FIVE LAYERS OF THE HUMAN MIND

?Why are some people more successful than others?

Have you ever wondered why, in a group of employees given the same goals, mission, training, tools, environment and opportunity, only a small number of the group will inevitably succeed and even exceed expectations, while most cannot be as successful, despite their best efforts? It seems to happen everywhere, regardless of what type of business you’re in. 

Having led many different groups of people over the years in various situations, I have learned that what’s necessary to succeed and excel goes far beyond just basic skills and capabilities. The real key to personal success is how intentionally you have developed the complex set of characteristics and skills known as the FIVE LAYERS OF THE HUMAN MIND.  These control how your mind functions, processes information, and makes decisions. The ’layers’ include everything from your self-awareness and how you perceive yourself to your interaction with others, and your basic task--oriented job skills. The more you develop proficiencies in each layer, the more you increase your chances for success.

FIVE LAYERS OF THE HUMAN MIND: 

1.    Self-awareness:  The Foundation of everything is self-awareness. It’s all about how much you know about yourself.

What we believe about ourselves, (our self-esteem) is what drives our feelings about ourselves. Those feelings then drive our behavior, action and habits. Self-awareness is about our self-belief, self-acceptance, self-confidence, and self-respect. If that is not in place, our foundation becomes shaky, which can get in the way of our ability to succeed. Therefore, it’s important to expand any self-limiting beliefs we have about ourselves.

2.    Mental Cognition: This revolves around your critical thinking abilities, like problem-solving, intuition, judgment, out of the box thinking, and creativity. How much time do most people really spend developing these skills? Not enough. These are critical skills, and it’s important to take the time and make the effort to develop them further. If you want to excel, you need to be able to innovate and make decisions. Just knowing the process of how to do things is not enough. Sam Ovens, has a great video around "Mental Cognition" that can be found on his YouTube chanel.

3.    Business Core Values: This is your belief about how you perceive your business, job, and career. This belief guides the ethics and principles of how you do business and also determines how others will ultimately see you in the workplace. 

4.    Business Competencies: These are your skillsets, which play a big factor in your success. In our business, like sales, these involve things like marketing, sales, public speaking, and other ‘process oriented’ skills, like writing, computer literacy, etc. Combined with your experience, these skills come together and kick in when you need them most to increase your competency. Often the more of these you have, the more you stand out from your competition and the more competent you are.

5.    Business Processes: This is the ‘how to’ of your business applications. Think of these as the daily skills and techniques you use for accomplishing tasks, such as sales process, different steps of marketing, etc. This is the methodical expertise necessary to do a particular job in a specific way.

The power of the combination of these traits and skills cannot be ignored. Those who have the full package of characteristics stand out. Together, these abilities are what differentiates people in the workplace, driving them to success. But while some of these aptitudes may be innate, most can and should be developed. You must be willing to dig deep and accept that we all have blind spots and areas where we have to improve. 

By being intentional about personal growth and working on your self-awareness, you can expand your self-limiting beliefs, improve yourself and increase your confidence.  People who work on themselves daily see results in the real world and those results multiply in impact. Every hour you spend working on yourself equates to hours of hard work that pays off. 

Stay consistent with your growth plan in 2020. Do the hard work, develop your own package of skills, and you too will stand out in the crowd of those who are super successful!

“Whatever we plant in our subconscious mind and nourish with repetition and emotion will one day become a reality.” -Earl Nightingale