Work Place Success Part 41 - "Enhance Your Mental Fitness Do Something New Each and Every Day"

Whatever you do throughout your business day, every day, find new ways to learn new things, and continuously question your colleagues by asking "Is there a new and better way to do this?".

"The more new things you do, the more new experiences you will have and the wiser you will become"

I recently had the pleasure of reading some interesting research material with regards to the ageing process of the human mind, much to my surprise the antidote to this problem is renewal.

Renewal has a limited effect on the body though but can work wonders on your mind. Such is the power of renewal in fact, that it will even be reflected through the shine in a person's eyes. People with dull eyes never renew themselves. They, never seem to seek out new thoughts, attempt to do new things, or aspire to achieve greatness or their true potential, according to the research.

The people who are desired by most organisations are those who can think anew and do new things to improve the performance of their business. They are always exploring new options for replacing the less efficient and discredited modus operandi. It is a fact of life that whatever you do, and what is done by your company, that there is always a better way to do it. If you don't find that better way, then someone else will and you risk losing your job and your company going out of business.

I recently ceased the opportunity of acquiring some renewal, a fantastic training programme courtesy of LinkedIn Learning called: "Business Innovation Foundation - Systematic Innovative Thinking". It is without a doubt the most eye-opening 3 hours of content that I have personally encountered in a long time and I would highly recommend that you acquire this programme too (Course Preview Link).

The presenter is a fantastic instructor by the name of Drew Boyd. The methodology delivered here is a systematic approach to thinking differently by challenging the norm and conventional, it enables you to better and improve, any new idea, process, product or solution which, will certainly help you to get ahead in the game by generating new thoughts and solutions to what others see as unsolvable or unfathomable problems. It is a template for success, and like all successful people throughout the world, the method they adopted which they used consistently is what helped them to achieve greatness. Agatha Christie, The Beetles, Tony Robbins, Andy Harrington, Lewis Howes, Bob Proctor, Bill Gates, Sir Richard Branson they all have a system or template to achieve success and you can too.

Doing new things, being innovative and creative, brings a vitality, a freshness, motivation and the possibility of improvement - whilst carrying out old things merely reinforces mundane routines, dullness and no possibility of innovation.

The challenge, is therefore, that of developing new thought processes and patterns of thinking that replace those that you have today. We must prevent our minds from adopting its mundane thought processes and instead develop new chains of thought(s), develop new and better ways to think. Repetitive mundane thinking is dangerous as it can lead to a non-thinking, subconscious approach to your work reinforcing a detrimental mindset, which can prove toxic to you and your role in your business. Instead, you should perhaps think of new ways to communicate with your colleagues rather than by the usual email, text messaging or instant messenger technologies which are at our fingertips each and every day.

Think too, of new ways of spending time with your colleague as well as your customers and suppliers. Here are some ideas that I have observed in business over the years which have been adopted by different clients.

1. For those of you who are Receptions and or EAs (Executive Assistance) I urge you to think of new ways of greeting visitors.
2. For any person running a business, challenge your teams to come up with new and innovative ideas that could help the business to grow each and every month. Reward the people who inspire these ideas with recognition and potentially financial reward.
3. Urge the people under your employ to learn something new each and every day from a work sector resource (Case Study, Whitepaper or Research Paper).
4. If you are a CEO or Executive with multiple offices, make the effort to visit each and every branch of your business over the course of a year, find out what's happening on the frontline, in order to acquire the inside scoop, so to speak. Get the intelligence you need to make an informed business decision first hand, rather than a diluted version as it comes to you through the ranks, if at all.
5. If you work in a large business, take the opportunity to sit at a table each week with a different group of people whom you do not know. Ask a few questions, listen, empathise, seek first to understand and then to be understood, learn.
6. For all employees in the business, when you travel to the office, reach out and make contact with one new person you don't know each and every day on your journey. Over the years I have met some amazing people who work at Cisco, Microsoft and GSK, to name but a few.
7. If you run meetings with regularity, try and find a new way to run a meeting each time you have one. If you are stuck for ideas, reach out to your network on LinkedIn.
8. If you work in a large open plan office, take a different route to your destination and take a moment to speak with one new person whenever you can, each time you walk through the office.
9. If at all possible seek out new financial rewards that motivate everyone, and remember to award your best performers

By keeping 'new' you increase the probability of some great new idea emerging that can revolutionise your company, whether it be a new product, a new design or a new way to distribute your goods to customers. You can also think of new ways of furthering your career.

In today's globally connected world, everything and anything is possible, albeit not everything new is obvious but by keeping your thinking fresh and new, you will begin to see things in different ways. This will give you ideas for innovation and improvement, you will see things that others do not see, joining the dots as it were which, in a moment of inspiration that will lead to something extraordinary, perhaps even magical.

Allow these creative new ideas to 'bubble through' to your consciousness when your mind is alive to new possibilities. This means talking with new people, doing new things and exposing yourself to new experiences. It was in this way that Starbucks (as we know it today) was founded by Howard Schultz. The same can be said of Amazon and Jeff Bezos, Virgin and Sir Richard Branson.

The rational thinking came latter, so let the new ideas 'bubble up first'.

In Conclusion (Practice Tips)

1. At every opportunity, meeting informally with your colleagues and have only one item on the agenda, "What can we do a new?"
2. Your mind, heart and instincts will always serve you well, trust them, follow them, express your feelings and keep sparking new ideas even if they go nowhere. Write them down and expand on them over time as you acquire more knowledge.
3. Challenge yourself and your colleagues to learn something new each and every day
4. Examine, new things that have revolutionised the world (E.g. Google, the iPod, iPhone, Wireless tech) and find out where these ideas came from, what spawned their genesis.
5. Acquire the video on Systematic Innovative Thinking, if nothing else, it will enable you to think very different to those around you and see the world and insurmountable problems, in a new light with a thinking approach like no other that you can use time and time again.
6. Finally and most importantly, just because an idea may not come to fruition, never quit, never give up on it. If you want something bad enough you will make it happen and or inspire others who can help you to make it happen. Once that groundswell, that movement is created keep the momentum going, keep moving forward.

To Your Growth Success and Contribution