You’re as good as right now! - Do affirmations have a part to play in business?
I was watching a TV show the other night with my daughter when the host introduced a singing act. “He has sold over 45 million albums….etc”. I suddenly thought “So what?”. The famous singer sang and danced and my daughter said. “He’s no good at singing when he’s dancing, he sounds out of breath.”
Why are we so hung up on past-performance? A mentor of mine in the investment business used to say, “past performance is no guarantee of future performance, but it can be an indicator”. He applied this when talking about dating too.
It is intriguing, in the investment world, how many people choose an investment because it “did well last year”. There was an interesting study done my Merrill Lynch some years ago, that showed two investment strategies compared over 10 years. One strategy moved an investment every year in to the previous year’s best performing mutual fund. The second strategy moved an investment every year in to the previous year’s worst performing fund. Guess which strategy won over 10 years? Strategy one lost money over 10 years, strategy two made money ten-fold in that period.
Bye the way, they checked a 3rd strategy too, retrospectively calculating what would have happened if they had been able to choose in advance, the following year’s best performer and moved in to it at the beginning of each year. This of course made millions. With all the hindsight in the world, I wouldn’t have seen that coming…
That principle doesn’t suggest that last year’s worst singer will become this years success story, but it does remind us that in reality, the live performance you are about to see and hear will be what it will be. If advertising for someone to buy a ticket, past performance of selling a lot of albums is a good indicator that a lot of people are likely to enjoy the show, but once you are there, in your seat, who cares if they did well in the past, we only need them to do well tonight.
What does this tell us in business and in life?
Another of my early business mentors used to say “you are only as good as your last month’s pay-cheque”. Meaning? Don’t be arrogant and believe you are more than you are. This at the time seemed something of a confusing message. Did that mean that if someone is broke and had a bad month, no-one should take any notice of them, nobody should buy from them? Absolutely not.
However, having confidence that this month can and will be great is the important attitude.
If you are sitting in debt, with the bills pilling up, you can understand the contradiction in saying “I am rich and riches come to me”. Affirmations are a wonderful positive approach to life, but the body knows the truth of the physical universe. So the key is to believe you are “perfectly capable” of climbing out of the current situation and making things better, in fact as ‘better’ as you want.
The reason for the positive affirmation is to reset your mindset in this way. “I am successful because I believe I can be.” Let the subconscious, or whatever power you believe works behind the scenes, take it from there.
The trap to avoid is to say to yourself “Riches fall in my lap” and then go out and spend those riches before they have actually settled in front of you. An arrogant colleague once said to me he was as rich as the size of the overdraft he felt comfortable with. It is that thinking that got us in to the debt crisis.
It’s the difference between confidence and arrogance. “I am as rich as the amount of wealth I believe I can create.”
Well it’s not all about money, although money is the life-blood and purpose of business. But these truths hold as true for all aspects of life and success. The singer on stage, the athlete on the track, must believe they are “great” (capable of being great when called upon).
There is not a human on this planet who is not “great” (capable etc..), but probably 6 billion humans who don’t always remember that. We all need ways of reminding ourselves…now that is what affirmations are for.
A man drives back on to the second-hand car lot where he bought his car. The salesman approaches and the customer winds down his window. “Hi” says the salesman, “good to see you again, how can I help?” The driver says “Can you tell me about the car again please, I get so depressed when you are not around.”
Tuesday, August 17, 2010 at 11:00AM
Reader Comments (2)
The article is very good! I like it very much,but If you can add more video and pictures can be much better, I have never read such a lovely article and I am coming back tomorrow to continue reading.replica rolex day date watches.
-Guess designer shoes
Remember wha replica pasha cartier
should be remembered, and forget what should be forgotten.Alter what is changeable, and accept what is mutable。replica omega constellation