Quantum Physics of Beliefs - Purpose

Continuing the topic from the last week's article ("When Helping Others is Your Life Purpose") let me discuss a little bit more deeply on what exactly is the 'Life Purpose'. I was actually driven to continue to write more about it while thinking about a question that I received on one of the Facebook groups in response to a VoARadio talk that I broadcast couple of weeks ago on the Quantum Physics of Beliefs - Power of Intentions Part1 and Part2. The question was "How do you know if it is your intention or someone else's?" In my response, I suggested to look at the classical meaning of the word intention - 'to have in mind a purpose or plan, to direct the mind, to aim' - and examine if it is indeed your plan/purpose to do something or someone else's? But, then I realized that there is more to 'purpose' than just a plan. So, let's delve into it...

LIVING YOUR PURPOSE

The original Latin meaning of the word purpose is derived from the word intention; (there you have it - intention and purpose go hand in hand) meaning that your purpose is there by (your) design and is something that you intend either consciously or unconsciously. When you intend for something to happen you are the one that makes it happen; it is not something or someone outside of yourself.

It's been said that great minds have purpose while others just have wishes. At some point in your life you have probably asked yourself the question "why am I here?" Or "what's the purpose that I am living in this world?" I think that most people with a healthy mind often ask this question and mostly at points in their lives when they are forced to take a time out. Socrates said that the unexamined life is not worth living and it is from examining our lives that we can look at it afresh and get a new perspective on why we are really here.

I believe that we all have a purpose for being here. There is a reason why you are here in this universe and that there is a specific role for you to fulfill. Even though this is a belief, I do think that anyone who is in touch with their spirit (or soul or inner self or whatever name you want to give it) will know that there is a part of you that long for more than just the day to day physical needs of life. We all dream for more and this desire, in a sense is fulfilled by your purpose. Your purpose in life is not a pre-assigned role, but rather a decision that you make as a result of introspection. There is no black board in the sky on which your purpose is written. There is however feelings and experiences that you long to experience while you are here and your purpose is what will cause you to experience, feel and be that which you long for on the deepest level of being a human "being."

Most people spend all their lives waiting for "a sign" as to what their purpose is. They spend all their lives trying to find their purpose instead of just deciding and using the power of intent to make things happen. Mahatma Gandhi as a young man saw things he did not like in South Africa and he decided that his purpose in life will be to get equal rights for all. Later on, when he returned to India, his purpose transformed to liberating his mother India from Colonial rule and establish democracy and self rule for the people. These became the very reason for him living and even though his purpose lead him on a very rocky road, his purpose did not change. All this was born in a truly committed decision. His committed decision lead to a definiteness of purpose; something that did not change, despite all the odds being against him. He found a purpose that was much bigger than himself that gave him leverage to achieve the impossible.

With a strong sense of purpose you can achieve virtually anything. Purpose is what gives you the reasons for doing something. In life there is a big difference between what you can do and what you actually do and the results usually come down to your motivation. Motivation is nothing but having a strong sense of purpose; a sense of knowing why you do what you do. When people don't know why they are doing something they will rarely do it and they will rarely stick with it long term. Purpose is the engine of human motivation. Purpose gives you the reasons why and with strong enough reasons "why to" you will find the "how to" - reasons come first and the answers come second as a result of the why.

Purpose therefore gives you power. It gives you the power to persist and take action until you succeed.

When you say that someone did something "on purpose" you are actually saying that he was responsible for doing it and that it is because of him that it happened. When you use your mind, your body and your emotions you have the ability to bring into being virtually anything on purpose. By intending for it to happen you can make it real. With a strong purpose you are able to tap into the unlimited resources that are within you; resources that become available because you feel compelled to make it happen. When it is a must you will find within yourself the resources to make it happen. When what you want is merely a wish, it is only a "should" that might only come together when it is convenient. Musts happen regardless of your circumstances or situation for it is your very purpose. It is your reason for being. Gandhi was able to change the way a whole nation thought and acted upon. With a strong enough purpose nothing can hold you back.

Discovering and living your purpose is all there really is for you to do in this life. It is like the axis of the wheel of your life and it holds everything in your life together. Your purpose gives meaning to everything you do and provides you with an inexhaustible well of resources to truly achieve whatever you set out to achieve or accomplish. The ironic thing however is that when you are on purpose all the "things and stuff' do not matter as the feeding of your purpose is what you truly long for and it needs no external satisfaction other than the experience.

Great minds have a purpose and it is usually a purpose that goes beyond themselves; beyond what they will "get". With their purpose they serve humanity. You can only find that much drive to serve and uplift yourself, but when you turn your attention to a cause much bigger than yourself you can find a purpose that has immense power to propel you to do virtually anything; even that which most people think of as impossible. The human spirit is truly one of love as we will do more for others than we will ever do for ourselves. When you find something that you can serve that goes beyond your personal gains you will discover that life's greatest joys is in giving; in giving the gift that you are.

Quantum Physics of Belief - Motivations

For the past few months, I was writing about quantum physics and business research to explore the correlation between the science of consciousness and patterns in the business world, to suggest innovative ways of using this wisdom to lead and succeed in a business environment that is constantly evolving at a rapid pace.  Once we reach a greater understanding of how the thought energy in an organization, in addition to actions, is influencing our results, many of our focuses will change. Today, we place a huge emphasis on monitoring how employees perform, as far as the actions they take, but we place very little emphasis on understanding the thoughts behind their actions. Today we only care that an employee is motivated to perform, but in the future we will care about why an employee is motivated to perform, because this will determine the target of their intentions.

When employees are motivated to perform because they intend that the company is successful, rather than because they desire self-preservation or self-promotion, our businesses will be more successful. This is because the energy of their intentions has an impact on business outcomes (see earlier article on Intentions.)

It has been proven scientifically thru experimentation, when groups of people intend that a particular outcome is achieved, the intentions themselves have an impact on events, so that the outcome is more likely to occur in the direction of the intentions. An intention is a conscious desire for a particular outcome. See my earlier article for a premise on how thought energy leads to business success.

It is not a foregone conclusion that employees of a business have a conscious desire, or intention for the business to succeed. I remember one time I was talking to a prospective client who has never worked for a company. I was talking enthusiastically about the importance of employees’ intentions for the success of a business, and he looked at me with a quizzical expression and said “Why do you think this is such a revelation? All employees intend for their company to be successful.” Those were definitely words of a person who was never employed in the corporate world. Based on my experience, it’s not a stretch to say that most employees in corporations don’t have high levels of intentionality for the success of the company, but rather their intentionality is focused on their own success.

So the question for leaders and managers to ask is “Are employees striving to do a good job because of self-preservation/promotion, or do they care about the success of the overall organization?” The answer to this reveals the object of their intentions.

Here are some reasons why the object of most employees’ intentions is their personal success. Typically, we have caused this by the way we run our multinational businesses.

First, most employees see that winning requires they look better than their fellow employees. That’s how they get promotions and raises that are larger than their co-workers, and that’s how they protect their job security. It follows that their personal success is more important than the success of the overall company and is therefore the object of their intentions.

Secondly, employees will focus their intentions on the realm that is top of mind. They naturally have an active awareness of the success of their particular job function or the project they are working on, but most don’t have an active awareness of the overall success of the company. I like what I have read about how Herb Kelleher kept the employees of Southwest Airlines connected to the affairs of the overall business, by emotionally engaging them in the issues and the company’s strategy for tackling them. This helped focus their intentions on overall business success, but most companies are not nearly as adept at this.

Finally, employees will focus their intentions on the realm where they believe they can influence success. This means they’ll focus their intentions on the realm that they control, which is their personal success or the success of teams of which they are a part of. Most companies aren’t proficient at showing employees how they personally contribute to the bottom line.

The traditional method that leaders use to get employees to be invested in the success of the overall business is to tie the wealth of employees to the wealth of the business through profit sharing bonuses or stock ownership plans. I won’t say that these methods are ineffective, but I will say they are of limited value as long as employees are more motivated to achieve personal success.

Most employees have a high level of intentionality for their own success but not for the success of the entire company. Even employees who are highly engaged and excellent performers will likely intend for their personal success to a far greater degree than the success of their overall company. Causing employees to have strong intentions for overall business success is multi-faceted and the subject of other articles, but we can start with simply paying attention to the current source of motivation.

Law of Unfulfilled Potential

One can see aspects of this law working in such areas like, for instance, in neurophysiology, humans use only a fraction of their brains' capabilities; in technology, superconductivity is not yet widely available; and in medicine, the harnessing of the body's abilities to fight cancers is only just beginning to be understood and realized.

But the Law of Unfulfilled Potential is particularly dominant in the business world - and especially in operations. Operations is the blocking and tackling of any organization, the fundamentals that create the foundation for consistent success.

It's such an important function that in many companies the Chief Operating Officer is usually the next in line for the job of CEO. If a company is not doing operations well, all of its other functions are diminished.

Having worked with operations leaders in a variety of top companies for over two decades, I have seen that many are unfortunately strict adherents to the Law of Unfulfilled Potential - for one main reason: They have neglected an all-important results-driver, motivation.

Clearly, many factors further operational excellence: capital, cycle time, technological advancements, quality, efficiencies, etc. But motivation is the most fundamental, operational determinant of all, for it drives all the others.

After all, operations is the sum of people doing many jobs; and when skilled people are motivated to accomplish those jobs, great results happen.

But many operations perceive motivation as "soft" - as opposed to the "hard" factors of cycle time, quality control, etc. - and so either ignore it or struggle with actualizing it on a daily basis.

I see motivation, however, as a "hard" determinant of operations that can be a concrete, a practical results-producer.

I am going to provide four imperatives that you can use right away to achieve consistent increases in operational results. But before I do, I'll offer a working description of motivation. Leaders often fail to motivate others because these leaders misunderstand the concept of motivation.

The best way for me to describe it is to describe what it is not.

Motivation is not what people think or feel. It's what people do. Look at the first two letters of the word, "mo." When you see those letters in a word, such as "motor", "motion", "momentum", "mobile", etc., it usually means action of some kind. Look at motivation as action too. If people are not taking action, they are in point of fact not motivated.

Motivation is not something we can do to somebody else. It is always something that that someone else does to themselves. Look back over your career, and you will see that the motivator and the "motivatee" were always the same person. As a leader, you communicate, and provide an environment for your members to thrive but the people whom you want to motivate must motivate themselves.

Motivation is not a dispassionate dynamic. It is an "emotional" dynamic. The words "motivation" and "emotion" come from the same Latin root word, which means "to move." When we want to move (motivate) people to take action, or in truth have them motivate themselves, we engage their emotions. Put another way: People will not take action for more results faster continually unless their emotions are engaged.

Finally, the best way to enter into a motivational relationship with people is not by distant communication but the kind of face-to-face talk that has people make the choice to be committed to your cause. It is called the ‘leadership talk’.

Those are descriptions of what motivation truly is. But descriptions alone won't help you meet the challenges of Unfulfilled Potential. You must follow clear imperatives to help you transform descriptions into results.

Here are four that will help you cultivate motivational operations.

1. Give leadership talks not presentations. The difference between a presentation and a leadership talk is what Mark Twain said the difference between the almost right word and the right word is. "That is the difference," he said, "between the lightning bug and lightning."

Let's understand the basic difference between the presentation and the leadership talk.

Presentations communicate information; but leadership talks have people believe in you, follow you, and, most important of all, want to take leadership for your cause. (The best example of such a talk is the one given by George Washington in 1783 to his field commanders who were on the verge of a revolt in the history of American Revolution.)

My experience has taught me that 95% of all communication in business is accomplished through the presentations. However, if 95% of communication were accomplished through the leadership talk instead, leaders would be far more effective in getting results.

So, before you speak to people from now on, and by the way, leaders speak 15 to 20 and more times a day, ask yourself if you are simply providing information or are you motivating those people to motivate themselves to take action for results.

2. Create motivational systems. Most operational leaders are good at systemizing quality initiatives, cycle time, efficiencies, etc. But few understand that some of the most important systems they can put into place are systems that help people make the choice for motivation.

A particularly effective motivational system is one that saturates operations with "cause leaders."

Unquestionably, people accomplish a task better if they are not simply doing it but taking leadership of it. When we are challenged to take leadership, we raise our performance to much higher levels. With that in mind, create systems that identify cause leaders, challenge them to take specific leadership action, and support those actions through systematized training and resource allocations.

3. See results not as an end but as a motivational process. Clearly, you have to get results. But many operations leaders misunderstand what results are about. I teach leaders the concept of achieving "more results faster continually" - not by speeding up but by slowing down and working less, by putting the motivational imperatives into practice. Leaders understand the "more results faster" aspect - but they often stumble when it comes to the "continual achievement" aspect.

We can usually order people to get more results faster. But we can't order people to do it on a continual basis. That's where motivation comes in. Instead of ordering people to go from point A to point B, say, we must have them want to go from A to B. That ‘want to’ is the heart of ‘continually.’

When we understand results this way, understand that we must achieve "more, faster" on a continual basis, then we begin to make motivational operations a way of life.

4. Challenge people to be motivational leaders. The imperatives are powerful when you use them consistently. But they are even more powerful when you have your leaders use them and teach others to use them. After all, you alone can't create motivational operations. You need others to help you do it, especially those mid-level and small-unit leaders. If they are not putting the imperatives into practice every day, your attempts to raise the standards of operations to a consistently high motivational level will falter.

Define the success of your leadership by how well your leaders are leading, and you are well on your way to making motivational operations a reality.

Once you begin to institute motivational operations by applying the four imperatives, the Law of Unfulfilled Potential becomes your competitor's worry, not yours.

Snow Ball Effect

In many ways, the first small steps you take to change your behavior are the most important. Once you initiate change, it seems to feed on itself, as two psychological triggers are at work:

a.    More exposure effect: The more you are exposed to something, the more you like it. Initially unwelcome change efforts will gradually be perceived more favorably as people get used to them.

b.    Cognitive dissonance: Once people take small steps, it becomes increasingly difficult for them to dislike how they act. We don’t like to act in one way and think in another. And once we begin to behave differently, our self-perception changes and our identity evolves, which reinforces our new approach.

This is what is called ‘the snowball effect’. Changes just seem to take off. They are the result of “small wins” but, not always. Rather, they are automatic forces that kick in as time passes.

It’s therefore essential to start as soon as possible and take advantage of the momentum.

While inertia and the status quo may exert an irresistible pull, at this point you need to muster the courage and just do it. Just get it started.

Ah, yes, but that’s the problem, isn’t it? The status quo feels comfortable and steady because much of our thinking is on autopilot. Routines feel good to us because it frees up our brain for other things, especially creative thinking.

What really helps me to get started when I want to change a behavior is to become aware of how much I am on autopilot. Having routines can be a time-saver since we don’t have to make choices, we just do it. But it’s also what creates rut and stagnation.

It actually irks me to be a slave to my habits (just the ones I don’t like). I tell myself, “Who’s in charge here, the autopilot or me?” If I am more powerful than that, I will actually feel energized by breaking the routine to do something new.

Your first attempt doesn’t have to be perfect or complete. At some point, inertia will shift from resisting change to supporting it, and small changes will snowball into big changes.

But it’s that first effort to say, “No, I am not going to eat that over sized portion on my plate,” that builds the momentum. At the next meal, you become aware of how restaurants over serve their portions (here in the USA), and you start cutting down meal sizes.

·        It’s that first time you respond with a smile to someone who pushes your buttons.

·        It’s when you stop yourself from explaining everything and ask a question instead.

·        It’s when you stop telling yourself you are tired and start asking how you can re-energize your tasks.

When I stop looking for how I can cut corners and make my work flow a routine, and start looking for creative ways to make a difference in the world, then I become more of a change agent.

It starts with the first snowball, and I am the one who has to set it in motion. Then it becomes fun to watch it grow and gather momentum.

What has been your experience when you want to change something?

What Do You Need to Change Your Behavior?

We’ve all had those times when we were bad. And not the “I didn’t know so it’s not my fault” kind of bad, but the “fully aware, self-justified” kind of bad.

Why do we do things that we…

• Know are bad for us? For example, eating cheesy puffs.  (I personally deny having a cheesy puff problem. I only eat cheesy puffs socially… most of the time).
• Really don’t want to do? Every time I eat cheesy puffs I realize that they don’t taste good. In fact they remind me of orange colored Styrofoam and yet on occasion I indulge – why?

Why don’t we do things that we know we should be doing?

Not only do we do things that we know we shouldn’t be doing, we avoid things that we know we should be doing. Exercise, for example.

I’d say everybody in the free world knows they should exercise (never mind the exact type) and I’m sure many really mean to (or intend) to exercise, but don’t.

Is it because it takes too much time? Maybe they don’t have the time, but there are way too many people watching reality TV to say there is a shortage of time for the average person.

So what’s the problem?

What do we need to do to change our behavior?

Maybe we need a plan.

One theory, “theory of planned behavior” says that intent (or purpose) is enough to change behavior. In this case, our intention is explicit, which then generates behaviorally oriented decisions. This means we have a set of goals that we intend to reach by acting a certain way. We plan to do something on purpose.

For example: I want to lose 10 pounds in the next two months by following healthy nutritious food habits and exercising 5 hours a week.

I have a goal – check.

I have a plan – check.

I have all the intention I need.

So now I am off to be successful! Right! Right?

While intention is really important, there is another piece to the theory of planned behavior: perceived behavioral control.

Are we in control of our behavior?

The first thing we need is the intent to exercise – with the goal and plan in place.

Then we need to think that we can control our behavior. Once we have our goal and our plan we need to BELIEVE that we can do it.

Psychologists have even put a number on how much perceived behavior control matters in intention: 45% of behavioral variance can be predicted by our belief that we have control.

Whether we actually have control doesn’t matter – assuming we are not locked up 24 hours a day in a room so small we are actually unable to exercise. Whether we think we control our behavior is what matters.

So far we need:

·        A goal

·        A plan

·        The perception we control our behavior

With all this I must be exercising! Right! Right?

While this psychological model of theory of planned behavior does show that all these factors contribute to whether or not we will actually do the behavior (exercise for example) it’s not that good.

But what else could matter?

·        Attitude.

·       Subjective norms – the way each participant’s close social network (i.e. family and good friends) felt about the participant’s goals.

·        Perceived behavioral control.

·        Intention.

·        Emotion. Research shows that intentions to participate in exercise (physical activity) didn’t always lead to exercise. This gap between what people intend to do and their behavior has been called the “intention-behavior gap” - emotion is the missing link in modifying behavior.

Results

After analyzing the different measures it turns out that attitude, subjective norms and perceived behavior control all impacted intention. Intention impacts how long it takes and whether we realize our goals.

But there is more ... emotion matters. Emotion toward intent to achieve goals matters. Emotion also impacts intention.

Bottom line

What does this mean to you?

To give yourself the best chance in changing your lifestyle and behavior you need:

• Intention – with a goal and plan in place.
• Have a positive attitude toward the goal you intend to realize.
• Surround yourself with people who approve and believe in what you are trying to do. Or avoid discussing the topic with people you know are unsupportive.
• Believe that you are capable. Yes, you can!
• Have a positive attitude toward your intent to change your behavior and attitude. Believe in the goal and the plan.

__________________________________

Surya M Ganduri, PhD. PMP. is the founder and president of eMBC, Inc., an international firm specializing in strategic and executive leadership development processes that Help People Succeed in an Evolving World. His company is dedicated to helping organizations and individuals manage strategic change, innovation, cultural transition, and goal achievement. Surya has over 26 years of business experience in management consulting, leadership development, executive coaching, process improvements, organizational development and youth leadership. Contact Surya at s6ganduri@eMBCinc.com. For more information, visit www.eMBCinc.com or contact eMBC, Inc., directly at (630) 445-1321.