Transformation & Mental Reprogramming

What we “know” can be as bad as what we “don’t know.” It is a fact that the majority of people get in trouble by not understanding this simple maxim. The bottom line is that what ‘breaks’ us is often what can ‘make’ us, but most people are unaware of it and thus become lost in their own anxiety mindsets or crawl into the proverbial bottle. It was not an accident that Madam Curie suffered from a nervous breakdown just prior to both of her Nobel Prizes or that Lance Armstrong had testicular and brain cancer prior to setting an unprecedented number of wins at the Tour de France.

Knowing too much can prove our Achilles Heel, as has been shown in the lives of those who broke down but refused to let it interfere with their breakthroughs. Russian biologist Ilya Prigogine won the Nobel Prize for showing that the mind is much like a bone. If you break a bone in your arm and it heals properly it will never break there again. Why? Because it heals stronger where it was broken. Well, the mind and emotional system is like a bone. Prigogine told us, “Many systems of breakdown are actually harbingers of breakthrough.” In his validation of this principle he wrote:

“Psychological suffering, anxiety and collapse lead to new emotional, intellectual, and spiritual strengths. Confusion and death can lead to new scientific ideas.” (Dr. Ilya Prigogine 1984 – Order out of Chaos)

What does this have to do with winning the game of life or business? A lot! The past is prologue but most people remain lost in the debacles of the past. This author found, in doing his doctoral work on success, that out of chaos comes empowerment. One of his subjects in that study was the founder of today’s Big Box retailers known as the Warehouse industry – Costco, Sam’s, Home Depot and Best Buy. It happened only because Sol Price was fired when he was 60-years old. He was out of work and walking the streets of San Diego for solace, and talking to small retailers, when he had an epiphany. The small retailers told him about the problems of getting candy, cigars and other items every two weeks from a middleman and paying 35% for the privilege. Sol saw this as a very old-fashioned way of doing business and rented a large warehouse outside of town and contacted the small retailers to come to him. He cut costs dramatically by having no chandeliers, carpets or other social amenities so that he could have margins of 12%, instead of 35%, on the products they bought. Sol became a billionaire, at an age when most men were retiring, by not quitting and by finding a reason to get up each morning.

This is not an isolated case. Walt Disney was fired as a cartoonist, his idyllic job, went bankrupt in his very first venture in Kansas and then when he launched his first cartoon hit – Oswald the Rabbit – it was stolen from him by a nefarious New Yorker. Walt suffered a nervous breakdown and on his train ride back to California drew Mickey Mouse – and the rest, as they say, is history.

An even more memorable example of hitting bottom and reaching the top comes from the life of Buckminster Fuller. Bucky’s daughter died when he was absent and he took it personally. Shortly after this tragedy, he was fired from his job by his father-in-law. When he called his mother for support, she told him he was “a loser.” What did Bucky do? He walked to Lake Michigan to commit suicide since life was no longer worth the hassle. Sitting on the cold steps of Lake Michigan he began thinking about his life and dilemma and told himself, “You do not have the right to eliminate yourself; you do not belong to you; you belong to the universe.” Bucky decided to go within and spent the next two years as a mute refusing to speak to anyone, including his long-suffering wife. Out of that transformational period rose one of the most incredible innovative geniuses America has produced. The geodesic dome that adorns the entrance to Disneyland and all of the world’s enclosed stadiums is due to Fuller’s introspective eminence. Out of tragedy was born an incredible superman.

Mind Viruses & Economic Viability

Most people identify with their jobs to such a degree they go into shock or play the tranquilizer game of life when they lose their job. Wrong! They should not have such an identity in the first place. Identify with some personal and viable long-term career goal and then a job loss is merely a temporary distraction on the way to Shangri La. What is this all about? The need for mental reprogramming! All of us are walking around with mental messages from the past that were put there by well-meaning parents, teachers, preachers trying to keep us safe. Well, safe is not correlated with success.

We all walk around unaware that 95% of our decisions are unconscious. And on top of tha,t a similar number of our decisions are self-serving to the point of being self-destructive. That is why focus groups are not the means to answers in new marketing ventures. New Coke bombed because of asking people what they thought about products. People don’t know, but they think they do. Coke executives listened to focus groups on taste tests and capitulated. Harvard’s Gerald Zaltman looked at the data and found that focus groups are unfounded. He wrote, “People can’t tell you what they think because they don’t know. Their deepest thoughts, the ones that account for their behavior in the marketplace, are unconscious.”

This tells us to dump the mental baggage of the past and fill our brains with positive new axioms for the future. New brain research has shown that we can now alter how we think. It was said best by Michael Merzenich at the University of California:

“In order to keep the brain fit we must learn something new rather than simply replaying already-mastered skills. It causes the brain to grow and expand. We all have become habitual in many ways and it makes us mediocre.”

The following table offers insight into mind-modeling via the use of a snow-sledding metaphor:

Mind Reprogramming Metaphor – Snow Sledding and Behaviour Modification –

Nothing spreads atrophy like being immobilized in the same environment.

“The brain has the capacity to learn and be changed” – Michael Merzenich

What Makes Us Strong is Often What Makes Us Weak

Homer saw the truth in all this 2500 years ago when he depicted Prometheus as a Greek Titan who defied his big boss Zeus. The defiant titan ignored Zeus and brought light to man. This had made him the poster boy for entrepreneurship.

Is there a price when we do such a thing? Sure! For his defiance, he was chained to a rock where his liver was torn asunder. It is no accident that psychologists use Prometheus as the metaphor for those of us who see the world globally but deal with what we see locally (Intuitive-Thinkers). Psychology has labeled these types Prometheans – or change masters. They tend to see the world through a philosophical filter and deal with what they see rationally. Prometheans see business as a game and the rewards are the way we keep score in that game. Those who permit themselves to be destroyed by what is bad in their life tend to self-medicate or self-deprecate or even worse.

The bottom line in all this is to deal with the bad stuff. If you are part of the problem, then change, and get out of those habitual behaviors that cause you problems and anxiety.

Start sledding down new paths and break new snow – and while you are doing it you will be burning new and different brain cells that are more positive in your life.

Dr. Terry Jackson is C-Suite Advisor, Thought Leader, Solutions Provider, Organizational Acceleration Consultant and Change Management Architect. Dr. Jackson partners with Executives and Organizations to align Strategy, People, and Processes to optimize and sustain Peak Business Performance. His methodologies increase Profit and Productivity, help manage change and reduce organizational cost.