Train Your Brain For Success

by Roger Seip

  “Daddy, I forgot my giraffe!”

  “Daddy, I have to pee!”

  “Daddy, we forgot the permission slip!”

  And on and on. It's nobody's fault, it's just life! I make light of this, but haven't you experienced this in your life? Not just trying to take a trip to the grocery store with kids—I mean anytime you try to take your life from where you are to where you really want to be. You've committed to lose 20 pounds and get in great shape, but somehow by the end of the first week you've already skipped going to the gym twice. Or you've decided to grow your business by 30 percent, but for some reason you just can't muster the motivation to make the calls. Or maybe you got off to a great start on some project, but illness or some other external circumstance derailed your progress. In my life and in the lives of our clients it seems that anytime we set out to do anything, obstacles pop up and slow us down or get us off track. Some of these obstacles come from outside of us, some come from inside of us, and some of them look like external circumstances but really we've created them unconsciously. The good news is that you can deal with them and get where you want to go, if you're prepared and have a game plan.

  Three Emotional Barriers

  Unwillingness to Accept 100% Responsibility

  The first and most damaging is an unwillingness to accept 100 percent responsibility. Most people are simply not willing to accept that they are in charge of their life 100 percent. I am far from the first person to make this observation. In The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, Stephen Covey talks extensively about accepting responsibility, or as he calls it: response-ability. In his outstanding book, The Success Principles, Jack Canfield makes accepting 100 percent responsibility for your life the very first chapter. The reason that so many of the greatest personal development thinkers of all time hammer on this principle so hard is that so many people miss it. The vast majority of human beings do not accept total responsibility for their actions or results. Yet taking this step is the first thing necessary for any growth to occur. I'm not saying that most of us accept zero responsibility—most people will admit that they have some role in the quality of their life—but for most of us the concept of 100 percent responsibility is foreign.

  How can you spot this barrier? Quite simply, it looks like blaming. If you've ever found yourself blaming a failure of any kind on the government, the economy, your stupid boss, your lazy employees, your spouse, the weather, your parents, your kids, your birth order, or any number of easy targets, you are dealing with this barrier. If you continue accepting anything less than 100 percent responsibility, you create what is known as a victim mentality. If you think and act like a victim, you simply won't get very far. You and you alone are responsible for the quality of your life.

  It's helpful to distinguish between accepting responsibility and accepting blame. Accepting blame indicates that you did something wrong. Accepting responsibility is done for the specific purpose of dealing with reality. For example:

  I have a family history of cancer. My father died at a relatively young age from colon cancer, and so did his mother. So there is a gene in the Seip family that lends itself to developing this disease, and almost certainly this gene was passed on to me. This is not my fault. It just is, and it makes no sense for anyone to blame me for this genetic predisposition. It makes even less sense for me to blame anyone else! What does make sense is to accept 100 percent responsibility for this circumstance, and do everything in my power to influence it. When I accept responsibility, I eat well, exercise regularly, learn how to care for my body, and get the appropriate tests done very early. Blame gets us nowhere. Accepting responsibility is the thing that enables us to move forward.

  So how do we overcome this barrier? The very act of setting goals is one of the biggest things that we can do to cue our subconscious that we are in charge. Think about it—if we don't believe we're responsible for our outcomes, how could we possibly set goals at all? When you sit down, think about the future, set a goal, and begin working toward that goal, that very act is an act of taking responsibility. Whenever I've needed to get some aspect of my life back on track, just sitting down with myself and telling myself, “Okay, this is where we're going” is the first (and often only) step necessary to reassert who's in charge. The more frequently we do this, the better we train our minds to create our reality.

  Unwillingness to Look Foolish

  The second emotional barrier to growth is an unwillingness to look foolish. This is also known as fear of criticism or fear of failure. Most of us are simply afraid to look bad in front of anyone else. This starts around late elementary school or middle school when fitting in becomes terribly important to us. It's detrimental because reaching our goals inherently involves two things—taking risks and getting out of our comfort zone. If we're held back by an unwillingness to look foolish, we can't do either.

  How can you tell if you're dealing with this barrier? It manifests as excuse-making. If you've ever known (or been) someone who talks a good game but then always has an excuse when it comes time to actually perform, you recognize the classic sign of fear of looking foolish.

  If you want the antidote to this barrier, it's simple: Develop a strategy and get over yourself! In the vast majority of cases, when we are afraid of looking foolish we are simply making up a fictional story. I was recently at a party with a friend who had just attended her 20-year reunion. These days she's pretty cool, but by her own admission she was not one of the cool kids in high school. So she bumped into a guy who had been very popular in high school. They didn't know each other well, but got to talking, and shortly my friend was shocked to hear this guy say, “Susan, I was always afraid to talk to you. I wanted to ask you out, but you just seemed way out of my league.” Which was funny, because the whole time in school, she had been afraid to talk to him for the exact same reason!

  My father used to say, “you wouldn't worry so much what other people think about you, if you realize how seldom they do.” Really, who are all those people who you think will make fun of you? Most of them have their own problems and aren't paying attention at all. The rest would actually be totally supportive or even intimidated if they knew what you were shooting for.

  For a first strategy, I would go all the way back to the five characteristics of an effective goal. Specifically, the first one: Make dead sure that you have selected goals that are meaningful to you. Second, do the things we discussed to heighten your focus. When you are chasing after something you are really passionate about you won't care what anyone thinks. When you devote your focus to achieving that goal and fill your mind with positive thoughts, you'll simply crowd out your fear. Third, a coach or accountability partner can be really helpful. Someone who you know is going to be supportive and cheer you on is an invaluable tool for overcoming your unwillingness to look foolish.

  Unwillingness to Take Action

  Our third emotional barrier to achievement is an unwillingness to take action. To achieve the things you want requires action—in many cases, massive and immediate action. If you want to make sales, you will need to talk to some people. If you want to get in shape, you will need to get to the gym. If you want to get a date, you will need to ask. Nothing happens until you make something happen.

  There are two common syndromes that identify this barrier. One is procrastination, the tendency to put things off. The other syndrome, just as common, is known as analysis paralysis. If you've ever known (or been) someone who gathers all the knowledge, does all the research, makes all the preparations, and then just never actually gets started, you're looking at an unwillingness to take action. These folks spend tons of time getting ready to get set, but never go. Analysis paralysis is really easy to disguise as good, rational, decision making. The trouble is that you end up being like someone who wants to go on a really great trip, but then waits for every light to turn green before they'll leave the driveway! You'll notice that successful people who hit their goals have a pretty strong tendency to “ready,
fire, aim.” I'm not saying make rash decisions; I'm saying most of us tend to err on the side of not enough action.

  How do you overcome procrastination and analysis paralysis? Again, go back to the five characteristics of effective goals, this time characteristic number three. If your goals are the right size—big enough to challenge but small enough to be believable—that will help a lot. Much of this particular barrier comes from being intimidated or overwhelmed. If you've structured your goals in a way that you can clearly see the finish line, that helps you to feel confident.

  Remember, just take the first step. And only after you've taken that step take the next. Everyone struggles to some degree with unwillingness to take action. I personally struggle with my own inertia in lots of areas. I have a lot of days when I need to make a few dozen sales calls and I don't want to. I have a lot of days when I plan to work out or run a few miles and I don't want to do it. And on and on, the point being that when I feel like this, I've learned that my feelings of distaste or intimidation disappear completely as soon as I actually start. Once I've made one or two calls, I suddenly want to make the rest of them. Once I've done the first quarter mile, the next four feel great. Action really does cure fear.

  Here's a little incident I witnessed in a parking lot. A mother was walking out of a store with her son. The kid was somewhere around three years old, and was making it very clear that he did not want to get in the car.

  “I don't wanna! Noooo, I don't wanna!”

  His mom (who seemed to know this drill) said calmly, “You don't want to get in?”

  “No, I don't wanna!”

  She smiled and said, “That's fine. You don't have to wanna, you just have to do it. Let's go.”

  And the kid got in the car. We sometimes have to treat our own brains like that preschooler. You don't have to wanna, you just need to get going.

  Mental Barriers

  Inability to Stay on Track

  One of the biggest mental blocks we struggle with is that we humans get sidetracked really easily. Sometimes any distraction will do.

  “I know I need to get in shape, but that quart of ice cream in the freezer just looked so good. Oops.”

  “I know I need to pay off my credit cards, but I thought—well, just one more flat screen TV. Oops.”

  “Well, I know there's this part of my sales process that really gets good results, but I just forgot to do it six times in a row. Oops.”

  “I was going to write this book, but somehow I found myself playing spider solitaire for an hour. Oops!”

  If it sounds like I am making fun of these, I am. Some of this is due to how our brains are wired, but a lot of this inability to stay on track is just a lack of clarity and specificity about what we want to accomplish.

  So be extremely specific and clear in what your goals are. Nearly everyone needs to be much more specific in their thinking. For some reason, I usually have to take my clients and coax or berate them into thinking more specifically. I ask them to write out their goals and they come back with things like:

  Get in better shape.

  Sell more properties.

  Pay off debt.

  Go on vacation.

  Which are fine, but they do nothing for your brain. Most people resist the idea of being specific in their objectives, so—don't be like most people. Remember Mort Utley?

  “The reason most people don't get what they want is that they don't actually know what they want.” Be smarter than that. Your brain needs something to focus on, and in the absence of a very clear and specific objective, it will always default to what is easiest and most immediate. So start with making your goals specific and clear.

  A second strategy for staying on track goes back to something I said earlier about our wiring: Our brains are wired to notice and gravitate toward things that are different. If something is out of the ordinary, our natural programming forces us to pay attention to it. Back in the day, when something different was the shadow of a sabertooth tiger hunting us, this was really a helpful trait. Nowadays, it just leads us to be easily distracted. Your wiring is not your fault, but you are responsible for doing something about it. So here's the strategy:

  Identify what commonly distracts you and eliminate it.

  In the world of health and nutrition there's a saying: “Smart eating begins with smart shopping.” If you have junk to eat in your house, you will eventually end up eating it, just because it's there and it's easy. In the world of building wealth, one of the most basic principles is to pay yourself first—take a percentage of your income every month and set it aside where you can't get it easily. Both of these strategies work so well it's almost like magic. But it's not magic, it just makes sense. If you eliminate the ability to make poor choices, you make many fewer poor choices.

  Here's the key: When you do this, you don't even notice the difference. You only notice the drastically improved result. When I don't have junk food in my house, I hardly even notice it isn't there. I just have a snack that doesn't wreck my body. And if I ever do think, “Hmmmm, I'd really love some Cheetos,” it's too much trouble to actually go get them. So it ends up being just a passing thought, rather than a couple of thousand calories' worth of saturated fat going into my body. I don't notice the pain; I just notice when the doctor says, “Wow, your blood pressure is the lowest I've ever seen.” When I first started saving 10 percent of my income, I noticed zero difference in my day-to-day quality of life. I had just as much fun, did just as much cool stuff, and enjoyed my life at least as much as before. I just noticed that at year end I had several thousand dollars growing in some investments. Amazing.

  So make the commitment right now to eliminate what gets you off track. If you need to clean out your fridge, do it. If TV is sucking your energy and you need to cancel cable, do it. If you need to stop responding within five seconds to every e-mail, shut off the alarm that says, “You've got mail.” Whatever is getting you off track will continue getting you off track until you eliminate it, so eliminate it. It will be less painful than you think. Day to day you won't notice the difference—you'll just notice when you start hitting your goals with much greater frequency and speed.

  Overwhelm/Overthinking/Too Much Pressure

  The last mental barrier that I wanted to address is the issue of being overwhelmed by your goals, or putting too much pressure on yourself. Most people tend to freak themselves out, which hurts performance. In our memory training workshops, we talk about how “stress is the number one killer of your memory.” Well, the same thing goes for any area where performance is important. A small amount of pressure can be helpful in providing energy, but negative stress or too much pressure can really shut down your brain. And a lot of the stress we experience is self-generated. We actually create our stress through what I call overthinking. There's a kind of relaxed intensity that gets results. There's a great story about Franz Klammer, the Olympic downhill skier. Going into his final run, Klammer was in contention, but behind enough that he needed to essentially break the course record to win the gold. Before his run he was laughing and joking around. When the gates opened, he made one of the ugliest runs of the whole Olympic games. His start was technically wrong and he looked like he was about to wipe out for much of the run. At the bottom, however, he had done what he needed. He broke the course record and won the gold!

  Afterwards, all the reporters wanted to analyze his performance. They wanted know what he was thinking, why he did what he did, and so on. And he just didn't have an answer. They kept asking stuff like, “Why didn't you push harder on your poles out of the gate?” and “Why did you take that angle on such and such curve?” Klammer just kept having to say “You know, I don't know, I didn't really think about it.” Finally, when pressed for an answer to the question “Come on, you had to be thinking about something—what was it?” His answer was:

  “Going fast, I guess.”

  There's a time for thinking and a time for letting go of thinking, so here are a couple of strate
gies for facilitating this relaxed intensity.

  First of all, do your thinking all at once. When you are in the middle of doing what you need to do, that's not the time for conscious thinking. Some people have what I'll call “leftover thinking,” when the time has come to be performing (time to let the subconscious take over), but they're still thinking (consciously). Usually this happens because of a nagging suspicion that “I'm not ready yet, I'm not prepared.” Do all your thinking at once, then pull the trigger.

  Secondly, to eliminate being overwhelmed, take your goals and break them down into bite-size pieces. For example, I recently set a quarterly sales goal that was going to be about 35 percent bigger than my biggest sales quarter ever. At first, thinking about it kind of made me gulp; it was a bit intimidating to think of it all in one piece. But when I broke it down to specifically how many presentations I would need to give, how many phone calls I would have to make, and how much business I would need to generate per client, I realized, “Well I can totally do that!” When I then broke that down to what I would need to do each week and each day, my confidence skyrocketed because I saw that the daily activities were actually well within my comfort zone. You'll find that if you take your end goal and think backwards from it—sort of “reverse engineer” it down to specific activities—it's amazing how you get rid of that overwhelming and overthinking that can be so crippling. Once you have a plan that's specific, then you can shut off the thinking and just execute. Fun!

  Here's a last strategy for overwhelming/overthinking and too much pressure—make it a game! Really, one of the biggest things that trips people up is that they put too much pressure on themselves. So make it a little less serious—everyone loves a good game. So make a game of your goals! Here are two of my favorites.