optimized-results.com

 

 The Racer's Edge [8:08m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Auto racing has become much more thrilling and competitive over the last few years.  Every aspect of what makes it exciting has become more visible with technical advances in camera work and telemetry.  In NASCAR, forty-three teams simultaneously playing chess at 200 mph, while staying on top of and adjusting for constantly shifting variables is quite a spectacle.

If we pay attention, we can learn a lot about how to create and maintain a championship team that wins in the marketplace.  Why is it that out of those forty-three teams, the same ten or so seem to be at the checkered flag every week?  What are they doing right, and how can you apply their hard learned lessons, without the pain and expense that they go through?

When we compare the top teams to the struggling ones, we see that they’re doing exactly what needs to be done by any individual or in any business, especially in the 21st century market.  We can boil it down to three areas that make a champion out of a contender: Read the rest of this entry »

 

 Same World - Different Experience [8:07m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

One of the most important and yet difficult things to understand is just how differently each of us experiences the same world.  It seems logical that if we’re standing next to each other witnessing a car crash, that we’ll see the same car crash.  So why don’t we?
 
Our filtering systems are such an integral part of how we process incoming information, that it doesn’t occur to us to question them.  We just take in information and sort it how we always sort it.
 
Unfortunately the combination of this automatic aspect and the lack of questioning sets us up for conflict, confrontation, and confusion.  If you’re wearing colored lenses, it affects how you see things; there’s no escaping that.  If we forget that we’re wearing these lenses, and go about our business believing that we’re seeing pure truth, we get into trouble, especially with other people - especially when they’re wearing different colored lenses, and seeing a different situation.
  Read the rest of this entry »

 

 "Futility's Chase" [8:08m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Back in High School I wrote an ambitious progressive rock anthem called Last Illuminations.  Each movement addressed different facets of the same issue: what are you chasing? Why? What would be different if you had it? And what would be next?  One movement, Futility’s Chase, really emblemized the theme.
 
How seriously I took myself back then! And how ironic that my life’s work has me asking clients the same questions today.  Finding the real motivations hiding underneath our perceived motivations is at once a joyful “aha!” and disturbing “oh, man!”  It’s a phenomenal cross-road where we can make a significant, life-altering shift. Just by raising our consciousness around the deepest of our motivations, we can see how irrelevant they are to our lives right now, in-the-moment. Read the rest of this entry »

 

 Clipping the Wire to the PLAY Button [7:34m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

It often seems that certain people or situations really trigger us.  Then we either we have a knee-jerk reaction, or we stop in our tracks, trying not to have a reaction at all.  This is like “not thinking about a pink elephant,” and we know how well that works.
 
The only way to really separate the trigger from the reaction is clipping the wire, or re-wiring the triggers themselves.  This is totally within our abilities, and with a little practice, we can get quite good at it.  The process is all about using language more consciously.  So, let’s look at how words and language affect triggers or become triggers in themselves, and what we can do to minimize conflict and maximize effective communication.

Read the rest of this entry »

Along with not particularly enjoying being told what we’re thinking, feeling or what our motivations are by people who haven’t bothered to check in with us, this concept of “telling people what to do” is a pretty common dynamic.  The folks who do it rarely think of themselves as being bullies, but in fact this is exactly what they’re being.

This is a Power issue underneath it all, and looking at Power more carefully, we can see where it goes wrong.  When we look at the definitions of Power, Strength, Force, and Authority, we are likely to be quite surprised by the vast differences between them. Political Scientist Hanna Arendt wrote extensively about these differences.

The important piece to get right away, is that Force, Strength, and especially Authority are all used when Power is not really in place.  

Read the rest of this entry »

 

 Early Reflections and Feedback Loops [8:35m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Early reflections and feedback loops are a noise problem in recording that can be a nightmare for recording engineers.  Interestingly enough, they’re a pretty accurate metaphor for the noise in our heads.  Sound bounces off of different surfaces at different rates, with different amounts of absorption or reflection.  Sometimes things resonate harmonically with objects, and the sound waves get multiplied out of control; just like in our heads.

We actually embody several voices; some in direct conflict, and some out of sync with one another.  Our life experience and upbringing, influence the relative strength or volume of any one of these voices.  We’re rarely aware of them as separate from one another; and unless we consciously clarify and distinguish them, we just hear the noise.  When we communicate with someone else, our voices combine with theirs, and it gets even more complicated. Read the rest of this entry »