Keynote Speaking from Christian Simpson

For the past 5 weeks it’s been murder in my gym. What resembled the Marie Celeste before Christmas is now packed to the rafters, bodies everywhere.

It’s an annual phenomena that, for most, is doomed from the off, and regardless of what the New Years resolution is, this is the time, approximately 30 to 45 days into the year, where it typically all goes ‘pear-shaped’ and people fall off the wagon.

It’s happened to the best of us and it shouldn’t. So what prevents us from creating the changes we want so much?

There’s some revealing scientific research that points the way. In an attempt to discover how a group of astronauts would respond to the kind of disorientation experienced in outer space, NASA took a group of 10 high trained astronauts and had them wear goggles fitted with concave lenses for 24 hours a day for 30 days.

It must have been an incredibly tough experience, because to these astronauts the world appeared upside down and back to front. The objective was to observe how each individual coped with long periods of disorientation that was typical of conditions experienced in outer space.

The most astounding discovery of the process baffled the scientists at NASA. Between the 25th and 30th day, every individual undergoing the exercise had the same experience: whilst still wearing the concave lenses, their vision ‘flipped’ and returned to seeing the world as normal.

The mind had adapted to events and modified the output. Scientists discovered that each individual had developed new neural pathways, allowing them to operate more effectively within the new set of circumstances, and the window for this process, without exception, was 25 to 30 days.

In a subsequent experiment, NASA scientists took another group of astronauts and repeated the experiment, but with one change, on day 15 half the group were allowed to remove their goggles for one day only.

The outcome was fascinating. The individuals who removed their goggles had to wait another 25 to 30 days from the day of removal for their vision to turn right side up again. Just one single interruption made the difference.

This experiment led to what some Neuro Scientists call the ’30 day principle’, where it takes 30 consecutive days to BEGIN the process of overcoming a habit, to begin to modify a deep seated belief system and install a new pattern of behaviour, which, of course, generates new results.

This fascinating research reveals why lasting improvements in performance are so difficult to achieve for many individuals and organisations.

In my next post I’ll reveal the chain of events that must take place if lasting improvements are to be made in ANY aspect of life, and how successfully changing a habit has nothing to do with talent or ability, and everything to do with how we’ve been programmed to approach it.

I’ll begin by wishing you, my valued readers, a very Happy New Year and great success in every area of your life in 2012.

My year begins by sharing some messages that relate directly to the reality of what undermines our ability to accomplish more in our lives. There couldn’t be a better time to discuss these topics given this is the time of the year when just about everyone with a working pulse vows to make an improvement in some aspect of their lives.

Inevitably, for most, the tradition of making New Years resolutions inevitably ends in failure, so why on earth do we continue to indulge in what is, for the majority of people, a fruitless exercise?

We do it because it’s what we’ve always done. It’s a generational, social imprint that was imbedded into our minds so early on in our lives that we didn’t have the ability to question it’s validity. And we’ve failed to evaluate it ever since.

Evolution, and the lasting improvements it generates, can only come from evaluating our most cherished beliefs, and traditions, just like the constructs of worldwide religions, are nothing more than mass-supported belief systems.

I’m not intending to rain on everyone’s parade. It’s not natural for me as an agent of positive change to put a spanner in the works of personal and professional transformation, however, given the gravity of the truth that our beliefs ultimately shape our realities, I’d consider myself negligent if I didn’t challenge the status quo.

So let’s begin by examining the implications of the New Years tradition. It implies that we can only reinvent ourselves in the name of greater accomplishment once a year. As ridiculous as that suggestion may first appear, the truth of how much we buy into it is revealed by our behaviours.

For most of us, we are only willing to try and become architects in the outcomes of our lives once a year, when everyone else is prepared to do the same.

There isn’t a better indication of how immersed you are in mass consciousness than how much precedence is placed on tradition. Thinking as everyone else thinks is all very well as long as everyone else is achieving the kind of results you aspire to in life. However, if you’ve ambition to be, do and have more in your life, it’s very unlikely that they are.

Meaningful accomplishment can only come from moving beyond the unconscious trappings of mass consciousness, with a willingness to drag our most cherished beliefs into the cold light of day to assess their validity. This is what brings about intelligent evolution, a subject I’ll discuss in greater detail in my next posting.

It was 16 years ago next Sunday that I received the most precious of gifts. In
December 1995 someone gave me Stephen Covey’s 7 Habits of Highly Effective
People’ and I didn’t put it down throughout 1996.

I’d been awakened to personal development, and the person gifting the book
changed the course of my life. The legacy of her contribution is literally
carved into my evolution for eternity.

It’s unlikely she’d have thought the gift would have such a profound impact
when she picked it off the book shelf and wrapped it up. Whilst it may not have
been the most expensive gift I’ve been blessed in receiving, it’s certainly
been the most expansive. It’s value has been exponentially more than any gift I
have received other than my own birth and the blessing of my children.

It was a gift with an extraordinary legacy. It compounded in value every year
of my life and changed how I thought about myself, my potential, my future, the
world and my place in it. Covey’s classic opened me up to receiving lessons and
teachings that I previously wasn’t open to receive, lessons that have proved
far more beneficial to me in my personal and professional life than ANYTHING I
learnt at school or college.

The most precious gift in December 1995 was not the actual book itself, but
what it awakened in me. In 2011, some 16 years later, the most poignant lesson
of all was finally received. a gift of understanding that no matter how much
success we experience in our lives, if that success in not shared with others,
if we’re not contributing to the success of other people, we’ve not experienced
success at all.

Because of that lesson, I dedicated 2011 to creating an opportunity that will
allow you to  make the most precious gift to yourself, someone you value in
your life, and to those in the world who need our help the most.

This is a legacy of true success: where powerful personal growth meets
meaningful philanthropy, where, just like the person who gave me Covey’s book
in 1995, you too can make the most precious gift to someone you value, a gift
that will compound in value in their personal and professional lives for every
year of their lives.

The only difference with this opportunity is you will do it whilst transforming
the lives of the most impoverished orphaned children facing the most dire of
circumstances on our planet.

The extraordinary opportunity closes on 23rd December, you can find out all
about here:

[1]http://www.christian-simpson.com/offer2012

I hope you’ll consider joining me in making 2012 a life-changing year. It’s a
decision that I guarantee you’ll be delighted with for the rest of your days.

In just about every book on the topic of personal and professional success there’s a teaching on the essential nature of casting vision. It’s not a new idea, the same idea is expressed in many ancient scriptures, for example, in Proverbs it states ‘where there is no vision the people perish’. If you’ve ever worked for an organisation that has lacked vision, and I certainly have, you’ll know how rich in truth that statement is.

Without vision people become wondering generalities, lacking direction and purpose, nothing restricts performance more than an individual lacking direction and purpose, and in my experience that’s where the vast majority of people are in today’s workplace.

I recently had this debate with a group of business leaders. We were discussing what was the true indicator of a high performance environment. There was a broad array of suggestion as you might expect however, having spent two decades in corporate environments for there is only one answer: vision, but not in the way that most people might assume I mean.

If you were to ask most people about vision they consider it something that is cast by the CEO, a strategic intent created by the hands of the most senior leader in the organisation and his team and then cascaded down the organisation for employees to buy into.

Getting people to buy into vision requires more than communicating it, and that deserves an article of it’s own, but for this lesson I want to remain focused on this term vision and it’s role in high performance environments.

There’s much more to the importance of visioning than organisational intentions. Whilst a company should have a vision, it has little meaning to the lives of the people it’s been cast too unless it’s associated with a vision of what success means in their own lives.

The teaching in Proverbs that states where there is no vision the people perish wasn’t written with the modern organisation in mind. Whilst it’s truth applies beautifully to the performance challenge of the modern organisation, its meaning was literally for the individual, because where there is no vision the people literally do perish, not in the way of scarcity in food or lacking a roof over their heads, but in the way that any individual lacking a personal and professional vision of success will never experience the true nature of their potential, never be all that they could have been, never achieve what could have been achieved in their personal and professional life.

Multiply that out to represent an organisation, and you’ll find one that will never experience the true nature of its potential manifesting on the top and bottom line.

Why is vision such an essential component of success?

It’s because of how we operate. We’re wired to think in images. Think of where you work for a moment, notice an image appearing on the screen of your mind, now think of your front door, straight away the image of your workplace is gone and instantanously you see your front door.  Your mind is structured to operate with images and through its creative process it cannot produce the success you aspire to in your life if there isn’t an image to work with.

The true measurement of a high performance environment is whether the people in that environment have a personal and professional vision for success, one that they originated, a vision from the heart that is underpinned by meaningful, personal goals. The trick to high performance is helping indivduals see how they can achieve their personal goals and realize their vision within the strategic vision and goals of the organisation. This is one of the primary functions of leadership. It’s what compels people beyond contractual obligation into the discretionary levels of performance, and it a lesson brought to me by my own experience.

Some years ago I worked in sales in the telecommunications industry. I was always a good, strong, solid performer throughout my sales career and I overachieved my targets, however, I didn’t really achieve what I knew I was capable of, and for many years it was a source of great frustration.

I didn’t have the awareness to understand that I lacked vision of success in my life. That wasn’t a topic found in the education system I experienced, so why would I think of it? All I had to compel me towards success was whatever someone else gave me, which for many years was the numerical target given to me by the company I worked for.

I had no vision and goals of my own, other than the earnings I’d receive from achieving the company’s sales target. The compulsion of earning money can be strong, however it’s potency is diluted unless it brings meaning and heart, i.e. a person has clarity on what they’ll do with money once it’s earned.A target isn’t a goal, it’s a return on investment exercise for employing someone or a means of performance measurement, it’s not what drives performance.

People respond when emotionally compelled to achieve something, and the key to unlocking untapped potential is a leaders ability to help employees clarify what a vision of success looks like, not one linked solely to outcomes in the business, but one that has meaning and heart to the individual, an outcome that is emotionally charged. Emotional involvement is key, the clue is in the word itself, e-motion, energy in motion.

In my experience, it was only when things changed in me that things changed for me. My typical annual target in my corporate sales days was 4m worth of order value a year. When I created a compelling vision of stepping out of corporate life to run my own business, helping people around the world improve their personal and professional lives and the lives of those they influence, I was compelled by a vision to earn a specific amount of money to launch and fund my first year in business. I began to think and act differently into my day to day working duties, and in a year my performance went from 4million to 64 million. I’d never made that kind of leap before.

Having seen the impact of visioning on my success, a couple of years later I cast vision to work alongside the biggest names in the personal development and leadership business, and in the past 3 years I’ve shared the teaching platform with the likes of Bob Proctor, Les Brown and today I work closely with the world’s most published author on leadership, John C Maxwell.  It was late 1999 when I began to read John’s books and I recall thinking that one day I might have the opportunity meet him and get to ask him a question or two. Today I’m blessed in working with him, training his global teams of consultants in professional coaching skills.

I’m sharing none of this to impress you but to impress upon you how essential casting vision is to high performance. It’s the alchemy of your success.

Do you have a personal and professional vision for success? Do you have a detailed image of what your best life would look like? Your mind cannot create what it cannot see, and as you’ll influence others in your life,  you’ll not be able to do for another what you’ve never done for yourself If you cannot see the successful life you intend to live into in your mind’s eye you will never experience it in your physical reality.

Take some time to do what every master of their own destiny has done, grab a pen and a pad and begin to articulate, in the present tense (as if you were living it today) what you living into your best life would look like. Repeat this process, without referring to your previous writings, for a minimum of 7 days. You will find more and more detail will emerge on each reiteration, and you’ll begin to become emotionally involved with the image taking shape in your consciousness. After 7 days read your vision first thing in the morning and last at night, and rewrite it once a week for the first month. You’ll now be beautifully equipped to underpin the vision with the creative steps, those meaningful goals that serve to bring about its realisation.

Finally, a word of warning: there is a part of you that will seek to sabotage this process. It’s called ‘conditioning’, a part of the personality that’s in the business of maintaining things as they are. It subtly undermines change by develops limiting beliefs that infuse your thought processes. Most people are unconscious to it’s influence. If you start to think the visioning process is ridiculous or pointless, and you have ‘better things to do’, welcome to your conditioning. You will be well served to remind yourself that there is a reason why every book of quality ever written on the topic of success described the essential nature of visioning. It is the alchemy of your success, and I urge you to take it seriously. It’s impact on my life has been astronomical, and I’m not blessed with any more potential than you are.