So, you like to have your way. Here’s a shortcut. Be the architect of your dominant thought and your truth. But we normally live with our truth and dominant thought that occurs to us. Here’s how to align your thoughts to get the outcomes you seek.

Step One: Align Your Ant and Elephant. 

Think of your conscious mind and subconscious mind as an ant and an elephant. The ant is on the back of the elephant. The conscious decisions you make are equivalent to the ant making decisions as to which direction to walk on the elephant hide. Meanwhile, the elephant is also making decisions on where to go. They (those scientists in white lab coats and thick glasses) call it SUBconscious because those thoughts are BELOW consciousness. 

Let’s say you got a birthday invite a couple of miles west of your home. You reply “Yes.” The day arrives. Your ant made a decision to go west. But your elephant walks east. You intended to be at a party on the west side but ended up at a closed-down gas station on the eastern side of town. 

Imagine this: What if your elephant goes in the same direction as you consciously decided? You aren’t just at the party. You are THE party!

Step Two: Define a Truth with an Elephant Buzz

Emotions drive thoughts. Thoughts drive behavior. Instead of trying to behave differently… Instead of trying to think differently… Focus on the Emotional Quotient. The Emotional Quotient is thought that:

• Lights you up.
• Gives you energy.
• Makes joy course through your veins. 

That is called your Elephant Buzz. A thought that literally has a physical reaction attached to it. It’s the difference between saying to a kid “Let’s go for ice cream” vs “Go clean your room.” 

If your dominant thought is exciting, your elephant will be inspired to run, not walk in the direction of your desired outcome. 

Step Three: Trigger your Dominant Thought to Create a New Truth

Personally, I like to use a Gold Dot as a reminder for my Elephant Buzz. I see a Gold Dot and I silently repeat my Elephant Buzz. For example:

• When I started ski racing, my Gold Dot statement reminded me of marching in the opening ceremonies of the Olympic Games.
• When I started speaking professionally, my Gold Dot reminded me of accepting the Speaker Hall of Fame Award.
• When I started writing books my Gold Dot statement reminded me of receiving a phone call that I would be on the New York Times bestsellers list.

What would your Gold Dot represent? Are you ready to tell the world?

If you’d like to know more about how the Ant and Elephant can work wonders in your life, check out the book, The Ant and the Elephant, Leadership for the Self. Order it from www.AntAndElephant.com and I’ll sign it for you personally. Let’s get your ant and elephant going in the direction that you decide.

3 Ways to Protect Your Business

If you're facing a veritable rodent in your midst; be it a hacker trying to disrupt your business, a knock-off competitor who wants to steal your clients/prospects, a rip-off copycat who can't come up with their own ideas... you have to think like them. Using a metaphor of raccoons that set-up residence in our attic, here are a few ideas to fend off the business rodents who can infest your space.

1. Don't Blindly Trust the Professionals. 

   Without going into details about how the roofing pros didn't ensure raccoons got into our attic, suffice to say they fell short of keeping the sound of raccoons ballroom dancing on our upstairs ceiling. Thousands of dollars later, the "pros" were never invited back while the raccoons never needed an invitation.

2. Overestimate the Tenacity of Your Competitors.

   It turns out that raccoons are pretty tenacious creatures. I custom built a layer of hardwood and stapled chicken wire all along the point where the raccoons were getting in. I even hired a small man to squirm into the space between the roof and soffits to ensure the barrier was screwed in. Months later, the sound of raccoons doing a remake of Saving Private Ryan echoed through our entire attic space. Again, I humanly relocated our furry guests. 
   
3. Overcompensate Your Barrier(s) to Entry. With the roofing company and skinny helpers permanently in my rear-view mirror I decided to take matters into my own hands. With the barrier of wood and chicken wire torn back and tossed aside by raccoons determined to exercise their squatter's rights, I squeezed into the tiny space. I sprayed Coyote Urine in and around the opening. I tripled the number of screws in the wood/wire barrier. I caulked the entire perimeter. I cut out sheet metal to cover the space with extra-flaps to surround the top, sides and bottoms. Screwed another dozen screws into any available opening. Then caulked the entire length and breadth of the metal edges. 

By thinking like a raccoon (not lazy roofers or uninvested skinny guys) did I conquer this first world problem. May your business be fortified by your attention to not blindly trusting professionals, overestimating the tenacity of your competitors, and overcompensating any barriers to entry into your business space. 

Fear can be the bane of our existence. Getting rid of fear(s) will be a lifelong pursuit. 

The paradoxes surrounding FEAR is multilayered: 

• Run away from fear it gets larger.
• Run towards fear and it gets smaller.
• If you let fear go up, confidence goes down.
• If you minimize fear, confidence goes up.
• Fake that you're not scared and you're only kidding yourself.
• Embrace your fears and you are courageous.
• If you ignore what you fear, you're ignoring what is important to you.
• If you dive into the middle of what scares you you're on your way to fulfillment. 

This video is a small exploration into the power of fear. Whether that power is in your hands or out of your control is absolutely up to you.

Enjoy.

Here's your breakthrough for today. You'll gravitate to that which you believe to be true, so be the architect of that truth. Let me say that again, backwards. Be the architect of your truth so that you can gravitate towards that truth.

We could spend an hour on this topic and give you all sorts of good examples of celebrities that had a truth in their mind and they gravitated towards that, positive and negative. Gosh, the first person that comes to mind is Muhammad Ali.

He thought he was the greatest in the world, he told everybody he was the greatest in the world, and you know what? He probably was, in terms of boxing, the greatest in the world.

There are people that have a truth they are the architect of. There are some people, it just occurs to them. So be the person that chooses the truth that you want to gravitate towards. Be the architect of that truth, design it.

Now, how?

Well, repetition, repeating things over and over help. You keep telling somebody something, in some form or fashion it's gonna come true. Negatives can occur too.

If you're not conscious of your truth, negative things can occur because you may have a subconscious truth that's going to take you backwards.

So be the architect for maybe a positive truth, and really design that in a way that has not just repetition, but has emotion attached to it. When you think about it, you feel it inside, there's this buzz inside, you just go, oh, I would love to do that.

So when you establish that truth, you'll gravitate towards that.

You do that, well, we got this.

Conversations with Dune explore a variety of inspirational topics, practical tools for entrepreneurs, insights for parents, and anyone searching for a better way... Enjoy this one hour and fifty minute interview. 

The ratio between the conscious and subconscious mind is the exact same ratio between an ant and an elephant.

The ant is the conscious mind, the elephant the subconscious. The ant is on the back of your elephant making decisions on direction. You make a decision, I wanna go west, it starts marching on the back of the elephant going west. What if the elephant is headed east, which way is the ant really going?

East thinking you're going west. But it's human nature. We make decisions and owners and managers, I wanna go west, I'm gonna go on a diet. Subconscious mind, I don't think so. And so we may have unconscious reasons why not and end up in a place where we go how did I end up here again?

Yet, how much better would you compete with this kind of alignment?

How much better could you do what the competition's not willing to do if you had 2,000 neurons and four billion neurons headed in the same direction.

Hey COVID campers, how you doing?

You know what? We're trying to manage our way through this situation. We're trying to cope as things look like they might get worse before they get better. Yet, we don't manage our way to excellence, and then we don't cope our way to better outcomes.

Now when you think of what the opposite of managing or coping with a situation is, it's surrendering, well we're not doing that either.

The point here is to be able to supersede coping into the next level, which is to be able to be curious about the kinds of things that may work and then get creative within that. 

I mentioned this earlier, but I'll give you another example. My son Max is a musician. You know, he is kind of trapped at home with the rest of us. He's reaching out through social media, and he's saying, hey, tell me your story, I'll create a song for you. And then I'll give it back to you and I'll play it live for you. So, is that gonna bring in revenue for him? Who knows, that's not the point. He has an expertise, he got curious about the kinds of things he could do, and then he got creative with that.

Here's a link for you to be able to learn more about what Max is doing.

In the same breathe, how curious and creative can you be in these times ahead instead of just coping or managing the situation? Take care COVID campers, bye bye.

Hey COVID campers, you know what, in times of uncertainty, the tendency is to be able to just stick around and wait and see. Well, that's not the solution, the solution is to be two things.

One, curious.

Look at all the different opportunities. I mean, if, what's his name, Edison, did the light bulb that took 10,000 tries, well 10,001 he figured it out. Well, if he can do that, we can at least every day do one thing that we're acting in out of the place of curiosity. Is this something, is this something.

Second step is to be creative.

Well, we have to be creative of how to apply that. And so when I think about all the opportunities in front of us, me as an author and as a speaker, I'm looking at all sorts of ways to reach out and this is one of them.

So stay curious and then get creative. Those two things will put you in a place where eventually you'll pop out the other side. And pop out the other side stronger as well.

It's time to pivot.

The problem with pivoting from negative thoughts to positive thoughts, is that's pretty lame advice, you know why? Because you first have to set up your emotional buzz. Your emotional buzz is, where do I want to go with my life? What do I want to do? Is this state that we're in right now where you want to be?

Well, maybe not, with this whole pandemic, so let's actually pivot by first identifying what your emotional buzz is, then you can pivot and when you pivot, this, your emotional buzz is where do I want to go with my life? What do I want to do? Is this state that we're in right now where you want to be?

Well, maybe not, with this whole pandemic, so let's actually pivot by first identifying what your emotional buzz is, then you can pivot and when you pivot, this is a way to do it. Make sure your conscious, your mind and your subconscious might have a conversation.

In a book I wrote called The Ant and the Elephant the ant is the conscious mind, the elephant the subconscious mind, and what they do is the ant realizes the elephant, the subconscious mind, is having a negative thought.

The ant says to the elephant, "Thank you. That's not part of my vision. My vision is…" (Insert your emotional buzz here.) and it pivots onto that emotional buzz you had in the first place.

So set your emotional buzz, where you wanna be in your life, and then, and make sure it has an emotional quotient attached to it, then when a negative thought appears, that's when you can pivot. That's when you can go to the subconscious mind, the elephant, and go, "Thank you, but that's not part of my vision. "My vision is..." and then go onto the positive thought. And you can make it even better if you add the sensations of sight, smell, taste, touch, and sound. I mean, you'd be able to bring in the five senses and really experience that, that will be an effective way to pivot on where you want to go.

Take care Covid Campers.

We've got this.

Hello Covid Campers.

Let's profile a Covid Camper. Here's the first profile.

Here's an interview we captured a few days ago with single mom, entrepreneur and my sister, Christa Haberstock. (Note: It was taken in those good old days when we, non essential service people, were allowed to go out of the house but ensure we were social distancing.)

You'll learn how she has been ensuring her teenage kids can make the most out of their time. (Self admittedly, she's not the perfect mom.)

You'll learn how Christa pivoted from not making money in her current business to delivering groceries to those who could use the help. Note how she brought her kids into the service, as a parenting, teachable moment.

You'll see how Christa is using humor to make it all work in times of chaos.