We all know a four letter word or two.
We probably have a few favourites too.
But did you know there is a four letter word that underpins every successful person, product, or business?
As soon as you read that you probably thought of a few four letter words. But it’s true.
That four letter word is….IDEA.
Ok, I know I have tricked you but I needed to get your attention. That’s because millions of people over the years have had incredible ideas for businesses or products and even for their own futures, but never did anything about them because they were just an idea.
But it’s never JUST an idea. That word is one of the best four letter words ever. Everything we use in our lives came first from an idea. It’s the original source. An idea, a flash of vision, a concept, something that has legs that is different, new, ground breaking, and even lucrative. That simple idea built upon and developed grows and grows until it’s a living shiny come to life item of success.
Coffee anyone?
Starbucks was formed by two teachers and a writer to put a coffee shop on a corner of every city that came out of an idea to simply share coffee made from fresh beans with others. Subway, the take out sandwich store, evolved from the founder’s love of subs which they thought would be a great snack to keep travellers on the go. And more famously Ralph Lauren started his brand because he had an idea that many men would look suave and sharp just like he felt when wearing more bolder, colourful ties.
None of the above and heaps more other big successes had any proof it would work but they gave the idea a chance and ran with it. And ran with it all the way to the bank. So take a leaf out of their book. Polish up those ideas you have and start doing something about them. Let them loose and see where they take you. Nokia started life as a single paper mill operation that morphed into the mega million earning mobile/cell phone manufacturer. Wouldn’t have happened if those pieces of wood didn’t get cut to begin with.
And if you do open up your ideas so that they can be turned into a success, you might be shouting lots of four letter words in happiness the day you hit the jackpot.
Five thoughts, ideas, insights, or quotes to power up your mind to think differently and creatively about the future and what can be. Put all previous thinking away and open up a brand new world of the supermind.
This week – truth.
Your super 5 about truth for your mind to play with. Let go, be free, have fun…...go wild.
Truth is very hard to establish in today’s modern world full of social media, fake accounts and news, ideology, scams, plus photoshop and AI. So….
- Where is still the place to go for everyone regardless of belief or age or background seeking absolute truth?
- What is the one truth we all could agree on across the world?
- How can we teach young children today about truth when it’s so difficult to ascertain?
- If you were to set up an international truth standard and organisation, what would it be based upon?
- Elvis Presley once said, ‘Truth is like the Sun. You can shut it out for a time, but it ain’t goin’ away’. What is the most obvious truth we are all shutting out?
That’s Supermind Saturday for this week. Keep asking yourself these through the week to open up more of your mind to evolve the power of your mind.
See you next time for more super thinking.
Do you hate your job?
Is that the phrase you tell your friends and is the one in your head?
Well, if it is, it’s not true.
The big word that fills your mind and feelings is hate. You have told yourself that you can no longer put up with the manager’s poor leadership or your colleagues lack of standards or perhaps it’s the public and their incessant complaining and lack of patience or the unsociable hours are getting to you.
All of these seem valid at making the role far from enjoyable, but you DON’T hate your job.
Why? Your mindset is focused on the elements in your life that aren’t good or missing and it keeps nagging away at you about these because it’s become set at finding fault in things. As work is the prime time consumer and energy taker in your life, it gets thrown the lions share of dissatisfaction from your mind. It’s also pretty much a daily occurrence in your world so that doubles the blame attached to it for ruining everything or holding you back.
Those negative beliefs grow and magnify and where once Jane’s usual lateness on a Monday morning as traffic is often worse her side of town, has now become a fully blown anger in your mind about her and how typical it is with others in this job. It’s been blown waaaaay out of proportion. Annoyance evolves over time into plain hate.
Where does this come from then? FROM YOU!
The Missing Potential.
Underneath it all you are working in a role far beneath your true ability not to mention your actual worth. But you can’t see it or most likely, can’t accept this as true. You have devalued yourself and taken a job that doesn’t represent half the talent and skills that you possess. Your own lack of self belief has directed you to lower the level you could and should operate at in your career plus the lesser salary and conditions that comes with it.
Hence you are not hating the job but simply picking at everything because it’s not where you want to be…..because you are not being WHO you want to be. But it’s your beliefs that are preventing you from living up to your own potential not the computer’s being slow again or the coffee machine taking too long to warm up in the morning. They are the scapegoats for your self sabotage.
You don’t hate your job. You dislike where you are probably in work, perhaps in life status, and maybe even in relationships or family. And you do that because you don’t have sufficient self worth to elevate yourself to a job or scenario that matches your real unique self.
So while you think about what those beliefs are that are keeping you small I’ll also leave you with one big question.
What great thing about yourself do you really ‘hate’ that everyone else can see (and have probably mentioned to you many times)?
Because if there is anything you hate, it’s that you hate you have done nothing about it.
And Mike’s terrible aftershave will never be the reason!
Five thoughts, ideas, insights, or quotes to power up your mind to think differently and creatively about the future and what can be. Put all previous thinking away and open up a brand new world of the supermind.
This week – work.
Your super 5 about work for your mind to play with. Let go, be free, have fun…...go wild.
- We consider work to be about effort – what if work was simple and enjoyable, what would we all/would you work at?
- What if we didn’t need to work – how could we all make money (legally) to be able to live?
- Work is directly connected to money – what other one factor could work be linked with to change our whole experience of it?
- How could the world survive without work?
- Quote about work – ‘Hard work without talent is a shame, but talent without hard work is a tragedy’, Robert Hall. What talent do you have (the simpler and more natural for you, the better) that you have not put any hard work into……or any work at all???
That’s Supermind Saturday for this week.
See you next time for more avant garde questions for super thinking.
Do you play sports or enjoy a sporting hobby?
You are not alone. Millions upon millions also do. But sport also means competing which involves facing others and the bigger issue of winning and losing. And for many of those millions the possibility of victory or defeat in not won or lost on the field of play, but in the mind.
It is the playing of the mental game that we are all actually participating in.
If you play golf, how is your putting? I ask this because there is a well known affliction on the green whereby good, solid golfers fall apart and lose all confidence to slip the ball into the hole even if it’s only a matter of 6 inches away. It’s called the Yips and even professional players suffer from it. Top 10 golfer and Major winning star Ian Baker-Finch famously quit the game as he couldn’t seem to hit the ball cleanly anymore putting the reason down to one word, ‘Mental’.
He’s not alone. In the 1968 Rugby League Challenge Cup final Wakefield’s Don Fox missed the last kick of the game from right under the posts to hand the cup to Leeds despite just being voted man of the match as the enormity of the kick played on his mind.
It even hits Olympic champions! World class gymnastic legend Simon Biles actually withdrew from some events having developed ‘the twisties’, a mental block gymnasts experience making them lose their sense of space and awareness in the air and causing them to lose control adding an extra twist or two that isn’t required and potentially landing awkwardly or dangerously. Biles cited stress and the pressures focused on her for getting her mind bent out of shape.
Heads you win!
Truth is all of these skilful athletes and players are human like you and me. We don’t just play the mental game in a sporting sense, we play it in the very real living sense. A missed penalty in a football match can lead to losing and letting others down in our heads. Missing an opportunity for promotion due to giving a poor job interview can also destroy our self belief and remain with us for years, Not hitting the bullseye in darts ends up in a loss you should have won and not asking that cute guy or girl out who seemed to have an eye on you becomes saying goodbye to the one you could have married and been happy ever after with. That’s the mental game. It’s in our heads and nowhere else.
You are beaten before you’ve done anything if you play the mental game that way with yourself. You will always miss, lose, blow it, fail, and confidently collapse if you keep believing and expecting to. Whether it’s a five inch putt to beat your best buddy Walt or a 25 yard field goal to snatch the Superbowl in the dying seconds.
It’s never the physical game that we play that tests us, it’s the mental game that’s our true opponent to beat. On the sports field or in the game of life itself.
How do you play the mental game?
