of the purposes one must have in a relationship/partnership is that they do not disturb their partner, create upset around their partner, or be sharp with their partner.
An intelligent and mature view of the partnership/relationship is that if you are around an individual 10 hours a day, or 24 hours a day, or seven days a week, all of the imperfections and less than perfect visions and performances will come up. It should be a choice to ease those human miscues, in order to make the person who made the miscue, comfortable.
The preceding paragraphs that address assumption and fact coming from strangers attempting to get you to part with time, money (or both), is dwarfed by the deadly effects regarding your performance, your integrity, your goals, and the execution of your life plan by your own individual assumptions regarding information that you use to operate on.
The individual you need to be the hardest on, regarding the assumption of fact, is yourself.
If you can hold yourself to the same meticulously accurate data that you act on, change your decisions or positions on, plan on in your dealings with other people, then your level increases immediately in the realm of effectiveness, force, and integrity.
If you take no action, and change no position that you have until you have absolutely, unequivocally verified the information upon which you are about to act, your performance, reliability, and consistency will be accelerated and enhanced ten-fold.
This is not a comfortable standard. This interdicts our own chatter and background conversation about how close we are to our dreams, or how well we are doing. It is essential to not know how well we do, but how well we are actually doing.
By examining our own performance in the bright light of hard evidence, unalterable fact, and outside verification from someone who has remorseless compassion about reporting to us our current state of mind, current actions, or current performance, we will be enormously enhanced.
Inviting such difficult examination is not a trait that many people exercise. It is too uncomfortable; it is far too easy to live within our dreams, lies, and misjudgments about ourselves, rather then becoming a stand for accuracy, integrity, and truth in our own self-assessment.
It is far more difficult to assess someone else's truth, accuracy, and integrity when we are not rock-solid and grounded in those standards ourselves. Horse puckey purveyors get fooled by other horse puckey purveyors. Birds of a feather flock together.
If you lie down with dogs, you come up with fleas.
All of these are observations, which need to be reviewed when taking a look at ourselves. The reward for being difficult with ourselves is that we become significantly less available to be fooled by anyone else.
If we are true to ourselves, and the standards by which we are being true to ourselves are the ones described, we will become a person to be reckoned with, and more importantly, someone who can be trusted and looked to for an accurate reading of what is happening at the moment. That is an enormous gift to your business associates, your friends, and most importantly, to yourself.
SuperOrder and High Performance Your Life:
By Michael Kelly, Esq.