Table of Contents
Table of Contents
This edition first published 2012
© 2012 Robin Nixon
Registered office
Capstone Publishing Ltd. (A Wiley Company), John Wiley and Sons Ltd, The Atrium, Southern Gate, Chichester, West Sussex, PO19 8SQ, United Kingdom
For details of our global editorial offices, for customer services and for information about how to apply for permission to reuse the copyright material in this book please see our website at .
The right of the author to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, except as permitted by the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, without the prior permission of the publisher.
Wiley publishes in a variety of print and electronic formats and by print-on-demand. Some material included with standard print versions of this book may not be included in e-books or in print-on-demand. If this book refers to media such as a CD or DVD that is not included in the version you purchased, you may download this material at . For more information about Wiley products, visit .
Designations used by companies to distinguish their products are often claimed as trademarks. All brand names and product names used in this book are trade names, service marks, trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners. The publisher is not associated with any product or vendor mentioned in this book. This publication is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information in regard to the subject matter covered. It is sold on the understanding that the publisher is not engaged in rendering professional services. If professional advice or other expert assistance is required, the services of a competent professional should be sought.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication data is available
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN 978-0-857-08310-4 (paperback) ISBN 978-0-857-08324-1 (ebk)
ISBN 978-0-857-08325-8 (ebk) ISBN 978-0-857-08326-5 (ebk)
For Julie
Acknowledgements
I’d like to thank all the people who have helped to bring this book to publication, including Jonathan Shipley, Iain Campbell, Jenny Ng, Vicky Kinsman, Grace O’Byrne, Megan Saker and Emily Bryczkowski, and everyone else who has been involved. It’s been a distinct pleasure to work with the Capstone team, and I’m grateful to you all for making my vision for Yes I Can! become a reality, and for helping it to turn out better than I ever expected.
I’d also like to thank each and every one of the well over 150,000 people who downloaded the first four chapters of this book from the iTunes App Store and Android Market. Your incredible support and hundreds of kind comments let me know that what I had written made a difference, and spurred me on to complete the book you are now reading – it wouldn’t have happened without you!
Introduction
This Book Will Change Your Life
You can do it!
– Robin Nixon
‘I wish I could be like that person.’ I bet this is a phrase that you have said to yourself. Deep down you know that you have the potential to be ‘that person’, but achieving it seems impossible in practice. Well, I can tell you that it’s not impossible:
Once you get used to these techniques and have seen the real results you can achieve, you’ll understand how you can adapt the techniques directly to your own specific life and circumstances to achieve much more specific goals.
The power of creative visualization has been known for centuries, but it’s something you rarely come across. But think about it. Before building a house you need a plan, an architect’s drawing or blueprint. Without it, builders would run around in circles not knowing where they were going or what to do next.
But with a plan the builders can progress in an orderly fashion, from one task to the next, ensuring, for example, that they don’t try to put the roof on before the walls have been built.
So it is with life. Think of these exercises as life blueprints. To create them you simply set aside a few minutes each day to visualize the part of your life you wish to change or improve, and as you do so you see where the problems are, and the solutions just pop into your mind. And there are plenty of ready-made exercises in this book you can practise.
If you visualize on a topic for several days you will see your visualizations grow. They will expand and become more detailed, and you’ll start saying ‘Aha’ as not only do you begin to understand how you can make the change you want, but you’ll notice that you’ve actually already started out on the change.
I promise there’s no mumbo jumbo in this book. Every technique is simply explained along with the reasons for why it will work. In these chapters you’ll find practical, real-world changes you can achieve in your life using tried and tested techniques.
These exercises have worked for me many times over – and they will work for you. Prepare to be astonished.
1
Learning to Visualize
I visualized myself being a famous actor and earning big money. I could feel and taste success – I just knew it would all happen.
– Arnold Schwarzenegger
In this chapter you will:
Creative visualization has been known about and understood for hundreds (if not thousands) of years. For example, ancient cave dwellers visualized the animals they would hunt and how they would do it, and drew this on their cave walls.
Throughout history shamans have used visualization for healing, and we know that the ancient Greeks implemented guided imagery as part of their culture – the imagination was considered an organ, just like the liver or heart. The concept even appears in the Bible in numerous places, such as in Matthew 7:7, which says ‘Ask and it will be given you, seek and you will find, knock and it will be opened to you.’
Nowadays there’s hardly a professional who isn’t aware of some aspect of visualization such as using it to help speed up the healing process and for diminishing pain, and sport coaches use visualization every day as part of the training process. But it is only in the last hundred years or so that creative visualization has gained its modern name and that several books have been written on the subject, leading to a far more widespread understanding.
The first major book on creative visualization in recent times was The Science of Getting Rich by Wallace Wattles. Published in 1910, the book outlines the process of maintaining ‘a state of positivity and self-affirmation’ if you wish to be financially successful. Soon after, in 1916, Charles F. Haanel, an American entrepreneur, author and millionaire, wrote The Master Key System, which is claimed by some as the inspiration behind the success of Bill Gates, who is said to have discovered the book while studying at Harvard and afterward decided to drop out and form the Microsoft company.
A few less well-known books followed and then the blockbuster Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill was published in 1937. It was based on an earlier book of his, The Law of Success, which had been commissioned by wealthy industrialist Andrew Carnegie. It was based on interviews of 500 American millionaires over a 20-year period and distilled everything Hill had learned into 13 ‘steps towards riches’.
More recently the book Creative Visualization by Shakti Gawain, published in 1978, reignited interest in the subject. It was written after a trip to India in which Gawain became deeply impressed with its culture and religious beliefs and lost all interest in material things. She says of the trip, ‘I gave away all my possessions and kept only what I could fit into a small canvas bag.’
The next big hit was the best-selling book The Secret by Rhonda Byrne, which stormed the charts in 2006. Crediting both The Science of Getting Rich and The Master Key System, the book drew interest from celebrities such as Ellen DeGeneres, Larry King, and Oprah Winfrey. The book is based on what Byrne calls the ‘law of attraction’, which in my view is simply another way of looking at positive thinking and creative visualization.
There are several theories about how creative visualization works. Some ascribe its efficacy to God or another divine being; others are more practical and think its results are brought about purely as a result of positive thinking. Others take the universal mystical approach that like attracts like. Scientifically there is no evidence for universal attraction so psychologists and biologists will be more likely to look for a mental or physical process to achieve the results that have been attained over and again in many scientifically controlled studies. This is also the view that I take.
By visualizing a desired outcome thoroughly you draw a complex image (or sequence of images) in your brain, often accompanied by sensory imagery too. And by doing so you stimulate neurons, which then form new connections with each other, subtly altering the way you think. Over time this effect magnifies and, for example, when a shy person visualizes about having greater self-confidence, new more positive pathways replace the older negative ones, and that person actually takes on the character trait they have visualized.
At the same time, however, there is little doubt in my mind that having a belief in God or an all-powerful being enhances the results, which tend to come quicker and be even better than you hope for. If you are religious you’ll say ‘Well, of course!’ And if not then you can put this extra effectiveness down to having a greater belief in the technique.
In numerous studies, the key to creative visualization has been found time and again to be having a positive expectation of a good outcome. When you visualize a goal and truly expect that you will achieve it the chances of doing so are several times greater than if you merely fantasize over it. In fact, people who simply daydream or fantasize of things they would like to happen tend to be lower achievers than those who don’t visualize at all – an important consideration to remember!
Therefore, as you read this book be aware that only by believing that you will be successful will that be the case. So please don’t just read the exercises and think that it will be good enough. You must actively feel the power and intent behind each one, and feel secure in the knowledge that you can and will achieve the change you desire.
Because belief is so important I cover it in the next chapter, in which I introduce the most powerful creative visualization technique of all: written affirmations, more commonly referred to as goal setting. Therefore I recommend you read this chapter first, before jumping into later parts of the book that seem most interesting to you right now. That way you’ll have a great technique already under your belt, with which you can build your belief in yourself, and your positive expectations of a great outcome.
In 2010 a study was published in which it was claimed that the popular health supplement glucosamine (which is used to treat joint pain and arthritis) appeared to have no statistically positive benefit after all. As a result, sales of the product plummeted with tens of thousands of people who had previously been absolutely certain that it was helping them now believing the opposite.
When we heard of this in our household we thought we would try an experiment. Both my wife and I have trouble with our joints, so we decided to stop taking the supplement to see if we would notice any change. If the study was correct we shouldn’t have noticed any difference. But we both felt our symptoms deteriorate and quite quickly too. So we resumed taking the supplements and after a few days we both felt much better. So does this supplement work or not? Well, the answer to that question doesn’t matter to us – because (perhaps due to adopting the right frame of mind) we both find it helps, and that’s good enough.
By maintaining our belief in something, not just by faith but by conducting simple tests where necessary (so that our belief has a footing in fact), we maintain its efficacy. Positivity always wins out over negativity, which is why it always pays big-time to try to avoid being negative in the way we think – whether about things, other people or ourselves.
One final thought before you get on with changing your life. Always select goals you are confident you can achieve. Instead of aiming for the stars, shoot first for the moon. That way your belief will be strengthened and the goals you seek will come quicker and easier. You can always choose the stars for another goal when you are ready!
With creative visualization you can change or achieve almost anything to which you put your mind.
2
Belief Is Half the Battle
Man is what he believes.
– Anton Chekhov
In this chapter you will:
Belief is a very powerful thing. Everything you know and do is built on beliefs. It’s true. Nothing is really based on facts because, as any scientist will tell you, no fact is ever proven to be a hundred per cent true – only the statistical chance of a thing being true can be considered.
Yes, it might be that every time you let go of an apple it falls to the ground. But that’s only up until now. What about in the future? You might tell me not to be so ridiculous but, for the sake of argument, assume you’re a character in the Matrix movies. Or, as we used to say pre-Matrix, imagine that you’re a brain in a bottle.
There’s actually no way for you to prove that you aren’t in the Matrix, or a brain in a bottle. No matter what you think of, it could still be an experience fed to your brain by a computer or other outside set of input sources. Touch, taste, feeling, hearing and smell – every one of the five senses could be simply illusions fed to a blob of grey matter floating in a bottle of nutrients, and there’s no way you can actually prove that’s not the case. Go ahead, try arguing it with yourself.
Speaking of which, let’s talk about you. Are you a religious person? If so that means you have faith. All religions are based on a system of faith, or belief. There’s no proof that a scientist would accept that Jesus performed the miracles mentioned in the Bible. In fact they are contrary to what we understand of science, and that’s why they are called miracles. But, even so, many millions of people have an unshakeable belief in their being true.
A few hundred years ago most people believed that the Earth was flat. A few still do today. They also believed that the universe truly was created in seven days – and millions of people still believe that. You see, belief is different for everyone. What you choose to believe (or maybe you don’t choose, but feel you have to believe), well, that could be (and very likely is) very different for many other people.
Let me ask you something. How do you view yourself – I mean relative to other people? Do you feel you are more successful? Less? About average? Are you happier? Do you think you are smarter? More hard-working? Whatever answers come to mind when I ask you that, they are your beliefs. And they are strong; as strong to you as if they were immutable facts. You have probably derived these beliefs over many years of saying things like ‘Oh, I could never learn to program a computer’ or ‘Cooking? I could never do that’, and so on. And after a while it becomes true – at least, in your mind it does.
Do you ever wonder why you run up against stumbling blocks in life and turn away from them? It’s because you think they are insurmountable and you don’t believe you can overcome them. One by one, you’ve created roadblocks all around you, controlling what you can and can’t do, forcing your destiny. Richard Bach, the author of the wonderful book Jonathan Livingston Seagull, once said ‘Argue for your limitations, and sure enough they’re yours.’ Think about it.
I know a couple of people who have never learned to drive a car because experiences put them off when they were younger and they decided they would never be able to learn. I also know of others stuck in low-paid manual jobs because they never went to college, and believe they are too old to do something about it now. And I know still others who turned down job promotions or opportunities because they felt they couldn’t succeed and were afraid of looking bad.
If I reflect on it, I think for every couple of dozen or so people I know, probably only one of them won’t argue their limitations and is prepared to ‘give it a go’ when presented with something like a new opportunity. Some people I know have tried in the past and failed and have then eventually given up trying, and that’s a real shame because nearly all the self-made, successful and famous people you’ve heard of have overcome tremendous setbacks to get where they are.
Consider Donald Trump, who has encountered bankruptcy a number of times. He is now one of America’s biggest, richest and most powerful property tycoons. Then there’s Larry King, the former talk show host who filed for bankruptcy in 1960 (and then again in 1978), yet he bounced back each time.
Another example is PT Barnum, also known as ‘The greatest American showman.’ He organized his famous circus, The Greatest Show On Earth, only after previously filing for bankruptcy, and it later merged with the business of his most successful competitor into the Barnum and Bailey Circus. History is scattered with the names of people who failed but refused to take ‘No’ for an answer. People who include Walt Disney, Kim Basinger, Henry Ford, Wayne Newton, Burt Reynolds and many, many more.
So let me ask you again. Do you feel there’s something in life you want to do but you simply don’t believe you can achieve it? Maybe you want to be financially independent. Or perhaps you are afraid of public speaking. Then again, maybe you are looking for a partner in life, or perhaps you just don’t feel confident enough at work.
So choose something you want to get done or something you want to overcome. Don’t be too general or think of more than one thing. Choose a single, specific change you would like to make such as ‘I want to be earning more money by the end of next month’, and then practise the following exercise:
WRITE THISGeorge Dantzig is a person who illustrates just what you can achieve when there are no boundaries or people telling you that you can’t do something. He was an American mathematician and the recipient of many honours. While Dantzig was a graduate student at UC Berkeley, near the beginning of a class for which he was late, his professor wrote four examples of famously unsolved statistics problems on the blackboard.
When Dantzig arrived, he assumed that the four problems were a homework assignment and wrote two of them down. According to him, the problems ‘seemed to be a little harder than usual’, but a few days later he handed in completed solutions for both, still believing that they were an assignment that was overdue. An account similar to this was used as an introductory scene in the movie Good Will Hunting.
Another example of belief in action is the placebo, which is a preparation that is pharmacologically inert but which may have a medical effect based solely on the power of suggestion – a response known as the placebo effect.
When B. Timothy Walsh, a Columbia University psychiatrist, reviewed 75 trials of antidepressants conducted between 1981 and 2000, he found that on average about a third of people given placebos improved, and that this response rate increased by about 7 per cent per decade.
At the extreme end of the scale of placebo effectiveness a clinical trial for Zoloft found improvements in almost 60 per cent of children given a placebo, compared with almost 70 per cent of the children taking the drug.
If you truly believe, then what you desire becomes achievable.
3
Standing Up for Yourself
Assertiveness is not what you do, it’s who you are.
– Dr Cal LeMon
In this chapter you will:
If you ever watch the Simpsons cartoon you’ll probably agree with me that the Ned Flanders character (Homer Simpson’s long-suffering neighbour) typifies a person totally lacking in assertiveness. He is always overeager to please to the extreme. Of course, like everything in cartoons he’s a caricature – an exaggeration or distortion.
But the real personality behind the character is one of an insecure person who will always try to please others because he fears not being liked. This is an easy trap to fall into because you can avoid immediate unpleasantness but only by reinforcing other people’s taking advantage of you again in the future.
Of course, very few of us are like Ned Flanders, but many of us will choose to submit rather than be assertive on certain occasions. But let’s not confuse assertiveness with being aggressive. The former is reasonably standing up for yourself so as not to be walked over, while the latter usually violates other people’s rights by being hostile and demanding or blaming others – in this case you become the aggressor.
So, do you feel you are assertive enough? Think about how you relate to other people. Will you do as your boss tells you, even though it feels demeaning? Are you able to express your disappointment with another person’s actions in an appropriate manner? Or do you just keep quiet when someone offends or upsets you?
If you are lost will you ask for directions? Or do you hate to do that in case you look stupid? If you have an opinion different to that of a group of people but you think it’s equally valid, will you offer it up for discussion, or just go with the flow and agree with everyone? Do you find you constantly avoid eye contact with others?
If the answer to any of these questions is ‘Yes’, it may be that you are not standing up for yourself sufficiently and could do with increasing your assertiveness. In fact it’s probably safe to assume that you have felt like this at one time or another and so you can benefit from at least a little assertiveness training.
But where do you begin to learn these skills? Well, it all starts with believing in yourself. Even though you may still feel timid towards others in certain circumstances, having a belief system in place as a solid foundation will take you to the next step.
To work on your self-belief let’s deal with one particular area in which you’d like to improve your assertiveness. It could be that you’d like to stand up a little more to one of your parents. Or maybe you feel your boss has been unfairly treating you. Maybe you are a boss and you don’t feel confident enough with the way you handle your staff. Whatever it is you should choose one particular area.
To illustrate, let’s assume part of your work includes supplier negotiations and you wish to try and get better deals in future because you believe the other party usually gets the better of you. First, you need to place yourself mentally in a negotiating situation then practice the following exercise:
VISUALIZE THISGently making your voice heard, or saying ‘No’ sometimes, quietly, but with conviction (at the right times) will slowly make people gain more respect for you. Occasionally you may need to be more emphatic, but usually quiet firmness will suffice.
What you will discover is that (to you) it will appear you are not being more assertive. Instead you will feel that others are being less demanding or less aggressive. And that’s pretty much how it will be. They will slowly (almost without realizing it) decide that they would rather not confront you so much, as you seem to be a stronger person. In fact, they may start agreeing with you on various matters they hitherto had disagreed on.
And you should find that, over time, very rarely will you actually need to use assertion. When you do, it will not be what you may now think the word means; it will simply be you confidently stating the case as you see it. Just make sure you don’t teach yourself to go the other way and become aggressive. You should always be calm. Your voice should be normal and not raised. Retain polite but firm eye contact and your body language should simply give off a feeling of self-confidence to others.
Now I’m not saying you can change passive or submissive behaviour to assertiveness overnight. Nor should you try to – it wouldn’t be you. Instead you should be thinking of this as an addition or improvement to your personality that you wish to grow into.
Alexander Kjerulf speaks and consults on happiness at work. He recounts the story of when, at the age of 26, he was working in only his second job as a software developer for a small consulting company. One of his customers was particularly problematic in that they would change the specifications for the system at every single meeting.
He would explain to them that each change was different to what was agreed at the previous meeting, and that implementing the change would cost more. But they would just insist that the changes were made anyway.
Finally, Kjerulf recalls, he ‘lost it’ at one meeting. After introducing yet another change he snapped and pounded the table with his fist and, smacking his folder shut, said ‘No. This can’t go on. This system will never get off the ground if you keep changing your mind at every meeting. We need to make decisions and stick to them.’
The meeting was then adjourned for a break and Kjerulf describes how he was standing alone drinking a cup of coffee, thinking ‘Well, that’s the end of this project for me’, and feeling rather embarrassed. So what happened next was entirely unexpected. The executives started treating him much better.
All the time Kjerulf had tried to play the cool professional they had walked all over him. But when he got mad, he showed them that he was human, and that there were things he wouldn’t put up with. From that point on, they respected him more and they trusted him completely. He became the guy they went to first, and work on the system became much smoother.
Here’s another anecdote to illustrate the dangers of not being assertive enough. Before the Second World War, British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain had expressed his desire to find a peaceful solution to Hitler’s wish ‘to create a new and enlarged German homeland in Europe’, and in 1938 Chamberlain was hailed as bringing ‘peace to Europe’ after signing a non-aggression pact with Germany.
Arriving back in the UK (holding an agreement signed by Adolf Hitler) stating his desire never to go to war with Britain again, Chamberlain declared that the accord with the Germans signalled ‘Peace in our time’.