Curious about Mindset - Have You Adjusted and/or Used Yours?

The American Heritage Dictionary defines Mindset as, “A fixed mental attitude or disposition that predetermines a person's responses to and interpretations of situations.” And, “An inclination or a habit.”

All I know is that “Mindset” seems to be the current, descriptive noun for “attitude” or “paradigm.” During the last two decades - or longer - these words were in favor. Now, we read or hear about the “millionaire’s mindset,” an “entrepreneurial mindset,” a “marketing mindset.”

From Wickipedia, “A mindset, in decision theory and general systems theory, refers to a set of assumptions, methods or notations held by one or more people or groups of people which is so established that it creates a powerful incentive within these people or groups to continue to adopt or accept prior behaviors, choices, or tools.”

Is it different, or just another name for “attitude?” When I looked up quotations, I found that none of the ones posted were said and/or written before the early 20th century. Very interesting.

Anyway, how is your mindset, what is it and does it serve you?

I have always been accused of having a “positive, optimistic” attitude, and I guess that would also be my “mindset.” It has also served me well until the beginning of this year when I walked around on a fractured hip for three weeks - yes, I couldn’t imagine that I had a fracture, so I was positive that I would heal naturally. A big wrong!

Also, there are those who scoff at the idea that our mindset helps determine our course and our success. All I know is that those with a good mindset seem to succeed more often than those with a negative mindset. I am taking no chances, however, I do know that one must combine that great mindset with action steps. And, if certain action steps are not producing the results we want, take different actions - don’t abandon a good and positive mindset!

Are you ready for a few quotations?

• “My greatest challenge has been to change the mindset of people. Mindsets play strange tricks on us. We see things the way our minds have instructed our eyes to see.” - Muhammad Yunus
• “Our mindset always says it's not how big the market is but how profitable it can be as the key determiner of whether or not we want to be in it.” - Kevin Rollins
• “Let's just say that at 74 I'm in the mindset that, having been free-to-air, I want to stay free-to-air.” - Richie Benaud (what does he actually mean by this?)
• “Evolutionary psychology is taking that mindset and applying it to more emotionally charged aspects of behavior, such as sexuality, violence, beauty, and family feelings.” - Steven Pinker

A majority of the quotations I found had a relationship with art, performance and/or music.

• “It was just a once-in-a-lifetime situation for me, where you know you're in a spot. You're not in a daze, but you're kind of in a mindset. Looking back on it, I just was totally concentrating on my next move.” - Bobby Thomson
• “What I enjoyed absorbing while I was making my own book was the Brontes, because they were part of that mentality, the mindset of the educated Victorian woman.” - Martin C. Smith
• “Once you're in that mindset, when you're recording in a house as opposed to a clinical environment of a studio, you get beyond that, and you try to capture a performance more than sonic perfection, which is what we were interested in.” - Vivian Campbell
• “If you ever hear a Bobby Keyes solo, you are immediately in a Rolling Stones mindset.” - Sheryl Crow
• “I changed my mindset and figured, ‘Why not try to be really entertaining instrumentally?’” - Brad Paisley

I do hope you will examine your own mindset to discover if it is serving you well. And, then consider the following quotations for their interesting thoughts. They can serve as good topics for discussion starters.

• “The standard entertainment industry reaction to Hollywood's box office slump reveals the same shallow, materialistic mindset that helped create the problem in the first place.” - Michael Medved
• “The hacker mindset doesn't actually see what happens on the other side, to the victim.” - Kevin Mitnick
• “Years of science fiction have produced a mindset that it is human destiny to expand from Earth, to the Moon, to Mars, to the stars.” - Barney Oliver
  

Curious about Clarity - How Clear Are You about What You Want and What You Do or Are Doing?

“Clarity affords focus.” - Thomas Leonard

“I see clarity. To survive we need to view people - especially ourselves - with accuracy.” - Barry White

“That inner voice has both gentleness and clarity. So to get to authenticity, you really keep going down to the bone, to the honesty, and the inevitability of something.” - Meredith Monk

Late yesterday I returned home from the National Storytelling Network’s annual Conference. I feel it was one of the best of the seven I have attended. It not only offered, as they all do, a reawakening of relationships with other storytellers, the sharing of all kinds of wonderful stories, and lots of laughter and joy, but it also brought me clarity about my storytelling and what storytelling means to me. How did that happen?

I am asking myself the same question. Both of the workshops I attended were led by storytellers who asked us thoughtful questions about what is the core meaning of our storytelling. We were challenged to work on our vision and our approach. And it was no namby pamby challenge either.

Now, I am going to challenge you. How clear are you about what you want? A great majority of those who try to set goals have no luck, because they do not know what they want. Moreover, if they want something, they really don’t have enough desire to keep working at it until they achieve it. This is why you and I have goals that we never accomplish.

• "So in order to achieve clarity and be fully and positively engaged in what you're doing, you must (1) know the goal or outcome you're intending and (2) decide and take the next physical move to propel you in that direction.” - David Allen
• “It is still not enough for language to have clarity and content... it must also have a goal and an imperative. Otherwise from language we descend to chatter, from chatter to babble and from babble to confusion.” - Rene Daumal
• “Your mind, while blessed with permanent memory, is cursed with lousy recall. Written goals provide clarity. By documenting your dreams, you must think about the process of achieving them.” - Gary Ryan Blair
• “Although our intellect always longs for clarity and certainty, our nature often finds uncertainty fascinating.” - Karl von Clausewitz

A great number of the quotations I checked for clarity, referred the form of writing communication. How clear is your communication through writing and/or speaking?

• "Take advantage of every opportunity to practice your communication skills so that when important occasions arise, you will have the gift, the style, the sharpness, the clarity, and the emotions to affect other people." - Jim Rohn
• "And how is clarity to be achieved? Mainly by taking trouble and by writing to serve people rather than to impress them." - F. L. Lucas
• "Anything well written with good language and clarity and honesty is worth doing. It comes out of the same tradition as Shakespeare." - Michael Moriarty
• "They place great stress on the clarity of our language for expressing nuances and showing subtleties." - Bernard Pivot

At this point, I hope you are asking yourself about the clarity of the life you live and the work you do. Let me leave you with these thoughts:

• “Clarity is the counterbalance of profound thoughts.” - Marquis De Vauvenargues
• “As I began to discover my own truth and endeavored to possess it with clarity, I became more and more alienated from that which my companions held, or professed to hold.” - Juan Goytisolo
• “Witness the contents of mind, the visions and sounds, the thoughts, as clouds passing through the vast expanse - the sky-like nature of mind. The rootedness of Being is in emptiness, clarity and awareness: unborn, unspoilt, stainlessly pure.” - Alex Grey

Have a great and clear week!

Curious about Momentum - Do You Have It? Where Do You Get It?

As I have mentioned previously, I teach seven to nine fitness classes a week. Many of the students feel that if they don’t jump around frantically or move with speed, they are not getting a hard workout. But the opposite happens.

You see, when we jump and move fast we build momentum, which in turn helps us to move more easily. When we don’t have the building and help of momentum we have to work harder. It is similar to Jim Collin’s flywheel analogy. In the beginning, we must push with all our might to move the wheel - even a little. But, as we keep on, it starts to move more, and finally gains enough momentum from its own weight to keep it moving.

In searching for quotations using momentum, I was surprised that there were fewer than usual and that many didn’t come close to what I was expecting.

Let’s start with the definition of momentum: “The quantity of motion in a moving body, being always proportioned to the quantity of matter multiplied into the velocity; impetus.”

Next, I will share the quotations I found that were the closest to what I had in mind as the positive qualities possessed by momentum and having momentum.

• “When you're that successful, things have a momentum, and at a certain point you can't really tell whether you have created the momentum or it's creating you.” - Annie Lennox
• “Success comes from taking the initiative and following up... persisting... eloquently expressing the depth of your love. What simple action could you take today to produce a new momentum toward success in your life?” - Tony Robbins
• “Enthusiasm is the energy and force that builds literal momentum of the human soul and mind.” - Bryant H. McGill
• “Many long years of pleasant toil and exertion had done their work. A full momentum of prosperity had been given to my engineering business at Patricroft.” - James Nasmyth
• “The world is wide, and I will not waste my life in friction when it could be turned into momentum.” - Frances E. Willard

So, how do we get and use momentum in our lives and businesses? I think that it is just like the exercising. When we start, we have to work a lot harder to move. We will experience setbacks and even pain. But, if we keep on keeping on, the momentum will build and start to help us and will make everything easier.

Michael Korda summed it all up when he wrote, “One way to keep momentum going is to have constantly greater goals.”

And then, there are momentum quotations with a whole different approach:

• "Most of life is routine - dull and grubby, but routine is the momentum that keeps a man going. If you wait for inspiration you'll be standing on the corner after the parade is a mile down the street." - Ben Nicholas
• "If your position is everywhere, your momentum is zero." - William N. Lipscomb, Jr.
• "I just wanna build momentum again. Keeping yourself in work is one thing, keeping yourself in good work's another. But if it doesn't work out, so be it. As the Taoists say, 'Learn to accept that which you cannot change.'" - Ian Hart
• "To have no heroes is to have no aspiration, to live on the momentum of the past, to be thrown back upon routine, sensuality, and the narrow self." - Charles Horton Cooley

For the rest of the week, I will leave you with a technical-sounding quotation to think about and ponder on. Charles J. Givens wrote, “Success requires first expending ten units of effort to produce one unit of results. Your momentum will then produce ten units of results with each unit of effort."

Curious about Trust - Are You Trust Worthy? What Does It Mean to You?

Ken McCarthy wrote in his recent blog, “It's all about trust. Going back to the start of this article, trust may be the single most important word in business.

“I'm not talking about being-blind trust. Healthy skepticism is one of the most important tools in the entrepreneur's tool kit. I'm talking about being trustworthy. Literally: worthy of trust.”

He truly hit a nerve with me and many others.

Having been active on the Internet since 1997, I have found that there are a few gurus one can trust, and many others who are not “worthy of trust” or my money.

I just discovered Ken McCarthy during this past year, and he and his “System” have definitely earned my trust. I won’t list the others here, but if you want to know some of them, do visit my newer website, www.ChrisRecommends.com.

Anyway, back to this blog. What does trust mean to you and your business and/or life? The formula for attracting, selling to and keeping clients is: we buy from those we, “Know, like and trust.” We all need to ask ourselves, “What makes or will make me worthy of trust?”

Here are some examples for me:

• I recently took my car in for service. Since I would be unavailable by phone, I told them that I would be willing to pay for complete replacement of my brakes if needed (they were making a terrible sound). The service man told me what that would cost and I was prepared. When I returned, he told me, “Good news! We only had to replace the front brakes and clean up the back ones.” Did he build trust with me? You bet!
• One habit that has always paid off for me is being timely and trustworthy about answering e-mails and phone messages. Even though I receive a huge number, I work at getting back to people FAST. I know for a fact that when in contention with someone else for a job (especially a storytelling gig) that my quick response has made a difference.
• There is nothing as distressing as ordering a program - especially a pricey one - and finding it is full of fluff or problematic when trying to use it. It kills my trust!

I know we all could go on and on sharing examples, but I do want to share some of the great quotations I found for trust.

• “Just trust yourself, then you will know how to live.” - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
• “Trust your hunches. They're usually based on facts filed away just below the conscious level.” - Joyce Brothers
• “We grow in time to trust the future for our answers.” - Ruth Benedict
• “Trust yourself, you know more than you think you do.” - Benjamin Spock
• “Today I trust my instinct, I trust myself. Finally.” - Isabelle Adjani
• “A man who doesn't trust himself can never really trust anyone else.” - Cardinal De Retz

Who and what can’t we trust?

• “Where large sums of money are concerned, it is advisable to trust nobody.” - Agatha Christie
• “Never trust a computer you can't throw out a window.” - Steve Wozniak
• “Don't trust anyone who has been in school for the past 24 consecutive years.” - Craig Bruce
• “Don't trust anyone over 30.” - Pat Boone
• “Nobody expects to trust his body overmuch after the age of fifty.” - Alexander Hamilton
• “I never trust an executive who tends to pass the buck. Nor would I want to deal with him as a customer or a supplier.” - James Cash Penney

Can we trust our friends?

• “I learned you can't trust the judgment of good friends.” - Carl Sandburg
• “I can trust my friends. These people force me to examine myself, encourage me to grow.” - Cher

And some theories about trust:

• “The chief lesson I have learned in a long life is that the only way you can make a man trustworthy is to trust him; and the surest way to make him untrustworthy is to distrust him.” - Henry L. Stimson
• “Back in the prehistoric jungle, all the animals who trusted other animals got eaten. The only ones who survived to reproduce were the ones who instinctively feared everybody and bit their heads off. This explains why so many people, like artists, who trust their instincts, behave like crocodiles.” - Brad Holland
• “I have known a vast quantity of nonsense talked about bad men not looking you in the face. Don't trust that conventional idea. Dishonesty will stare honesty out of countenance any day in the week, if there is anything to be got by it.” - Charles Dickens
• “Do not trust your memory; it is a net full of holes; the most beautiful prizes slip through it.” - Georges Duhamel

I will leave you with my favorite trust quotation for the week:

One of my favorite writers, Natalie Goldberg, wrote, “Trust in what you love, continue to do it, and it will take you where you need to go.”

Curious about Being Independent: Are You? Questions to Ask Yourself

In an e-mail I received today from Dan Kennedy, he asked the following questions:

Are you independent from money worries?
Are you independent about who you will and will NOT do business with?
Are you independent of wasting your time?

These questions put a bit of a twist on “Independence” which I wrote about in my July 5th blog last year. If you are interested, you will find it by clicking HERE.

Yes, Kennedy’s questions spurred me on to ask some other questions about how independent I am and of what?

Are you independent of worrying about what others think of you?
Are you independent from nasty gossip? About you or others?
Are you independent of procrastination? perfection? overwhelm?
Are you an independent thinker?
How independent are you?

Chauncey Depew wrote, “Follow the path of the unsafe, independent thinker. Expose your ideas to the dangers of controversy. Speak your mind and fear less the label of 'crackpot' than the stigma of conformity. And on issues that seem important to you, stand up and be counted at any cost.”

One of my favorite painters, Mary Cassatt wrote, “I am independent! I can live alone and I love to work.”

I wonder how many of you go as far as Depew recommends. “Conformity” has never been my strong suit, but I admit that being “counted at any cost” is a bit strong for even me. Yes, I do agree completely with Cassatt’s statement, which isn’t so outlandish today, but in her day it was.

Finding quotations this week using as my core word, “independent,” did open a different way of thinking.

First, let me share several made by women (note that usually I would not distinguish between genders, but realize that “independent” women are often suspect.):

• “My mother told me to be a lady. And for her, that meant be your own person, be independent.” - Ruth Bader Ginsburg
• “I like being a strong, independent woman, and to be honest, I was never afraid to be on my own.” - Dido Armstrong
• “Now, I am completely independent - I earn my living by speaking and writing.” - Karen Hughes
• “It is easy to be independent when you've got money. But to be independent when you haven't got a thing, that's the Lord's test.” - Mahalia Jackson
• “There is little place in the political scheme of things for an independent, creative personality, for a fighter. Anyone who takes that role must pay a price.” - Shirley Chisholm
• “I don't like traditions, I am very personal, very independent, I don't like intimate ladies, I mean in German lieder there's a lot of copy, a lot of imitation, a lot of tradition, and this I have put it aside.” - Victoria de los Angeles

Then, there are what I will call “philosophy or creativity quotations”:

• “A society committed to the search for truth must give protection to, and set a high value upon, the independent and original mind, however angular, however rasping, however socially unpleasant it may be; for it is upon such minds, in large measure, that the effective search for truth depends.” - Caryl P. Haskins
• “I've always felt like I was on the margins. Once upon a time that's what independent used to mean.” - John Sayles
• “A great actor is independent of the poet, because the supreme essence of feeling does not reside in prose or in verse, but in the accent with which it is delivered.” - Lee Strasberg
• “I try to construct a picture in which shapes, spaces, colors, form a set of unique relationships, independent of any subject matter. At the same time I try to capture and translate the excitement and emotion aroused in me by the impact with the original idea.” - Milton Avery
• “It is very nearly impossible... to become an educated person in a country so distrustful of the independent mind.” - James A. Baldwin

I will leave you with the assignment to come up with your own “independent” questions - or at least answer those I have listed. And, here are two more interesting quotations to chew on during this coming week:

• “The man who is aware of himself is henceforward independent; and he is never bored, and life is only too short, and he is steeped through and through with a profound yet temperate happiness.” - Richard M. Nixon
• “All men are by nature born equally free and independent.” - George Mason

Have a great Holiday! and Week!