Becoming The Boss Of Me

Over the coming weeks I will be sharing excerpts from my new book The Inner CEO. This week is a section from the introduction. More details at www.theinnerceo.com

One day I woke up and my plan was to end my life. That was the day I discovered something very significant:

I wasn’t the boss of me.

On the outside it looked like I was. But inside? Not even close. The truth was that my mind was the boss. At the time, however, I saw no distinction between my mind and me. Truth be told, I didn’t really know I had a mind, and I certainly didn’t see any distinction between my thoughts and me — the real me.

Bottom line? I was under the control of my mind; whatever it said, I believed. No-one had ever told me not to trust it, and I guess when one day it said I should end my life, I just believed that was what I should do.

Obviously, something got in the way of that instruction, and fortunately for me, I’ve since come to understand how to harness the incredible power of my inner world and to help others do the same.

I’ve used these insights to create a career and life that I love. Over the last twenty years I’ve worked with many leading entrepreneurs, CEOs, community leaders, artists, TV and sports stars, celebrities and ambitious executives in some of the biggest companies in the world. In very simple terms, my role has been to be their partner in success.

I’m not saying any of this to brag, but to give you the confidence to believe and be open to what’s contained in this book. I’m not an academic even though I’m very interested in the research they do.

And I’m not a psychologist either, even though I’m obsessed with psychology and how it impacts us.

What I am is a practitioner.

My job is to help people make meaningful, lasting changes in the real world. Often, however, what sounds like a fascinating theory doesn’t work in real life.

I take a different approach. I get into the trenches with my clients to help them figure out what does work so they can raise their levels of clarity, performance and enjoyment of both what they do and the lives they lead.

Most people I know are living at a level that is something less than they deserve. I’ve seen firsthand that most of us can do better.

At the heart of my approach is an inner philosophy that is based less on knowledge or acquiring more information than on unlearning untruths about who we are and how life really works.

What I’ve discovered is that filling people’s minds with more data is much less important than helping them to awaken to their own wisdom — wisdom that, as this book will show, is innate within all of us.

My intention with this book is to share some insights with you that I hope will help you not only to see the world differently but to interact with it in a better way — a way that works for you and those around you.

With that in mind I invite you to read it not just to get ‘more information’. If information was the answer, we’d all be millionaires, deliriously happy and have friction-free relationships.

Instead, I suggest you pause regularly as you read, and take time to reflect. Reflect on what strikes a chord and on the questions I ask at the end of each chapter, and then write down what occurs to you as you go along.

As I mentioned above, I am obsessed with psychology — about how our minds work, and how we can shape our thoughts and, ultimately, our behaviour.

This has led to me researching and studying many areas. Here are just some of them: NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming), performance and achievement psychology, Learned Optimism, Psycho-Cybernetics, High Performance, Resilience, Mindfulness, Meditation, Hypnotherapy, CBT, Counselling, Neuroscience, Neurobiology, Creativity, Leadership,

Yoga, Qi-Jong, Martial Arts, Fitness, Nutrition, Drama, Improvisation and even Quantum Physics! (in my defence, one person’s obsessiveness is another person’s curiosity...)

But what I came to discover was that while each of these areas offers useful insights and learning, they were also limiting. For example, I knew many people who were experts in NLP and achievement psychology but weren’t particularly happy (indeed, some people who are famous in their fields can be very unpleasant).

Eventually I reached a point several years ago where I was frus- trated by some of the results both in my own life and in my clients’. So I started to dig deeper. Soon I came to realise that the problem was that I was limited in my own understanding of our inner world — the one we each carry around in our heads every day.

By taking a different path and exploring new avenues, I soon discovered a significant blind spot in the conventional approach to getting the best from yourself and others. To put it simply: What’s going on inside your head is the single most important factor deter- mining what happens outside of you. Nothing else comes close.

I’ve also come to believe firmly that as humans, we are built for success, wellbeing and happiness, regardless of our backgrounds or circumstances. Yes, this is a very bold claim, but it’s one that I will back up throughout this book.

What’s the number one block to us understanding this?

A lack of understanding of how our inner worlds work.

What Lies Within

From an early age I was fascinated by what makes people do what they do. I used to wonder: where do the thoughts we have come from? So I used to imagine there were tiny, human-like beings who lived inside our heads, running our minds and lives. I call them The Innies. Little did I realise that years later they’d become the perfect metaphor for just how little control most of us have over our inner domains.

Just imagine these beings beavering away in your inner world without your knowledge, controlling areas such as memory, analysis, experience, beliefs, opinions, contemplation, intuition and so on. Some days they get things right, on other days things go wrong.

Without conscious leadership from you, The Innies end up putting one of their own in charge. I call him Smarts, the head of Team Intellect, and they’re the most clever Innie. Smarts has their work cut out, however, because the other Innies are difficult to manage and often do their own thing regardless.

In my metaphor, Smarts is in charge of many of the day-to-day oper- ations. Unknowingly, you are under their control — a hostage to your own mind. But here’s the thing: Smarts is not supposed to have ultimate responsibility or control. That role is designated for one person only: The Inner CEO.

And for a clue as to who that is, just look in the mirror.

The truth is that without even realising it, most people, even the successful and smart ones, are being led by their mind, that is, Smarts & Co. As a result, they’re not really leading, living or enjoying life the way that they should be. I’d forgive you for being skeptical; I know I was. And while there’s a chance I might be wrong on this, what if I’m right?

A Surprising Realisation

My clients (who are all smart, ambitious people) tell me that one of the most surprising things I say to them when we first meet is this:

You are not your mind. You have a mind.

It’s been over 25 years since I discovered that your mind is a tool. Yes, it’s an amazing tool, one that allows us to create and experience

all that the world has to offer. But your mind is not you. Just like any tool, it can be very useful if used in the right way. If you don’t understand it and how best to use it, however, it can also limit your success and happiness. You become just like the fictional human whose mind is run by The Innies: a dictatorship.

This lack of understanding is the reason why you can enjoy great success in one area of your life yet create the opposite in others. As a result, there really is only one problem in your life:

Your mind is running the show, not you. You are not really the boss of you.

It’s likely that you’re reading this thinking “Well that’s not me. I am running the show.” And for sure, there will be areas where you are more the boss than the employee, as it were.

Consider this, though. Like all of us, you have judgements, beliefs and opinions about others, yourself and the world. Unconsciously, these have a massive bearing on the quality of your life and on your ability to live and to thrive. How you are inside — what you feel and think about yourself — affects your levels of stress, anxiety, insecurity and self-doubt. It also impacts your levels of clarity, focus, creativity, communication and confidence.

Let’s imagine someone has cut you off while you’re driving, or sent you an email you don’t like. Are you able to stay completely calm and not react, mentally? Most people’s inner voice ‘goes off on one’. (That inner voice is not the real you, by the way, but we’ll come back to that later.)

The mind is truly incredible, but depending on how we use it, it can also be divisive and defensive. The good news is that there is an alter- native way — a better way — available to us.This way is more inclusive, collaborative, inspiring, innovative and, ultimately, much easier. It allows you and the people around you to thrive more consistently. It’s all to do with waking up a different part of ourselves so that we can gain a new understanding of our mind.

A Flaw In The Way We Think About Our Minds

Imagine that your mind is a room that you spend time in daily. Every now and then you get bored with the way it looks, so you decide to change the interiors. You paint the walls a new colour, buy new fur- niture and move things around.

In real life, this looks like seeking to change job or career, getting a promotion, trying to lose or gain weight, hoping to get married and so on. Thinking about and working on these changes makes you feel good — for a while.

The problem is that you are still in the same room and that by focusing on changing that, you fail to realise that outside of those four walls is a much bigger world to explore. This is what most infor- mation about the mind does; it keeps you stuck in your own small world. Yet bizarrely, the real opportunity lies outside those walls.

The conventional view is that we are what’s in our minds, which is why mental (re)programming has become so popular. Indeed, this is where I started in my recovery from depression. To be fair, I did see some big improvements, but I also came to see that this approach has major limitations.

The big mistake I made — and it’s one I see many others making now — is that I tried to control my mind completely. This simply doesn’t work. To get the most out of your mind, you have to learn when and how to nurture and lead it and when to let it off the leash.

This is crucial. Understanding how to lead and inspire your mind, and also when to let it go, is a much more productive and easier way to live. And I can tell you from my own experience and my clients’ that the possibilities it brings are incredibly exciting.

This is an excerpt from my new book The Inner CEO. I will share more over the coming weeks. More details at www.theinnerceo.com