The Ant and Elephan Day 4: Expecting the Unexpected

from Theresa Trumpelmann, Member

Life is full of opportunities. With every sunset, there will be a new tomorrow, with choices and opportunities for us. What a great way to end each day by asking “What choices would tomorrow offer?”

As expected, and I’m sure you’ve noticed through the last week, that changing ingrained habits is easier said than done!

Let me share with you the technique of Brio, the wise old Owl, to get your elephant (subconscious) to change direction. It is an amazing strategy for building and strengthening your confidence and sense of control. There is one condition for sharing this technique, however: you need to be 100% committed to reaching your goal.

Are you willing to redefine commitment and take it to a level of maturity and action beyond anything you’ve ever known? You see, we can reach a level of commitment and discover there’s still more we can do. You can always dig deeper. Promise yourself – that when you think you’ve done all can possibly do, you’ll dig even deeper into your core. Are you ready to do whatever it takes?

Being committed to a task means, in effect, being committed to the process of commitment. If you’ve said “YES!” (not “yes”) then we can take notes…

We often not only underestimate our elephant, but we also underestimate ourselves as leaders. Take a moment to go over what we’ve learned so far. Take a step back to review, but also to appreciate what you’ve discovered last week.

Make fear your friend, not your master. You don’t know what you don’t know.

- you clarified your vision

- you discovered that your fear can stop you or move you forward

- you learned to use fear to your advantage

- you opened up to the possibility that you don’t know what you don’t know

- you decided what your goal would be and

- you prepared yourself to take the necessary steps to reach your goal

Zero in on a goal that has depth of meaning. The journey has to be worth taking.

- after identifying your goal, you defined your core reasons why it is important to you

- you learned how to reach your core reasons by asking “why” until you have depth of meaning to your answer and you cannot go further and

- you learned that if the journey does not mean anything to you, there would be no reason to pursue it – a clarified vision and an emotional investment is needed to make the commitment to achieve your goal

ACTION STEP 1
You learned that you have to find your “elephant buzz”, the emotion that ignites the vision. Inspire your team through emotion. Never underestimate the power of emotion.

Commit to cultivate positive, dominant thoughts.
Shift beliefs, attitudes and truths to align with your vision. Envision having the goal rather than merely wanting the goal.

- you’ve realised how important your thoughts and actions are to your sub-conscious

- you made a commitment to nurturing positive dominant thoughts and lead & direct your elephant through beliefs, attitudes and truths that are in sync with your goal

- you’ve discovered that there is a big difference between wanting and having something, always envision having something

ACTION STEP 2

Stay the course. Change is gradual. Remember the ‘Drops in the Bucket’ to avoid frustration. Learn to delay gratification.

Experience your future with gratitude as if it were happening right now. Show gratitude consistently.

- not only did you learn to have a visual, constant reminder of your goal, but also to be grateful (the magic ingredient)

- you experienced your vision and thank yourself and your team mate (elephant) for having reached the goal

ACTION STEP 3
Use visual reminders, tied with emotions that will align your goal with that of your elephant’s. You’ll gravitate towards your current dominant thought and you’ll come to believe this to be true.

Strengthen confidence. Frustration will lead to negative thoughts, which will fuel more negativity. This negativity can be a pattern that destroys confidence. No two thoughts can occupy the mind at the same time. Replace negativity with positive, confident thoughts.

- in our most recent lesson, we wrote about how negative patterns can erode your confidence, and without confidence you won’t be able to stay the course and realize your objective

- you learned how to break that negative cycle by reminding yourself that only one thought can occupy your mind at a time and break that thought pattern

ACTION STEP 4
Institute pattern busters. Once you recognise yourself (or your team) playing out the pattern of negativity, interrupt the pattern by saying “Thank you, but that is not part of my vision. My vision is…” Experience the vision in full detail.

With this last action step, you discovered a way to redirect your thinking with a positive twist, stopping negative thoughts in their tracks!

If you look at this list, it is astonishing how much you’ve covered over the last week!