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With Happiness,

Sandi

What lesson is there in a millionaire’s ring tone?

When I realized how all of us in my coach’s million-dollar mastermind had default ring tones on our iPhones, I thought how boring we all must be.

I wondered if wealthy people, or at least the people in this group, lacked creativity and individualism? But that wasn’t it. On the contrary. These were amazingly creative, fun, and sharp minds that I was privileged to spend 2 days with at the Ritz in Miami.

And then it hit me. How can you make money by changing your ring tone? You can’t. You don’t.

In any business owner’s day, there are a million things to do. We all have so many choices about what to do first, what to do at all, and what to delegate. It’s a really simple concept: the millionaires don’t do “ring tone” tasks. They don’t do the tasks that don’t yield them a healthy return.

How do you organize your day? Do you work on the things that scream at you the most? Do you work on the things you like the most? Do you work on the things that you are most comfortable with? Or do you have some other method for working your inbox and your to do list?

Because successful people organize their days differently from all that. They work on the highest payback tasks. They don’t even bother with the tasks that don’t net them a return.

Take a look at your own to do list. How can you prioritize it in a way that brings you the most return? What “ring-tone” tasks do you have on your to do list that you can get rid of?

When you can reorganize your day to match the habits of multi-millionaire business owners, you come that much closer to becoming one yourself.

What do the rich successful, and happy do that average people don't?

You might already have an answer in mind. My students have given me many answers to that question over the years. Some people feel there is a hidden formula that only high achievers understand. Most people feel like you need to be driven to work hundred-hour weeks. Others feel like you are either born with it or you aren’t.

But there isn’t any magic to being a high performer, you don’t have to work your fingers to the bone, and you don’t have to be born with something special. Anyone can be a high performer.

The reason that most people are not high performers is not only simple to understand; it’s the key to becoming a high performer. I believe you’ll love the answer because every single one of you can do something about it as soon as you realize it.

Take dieting. Why do people have so much trouble losing weight? There are only two possible actions that result in dropping pounds: 1) eating less, and 2) exercising more. Why can’t people shed their excess weight quickly and simply?

The answer to that question is the same as the answer to my first question: Why aren’t we all successful, high performers?

Before you can be successful as a high performer or a dieter, you have to get a handle on your emotions. High performance is emotional. Dieting is emotional. There is an emotional component that people don’t recognize, don’t understand, and have no idea what to do with.

Inside our brains, our emotional and logical wiring are so interconnected, it’s impossible to separate them. Your decision-making system is like an iceberg; a little bit is visible from the surface, but the bulk is underwater or subconscious. A big factor in why we underperform has to do with the emotion of fear – fear that we might not even realize we have.

The key to high performance is in understanding how our brains are wired as human beings. Our brains control everything we do, think, and feel. You may feel your heart flutter, but it’s your brain that sent the signal to your heart to beat fast. You may be aware of a gut feeling you have, but your brain initiated that feeling before it reached your gut. You may be able to wiggle your toes, but your brain first sent the command to start wiggling to your toes from its motor cortex. Your brain is your master command center for everything.

Throughout history, our brains have been wired by default for survival ; success as we tend to measure it in our contemporary society is simply not in our natural wiring. Our wiring dates back thousands of years and was brilliantly designed to keep us alive at all costs in our cave man days.

Once you understand why this cave man wiring causes you to act the way you do in today’s modern world, you can decide if you want to “override” your default wiring so you can live more powerfully as a high performer. The good news is that it takes only a little bit of understanding and knowledge – and actually a lot of fun – to adjust the natural wiring so that we can become the successes – the high performers – we want to be.

In future issues, we’ll go more in depth on how to rewire your brain to win instead of just survive. For now, start becoming more aware of how you make decisions and when fear (or just hesitation) comes up for you. With this increased awareness, you’ve mastered the first step of rewiring your brain to win.

Secrets from the Olympians

Peter’s boss had quite a reputation of being hard to please. Peter’s co-worker, Molly, had just been yelled at and was developing a fear of him. She was assigned to develop a presentation for him and was scared.

Peter learned about motor imagery a few days before Molly was to present. He asked Molly to visualize every detail about the way she wanted the presentation to go: seeing how it would start, practicing what she would say, visualizing how she would gesture, crafting what the slides looked like, noticing the pleased look on the boss’s face, listening to his praise about how well she did during the presentation, answering questions well, and walking out with a smile on her face. She imagined this mental rehearsal in her mind over and over again the night before the presentation.

On the day of the presentation, Molly nailed it. Peter’s boss melted and felt Molly did an outstanding job, increasing his confidence in her and her credibility in his eyes. Molly felt competent and gained confidence as well. Peter was very pleased that the whole thing worked out so well for all.

What Peter showed Molly how to do is motor imagery, and it’s something you can learn too. Motor imagery (MI) is defined as a mental representation of movement without any body movementⁱ. It’s also called mental imagery and mental simulation of action. Motor imagery has been shown to be very effective in motor skill learning.

Here are a couple examples of how it’s been studied in the lab.

• One scientist had new piano players try this method. The imagining players were as accurate after two hours of practice as ones who actually practiced for five days.ⁱⁱ


• MI has been used to helped paralyzed individuals become more independent by designing machines that can read their thoughts.


• When one scientistⁱⁱⁱ had subjects imagine running on a treadmill at speeds of 5, 8, and 10 kilometers per hour, both heart rate and breathing rate went up relative to the imagined speed, powerful evidence that imagery alone can engage the autonomic nervous system.

Olympic gold medal winner Peter Vidmar spent years visualizing the same scenario every morning. He would imagine himself walking into the gymnasium, performing his routine, hearing the crowd cheer, seeing his judge’s score, and accepting the gold medal. It happened as he imagined it.

How can you apply motor imagery to your life for improved learning and performance when it counts?

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ⁱ Guillot, A. and Collet, C. (2005). Contribution from neurophysiological and psychological methods to the study of motor imagery. Brain Research Reviews, 50, 387-397.
ⁱⁱ Norman Doidge. (2007). The Brain that Changes Itself: Stories of Personal Triumph from the Frontiers of Brain Science. Viking, New York, 201-207.
ⁱⁱⁱ Decety, J., Jeannerod, M., Germain, M., and Pastene, J. (1991). Vegetative response during imagined movement is proportional to mental effort. Behavioral Brain Research, 42, 1-5.

When the Engine Stops at 19,000 Feet over the Atlantic

It really did happen when I was flying around the world in 1995. The small airplane engine stopped while we were over the 50-degree waters of the Atlantic Ocean, 1,000 miles from any land. Silence. Nothing.

My heart started racing so fast, and for a split second I didn’t know why. My conscious brain hadn’t caught up with my body’s survival response. I immediately went into checklist mode, like any good pilot would (like Scully did – he was pretty much just running a checklist and did everything perfectly). Number one is always the same thing:

1. Fly the airplane.

So many accidents occur when pilots are distracted by any number of things: a red light in the cockpit, a weird Air Traffic Control instruction, even a passenger. In an emergency, the best thing to remember first is to fly the airplane.

It’s not a bad lesson to remember for 2010. We can get so distracted with the economy, the government’s messes, a needy client, a too close for comfort bankruptcy of a friend, and our own fears that we forget to “fly the airplane.”

Where in your life do you need to remember to get back to just flying the airplane? Your business, your marriage, your life’s purpose? I’ll leave it to you to apply where it resonates most.

Sometimes, we need a jolt to get re-aligned with our core. Even though we fight it tooth and nail while it’s happening, we end up growing so much from a really good scare. I don’t necessarily recommend you cut the engine when you’re over the Atlantic. I do recommend you take some risks that scare you once in a while. There’s nothing wrong with getting good at flying the airplane.

How Can We Be Happy While Haitians Are Suffering?

Every Sunday, Star and VIP American Happiness Association members receive an Action Plan. I thought we should share this week's AHA action plan in light of world events. Please liberally forward this message to your friends who need to hear it, keeping the spirit of a Creative Commons Copyright and the source of American Happiness Association intact.

Happiness Action Plan - January 17, 2010 - January 23, 2010
Topic: How Can We Be Happy While Haitians Are Suffering?

There are no words to describe the tragedy in Haiti. Many of our members are wondering how in the world we can be so selfish as to think of our own happiness while there is so much death, pain, fear, and destruction. It's not easy, but we do have some answers.

Immediately take whatever action you can, then let go

If you can give money, do so. If you worship or are a healer, you can pray, light a candle, or send healing thoughts. If you are part of an emergency team, you can go there. Do what you can, then let go of the outcome.

Increase your happiness practice

Most of us will need to increase our happiness practice. Those of us who are ultra sensitive or highly emotional will need to significantly boost our practice during this time. Some of the tools and practices that work especially well:

• Love - Let the people around you know you love them. Tragedies help us stop taking things for granted.
• Compassion - magnify your compassion for others. Strengthen your empathy muscle.
• Acts of kindness - a perfect way to show we care and can be caring to strangers and friends. You never know: your act of kindness in Canada may be "paid forward" all the way down to Haiti.
• Gratitude - for our loved ones, our own safety, our country, even our government.
• Perspective - If you are spiritual or religious, acknowledge that there is a big picture plan we don't fully see or understand.
• Courage - If you feel fearful, work on building and practicing courage.
• Turn off the news - reduce the negative impact to your brain. Remember your brain is a sponge and the news will literally put you into a depression if you repeatedly watch it. If you feel the need to stay caught up, set a 5 minute timer, go online and get your fix, and keep everything off the rest of the day.
• Social - Surround yourself with positive family and friends and increase your social time. (correspondingly reduce your isolation right now)
• Grieve - If you still feel sad, you may need to move through the grief process: denial, anger, sadness, acceptance. Watch a really sad classic movie where someone dies like Saving Private Ryan or Love Story, and cry your eyes out. Then move on.

Areas of your life that this affects:

• Your empathy and compassion "muscles" and a chance to grow them
• All of your emotions
• Your level of courage and a chance to boost it.

Questions to consider:

1. Have you done everything you can to help, then let go?
2. What tools and practices above do you need to boost to maintain your self-care?
3. What people do you have in your community that can be with you and support you?

Action steps for this week:

1. Immediately take whatever action you can for the Haitians, then let go.
2. Increase your happiness practice in the ways that resonate best with you.

Happiness Action Plans are AHA member benefits of the Star level and above and are distributed every week on Sundays.

Quick Link...

http://www.americanhappiness.org

BrainWays 30-Day Brain Health Challenge Update

Today is the last day of Brain Awareness Week, but only Day 7 of our BrainWays 30-day brain health challenge.

For those of you who are playing along, how did you do this week?

Take a look at your brain activities list. http://www.sandismith.com/brainchallenge.html
How many can you check off and say you did this week? Congratulations!

Let's keep doing great things for our brains! Your brain is grateful.

It's time to plan for next week. Choose your healthy brain tips wisely, update your calendar, and then do it!

I'll check up on you again next week to see how you're doing. In the meantime, let me know if you have any questions.

Thanks for making Brain Awareness Week fun.