FACING THE HUNDREDTH REJECTION

I would like to answer some important life questions. Firstly, why does losing and rejection feel so bad, and how do you carry on after the hundredth rejection? Is there such a thing as a rejection too far and why should we try for the 101st time? By the time I have finished, you will hopefully have a better understanding of yourself, the world you live in and the strength to carry on.

Firstly, what is it about rejection and losing that makes it feel so bad? The short answer is evolution! You have been programmed by evolution to hate rejection and to avoid losing at all costs. Unfortunately this instinct is in modern civilisation completely redundant, useless and distinctly unhelpful. If you do not learn to understand it and override it, it will completely ruin your life, as does to many on a regular basis. The good news is that it can relatively easily be overridden and even reversed! You can actually use rejection to strengthen you!

Let’s begin by understanding why this hatred of rejection evolved. It’s Cameroon 170,000 years ago, or in evolutionary terms about five minutes ago. You are the last of as low as possibly 100 breeding pairs left alive of the genus homo, the apes who walk on two legs. All your relatives except homo neanderthalis up in the frozen north have been wiped out by famine. You live in one of a few scattered tribes eking a living on the African Savannah. You stand on the very brink of extinction.

But it’s no coincidence that you are one of those last few hundred survivors. You have survived through a combination of extreme intelligence and handy instincts. You’re a greedy beggar, you’re bone idle and you’re very fond of bonking. This means you are determined to get as much of the finer things in life for as little effort as possible and whenever you’re in a good mood, and the environment is favourable, you’ll be doing the wild thing. This means that in bad times they’ll be enough people smart enough left to survive, and in good times the population will rapidly recover because when you’re in a good mood, you can’t resist a bonk. Besides, the X-Factor hasn’t been invented yet!.

But there’s another instinct equally important – the tribal instinct. You have the urge to clump together in distinct groups, because it is only as a team that you will be able to hunt and gather enough food protect the children and get suitable shelter. The environment is too harsh to enable you to survive alone. It is absolutely essential that you belong to a tribe, that is the bare minimum survival requirement.

But you don’t just want to be in the tribe, you want to get as high up in the hierarchy of the tribe as you can, ideally to become the alpha male and the alpha female, because they will get the pick of the food and the shelter, so in the hard times, the higher up the pecking order you are, the less expendable you are. But you have to be careful, because if you’re too ruthless, the tribe will throw you out, because then you’re a threat to everyone else, and if you get thrown out, you die! You can’t survive alone! But if you’re too soft, if you let everyone walk over you, you will be at the bottom of the pecking order, so when food’s short, who misses out first. Yep, you’re a gonner in this instance as well!

So how as a man do you rise through the ranks? You prove your worth! You kill the most antelope, you build the best house, you make your rivals look bad, you run the fastest. And so on. If you’re a female, you can’t compete with all this, because you’re evolved to have the babies, so you need a different body to a man, so the only way you can get to be alpha female is to get the alpha male’s attention, but you have also to be crafty. If you’re ruthless, all the other females will cast you out, so you have to be attractive without being slutty, bitchy but subtly bitchy, and you’ve got to at least look fertile.

Now most of the time, you’re too busy to think about all this, because you’re permanently knackered, so instinct does it all automatically for you. All this means that only the best of the best have survived. And so this goes on for quite a while. Roll the clock forward to 14,000 years ago. The last ice age ends. The climate dramatically improves, there’s much more water, which means more food and much more room.

This means much more bonking time, and many more survivors, and so the population explodes! Now we get migration and civilisation and the rest is quite literally history. So now we don’t have to worry about food, at least here in the West, or worry about belonging to the tribe, or rising through the ranks. But guess what? Your genes and evolution doesn’t know that! Your instincts don’t do logic, they’re evolved to override logic, so if you submit to the default programming, you are going to be an unhappy and unsuccessful and maladjusted individual.

The reason rejection feels so bad is because it is tapping into that primordial fear instinct. That fear factor which kept our ancestors alive is now making us unnecessarily unhappy and miserable. You can see it especially in young children. Say no to a two year old, take something off them, and they’ll act like their world’s come to an end! This is because their primordial instincts are telling them it is!

What’s worse is that generally on the African Savannah you only get rejected a few times in your life, then you will either die, or be accepted elsewhere. But in modern life you can be rejected over and over and over again, and we are not evolved to cope with that sort of prolonged anguish. Your instinct to belong is now clashing with your instinct to avoid pain. For this reason, life can seem like a choice between the agony of loneliness and unworthiness and the agony of continual competition and rejection.

But fortunately, you are not doomed! You can use another evolved mechanism to override your instincts, and it is the ability to focus. Your body does not react to what’s there, it reacts to what has your attention! If what’s in front of you is stimulating or threatening, yes you’ll react to it, but most of the time it’s neither, so you will react to what you are thinking. Your body does not take it’s cue from your environment, it takes its cue from your mind.

You’re on your own in the library, reading one Catherine Cookson’s bodice rippers. There’s nothing in front of you but printed symbols on a piece of paper, but when you read the bit where the local squire, dashing, fit and handsome, stares powerfully into the heroine’s wild eyes, and gently runs a finger across her heaving bosom, some of you may find your body responding in a manner highly inappropriate for being in the library.

Your body and your behaviour does not respond to the environment, it responds to what’s in your head. That is very handy indeed if you want to stop letting your mind run wild in stone age default mode and start practising the ancient discipline of mindfulness, the practice of deliberately focusing your attention on something, rather than letting it wander wherever it likes, which is usually back to the Stone Age.

In business and in the pursuit of success generally, rejection is a fact of life. Rejection no longer means death, but if the rejection has your attention, it will feel like death, because that is how you are genetically wired to respond to rejection. The difference between successful people and the unsuccessful is not how often they were rejected but what they were focused on. Whatever has your attention has your life. Whatever you are focused on grows in strength and power.

You have been rejected – give it your attention, focus fully on the fact that you were rejected, and what will grow? Fear, anger and despair, and the longer you focus on it, the stronger and the stronger fear anger and despair get, and keep going long enough and that’s all you will be. And all through life you will come across such people, broken, bitter and twisted.

But the successful are not focused on the rejection. Their mind goes straight for the lesson! “hmm, I didn’t get it, what do I still need”? For them, it’s a clue in a hunt! Every rejection is another piece of the jigsaw. In fact so is every hurt of every kind. They are tapping in to a different instinct equally as powerful as fear – the hunting instinct. Successful people will often tell you, it’s not the kill, it’s the thrill of the chase. There is no thrill in a conquered fortress, a solved puzzle or a completed creation. The point of the journey is not the destination, it’s the road! When life runs out of destinations, it runs out of meaning!

My friends, the only thing that gives life flavour is the ability to create something. It is not what we create so much as the sheer joy of the act of creation itself. The secret of success and happiness is not submission to a discipline, so much as devotion to a cause. The majority of people out there do not grasp this great truth. Their minds are stuck in Stone Age default mode, valuing their self-worth by comparing themselves to others, and simply reacting to their circumstances, rather than proactively changing them. It is the latter who take rejection the most badly. It is the visionaries who are the most rejection resistant.

Those who have been worn down by continual rejection are focused on their self-worth, their perceived value to the tribe. The visionaries are not giving the rejection their attention. For them it’s a hunt. Imagine having a dream where you faced ten thousand doors. Behind 9,999 of them is rubbish, but behind one is wealth beyond your wildest dreams. Can I suggest that in that scenario you would keep opening the doors, because you knew that sooner or later, the door with the wealth behind it would be in front of you. In the same way, real life visionaries persist because they know that one door just one door has behind it the big break, and that’s the only one they need. They know that all they have to do is keep banging on doors and one will open. My friends, that golden door is there.

This is a quote from someone who depends on cold-calling to make a living; If you're in cold calling, you need to focus on "Door 101." What is "Door 101?" Well, it's the 101st. door you knock on --- the 101st. phone call you make --- the 101st. presentation you make. The fact is "most" people will say NO to a cold call. But if you keep knocking, calling, presenting, even after 100 people tell you NO --- just keep going ---- If you can't handle NO, you're in the wrong business. Personally, I have fun with it. I record my cold calls to come back later and listen to what I could have done different and to use for training with my people. So you see, visionaries are not focused on the rejection at all their attention is on the 101st door and the lessons in the “no’s”

Now there are a few people who for whatever reason, this all comes naturally. There are many who will choose to be unworthy, who will point to all the evidence they claim proves that they are doomed. They will not let anyone be so rude as to suggest otherwise. And there are some brave souls who start out as victims, both genuine and imagined, who one day get so sick of being victims that they decide that they are tired of all this doom, and they want to learn to think a different way. It is my destiny and an immense honour and privilege that some of these souls end up at my door, and I provide those people with the keys to the power that lies right inside them.

If you are one of those who have been worn down by rejection but don’t want it to break you, hopefully by what you have heard so far, you now have some understanding of how you got to this point, and I would like to help you to begin the process of changing your mindset.

What makes us happy or sad, ill or poorly is not what’s out there, because what’s out there is in fact everything. Every feeling or experience you can think of is already out there, everything from the heights of joy and ecstacy to the depths of the most unspeakable evil. Look hard enough and you can find either and everything inbetween. What determines how we are feeling is what has our attention.

Now your attention is exactly like breathing. You can just let your attention wander about of its own accord, or you can consciously control it. The difference is that whilst your breathing is quite good and finding the ideal level by itself, your attention is not. Most people’s attention defaults to the negative. We’re like a radio that comes with presets, and most of us are preset to radio doom. Why, because in the African Savannah where you evolved that kept you alive. It stopped you being eaten and bitten, but in modern civilisation this is a distinctly unhelpful default, because there’s doom on tap 24/7.

But the visionary has re-tuned his attention manually. The visionary is locked on like a ballistic missile to the target, not doom, not all the things that might go wrong, not the obstacles and certainly not all the rejection other than the lesson. The rejection and the failures and the mistakes become fuel for the missile, making it tougher, smarter, wiser. It is not aptitude that determines altitude, it’s attitude. It’s the way you react to your circumstances, and the way you react is determined by your attention, and who determines where you attention is? You do!

If you have been battered by life, if you have been worn down by failure after failure and one rejection to many, the first thing that must change is not method but where your attention is, and at first this is hard work. You see the dial on your tuner can be on doom for so long, it’s a bit resistant when you try to turn it, or some people are a bit clueless at first how to re-tune away from the doom and failure and rejection onto the target, the lessons and the 101st door.

To re-tune your attention, there are certain exercises and disciplines that you must perform, which means a change in what you are doing. Of course this puts a lot of people off straight away. They want to be different without doing anything different. But this is how it is: If you always do what you’ve always done, you will always get what you’ve always got! So you must choose. Are you sick enough of feeling awful that you are ready to change?

To begin this process of change, you will need to invest in a nice new quality notebook, no ASDA smart price cheapo rubbish, a posh quality notebook, and on page one of your new super posh quality notebook, you will write very neatly in very large letters: MY POSITIVE THINKING BOOK. On page two you will write ten things you experience regularly that are nice, and if any of these things are somewhat embarrassing, that’s O.K. because only you will ever read this book! Write them down anyway!

Having written down your ten things, I want you to think about them. In fact why not think about them right now, as if they were happening right now. Visualise them right now in vivid detail, and as you are doing that, right at this moment, your brain is responding like they’re happening right here right now. You see your mind does not respond to what’s there, it responds to your attention. If right now you are focused on something nice, and you feel gratitude for those things, your brain is flooding with dopamine and serotonin, and your body with endorphins, and the electrical signals in your nervous system are changing pathways, which changes your behaviour, and that affects everyone else around you as well!

Now every day, your notebook should be your constant companion, and every time something good happens, you see something nice you feel something nice, experience anything nice, you will write that down, and give it your full attention! And as you persist, you are in every sense changing.

But that is only task one!

Task two. Every time you are waiting for something, in a queue, in a traffic jam, outside the bathroom, I want you to imagine a thousand doors, and behind one of those doors is wealth beyond your wildest dreams. You don’t know which one it is, but it is definitely one of ‘em! You open the first door, and behind it is a pile of horse manure, but it occurs to you that you are one door nearer, and you start frantically opening doors like there’s no tomorrow, and each one has got the same unpleasant pile, and you start to wonder if there’s a system that might speed things up, and you think there might, but whether you get one or not will not change the inevitable fact that eventually short time or long, you will find the door with the wonga behind it. Feel the excitement the anticipation of finding that one door, the only one that matters.

Task three is for those who find it hard to focus their attention because negative things are screaming at them really loudly! Go learn how to relax! Learn meditation, learn T’ai Chi, go Boxercise, whatever, but go do it because the only way to stop the negatives screaming is to learn how to calm the mind. Give me a call, I’ll soon chill you out!

It is only with a calm mind that you can then really take full control of your attention and focus it where you want it to be, so that it is no longer defaulting to the misery of the hundredth rejection but is rather focused on the ladder of success on which this latest rejection is simply another lesson making you even wiser and stronger and another rung on the ladder to where you want to be.

30 Second meditation for stress

Stress/Anxiety is one of the main reasons my clients come to see me. Obviously if you have a deep-rooted problem there is no substitute for seeing a proper therapist like me, but for "everyday" stress, here is a technique that calms you instantly:

1. Sit down in a chair hands on lap, palms up

2. In each hand touch your thumb tip with your middle finger-tip.

3. Stare down at the two "O" shapes you have made and focus on the feeling of thumbs and fingers touching. You will find that your mind goes blank.

4. Take a deep breathe in and think "breathing in, I cool my body". Hold your breath for 1 second.

5. When you breathe out, think "Breathing out, I smile"

6. Smile!

7. Repeat 5 times

..Let me know how you got on!

To give feedback, and/or to ask about a low cost guided meditation or hypnosis session on CD, drop me an e-mail to info@garyblonder.co.uk

Find all my other stuff in these places:

http://garysultimatewebquotes.blogspot.com
http://garyswordsofwisdom.blogspot.com
http://garysnineaday.blogspot.com
http://www.garyblonder.co.uk
http://silentvoicespeaksloudly.blogspot.com/
http://garysspiritualitypages.blogspot.com/

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btw I'm the ONLY hypnotherapist member of Bradford Chamber of Commerce

The Perfect 30 Second Pitch

THE PERFECT 30 SECOND PITCH

If networking is an important part of your marketing strategy, you will be used to the concept of the pitch, also known as the “elevator speech”. You are given anything between two minutes and thirty seconds to make a speech about your business. It’s not difficult to know a good one from a bad one, but somewhat harder to put your finger on what it is about a pitch that makes it good, bad or mediocre. Some people are clearly naturals at it and some are hopeless! The good news is that just because you’re not a natural doesn’t mean you are doomed to being hopeless. With study and practice, even the worst of us can make a decent pitch. There’s a simple set of do’s and don’t’s, and when you have understood them, the rest is simply a case of rehearsing enough to perfect it.

WHAT’S IT FOR?
The most fundamental mistake you can make is to fail to understand the purpose of the pitch. It is NOT to close a sale! No one in their right mind, even if they’re in the market for your product, is going to buy from a stranger on the strength of what they said in 30 seconds. The purpose of the pitch is to be remembered for the right reasons. If what you said was memorable, you will linger in the mind of your audience. That’s what you want! When they think of a particular product, you want them to associate that product with you. When people who think of hypnotherapy, if they’ve met me, believe me, they’ll think of me! Even better, when they think of a good motivational speaker, they will also think of me, because they experience that first-hand for the duration of my pitch.

You don’t want to be bland, and so not be remembered at all, and you don’t want to be remembered for being rude, hopeless, weird, stupid, outrageous or funny, unless your product is comedy related, because then you will be linked to those qualities instead of your product. All you want is that when your product comes to people’s minds, so do you! When you fancy a burger, what company springs to mind? What about hot chicken, or a Pizza?

INTRO
Spend the first second on a greeting! This has a very important psychological impact – it tells your audience that this is meant for them. It will take their attention from wherever it is to your voice. It must be said in a confident happy tone. “Hello” delivered positively is fine, but if you are particularly confident, experiment with other greetings like “good morning” or if particularly brave, “blessings upon you”! You are sending the message that your pitch will be different and interesting.

YOUR NAME
The first thing you want people to remember is your name. This is no easy feat. Whist some people are excellent at remembering names, the majority of us mere mortals are singularly useless. I am particularly bad – I suddenly find that the names of people I’ve known for years suddenly vanish from my recall just when I meet them again! Whilst this is a handicap, it’s also a useful tool. I give pitches in such a way that even I would remember the name of someone who did it the same way. If I can remember your name after one meeting, you’ve done very well indeed!

There are three very simple techniques to help lodge your name in the subconscious of other’s minds. Firstly, pause very slightly before giving your name. My name is…Gary Blonder! This pause is very subtle, only about one second. It causes people to pay attention. However double it to two seconds or longer then you generate the wrong impression. You start to generate embarrassment and irritation, so don’t overdo it!
Second, raise the pitch of your voice as you say your name, so it ends on a higher note. This subsconsciously raises the expectation of your audience. Thirdly, get your name into the pitch three times, in the beginning, the middle and the end. Remember this little proverb – THIRD TIME REMEMBERED!

WHAT YOU DO
A common and fundamental mistake is to state your profession and/or what you supply. This is to totally misunderstand the mindset of any potential referrer or buyer. Let us take the simple example of an accountant. Nobody WANTS an accountant! No one sits at home dreaming of the next time an accountant will drop by. If you therefore announce that you are an accountant, at that moment you’ve already failed. In every mind in the room, you have triggered the boredom switch. Everything you say from this point is worthless!

Your audience is interested in one thing alone. How are you going to make my life better? The fact that you are an accountant holds no promise of making my life better. However, I have better things to do with my life than sit in front of a desk with columns of figures. This is not what I’m in business for! Wouldn’t it be great if someone came along and did it all for me? Then I would be FREE! Is there such a person out there?

Understanding this simple psychology is crucial to your success. Don’t tell me what you do, tell me what I’ve got when you’ve gone. After I’ve gone, you’ll be free from that issue that’s been holding you back and making your life a misery for so long. When I’ve finished with your team, they’ll be fired up, feeling good and have a higher opinion of the one who brought me in. Sounds good, eh?

It’s a fundamental mistake to assume that your audience will figure all this out themselves just by your telling them what you do. They won’t! I could spend a fascinating half hour discussing why the brain doesn’t work like that, but bottom line is, it doesn’t! Accept it, and stop telling people what you do. Tell them what they’ll have when you’ve gone!

THE USP (Unique Selling Point)
Having made the point that you are the answer to a problem, or the fulfilment of a desire, take a few seconds to explain why only YOU can be trusted to make it happen. To do this, you need to throw in something about you that is advantageous, rare, and if possible unique. I for example am the only hypnotherapist in Bradford Chamber of Commerce.

THE INVITATION
Spend a few seconds inviting contact. This has an important psychological impact. It implies that failure to do so will involve missing out. Point out in this invitation that to contact you is free and noncommittal – they’d therefore be foolish not to!

THE STRAPLINE
A strapline is a single short phrase that should be the last thing you say. It can be thought of as a memory link between you and your product. For companies with big advertising budgets, the strapline is simple and often bland, but through continued repetition gets lodged in the mind. Examples include “I’m lovin’ it”, “Just do it” “loves the jobs you hate” and “Put a tiger in your tank”.

The average trader however, in the context of the pitch, does not have the luxury of such continued exposure, so needs to also make it witty. Mine for example is Liberating you…from you! My friend John Steel, a photographer, has the strapline I shoot your family…so you don’t have to!

You can see in both these examples that the strapline comprises of two phrases: the first is an interesting way of saying how you will be helped, and the second is the punchline. The first phrase stands alone as a sentence, and the second is added as a surprise, making you see the first differently. Choosing a good first phrase is easy, but the punchline is much harder to think of. Some people are highly talented in this field and can come up with a matching punchline in moments. Some have to mull over it for a day or two, then in a flash of inspiration, it will occur to them. Some are just clueless! If you are in the third category, don’t despair, because you almost certainly know someone who does. If you belong to a business or social network, simply “feed” your chosen first phrase and ask them to come up with a punchline. Those who are good at wordplay will not be able to resist the challenge!

PICK N MIX
Every pitch should have name, what I’ll get when you’ve done and a strapline at the. Between these elements, there are a variety of optional extras that are good to include if you have enough time. Which you decide to include depends on both time available and the specific markets you are interested in at that moment. Here is a selection of the best ones you may like to include:
1. WHO I’M LOOKING FOR
There’s a well-known business proverb that if you ask for anybody, you’ll get nobody! If however your contacts know you are after a specific person, category or company, it focuses their minds. Most people want to help others if they can, but we need it framed for us (e.g. “give two pounds a month”). Add your specific request just before the strapline, adding “thank you for your help!”
2. SUCCESS STORY
If you have been in business for a while you will have at least one! For the purpose of the pitch, simply state the predicament your client was in before you came along and what they were like when you had finished.

3. SPECIAL OFFERS
Any offer targeted at your audience that gives them a privileged discount is always welcome.
4. FREE SAMPLE
Tell your audience how to get a free sample, preferably there and then, or otherwise within easy access.

PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER – THE WORKED EXAMPLE

Greetings! [confident, slightly quirky attention-grabbing intro]

My name is Gary Blonder! [rising pitch]

Wouldn’t it be great to be free from fear, anxiety and all your secret personal issues? I do this for people on a regular basis! I liberate people to be the person they want to be!
[I have focused people’s attention on their own desire and linked the solution to myself. For longer pitches, I would make this section twice as long, adding more problems that I’m the solution to. Note that I haven’t yet said what my profession is, as it is in itself irrelevant to the audience]

I am Gary Blonder, a motivational speaker and the only hypnotherapist member of Bradford Chamber [having pointed out I’m a possible solution, I now deliver my USP – the reason why I’m the best choice. There are other things I could have added, but these are unnecessary – one single good USP makes the optimum impact. Note the second mention of my name, strategically placed in the middle of the pitch.]

It costs nothing to talk to me, and it could be a fresh start for you, your team, or someone you know [The invitation. Notice the absence of a direct command, simply the implication that there is an offer foolish to resist on the table]

[For the 30-second pitch, time is nearly up, so it’s straight on to the strapline. For longer pitches, I can throw in my extras at this point]

I’m Gary Blonder, liberating you – from you!
[Strapline and third mention of my name. I have now achieved my objective – to be remembered as Gary Blonder the hypnotherapist who is also a damn good speaker. When my audience next encounter a need for my product, they will think of me!]

AND FINALLY
With your pitch constructed, don’t forget to keep it updated! Tweak the words periodically to keep pace with the changing circumstances, and also to stop it feeling “stale”.

Embracing the Uncertainty of Business

EMBRACING THE UNCERTAINTY OF BUSINESS

I am in business for two very simple reasons; I’d rather spend my life doing something I love doing than doing something I hate doing, and I’d rather be the victim of my own decisions rather than someone else’s. In making that choice however, I am choosing to embrace a much greater degree of uncertainty. There is a much higher risk of being financially ruined in business, and if that happens, it doesn’t just affect me but my nearest and dearest also.

Most people find uncertainty rather stressful. However much they love their business, however much you believe in what you’re doing, the uncertainty of it all can get to you. It can drive you to working 24/7, to neglecting other important areas of your life, and ultimately make you ill and unable to be successful anyway. If you could be a little less anxious about it all, you wouldn’t feel compelled to overwork and make yourself ill. Wouldn’t it be great if you could be as nonchalant as Sir Francis Drake, who according to legend was cool enough to finish his game of bowls before taking on the Spanish Armada?

There’s a skill in embracing the uncertainty of business, taking that uncertainty in your stride so that you will work to your optimum and not make yourself ill or neglect other important areas of your life.

Let us begin by looking at what makes business so scary. It is probably to do with how even most business people look at it, which is a very black and white idea. For most people, it’s about triumph or disaster!

You will either succeed and everything will be brilliant and you’ll live happy ever after, or its destitution. You’re going to be Bill Gates or Big Issue. The trouble is, even after a successful year, you’ve still got the same choice facing you! You’re only ever as good as your last deal, so that threat of destitution never goes away. Just ask any former member of Lehman Brothers!

Now if that’s your mindset, you’re in for a highly stressful life, and however much you love your business, illness or death is going to take it from you prematurely. It’s not the work that will kill you, because in most cases we love our work, I would happily do it every waking minute if I could. It’s not the work, it’s the worry, that nagging voice at the back of your mind that you’re doing it wrong, you’ve made a bad decision, you’re not working hard enough, you’re not working smart enough, you’re not diversifying enough, you’re too diverse, you can’t trust your business partner, you’re going to be let down, I’ve gone a week with no new clients, nag nag nag. Aaaaarrrgghh!

One thing is certain, that there is no certainty, and however hard you push you will never ever eliminate it, so let’s not waste a lot of time and energy trying to make our businesses invincible, because it is 100% impossible. No business, from the empire of Microsoft to tuppenny ha’penny bloke like me is immune from the shifting sands of time and circumstance.

Today I offer you an alternative model to this mindset of triumph or disaster, and it’s this: GAIN – GAIN. Here’s the good news – just by getting out of bed in the morning, just by doing something, just by making decisions, just by being focused on a target you are going to gain. Whether or not you hit your business target, whether or not you achieve the outcome you started out hoping for, you are going to gain.

It’s already happening every single day in the office. You are gaining either money or assets or experience. Now the experience is every bit as important as the assets and money. I hold that as self-evident. Just think about everything you have ever learned to do. In everything you have learned, what did you make a lot of? MISTAKES?

What does a toddler do when he’s learning to walk – fall down! A lot! And sometimes they hurt, and sometimes they cry, but they persist. And provided nothing’s physically wrong, they will walk.

In business, there are two things that you have to face head on that the rest of the population avoids at any cost, the qualities they had as young children but has been squeezed out of them by life, and they are fear and mistakes. So then, this is rule number one

SAY YES TO FEAR OR MISTAKES because if you do you will only regret that you did years from now. You will be afraid and you will make mistakes. Accept it, say yes. Walk through the fire, take the leap in the dark, throw your dice, because the worst that will happen is you will be stronger. This leads me to fact number one

IF IT DOESN’T KILL YOU IT MAKES YOU STRONGER – it’s one of those statements that you hear a lot and can sound a little bit glib, but it is a profound fundamental truth of life. The whole of life on Earth and the principle of evolution rests on this principle. Now let me draw a distinction here, I’m not saying that you will definitely get you want you want, but you will as a person find fulfilment and satisfaction in your life.

Last year I treated a client who was in every sense wiped out by the recession. She had a successful business in property, but then came the property crash and she financially completely ruined, bankrupted, and she was a single mum as well. She came to me with her confidence in herself destroyed. I treated her for free because firstly because she couldn’t afford me, but secondly because I saw her as a sound investment. I believed that it was only a matter of getting her to believe in herself and time that would put her right back to where she was. She didn’t see that. For her, life was over, she was only living for her daughter. She was working as a care assistant for old folk in Bingley and living in a little pokey rented flat.

I pointed out to her that the was not dead. In fact she had now gained a wealth of new knowledge and appreciation, and that she was going to come back stronger smarter better. After five sessions with me, this is what she said:

Gary Blonder came recommended to me by a former client of his. I was somewhat sceptical at first about hypnotherapy, but upon meeting Gary for the first time he put me at ease and made me feel very comfortable. I explained my problems to him and he put it down to Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. My symptoms included loss of confidence and motivation, uncontrollable tears, and basically feeling very anxious. Gary recommended 5 sessions, he was very confident and assured me he could help me. After the first session I noticed a big difference, I was a lot more relaxed, now I have completed the sessions and been given a CD to which I listen to every other day. I can now look forward to the future. Gary has helped me gain control of my life again, and taught me to look forward not backward. I know my direction in life again now. I certainly would not hesitate in recommending him.

But this just about me blowing my own trumpet. I gave this woman back her belief, but all I was doing was enabling her to look inward and see what was already here within herself, that she had everything necessary within herself to start again. She had the knowledge, the talent, the capability and in greater amounts than ever before, all she needed was to see beyond what had happened, see beyond the fear and get right back on the horse. She learned that IF IT DOESN’T KILL YOU IT MAKES YOU STRONGER and to SAY YES TO FEAR OR MISTAKES

So the next time you start to get worried, the next time the phone doesn’t ring, a client or customer cancels, the next time you wonder where the next order is coming from, feel the fear and do it anyway. Say so what and just respond. Say this to your worry. WHATEVER HAPPENS I CAN HANDLE IT!!

Here is a fascinating fact: take any fear you have and it will boil down to this. I can’t handle it. No matter what it is, from spiders to failure, it all boils down to this fear, and the reality is you CAN handle it every time so long as you don’t die. That’s the only prerequisite – there is nothing that can happen to you that you cannot deal with, because you always have and always will.

HOWEVER, there is a caveat, a necessary requirement in order to be able to handle anything: it’s an old Buddhist maxim: BE ATTACHED TO NO SPECIFIC OUTCOME.

As business people, we usually have a specific outcome, a target that we are aiming for. There is nothing wrong with that, it gives a specific direction, it helps us focus. However, not only does the outcome often turn out to be not what we planned, we do not need that specific outcome in order to find happiness, success and fulfilment. It was right to have that objective, because in going for it we find fulfilment and success.

So then, remember MANY DIFFERENT OUTCOMES CAN BRING FULFILMENT AND SUCCESS

So far then, I have provided you with mental tools for letting go of the future whilst still maintaining a direction. The good thing about letting go of the future, embracing uncertainty and living in the present is that all your ability talents and energy becomes focused on the one point you have full control over, which is right now.

The trouble is you can take in everything I’ve taught you and still find your thought slipping its lead and wandering off into worry about the future and brooding over the past. Keeping your mind on task is the discipline of MINDFULNESS, a gentle awareness of the present moment.

Here is Gary’s easy to follow guide for keeping mindful, in charge of your thoughts rather than letting them pull you off the job.
1. The affirmation of correction:
THIS IS WASTING MY ENERGY. I WILL RETURN MY FOCUS TO MY INNER VOICE [planning is ok, that’s a NOW task]
2. Use your intuition. Intuition is that part of you you’d call a hunch. You cannot embrace the uncertainty of business without it! It often flies in the face of logic and it’s always right. The human intuition is an anomaly in human understanding. It exists but no one knows what it is or why it works. It is the dark matter of neuroscience. Opinions vary from a function of the right side of the brain, to tapping into the collective unconscious to the voice of God. Fortunately, you don’t have to know what it is, only that it exists and can be used for guidance. There are ground rules for using it.
Rule 1 you must have a calm mind. If you’re not calm, your intuition can’t be heard, it will be drowned out by fear and the left side of your mind desperately scrabbling for an answer. Think about where you were and what you were doing when you get your best ideas. [Archimedes]
Rule 2 It only tells you what to do right now. Your intuition is not quite the same as an idea, although they both originate from a calm mind. An idea can be a plan. Your intuition never gives you a plan, never tells you how it is or what’s going on, and most annoyingly never tells you WHY. It just says DO THIS. You have to trust it. How do you activate it? Just be calm and still and listen!
Rule 3 It’s soft gentle and never critical.
So be mindful, be intuitive, thirdly Be permanently grateful, be a gratitude spotter. Evoke gratitude.
4. Be an opportunity spotter!

And so to summarise, to embrace the uncertainty of business, remember these important principles:
1. A choice is never between success and disaster, it’s between one type of gain and another.
2. SAY YES TO FEAR OR MISTAKES – FEEL THE FEAR AND DO IT ANYWAY because IF IT DOESN’T KILL YOU IT MAKES YOU STRONGER
3. WHATEVER HAPPENS YOU CAN HANDLE IT!!
4. BE ATTACHED TO NO SPECIFIC OUTCOME because MANY DIFFERENT OUTCOMES CAN BRING FULFILMENT AND SUCCESS
5. Practise the discipline of MINDFULNESS, the discipline of being present-focused, by listening to your intuition, and being eager spotters of gratitude and opportunity.

Positive Thinking In Plain English For Beginners

We've all heard about positive thinking and being positive, but I wonder how many people have absolutely no idea what this means or how to put it into practice. In plain English and just a few simple paragraphs, here's enough to get you started!

For everyone, be they rich folk or poor, there is a clear gap between how we want things to be and how they are. However, in the midst of "how it is" are things that are good. To take the most extreme example I can think of, Victor Frankl, a renowned psychologist, spent several years in Nazi concentration camps, but throughout that horrific experience was able to find things of joy, beauty and amusement.

To focus your attention on the "gap", i.e. the difference between how you want it and how it is, this is called "Negative Thinking". Focus on things that are good within your actual situation is called "Positive Thinking". Both these types of thought focus on truth. It is true that to be held in a concentration camp is horrific. It is equally true that in daily camp life it was possible to see beauty in nature and the countryside beyond the camp, and acts of heroism, humour, and kindness within the camp.

Negative Thinking usually comes "easier". Most people will by default gravitate their focus on the "gap". However, mental focus is like breathing - it will do it's "own thing" without any effort, but can be completely controlled consciously. But why should you and why does it matter?

Whether your circumstances are horrific or actually not that bad, the type of thinking you're doing has profound consequences for your health, happiness, success and survival. This is due to the way that the brain and its' software the mind are "wired".

When you think negatively, you are focused on something that is bad and beyond your control. Your mind is built to help you survive and get out of situations or improve them. Focused on the bad, your mind goes into THREAT mode. It causes the release of "fight or flight" hormones into the blood. This diverts the body's resources into the muscles, heart and senses. It does this at the expense of digestion, the immune system, the reproductive system, the bodily regeneration system and logical thinking, none of which you need when facing an immediate threat.

However, you are focused on a gap, something that ISN'T THERE, that you can't change, and to which there is no solution. All this energy in the muscles and senses is completely useless. It was evolved for encountering natural threats on the African Savanna, not for losing your job or meeting business targets. With none of your resultant actions solving the problem, you stay permanently in THREAT mode. This means that you become very unhappy and very ill very soon, as the body, thrown permanently out of balance, cannot maintain itself properly.

When you think positively, you are focused on good things you can appreciate. The brain thus goes into OPPORTUNITY mode, and a much more balanced mix of hormones is released to exploit the opportunity. Focused on opportunity, you are happy, calmer, think clearer and rest easier, allowing repair, regeneration and robust defence against germs. Furthermore you can DO something with your opportunity, keeping you absorbed and positive, able to solve problems and cope in adversity.

So you can see that whatever the circumstance is, your personal success and happiness and survival depends on which aspect of it you are focused on!

If up to now you have been a negative thinker by default, do not despair! To think positive is only a question of training. Begin by keeping a "Good Things Journal" - every day before bedtime write down 1-10 things that were nice that you either observed or happened to you. Feel thanks and gratitude for these things. Now you are a Good Things Hunter! In time, as you see the benefits of doing this, grow in confidence and become increasingly encouraged, you will become a newly converted Positive Thinker.

Who You're Not! The Ego Explained in Plain English

There are many different interpretations of the word "ego". The word was coined by Sigmund Freud who saw it as a kind of mediator between your desires and your personal morals. In common language, it means the arrogant part of you that thinks you are in some way superior. Neither of these definitions really get to grips with what the ego actually is, so here is a simple yet full explanation:

The ego is basically the mind's "autopilot", the things you do and think by default. The ego is not "you"! It is in fact a reflex response just like blinking, but very highly sophisticated, with a whole range of diferent responses that are triggered by different environments. Unlike blinking, which is genetically hardwired from birth, the ego is flexible and can both gain and lose responses. The ego is a set of learned reflexes. This gives human beings and other animals with similar mechanisms an immense advantage - it means we can adapt and learn new behaviours for new environments, enabling us to survive and thrive almost anywhere on the planet.

Unfortunately, amazing and useful though it is, it is not infallible. Because of evolutionary forces, it is biased toward childhood experience, particularly in the age range 4-10, as in this period language is used to label and associate experiences with responses and other experiences. A traumatic or antisocial experience in this period can leave a person's responses permanently warped and unadapted for adult life. Most problems I encounter as a therapist boil down to this mechanism.

The ego is so fully integrated into your mind that the majority of people understandably assume that their egos are what they are - they say things like "I" get angry when I see... No you don't! You experience the feeling of anger triggered by a certain situation, but it isn't intrinsic to who you are - you have acquired that response due to a prior experience, and theoretically at least you can also unacquire it.

The only part of you that is truly "you" is the part that actually experiences, ie your awareness, and your true intention. Your awareness never truly sleeps - even when you are deeply asleep you have awareness, although it is all inward. Only a general anaesthetic can properly turn it off.

Up to this point, you may have considered your thoughts were "you", but they're not - they're simply your ego in action - it is responding to data that is either fresh from the senses or equally as often from memory. You are aware of this because your own thoughts can upset you, are not what you want to think, are nonsense or completely contradict each other. They are not your intention, which is to do with self-worth, safety and creation.

Most people will spend their entire lives on autopilot, not being truly themselves but being controlled by their ego. This is fine if your default attitude is bright and sunny - why wake up from a good dream? Unfortunately most egos are not! They are fearful, sad, lonely or bitter, and for many life is spent trapped in a dream of disappointment, which by their behaviour they inflict on the next generation.

There are a few people who are so sick of being sick of it that they become determined to find a way out of their own negative thought, and it is these people who discover ways to override their egos and discover true happiness - not from the world around them but from within themselves. Such a discovery is called many names, such as awakening, enlightenment, epiphany or self-realisation.

It is beyond the scope of this introductory article to point you fully in the direction of being liberated from your ego and learning to control it rather than vice versa. However, most sources agree that the first step to liberation is learning to calm the mind. A calm mind turns off the ego and you can begin to see things clearer.

A final point - your ego is not your enemy. It is there for a good reason - to help you survive, and enable you to multitask. It is a wonderful servant, but not often a good master. Learn to tame it, and your life will be powerful indeed.

New blog!

I want to focus this blog on personal mental issues, that apply to all, and do not necessarily require a spiritual dimension, so from this point, spiritual issues will be dealt with in a separate blog, http://garysspiritualitypages.blogspot.com