Read the 3rd article of this popular six-part series in the Selling to Schools "Stage the Big Payoff" section, and be sure to listen to the accompanying podcast below.

So if we have the ability to exert our will and use the power of control in our primary world, why don’t people exert it more often in order to create better lives for themselves?  One answer is that the mind has the ability to both help and hurt us.  Psychoanalyst Fritz Perls said,  “Lose your mind and come to your senses.”

Thoughts -> Connection -> Meaning

The fact is, as human beings, we have an incredible capacity to get in our own way.  Here’s a simplistic explanation of how this works. The mind experiences a thought. The thought doesn’t have meaning in isolation, it needs to be connected to another thought.  These connections continue to form and create neurological pathways until enough synaptic connections are made to create meaning. 

When a new thought enters our head, our minds have familiar and well-worn neurological pathways in place for that thought to travel.  Think of it kind of like ice melting on a mountain; the water moves toward the well-worn crevices of the mountain’s surfaces as it forms streams down the mountain. Over time, these crevices get deeper and deeper.

Neurologically, biologically, socially, and psychologically we are driven to make connections so we can find meaning.  The problem is, our thoughts move toward the well-worn neuropathways of our minds whether those connections create edifying meanings or destructive meanings.  And because the mind can experience both conscious and unconscious thought, it can happen without our awareness.

Story -> Connection -> Meaning

How can we create more awareness about how we’re processing our thoughts? One way is by examining our stories. Stories create meaning by making connections. Our stories of ourselves are the result of the connections we make. In this way, we are the stories we tell ourselves we are.

We have the ability to change our less than edifying stories about relationships, people, work, money, life, politics, love, sex and other concepts, but we first have to become aware of our stories and then understand that our current understandings aren’t necessarily true—even if our personal historical experience has proven us right.  

All that you see or seem, is but a dream within a dream.
-Edgar Allen Poe

Exercise Your Mind to Work For You, Not Against

It’s difficult to use the power of our will and our self-control to find more edifying definitions that serve us.  But for most of us it is absolutely within our power.  It begins with opening your mind. 

•   Examine which definitions might not serve you. Explore other possible meanings that could be true and would be more edifying. To get started, think about or write down how you would describe yourself to a new pen pal or someone who doesn’t know you well (essentially, your labels).
•   Recognize personal attachment to particular notions. Think about family stories about you, or ideas you hang out to but may not have examined lately.
•   Work to get control of your nervous system to create detachment and peace. Question your assumptions and automatic reactions to things or thoughts. Slow down and allow yourself to let go of the old way and be open to new thoughts about an old process.
•   Accept all new awareness without judgment. 

All of this must be done with great diligence, as the mind can trick the will.  All of this must also be done with as much objectivity as possible. 

© Joe Caruso and Caruso Leadership, 2012.

More Resources and Exercises

For those of you who might be interested in examining, uncovering and changing the stories, narratives, meanings or definitions that don’t serve you, here are a few links to some further reading and exercises.

Top Ten Things to Let Go Of >>

Power of Losing Control Companion Content >>

Success Strategies >>

Assess, Accept, Adjust and Advance >>
This is the process of unlocking the limitations of the mind and freeing yourself to become more peaceful, more powerful, more happy and more successful.  It may just be the hardest and most rewarding work you’ll ever do. And it can be done for you personally and professionally. It can also be done for your business or organization.

148/296 + 35/70 = 1

This struck me more than just being “cool”, because I saw it as a metaphor for how we tend to over-complicate how we define things in our lives, in our jobs, and in our relationships. For many, one is not simply one; it’s a complicated formula that does not need to be complicated.

This human tendency to over-complicate is important to uncover because the way we define things is the filter and context by which we see the world, respond to the world, and can ultimately determine our success and happiness in the world. All definitions are self-reflective. We can’t see the world and not see it through the context of ourselves.

So if your self-definitions are not serving you, then it’s time to lift the covers on your assumptions, denials and blind spots. Can you adjust to a new definition that serves you? Remember, the only thing we can control is our primary world, ourselves. Why do we choose to overlook or ignore the only thing we can truly control.  An over-complicated definition influences our secondary world – whether people like themselves when they are with us, how we are treated by others, the type of personalities we attract, etc.

It’s not easy to get at these issues – I know because I have worked hard at uncovering my own blocks. Often we operate through much of our lives without even realizing what our self-definitions are. Start by thinking about how you define yourself to others to “explain” your reaction or opinion on something. “Well, I was the middle child, so…” or, “My dad always wished I had been a better athlete…” – you get the idea. These “stories we tell ourselves we are” are exactly the ones that may not be serving us. You get to define yourself. No one else does.

Sometimes when things don't quite seem to add up, it's because we're complicating the math. It’s time to think about how you add to get to one. And that one is important – it is you.

© Joe Caruso and Caruso Leadership, 2012. Reprints and re-use available with permission.

Be sure to tune in for each episode and fine tune your leadership skills in the fluctuating education marketplace.

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How to Thrive in a Changing K-12 Marketplace

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Education Market Leadership Part 1: It's Time to Reassess

"Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation, so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate, we can not consecrate, we can not hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."

[President Lincoln delivered the Gettysburg Address on November 19, 1863 in just over 2 minutes. Given at the battlefield of Gettysburg just four and a half months after the Union army defeated the Confederate army, it remains one of the most popular speeches in American History.]

Great leaders know that their words—if well-constructed—can help guide how people think and behave. 

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Accept, Adjust, and Advance

As many personal development success strategies inform and improve professional development as well, I wanted to share a process that I have been honing and developing with clients for many years. In our businesses and organizations, we are steeped in processes – how we do things, how we decide what to do…even how we approach what we decide to do. With all of these processes, I suggest that there is one Quintessential Process to guide organizations through the best way to impact outcomes and improve the bottom line.

More About The Quintessential Process

The Quintessential Process™ was developed by clinically studying over 500 organizations of various types and sizes.  It is informed by over twenty five years of studying the role psychology has in leadership and with groups.  It has been successfully implemented by leaders, businesses and organizations across four continents in a number of countries and cultures including The U.S. Military, non-profits, multi-national corporations and small businesses.

This video offers a closer look, in pictures, at the work Caruso Leadership performs daily with clients and organizations throughout the world. The accompanying audio captures an interview with Joe Caruso as he describes The Quintessential Process.

Consider this.

Most organizations that aren’t happy with their outcomes will focus on their processes or behaviors in order to determine what they might need to do differently in order to change their outcomes.  They may have a pow-wow of some kind to brainstorm ideas.  They may have a retreat.  They may hire a niche consultant who specializes in their industry or in the particular kinds of problems they’ve identified.  They may even decide they need to reorganize. 

In each and every one of these cases, the organization is trying to solve their problems by focusing on the back-end of a sequence of chain reactions, rather than where the problem actually originates.  Additionally, unless the consultants they hire understand the role of narrative in organization development, they will be trying to change people’s behaviors, even while those very people are holding onto the same narratives that drove the thinking, decisions and behaviors that created the problematic outcomes in the first place. 

In business, it isn’t wise to willfully or naively ignore how the collective and individual mind functions.   The mind can’t consider an idea in a vacuum.  It must attach the idea or thought to something it is familiar with in order to create meaning.   (This is called comparative thinking.)  This attachment then creates other attachments and very quickly forms a narrative—a story that makes sense of the original idea and how it relates to other known thoughts, notions or ideas.  While we are fully capable of doing things that don’t make sense to others, we must have our own reasons for why we think and behave certain ways.  (Even if the reasons are made up and don’t stand up to reasonable examination.)

The first thing I do when a company calls me to help them with a goal or a problem is to uncover the thematic narratives of the organization.  Every single time, it has proven to be critical to solving the core problem.  Twenty-five years and hundreds and hundreds of companies later, it still is—every single time. 

The Times of Our Lives

Consider Kodak.  Founded in 1889, they owned the photo development market.  They even invented the digital camera.  What happened?  While many forensic business analysts examine the corporate corpse looking for clues, I contend that this is a company that couldn’t get past its legacy thinking.   In other words, it couldn’t adapt its narrative about itself to the modern times, and because of this, nothing else they tried could turn around their demise.   Stated simply, it couldn’t optimize its invention of the digital camera, if it meant that doing so would lessen the importance of film development—a foundational and fundamental part of their sense of identity. 

It’s not like they lacked the resources to change.  As late as 1976 Kodak had 90% of film and 85% of all camera sales in the US.   It’s not like they weren’t trying to change.  The company has had four different CEO’s in the last 19 years.   On Thursday, January 19^th, the same day that Apple announced that they will change the textbook industry forever, Kodak filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.   If they can’t successfully emerge, the company that helped America make memories will soon become one.  (The irony here is that Apple is a company that was able to successfully change their legacy narrative from, We will beat Microsoft, to We create technology so disruptive that it redefines entire industries.)

The fundamental reason why all the changes Kodak tried to make failed to save them comes down to one thing—a narrative that didn’t serve them.  The fundamental way they saw themselves became fatally flawed, once they invented the digital camera.  True to their narrative, they once again led the field in photographic invention with yet another breakthrough.  Only this time, the nearly monopolistic masters of processing, couldn’t process how to embrace the new while they still clung to the old—an impossibility for any individual or organization.  In the meantime, the marketplace spoke.  Marketplaces don’t wait for companies to change.

We are the stories we tell ourselves we are.  Sometimes our stories serve us.  Sometimes they hurt us.  Sometimes they help us.  Sometimes they get in our way.  Great leaders need to understand the narrative of their organization and make sure it’s always edifying, because their markets will continue to shift and change at an increasingly rapid pace.  In this way it seems that today’s marketplace reflects the sensibilities of hundreds of millions of avid digital photographers—an analogy that was obviously lost on Kodak.   Once the marketplace focuses in on what it wants, it doesn’t like to have to wait around to see how everything develops.

Learn More About Narrative and Organization Development

Read Part I:  What’s Your Story?  How Narratives Drive Outcomes

Learn more about Caruso Leadership Organization Development

Read more about “the story we tell ourselves we are” in The Power of Losing Control, offered as a free eBook for a limited time.

© Joe Caruso and Caruso Leadership, 2012