There is usually one person in a team who plays out the least attractive emotions or voices the most annoying point of view. When teams are given opportunity to reflect on the voice, often they find that the annoying emotions, ideas and challenges reflect their own misgivings about proposals being discussed. Wilfred Bion showed that this person has been unconsciously positioned by the rest of the team to play this role. When people work as a group they display roles and actions resulting from deeper, unconscious frameworks. Bion highlighted this effect in his work with teams when he described the two different groups acting within any group of people working together:

• The work group operates in a rational way to complete the task the group has formed to accomplish.
• The basic assumption group plays out the underlying assumptions to present a particular group behaviour.

There are models we can use to make these hidden structures explicit. One such structure, from David Kantor, presented in The Fifth Discipline Field Book identifies four roles people assume in any conversation.

• Mover: who posits a point of view or suggests an action.
• Opposer: who challenges the suggestion of the Mover.
• Supporter: the mover and opposer will each have a small group of supporters to their view.
• Bystander: who silently observe the interchange and develop perceptions that may be shared in the breaks.

Each of these roles is essential. Not everyone can contribute vocally to each topic. Bystanders often feel the name is accusatory. But the silent people in a conversation, if they are fully present and giving attention, provide the fabric on which conversation and insights are embroidered.

Once you have identified the roles people play keep the information with you and confirm your perceptions. Then reflect on the roles you have identified and how effective they are and how flexible the team is in these roles.

The way of pure logic is not all that effective, sorry dude!  Photo from the Star Trek website

Emotions are a reality we dare not ignore in negotiation. Emotions can hinder or aid your progress in dealing with people.
Emotions raise obstacles to negotiation when they:

• Divert attention from the matters at hand. When parties get upset.
• Damage relationships when frustration and anger are given rein to cause hurt and embarrassment.
• Cause you to react in noticeable ways, allowing other parties to exploit you.

Emotions can also be a great asset in negotiation. Positive emotions:

• Enhance relationships, creating intrinsic enjoyment from the interpersonal interaction. We can enjoy the experience of negotiation, the camaraderie, without fear of personal attack. We can also challenge points on which we disagree, raising the conflict, knowing that our relationship can handle it.
• Reduce fear and suspicion, making us open to new and challenging ideas. Adversaries become colleagues.
• Motivate us to get more done, more efficiently.

Positive emotions can also lull us into overconfidence and making unwise concessions.  Therefore preparatory work is required to set up the bounds of a negotiation and to develop an understanding of your own and the other party’s positions and Best Alternative to a Negotiated Agreement (BATNA).

Here are three approaches to the emotional component of a negotiation don’t work:

• Pretending you can stop your emotions. Your emotions will surface in a negotiation. Unchecked, they will affect the negotiation, usually to a greater extent than you planned.
• Ignoring your emotions. Emotions are always there and they affect us to a larger or greater extent. Our emotions affect our body, our thinking and our behaviour. Thinking lags behind strong emotions and we can find ourselves saying or doing things we later regret. Steeped in negative emotions we are more likely to miss concessions being made by your counterpart in a negotiation.
• Managing emotions directly. We can learn skills to deal with our anger and our fear for instance. However working with every emotion as it comes up in a negotiation will keep us busy and will take our attention away from the content in the discourse.

What can we do about this business of emotions?  Well there are five generic concerns that parties bring to every negotiation. Addressing these five concerns creates a framework of understanding within that deals with most if not all of the emotions that can derail a negotiation.
There is overlap between these five considerations and each one provides a perspective on how well a negotiation is proceeding. When each of these core concerns is met appropriately we can know that we are being treated:

• Equitably: as others would be treated in a similar circumstance.
• Honesty: That we are being told the truth.
• Consistently: that our treatment is in-line with changing situations.

The five core concerns are:

• Appreciation: Our thoughts, feelings and actions are acknowledged as having merit.
• Affiliation: We are treated as a colleague – not an adversary
• Autonomy: Our freedom to decide on important matters is respected by others.
• Status: Our standing is given full recognition, where it is deserved.
• Role: We find our activities fulfilling and our role describes what we do.

As I warmed up on a step machine I read an article on the research into what makes people happy. A busy field of research. Papers are published in Science and people earn Nobel prizes for their research into the question of happiness.  Many disciplines are engaged:

• Psychologists want to understand what people feel.
• Economists what to know what people value.
• Neuroscientists seek to understand how our brains respond to rewards.

Why is happiness so important?

Well for a start happy people are more creative and more productive.  Everyone knows that you need to keep an edge of fear in your dealings with staff to get them to produce. And ‘everyone’ is wrong.  There are obvious exceptions. Just as we all know a guy who smoked two packs a day from when he was 15 and lived till 90, so people point to Beethoven, Vincent van Gogh and Hemmingway as proof that miserable people are more creative.  But the research shows the opposite.  Contented people are more creative and more productive.  Just to be clear, contented does not mean bored. Working through a challenge builds contentment.

Then what makes us happy?  What is the secret?

The research shows few surprises. People who are healthy, who live in community and are wealthy are more happy. Over a century of research has shown unequivocally that reward works better than punishment. People rise to a challenge but are squashed by threats. Staff are happier and more productive when they:

• Are treated fairly.
• Are recognised for success in significant and challenging work.
• Have warm, interesting and cooperative relationships in the work-place.

Perhaps an unexpected finding is that frequency is a better predictor of happiness than intensity.  A single big event will not create longer lasting happiness. And similar big events have less impact the more we experience them. Small boys’ response to regular ice-cream quickly goes from excitement to entitlement.  The research also pointed to our remarkable ability to cope and find happiness or joy in the face of set-backs and disappointments, even in the most dire circumstances.

It is possible to engage in a programme of events to lift your spirits.  Just as we know that losing weight requires us to eat less and exercise more, so being happy requires a series of many small positive events over time.  And this takes time to take effect. So eating num-nums from the hedge at a client site, kissing your wife or stealing a roast potato are more likely to create a lasting happiness. Chatting with friends behind the break may be more uplifting than one ‘wave of the day’!  Regular quiet reflection, exercise, enough sleep all contribute to happiness. Nurturing social connections, telling people why you are grateful to them. Nothing surprising in that. Altruism, helping others is particularly potent. The secret is not a secret!

At the end of my gym session I was in the change room and there was an older guy changing at the opposite end of the bench. Another old guy came in and greeted him in a most energetic and welcoming way. He laughed and pointed to his friend’s pinkish tee-shirt and began to tease him. “Maar ek sien jy dra jou ma se vrokkie… Ek sien in ons ou-dae word ons sag… Ek is ten minster oplettend, ek sien jy loop van die spore af”  He laughed. (“I see you are wearing your wife’s blouse. In our old age we are getting soft.  At least I can see that you are going off the rails.”).  All this time his mate kept a poker face and just said “Jy’s ****** lelik”. (“You are ******* mean).

Later I saw them with other friends in their work attire having coffee. “Well” I thought “there’s a more happy start to the day.

“We wanted to make something that reflected the life we were living, that had some of the joy of family and the headiness of late nights and bright lights.
But Joy is a very hard thing to conjure, and happiness won’t do.” –  Bono

Take up the reins in your life

Please allow me just a little conjecture. The man with a fancy hairdo, leading the horse proudly gestures towards something, perhaps their destination. His less distinct companion (who doesn’t even have legs) sits on the horse. I suppose this left me wondering what was being portrayed and whether the rider was a willing participant in what was going to happen next. Perhaps the picture has been created by the companion to honour the brave, successful, virile man. Who knows? I found the photo as I was looking for different views of people on horses to illustrate the idea of what happens when you take the reins in your own hands to choose your own path.

The  photo was taken by Randy Langstraat and displayed on his Rock Art Photo Blog.  I have asked for his permission to use this and will take it off if it is a problem.

It is possible to make a complete hash of life. There is every possibility that without intent, perseverance and courage you may reach the end of your life with nothing but empty dreams. If you have not been managing your life well you may be aware of important and painful ways in which your life is short of what it should be. Poor life strategies can lead to ongoing set-backs and disappointments that can eventually break your spirit. Or they can end in a single powerful blow from which you don’t recover. Perhaps things you value have been taken away. Perhaps you have lost someone who is important to you. More insidiously, you may not be creating those things which only you, with your unique gifts, can bring into being. Success is not a forgone conclusion. There is work to be done. There are framework decisions to be made. If you are not working a well defined plan, you will be a stepping stone for those who are.

If your life was a business. And you employed a manager to keep it successful.   How earnestly would you contract and manage this person?  Just as you are your own scientist, you are also your own life-manager, monitoring, measuring and controlling and making decisions about how to play the next event.

As manager of your life, how important do you believe your client to be? How well are you doing at this job? Are you ensuring that adequate deposits are being made in the physical, mental, emotional and spiritual accounts of your key client?

Engage your life manager. Now is the time to start. Dump whatever is eating away at your time. Just stop doing it! Resolve to leave it alone. Now is the time to demand more of yourself. Focus on your purpose. Get stuck into your life work. Pick up the next task towards implementing your plan. Start grappling with the details to achieve what you have to do. Wrestle with the work. Resolve not to be turned aside by distractions. Deliver the goods.

Some commitments

A good life manager may require commitments from their client and ACTION!  Some suggestions  have been documented in the blog posting.

How do you measure up?

If people around you cannot observe the difference, you are falling short. Where does your behaviour fall below the bar or excellence? Where do you need to apply some resilience? Do it today. Do it to make yourself a better person.

You can read the full article here.

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Technique

Team Launch

In 1924 Wernher von Braun strapped six rockets to a small wagon and watched in delight as the wagon roared around his street and then exploded.  The local constabulary were less impressed however, and took the twelve year old boy into custody.  And so began an incredible story leading up to July 16, 1969.  On that day the Saturn V rocket designed by von Braun launched Apollo 11 from Launch Pad 39A to begin the historic mission that would land the first men on the moon.

Wernher von Braun, from the NASA website.

The launch of a space mission must be a hard-to-beat experience.  The launch is the pivot around which a space mission unfolds.  It is the moment of truth where the design, planning and preparation come together.  And it is the start of the chain of events that make up the mission, until the crew is safely back on Earth.  Here is a photo from Wikipedia of the Space Shuttle Columbia being launched.  (This was just more exciting than any of the Saturn V photos I could find).

And so it is with teams. In setting up teams, leaders have two important responsibilities: first to design and prepare the best possible team structure, and second, to help members take possession of the structure, and competently launch themselves onto a course they make their own.
The design and preparation phase should deliver a structure, including:

• Team design.
• Team boundaries.
• A team task.
• Roles and responsibilities.
• Agreed norms.
• Agreed processes and infrastructure.

In the second phase, the leader of the team breathes life into the structure during a team launch session.  The first meeting of any team provides a unique opportunity for a leader to have an enduring impact on the way the team works together.  A well executed interaction builds motivation and allows the team to invest themselves in the work to be done.

Project initiation workshops provide the most effective structure for launching teams.  There is a slot at the beginning of each workshop where the leader can deliver a motivating address.

There is an alchemy in launching teams.  A list of names goes out on e-mail and a group gathers.  If the launch is successful, the group becomes a real, bounded social system; a team.

You can read the article here.

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A small adventure

A good start to the year

There is something about finishing well and making a good start. We saw the new year in down at the beach in Betties Bay. Apart from this, the last thing I did in 2011 was to sit on the roof of my bakkie and paint the view at Bass Lake. And the next day I sat on the tailgate, protected from the wind and painted the same scene.

And what is more, I photographed the painting and posted it on my watercolour blog using my android phone which was another early milestone in the year.

You can read the blog posting here.

BY STEPHEN QUIRKE, ON JANUARY 31 2012

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At StrategyWorks we assist leaders and their teams, with those crucial conversations for clarity, decisions, action and outcomes.  These conversations can be frustrating when people are not heard, the team cannot make decisions or the way forward remains vague.  Leaders contact us at StrategyWorks when they are ready to do something different.  In the process those involved in the conversations feel understood and challenged.  At the end of the intervention, the leaders and their teams feel focused and released around a clear plan of action.

Find out more from our website at:www.strategyworks.co.za or better still contact us at the email address: stephen@strategyworks.co.za to arrange a meeting with Stephen.

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© 2012 Stephen Quirke, All rights reserved.  You are free to use material from this Conversaction newsletter in whole or in part, as long as you include complete attribution, including live web site link. Please also notify me where the material will appear.  The attribution should read:  ”By Stephen Quirke of StrategyWorks.  Please visit Stephen’s web site at http://www.strategyworks.co.za/ for more resources on how to hold effective conversations in your organisation.” (Please make sure the link is live if placed in an eZine or in a web site.)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The illustration is one of the many Ute petroglyphs found along the road in Nine Mile Canyon. This historic scene features a rider on a horse being led somewhere by someone with a rope. This photo was taken by Randy Langstraat and displayed on his Rock Art Photo Blog.  I have asked for his permission to use this and will take it off if it is a problem.

It is possible to make a complete hash of life. There is every possibility that without intent, perseverance and courage you may reach the end of your life with nothing but empty dreams. If you have not been managing your life well you may be aware of important and painful ways in which your life is short of what it should be. Poor life strategies can lead to ongoing set-backs and disappointments that can eventually break your spirit. Or they can end in a single powerful blow from which you don’t recover. Perhaps things you value have been taken away. Perhaps you have lost someone who is important to you. More insidiously, you may not be creating those things which only you, with your unique gifts, can bring into being. Success is not a forgone conclusion. There is work to be done. There are framework decisions to be made. If you are not working a well defined plan, you will be a stepping stone for those who are.

Say you owned a business. Imagine you had put your whole life savings into this business. In addition to this, you work day and night for the business. Let’s say you have everything riding on the success of the business. All or nothing! Now let’s say you had one person managing this business for you. How earnestly would you contract and manage this person? Now isn’t this a good description of your life? Just as you are your own scientist, you are also your own life-manager, monitoring, measuring and controlling and making decisions about how to play the next event.

As manager of your life, how important do you believe your client to be? How well are you doing at this job? Are you ensuring that adequate deposits are being made in the physical, mental, emotional and spiritual accounts of your key client?

Life slips past, not a year at a time, not a month at a time, not even a week or a day at a time. These are all good splits to stop and review how we are doing. But life slips by one decision, one action, one transaction at a time. In each moment as we decide to dawdle instead of pushing on, we lose another opportunity and another period of time in which we could be growing. That distraction that we choose for the next five minutes becomes two hours and then a day. The work you could have done this morning is postponed till tomorrow.

Engage your life manager. Now is the time to start. Dump whatever is eating away at your time. Just stop doing it! Resolve to leave it alone. Now is the time to demand more of yourself. Focus on your purpose. Get stuck into your life work. Pick up the next task towards implementing your plan. Start grappling with the details to achieve what you have to do. Wrestle with the work. Resolve not to be turned aside by distractions. Deliver the goods.

Some commitments

A good life manager may require the following commitments of their client:

1. Create a programme in which you reflect on the laws governing life.
2. Commit yourself to resolve rather than endure your personal problems.
3. Decide to deal with your unresolved fears.
4. Refuse to live with unfinished emotional business.
5. Honour your agreements, whether with yourself or others.
6. Decide to focus. Decide to resist distraction. Give yourself small goals to develop the work ethic of consistency and delivery.

Some actions

And here are some actions you can carry out in support of your life manager:

1. Compile your vision, strategy and plan.
2. Implement your plan.
3. Deal with your flaws, problems and challenges. (Yes – everyone has them. Everyone!)
4. Stretch yourself. Find someone to whom you can be accountable for your growth. Y
5. Up your game. It may be time for you to work harder. To work smarter too.

How do you measure up?

If people around you cannot observe the difference, you are falling short. Where does your behaviour fall below the bar or excellence? Where do you need to apply some resilience? Do it today. Do it to make yourself a better person.

The launch of a space mission must be a hard-to-beat experience.  The launch is the pivot around which a space mission unfolds.  It is the moment of truth where the design, planning and preparation come together.  And it is the start of the chain of events that make up the mission, until the crew is safely back on Earth.  Here is a photo from Wikipedia of the Space Shuttle Columbia being launched.  (This was just more exciting than any of the Saturn V photos I could find).

And so it is with teams. In setting up teams, leaders have two important responsibilities: first to design and prepare the best possible team structure, and second, to help members take possession of the structure, and competently launch themselves onto a course they make their own.
The design and preparation phase should deliver a structure, including:

• A carefully designed team, with the right size, mix, skills and experience.
• A clear message about who is in the team and who is not, as well as the limits of the team authority, what is up for discussion and what is not.
• A team task, defined to foster internal motivation.
• Clearly defined roles and responsibilities.
• A set of agreed norms for team behaviour.
• Agreed processes and infrastructure.

In the second phase, the leader of the team breathes life into the structure during a team launch session.  The first meeting of any team provides a unique opportunity for a leader to have an enduring impact on the way the team works together.  A well executed interaction builds motivation and allows the team to invest themselves in the work to be done.  As leader you may wish to cover the following points, inviting input from the team:

• Clarification and discussion on the structure of the team as described under the design and preparation phase above.
• Affirmation of the positive features and resources in the team.
• A statement of the compelling direction for the team.
• Discussion on the unique circumstances surrounding the work to be completed.

Project initiation workshops provide the most effective structure for launching teams.  There is a slot at the beginning of each workshop where the leader can deliver a motivating address.

There is an alchemy in launching teams.  A list of names goes out on e-mail and a group gathers.  If the launch is successful, the group becomes a real, bounded social system; a team.  The task assigned to the team is examined, assessed and redefined to become the slightly different task that members actually work on.  The norms of conduct specified by those who created the team are tried out, explicitly or implicitly, gradually revised, and made the teams’ own.

What will probably not have happened is a discussion about alternative ways of working together to accomplish a task, to agree the best way to proceed. Research shows that this is not natural for teams in the launch phase. Members of teams need to log some experience with a task, and each other before they are able to have a useful discussion on how best to go about the work.

Perception is different from reality
Perception is reality

Who drives the better car?  The other day I saw some reading an article comparing the 4×4 performance of Landrover and Landcruiser.   He finished the article, nodded knowingly and handed it to his mate.   When he had finished he said “Well that is conclusive then, Landcruiser is a better 4×4 than Landrover”.   The first guy’s eyebrows shot up.  “No way” he says, “the article proves that Landrover is the best”.

Just another example of how we see what we want to see.

We see the world through filters.   From the start of our lives we have been developing constructs, or templates into which we try fit reality.   Our reticular activating system filters out any out-of-paradigm the information brought in by our senses to make sure we only become aware of what we already believe is true.   We then use these filters, to predict how situations will unfold.  We have literally learned how to see the world.

To manage our lives and to live effectively we need to understand these filters and how they affect what we perceive.

We are accountable for our lives.  We are therefore accountable for the filters we allow to operate.  If you can acknowledge your history, put aside your excuses and identify the filters through which you view the world, you can empower yourself to step beyond your current reality.

So what are these filters?  How can we go about recognising them?  Because these filters are so over-learnt we are usually no longer are aware of them.  This requires a reflective journey, keeping a log of the ebb and flow of thoughts and emotions in our day.  Set yourself up as researcher into your own life; your personal scientist. Instead of allowing life to wash over you and under the bridge, capture your thoughts. Write them down.

Our filters are most distorted when we view ourselves.  We are our own worst critics, easily glossing over our real faults, elevating our imagined ones to monster status and failing to see our special gifts.  So what faulty assumptions are you making that you have not tested?  What are your fixed beliefs?  What labels have you taken on for yourself?

You can read the full article here.

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Technique – Resilience

I love the innovation and persistence illustrated in the story of Soichiro Honda.   As a young mechanic he had a dream of developing piston rings for Toyota.   He worked long hours, sometimes sleeping in his workshop.   But his designs were repeatedly turned down by Toyota and ridiculed by other engineers.   He pawned his wife’s jewellery for collateral to go back to school.  Finally after two years he won a contract with Toyota.   With materials in short supply he developed his own concrete making process and built a factory to construct pistons.   The factory was bombed.  Twice!  Each time Honda picked up and continued.   When steel became unavailable he collected the fuel tanks jettisoned by US fighter planes.  The factory was finally destroyed in an earthquake.

Setbacks sometimes come as a surprise.  But they shouldn’t.  Anything worth doing will raise challenges.  In his ‘Last Lecture’, Randy Pausch said that obstacles are not there to keep you out, they are there to test how badly you want something.  How will we deal with those disheartening obstacles, pitfalls and setbacks?  How can we keep going?  Well, we need resilience.  A dogged inclination to persist under adversity.  Every time, in that moment between a stimulus and response, the resilient person says “one more time…”, gets up and tries again.  Resilience includes flexibility, strength, confidence and our capacity to create.  Resilience is the key differentiator between those who flounder and give up, and those who flourish under adversity.  Here are four approaches you can consciously use to develop your resilience:

• Control your response
• Manage the scope and reach of the adversity
• Own your situation
• Endure

“Success is 99% failure” – Soichiro Honda

You can read the article here.

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A small adventure – Betty’s Bay asleep

The small adventure comes this month has to do with a stretch in technique and medium.  Many watercolourists seem to work quite comfortably with darks.  However I have found my paintings tend to mudiness when I try.  This is a situation that has to be addressed.  Therefore I painted this early morning view of Bass Lake.

This painted in watercolour on 300gm Arches Rough and is approximately 500x760mm.

You can read the blog posting here.

BY STEPHEN QUIRKE, ON DECEMBER 29, 2011

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

At StrategyWorks we assist leaders and their teams, with those crucial conversations for clarity, decisions, action and outcomes.  These conversations can be frustrating when people are not heard, the team cannot make decisions or the way forward remains vague.  Leaders contact us at StrategyWorks when they are ready to do something different.  In the process those involved in the conversations feel understood and challenged.  At the end of the intervention, the leaders and their teams feel focused and released around a clear plan of action.

Find out more from our website at:www.strategyworks.co.za or better still contact us at the email address: stephen@strategyworks.co.za to arrange a meeting with Stephen.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

© 2011 Stephen Quirke, All rights reserved.  You are free to use material from this Conversaction newsletter in whole or in part, as long as you include complete attribution, including live web site link. Please also notify me where the material will appear.  The attribution should read:  ”By Stephen Quirke of StrategyWorks.  Please visit Stephen’s web site at http://www.strategyworks.co.za/ for more resources on how to hold effective conversations in your organisation.” (Please make sure the link is live if placed in an eZine or in a web site.)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Just another example of how we see what we want to see.

We see the world through filters.   From the start of our lives we have been developing constructs, or templates into which we try fit reality.   Our reticular activating system filters out any out-of-paradigm the information brought in by our senses to make sure we only become aware of what we already believe is true.   We then use these filters, to predict how situations will unfold.  We have literally learned how to see the world.

To manage our lives and to live effectively we need to understand these filters and how they affect what we perceive.

We are accountable for our lives.  We are therefore accountable for the filters we allow to operate.  If you can acknowledge your history, put aside your excuses and identify the filters through which you view the world, you can empower yourself to step beyond your current reality.

This may not be a trivial task.  Past traumas may deeply affect the way you see the world.  You may have suffered unspeakable tragedy.  This note is not in the slightest way intended to minimise your experience or the impact this has had on you.  However, you have a choice about how you wish to deal with the effects of that situation as it affects your life right now.

So what are these filters?  How can we go about recognising them?  Because these filters are so over-learnt we are usually no longer are aware of them.  This requires a reflective journey, keeping a log of the ebb and flow of thoughts and emotions in our day.  Set yourself up as researcher into your own life; your personal scientist. Instead of allowing life to wash over you and under the bridge, capture your thoughts. Write them down. Here are some questions you can ask yourself:

• What is my pet criticism of people?
• Do I have a chip on my shoulder?
• Am I naïve and blindly trusting.
• Do I seek to honour arbitrary people at overwhelming cost to myself?
• Am I over-controlling and hyper-cautious in any new meeting with people?
• Do I fall apart at the first sign of stress?
• Am I able to size up a situation and see the people around me and what they their agenda could be?
• Is each crisis I face just one more disaster, confirming my ineptitude. Or is it “an opportunity to shine?

Our filters are most distorted when we view ourselves.  We are our own worst critics, easily glossing over our real faults, elevating our imagined ones to monster status and failing to see our special gifts.  So what faulty assumptions are you making that you have not tested?  What are your fixed beliefs?  What labels have you taken on for yourself?  Are you telling yourself any of the following:

• I never come out on top.
• The competition are going to beat me anyway.
• If things are going well, they are just preparing for a failure soon.
• I will never be able to change anything. I am stuck with my lot.
• I cannot influence what is happening around me.

Are you your own personal scientist?