Harness your Superpower
Business Assumptions and Expectations
It’s wise to assess past obstacles when offering a response, and it’s foolish to pretend that playing out potential scenarios in your imagination (based on emotional reaction) isn’t seductive. However, establishing a framework of assumptions and expectations around which future negotiations are plotted will add the sharpness of intentionality to your toolbox. Control through prepared design and systematic adjustment supercharges any communicator.
Negotiation best practices establish outcome oriented boundaries that ensure organization of thought for clarity of communication. Assumptions and expectations are either prepared frames we wrap negotiation in, or they are show up as disconnected thoughts causing unintentional responses. These frames keep us from slipping into a never ending cycle of what we didn’t’ fix the last time around.
What’s in your Focus
Studies on memory and intelligence in an aging population suggest that the more you think about losing your memory—the better chance you have to lose your memory. The more you use your memory in your engagement of daily life… the longer it lasts.
As focus and energies are unswervingly plugged into a problem, the problem becomes endued with a source of power that is actually intended to kill it. As with most things in this world’s natural order, the obstacle learns to harness the energy while avoiding the fatally destructive intent. All the while, we delete our own resources to fight against the very thing we battle. Irony seems cruel when you oppose the natural order of things.
Giving effort to overcome past issues is a worthy endeavor. Pretending that there is nothing wrong in the world is stupid! Annoying circumstance, destructive problems, and reoccurring difficulties are real, however they should never be the default point of focus (at least not for too long). In a fascinating twist of spiritual physics, the energy source for that fear or habit—becomes you.
One of the most fascinating studies I’ve seen is by Masaru Emoto. He claims that energy from thoughts and words can manipulate the structure of a water molecule. These studies were conducted by freezing a water sample (usually overnight), and exposing it to some sort of energetic factor such as a chanting monk, a word written on the container, or selection of music. As the water thawed, they took pictures of the molecules. (see image:emoto).
No matter the level of skepticism experienced when reading this study, a truth that lies directly in the middle of daily life is how closely the Emoto images reflect people’s faces and countenance when these types of statements are used in their presence. Our faces and bodies reflect the beauty and disgust of these water molecule pictures. Regardless of whether it’s purposeful, sarcastic, or simply to make a point – thoughts and words instigate a cause and effect relationship that carries a weight that defies dismissal.
Aristotle (the Greek philosopher) said, “A good character carries with it the highest power of causing a thing to be believed.”
Jesus (the founder of the world’s largest religion) said, “The power of life and death are in the tongue.”
The springboard of “what if”:
Reviewing a past experience or repetitive statement with the “what if” frame wrapped around it can allow you to test beneficial responses to similar encounters (when they happen again). By poking around the possibilities—your imagination can be used to replay a scenario in search of a better or more productive engagement next time. Many beliefs are conceived with the words, “What if…”