It’s the curve balls that make life interesting.. Shows us what we’re made of.

There’s a story about a man fighting out on the frontline. His best mate is shot down right next to him. The man breaks down in anguish, “How could life be so cruel? What did I do to deserve this? Life isn’t worth living..”

Two hundred meters down the line there is another man. His best mate is shot down right next to him. The man feels sorrow combined with a unique sense of awe. “Life is precious.. What an amazing world.. I’m going to make the most of every moment..”

All you have is now. All you have is your character. How are you going to play?

Let’s make one thing clear.

ALL communication is based on assumptions.

We each have our own personal view and interpretation when a message is transmitted. When the assumptions we make are close to 80 or 90% of the intent of the message, we can communicate fairly successfully. The challenge occurs when we assume without questioning our assumptions.

Particularly when we assume what someone else might be assuming….

Simply ask.

Communication by its nature means assumptions are made. We put together the clues of language and what we associate to be the meanings of the words to be able to receive the messages. To ask someone to not assume is ludicrous. To ask someone to question those assumptions and suspend judgement is not.

All conflict arises from unquestioned assumptions

Are you willing to question your assumptions, and at the same time, support me in questioning mine?

This is far bigger than the individual topic of assumption. This is about a way of being through life. For you to allow someone to question a potential assumption, it means being open and willing to what may ensue.

Not 150%

Not 200%

Not 1000%

You may be giving that much more than you usually give, but don’t go saying you’re giving 200% when you just don’t want to acknowledge you were only ever operating at 50%. The truth is we don’t ever really know what our 100% is until we go there. But we can’t ever go beyond 100.

It works in finance, it works in ROI, but it doesn’t work with personal energy.
Sorry.

Give it all you’ve got, and accept that most of the time you’re only working at 30% capacity. It is actually more ‘motivating’ when you look at your baseline from that view, far more realistic, and achievable to increase your output when you’re accurate with where you are right now.

A study was done on employees where they were asked what capacity they thought they worked each day. 70 – 80% was a good day.

If you were encouraged to go more than 100% at some highly energetic seminar. If the speakers are trained in hypnosis and NLP – it’s specifically designed to get you to associate high outcomes with that experience and most likely to have you invest more money.

Now, our 100% capacity does change. At different points in our lives we have more education, experience and understanding, so our output for 100% effort is far greater.

Or my email accounts?

Perhaps you’d like to rifle through my facebook messages or read my diary.

I’m the kind of person who you can ask any question to and won’t be offended.

In fact, I love the hard, challenging, potentially offensive questions.

They make me think, enable us to have a greater connection and you get to see who I really am – in that moment anyway.

The only challenge I have is that people consistently misinterpret what they find or what answer they receive.

Now I understand that we all have our own view of the world and our own interpretations of things.

But when you assume that your world view matches the other persons and you don’t question it?

Well that’s a bit silly isn’t it….

If something is important to you, you’ll find a way to make progress with it. If something else is more important, you wont. The ‘something else’ that is more important doesn’t have to be a thing, it could be approval, or upholding the status quo, or their ego.)

If someone doesn’t get back to you, it’s because there is something else more important. That may be another person, an activity or a moral value they want to uphold. Or a fear. Sometimes a fear is more important than you.

When you find out what is important, then you want to know why that is important. When you know the why, the how takes care of itself.