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What Stops People From Achieving What They Want


2009_year

Happy New Year!!!

2008 is behind us now and a new year has begun! By now, you’re off to a great start on achieving the goals you’ve set for 2009. However, you have probably run into some opposition. Typically, opposition shows itself in two ways – but I’m only going to write about one in this post. Ready?

The Most Powerful Force Opposing Your Goal Achievement

The most powerful opposing force to achieving your goals in 2009 and beyond is YOU! More specifically, it’s the disempowering beliefs that you are harboring about yourself, your capabilities, and resources. For example, let’s suppose that in the past five, ten, or twenty years an associate of yours has repeatedly set a goal to earn six figures but it has never happened. Why didn’t it happen? It’s not that they didn’t want to achieve the goal.  It’s that they allowed feelings/emotions to stop them during their journey.

You might be saying, “Wait a minute, Ron, I thought ‘disempowering beliefs’ were the cause of me not achieving my goals.” Yes, you’re right. However, in order for you to feel any emotion, you quickly evaluate what’s happening based on your perception(beliefs), then you feel an emotion and act/behave a certain way (or not).

Let me give you an example of what I mean, okay?  Let’s say you are the one that has set the goal to earn six figures every year for the past twenty years and have not  yet realized that goal. I’m curious. What if you only looked at your financial results for the past twenty years? Does it cause you to feel doubtful about hitting your target this year? What do you think your possibilities of making it happen will be if you don’t learn new skills, strategies, or techniques? How do you feel? More importantly, what do you think/believe in order to feel that way?

What did you learn?

In the days and weeks ahead, as you continue to pursue your goals, I highly recommend asking yourself a similar question because, if you do, you will discover the disempowering beliefs that have stopped you in the past. After you’ve discovered the disempowering beliefs, replace them with empowering beliefs, and walk yourself through the following process to radically change the way you feel in the moment:

As you read, take a deep breath and begin to remember a time when you felt absolutely certain that you were going to accomplish whatever you set out to do. What are you picturing in your in mind? What are you saying to yourself? How do you feel now? Hold on to that feeling!  Maybe you can hold on to it with your right hand.  Now, make a fist a say, “Yes!”

In your current emotional state, do you think you will accomplish your goals this year. Chances are, you do! The reason is that the way we feel determines our behavior and the results we produce. However, our feelings/emotions are driven by our beliefs. Therefore, you must watch out for beliefs that are like garbage and throw them out. Then, you must continually add empowering beliefs in their place. Are you with me?

Isn’t it time to show the world the best of you and of what you’re truly capable? I can’t hear you? Make a fist and loudly say, “Yes!”

With your success in mind,
Ron

P.S. Research shows that nearly 2% of the US population that set goals on New Years day will achieve them. (Source: Robbins Research International) Will you be in the 2%? If you want to ensure your spot in the 2%, click here to find out how we can work together.

Perceptual Persuasion Defined


Last week, if you visited my blog, you read a post titled Perceptual Persuasion, in which I revealed my experience of being betrayed by a friend.  I hadn’t thought about that incident in many years – and I don’t know what reminded me of it.  What I do know is that I wanted to tell you what I hoped would be an interesting and true personal story to begin that post.

Why?

My intention was to ethically influence and persuade some of my readers to open up to me, and I knew it was imperative that I go first.  You see, I needed them to perceive me as an open, authentic, and caring person.  However, I knew that simply telling them that I am open, authentic, and caring would not have worked as effectively to convey that message as illustrating the behavior.

Sure, I could’ve requested testimonials from friends, peers, and colleagues, but I decided that that was impractical.  Additionally, I believe that people tend to trust their own experience more than someone else’s. As my friend and colleague, Blair Warren would say, “People sometimes believe what they are told, they never doubt what they conclude.” (sic)  Have you concluded that I am an open, authentic, and caring person?  If you’ve been reading my posts, you probably drew that conclusion a while back.

Anyway, by displaying the behaviors of openness, authenticity and caring I gave you an experience of what I mean by Perceptual Persuasion.  Now, I’ll define it.   Let’s start with the word perceptual.  Perceptual means, based on, or involving perception.  And perception is the process, act, or faculty of perceiving.  Though the dictionary lists a few meanings for perceiving, I’ve decided to list only the following one for brevity’s sake: To become aware of in one’s mind; achieve understanding of; apprehend.

Pretty straightforward, right?

Let’s take a look at persuasion.  As you know, persuasion is the act of persuading.  To persuade someone means to cause (another) to believe or feel sure about something: assure, convince, satisfy, win over.

Therefore, Perceptual Persuasion is the skill, or the ability, to enable someone to achieve understanding about something or someone to the point that they believe or feel sure about it.

Think back to the hypothetical scenario in the previous post.  Remember, you were rushing back to your desk to grab your iPod, when you noticed your friend (who had stolen from you a year ago) walking away from your desk in the opposite direction?  Now, as you arrive at your desk, heart racing, you notice an envelope with the Apple logo on it, laying next to your iPod.  Curious, you tear open the envelope and find a greeting card with the words, “Just because…” signed by your friend, and you also find a $100 gift card to buy more music!

Surely, an act of such kindness and generosity would soften your heart.  Or would it?  That aside, I’d like you to recall your initial response (thoughts) to the hypothetical scenario.  Would you agree that that initial response was triggered by your perception of your friend?  That perception was based on whether or not you believe people can truly change.  In this instance, clearly you’d have further proof that people can change and you would be more persuaded that your friend was worthy of your trust.

So now you understand that Perceptual Persuasion is the ability to cause a feeling of certainty about an event, person, product, or service to the benefit of your readers, audience, customers, clients, and yourself.  How can you begin to utilize your understanding of Perceptual Persuasion now?

With your success in mind,

Ron

Perceptual Persuasion


What is Perceptual Persuasion?  Hold your horses!  First, let me tell you a brief story.

One summer’s day, back when I was a tall and skinny teenager, sleeping late into the day after staying up all night, I was awakened by a noise outside my bedroom window. Initially, I lay there slightly startled but as the noise continued, it became apparent that someone was attempting to open my window. As you might imagine, my heart began pounding as I rose from my bed and headed toward the window.

Slowly, I peeked out the blinds to see what the burglar looked like, so that I could describe him to the police later. While peeking through a small space in the blinds, I definitely saw the burglar, and I was completely shocked! You see, the person attempting to break into my home was someone who I called “friend!”
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How to Immediately Influence Yourself


Sometimes we have an inaccurate perception of the happiness of successful people in business, politics, and entertainment. In reality, regardless of their socioeconomic success, a number of them are messed up on the inside. In fact, many times we have discovered they are depressed, abusive, suicidal, and addicted to drugs and/or alcohol.

Ironic?  Yes!  Think about it.  In our society, people believe that happiness and success are derived from earning a significant income, acquiring material objects, traveling to exotic places, eating in the best restaurants, and staying in the finest hotels.  Yet, I imagine that you can think of a few famous people experiencing all that, and more – but they are miserable.

Why?
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How to Deeply Influence Others and Yourself


James Van Fleet once said, “Always think in terms of what the other person wants.”

During my nearly 10 years of marriage, I’ve discovered that one of the keys to a successful relationship is thinking in terms of what my wife wants.  For instance, there are times when my wife wants to watch a romantic movie when I’d prefer to watch an action movie.  You might be saying,”Great!  Let her watch her romantic movie and you go watch an action movie on another television.”  Good idea, my rational thinking friend.  However, if I were to act on that type of thinking my wife wouldn’t get what she really wanted it from the experience.  Connectedness. Guess what?  I want to feel that too.

In fact, everything human beings do can be summed up this way:  Human behavior is driven by our desire to change the way we feel or change the way we behave. Most people take actions to change the way they feel because it’s an easier path to take.  Unfortunately, many people indulge in behaviors that are detrimental in the pursuit of changing feelings.  It doesn’t have to be that way.  You can take complete control of your feelings/emotions in an instant.  Want an example?

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