The following are the notes I took while listening to the audio version of the book. This is not intended to be a comprehensive summary nor is it objective. I hear and write, through the lenses of my current knowledge and interest levels. If you read something that fascinates you in my notes you might enjoy reading this book for a deeper understanding.

Childhood is about learning the skills required for adulthood. As parents, our role is to mentor that process not to guarantee the happiness of our children neither during childhood or beyond. Preventing a child from having a full range of complex experiences from which to learn, including failing and frustration, will lead to their underdevelopment.

We learn through experience. Through doing. Every experience has the potential to teach us something. But we cannot focus on the experience if we are continuously being judged. We edit ourselves to get ‘good’ feedback from our parents and peers. This reduces our willingness to engage in experiences where we might fail, which could be anything new or complex. This limits children very quickly to a narrow range of activities that they know they can get positive feedback and praise for.

Continuously praising our children can inhibit their growth and self-esteem just as fast as criticism.

So swap the ‘well-done Jenny’ for neutral feedback questions like; what did you do? and What did you think? ‘Tell me about your day’, instead of ‘how was your day’ which invites self-processing. To avoid judgement during their telling you, use statements like; ‘tell me more’ and ‘then what happened’.

At the end of the telling, highlight the learning from their experience by asking your child questions about how they feel about the event and if you think they could change the process, without suggesting next time will be better to ask ‘is there something you wanted to say/do that you didn’t get a chance to’ or ‘next time this happens what else will you say/do’?

Maturity requires trial and error to find our real strengths and have enough practice to develop these. That is, learning is a series of adjustments, with failure as the compass for progress. If we make it about doing it well, children will limit themselves to experiences they can already do and thus never exploring alternatives.

The truth of our experiences and the decisions we make about what to change next time create real self-esteem. Truth defines us accurately which allows us to confidently move into new activities to learn more. Dembo argues that we develop into more capable adults if we know our skills are lacking and can make adjustments to improve at our own pace. Compare this to being over-celebrated making us unsure if we should change anything and lose that praise so we plateau and waste that improvement time leaving us underprepared for further learning.

America’s success at all costs attitude, which he attributes to the Dr Benjemin Spook books on child-rearing, is creating huge unhappiness. Success is an expectation of improvement which does not allow for reality and the truth of who we really are. Most of us are pretty bad at everything we do with at best a few areas of real competence.

Judgements and comparisons, including positive ones, are unmotivating and diminishing and do not allow real self-esteem to develop resulting in;

• low self-esteem,
• being afraid of growing up,
• being afraid of trying anything new.

Overpraise and celebration show the child what is expected and that everything else is bad. Then the parent’s feelings and reactions become more important than the experience itself and our reactions, this creates hesitation for further action and exploring new behaviours that we can feel good about. It becomes all about pleasing our parents rather than growing into ourselves.

The psyche is a processing centre that blends our values, morals, intellect, personality and spirit into our identity. From that blending comes a process that allows us to view the world through our interpretation; our conscience.

As parents, we used to think that teaching our children right from wrong was enough for them to navigate life. Now we think they need to perform in specific ways to be happy in the world. They are no longer relating directly to the world through the filter of their own identity, rather in comparison to a parental ideal.

This perpetual comparison is the death of self-esteem and mental health. It also leads teenagers to bad choices as they no longer evaluate situations based on their own identity or even basic issues of right and wrong, but rather on how this will be perceived by others. They do things to fit in (or not) rather than because this is where they do fit in and this is who they are and the group they belong to. So they join groups where they are miserable or agree to do things they don’t want to do. Eg children engaging in sports and even careers that are expected of them by members of their family

Life must be experienced by us and end with us with little or no interference by the reaction of others. We must feel what we feel.

Sustainable adulthood is a cycle; feel -> think -> decide-> act. 

Our identity is the reason we feel what we feel during an experience. In the same experience another person eg a sibling will have different feels in line with their identity. If we accept our true self, our identity, we don’t need to waste energy justifying our decisions to ourselves, or others, or double guessing ourselves. We do what we do because we are ourselves.

We can also become so wrapped up in other people’s judgements that we lose the ability to evaluate experiences relative to our identity and don’t make sustainable choices. The pursuit of success brings the potential for dishonesty, shortcuts, hiding our truth and going underground (living a double life).

Going underground means detaching from the feelings generated by the experience while attaching our thoughts to whatever it takes to portray the desired picture to others.

People who continue to strive for approval have not established their full identity. They choose jobs where they can get ‘good grades’ rather than job satisfaction. ‘Good grades’ being aspects that get them respect or acclaim from; peers, partners, community or even long-dead parents.

If we have no internal measure of ourselves, what we feel good about, we can never choose sustainable paths. We will wear ourselves out by expending so much energy maintaining the lie and performing tasks that do not come naturally to us. Even worse if we do not find our real strengths and develop our natural preference as a child it’s super hard to undo decades of learning and habit to go back to the exploration and learning.

How frustrating it is to have no voice. The right to express how we feel and make our own decisions. When we are not heard we feel worthless and devalued and we disconnect from all feelings. When you are afraid to speak your mind there is no safety in your family dynamic and you have to find a way to survive by living underground.

Testing our family culture does not mean abandoning the family. Testing is natural and needed to differentiate our identity from our parents by finding out how we feel and if this variation is what we want in comparison to the approval; of our parents.

Performance Theory

The competition requires an enemy to beat. Athletes are peacetime warriors. If you create competition within a team, with a leaderboard, you will destroy co-operation and harmony and this leads to increased stress and reduces health in all members and reduces output and productivity declines.

Successful performance requires no judgement. Effective performance is about the direct energy expended toward the actions. That is the intention is to complete an action, not to ‘win’. The effort is the whole issue and Personal Best is the only relevant measure, otherwise, everyone who cannot win will refuse to try.

Outcomes naturally follow effort; more effort gives more outcomes. To keep the efforts high is the thing that gives the greatest long-term output. Knowing you cannot win is demoralising and will reduce output as unhappy people have less energy and reduced effort creates reduced output.

Winning is not where the value of our experience lies. It lies in the intention to take action and the experiences derived from the activity. Enjoying the task, feeling of exhilaration, being stimulated, even being perplexed and frustrated and our decisions to adjust our activity to get more or less of these.

Do we grow up to be only the things we showed the first abilities in because these were applauded and we had no room to stubble through others we may have enjoyed more? If we had no judgement no grading, no red crosses could we have struggled through more years of maths to have found a love for it? Could we have become engineers with lesser expectations of us in the early years? Remember Einstein was just an ok mathematician in school.

Are we locking our kids in too fast? Were we locked in too fast? I was good at maths at an early stage and that was both applauded and reinforced. Could I have been a better artist if that had gotten as much attention? What of kids who show no preference through all of their schooling?

If we value the effort, whatever the outcome, we will feel the full value of our experience and continually improve our performance by choosing to alter subtly parts we did not feel good about. As we enjoy the doing we reduce stress making us any to sustain activity longer and thus the time to see improvement.

If we focus on the doing and view the output as a bonus the acclaim of others is irrelevant and unnecessary for our enjoyment and continued doing. Then the more we do the better we become at that task.

Can athletes spend thousands of hours of practice from early childhood, 4 am wake ups to swim 2 hours before school every day, without enjoying their sport? Without feeling fabulous in the doing?

As the only thing we can control is our behaviour then the other competitors are irrelevant. Great swimmers only focus on improving their own time as to whether they win or lose on the day is based on who else swims alongside them, which they cannot impact.

Parenting is teaching guiding, coaching and loving our children through their own experiences.

A constitution is a set of rules with consequences if they are broken. There must be 3 elements of a family/group constitution;

1. respect self
2. respect others
3. respect property

Group rituals create a group identity, eg how e celebrate events

Coaching starts where the truth is. When performance becomes judgement we perform to gain approval and avoid failure we stop being in the action. For example, when a professional football player kicks for goals, the process of kicking is the same whether they are alone in a park or during a match in the stadium. If they start to focus on how important that kick is their attention is no longer 100% on kicking.

Self-esteem is not defined by success, it is defined by one’s efforts and intentions and staying congruent.

Coaching children to feel their own experiences is the real purpose of parenting. Our judgement and preferences for them will not lead to their fullest development. They will not become their true self if they only choose activities within a parent-approved selection.

Respect rather than react

A reaction is the expression of feelings within the event

A response is the expression of thoughts about the feelings, that is after an event consider how you feel and choose what to do next.

The process of all experiences;

feelings lead to thoughts lead to decisions leads to actions and around again.

Coaching can only occur in the stage after feeling where we help them to processes all aspects for themselves to make the best decisions for themselves. If their decisions are not based on their full feelings each cycle of decisions and action takes them further from themselves and become less sustainable.

Family Culture is created by parents and is made up of the 4R’s;

1. Rules – everyone has the right to make their own decisions within the rules of their family. Rules are only effective if they are clearly understood and thus must vary with the age/abilities of each child.
2. Roles – must be flexible as children grow and family circumstances change.
3. Rituals – help create a family identity through consistency.
4. Relationships with open and honest dialogue otherwise we are not relating directly to the other.

Success and failure are each equally stages in a process of learning. They both function as input for further thinking to allow for growth. There is no objective measure of success or failure except the consequences that follow it. Children will learn to regulate their behaviour by experiencing the consequences of their actions directly, without the consequences being filtered by the reaction and judgement of others.

Others cannot make us happy in the long term if it requires being dishonest with ourselves. Pretending to like something because we learnt these are valuable to others is not sustainable leading to increased stress and poor health.

Respect is the attitude and process of honouring someone/something through the intention to be kind and thoughtful to the other.

Rituals help create an identity. When we allocate a set time or space to honour an experience it then becomes an activity that defines the identity of a family.

Family meeting – A time each week to review our agenda’s, requirements and rules. Allows each member to have a voice in the family process and self-regulate.

Ritualise time with each child separately (no matter how limited). This allows time for the child to safely express their feelings and receive coaching without fear of reaction from their siblings. Examples of a family of 9 children had only an hour alone with mum each month. That’s better than never having any.

We all have different ways of both explaining and learning things. There is no such thing as better teachers/students. To maximise your learnings focus on finding teachers/explanations who make sense to you. Don’t give up on the topic, or worse, yourself go shopping for the right book/course/coach for you.

If you are reading something and you don’t understand it, assume the writer doesn’t know how to present it well for you and find someone else.

If you are searching for a partner who will ‘accept me as I am’ you are admitting that you do not accept yourself and you need someone else to confirm you are ok.

A great relationship has nothing to do with who you are or the other person thinking you’re great. It’s about how well you are, fits with who they are. So long as the two of you fit well enough (only you can say what is enough) you have the basis of a great relationship.

We all understand that no-one can fit perfectly with anyone else.   There will always be aspects of our personality that simply are of no value to anyone else; irrelevant behaviours while at work, the gym, engaging in hobbies etc. There will even be some differences that are more than neutral, they are outright annoying to the other. Belching comes to the top of my list, closely followed by Dad jokes.

You sustain great relationships when the value of the parts that do fit is more than the annoyance of the parts that don’t. A separate issue is whether you can choose to be respectful of the other, and reduce their exposure to the parts of you they struggle with. Only if you have a strong sense of self-worth do you have the choice to adapt your behaviours to strengthen the relationship further.

Let’s consider this with a really simple example.

If you are confident about your looks then you may use makeup in a large variety of ways, wearing lots on some days then none on others. People’s opinions about how much make-up you wear, the style and colours, whether it suits you, and whether you ‘need’ it, are all irrelevant to your self-confidence. That leaves you in a place to choose if you will consider the preferences of others when putting on your make-up for the day.

For most women, this is not a very simple example because looks are a very important part of confidence and identity. Let’s simplify it as promised. What if you are in a relationship with someone who is petrified of make-up (they have a clown phobia) or even allergic to it? If you are confident in your looks and value, then you will prioritise the relationship and no longer wear make-up for their safety and comfort.

But let’s make this example complex again and remove the health-threatening reaction. Then it’s less obvious where the tipping point for good relationships versus identity is. If you are not confident about your looks, you don’t have this choice without endangering yourself. Instead, you insist they ‘accept me as I am’ or if your confidence is very low you leave the relationship to ensure it does not endanger you. Behaviours you cannot live without, even while in the company of just one person, are saying more about you than the relationship.

Relationships, identity and choices are but reserved for personal relationships, life partners, family and friends. In my work as a business coach, I see the exact same balancing act occurring in relationships at work. The quality of every relationship is a combination of the value they offer you versus how much they threaten your identity. Understanding yourself allows you to better manage these reactions and make more productive choices about who you work with and how.

Is there a situation at work, a style of person, a job function that is triggering you and wasting your energy? Is it time to stop ‘divorcing’ great jobs or staff and learn to understand where these emotional responses are coming from and give yourself more choices? Then it’s time to find a business coach.

When we are stuck, not taking any action, we often find ourselves wistfully saying if only I had a bit more motivation. But motivation to do what? If you are stuck, it’s most likely there are too many unknown’s. You’re not sure what you want exactly. You may not even be sure where ‘here’ is. Or maybe you have a clear goal, even had it for a while, but you’re just not getting any closer to it and don’t know what to try now.

Why are you procrastinating?

It is impossible to generate action without clarity, the what, why and how of doing. If you are procrastinating there are potentially two issues getting in the way and they occur in this order;

1. Not enough planning in at least one of the three stages; what, why and how.
2. Emotional resistance

We are often focused on the emotional element first, having been sold the myth that if we feel good we can conquer anything, or that if we resolve old emotional issues we become more effective. Sorry to say, but even when we feel great, we can be idling in the shallows if there is not enough planning.

Let me explain.

Actions are generated by thinking – Feeling ‘good’ or ‘motivated’ cannot initiate actions.

Emotions can, however, block action- Emotions like fear, confusion or uncertainty all signal danger and will stop action.  We cannot sustain consistent action when there is significant ‘danger’ except for the actions that ensure survival (see graphic).

Emotions are themselves products of thinking. If we think something is dangerous we feel fear. If we cannot understand a situation we feel confused etc. If emotions can block action it’s understandable why we believe that simply ‘clearing’ these up is enough to stop procrastinating and restart action. But alas no. You still need clarity of what, why and how to start, and stay, in action. Without clarity, you are left in a state of confusion. Confusion is one of the emotions that stop action.

 What is motivation?

When we are unable to get into action we say we don’t feel ‘motivated’ enough, using the term as if it’s an emotion. Let’s consider what motivation really means? Motivation means having a motive, a cause or reason to act, it’s our ‘why’, that is, the second stage of planning. Motivation, it turns out, is not something we feel, it is something we think. This means we don’t have enough clarity on ‘why’ we want it, the rewards of reaching our goal and any upside during the process.

For example, you want to study to get a better job. Rewards from finishing the qualification include pride in achievement and increased social status/salary/employability. Rewards along the way may include, leaving a bad job, making new friends, living on campus/new city and for some the joy of learning. All of these only counts if you personally think they are positive.

The ‘why’ must also be the net reward after considering all costs; personal effort, actual costs, potential costs, losing the security of your current position and consequences of doing it badly (taking many years or not graduating). If there is no negative consequence of staying where you are now but action requires much effort for undefined rewards, why make the effort? Because you should? Because you ‘want it’? Neither of these is reasons enough to get you into action.

Are your attempts at ‘getting motivated’ making it worse?

To create sufficient clarity to get into action temporarily throw out the visualisation board, the 5 am alarms and other “simple” success strategies. These can be making the situation worse by creating new emotional barriers to action. Yes, all of these success ‘tools’ can make it harder to start or continue.

If you cannot get yourself into action but have started ramping up ‘motivation’, you are proving your inability to achieve your goal; no action = no progress forward = lost resources (time) = failure. This artificial loss is creating more emotional resistance and barriers to action.

How planning helps!

It’s time to start thinking in much greater detail to get yourself into action. Thinking includes 3 different aspects and they are best started in this order;

• Deciding exactly what you want – setting specific goals and milestones. What does being ‘done’ really look like?  For example, you want to be an Art critic. That is a big lofty hard-to-define goal. Instead, you might focus on a specific tangible milestone; to have 5 unique art reviews published within 12 months. With this tighter milestone, you can now plan why this will benefit you and then what actions are needed, which need to be repeated and how often etc.
• Understanding why you want to do this. This can be very tricky and is the place most goals stall. Without reasons you can quantify, you cannot continue to the how stage of planning. But sometimes you cannot work out if your goal is worth the effort until you know exactly how much effort it will it take, the exact value (both monetary and emotional) of the rewards including milestone rewards.  So the ‘Why’ phase often needs to include some research on the ‘how’. Analyse (cost + risk) vs. reward of the final goal and each of the milestones. Often the early stages of a plan can appear to be all negative, requiring huge additional effort, like years of education. Having clarity over what the total costs and rewards actually are is very important to both starting and staying in action during the cost/negative phase. For example, knowing how much salary advantage your qualifications can give you over the next 25 years versus the costs of tuition and salary lost during study.
• Finally, how you would go about it all. To quantify the why you have already completed some of the how. The danger here is to think your initial considerations of how are enough to get started. Certainly, if you did the why analysis thoroughly it will ‘feel’ great. Seeing how much more upside than effort there is will energise you. You are as they say; on fire!. But beware, you will need to go into ALL the details to prevent resistance creeping back or becoming totally stalled later.

If a lot of detail makes planning seem overwhelming, then plan for a shorter horizon to a specific milestone which has a significant tangible reward. The reward must be big enough to justify the effort even if you go no further. Do you need a 5-year plan or a 3 month one? For example, will completing just the one stage of the education give you enough upside?   Big goals do take a long time to achieve, but the longer the time frame you set, the harder it will be to plan at a detailed enough level to get started.

Just do it – and the never give up death-trap

Should the story of Edison trying a thousand different materials for the filament in the lightbulb inspire us to never give up?

No. Edison had a real plan and was following a proven success process.

As a scientist, his life was about discovering things by hypothesising and experimenting with a range of options, to eliminate what does not work, in order to establish what does. So ‘failure’ is a positive action in his context that directs future actions toward success. There was also no social downside, everyone expects scientists to fail continuously. Financially risk? Nope, he was being paid to conduct these experiments. When a reporter asked, “How did it feel to fail 1,000 times?” Edison replied, “I didn’t fail 1,000 times. The light bulb was an invention with 1,000 steps.”

But if you are not following a proven plan and being paid for the journey, then continuously ‘failing’ will create a huge toll on your mental health, perhaps to the extent that it will rob you of your energy to perform in other parts of your life.

Should you stop wanting things if you cannot work out how to achieve them?

No.

Just don’t torture yourself if you are doing nothing about making it happen, nor confuse wanting, wishing and hoping with having a goal.

To want something and let the ‘universe provide’ can sometimes help gather information to allow detailed planning and thus get you into action later. Coming back to the art critic, with your heightened desire to achieve the goal of publishing 5 articles, you become more observant of relevant issues. You notice adverts for writing courses, ask more questions of anyone who is already in the field, read more about art, and so forth. All this ‘universe’ provided input contributes to being able to start really planning, by clarifying parts of the what, why, or how.

The role of research and networking

As a variation to waiting on the universe to provide, you can actively seek more input on any of the three stages, by researching or interacting with people who are already on this journey.

Planning is boring

Agreed. So is brushing your teeth, and as adults, we know there are real consequences, physically in the long term and socially in the short term, if we don’t do it. To succeed, planning is not just an event, it is a daily component of success. This does not mean you are continuously changing the plan, rather maintain clarity you may need to review it daily or refine it as you progress and you have more information. If you talk to anyone with greater success than you, you will see that they have done, and are doing, more planning than you are currently doing.

While enough planning must occur before action can start, you will need to be continually planning on a daily, and if unforeseen obstacles emerge, even an hourly basis for action to continue. We have many names for this continuous planning, like ‘time management’ and being ‘agile’ or ‘responsive’. This can be happening subconsciously, which does work beautifully for some people. But regardless of your usual style, if you are procrastinating you need to do your daily planning consciously, at least till are fully active again.

Where does a coach fit in?

There are lots of misconceptions about the role of the modern-day business coach. A coach is not here to provide public accountability and to keep your ‘toes to the fire’. These just increase your emotional risk of humiliation and reduce action. We don’t need to pay anyone to tell us we are behind schedule. If you think you do need someone to tell you, then you probably have a parent or sibling who will gladly do this for free.

Coaches help us becoming better at the planning, improving our skills (doing) and managing our emotions on the journey.

1. Planning: Giving you the headspace to plan, by focusing your attention on the goal, why it matters to you and its steps. Providing skills and methodology for planning. While a coach does not need to be a subject expert they need to be good at analysis and planning, otherwise, you could use any friend to question your decisions.
2. Doing: Improving your activity by helping to analyse the progress and by offering feedback. By telling your coach how you felt you are not just sharing the burden, but this conversation can lead to practical adjustments to the plan, improving your results, and reduce the emotional consequences over time.
3. Managing emotions: Moral support while you learn to crawl. A cheer squad on the journey who is objectively able to say, “your winning because you’re getting better and failing less now”. The feedback that you are going forward, no matter how slowly, reduces your fear response and makes future actions easier. When you work alone the uncertainty of not knowing if your effort is moving you forward is enough for your brain to stop all activity to conserve energy for actions that can produce positive outcomes.

We all need help making things happen in our lives. A few coaching sessions could be the start of a new adventure or the insight to conquer a specific roadblock. Let’s start the conversation by emailing me at maya@salesinventoryprofile.com

Corporate Coaching since 1994 in Sydney or by Skype across Australia and New Zealand.

Most business owners falsely assume that investment potential is based on having an innovative product or service. However, we have all seen the craziest business opportunities get funding on Shark Tank solely because of the leader in the business.

#1. Create massive external clarity.

Everyone who comes in contact with your business must get with absolute clarity what your business does and who they do it for.

#2 Massive external credibility. 

This simplest way to do this is to become published in a trade journal, newspaper, or a popular blog. Many entrepreneurs find the ultimate credibility is to become a published author.

#3 Corporate design.

If you’re looking for equity investors to inject your business with tonnes of working capital, then you must design your business to be attractive to investors from day 1. Operations manual so someone can step in and conduct the business to some extent without explanations from the owner. At least four distinctive products or product lines. Have four to twelve staff in addition to the owners, in this ratio 2:1:1 Sales: Marketing/Promotions: Technical Support/Delivery.

#4 Become visible in your community. 

If the investor approaches you, you’ll have a 90% chance of getting the exact deal you want. You must increase your visibility so that investors know where you are. Participate broadly in both the business and local community to increase your peer network. This generates the word of mouth reputation that can lead to effective introductions.

The new big business won’t be big at all. It will be the collaboration of several small businesses or people banning together to reach a level of influence that it will generate the big company’s profits.

Get a free copy of the Collaboration Economy book https://johnspencerellis.com/collaboration-economy-book

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