Quantum Leaps Consulting

We all have six intellectual faculties: memory, perception, imagination, reason, intuition, and will. The problem is not necessarily that people don’t use their intellectual faculties; rather, it’s that most people aren’t even aware of their existence. If you are unaware of the fact that they even exist, you are not going to be able to fully appreciate and utilize the power they can provide.
Your intellectual faculties are the muscles of your mind. And just as it is important to challenge the physical muscles of your body—to provide resistance in order to make them stronger—you also have to test your mind to make it stronger, to make it grow. You have to utilize your intellectual faculties in order to keep them sharp.
Your intuition is very important in decision-making. Your memory, perception, and imagination are responsible for how you view and interpret your past, present, and future. Your ability to reason lies in the conscious mind and gives you the ability to choose. This includes the ability to determine whether or not you are upset, glad, sad, or anything else.
And finally, we have will. When faced with a difficult proposition, most people ask themselves, “Am I able?” In reality, the question you need to be asking is: “Am I willing?” You must be able to concentrate your efforts on the task at hand in order to reach your ultimate goal. Your will is what focuses your energy. When you hold an image in your mind, it’s your will that helps you stay focused and keeps out any disturbances and anything else that can distract you.
If you want to succeed at anything in life, you must have the will to do it. Keep the following tips in mind as you focus on developing your will.

•    Control Your Thoughts
When you concentrate and focus on something, you give it energy. Your will is the instrument that focuses your energy. If you want your dreams to grow, you must nourish them with positive energy. This takes will and determination. You have to use your intellectual faculties so as to not be affected or influenced by the outside world. Other people will always share their opinions with you on every matter, whether they are knowledgeable on the topic or not.
Family, friends, neighbors, colleagues, radio, TV, and newspapers will all compete for your attention, eagerly throwing opinions in your face. It’s your responsibility to be confident, in having discovered your purpose, to withstand such distractions. When you take control of your thoughts during these times, you develop the will to stay on course. You have to be able to weed through the negative and corrosive influences of such things that will endlessly attempt to prevent you from reaching your goals.

•    Stay True to Yourself
Your will is a strong and capable force. Remember to use it inwards and not outwards. This means that you do not want to develop a bad habit of trying to use your willpower to force others to do what you want them to do. Just as you have your own course, they have their own course. You must respect this. The key to your success lies in what you do and not on what you can get others to do. You do not want to be in the business of manipulation.
Wallace T. Wattles has written about this in his book The Science of Getting Rich (Wattles 1910). The premise is that in order to get what you want, to live on purpose and to gain a fulfilling life, it is important to understand that you do not have to apply power or force toward any other person in the process. Your success is not contingent upon how much pressure you can apply to others or upon how readily you can reshape others’ views, opinions, or actions. Your success is dependent upon you and your actions. You are responsible for your own future. In fact, forcing others to do things only tends to defeat your own purpose.

•    Be Future Oriented
In the pursuit of your goals, in trying to accomplish your mission, always look ahead. You aren’t going to have much of a chance marching into the future toward your goal if you are doing it while constantly looking backward. “Let the dead bury the dead” is an oft-used expression that actually originates in scripture. While you can interpret this saying many different ways, in this context, the point is to go forward and do what you can about improving your future.
You cannot do anything about your past, so you should concentrate on pursuing your purpose into the future. In order to keep looking forward, you have to focus. Use your will. Whether you are happy with your past or not, you cannot change it. Concentrate your efforts on those things that you can change. If you focus on the past, you are taking valuable resources away from your efforts toward fulfilling your purpose and making a better future.

•    Define Your Own Success
There is only one person that can define success: you. This is not a competition, and there is no benchmark. Benchmarking is more often used as a way to level the playing field. It is not helpful to you. You want to set goals, but there is no reason for you to measure your success in comparison to what others are doing or achieving. Your success is defined and determined by you and you alone. When a company sets a benchmark, what they are inadvertently doing is imposing limitations by setting a restrictive realm on what is possible based on what has been done before. You need to set your sights on your purpose, vision, and goals. The parameters as defined by others should not be of major concern to you.
Become an expert in your field as defined by you. Success is entirely an internal matter. If you have set a goal, and you are on your way to achieving that goal, then you are on your way to success. You should be happy when others are successful, when they achieve success according to their definition. Again, this is not a competition. There is no shortage of success to be had in this world. It is not a scenario where if someone else succeeds, it lessens your chances for success. One person’s success is no more or less valuable than anyone else’s success. There is equal validity to everyone’s specific goals.

•    Stay Committed
Internalize your goals. If you have not fallen passionately in love with your goals or your ideas, then you will not develop the necessary will to achieve your dreams. You must be committed. If you are not committed to your purpose, then what chance do you have of breaking through the barriers that will inevitably block your path? There will be very strong forces that will work against you. Expect it. Many of these forces will come from within you. You are in control, but you must have a strong will and strength of mind to withstand the barrage of resistance that will come your way. Without a strong will and a depth of purpose, this is a battle that you are destined to lose. A strong will is essential to overcoming the obstacles and challenges that you will most certainly encounter along the way.

Be Willing to Attain Success
When your will to reach a goal has reached the highest levels, you can find a way to overcome seemingly insurmountable obstacles that might be in your way. You are capable of extraordinary things and can reach a level of accomplishment and fulfillment that you might have previously never even thought possible. Sticking to your goals, and having the will necessary to keep you on the path to greatness, is the key ingredient that separates those that actually live a life of fulfillment from those that only talk about it.

JP

Any time you are on the verge of breaking out of your comfort zone, you will encounter a wall of resistance, the terror barrier. When you create or attract a new idea into your life, when you prepare to make a bold move or venture into the unknown, the terror barrier will rear its ugly head. In fact, you have probably hit the terror barrier many times without even knowing it. Whether you are rich or poor, world-renowned or living in obscurity, this force acts upon all of us.

At the prospect of venturing out beyond your comfort zone, the terror barrier swells like a storm. This happens because you feel threatened. As is the case with all storms, some will dissipate and die away, while others will continue to build into a hurricane, a powerful force capable of much damage and destruction. The problem with the terror barrier lies in the fact that it inflicts damage in whatever form it takes, no matter the level of force. As occurs with relentless waves hitting the shore, even if the force is relatively minor, the long-term weathering impact will slowly erode your dreams of living a life of fulfillment—if you decide to let it, that is.

Sometimes, it is like hitting a wall with a BANG! Other times, you are gently lulled into submission until you decide to finally give up on your vision for good. Either way, the terror barrier exists and can have a damaging and lasting effect on your life. So,what is actually happening? As it is most of us live our entire lives in our comfort zones, that place in which you feel the most safe and secure. Now notice I didn’t say the place in which you feel the most happy. The vast majority of people will endure a life of unhappiness and unrest simply because they are comfortable with it, because it’s what they know. This is an unfortunate, but all too often adopted, approach. And usually this stems from conditioning according to the norm and is the reason why it is so important to break out of the norm or conventional wisdom if you like.

So many people I encounter hate their jobs. I mean really hate their jobs. Yet, they are stuck in circumstance. What I mean by this is that they let outside factors control their lives instead of making fundamental changes that allow them to overcome these barriers. Let me be clear; there is absolutely nothing wrong with putting in a hard and honest day’s work and dealing with unpleasant tasks along the way. There are many noble professions that provide vital services to our communities that, while necessary, don’t necessarily have the glamour attached to them or garner the esteem from our peers in the same way of other jobs. This is okay. I am not talking about glamour, and I am not making judgments about what is or what is not a worthy endeavor. This is an extremely personal choice. My point is to let you know that if you are not content with your life, you can make changes in the way you approach your life after tapping into what is most important to you.

Oftentimes, people just change jobs. However, they are not truly addressing the source of their problems; thus, they find themselves in this perpetual state of unrest. They go from one uncomfortable and unfulfilling situation to the next. I have set up my business, Quantum Leaps Consulting, to help positive and motivated people, as individuals or in a corporate environment, turn potential into performance. Again, you have to be willing to do what it takes, but you can most certainly make changes in your life for the better.

Have you ever seen one of those people that can chop through a stack of boards, ice, or concrete with their bare hands or even their forehead? Well, the keys to this task are belief, will, and commitment. If they were not willing to go all out, they would not generate enough force to break through the surfaces, thereby releasing the resistance and avoiding serious injury. Now these people have undergone a great deal of training, and I am not recommending that you set up blocks of ice in your garage and start head-butting them to impress your neighbors. I am using this as a metaphor to demonstrate that you must fully commit to what you want and only then will you have the necessary force to carry you through and achieve your goals.

JP

Isn’t it strange that leadership is so much about benchmarking? We are so concerned with competition, scarcity and what our competitors are doing that we completely miss out on the opportunity to take our own business to the next level.

It seems like most businesses like to stay mainstream. They might have started up as a unique idea, but once others enter the market everybody seem to adjust to each other, more concerned with not standing out, than actually doing so.

Next level leadership is about daring to stand out. Getting out of that comfort zone that the benchmarking level is all about.
We know the market, we know the customers, and the competitors, we look back when we set goals for the future, we only do things we know how to do, and know that we can. This is a good place to be, we experience it as safe, and it is right out comfortable. And it can be for a while, at least as long as everything is on an upward swing. Because as long as you choose to be mainstream you will go with the flow as long as the flow goes. If, on the other hand, you choose to stand out, you will keep going in spite of everybody else stopping.

That is truly a nice place to be. So why do so few businesses go for it? Because it takes a bit to get there, and this is where most of us back out. We hate to admit it, but whether we are sales people, middle or even top management, we don’t like to challenge the unknown. That is hitting the terror barrier. Admitting you’re afraid of something is regarded as a weakness, so you keep quiet.
We do not like to do something that is new to us, which we do not quite know how to solve. We are more concerned with doing things right than doing the right things, the things that actually can give us an advantage over the others in the market place. Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried something new.

Remember this; the Wright brothers had no pilot’s license. Edison did not know he was going to illuminate the world. You see – great accomplishments have never been based on how. If you’re going to set goals you know how to achieve – you’re going to have to always lower the bar.

Don’t be so afraid of failing. Failing is a good thing, start promoting it! That is good leadership. If nobody fails in achieving goals, the goals are too low. Michelangelo says: “The greater danger for most of us lies not in setting our aim too high and falling short; but in setting our aim too low, and achieving our mark”.

John Maxwell says it is important to fail forward, fail forward into growth. By doing so you naturally bring your business forward, because every time you fail, get up again and keep going, you move forward. And every time you hit the terror barrier and break through it you advance to a new level, and if you advance, your business does.

JP

People looking to break out on their way to a fulfilling life include individuals that are more or less just getting started on their journey as well as those that have drifted off course over the years and find themselves staring at their dreams, a blurry haze way off in the distance. There is also a large contingent of people that while they have made significant progress toward their goals, now realize it’s time to finally stop and ask for some directions to guide them the rest of the way. And admit it, even though we might not like to ask for directions, the time it takes to reach your destination might decrease dramatically as a result of your query. However, as we discussed previously, regardless of your circumstances, or wherever you are in life at any given moment, you have the capacity to make the changes necessary to get the most from your life.

When you have taken the time to zero-in on what you want out of life, every choice you make, large or small, will be geared toward helping you achieve your goals. If you have not created a clear image in your mind of what you want, you will find yourself incapable of making quick and informed choices. Or worse, you will make uninformed choicess that, unbeknownst to you at the time, will have negative repercussions that won’t be realized until much further down the road. You might have difficulty recovering from these choices, as they will take you in a direction that requires more time and effort to get you back on track.

Now there are things that can be gained in life from making mistakes, and I can assure you that we all make them and will continue to make more of them as we go. I am not talking about a fear of making an unrecoverable mistake. First, you can always recover, and you will be richer for the experience. However, also realize {that I am pointing out} that if you are not aware of what you want, you will find yourself roaming around aimlessly. Not knowing what you want, or being under the impression that wanting anything at all is being unrealistic, will greatly increase your chances of failure. One very common and important factor that both can and most probably will make you indecisive, is circumstance. You might be saying: “What’s the use? Why bother?” You might actually find yourself so overwhelmed that you have effectively rendered yourself incapable of making the choices that, if made properly, would enhance your life greatly. Do not become a victim of such thinking. Envision, plan, and take action.

JPA

The ability to manage the terror barrier is largely what sets those that are living a life of their dreams apart from those that are steeped in mediocrity and unhappiness. It’s not that successful people “get all the breaks” or “have it easy.” Sure, there is a wide disparity in the backgrounds and circumstances of people, but the real reason people are able to reach a life of fulfillment is that they are able to break through the terror barrier. It’s not that successful and wealthy people don’t have challenges or don’t have fears. Of course, they have challenges. Of course, they have fears. It’s just that they are able to work through those challenges and fears and move forward in pursuit of a better life. “Do it afraid” is an expression with valuable meaning: Every now and then you have to do things you fear in order to move forward. If you do things afraid, I guarantee your life will change.

There are plenty of people of privilege who throw away all of their advantages and fall into a life of poverty and discontent. These are the individuals that make the decision to stay locked behind their terror barrier. They have not been able to overcome this obstacle and get out of their comfort zone and make the most of the gifts they have been given. We all have specials skills and talents that help determine our purpose in life. What we need to do in order to unleash these gifts to the world is to face and conquer our fears. The terror barrier is a threshold that we must learn to cross if we are to get ourselves on the path toward a life of fulfillment.

We stay in our comfort zone, because it is safe, it is familiar, and it is naturally comfortable. If you think about it, just how comfortable can you remain before you start to have negative consequences, before it actually hurts you tremendously? It is not surprising that we carry on this way and take refuge in our comfort zone if you consider the fact that we are conditioned to think along these lines from childhood. We are molded from uniqueness into conformity at a very early age and tend to go through life on automatic pilot. Yes, this might be comfortable, but it is also a very unfulfilling way to live.

There are a large number of people that are unwilling to undergo even the remotest amount of pain in pursuit of a goal. I would argue that this approach, in the long run, is more dangerous, as it results in even greater pain later on. Experiencing a bit of pain as you branch out is not only normal, but also a good motivator to get you up and going. Pain will often lead to growth and development. You are probably familiar with the expression “to light a fire” under someone. Well, this has become cliché, but the reality is that many of us need to turn up the heat a little bit in order to set the wheels of change in motion.