Marketing 101 By Mike French
mike@mikefrench.com
How to Move to the Next Level in Business and Practically Anything Else!
reaking the barriers of what is pre- venting you from achieving real suc- cess in your business and personal life is vital for growth. Last issue, I discussed how to deal with the first barrier, which is information overload. Now, let’s discuss overcoming the mental barrier.
B The Problem
All lights are green and you are sailing towards success. Everything looks great, but suddenly, without warning, you fail! As much as you hate to admit it, this sce- nario has happened to you more times than not. It’s a familiar pattern that con- tinues to repeat itself every time you get close to success. You’re frustrated. You don’t know what happened. You don’t understand why you can’t reach the next level of success. But, the simple explana- tion is that you have hit a mental barrier that has prevented you from moving ahead beyond a certain level where you seem to be forever stuck.
I have a friend. I’ll call him “Bob.” I’ve seen him at conferences over the years. Bob attends lots of these conferences and takes pages and pages of notes. I enjoy vis- iting with him in the hallways between ses- sions because he’s friendly, thoughtful, and enthusiastic. But the truth is, nothing much changes with Bob no matter how many conferences he attends. He never advances to the so called, “next level.” Bob is one of those people who is “forev- er learning but never changing.”
Why This Happens
Some people may argue that people like Bob don’t advance because they aren’t intelligent enough, or they don’t have what it takes. In some cases it may be true, but it certainly isn’t true all the time. There are bright people who just don’t advance. My friend Bob is actually very smart and talented, but he seems to have a governor installed in his brain that continues to hold him back no matter
30 Automotive Recycling | September-October 2015
how smart he is, how much talent he has, how many how-to classes he takes, or how many opportunities come his way. A mental barrier is like an engine gov- ernor in your head. Let me explain what I mean with the following story. During a summer vacation, I rented motor bikes to ride on the beach with my son, John. It was a lot of fun, but, the bikes we rented were designed to go faster than we were able to get them to go. No matter how much we gave them gas they would only go so fast. This was because the rental people had placed governors on the engines to control their top speed. In a similar way, a mental gov- ernor controls the top level you will achieve in whatever you do. A mental governor controls the way you think and is a permanent part of your subconscious mind. Try as you will, you cannot behave inconsistently with that mental governor.
The Power of the Mind The brain can stop an elephant! Your
mind has the power to control you in the same way an elephant can be con- strained by a very weak leg shackle. A 6-ton elephant could very easily tear loose and escape, but it won’t even try because it “believes” it can’t escape. The elephant thinks like this because, when it was very young and small, a heavy chain was placed on its leg. It fought violently with all the strength it had at the time, but eventually gave up trying to escape. It never tried again no matter how big it eventually grew. Now, as a full grown ele- phant, it can easily be controlled by even the smallest chain.
The Solution Dr. Maxwell Maltz wrote a book many
years ago titled Psychocybernetics, in which he coined the phrase, “self-image;” it’s about the view we have of ourselves including our capabilities and limitations. His theory was that you could neither
underperform nor overperform accord- ing to what you believed to be true. This idea is nothing new. The Bible, written thousands of years ago, puts it this way, “As a man thinks in his heart, so is he.” In recent years, further developments in neuropsychology have concluded that we have the power to change how we think and, therefore, change our lives. There is hope for people like Bob; but it takes some work to make a mental change. Old beliefs and ingrained nega- tive thinking patterns don’t give up easi- ly. But it can be done.
Here are a few steps on how to repro- gram your brain to get to “the next level:” 1. Do a mental inventory and deal directly with any wrong thinking holding you back from going forward to the next level. Zig Ziglar said in his book, See You at the Top, to “give yourself a checkup from the neck up to keep you from stink- ing thinking and hardening of the atti- tude.” When you discover something wrong in your thinking, write it down in the present tense as already corrected such as, “I am a strong leader.” 2. Write down the success level you want to achieve in the present tense as though you already have it, such as, “I am the top business manager in the compa- ny I work for.”
3. Start each day by reading this list out loud to yourself. 4. Carry the list with you and read it to yourself several times daily.
After doing this exercise over a period of time, depending on how ingrained your old negative thoughts are, your thinking should begin to change. When you truly embrace what you’re telling yourself, you are then in a position to move to “the next level.”
Mike French, president of Mike French & Company, Inc., can be reached toll free at 800- 238-3934, or visit his company’s Web site at
www.MikeFrench.com.
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76