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Now, another way to look at Beliefs is to look at an area of life where we are not taking the actions we would like to take, or feeling the way we’d like to feel in certain situations, and check in with ourselves and see what Belief might be holding us back.

For example, let’s say I didn’t like talking to Strangers, but I don’t know what the exact belief is holding me back. What I can do to find out the belief that is likely to be holding me back is to ask myself this question:

In order to feel like this or act like this in this situation what must I believe about myself, about others and the world in general?

You’ll be surprised how new ideas and thoughts can spring to mind when you ask better questions of yourself……too often we say “Why can’t I do this?” and answer ourselves in a way that is not very helpful….

So apply this method to anything you want to work on, or what would be even better is to notice over the next little while any bad emotions you get or feelings, or anything you hold back from doing and simply say to yourself:

“In order to feel like this or act like this in this situation what must I believe about myself, about others and the world in general?”

One of the things I’d really like you to do is become more aware of when fears come up or negative emotions, perhaps it’s even when you get annoyed if something is not going your way. Notice these times and ask yourself the above question.

Often we are all too familiar with our day to day emotions that although we feel them, we just accept them, they have always been there. If we take time to notice them and pay attention to them, and ask ourselves the above question, then we become more aware of how we work. Once you know how something works it is so much easier to improve it.

Mark Rhodes

It’s not about getting outside your comfort zone it’s about expanding it.

Some people say that they are happiest inside their comfort zone and therefore design their life and ambitions to not cause them to need to expand or get outside their comfort zones.

This is fine unless of course you hit a problem when you ask yourself this simple question:

“Is living inside my comfort zone giving me the results, the passion, the fun and the excitement I REALLY desire in life?”

If not you need to accept that for things to change, you need to change and part of that could well involve expanding your comfort zone. It’s natural, we all have comfort zones, they are just at different places. If you are not pushing your comfort zone you are not growing as a human being.

Think about what small thing could you do differently this week to what you would normally do, something that will just push your comfort zone a little, where you don’t risk a lot but look back with pride and say “I wouldn’t have done that before”

Perhaps its as simple as making a call when usually you’d send an email “because if felt easier”, maybe it is saying “Good Morning” to someone you pass in a store or see at a bus stop.

The outcome of any of these type of things doesn’t really matter, regardles of outcome you have made progress and expanded your comfort zone by doing something you wouldn’t normally do.

I usually expand my comfort zone by thinking how great it will be when the thing in question is done or over, or I give myself some reward, no matter how small, if I do that thing that feels uncomfortable.

Play with it, and have fun. When you feel that comfort zone feeling come in, get curious, ask yourself “What must I believe about me, the situation or others in order to feel like this?”

Then apply the questions and tasks in the free ebook available on the website.

So why are they so dangerous?

I’m sure there has been a time when you’ve done something amazing, or had something amazing happen, or perhaps learnt a real bit of juicy gossip, and on relaying this to a friend they say to you in amazement “Get out of here!” – You then smile and say “no honest it’s true” and the banter continues.

There may also have been a time when as a child you got involved in something you should not have and a parent or teacher said sternly “Get out of here!” – You probably didn’t smile, and quickly your emotional state changed to very negative.

Now in both situations the words “Get out of here” are the same but you reacted differently, the reason is that it’s not the words that define the meaning of the communication – it’s the tonality – how it is said.

So how do you get the tonality right in an email? – You can’t – there is only one tonality for an email – and guess what, as the sender it’s not yours.

The tonality that will be applied by the reader of the email will be their own tonality based on their emotional state at the time, their beliefs about themselves, and beliefs about the world around them and what you have written. You could be saying something in jest and they may get really hurt and think you are serious, because they are sensitive about this subject for some reason and applied a serious tonality to it.

My first suggestion is if you are replying to something you’ve had land in your Inbox that has wound you up then please save your email response as a draft, wait 15 minutes and go back and read it as if you’d received it – is this the best way to respond, in fact is it a response, perhaps it’s a reaction? A response is a considered piece of communication driven by logic and sensible thinking. A reaction is an emotional response driven off your own fears or emotional reactions.

Taking time to calm down and reconsider your approach is the best way to handle such situations, well third best really – first best is face to face, then phone, then this calm email method coming in as third best, but far better than an over passionate over reaction email response that usually happens.

Perhaps you are just composing an email and not responding to something that’s really emotional, still don’t just hit send, go back read it as if you had received it, read it again from a neutral perspective and how the receiver may read it. Is there anything that could be misunderstood? Your brain is running with what you want to say faster than you can type, so you know what it means when you read it again, so try and read it like someone would just receiving it, how can it be read incorrectly? What needs clarifying?

Make sure as much as you can that people getting your emails are getting the message you want them to get!

Oh and I wonder how many have noticed that most people can only answer one question per email, so if you put two or three questions in an email very often they only answer the first or last question and ignore the others and then you have that dilemma of going back and asking the same questions again without knowing if they missed them or ignored them on purpose……..

Mark Rhodes

Welcome to the Blog and main website of Mark Rhodes, Motivational Speaker and Trainer in Personal Development and Success in Business.

In addition to speaking for companies and organisations as a guest speaker, I also run live seminars, events and Online Seminars that are open to everyone. You can find out more about me as speaker for companies on my Motivational Speaker Page

There is also a collection of free material on the site and I run regular free online seminars in all aspects of Personal Development.

Anyway in the main my plan worked really well to keep the examples used in the talk to things that they would be interested in so things like relationships, dating, Nintendo DS and Playstations etc……even opened the talk telling them about when I spoke for Ann Summers earlier in the year.

Now the thing is it worked too well at times, because when speaking at schools there is a fine balance in speaking about things that interest them, but will not distract them into lots of whispers and giggling because of something that has been said.

They did brilliantly though, I must say, a real credit, at 16 or 17 if I’d been sent to sit in a hall for an hour and listen to someone talk about anything I’d have been thinking “What’s the point?”.

However I know some of them took the messages on board and hopefully over the coming days and weeks others will too as they encounter things in daily life that remind them of my talk.

As I said to them at the start, you’ve not got to learn anything from me, I’m not going to tell you things you need to learn, I am going to tell you what you need to forget and unlearn.

You see we are all born without limiting beliefs and comfort zone issues, and we all live in the moment in our early years, no fear of failure or what others may think. We learn bad ideas and bad habits, and bad ways of thinking from those around us.

That’s why I always say to my audiences that a 3 year old could do my job, and would be better at it than me! They live for the moment, in the moment and are curious about everything.

I really do wish someone had shared such messages with me at school in the 6th form, although I do wonder even if they had would I have noticed?

Mark Rhodes

I really wished I’d got exposed to this sort of information when I was at school. I wonder if times have changed because I am getting asked to speak in schools more and more, or was it that my school was one of the few that didn’t do this all those years ago?

Based on feedback from my audiences over the years saying “I wished we had got this 30 years ago at School”, I suspect most schools didn’t cover any aspects of mindset and personal development when I was younger.

Feel free to share your experiences.

Thank You

Mark Rhodes.

Thank you to all those that attended, details of the next one about recession success further down but first here are just a few of the comments that came in within hours of the seminar finishing:

“I really enjoyed your seminar. Thanks for inviting me, and thanks for offering it. We all need to know and remember it. You are a living proof that your methods work. It was value from start to finish.

It is phenomenal technology that I could sit in my home in South Africa in a very small village far away from everything, where it is unsafe to go out at night, and I could hear you clearly from the UK! Now we need some Webinar concerts!” R.S.

“Thanks for your inspiring and insightful talk on Thursday. I enjoyed it very much.” E.

“Mark is a kind, friendly, down to earth, highly trusthworthy person.
I listened to your seminar and I found it superb. All those treated concepts were known to me and with your explanations, I truly apprehended them. I enjoyed it heartily. I look forward for the next webseminar.” M.C.

“I only managed to catch the last 15 minutes of the Webinar. I was very upset that I missed most of it, but the little I saw had me totally glued to my screen.” P.H.

“I would like to thank you for a very thought provoking seminar last night. The thing that hit me the most was, whenever I want to do something I see it done, and then do it. But, other times it does not work and only when you said “willpower” did it make sense to me. The times I did not get whatever right was when I was doing it with willpower and forgetting the visualization.” S.D.

“Simply Brilliant – Thanks for your valuable insight and guidance during the last hour.

I’m smiling and laughing as I type this – can I do it? I have requested your free eBook to overcome the icant virus! – look forward to reading and applying it. “L.B.

“Just wanted to congratulate you on a brilliant webinar.” G.T.

This was a FREE seminar with huge value relating to building a success mindset and being more successful.

I discussed how change occurs and why so often people give up too easily and went on to explain how we should think about the change process and our attempts at change in order to stay with it and make the change.

We also looked at Values, what are our life values, how can we discover and understand them.

There is another free seminar coming up on Thursday 1st October – this time the subject is the mindset needed for “Success in a Recession” how we can maximize our success in current times and avoid the mistakes most people are making right now.

This topic is my most requested topic by companies and networking organisations when I speak at their events.

Booking for this next FREE online seminar opens on Tuesday 15th September so check back at the site then, it will be centre stage of the home page of this site.

Mark Rhodes.

I’m going to give you just two words now, and they are magic words:

Enthusiasm
Expectation

These are two of the most powerful words in a Success Mindset. If you want your prospects or clients to be enthusiastic you’ve got to be enthusiastic first! It is one of the most contagious emotions, the trouble is a lot of people don’t have enthusiasm they have desperation.

Desperation is a negative emotion and does more harm than good – other people detect it and it turns them off. You need to be sure you are enthusiastic at all times.

Two ways of being enthusiastic are to make sure you are passionate about and love what you do! So often I meet top sales people who tell me they were never any good at sales…..until they “came across this product that they love so much”!

The other the “Expectation” of a good outcome is as important and the two together are amazing.

The real difference between the sales people going in getting most of the deals as opposed to the ones getting poor conversion rates is usually down to expectation of outcome and lack of genuine enthusiasm, as quite often they have had the same type of “how to” process training but simply don’t get the same outcomes. There is a difference that makes the difference!

You’ve got to see yourself going into situations and having it all going the best it could do, that way you will perform better and be more natural and with the passion for your product or service you will be weaving a magical mix of enthusiasm and expectation!

So ask yourself – What would I need to change or would I need to be doing in order to be totally enthusiastic about my offerings and have a total expectation of a good outcome?

True, things won’t always turn out totally as you desire, but that uncertainty is all part of the game. What is the point of playing a game if you never stood the chance of not winning?….it would get boring….but the expectation of winning will mean that you will win far more than with an expectation of not winning.

You see successful people don’t get successful by getting it right all the time, they get successful by getting it wrong, doing it again or using a different approach.

Mark Rhodes.

One of the questions we need to ask ourselves just before we respond to something someone sends us or something someone says to us is this:

Am I reacting or responding?

You see all too often we “react” rather than “respond” – there can be a key difference.

Reacting is emotionally driven – usually someone says something or writes something and we let fly, we feel that emotion well up inside and it drives us into a state where we usually end up over-reacting, all too often 15 minutes later when we calm down we start to think more rational and wonder if perhaps we did over react.

You see that explosive emotional reaction is driven from your beliefs or fears, something said has struck a chord that you feel has reflected on your identity, standards or abilities, and your fight/flight response kicks in and the adrenalin drives your over passionate response.

This all seems very justfied at the time, but like I said earlier we often realise afterwards there probably was another way we could have handled it – we could have responded rather than reacted.

So whats the difference? Well, if before we let fly we take a minute to check in and see if we are reacting or responding and calm ourselves down a little, take a deep breath and decide to get clarification of what they mean – perhaps it is a simple misunderstanding.

A response will always be calmer, more considered and in the end you will come across as far stronger and more sure of yourself than any mad outrage. After all its only your body you are putting under excess strain in that situation.

Someone who can stay calm, get clarification and set the record straight in a calm but firm way is a far healthier, constructive and respected person.

Now, this is going to be a little hard for some of you to accept but you see the simple fact is this – no one can ever really upset you, our emotions are a process we do to ourselves, it’s how we process and take on board what someone else has said or done.

The first step though is to stay in control, not let what someone else has done or said upset us more than it should, because all too often we do get upset or annoyed far out of proportion to the “crime” so to speak.

Yes, people do and say horrible things, its always happened, always will. One of the most stupid sayings ever is the one we all learnt at school “Sticks and Stones will break my bones, but names will never hurt me” – like thats true!

Words are powerful, words people say to us, and also the words we say to ourselves….we need to be careful with words…

Just because someone says something though does not mean it’s true, something someone does, does not mean they have considered how you would feel and gone ahead regardless, most of the time people don’t think at all they just do on autopilot.

We can be different though, and we can be healthier and have far less stress if we develop the habit of staying calm, looking for clarification, collecting the facts and then responding.

“What makes you say that or think that?” is often a good response to something to hold your position before you react and change gear down a notch or two from reacting to responding.

Have fun with it, get curious about why you react the way you do sometimes.

Mark Rhodes