Introduction
I HAVE THE good fortune and pleasure to work with some of the most successful people on the planet. One thing I’ve realised is that everyone can improve in some way. You don’t need to learn new skills to improve. It’s simply about understanding what you do, and then doing it a bit better.
Working with professionals from diverse fields – from Premiership footballers to fighter pilots, from CEOs to celebrities – I’ve found that the route to improvement is based on our perception of ourselves and the world around us. All of us are talented enough – but we perform only as well as we allow ourselves to. The key to performing better is to remove the inhibitors that get in the way.
I have spent four years putting together the ideas in this book – the principles of Mind Shaping. The techniques and ideas are not only useful but also easy to understand and use immediately.
Why Does Mind Shaping Work so Well?
Within these pages you’ll find all you need to help you succeed in life. You’ll discover how to achieve success at work, in your social life and in relationships. What’s more, my Mind Shaping techniques have been designed to make it all as easy and painless as possible.
I’m going to begin with a bit of a negative statement:
‘Most self-help books and programmes don’t work very well.’
Why should Mind Shaping be any different? And why don’t most of these other techniques work as well as they should? The fact is that most ‘life-changing’ programmes want us to stop doing something altogether (like smoking) all at once. Or start doing something (like a diet) – again, all at once. These represent major changes to what we are doing now. Inevitably, these changes put us under a huge amount of pressure. Change has a nasty habit of doing that because it rips us out of our comfort zones without so much as a ‘by your leave’. Doing things this way also generates unrealistic expectations: if you initiate a major change in your lifestyle, you expect to see rapid results – it’s only human nature. Worse, your friends and colleagues – from whom you find your new regime hard to conceal – also expect to see quick results. You become only too aware of this, and the pressure mounts …
Quite simply, you are making life hard for yourself. Most of us seem to have grown up with a belief in all sorts of masochistic aphorisms such as, ‘No pain, no gain’ and ‘If it tastes horrible, it’ll be doing you good.’ While there might well be an element of truth in such dictums, there’s no rule that says you have to do things the hard way, particularly when there might be an easier option!
Where Mind Shaping differs from most other self-help programmes is that I advocate making just a tiny change at a time in a very small aspect of your life – what I call the ‘one degree change’.
Imagine standing at the start of a stretch of railway track with two parallel rails running off to a distant horizon. Then imagine what would happen if you were able to unbolt one of the rails and set it just one degree away from parallel. The difference would be barely noticeable from where you’re standing now but, 50 miles down the track, those rails (I am assured by my friendly local mathematician) would be nearly a mile apart!
Broadly following Dr James Lovelock’s Gaia hypothesis, it is often suggested that a butterfly flapping its wings somewhere in South America could – through all manner of knock-on climatic effects – influence the weather patterns of Western Europe. Tiny variations really can generate significant change. Tiny variations aren’t going to cause you that much pain. Tiny variations are realistically achievable. And tiny variations aren’t going to put you in the spotlight of expectation.
My belief is that you should let people around you notice the results of your ‘one degree change’ gradually, almost as if the results have crept up on them over time. This is a more effective approach than looking for improvements every day, and being disappointed and disillusioned in the apparent absence of dramatic progress. That’s when people start believing that ‘such and such a programme doesn’t work’ and they stop trying.
Another real benefit of gradual change is that it is easier to incorporate into your lifestyle on a solid, long-term basis. If change is slowly growing in your daily life – like a climbing plant weaving through a trellis – it is much more likely to become an integral part of everything you do. Wholesale change that is imposed dramatically is many times more likely to be unstable and thus reversible.
Remember, the essence of this book is making selfimprovement as easy as possible. Just as the best way to eat an elephant is ‘one chunk at a time’, the best way to change your life is ‘one degree at a time’.
How to Make the Best Use of this Book
I’ve always been puzzled by our attitude towards books. From a very young age, we are taught to revere books, to handle them gently, to turn a page by carefully locating the tip of a corner to eliminate any risk of creasing or tearing. Furthermore, we have been brainwashed into believing that we have to read a book from the beginning to the end, preferably a chapter at a time. Books, in my house, used to be treated almost as works of art to be displayed on shelves and handled with kid gloves. But I want you to forget these notions when it comes to The Mind Coach!
This book is to be treated as a tool. When you come across a phrase, sentence or paragraph that really says something important to you, highlight it. Underline sections and scribble big circles round any sentence or paragraph that takes your fancy. Add your own notes. Fold over corners of important pages or even tear them out. Don’t worry if it looks used and well-thumbed … it should! That’s the idea. After all, you don’t panic if a spanner gets a bit oily, do you? You simply wipe it clean and make sure that its usefulness as a tool remains unimpaired.
I also urge you to dip into the book in a random fashion. Sure, there is a notional order in which it has been written, but my intention is that you should be able to scan any page and read something interesting and relevant. I want you to feel that you can dip in when you’re relaxed or angry, and feel better for having found something new or enlightening. This book is the tool with which you are going to tweak, tune and improve your life. Make it work for you in whatever way it can be useful (even if that use is propping up a table leg). But please, make sure that it’s your own copy, and not one belonging to the public library!
