Focus, Feelings and Patterns of Questions

Focus Triggers Feelings

I want to begin this post with a simple question; in the last 30 minutes what have you, the reader, been focused on? Perhaps it was with a problem with work; great news you just received from a short call; or your kid asking you the same question for the hundredth time with a two-minute period. It could have been any number of things.

What we focus on directly determines what we feel. For example, an individual's manager gives some corrective feedback about taking more time to listen to people's side of an issue during the week's tactical meeting. John feels irritation with the feedback, which feeds into a sense of despise for his manager Kjetil also feels irritation, but it leads him to feel that his manager is trying to support him.

One thing is what we focus on, but what is also important to understand is the meaning we assign to that focus. We may wake up one Monday morning, look outside the bedroom window out onto a gray, cold, dark autumn morning. Some people's mood and motivation will be dampened and down, because of the what that particular mornings weather means to them. Some others will feel uplifted and looking forward to the day, because they reason with themselves that they will be inside the office most of the day engaged in an interesting project and the weather really has no significant relevance.

Learned Patterns

The meaning we assign to what we are focusing on at any particular moment is determined by our language, and more specifically by the questions we ask ourselves. We have a learned-pattern of questions that we ask ourselves time and time again. What do I mean?

Human being are pattern-based creatures. That is, almost everything we do, say, think, and feel in our day-to-day lives are based on learned patterns. We have an experience, we learn from that experience, and if repeated often enough it establishes a pattern (in some cases the event may only have to take place once to establish a learned pattern). For example, a person may as a child have gone up to a dog to pet it. The dog was scared and bit the child's hand. That person develops a pattern to avoid dogs. When her focus fall on a dog, she assigns a meaning that the dog is going to bite, and thus she avoids the dog. This is her pattern when it comes to dogs.

Questions as Learned-Patterns

We have a tendency to ask outselves a fixed pattern of questions depending on what we are focusing on. For simplicity's sake, focus can be categorized into three areas: what we can control; what we can influence; and what we can't control.

If our focus is on the areas of what we can control and influence, then the questions we ask oursevles tend to be constructive and opportunity-seeking in nature. For example, we may ask ourselves some of the following questions:

• What can I learn from this?
• How can I apply this to other areas of my life?
• What can I do with this experience/information?
• What won't I do next time? What will i do next time?
• What do I need more of? What do I need less of?
  
• This situation really blows, but where do I go from here?

These questions will tend to make us feel a number of resourceful feelings like a sense of control, oversight, certainty, growth, opportunity etc.

On the other hand, if our focus tends to be on those situations where have no-control, the questions we tend to ask ourselves tend to act as road blocks preventing from learning and moving forward. The questions tend to be negative of nature and endless-loops.

• Why did this happen to me?
• Why did events have to play out like this?
• Why does this always affect me?
• Why can't I find a solution?
• What is wrong with me?
• Why am I so useless and stupid?

Just writing these questions is depressing the hell out of me. Thankfully, I hardly ever do this anymore. For some people, this is their fixed pattern of questions. No wonder they tend to find themselves more often in an un-resourceful state than a resourceful one.

The questions we ask ourselves, depending on how we choose to focus on events, will have a direct influence on how we feel.

If you want to help someone, first find out what they are focusing on. Is it something they can control and/or influence or is it something where they have no-control? When they begin to describe the situation it is vital to pay attention, because they will tell you the questions they are asking themselves.

Important Note
The patterns people establish work on an unconscious level. Thus, the questions they routinely ask themselves are also being asked at an unconscious level. It is only by drawing their attention to this fact, that they can start to take control over their patterns. This awareness they then have the ability to change the questions they ask, the meaning they assign to an event and finally how they feel.

Anthony Robbins & Psychology

I find that at least once a month I am going back to my collection of psychology text books from grad school to refresh my mind on a particular approach to counseling or clinical psychology. What usually triggers this can be simple curiosity or a client who presents a particular challenge.

I was not a student who followed any particular discipline or branch of psychology. I had, and still have, a rather eclectic interest in all things psychological. It was a couple of years after grad school that a buddy of mine gave me an Anthony Robbins archaic tape collection from the mid-80's. I listened to it and thought it was interesting enough, but it really didn't spark that intense of a curiosity.

It was not until a few years later that I was again reintroduced to Robbins by another friend who this time gave me an mp3 collection. By this time, Robbins had been in the business of helping people for 20 to 25 years. This time when I listened to him he caught my attention. He still had the same vitality and energy in his voice, but now it was tempered with experience and humility. I listened and I learned. What he had to say added very much to my schooling in psychology.

Back to my main point. When I return to my book case or my iTunes library, I find that I am listening more to Anthony Robbins. His way of helping people is highly-effective and compliments much that I learned studying clinical psychology.

So for any of you coaches out there (or anyone who is looking to change for the better), I would suggest listening to anything Robbins in the last decade or so.

I find listening to his audio products very engaging. As for seeing him live, I have not done that, yet. I don't think I would either. Why is that? It seems so evangelical and cult-ish. With the chanting and the cheering.

Perhaps with time my views will change. Until that time, I think I'll stick with the mp3s and the insight and useful skills and techniques for helping people.

Twitter as a Business Tool?

I've been using Twitter for a few weeks now. I finally decided to to jump in and actively use the service for a number of reasons. One, it was to create a community around people interested in coaching, psychology, leadership and general business. Second, I found that it grabs the attention of crawling search engines, and subsequently, drives a lot of a traffic to my website. Third, (mind you it is only a very small fraction) it has generated business for me and MINDtalk, in the way of new clients.

Twitter is still a tool that I have yet to fully utilize. That is, there is still much about it that I can learn to use.

As I usually do, I crawl the latest blogs looking for new insights that can add to my knowledge-base. I found this one interesting blog entry from a tweet, and it's about Twitter as seen from a management model.

Please visit the original source at http://www.socialmediatoday.com/SMC/115317. Enjoy the following entry by Gary Eckstein.

Twitter will not Survive - A Management Model Explanation

by Gary Eckstein

When consumers have little choice or when a product, technology or service is at the very beginning of the Product Lifecycle (also termed the Product Life Cycle), quality is not as an important differentiator as in mature products or markets. Quality becomes increasingly important as the product or market matures and moves through the Product Lifecycle stages.

What is the Product Lifecycle?

The Product Lifecycle (variously attributed to Levitt, Bartels, Converse and others) has four stages; Introduction, Growth, Maturity and Decline (the Lifecycle is sometimes presented as a five stage model; Introduction, Growth, Maturity, Saturation and Decline). A new product or service moves through the Lifecycle stages and each stage has distinct characteristics. The purpose of this article is not to explain the Product Lifecycle in depth but there are various excellent resources which explain this model.

What is Quality Management?

Quality Management is about improving the quality of products and services and ensuring that quality meets defined criteria. The quality of a service or product is a differentiating factor as may be seen with the success of Japanese Auto companies and the decline of the American Auto giants (e.g. GM and Chrysler). Japanese Car makers such as Toyota realized that competitive advantage may be attained through manufacturing Cars of a superior quality to those of American competitors. This quality focus has certainly shown its market relevance.

Quality Management and the Product Lifecycle

Quality becomes an increasingly important consumer decision factor as a product or service moves through the Lifecycle. In the Introduction and early stages of the Growth stage of the Product Lifecycle, consumers are ‘early adopters’ and are generally willing to accept quality flaws as a trade-off to being the first to own or use the new product. As the product moves into the Maturity stage and beyond consumers have more product choice therefore are more quality conscious.

As an example of this think of early Cellular/Mobile phone networks. Early adopters accepted poor reception however consumers will no longer consider poor reception.

Google Search, Quality Management and the Product Lifecycle

Here is a topical example of the importance of quality and how it relates to the Product Lifecycle: Google originally gained search market share quickly based on two quality basics; search speed and search accuracy. Before Google arrived, Lycos, Yahoo and other major search engines of the time offered slow and inaccurate results on the Search Results Pages (SERPs). Google appeared at the beginning of the Growth stage of the Search Engine product lifecycle and is a great example of the fact that being first to market is not necessarily as important as ensuring quality. Google Search is also a very good example of ongoing quality improvement. Google is constantly updating its search algorithms in order to best deliver the most accurate results to people as quickly as possible.

Twitter and impending Doom

Twitter looks to be in some trouble! Sure the number of Twitter users is increasing at an impressive rate however the micro-blogging industry is in its infancy (i.e. the Introduction stage). There aren’t many viable/realistic micro-blogging competitors out there. If Twitter is to micro-blogging what Yahoo was to Search in the 1990’s, then Twitter needs to concentrate on quality … and fast. Twitter is storing vast and escalating volumes of data. Increasingly low quality or ‘spam’ type data is appearing on Twitter and the recent ping attack on Twitter shows that it is in the sights of disruptive predators. Google is also making its search far more time relevant which has been one of Twitter’s key strengths up until now.

As micro-blogging progresses along the product Lifecycle consumers will want increasing quality in terms of relevancy of data. Just at a time when quality is becoming more important, the quality of Twitter content is subsiding. Micro-blogging competitors and new entrants must be feeling rather positive at present just as Google felt when they took on the giants of Search of the time in the form of Yahoo and Lycos.

Coaching Tools of Imagery

In this entry, I would like to describe three of the seven tools of
imagery from he discipline of sports psycology I use when coaching
clients.

The first is the ability to paint a clear picture of what is wanted or
needed. A majority of people, when describing or telling about
something, tend to use language that is vague and general. This allows room for the possibility for misunderstanding or miscommunication to creep into the communication. The best remedy for this is to use language that is specific and concrete.

Remember- people are not able to do something if they can't picture it
in their minds. When we communicate in order to help someone improve
their performance, we need to remember that any performance consists
of an (or a series of) action/behaviors.

If we want our message to be clearly understood, we need to be
specific and concrete. To improve performance, the message should
communicate what he/she should see, hear, feel and do.

For example, if I'm taking golf lessons from a pro and he simply says,
'hit the ball straight' or 'stay on the fairway and out of the rough',
this is too vague and general. At the same time as my frustration is
increasing with his inadequate instruction, the 'how do I do that'
question grows in equal proportion.

If I am to improve my game, a good instructor is going to tell me how
I should see my stance, how I should hold amd feel the grip of the
club, what I should hear when I hit the ball squarely. He uses the
language of imagery to paint a clear picture by specifically telling
me what I should see, feel and hear when I'm swinging the club.

The second tool is the ability to link a current action or behavior to
an end goal. Leaders, teachers and coaches are consistently trying to
motivate their people to increase performance and build skill. One way
of doing this is by painting how a current behavior is linked to the
acheivment of an overall goal.

For example, a boxing coach will mention how training on the speed-bag
increases eye-hand coordination and reaction speed, which makes a
significant difference in the ring by delivering more punches with
speed and snap.

In a business scenario, getting a client to see that practicing
conflict resolution skills with current challenges will increase his
competence as an effective leader and communicator.

It is important to link the 'what' - the present action or behavior-
to the 'why' - the reasoning why what they are doing leads to a payoff
- to the 'where' what the payoff will be in the end.

Another reason to use the second tool is that it allows the employee/
athlete to understand the direction you want to take them. By
communicating the end-goal, it also allows them to be able to map out
the steps necessary to acheive the goal depending on it's complexity.

The third, and final, tool that I'll describe in this entry is getting
the employee/athlete to translate words into imagery. This is critical
when the person is internalizing instructions. To be able to
completely understand the instuction they need to be able to imagine
doing it.

A key part of learning anything is the ability to take new knowledge
and to intergrate it with exsisting knolwedge. To do this the learner
needs to be able to see himself/herself doing/feeling/hearing the
action. By getting the learner to describe in his/her own words what
he/she sees and hears it speeds the intergration of new knowledge.

For example, after teaching a client the appropriate way to give
corrective feedback, I would ask her what I would see and hear her
doing if she was giving appropriate feedback to a colleague. By her
explaining it to me she went through the mental exercise of
translating my instructions into imagery. Again, she is spoke the
language of performance, which her mind and body can very easily
understand and integrate.

The take-home message is this: insure the message you're communicating
is specific and concrete. The listener will precisely understand,
through the language of imagery, what he/she has to see, hear, feel
and do in order to perform at a higher level. If he/she can picture
the behavior/action in their mind, they will be able to perform the
behavior/action.

Cordially,

Jason W Liem
MINDtalk@email.com
www.mindtalk.no

Sports Psych and Giving Feedback

Communication is a skill that is often overlooked. Indeed, when we are in the presence of others we are constantly communicating, whether we like it or not. What we don’t say often says more than what we do say, and we sometimes say one thing and mean another
What is communication?

Is that a strange question to ask? Well, not really, because many of us will have experienced the manager at work that believes he is communicating through his barrage of memos, or the teacher that talks at the class but doesn’t listen. Both of these people communicate, to a degree, but are they effective?

Verbal communication occurs when we talk, listen, shout, sing, write or read. Non-verbal communication occurs through facial expression and body language, and can be very powerful. We’ve all noticed when someone says one thing and means another. That person has failed to realise that while they verbally communicating one thing, they are sending out a powerful and contradictory message when they quickly cough or shift their eyes from yours.
With whom do athletes communicate?

Athletes in different sports have to communicate with many different people in different ways. The elite athlete might communicate very openly and emotionally with a coach, say, that they have worked with for a long time – even more so than with their own parents. The same athlete may have to hold formal, contractual discussions or conduct press conferences. The variety of different people that an athletes may need to communicate with is great, and include coaching staff, the media, fans, team-mates, scientists, family, officials (umpire/referee) and competitors.
When do athletes communicate?

Apart from “all of the time”, of course! There are times at which effective communication are key. These include:

* In training – getting more out of your coaching sessions, letting your coach know when you are experiencing difficulty and helping team-mates out with their training;
* Before competition– making sure your coach knows whether preparation is going well; making sure your coach’s pep talk is helping you;
* In competition – using signals and code to communicate tactics, to help team-mates perform, to keep the team together, to request help; and
* After competition – feeding back on how you felt to your coach, asking for feedback from your coach, seeking emotional support; dealing with family & other important people.