The Law of Traction: Act, Believe, Receive

The Coach's Thought of the Week:

"A dream is a just a wish to someday change the present. Add commitment, and the dream becomes a vision that challenges the status-quo. However, to accelerate this vision towards a new reality, you must overpower the inertia of the comfort zone through bold, massive action."

-Coach Davender

An article in the March 18 Toronto Star about "The Secret" phenomenon is subtitled "Ask, believe, receive... or not". However, in the first version that I saw early that morning, the subtitle was "ACT, Believe, Receive... or not". (capitals mine - I still have the PDF of that version...)

How apropos... Although I truly respect "The Secret" for getting people talking about how thoughts influence results, my main beef with all of this is that people seem to get the wrong impression about The Law of Attraction, which is summed up in the DVD through the three words "Ask, believe, receive". This mantra makes me think of the universe as some kind of cosmic ATM, where just by wishing, what you want just pops out of the slot...

Every Sunday, I go for a long run, and this morning the Star article's original subtitle was whirling around in my head, as I realized how spot on it was. Instead of the "Law of Attraction", I decided to call this the "Law of Traction". Here's what popped into my head during this long run...

The "Law of Traction" describes how to power your Vision from the potential of Passion to the results of Profit. Passion is the energy of the possible, and Profit a positive change, intagible or tangible, which benefits all stakeholders.

The Law of Traction focuses on taking proactive action, on coactively creating results, on making things happen. Traction is about motion, motion that generates the energy to overcome the inertia of the status-quo and create a new reality.

The Law of Traction has three steps:

• ACT - Take Massive Action Without Permission.
• BELIEVE - Adopt an attitude of "Glorious Obsession".
• RECEIVE - Accept whatever happens, good or bad, negative or positive, with gratitude and humility, and learn from it to act anew.

ACT - Getting what you want takes action. Why does it seem that so many are waiting for "permission to change", waiting for the right time, the right circumstances, for something else to finish, to begin, for someone to say "go"...

A dream is a just a wish to someday change the present. Add commitment, and the dream becomes a vision that challenges the status-quo. However, to accelerate this vision towards a new reality, you must overpower the inertia of the comfort zone through bold, massive action.

To me, this is the missing link in "The Law of Attraction" - the need to be in action. "The Secret" says "Thoughts are things"... To me, the truth is "Things are thoughts plus action". Nothing can happen if you are not in action.

You have to be in movement to see the opportunities around you. Just like you can see through a stand of trees or a fence while speeding down the highway, but if you stop, all you see are trees or the fence. (for safety's sake, only try this as a passenger, please!).

At first, all of the action you invest in your vision will seem like it's doing nothing. I call this the "Fred Flintstone" effect - remember how he gets his car going (the feet windmilling on and on, boobityboobityboop, then all of a sudden "whoosh" the car shoots forward). That's why action has to be Massive, to overcome the inertia of the comfort zone.

To create, you've got to act without waiting for permission. As a solopreneur, you are your own boss, so who are you waiting for to give you permission to get started?

So to put the Law of Traction into motion, you've got to first Take Massive Action Without Permission.

BELIEVE - Even the producer of "The Secret", Rhonda Byrne, didn't just sit by and daydream about success. She took massive action, betting her production company on the movie, and seizing every opportunity to spread the message of her film. You don't "just get" on Oprah... twice. You have to contact the right people, following up, "selling" your idea, following the "three foot rule" (talk about your vision to everyone who comes within three feet of you). What do you think she thinks or talks about all day? I bet it's about how to move her vision to the next level...

Believing is becoming "gloriously obsessed" about what you want to create, "obsession" in the sense of focusing all your thoughts and energies in one direction, and "glorious" meaning a direction that celebrates Who You Really Are, in the direction of your Mission, Vision and Permission.

You've got to eat, sleep, think, dream, talk, question, harangue, needle, infuse, ignite and excite everyone around you with your vision. You've got to be the beacon, the projector for your vision, so much so that it's got to get other people vibrating to your beat, too.

After all, if you're not the one who's most enthusiastic about your vision, who else can be your champion?

RECEIVE - Think about this one carefully... Do you really want what you say you want? To me this is another key failing of "The Law of Attraction" as described in "The Secret". If I receive everything I ask for, not only would life be quite boring, but would I not be shortchanging myself because I would be only exploring a fraction of my potential?

There is an unsaid truism in project management, that if the project comes in on budget, on schedule and on specification, that means that the project is probably not what was needed nor wanted in the first place. Truly great projects that change the world (think Panama Canal, or the James Bay Hydroelectric Projects in Quebec or whatever megaproject that comes to mind), they all flirt with the edge of the impossible, challenging the way things are now, to create a new reality with unforeseen consequences, sometimes good, sometimes not so good, but always placing us in a new situation that allows us to explore a new part of our humanity. Does this mean global climate change is good? Well, I see it as a grand opportunity to flex our collective creativity!

Most visions start with an insatisfaction with the present, and therefore are only projections onto the future of what we want (or don't want). The paradox of vision or goal setting is that although I need a strong vision or goal to get started, I must be willing to let go of it mid-stream to reach for a new goal or vision that's beyond what I originally wanted.

I remember in January 1994, when I was an officer in the Canadian Air Force, I had just finished meeting with my career manager, mapping out my next five years in the service and planning for a move to a staff job in Ottawa. So I had at that time a clear vision of what I wanted. Six months later, I had turned in my uniform and moved to a new life in Calgary. How could I have planned that the 1994 federal budget would mandate a 30% downsizing of the armed forces? Or, in May 2004, I visited my mother in Quebec City during a conference there, the first time in four years that I had come back home from Calgary. How could I have planned that seven months later I would be leaving Calgary (where I had thought I would be spending the rest of my life), and starting a new chapter of my life in Quebec City?

I can think of all kinds of other unforeseen turns and twists that led me to meet new people, live new experiences, discover new parts of my being.

So this is why I say it is important to learn to receive the bad with the good, always with humility and gratitude. Because there is something for me to experience in every moment. And it is through the unforeseeable that I can leap out of my comfort zone and expand my reality.

If life always turns out the way I plan, then life would be really boring. The juice of life is always in the unexpected. To live fully is to learn how to dance with uncertainty.

To sum up, instead of the "Law of Attraction" that to me is too passive, I prefer to live through the Law of Traction: to ACT, to BELIEVE and to RECEIVE. Traction begets motion, and it takes motion to generate the energy that overcomes the inertia of the present and power me towards a new future.

Another way of looking at The Law of Traction is through the words of that immortal philosopher Mick Jagger:

"You can't always get what you want,
And if you try sometimes, well you just might find...
You get what you need!"

Note: See also my past posts on "The Secret" here and here

On the right questions

The Coach's thought of the week:

The quality of our results is determined by the quality of the questions that we ask ourselves.
- Coach Davender

Too often as solopreneurs and in life, we search exhaustively for the "right answer", this mythical book of instructions which contains all of the recipies to create what we say we want.

We live in a time where the common citizen has at hand more information than at any other moment in the history of humanity. This knowledge is constantly changing and evolving at an accelerating rate. You want answers? Simply ask the Great Google and it will direct you to tens of thousands of books, audios, videos and Web sites which each have their own take on the subject, and all in 0.03 seconds or less.

We are drowning in information, and yet so many have so little direction. Even with all these answers, be they may so easily available, why are people are still dissatisfied of their results, their situation, their life?

True leaders, those who break out of their comfort zones, who go beyond the possible to create new realities, they do it without a map, for there are no maps for where they're heading. Just as ancient explorers set off towards the horizon, towards unknown lands marked "here be dragons", aremed only with a compass, a sextant and a clock for navigation.

The compass, the sextant and the clock of success, are the questions we ask ourselves, the questions that remind us of our mission, our vision and our permission, our "who?", "what?" and "why?" These are the fundamental and invariable questions from where from appear all the answers that we really need to act with confidence and courage in the present moment.

Whether it is in your business project, or in any other aspect of life, it is necessary to go beyond your past to create the future that you really want. To do so, you have to let go of searching for the "right answers", and learn how to ask the "right questions". And it is the exploration of these right questions that will lead you farther and higher than you ever thought possible.

What if it happened here?

I generally avoid commenting about news and politics in this blog. However, an opinion piece by Patt Morrison in the Mar 8 LATimes.com caught my eye:

If L.A. were Baghdad
Imagine our reaction to suicide bombers killing 40 USC students and blowing up South Coast Plaza in the same month. (link to article)

The author describes eight incidents from the past month, transposed from Baghdad to Los Angeles. As I read the article, I caught my breath...

I realized how immunized I have become to the news. Talk of ten deaths here and forty deaths there becomes simply background noise between commercials. Because it is so far away, and I cannot imagine what it is like to live that situation, I can't really relate to it - I "know" it's a bad thing, but the descriptions don't "move" me.

Patt Morrison's article really affects me because it puts me in the middle of the experience - instead of simple facts, it draws pictures in my mind's eye that triggers real emotions: the essence of effective communication.

As a solopreneur, knowing how to communicate not just facts or reasons, but communicating to trigger emotion, is a crucial skill. Emotion is where decisions are first made, then we look for reasons or facts to justify the emotional decision. Successful entrepreneurs know how to trigger emotion, to tell a story: think of Steve Jobs of Apple (watch his keynote for Macworld 2007 here to see a master story-weaver at work).

Okay, that segue from Iraq to Apple was a stretch, but the core point of this post is about how the technique of transposing an otherwise invisible or distant situation into the here and now of everyday life is a powerful technique to tell your story and get people to take notice, and hopefully, take action.

How can you use a similar technique to communicate global warning, or degenerative disease, or corporate culture or another situation that's hard for the average person to perceive as tangible?

Going back to the original article, what if Baghdad's experience was transposed onto your city? How would it feel to you?

And, most of all, what would you do about it?

Direct link to article (registration might be required)
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-morrison8mar08,0,4802705.column

I Got Powered Up with "Power Within" in Ottawa

I attended the "Power Within " conference in Ottawa on March 6, 2007 - a powerful day in a sold-out room (5000 at the Ottawa Congress Centre) with seven amazing speakers presenting ideas on leadership and passion (in order of appearance):

• Les Brown
• Jim Fannin
• Andy Nullman
• Kenneth Cole
• Suzanne Somers
• Cherie Booth Blair
• Presidente Vicente Fox and Marta Fox
• Tony Robbins

And because Tony Robbins was headlining... I just had to be there to see him in person for my first time! I've posted my notes on the day, along with some personal observations and comments, here.

We all need to get our passion tanks refilled from time to time. The key to getting one's money's worth from these events is to move into action, a specific, tangible action to anchor the learning. My action steps were first to post my notes from the event on my site (done). I also purchased Tony Robbins' "Time of Your Life" ten-day planning and action program to get some ideas I can incorporate into my own life and to help my clients. (Actually, purchasing is not enough - I've already listened to CD#1 and will let you know how the ten-day program turns out!)

If you ever get an opportunity to see a Power Within event (they are held across Canada), I highly, highly recommend it! I make it a point to attend at least one per year.

Favorite quote from the day - from Andy Nullman:

"The possibility of failure defines your success. If everything works, you're playint it too safe! Remember, failure is but a temporary state..."

Link to the my article:
http://en.davender.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=64&Itemid=31

Taming the perfectionist streak

« Perfection obsesses over what could have been, while Excellence recognizes and reinforces what works.»
-- Coach Davender

Are you your own worst boss, your most shrill critic? How can you tame this perfectionist streak that can stop you cold, and transform it into an energy that powers you towards excellence?

Perfectionism is really a state of high anxiety. In this state, you are focusing on the process, constantly worrying about making a mistake. Perfectionism shows up as a constant stream of self-criticism, and causes one to play it safe, to not take risks, to not step out of one's comfort zone. However, you can do everything "right" and still fail. When you are in this state of perfectionism, you can rarely live to your full potential because of the internal judgemental chatter of the "monkey-mind" that freezes you in your tracks like a deer in the headlights.

Excellence, on the other hand, is about focusing on the outcome, being willing to learn, adapt, experiment and be bold in pursuit of creating a result that is the true projection of one's original intention.

A person who strives for excellence does not give up when a mistake is made, and does not avoid tasks for fear of failure. Sometimes you will fall flat on your face, and then you pick yourself up, figure out what worked, let go of what did not, and try again. And often you may find that the "mistake" opened the door to an outcome even better and truer to your original intention, giving yourself the opportunity to create a result that is even more remarkable.

To overcome a perfectionist tendency, go beyond the missed opportunity, or the error, or the loss, and, instead of trying to find someone or something to blame, look for a greater truth or source behind the situation, as well as the link between the outcome you wanted and the outcome you created. Instead of obsessing over what could have been, recognize and reinforce what works.

It's all about the experience, silly!

One of the maxims I'm always harping on is:

"People do not buy your product or your service. What they really value is the experience that your product or service creates for them."

A powerful proof of this is in the letter that founder Howard Schultz sent to store managers (available here via Seattle Times)

Read the article and commentary here (LA Times)

Being competent is not enough. People make their decisions based on emotion first, then follow up with "reasons" to justify their decisions. And emotion is triggered through experience.

Find that creative DNA that makes people think you're something special. Focus on translating this into a unique and powerful experience, and people will line up for what you offer. Lose that experience in the name of efficiency, and you will lose your customers.

What can you do today to turn the experience you create up by one notch?

Excellence vs perfection

A nice quote I found here

EXCELLENCE is the Willingness to be Wrong; Perfection is Being Right.

EXCELLENCE is Risk; Perfection is Fear.

EXCELLENCE is Power; Perfection is Anger and Frustration.

EXCELLENCE is Spontaneous; Perfection is Control.

EXCELLENCE is Accepting; Perfection is Judgment.

EXCELLENCE is Giving; Perfection is Taking.

EXCELLENCE is Confidence. Perfection is Doubt.

EXCELLENCE is Flowing; Perfection is Pressure.

EXCELLENCE is Journey; Perfection is Destination.

EXCELLENCE is Surrender; Perfection is Consuming.

EXCELLENCE is Trust; Perfection is Selfishness.

- unknown author
(unfortunately I can't find the name of the blog's author...)

Touching the sacred

While riding the bus today (Mar 4 '07) I happened on the CBC Radio One program "Tapestry", a "weekly exploration of spirituality, religion and the search for meaning". "Tapestry" happens to be one of the CBC radio shows I really like, because their guests often get me thinking.

This week's guest was Bo Lozoff of the Prison Ashram Project and the Human Kindness Institute. Bo Lozoff dedicates his life to promoting the practice of human kindness, especially in prison populations around the world.

At one point he mentions the "Sanatana Dharma", or the central teachings of Hinduism. Mr. Lozoff has a beautifully succinct way of describing it, which I found later on the net in a sermon he gave:

(...) There's something in the East called Sanatana Dharma, which roughly means "Eternal, Universal Truth," and it consists of only three principles:

1. There is indeed something transcendent, beyond comprehension, something divine. It's real. It exists.

2. Each of us -- you and I, not just the Dalai Lama, St. Francis, Mother Teresa -- but you and I, can and must directly experience this divinity.

3. That is the only purpose of life. Everything else, who we are, what we look like, how old, how wealthy, how poor, how much or how little we suffer or find happiness, what we do for a living, what we do in the world, how many children we have, EVERYTHING else is a support system toward our direct experience of the eternal Great Mystery. [emphasis mine] (...)

Bo Lozoff then goes on to say on the radio program "if we do not strive to touch the sacred, then we are wasting our lives" (this is the part where I grabbed my pen and paper and scribbled it down)

Where am I going with this?

It was the "touch the sacred" part that really connected with me. This is a powerful reminder to me about the importance of discovering my life mission, vision and permission, to use it to ignite my passion and to live it through everything that I do.

Being a solopreneur, being an entrepreneur, the whole point of this way of life called "business" is about creating a means to channel our passion and make a difference in the world. In business we have the freedom to choose our direction and the initiative to move into action. This is why I believe entrepreneuring is such a high calling...

Business is more than just making money to survive... if that's all that I'm doing (surviving), then I am not really living, I am just existing. What Bo Lozoff is reminding me is that it is my duty to live a bigger picture, to strive towards a higher vision.

Bottom line? If what I am doing right now does not fire up my passion and make this world a better place, it's time to change what I'm doing!

This is why I put so much emphasis on exploring mission (who I am), vision (what I want) and permission (why I want it), to ignite passion and channel it to power oneself "from passion to profit", where profit is about the intangible experience as much (or more) than the tangible financial impact.

If "success" is creating an experience of living that fully expresses "Who I Really Am", and if this transcendant, higher, sacred energy as described in the Sanatana Dharma infuses this "Who I Really Am", then as a solopreneur, channelling my passion through my livelihood to make the world around me a better place, I can think of no higher calling, no better way to "touch the sacred".