Get a life: Scent of success

Tessie Lim is the Founder of World Center of Personal Excellence, a company she set up for the purpose of enabling and driving dreams through facilitating and realising potential, defining purpose and meaning for an optimal life. She is a certified performance coach with an extensive background in behavioural psychology, marketing, business and education. You may write to her at tess@wpx.com.my
Letters will be edited for length and clarity.

BEING in business, management, education and training for over 20 years, my experience confirms that it’s the “good” people who seek improvement.

Nowadays, whenever I’m invited to conduct a needs analysis or to receive a job brief, I’m often amused at how it’s the already well-run companies that want to do better. I believe I’m invited to consult not because the leadership doesn’t have the capacity to solve problems, but because they suspect their managers cannot see certain problems. We can’t act on what we don’t see, can we?

Before commencing my business relationships, I like to begin by exploring with my prospects, their ideas and meanings about success and failure. I like to determine with them in actual, observable and measurable terms how they represent these concepts in their mind.

Common anti-success strategies that surface in the course of our discussions include people belittling their achievements, leaders shifting goal posts and denial – not admitting their needs, wants and desires.

Everyday at the university and even lately, especially now in these troubled times, I hear worrying mums. “If only I could get (name) to wake up earlier… she could achieve so much more in a day.”

I see burly dads slump. They say: “My son seems defeated before contest. He doesn’t see anything through. He has no sense of urgency or desire to accomplish anything in life.”

Buckminster Fuller, American humorist, says: “All children are born geniuses, 99 per cent have their genius knocked out of them by their parents and teachers as soon as they learn how to talk!”

Educational institutions that do well, act on the belief that everyone is naturally a good learner. We concentrate on creating systems that allow students to access their potential – we present learning as easy, experiential and fun. We deliver so people feel energised and alive. We speak of succeeding as if it were the most natural thing in the world. We work to develop our students’ faith in their talent and competencies, and aim to instill in them a readiness to jump in and do.

Believe it or not, there’s an art to staying stuck. “Failure” doesn’t just happen – it has a structure and a sequence. This system will involve people or events and a pattern of thoughts, feelings, actions and interactions. Once we understand how all this works – for or against us – we have a means of structuring things differently. So we can work to avoid failure. Psychologists call this modelling.

Once something can be described, it can be taught and learned, unlearned or relearned. As long as we remain concerned with the structure, not the content, as long as we remain non-judgmental, but stay curious… interested and fascinated about the connection between action and outcome, we can be proactive about our improvement.

This means separating person from behaviour. This means acting on behaviour, not attacking the person. Yet how often do we see parents, teachers and bosses making scathing personal remarks that demolish the confidence of others?

Common patterns of stuckness include spending too much time with people who frame life as one big problem, having unrealistic time frames for success, presuming all change is hard work and therefore getting discouraged before beginning anything, doubting our own competence and not being tenacious enough – that is, being in the habit of taking ‘No’ for an answer.

Performing below expectations, if framed as failure, can be belief-forming because we draw conclusions from these situations that guide our future feelings and actions. If failure leads to self-blame or a sense of worthlessness, it can restrict ambition, bring on depression and further damage our self-image. This may lead to anger, bitterness, cynicism, a deviant and revengeful attitude to others, authority and even society in general.

The readiness to experiment is a key factor in success. This is the foundation for creativity and innovation after all and it requires a healthy attitude towards success and failure. If attitude is a way of looking at things, then what if I said that the person with the most flexible behaviour has the most influence? What if I told you that being flexible relates directly to our ability and willingness to try different, novel, untested responses and strategies?

I’ve learned that I am the all-powerful meaning maker. I know that when my “why” is compelling enough, I can perform any “how”.

Everyday I live by the wisdom of the poet Pantanjali who says, “When you are inspired by some great purpose, some extraordinary project, all your thoughts break their bounds. Your mind transcends limitations, your consciousness expands in every direction, and you find yourself in a new, great and wonderful world.”

In ex-husband’s clutches

Q. I’ve been looking for a life partner since my divorce. I know I don’t help myself because I’m the conservative type. Moreover, I busy myself with my children. My ex-husband is the jealous type — a commanding personality and old-fashioned about what our teenagers can do and can’t do. He still wants to control me.

A. Women can never get divorced it seems! It’s like there’s a karmic rope that binds us to our man forever (Arrggh!) We never stop being mothers, do we? We are the life-giver, protector and nurturer of the human race. Men, on the other hand, can go footloose and fancy-free even before the link is broken! On your personal love life, look where you’d expect to find the type of man you want. Hanging around places and hoping that “someone” (anyone) is going to show interest is a bit of a long shot. You’d be exposing your subconscious to its devices and before you know it, you’d find yourself dating the same type of man you just got disentangled from. Ask yourself what you really want in a man. Make your description crystal clear, and mark my words, you would have at least doubled your chances of finding him. As for your ex’s commanding demeanour, you need to decide who’s in control of your life. You’d also want to explain to your children about their responsibility for their own happiness. Don’t let there come a day when family blame each other for their misery.

Pity the invisible wife

Q. My husband talks over me as if I’m not there. He makes decisions for me and even disagrees with me after I’ve said how I feel about it. He treats me as if I’m invisible. He says he does it because he wants to take care of me and not let me worry about anything.

A. If ineffective communication is a saboteur of a loving relationship, then do we all need to be great communicators to be great lovers? When we can put our thoughts, feelings, understandings, perspectives and needs into words, as we describe things, as we tell stories, what we are doing is communicating our meanings to each other. The same events can literally mean different things to different people. To love someone and to appreciate them for who they really are and what they value, it’s essential to learn to see things from their view, to hear them properly and to get a flavour of how they experience life. Perhaps you can find a way to tell your husband he doesn’t own your mind-body-emotion, so he isn’t in a position to define your reality or make an assessment of what happens to you without first checking with you. Neither is he responsible for how you feel. If he really wants to take care of you, discuss with him all the ways he could do that, in ways that are meaningful to you and bring you both closer together. Sometimes talking with a third party works better. You could also review all the ways you have allowed him to take this type of behaviour with you. I believe we teach other people how to treat us by what we allow and disallow.