++++

Can you believe the nerve of this guy?

While Jonathan’s lazily propping his feet in a hammock, we’re here slaving away for him. He’s sipping drinks with tiny umbrellas and playing with his family while we’re grunting away at our own jobs. I mean, it’s bad enough that he keeps rubbing it in that he’s in a tropical paradise, but what really chaps me is that he’s taking a vacation and asking others (like myself) to do his work for him.

It’s easy to be a little really jealous of Jonathan, but the truth is that we’d all be in Bali right now if we could. Vacations and breaking out of our normal routines are like espresso shots for our creativity. I expect some high-caliber stuff out of Mr. Fields once he returns.

It takes a lot of work to be able to relocate for a month to a somewhat-remote place, and the fact that Jonathan is pulling it off is pretty impressive. What’s most interesting about Jonathan’s trip is that he was able to effectively use “peersourcing” to help him get away.

This is a fantastic example of how community is pivotal to the success of an entrepreneur.

Or in Jonathan’s case, how to slack off more. (Ok, seriously… I love Jonathan. I’d gladly drop everything to help him out, as he’s helped me out so many times before. Just don’t tell him, ok? I’d never hear the end of it.)

I was fortunate enough to co-found the blog network LifeRemix a few years back. The network has some amazing people, with serious skills in many different fields. Bestselling authors, awesome programmers, marketing geniuses, financial wizards… we’ve got it all. (I’m quite lucky that I was a founder, otherwise I wouldn’t have made the cut!)

We’ve managed to help each other out with our writing and other pursuits of life. In fact, we’re a pretty close little community. We all have unique skills and knowledge about different topics, so really the network is like a massive pool of knowledge. Someone will ask a question in our email list, and usually four to five really smart people will chime in, offering help and advice. So it’s no surprise that when Jonathan told the network he was going on vacation and needed a hand with guest posts, we gladly answered the call.

Here’s the secret to being a successful entrepreneur: You need community.

You need help from other people. People who will challenge you and lend you a hand when needed. People who will expand your horizons with their expertise or particular walks of life. Thanks to this thing called The Internet, you can find people and groups to help you in almost any field and variety.

Forums, Google groups, open source projects… there are literally limitless options for finding a community.

Or maybe it makes more sense to find a local, offline community. There are plenty of options for finding groups of people in your area. Churches, business organizations and memberships, neighbors, etc. Just because someone isn’t in your exact niche–or even know the definition of the term “niche”–doesn’t mean they can’t provide you with valuable support and feedback.

Community helps us fill in those little cracks in our life that we can’t fill ourselves.

I’ll often ask our crew for marketing ideas or feedback. I’m a designer by trade, but my marketing chops are “meh” at best. Guys like Jonathan or Chris have saved my bacon many a-time.

Community also gives us a chance to give back.

I love this. I love the fact that I’ve got a chance to help Jonathan because he’s helped me so many times before. There’s nothing better than receiving and giving. It’s important to note that asking for help is just as important as giving. Oftentimes people feel like they’re being a burden by asking for help. But other people need a way to give back their talents and resources too.

At LifeRemix we’ll ask each other for help all the time. In fact, it’s encouraged. I dare you to find a successful person that did it “all on their own”. Everyone (yes, even Steve Jobs) has had people in their lives that bring the best out of them, both professionally and personally. Finding and surrounding yourself with these people is going to be critical to your success.

So if you really want to skyrocket your career, find a community to be a part of.

If you can’t find one, then start one within your niche. (All you have to do is ask.) There’s always something you can provide. If anything, you can be encouraging and supportive. (Sometimes the thing a community needs most is more cheerleaders.) The important thing is to just get involved. No man is an island. (Though certain renegades do go and live on one for a month or so…)

++++

Glen Stansberry writes about helping creative people create at LifeDev. You can also find him ribbing Mr. Fields from time to time on his Twitter account.

The great Bali Renegade Workflow Project has officially launched. For the better part of the summer, I’ll be operating out of Bali, working part of the time, exploring part of the time and enjoying my family and the pace of life all of the time.

In my post last week, I shared some the ways I’ll be experimenting with my content creation pipeline and workflow in order to get the most out of my time on the other side of the world. But, today, I wanted to spend a few minutes sharing with you all 21 pounds of technology that’ll be coming along on the adventure with me. Normally, I’d never travel this heavy, but since we’ll be more “living” in Bali for a month or two, rather than “visiting” for a week or two, it made sense to bring what I needed.

Also, because this is such a lush, rich part of the world, I wanted to make sure I was able to capture it with a level of technology that really did it justice. Which is kind of funny, because the other “capture” technology I’ll be leaning on is a few old moleskine journals, aka, the anti-technology.

For a more detailed review of the Ogio Epic bag I’m using, check out Chris Brogan’s great new travel site, ManOnTheGo.com

This Friday will start the official Summer Guest-posting Festival, too, so stay tuned for some amazing insights, thoughts and stories from folks who are doing powerful things with their lives…

1. Failure to evolve.

Markets change over time. People’s needs change over time. One of the biggest problems that I see with entrepreneurs and small businesses is that they start the business based on a single solution, or set of solutions, products or services, that satisfy one particular need or pain point in a market, and they may be doing it very well at that point in time.

But over time, markets evolve, needs evolve, pain points evolve and everything changes. All too often, the people who are providing solutions for those markets don’t continue to evolve with the markets and are left with a bigger and bigger gap between the need and the pain point of the market and the product, service or solution that they’re providing. Add a drastic change in the bigger economy and the speed at which these gaps open grows exponentially, as does the width and depth of the gaps.

The answer here is to keep your finger very much on the pulse of where the pain points currently are in the market and how they’ve changed from when you started your business. Create regular check-in mechanisms to see whether your current solutions are driven more by ego or the desire not to endure the anxiety of change or a continuing need in the market.  Then use that information to change the nature of the solutions that you’re providing, if needed, to keep them as relevant and powerful as humanly possible.

2. Perceiving R&D and marketing as separate functions.

Very often people start a business by creating some sort of product, service or solution and then turning around and asking the question, “How do I market this?” Truth is – product creation and marketing are two points along the same continuum. The more remarkable, the more powerful, the more effective you can make your solution, the less you then have to turn around and say “What do I have to do to market this?”

Building around remarkability and delight is the single most powerful way to market a product.

Because, when you get those down, people can’t shut up about how what you’ve created is blowing their minds on a daily basis. Thing is, these elements are cultivated at the moment of creation, not as some afterthought for the product. Focus your energies on how to make something remarkable and delight potential purchasers at the moment of creation and it will make your marketing much, much easier. In fact, it may even turn it into an afterthought.

3. Failure to understand the importance of culture.

A lot of companies roll along thinking, “If I create a solution which completely kicks ass, which solves a problem in the market, that’s really all I need to do.” If your solution is capable of being provided just through one person or completely commoditized and made as an online, downloadable business, that may in fact, be true.

But if you plan on growing a business – a company with people – the interrelationships between you and those people and between them, becomes paramount. You’ve got to focus on what type of culture you want to build within your organization. Same way Tony Hsieh focused on culture as a driving force in building Zappos.  The culture becomes a core driver of your business’ success and if its not built right – failure.

4. Over-working and under-thinking.

Very often there’s an ethic in business that says you’ve got to put in a ton of hours to get the job done. In fact, working hard is pretty much an important part of any major business accomplishment, especially in the very early days around launch time and the first couple of years.

But a lot of times the biggest solutions, the greatest breakthroughs, the most relevant and impactful innovation comes not when you’re working, but when you work hard and then step away and allow time for contemplation, and for breakthroughs. When you’re building a business, rather than focusing on how many hours you can put in, step back and really encourage – not only in the way you behave but in the way your employees carry themselves – time for pure thought, time for contemplation, time to remove yourself from the setting and the nature of the work and allow for the greatest revelations to simply bubble up.

5. Going it on sheer will for too long.

Very often a company starts based on the sheer willpower and the sheer drive and energy of one particular person or a small team of people. As long as all of the tasks that need be accomplished can be handled by that person or team, the company continues to move forward. But inevitably, as you scale, you reach a point where those people can’t humanly work anymore.

And if the company will continue to grow in the way that its capable of growing, it will need to be based on a bigger, more systematic set of guidelines that other people can then be exposed to, adopt, and then tap, in order to grow the business more systematically. Once you reach that critical tipping-point where sheer willpower will no longer drive the business, it becomes massively important to have well thought-out systems to build your business from that point forward.

6. Playing prevent offense.

One of the biggest things that tends to happen in business is that they start out led in a sort of visionary, aggressive outreach, innovation manner and then once business starts coming in, the mindset shifts to thinking about how to preserve the wins or the gains that have already been accomplished, rather than focusing on constantly innovating and delighting existing and new clients on the level that they never expected.

This is called “playing the game with a prevent offense.” Instead of trying to consistently win and delight, you’re consistently trying not to give up what you’ve already gained. And, in the world of business and entrepreneurship, it’s pretty much the fast track to failure.

Entrepreneurial businesses can’t survive with a focus largely on keeping what you’ve got. The focus has got to be consistently on continuing to delight and surprise the clients that you’ve already retained while also aggressively moving forward, innovating and pushing to take that level of service to the next level and continue to lead the market. Sometimes that means it’s an uncomfortable place to be in, but it’s a far better place to be in than sitting back and just hoping and praying that you don’t lose a client.

7. Hoarding control.

This one hits close to home for me because I am admittedly a bit of a control freak. As an entrepreneur, and most entrepreneurs I know are control freaks, we have a lot of trouble giving away control and power. But, when you hoard control you not only limit your business’ ability to scale, you inadvertently demean the people that you’ve brought into your organization because even if its not overt, what you’re telling them is “I brought you in here, I told you I trust you.  I told you I’m going to hold you accountable to my vision and my growth goals, but I do not trust you to think, to create, to innovate, and to execute.”

When you send that message to the people who work around you and with you, you kill their will and you create a culture of dislike and distrust. Therefore, it becomes really important to take a regular check and take some risks. Allow yourself to feel uncomfortable as a leader in a small business. Hire amazing people and give them control.  Hold them accountable to a particular result, but give them the ability to take action, to execute, to create, and show you what they’re capable of.

8. Incentivizing innovation with a carrot and stick.

In Dan Pink’s recent book, Drive, he reveals some fascinating research which showed that for very simple, rogue, mechanical tasks, the traditional carrot and stick – meaning, if you do X, I’ll give you Y and if you do X even better I’ll give you even more Y – tended to work fairly well as a motivational system.

But as soon as you bring in tasks that are more complex, more creative, or innovation oriented, the traditional carrot and stick type of motivation not only doesn’t work, but it literally disincentivizes behavior that naturally would have been incentivized simply by the opportunity to do something very cool. So, when it comes time to figure out how to motivate those types of activities in your organization, take a step back and instead of offering money or particular tangible things as motivation, think about how you can facilitate mastery. How you can allow people the opportunity to move more aggressively toward mastery of something that they’re already intrinsically drawn to and that becomes about the most powerful motivating factor that you can have for people within your organization.

9. Focusing on hours over results.

One of the biggest gripes of a lot of people that I know who work for bosses, is a focus on what used to be called “face time.” You had to be in a place for a particular amount of time, you had to attend meetings because that’s just the way it was. You had to push a certain amount of documents, because that’s the way it was – these were the processes. Meanwhile, all these actions were being taken, meetings were being had, and clocks were being punched, but results weren’t being accomplished.

A much more effective way to grow an organization is to allow people a certain amount of freedom.  Allow flex-time.  Being at the office for a particular number of hours, being seen at an office, really isn’t relevant if the results aren’t coming. Focus on results. Task people with goals that are meaningful to them.  Give them the resources needed to meet those goals and then, step back and like we talked about in #4 above, tell people “I trust you to get this done by this particular date. How and when you do it is up to you.”

Not only will people feel empowered by that level of freedom and trust, but you’ll find them working on it in different parts of the day in different ways that accommodate their lives much better.  And they’ll become much happier employees because they have a work situation they can wrap more effectively around their lives and their lifestyles.  In the end, we don’t really care if something is within particular hours.  What we really care about is that it’s done well and on time.

10. Underestimating the delight margin.

People are creatures of habit. It takes a near seismic shift to make them change routine.  Even if the routine they’re in or the solution they’re currently using is sub-par. Even if they gripe about it every time they use it.  “Better the devil they know,” they figure. That means, if you hope to move someone from a competitor to you, your product, service or solution must not be 5% or 10% better, but 5 to 10 times better.

It takes that much energy, that much of a difference for you to move somebody to actually take action.  Fact is, if they’ve already taken action and committed to a competitive solution, you probably need to ramp that 5 to 10 times up to somewhere between 20 and 30 times better to move them away from a long-term competitive solution.

11. Forgetting the fun.

Most small businesses are launched, at least in part, in a quest to discover then mine the sweet spot between a viable economic niche and some product, service, activity or solution that in some way engenders joy in the founder. So, people like Tony Hawk build a business empire around the joy of the activity they love. In the beginning, it’s fun. There’s an energy to launching that keeps everyone feeling up. But, all to often, over time, that sense of fun begins to evaporate and the focus turns to efficiency, production, systematization, scaling and growth.

These are all critical elements. But, a funny thing happens when instead of being “added to” a sense of fun, purpose and joy, they “replace” those things…the energy of the company begins to tank, mood crashes, productivity falls, morale craters and along with that goes growth and success.

In business and in life, fun matters!

Genuine joy in what you’re doing matters. It infuses and impacts every aspect of your business. Maybe it can’t be there every moment of every working hour. I didn’t particularly love cleaning the toilets in the early days of owning a yoga studio. But, it was a minor blip on a bigger, more joyous radar screen. Do what you can to preserve as much sense of joy and delight as possible for those who help build your business. When you do, not only will you have a better time, your employees will, too. And, that will spill over into every touchpoint with your customers as well.

12. Bailing on your body and mind. Even if you love what you do, starting and growing a business includes a whole lot of stress and uncertainty. There is no way to eliminate them. But, it is mission critical that you develop practices that allow you to move through them without losing your mind and watching your body decompose. That means, like it or not, some kind of daily movement or exercise and some form of attentional/mindset training are not only important in your quest to stay focused, fit and capable of enduring the stress of entrepreneurship, they’re mandatory.

Find out where and how he did it in this short video below…

[The audio's a bit low, because we were out in Central Park, so turn it up a bit if you need]

So many of us are trapped by a fear of being criticized.

Judged.

Ridiculed.

Frankly, I’m a lot more afraid of being trapped by a life that somehow just happened to me, because I was too afraid of being knocked for my beliefs, my quests and my actions.

Sure, criticism hurts.

But a life unlived hurts more.

[Inspired by Chris Brogan's tweet earlier today "I'm wrong many times a day. I just keep steering the ship as straight as I can."]

So, I’m having this conversation with a friend recently…

She’s a fairly high-level person at a medium-sized corporation. And she’s relaying how her boss has adopted a rally cry to “be courageous.” Oddly, I’ve heard a near-identical story from a handful of others in different companies over the last 6 months. Probably a sign of the times.

Then, I asked, “what happens if you courageously propose a course of action, courageously execute it, then courageously watch the initiative go down in flames? Will they have your courageous back?

Her answer…”dunno. We’ve never really pushed the conversation that far.”

And, therein lies one of major distinctions between true leaders and those who like to sound like leaders.

Words are nice, but in the context of leadership, they’re just words.

If the people you’re saying them to don’t buy in, they might as well have stayed in your head. Especially if they are words that challenge people to provoke the norm, a move that would normally have grave consequences in the face of provocation followed by failure.

So, if you’re the leader, if you get to create the words that challenge the norm…

Be the first one to step up and risk failure!

Don’t just decree..own what comes out of your mouth.

Prove with your own actions that there’s power, integrity and support behind those words. Mullen CCO, Edward Boches, shared a great example of this in his recent post on a conversation with a Fortune 500 president.

Because if you don’t step up, if you don’t own your words, they’re just another dumb-ass proclamation from someone who everyone else will assume is either soon to be drummed out by the board or beaten into the bonds of the existing culture.

What follows are Howard’s words…

Around January of 2009, I was working as an IT Project Leader for UPS in Northern New Jersey. My plan was to retire from UPS around age 55 (that was 3.5 years from then), but I wasn’t sure what I was going to do. My wife forwarded a copy of the Firefly Manifesto, which led to me to purchase your Career Renegade book and get enrolled in Flight School. I’m not sure if you remember the flight school teleconference session where you were talking about meta tags and had the young person who was involved in BMX riding. During that teleconference session we were exploring how key words worked and how they affected search results.

I am a motorcyclist by hobby and during that session I started to type in motorcycle related keywords. Well, up pops the website for Fairleigh Dickinson University, and it just so happened that they were looking for people who were interested in becoming riding instructors. So I submitted an application and was accepted into the trainer, training program which was a very grueling 9 day program over 3 consecutive weekends. I passed the program and in May of 2009 began teaching Beginner Rider Classes on the weekends.

Move forward to August of 2009, and the economy is tanking and after 18 years with UPS I get laid off.

Not the first time in my life that I have had a career bump but certainly never expected it 3 years away from retirement age and from such a large and respected company. Just to give you the full flavor, my wife, who is a marketing specialist in the newspaper industry got let go a month earlier, so now we are flying without a net.

She starts a marketing business that specializes in social media in addition to traditional marketing and it takes off pretty quickly, and it is still the summer time and I am teaching classes at FDU so we are keeping the wolf away from the door. My dilemma is what to do next? Meanwhile all the time I am following your web site and listening to podcasts of your guests who have had successful career transitions.

Now the other thing you need to know is that I am somewhat of a history buff. I enjoy the history channel and going to battlefields and even took a multiday motorcycle ride to Gettysburg to see the battle re-enactment. So I decide that I am going to open a motorcycle touring business that specializes in tours to historical areas in the Hudson River Valley and NY/NJ area. Combining motorcycle touring with history, what could be better?

So I create Patriot Motorcycle Tours and start to figure out how to market it. I develop a 5 part tour series for new riders called the Practical Skills Riding Tour Series and try to market it to the university, I create various routes and rides over the winter of 2009/2010, I come up with a bunch of ride concepts, three cities baseball tour and Cooperstown, a Fort Ticondaroga tour, and Washington’s Crossing Tour, I create waivers and launch a website, and I work the motorcycle show at Javits where I meet up with a guy who runs a touring company in the Georgia area who is looking to expand up north to New England.

Things are progressing slowly. All the while I am still reading your blogs and listening to your podcasts. I get the book Escape from Cubicle Nation and start going to some of the networking events and meet Pam.

Then in around March of 09 I meet up with a guy who runs a defensive driving classroom course. Now this guy is based in NY and is looking to move into NJ. The course is a 6 hour multi-media presentation that gets you a discount on your car insurance and 2 points off your license. You can take it in an instructor led group session or as an Online course.

Turns out that a portion of the content is similar to what I teach in the classroom portion of the beginner motorcycle classes, and I have already passed the background check because I had to be fingerprinted and investigated for the university as part of getting the instructor job.

So, I make a deal to become the exclusive provider of this course in New Jersey, and anyone else who comes in does so under my umbrella. So I go back to some of your concepts in the Career Renegade book and I get onto Go Daddy and find out that Jersey Defensive Driving is available. So I register the URL, license the curriculum from the sponsoring agency that created it and got it approved by the NY and NJ DMV, have a JerseyDefensiveDriving.com web site hosted for taking the course online and start a Jersey Defensive Driving Face Book Fan Page.

I revamp the content and put it in a PowerPoint format a la the kind of presentations we would give at UPS, I create a marketing kit, get a fellow instructor who works for a gym oriented throw away magazine to get me some press, and start leveraging the career transition network groups I have been attending to get the word out on the business.

I started marketing it April and as of today I have 3 classes scheduled, one partnering with a local insurance agency and the others with a local YMCA. I also pitched the course to both Bergen Community College and FDU, and got a bite from BCC to be in their Fall Catalog.

So now, I am getting some momentum up, and am transitioning from career transition networking venues to start up and entrepreneurial networking events. I joined a bunch of linked in groups and hooked up with an attorney in South Jersey who specializes in DWI/DUI cases. Just had a conversation with a small start up radio station in the Newark area who via linked in is offering a deep discount on a radio marketing package for their station.

To top off the whole life is a circle thing, my wife just landed a full time senior position with a newspaper in South Jersey so we will be relocating down to the shore, but the good thing is Jersey Defensive Driving can be run from anywhere.

So to wrap up this letter, I have to thank you for giving me inspiration and a road map of sorts to think about what the possibilities could be rather than getting into a depression about why me and what did I do wrong (nothing), and all the other negative blah, blah, blah that you can get into with a job loss.

I hope to eventually get back to the historical motorcycle thing, but for now the Defensive Driving Course and the Motorcycle Instructor work have a good synergy and I think the earning potential is better with this venture.

I was down in Washington DC visiting my daughter who at the time was an undergraduate at American University. She had gotten a job at the National Archives and I went to see where she worked and get a behind the scenes tour of some of the cool documents.

On the steps of the archive carved into the cornerstone of the building is the saying….

What is Past is Prologue.”

I have adopted that as my personal theme!

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Feel free to share your thoughts, ideas and questions in the comments below…

Also, I LOVE sharing renegade stories like Howard’s!

If you’ve got one, please email me at jonathan at jonathanfields dot com or Facebook message me.

Who knows, your story just might hit the blog!

After I’ve walked my daughter to school.

And come back to sit at my desk.

When the sun starts to creep across my shoulder and onto my face.

Glitter on the lash of my right eye.

Illuminated twirls of mist rise from a mug of coffee.

That reminds me why I’ve built my life this way…

I’ve learned a lot from Seth Godin…

But, maybe one of the most powerful inadvertent lessons was:

Your replies don’t need to match the length of the questions being asked.

See, here’s the deal…

I get a lot of email. A lot. 300 to 500…a day. And, those are the ones that make it through the spam filters. Of those, more than a third can still be DOA—Deleted On Arrival. But, that still means another 200-300-ish that need action, often replies.

And, I started noticing an odd behavior when replying to long, rambling emails…

I felt somehow compelled to match the length of the original email with my reply. So, if someone sent a 5 paragraph, 250 word email, even if I could answer it with 5 words, I wouldn’t. I’d build more content into my reply as a way of, I don’t know, honoring the effort that went into the original email.

Then, I woke up.

And, Seth had a big role in that. One of the things I love about Seth is that he replies to email. Often in seconds. But, his replies are usually just a few words. Not because he doesn’t care or doesn’t put thought into them. But, because 99% of the time, that’s all it takes. Seth is apparently not hung up on matching the length of the original email.

I began to realize, most of those rambling 250 word emails I was getting could’ve easily been chopped down to 25 words with a bit of forethought and editing.

I didn’t ask for an essay where a stanza would do.

So, why would I feel bound, in my reply, to match the level of unnecessary “ramble-ocity?”

Decision made, I now reply to emails with the shortest possible response. Sometimes I feel a little weird doing it.

But, then I remember.

It’s not an insult.

It’s not that I don’t care…

I just really enjoy life outside my inbox.

Back in my corporate lawyer days, there was one guy who everyone hated. Not because he was mean or underhanded or cut-throat. He was actually quite nice and always willing to help. People hated him because he was good. Superstar good.

While everyone else fretted and froze under the dizzying pace and pressure of the job, he seemed to always keep it together, to thrive and even come alive as the fire got hotter.

He wasn’t an adrenaline junkie or cowboy. He was actually a pretty level-headed guy. But he just seemed to process things faster, do things differently and see things everyone else missed. And that gave him an edge. An edge everyone else wished they had.

I used to wonder what he was doing differently. Whether he was just wired that way. Maybe it was genetic. Or perhaps there was something else going on. All I knew is I wanted an answer.

Because if it wasn’t genetic, if it was something that could be learned, I wanted to know.

I never figured it out before I left the law. But I also never gave up the quest, because I began to see this phenomenon across all professions and all industries. A handful of seemingly bright, but regular people regularly dusted everyone around them. And, it wouldn’t be long until my experience as an entrepreneur in the lifestyle and wellness industry and my exposure to certain Eastern-derived practices began to fill in the gaps.

Turns out, there are a handful of things most super-performers do different that underlie or, at least substantially accelerate their success.

Time for Mindset Domination Strategy #2.

In part 1 of this series, we introduced the first of three little-known practices that turbo-charge your creativity, productivity and develop breakout problem-solving ability—Building In Space. We showed how completely removing yourself from the creative or problem solving process can often be the fastest path to an innovative, revolutionary solution.

Now, it’s time to add to our arsenal with strategy #2 – – Attentional Training

There’s one very special thing that many do, religiously, that really helps push them over the edge from good to professional super-power good. And while many do it intentionally, far more don’t even realize they do it. Or, they don’t realize how or why it works or how critical it is to their success.

I wonder when the last time you felt any of these was?

• Stressed,
• Anxious,
• Tired,
• Unfocused,
• Depressed,
• Moody or
• Burned-out.

Reality is, everyone experiences these on some level virtually every day, but your ability to handle, quickly recover from and master these states so often makes the difference between worker-bee and executive suite in the high stakes world of business. Think about it, what is the corollary to the above states?

• Calm
• Content
• Energized
• Highly-focused
• Upbeat
• Even-keeled and
• Optimistic

There is a simple daily practice that has the ability to not only make the dramatic changes in mindset and operating state noted above, but alter your “attentional” abilities to literally allow you to see things others miss.

This hugely-beneficial daily practice is called Attentional Training (AT) and it comes in many formats, both active and seated (heck, even lying down). Regardless of how it pursed, though, the critical elements always include the cultivation of high-levels of sustained focus that are required either by instruction or by the intrinsic nature of the activity.

How powerful is this practice?

Done right, AT induces a psycho-physiological state where your heart-rate, blood pressure and levels of stressor hormones all drop precipitously, while your attention becomes highly-focused. And, inducing this state on a regular basis not only helps your mindset, it dramatically lowers your risk for heart-disease, diabetes, and various other life-limiting conditions. It helps you sleep deeper, longer and wake fewer times at night and it can lower anxiety, stress and depression. That’s where the focus has been in most of the research.

More recently, though, we’ve discovered these practices have a monumental impact on professional performance.

Back in 2007, a team of researchers from China and the University of Oregon reported a study that showed improvements in a person’s attention and response to stress after only 5-days of practicing their specialized IBMT protocol (more on this later). The lead investigator’s wrote, “after training the experimental group showed less cortisol release, indicating a greater improvement stress regulation. The experimental group also showed lower levels of anxiety, depression, anger and fatigue than was the case in the control group.”

Other studies back up these conclusions and one fascinating study reported in Live Science even revealed improvement in what has been termed “attentional blink” after 3-months of a more intensive form of training.

How to see what everyone else misses…

Apparently when we’re shown two images in rapid succession, most of us don’t see the second image, because we are busy processing the first. It’s almost as if we had blinked. That means, all day long, we are literally not seeing things that are right in front of us. In fact, most of the time, we don’t even see a good part of the first image. Don’t believe me?

Take a look back at the photo of the monkeys above and see if there’s something, oh, just a bit unusual about the one on the left.

Researchers studying a very intensive form of AT called insight meditation discovered that, after three months of training, people were able to see far more of the “second” images than those who were not similarly trained.

With Attentional Training, they could literally see what everyone around them missed.

I wonder how much of an edge that would give you in business and life?

The C-Suite climbs on board

Constantly driven to be better at what they do, the mounting research has led more and more C-suite leaders and thinkers to engage in this practice.

According to an article in Fortune Magazine:

Devotees include junk-bond-king-turned-philanthropist Mike Milken; Bill George, the former Medtronic CEO; ad industry mogul Renetta McCann; and NBA coach Phil Jackson. Silicon Valley is full of meditators, such as Marc Benioff, the CEO of Salesforce.com, and Larry Brilliant, head of Google’s philanthropic efforts. Naturally, a crew of Google employees has organized twice-weekly open meditation hours, at which it has hosted Tibetan monks and a team of mind-science researchers….Particularly hard-core is Bob Shapiro, the former CEO of Monsanto, who has done three ten-day silent retreats and is considering a 30-day tour.

In that same article, bestselling author of Never Eat Alone and master business networker, Keith Ferrazzi, reveals the key to connecting is “not being an asshole” and cites the most effective path to be AT.

It works, whether you want it to or not

Well, that sounds interesting, comes the reply, but I don’t go for that namby-pamby mindset voodoo crap. Plus, I can tell you that most of the people I know with that magical professional edge don’t do all of the things mentioned above.

Maybe not, at least in the formalized way I just laid out. But, here’s the interesting thing—though few people have a dedicated AT practice, many super-performers actually do bring the critical elements of this practice into their lives every day without even knowing it. And, it’s those unwitting AT practitioners who tend to lead the professional pack. As you pour through the variety of ways to access the AT state below, this will become much clearer.

Okay, so that’s the what, now let’s get into the how…

AT takes many forms and, different approaches tend to work better with different people. So, here are 7 different approaches, each studied and considered to be highly-effective.

• Active-AT – This I how the vast majority of business super-performers get their AT in. In fact, many of us invoke the major elements of AT during specific types of sports, serious hobbies like painting, composing or playing music, knitting or outdoor activities without even realizing it. Look for activities that either: (a) by their intrinsic nature, require an intense state of concentration for an extended period of time, or (b) are repetitive and deliberate, allowing you melt into that elusive “zone” state. So, trail-running, which requires intense observation, concentration and adjustment would be example of the first, while track running would be an example of the second. The point is, the right kind of physical activity can induce the relaxation-response state. And, over time that psycho-physiological training filters past health to business performance. Ask any top-level executive who runs every day and they’ll tell you. It’s not just about fitness, but about the effect on mindset and creation of the “edge.”

• Mindfullness-based stress reduction™ – Developed by now world-famous psychologist and bestselling author of Full Catastrophe Living, Jon Kabat-Zinn, more than 20,000 people, from all walks of life have now completed this training with remarkable results. This is an 8-week program that can either be done live in Massachussetts, though trained affiliates or at home with Kabat-Zinn’s book and audio CDs (or mp3s). I have done it and highly recommend it, though, the 45-minutes a day required can be a bit of a struggle in the beginning.
  • iTunes – Mindfulness Meditations for Tranquility and Insight
  • App - Mindfulness Meditation

• Insight Training/Meditation – this is the technique that was studied with regard to reducing the attentional blink. It is a specialized form of meditation/AT that grows out of Buddhism (though you do not need to be a Buddhist to practice or benefit from it) and is highly effective at delivering a wide range of benefits. But the training can be fairly intensive, even requiring 10 hours a day for weeks at a time. So, though it is incredibly powerful, for most, it is not an easily accessible first-step. Interestingly, though, it appears similar benefits are derived from the other forms of AT and, upon further study, the reduction in attentional blink may, in fact, be a benefit of most sustained AT practices. Future research will tell. Insight resources include:
  • Insight Meditation Audio Course (aff)
  • Seeking The Heart Of Wisdom (book) (aff)
  • Wiki on Vipassana or Insight meditation
  • Insight retreats and centers
  • Apps – Guided Insight (iphone & Android)

• Biofeedback – Biofeedback has been around for decades and has been well-studied as a form of stress-management and state-change. It is a great tool for those more “science” oriented who want immediate, objective feedback. There are many approaches, but, generally, you use a simple machine that reads various biological markers, like pulse, galvanic skin response, temperature, and then direct your focus on changing those markers to bring them into a target range. Biofeedback machines and audio program are now very inexpensive and can be learned and used at home. Some resources include:
  • Stress Eraser – very cool, iPod-size, high-tech biofeedback device
  • BioMedical.com – online clearinghouse for devices, information and audio/video

• Classical meditation – A vast array of approaches to meditation abound, with the similar element of requiring you to train your attention on anything from your breath to a prayer, phrase, candle-flame, set of numbers and more. While highly-effective over time, many people find it extremely challenging to keep focus, get frustrated and give up on a practice that could have become hugely impactful. Reality is, it takes a long time before you feel any level of mastery and impact with this approach, which makes it important to find a technique, tool or teacher that really resonates with and supports your quest. Some resources include:
  • HealthJourneys.com – offers an extensive library of audio, video and downloads, plus detailed information on a wide variety of techniques.
  • Shambala Meditation Centers – directory of worldwide locations
  • Kripalu – one of the largest destination mindbody centers in the world with an extensive catalog or courses
  • Apps – Zen Timer, Relax with Andrew Johnson

• Psychoacoustics – In the 1970s, neuroscientists developed a technology that delivered slightly different, often inaudible tones into each ear simultaneously and found that by manipulating the frequency different between these tones, they were able to entrain brain waves in specific states. It was hailed by many as meditation for those who couldn’t meditate, because it seemed to work without the participant having to maintain a rigid point of focus. Since then, A number of researchers have build goal-specific audio programs and tools around this technology in an effort to allow more people to use these tools. Resources include:
  • Centerpointe Research Institute
  • Learning Strategies Paraliminals
  • Apps – AmbiScience Pure Meditation, Brainwave Entrainment Binaural Beats

• Integrative body mind training (IBMT) – This is the form of AT that was used in the University Oregon study discussed above. You can learn more about the science and the practice at Dr. Yi Yuan’s website. It seems to offer all of the benefits of AT, but three unique features may, in fact, lead this to become amongst the fastest adopted and most widely form of AT to hit the U.S. in a long time.
  • One, it does not require rigid focusing of the mind on one thing for an extended period of time, a practice that most people find extremely difficult.
  • Two, it appears the benefits can be experienced extremely quickly, in as little as 5-days, and
  • Three, the practice can be done fairly quickly, allowing almost anyone to fit it into their day.

Wanna jump right in today?

Here’s a simple technique and to get you started with a very basic, accessible 10-minute daily seated practice.

1. Find a quiet place
2. Sit in a comfortable upright position with your hands on your knees
3. Close your eyes and take 10 breaths, letting your exhale get longer and longe with each one
4. Starting at a very gentle pace, begin to count backwards from 100 by threes, saying each number softly or just sub-lingualizing them with every inhale and exhale. So, for example, inhale and think and say 100, exhale, think and say 97, inhale, think and say 94 and so on. If you get a number wrong, just let it go, say the right one and move one.
5. When this becomes easy or a few days or week in, pick up the pace a little bit until it becomes easy again. Then, bump the top number by 25 and keep practicing and bumping pace until it gets easy again. Keep at this until the whole practice takes about 20-minutes and give it a few weeks.
6. Let go of any expectations and see what unfolds…we’re all meant to suck at it in the beginning!

There are so many ways to explore AT and access the states that it creates. And, it is important to note that, while the focus of this article is on the “professional” impact of these practice, there is also a very clear and profound impact that reaches deeply into all aspects of your life. That discussion is for a future article.

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