Colourful Thinkers

Ahead of The Games.

A conversation between Richard and Daryll Scott (italics) following a conference of Olympiads talking about the Olympics.

Taking the thoughts of the day and seeing how they inform the business world.

RH: Writing everything down in a book means you can really track your improvements.

DS: Yes – furthermore – you are communicating to yourself that your performance is worthy of attention – very empowering.

RH: Real improvement comes from working with others, sharing tips, listening and recognising this takes time….there are few really fast fixes.

DS: Yes – I disagree about fast fixes – but no point discussing that – I need to show you. We are pack animals – our isolation of the ‘individual’ is relatively recent and individual identity is what prevents us from functioning as an integrated social system in any context.

RH: You have to know what good is – all achievements are relative – but having got the benchmark, focus on yourself and your performance not on your competition (the key to the Tesco success v. Sainsbury apparently).

DS: Beware of benchmarks – goals are also ceilings – I prefer curiosity and a feeling of possibility.

RH: Being ambitious and stretching yourself is good (it’s not bad to believe anything is possible) but in the end a degree of phlegmatism is smart – “you can only do what you can do”.

DS: Yes – an athlete like Leon– on an NLPer would describe this as focus on the process not the outcome. You can control the process with the choices you make – and you can guarantee constant incremental improvement – you cannot control the outcome. Especially something like diving because evaluation is so subjective.

The objective is to run your perfect race – nd if that’s  winner – reat! Comparative evaluation in sport is a catastrophic waste of energy and provides no benefit.

Comparative evaluation in life – car / house / salary / competence / popularity etc is the cause of a neurosis.

Forget them – think only of your own performance and constantly improve it.

RH: Relax, enjoy, smile, have fun. Too many people dwarf their talent with gloom.

DS: And the list you have provided above are higher performance states than ‘concentration, frustration, take yourself seriously’.

There is only one other process that carries the same signature of muscle patterns as deductive left-brained focussed concentration – constipation!

RH: Learn from your mistakes – most human models comprise a “learn, try, fail, adapt” model so failing is normal (not in most businesses where the fear of failure stifles of innovation and talent). But failing is the only way to get better – Robin Cousins was told to “skate to fall”.

DS: Yes – and this is my bone of contention with education and large political organisations – mistakes are stigmatized – the illusion of ‘right and wrong’ is fuelled and attention moves to ‘not messing up’ rather than doing something great.

RH: The Olympic buzz is a virus – think of how to create a marketing buzz in your business – something’s going to happen; create a build up; make the event extraordinary; worry about exceeding expectation and then leaving a legacy of new talent.

DS: Great.

RH: Mentoring is the cheapest, safest, fastest way of enhancing talent – getting what’s good and useful and learned from head A where it resides into head B. It’s a non judgemental grandparental role – that’s why age, experience and ego-freedom matters in a mentor.

DS: Yes – and a different style of communication – there are old, experienced and eo ree people that are not engaging an don’t care about the younger talent.

RH: What is the killer question? Why do you do this? Do you really need to do this? Would you still do this if you were going to get worse at it? Could a new challenge refresh you? What do you want? What are you best at?

DS: Yes – I call this ‘chunking up’ and it underpins every one of my coaching and training interventions.

The most elegant and precise examples being:

What’s important?

What’s the intention?

What do you want to get from?

RH: Expectation often determines the actual outcome so go with this and visualise a better result than you’d hope for….this may give you what you want.

DS: Unconscious Expectation ALWAYS determines the outcome – it’s a psychological schema – you will corrupt what happens to fit with the unconscious expectation.

RH: There is always a tick-box process which helps you ensure you are ready as you can be. Don’t deride it; do it. Always. Think about it a pre-flight check.

DS: Yes – if it then enables you to then forget about all of those things and quietens the voice in the head.

RH: Life is always about moving on to new goals – always. When change stops for you so does your heart.

DS: Very philosophical – my favourite quot is from Frank Herbert’s DUNE:

“Without change something sleeps inside of us and seldom awakens – the sleeper must awaken”.

RH: Get around and expose yourself to lots of different talent – it’s stimulating and reminds you that no one is ever good in a vacuum. Everything is about people interaction.

DS: Love this – who is your trusted council?

RH: Focus on the task not on your feelings – “I’m not well enough to do it”…is not a good enough excuse. Some of the best stuff has been produced out of pain.

DS: I strongly disagree for reasons that would take a long time to position – high performance comes from the flow state of doing and being fully alive in the moment with no internal dialogue. People spend a lot of time discussing what to ‘think’ watch Federer vs. Nadal – they are not thinking anything.

Leon’s dive takes 1.5 seconds – there is no space to think anything.

RH: Do not fear failure; assume success reduce stress and sleep better.

DS: If you can – not sure this is a process intervention – if someone sees the sense in this – doesn’t mean they can do it. Another experience needs to be evoked or an unconscious intervention is required.

RH: Sport; life; business the big word is – WE. WE talked; WE worked it out; WE did it….

DS: Nice.

70% of everything is in the mind not in the body nor in the brain.

DS: Yes and no – See my other email…

RH: Success is determined by the will and the plan. No one got anywhere just hoping for the best.

DS: At the highest level – yes – in other walks of life you can succeed with the will and no plan – it me you open to ‘left field’ opportunity.

RH: Make sure talent is well advised by professionals – to be sure advisors only make small differences but victory is achieved by small differences. Transformation is probably an overused word when improvement would do.

DS: Yes – one step at a time – transformation is a series of small improvement.

RH: Remain true to your roots and values. Stay ordinary. The greatest joy in life is always seeing ordinary people doing extraordinary things.

DS: Nice.

Great overall:

One comment surprised me:

70% of everything is in the mind not in the body nor in the brain.

It surprised me in a good way – This is a very effective ordering of the human system.

Most people think in terms of mind and body – separating the two – and when they say ‘mind’ they are saying ‘brain’.

We have inherited this from Descartes – the mind/body split does not exist – and was only imposed because the Catholic church prevented Decartes from studying anything from the neck up – it was the domain of the church and as such science could tell us nothing of these things.

‘Mind’ is at a different logical level to the anatomical descriptions ‘brian’ and ‘body’ because it encompasses both.

However – I would go further than your suggestion and say “100% is in the ‘mind’.”

One of my favourite hypnotic tricks it to get people to fail to do a simple physical task – if my language can dramatically alter someone’s physical strength – what does that tell you about mind in relation to performance?

You can have a well trained physiology, plenty of sleep and great nutrition – but if your mind is in the wrong place – forget it.

5 years ago I wont theUKnational karate championship (press clipping attached) – I should never have won – I was too slow – 10 years too old and decidedly under the weather on the day. How did I win – I can choose my state of mind in any given moment and i used something called a “know-nothing” state.

Sally Gunnel’s illness story is great – because the meaning i put on it is different to anyone else…

She had visualised winning the race in such a way that provides comprehensive instructions (and there are some ‘crazys’ out there that link it to quantum physics – it is proven that the act of observing corrupts results in the now, and speculated that the act of visualising corrupts results in the future).

So, just before the race, Sally’s unconscious does exactly what it needs to do to prepare for victory – it crashes the system to rest it. Without enforcing rest with flu-like symptoms Sally may have made other choices and burned too much energy.

The state she went into during the performance so that she was unaware of the result at the end is called “Know-nothing”. All New Code NLP is based on the use of this “Know-nothing” state – it takes me 10 minutes to evoke it through neurological manipulation…

RH: Penultimate comment.

In the doing of an actual task like running a race or acting a part on stage or more especially film you need to be in a reductive, distilled and narrowly focused state.

In the getting ready for the performance the complete opposite applies.

Think the difference between cooking a meal to a recipe and actually getting to create that recipe.

And I agree with everything else especially the dreaming observation – great ideas float into your mind you do not control their creation.