Hey, did you hear this?

Next week I’m doing an interactive video about speeding up the process within a company. The imaginary company created to use as an example is a call center for tech advice for cameras, but it could be anything.

In real life, it most likely would be located somewhere in India, but that’s another story.

The interesting part is what I’ve learned from reading the script for this project, that while I always thought I was listening to what the other person was saying, what I was really doing was waiting for my turn to speak and seem brilliant, not actually paying much attention to the content of what was spoken.

I had learned this lesson years ago when I took a coaching course from a guy named Paul Roth at his Coaching Exchange in Westwood, CA. The Coaching Exchange’s logo is CEX, which a Russian speaking person would pronounce as SEX, but that’s a story for another day. As I learned,Paul is a true genius, a guy who for whatever reason wanted to help people at the expense of his own financial betterment. This concept was one of the best things I got out of the class, and also one of the first things I forgot about as I moved on with my life. So it goes.

What I found was that you can’t use information that is given to you if you choose not to really listen to it. You need to take in each word and the examine the context of it as it’s given to you.

Try this: The next time someone speaks to you on a subject you know nothing about, really try and see if you can come away with a new feeling about that subject, or maybe take something from the talk and use it in an unrelated area of your life. Once you do this, you may find that an answer to something that you have had on your mind for a while will appear in the conversation, and this is true even if when it’s about an unrelated subject.

You have questions, others have answers, it’s just a matter of matching them up.

You’ll See It When You Believe It

It’s funny how you can’t see something unless you believe it could exist, even when it’s been right in front of  your nose for a long time.
I learned and re-learned this concept a few times, only to forget about it until time and again my nose had been rubbed in it, but enough about my nose.
The first time it happened was when I read a book called “Think and grow rich”, written a ton of years ago by Napoleon Hill, wherein I found out about the C-B-A principle, Conceive, Believe, Acheive. First you have to conceive, i.e. come up with an idea, believe that it’s possible, and finally do it. This all sounds so simple in retrospect, but it also has another way of happening, like how you might not know that it’s possible for you to do something until someone points out to you that it’s already been done by others, or you stumble on to that fact. The solid example of this for me is when I got my first “Sports” car, a Bricklin.

Bricklin rampant, not mine but other than the color very similar.

Not my 

I had wanted something non sedan like for years, but it just wasn’t practical and I couldn’t see myself in one. Sure enough, a self fulfilling prophecy, one Chevy or Ford after another for years, until a friend pointed out that I should cut out a photo of myself and paste it into the window of a picture of a Pantera and use it as a goal. Well, the Bricklin with it’s gull wing doors jumped ahead of the Pantera during the year of learning to believe, and then one day there I was driving one with a custom license plate as my tribute to Mr. Hill, EZASCBA for eazy-as-Conceive of the idea, Believe it, And (achieve) drive it.
Years later I had this way of seeing reinforced when I took a class with a career coach. Maybe life coach is a better description, as my career and life were intertwined so much that that my usual answer to “Who are you” was “I’m a photographer” instead of my name (movie set photography was my previous work field), it wasn’t until I was able to separate myself from my work that I was free to really see the world around me. One of the first things I saw was how my environment was always changing, and I was still relating to it as I always had, not adapting to the new real world. Paul Roth was my coach, and he did wonders for me in my learning to see. Sure sounds strange now to say that as a photographer I was unable to see, all those damn trees got in front of the forrest and all that. With his help, I was able to open myself up to the world of possibility that allowed me to move on. One of the first questions he asked me at the start of his group was, “What do you want?”. Sounds stupid simple now, but it took a few weeks of thinking about it before I was able to say that all I wanted was to be happy again. This was not all that long after after my divorce, but I found that stating aloud what I wanted worked on several levels beyond that. Being shown that it was not only possible, but easy, I was able to define who I was by where I had been. Once that hurdle was passed, setting course to where I wanted to go became sort of a manifest destiny. So here I am, several years later, doing better things with my life. With my new perspective, I can see that I’m still moving up the food chain and far, far more happy.

N.B., The ownership of any and all photos, opinions, and/ or quotes above (including those of my own) belong to the material’s creator(s). Credit is given when it’s known, but as everyone knows, success usually has a million parents and failure is an orphan.

Feel free to ignore any ads that are shown below, I don’t get to choose them and even more sadly, I don’t make a penny off any of them, so in the holy name of capitalism I rebuke and don’t endorse or support any of them, unless of course they’re made of funny stuff…..  

P.S., check back for occasional updates and rewrites….

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