Do you know how to unlock the unlimited power of IF?

“Align yourself and your thoughts with the possibilities, and with your potential.
Don't be the one who holds you back.”
Akiroq Brost

Have you ever noticed that when you want something big to happen, it is often the little things that stand in the way? There is even an old proverb for small details, “For want of a nail.”

Sometimes the smallest thing that stands between you and getting what you need is the tiny, two-lettered word, “if”.

Have you ever found yourself saying, “If only I had this, I could get that.”? We ask ourselves the “if” question all the time, without fully comprehending the answer to our dilemma lies within the question itself.

“If only I could close more sales, I could earn my quarterly bonus.”

“If only I could control my appetite, I could lose wait before my cruise vacation.”

“If only I could put more effort into my presentations, I would be a better speaker.”

There’s a lot of unlimited power in “if”, but it is just half of the equation. The answer lies in gaining the missing ingredient. Do you know how to unlock it?

What is IF?

When I see a word I ask myself, what is meant by that word and can I find a deeper meaning. I have done this very thing with the tiny word “if”.

The dictionary defines “if” as a condition or supposition that or in the event, something will happen. “If you like I'll put in a word for you.” It also means despite the possibility that something will happen; no matter whether or not. “If it takes me seven years, I shall do it> In either event just saying “if” is cause to believe something will happen.

This all sounds pretty “iffy” to me. Why should such a small word have so much power over our desires and achievements?

So, I looked for a deeper meaning within the word “if” and I found it.

The human mind, and maybe its spirit too, has a tendency to impose limiting language on itself as a built-in defense mechanism against disappointment. Part of this mechanism is fueled by a perceived fear of self-exposure. Most people will not judge you as harshly as you judge yourself. Overcoming this limiting behavior is a matter of Trust. The more you have in yourself, the more willing you’ll be to explore all sorts of possibilities.

The energy we use to build this Trust comes from within us. I call it IF and it stands for Intentional Faith.

What is Your Success Role?

Whether you know it or not, you are a role player. Having a role means you can influence the eventual outcome of any situation. The premise, “Success does not happen by accident,” is a key indicator your intentional actions play a big part in achievement. An intention is a something, mental or physical, of a person's design. Intentions do not grow on trees, cannot be found at a big box store, or up in your attic with your old baseball glove or Lincoln Logs. Intentions are a product of your desire. As such, they can be highly focused, goal-driven strategic components of a success strategy. Your goal as a role player is to control the intensity and frequency of your intentions. “When you have a role, you’re in control.”

Faith, the belief in the unknown, has the ability to magnify the action behind an intention. Record breakers do this all the time. They see a challenge, believe they can achieve it. They apply intention to their training. They intensify and magnify their confidence in a positive outcome. Finally, they put it all together, drawing on the combined energy of Intentional Faith, and conquer their objective.

Cause and Effect

Once you acknowledge you have a role in the outcome you can clearly see the cause and effect relationship in every “if” statement.

For instance:

“If only I could close more sales, I could earn my quarterly bonus.”

Closing more sales will earn quarterly bonus

“If only I could control my appetite, I could lose weight before my cruise vacation.”

Controlling your appetite will help you lose weight.

“If only I could put more effort into my presentations, I would be a better speaker.”

Putting more effort into your presentation will make you a better speaker.

It’s not rocket science, but it is neuroscience. The body achieves what the mind believes. And, you are the cause of it all.

You Living at Cause

Intentional Faith is “You Living at Cause”. It works like this:

• FAITH builds TRUST

• TRUST creates INTEGRITY

• INTEGRITY breeds CONFIDENCE

• CONFIDENCE produces COMPETENCE

• COMPETENCE fuels DESIRE

• DESIRE ignites IMAGINATION

• IMAGINATION develops INTENTION

• INTENTION compels SUCCESS

No one ever succeeds by accident!

IF you have a role, you are in control.

Click here to download an Intentional Faith PDF poster

You now know “How to Unlock the Unlimited Power of “IF”. IF – Intentional Faith has so much positive energy. When every action you plan has the full Faith and power of your Intention you will increase your opportunities for success. Speakers know this when they prepare their speeches. World class athletes experience this through the regimen of their practices. Performer live this with every rehearsal of their repertoire.

Don’t wait for success to happen to you by accident. If you do, you’ll never be in control of the outcome. And, “if” will always remain an unanswerable question.

Please feel free to share this post with a friend or colleague. As always, your comments and suggestions are delightfully welcome in the comments section below.

Bringing Positivity to Everything,
The Brain Tamer

“Success happens when an intention meets or exceeds a reasonable expectation.” Don E. Smith

Who is responsible for HOPE?

“Hope without action is like a Ferrari in your garage with an empty gas tank.
It’s nice to look at, but it won’t get you anywhere.”
Don E. Smith

I listen to a lot of recorded books. At the end of each book an announcer says, “We hope you’ve enjoyed this book”. That makes me wonder, “If I have just completed listening to the recording of a book you sold me, what are you hoping for?”

• Are you hoping I will buy another one?

• Are you hoping I will refer you to a friend?

• Are you hoping the narration wasn’t too bad?

• Are you hoping I am not lying on the ground bleeding to death because my experience was so bad I slashed my wrists?

What outcome can one expect when someone expresses hope for them? Not much!

So, I’m asking you, “Who takes responsibility for HOPE, the Hoper or the Hopee?”

Why there is so much Hope and so little Progress

Let’s face it, Hope is an orphan. It is born out of the union between desperation and idealism. No one cares for Hope, feeds it or shelters it. It is just recklessly offered to us as a solution and end game. We are asked to believe that, just by its mere existence, Hope is the best solution, ready for deployment with all our desired outcomes intact.

But once Hope is offered, who takes responsibility for it? Who fosters its growth? Who helps it reach its promise? No one.

Hope is an action-less being, requiring only desperate dreaming without any real strategy or commitment. And that is why Hope is an orphan.

When you say to someone, “I hope to see you again,” it is unlikely it will happen unless one or both of you take action to make it happen.

There is no potential in Hope, only desperation. Hope is the first sign of surrender indicating that you have run out of desire and are willing to let someone else do it for you. That’s why I see Hope not as a solution, but as a convenient way of distancing yourself from the outcome.

Most people Hope for a better world but do little to move us in that direction. That’s why there is so much Hope and so little Progress. Hardly anyone takes any action.

Hope is a frivolous expectation devoid of action. Hope without action is delusional dreaming. It is vapor-ware of the heart, a well-intended promise that is empty of potential and realization.

If you want to take responsibility for what you hope for in life, I urge you to take a “leap of Faith”, earn your Trust and stop being a “hope-aholic”.

Hope versus Faith versus Trust

When you begin a journey towards a goal, you are energized by a great expectation and fueled by a dream of achievement. As you move towards your destination, one action is followed by another. The more intention you apply to your actions the greater the opportunity to reach your goal. You examine, test, alter, react, and act again upon your goal all the while building layer upon layer of confidence with each cycle. As you progress, you begin to feel a sense of competence that begins to slowly replace Hope with Trust.

Do you recall the struggles you had as a child hoping you would master the simple task of buttoning a shirt? Now, you no longer “hope” you will do it, you “trust” you will. You have so much “faith” in yourself, that you do it absent mindedly, unconsciously competent in the process.

Hope is for people who bet on life without the ability to control the odds. If that suits you, buy a lottery ticket and “hope” you will win.

But Faith, while a belief in the unknown, has deep roots strong enough to overcome most odds.

The Flip of Faith

We see “miraculous” victories all the time in the sports world. They happen because teams and their individual members devote themselves to a singular goal. They practice, examine, test, alter, react, and act again against every conceivable variation that could occur until they lessen the “odds” against them for reaching their goal.

In 2001, Derek Jeter made one of the most amazing plays in sports history, “The Flip”. This play was successful not because he was lucky enough to be in the right place at the right time. He made the play because he knew his best chance to influence the outcome of the play in his team’s favor was to put himself in position to impact the play as it unfolded. Mr. Jeter did not stand around gawking at the play hoping someone else on his team would take action. He saw the opportunity, had faith in his instinct and trusted if the moment came he would take the right action. The play not only saved the game it won the playoff round.

Putting Faith & Trust into Practice: The Hope-Less Speaker

If you are a speaker, here are a few things you can do to eliminate Hope from your skillset:

• Prepare as well in advance of your speaking opportunity as possible

• Practice your content and delivery methodically – record it, analyze it, alter it, make it the best it can be.

• Run a checklist of everything you will need – don’t wait to be surprised by unexpected elements.

• Know your audience – who they are, what they want, and what they expect from you

• Put equal or more effort into the preparation of your speech than you do into delivering it.

The only time Hope is an appropriate response, is after … you have done everything you can - to create as much Trust as you can - that is based on the Faith of the actions you have taken.

You can’t operate in good Faith without Trust. If you do, all you have to go on is Hope. So, when all the “t’s” are crossed and the “i’s” are dotted, when there is nothing left that you can do to influence the outcome in your favor, you may consider Hope as a response.

But, remember when you do, Hope is an orphan and if you embrace it you are now responsible for it.

I trust you found this post to be of use to you and that you will continue to put your faith in this blog. As always, comments and suggestions are delightfully welcome in the comments section below.

Bringing Positivity to Everything,
The Brain Tamer

STICKTOITY: What you need to know about the power of perseverance

“It is a rough road that leads to the heights of greatness.”
Seneca

While doing a puzzle with my 6-year-old granddaughter, I encouraged her to "hang in there" and finish it. I said, "You need to have perseverance." She looked at me quizzically. There I go again. Using big words a 6-year-old cannot understand.

I thought a minute and then said, "What I mean is, you have to get some 'sticktoity'. She laughed at the silly new word, but she got the meaning right away.

Do You Have a “Capacity for Tenacity”?

It has been said, “What is now easy, once was hard.”

Heck, Malcom Gladwell in his book Outliers, wrote all about how many hours of focused practice it takes to master a skill.

10,000 Hours…

• 1,250 eight-hour days

•     40 hours per week for 250 weeks

•   250 weeks = 4.8 years

… of doing nothing but working on developing a skill or area of knowledge.

From Thomas Edison to Michael Jordan to The Beatles and more, our culture is rife with examples of high achievers who dedicated immense hours of focused experimentation, practice, creativity and energy in pursuit of a desire.

How can you make this happen for you? STICKTOITY!

Perseverance, Tenacity and Stubbornness

Perseverance or sticktoity is the ability to remain steadfast in doing something despite difficulty or – and this is very important – delay in achieving success.

Tenacity is the quality or fact of being very determined. Think ant vs. bread crumb.

Stubbornness is the dogged determination not to change one's attitude or position on something.

So – what’s the big difference? It’s small, but it means everything if you want to succeed.

The first two, Perseverance and Tenacity are skills and attributes of people who will not give up on a desired goal because they believe in it. They are willing to do or try anything to make that shift in performance that leads from anticipation to expectancy. People with Perseverance and Tenacity can see their goal within reach and know that there are changes ahead if they want to reach it.

While Stubbornness is certainly aligned with the first two, it is distinct in that it is based on an unwillingness to embrace change as part of the strategy. Einstein said, “If nothing changes, nothing changes.”

Change is not the evil under lord it is usually perceived to be. Change is good. But change doesn’t require a complete overhaul of the system or the process. To better embrace the idea of change, think of it as a transformation. Once you were that because you did that, and now you are this because you did this. Either way, you are still you, just slightly transformed. Transformation makes the dreamable achievable.

That’s why you need to have a Capacity for Tenacity.

A Capacity for Tenacity

All too often, I have seen people “bomb” on the stage and accept that as the final outcome of their ability. No matter how much they want it, they just give up. Some right out of the gate, some after a few tries, and some after years of practice.

What they need is an energy conversion system to help them stave off the effect entropy (the natural tendency of things to deteriorate) has on reaching their goal. Ambition often falls prey to entropy. It is not enough to want something, you have to figure out how to intensify your effort and commitment to overcome the debilitation of delay.

Sometimes the best of intentions, actions, and aspiration are derailed by shortfalls, missteps, and overestimations. These types of delays can have a decaying effect on the energy required to “hang in there”. To succeed in anything, you MUST – absolutely MUST – have an enormous Capacity for Tenacity.

This one ability, in fact let’s call it a skill (because it can be developed), is immeasurable to the achievement of a successful outcome for any endeavor – especially public speaking.

Whatever inspires you to achieve a goal will not be enough to sustain you to the end. Your desire must be continually rekindled by ever increasing amounts of positive energy, attitude and faith. No one can do this for you. It is the most solitary action one can undertake. You may not do it alone, but no matter how much someone loves you or believes in you, you cannot succeed at someone else’s passion. And correspondingly, they cannot succeed at yours.

So you’re probably thinking, what about teams? Don't they work to achieve each other’s goals?

Not really.

Teams that achieve high levels of success do so because they surrender individual identity to team identity. The team, as a single entity (composed of many units) contributes a large amount of positive energy, attitude and faith toward reaching their goal. While their fans may cheer for them, they can’t affect the outcome. Fans rarely, if ever, show up and cheer during practice. That’s what coaches are for.

To succeed you need three elements of STICKTOITY

1. A clearly defined goal based on purpose and passion

2. A reserve of persistent energy

3. A set of unbreakable promises that are driven by unlimited tenacity.

Sticktoity is the power of perseverance times the energy of tenacity. The formula looks like this:

PERSEVERANCE X TENACITY = STICKTOITY

STICKTOITY = Success. And you will get success every time. You just have to be patient, not give up on yourself and work the process over time.

If this post has transformed your ideas about success or not, please share your comments below. I’m here to serve you, my reader, and your input is most appreciated.

 Bringing Positivity to Everything,
The Brain Tamer

What Do You Think About Success?

“Success comes in cans, not in can nots.”
Wayne Dyer

Success Defined

There are sticking points and there are "sticky" points. When it comes to skills fulfillment, Success seems to be the one thing that is both sticking and sticky. Is there a difference? You bet there is!

Sticking Point

A sticking point is an obstacle to progress toward an agreement or goal. In many cases the obstacle is not real, but perceived. What causes many to get stuck in pursuit of success is how they define it. Most people think they are successful only when they have attained some lofty goal. Let’s call that point “Z”. And, true, if they do reach point Z they are indeed successful. But what about along the way? What is happening from point A to point Z? Was every attempt to reach the goal a failure or an opportunity to gain feedback and adjust both process and expectation?

Sticky Point

A sticky point is that moment when the effort of an intention becomes magnified by the impact it has on the goal. If you have a plan to do something and you do it with total intention the expectation for achievement is increased by the effort. It's when the experience adds or sticks to the intender's skill. If you can do something a little it means you have the potential to do it a lot. Someone put it this way, "What is now easy, once was hard." The road from hard to easy, from point A to point Z, is paved with great intention.

Success Defined

Success is defined as, "the achievement of an intention." Please note, nowhere in this definition will you find fame, fortune or power. Unless those outcomes are the aim of your intention, they are all by-products of an achievement. Sometimes success eludes people who try hard enough, but struggle with how to define their success. When “success” is not the outcome, most people believe they have failed either because they did not “work hard enough” or because they are “unlucky”. Or worse, they come up short because their goal is unworthy. In truth, it just might be, that at this point in time, their success expectation is unreasonable. When your grasp exceeds your reach, recalibrate your reach. Success is all about intention and managing the expectations that fuel your effort. The more realistic an expectation is in relation to your current skills, resources and experience, the greater the opportunity for success. I like putting it this way, "Success happens when the result of an intention meets or exceeds a reasonable expectation." To succeed you must clarify what constitutes success in relation to your desire and your abilities. Remember, when it comes to success, “Nothing succeeds like a realistic expectation.”

Bringing Positivity to Everything,
The Brain Tamer