Over the years I have learnt a lot from many people. Sometimes I learn from a newly employed graduate and other times from a wise old sage. Over the last two years I've learned from my colleagues, the Profs. The Profs are Professor Karen Pine and Professor Ben (C) Fletcher, Psychologists from the University of Hertforshire. They spend their time understanding what goes on in our head, why we do or don't do certain things and what impact the act of doing or not doing something has on us. 

Ben and Karen have helped me solve the mystery of stress. 'Coherence' or 'congruence' as some people refer to it, seems to be the key. In English, this translates as 'walking the talk'.

The more we behave in line with what we think and say, the happier we are, the less stressed we are. If I think and/or say I need to exercise more, but don't, it has a negative impact on me. The more we walk the talk, the more coherent or congruent we are, the less stressed we are.

Unfortunately the process of changing our behaviour to match what we think is not a simple one. There are a heap of reasons why we struggle to change but in the main it's because our brains are in charge.

Our brains are highly developed machines that process vast quantities of information every second. In order to cope with all this information, our brains operate on autopilot using habits to short-cut the need to make decisions. Very clever but . . . . . . not all of these habits are good for us.

We behave before we think which means we drive when we could have walked, we make a snide comment to our partner when we could have listened, we opened the biscuit tin as soon as we flick on the kettle etc.  

We don't think about these things before we do them. We just do them.

The majority of behaviour change techniques rely on changing our thinking but as we've just seen habits often ignore the thinking stage completely.

Even when we can create the time to think something different we still have to do something different if we want different results and moving from thinking something different to doing something different requires 'willpower'. This is something that's in short supply. 

So Ben, Karen and now me, recommend doing something different as the beginning of the process that leads to different results. Different results could mean you become a better manager or leader, you become more innovative or lose weight, you stop your antisocial behaviour or quit smoking, you improve your parenting or start attending school.

Ben and Karen have developed a programme called 'Do Something Different' that gets people used to the idea of doing something different gently. Participants or 'Do-ers' as they're known are asked complete an initial 'Diagnostic' online. This determines the content of the programme which is a series of seemingly easy to complete tasks (usually delivered by text message). The tasks or Do's as they are known are designed to get Do-ers back into the swing of doing something different.

Do's may encourage Doers to 'sit in a different seat to watch the TV' or 'walk a different way to the local shop' or 'taste something you've never tasted before'. After a while the programme starts to encourage Doers to experiement with behaviours they don't normally use. Someone who considers themself to be a risk-taker may be encouraged to 'play it safe'. Someone who doesn't consider themselves to be 'assertive' may be given the task of trying out a more assertive approach to a situation. 

Ultimately it all leads to a persons web of habits being broken down. They find themselves able to behave differently, to make different choices. They find themselves able to walk the talk. To act in line with what they believe. They become less stressed . . . . . happier.

It sounds too simple to be true . . . . but it's not. The results really are remarkable. I wouldn't be involved if they weren't. ChannelDo on YouTube gives you a better taste of what it's all about.

Go on . . . do something different.

We progress when our future is more than our past continued. That means Doing Something Different.  Professor Ben (C) Fletcher

1. 'Doing' is in, 'Thinking' is out
2. 'Different' is in, 'The Same' is out
3. 'Leaders' are out, 'Leadership' is in
4. 'Conscious' is in, 'Autopilot' is out
5. 'Feeling Good' is in, 'Looking Good' is out
6. 'Making' is in, 'Buying' is out
7. 'Fear' is out, 'Behavioural Flexibility' is in
8. 'Conflcit' is in, 'Convention' is out
9. 'Wifi' is out, 'Nofi' is in 
10. 'Warts and all' are in, 'Secrets' are out

Fashion is what you adopt when you don't know who you are
Quentin Crisp

The economic climate isn't great for business at the moment but in one very important sense business is getting easier for me and it's down to my ability to make decisions. Decision-making is getting easier because more and more of the choices I make are the ones I believe in. In the past I spent too much time and energy arguing with myself about the best way of doing something.

Part of me wanted to act in line with the perceived business wisdom. I guess because it required very little thought, to others it looked like it was the right thing to do and maybe if it went wrong I felt I was less to blame. But all too often I thought the perceived wisdom (particularly the bits that involved people) was a load of old bull, it just didn't feel right and the resulting argument with myself caused me to get rather stressed.

These days I'm much more likely to make decisions I believe in. Sometimes they're in line with the perceived wisdom and sometimes they're not. When they're not in line, I make the decision consciously and if later on, things go 'pear shaped', I really want to know why. In other words, I learn.

The alternative would be to go with the perceived business wisdom but there's a real danger that unconsciously I'll try and prove myself right by sabotaging the whole process so I can say to myself 'I told you so'. Even if things don't go wrong I'd probably convince myself that 'my way would have been better'.

Whilst the case for listening to one's self may be strong, putting it into practice isn't always so easy. To do it well, I believe there are two essential ingredients.

The first is Purpose, a really strong reason for doing what you do as effectively as you can. The second is Values, a set of principles that cannot be broken even if breaking them helps achieve the Purpose.

In the relatively recent past many of us have mistakenly believed that our 'Purpose' was to make money. Many of us failed because it was obvious to others that, this, and not 'fabulous customer service' or 'great quality' was what we were looking to achieve. Another group of us managed to make some money but found out pretty soon after, that it wasn't our 'Purpose' after all.

But I also know people who seem to go out of their way to avoid making money. It's almost as if their 'Purpose' is to go without the nicer things in life. 

My advice is to avoid including money as part of one's 'Purpose' and trust that the more progress you make towards your real 'Purpose', the less money-related worries you'll have. 

A really strong 'Purpose' is something that motivates you, something that gets you out of bed in the morning and something that you'd happily have on your gravestone.

Values are personal, they are a set of principles by which you live your life. They are not a set of principles by which you would like to live your life. Your 'Values' are your 'Behaviours'. The way you behave is the way you are. It doesn't mean you can't change your behaviours but it does mean if you cheat, then you value cheating. It means that if you shout at someone you attach value to that shouting. If you help an old lady across the road, you value the help you give.You give someone feedback, you value feedback and so on.

The perfect Conscious Business is the point at which all stakeholders have the right 'Purpose' and the right 'Values' for them personally and they are aligned. Investors, Customers, Employees, Directors, Suppliers  etc all share a common 'Purpose' and a common set of 'Values'

Conflict is the beginning of consciousness.  M Esther Harding

Over the last few weeks the subject of 'internal' and 'external locus of control' has popped up in conversation three or four times. Apparently, there is a general trend towards an 'external locus of control' which should, if true, make policy makers sit up and take note. Locus of control considers the extent to which people believe they are in control of their own future. Those of us with an 'internal' locus of control believe we can shape what happens to us and those with an 'external' locus of control believe life happens to them. If people don't feel they can influence what happens to them, then surely they're going to rely much more on the State and on the goodwill of others?

Stephen Covey, in his hugely successful book 'The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People' says:

"Be Proactive - Your life doesn't just happen. Whether you know it or not, it is carefully designed by you. The choices, after all, are yours. You choose happiness. You choose sadness. You choose decisiveness. You choose ambivalence. You choose success. You choose failure. You choose courage. You choose fear. Just remember that every moment, every situation, provides a new choice. And in doing so, it gives you a perfect opportunity to do things differently to produce more positive results."

It seems to me that:

 At any given moment you have a choice.  You either 'want the world to change' or you 'want to change the world'

When you make decisions at work, do you make them on the basis of 'looking good' or 'feeling good'? Wouldn't it be a relief if there wasn't a difference. You did the things that made you feel good - the things that you believed to be the right thing and the result was it made you look good.

How would that ever happen? I think there are a couple of ingredients required. Firstly, the company you work for need to be crammed full of like-minded people and secondly you'd need to listen really hard to yourself. Sometimes it's hard to know whether the decision you're making is to look or feel good, particularly when you have to make a decision quickly.

Be yourself, everyone else is taken   Oscar Wilde

"Don't take it personally, it's just business". This expression really, really gets my goat.

There simply isn't a difference between your personal values and your business values. Business is a part of life and the way you act in business is the way you act in life. If you tread on someone at work, you tread on someone, period – no caveats, no excuses.

”Real integrity is doing the right thing, knowing that nobody's going to know whether you did it or not”   Oprah Winfrey