Attitude is all

Geoff Roberts change, choice, flexibility, perception, selection

attitude changes everythingI make no apology for using someone else’s words today – Charles Swindoll seems to say it all…

“The longer I live, the more I realize the impact of attitude on life. Attitude to me is more important than facts. It is more important than the past, than education, than money, than circumstances, than failures, than success, than what other people think or say or do. It is more important than appearance, gift, or skill. It will make or break a company…a church…a home. The remarkable thing is we have a choice every day regarding the attitude we will embrace for that day. We cannot change our past… we cannot change the fact that people will act in a certain way. We cannot change the inevitable. The only thing we can do is play on the string we have, and that is our attitude. I am convinced that life is 10 percent what happens to me and 90 percent how I react to it. And so it is with you… we are in charge of our attitudes.”
Charles Swindoll

What is really happening?

Geoff Roberts Uncategorized

Today was one of those mornings…car won’t start, arrangements for our few days in Germany going to pot, non-existent ‘customer service’ from Netflights (very happy to name the ******s), kitchen scissors disappeared again, breakfast sausages still frozen… aaarrrgggghhhhh!! Why does it all happen to me!?

Do you recall the old sore “Bad things always come in threes”? How come the opposite does not apply “Good things always come in tens”? Well, it’s to do with perception, not reality (and OK for those of you who want to say that there is no reality, just perception – I Agree).

It turns out that us humans are very selective in what we notice about the world – have you ever noticed how mums- and dads-to-be suddenly start recognising other pregnant women or baby shops, when you last bought a new car did you suddenly notice rather a lot of them on the road…? My wife could tell you more about it, but we have this part of our brain called the – are you ready for this? – Reticular Activating System, which essentially pre-programs our brain to notice certain things and, by implication, ignore others.

Try this now – look around the room you are in and notice as many blue things as you can in 30 seconds. Surprised? Now, how many red things did you notice while you were looking for the blue ones? Weird eh? Your RAS programmed your brain to notice one thing (blue items) and implicitly ignore others (red ones).

Now this goes on all the time. We notice what is important to us or on our minds at the time (babies, blue things, churches, beggars, stuff going wrong…) and fail to notice all sorts else. This just has to happen. If we were to pay active attention to all the verious data streams impacting on our senses at any one time we really would need a brain the size of a planet and would be in a state of constant confusion.

I wonder what good stuff was happening while I was noticing all the **** this morning?

It has been suggested that the most effective long-term mental state is one of “pessimistic optimism” (of which, more in a future blog), so next time you find everything going to pot, remind your RAS to look out for the good stuff as well. And, equally, next time all is going swimmingly just be sure to put a tiny bit of your attention on what might go wrong – to recall what us Boy Scouts were always told “be prepared”.

Just being there…

Geoff Roberts change

We were working yesterday with a team who were confidently (?) expecting to hear very bad news later in the day. We had a great day planned, the final day of a series over the last few months – but we were not aware of the imminent news until we arrived at the venue. It was clear that what we had planned was unlikely to happen – not only were people less than enthusiastic about the session anyway but their minds were going to be elsewhere…a rapid replanning was needed.
So instead of them coming to us, we went to them in their workplace with all our rapport skills being dragged out of the cupboard. This was one of those situations where it was more important to deal with what they needed rather than what the plan suggested; indeed, it was probably more important to just be there acknowledging and empathising with their concerns than to offer any ‘training’.
Sometimes, and especially in the heat of the moment when significant change is happening, that’s all we can and need to do – just be there and empathise. This is a really important message for ‘change professionals’ and personnel/HR people who, because of their frequent exposure to the processes of change, risk becoming inured to the personal challenges faced by individuals at such times. I was reminded of something that a very wise colleague of mine said about dealing with change, he said that we needed to be “tough on the issues, gentle with the people”. We need to make a decision and be clear about the reasons and that a decision has been made, then we MUST treat people as individuals with individual concerns and responses to the change they face; we MUST treat every individual with respect and help them deal with the change they face at their own pace and in their own way.
Sometimes, just being there is what is needed.