P to the Power of Infinity™
8th Installment of our Self-Coaching Process
Blueprint for real transformation and success for individual employees/executives, teams and organizations
STEP 4: PLANNING & POSSIBILITIES, THE FOURTH & FIFTH P’S
This step is really, really important. How you journey through this makes the world of difference as to whether you succeed immeasurably or not. When you go through the planning process, you must stop yourself from thinking linear.
We talk about thinking outside the box but not many people or organizations actually do this consistently. There is still such a prevalence of limiting ourselves to what’s the norm, to what we imagine is possible. A great deal of it is so that we can fit in and not appear “other than normal”. But if we want to be extraordinary, we really need to go beyond the norm, to risk being ridiculed or challenged.
Think of Galileo, the great Italian physicist, mathematician, astronomer and philosopher who was tried and found “vehemently suspect of heresy” because he insisted that the Sun and not the Earth is at the centre of the universe and met with bitter opposition from some philosophers and clerics who supported the geocentric view, placing the Earth at the centre!
I’m not asking you to risk house arrest, which Galileo was put under for the rest of his life from 1632 but to dare to be different and to stand up for what you strongly believe in, that will make a difference to yourself, your team and organization.
There is a great need here to stretch your imagination. To quote Albert Einstein, another great physicist and philosopher, named “Person of the Century” by Time magazine in 2000:
“I believe in intuition and inspiration. Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited, whereas imagination embraces the entire world, stimulating progress, giving birth to evolution. It is, strictly speaking, a real factor in scientific research.”
We must indeed dare to go beyond what we already know, what we are familiar with and venture into uncharted territories. In this sense, we need to be like children who operate more from their Right Mind than their Left (which allows them to use their imagination freely and learn languages easily). Generally, they are not riddled with doubt and skepticism, quite as much as adults are.
Evolved leaders have this child-like (not childish) quality of Innocence, a naivety (coupled with wisdom) that allows the seemingly impossible to become possible. They are not blocked by skepticism which is born out of fear and its accompanying need to stick to the known and be limited to what seems certain and acceptable in order to feel safe.
Einstein would never have discovered “that the universe was not as it seemed,” as the Time magazine article about him put it, if he did not use his Whole Mind and imagination. It called him the “genius among geniuses” who was “unfathomably profound”. Also, “the bumbling professor” who was “engagingly simple” yet came up with his theory of relativity and mass-energy equivalence, expressed by his now famous equation E = mc2 (for which he received the 1921 Nobel Prize in Physics).
According to the article, “even now scientists marvel at the daring of general relativity” and can’t imagine how he came up with it! Einstein’s response was “humorous detachment” while “relativity seemed to pull the rug out from under perceived reality” to the world at large.
If you wish to read Frederic Golden’s full article in Time Magazine, when they named Albert Einstein “Person of the Century” in the year, 2000, check out: http://www.time.com/time/time100/poc/magazine/albert_einstein5a.html
To bring the subject back to the corporate world, planning and possibilities, the winning formula I am proposing to you here is to go beyond “perceived reality”.
If you want to be not only an effective but great leader, you must get in touch with your spirit and soul, and get in contact with an invisible world that supplies you with an unlimited amount of wisdom, ideas and information. Tomorrow’s knowledge. What people will come to think of as “unfathomably profound” when you turn that information into action and results that make a difference. To you, to your people, to the wider community.
And, if you think you are not Einstein and therefore incapable of such brilliance, think again. Think in these terms instead: the nature of genius is the ability to pick up information that is circulating out there and recognizing its significance, when no one else even knows it exists.
You don’t even have to aim at being a genius, just to be open to new possibilities. Dare to take that first step and then proceed to a whole new World of Endless Possibilities.
When you plan, you must plan with this attitude firmly in place. Our various corporate and personal coaching programs will show you how.
If you spend lots of quiet time on your own or/and go inward to meditate, be still, be in absolute silence, inspiration and ideas will arise. The word “inspire” comes from the Latin word, “inspirare”, meaning “breathe into”. In silence, ideas and wisdom are breathed into our minds. I call them “downloads” and feel privileged to receive great wisdom this way! Try it; it’s a really smart and cool way to get information!!