Chapter 01: THE PATTERNS OF EXCELLENCE - Part 01
First, I would like to thank and congratulate you for picking up this book. The fact that you are investing your time to read it only means that no matter where you are in your life you truly desire to achieve a lot more.
You have taken a most important first step: You have taken action and are putting that desire on the road to manifesting it. So, what kind of significant change do you want to create in your life? Greatly increase your income? Be a much more effective communicator? Grow as a person? Be the best in your field? Create stronger relationships with the people you care about? Whatever it is, know this:
You Have All the Resources You Need to Succeed
Most people set limits on how much they can achieve simply because they believe they lack the resources needed for successful outcomes. They believe that they just don’t have the mental discipline, intelligence, luck, creativity, energy or talent to live at a level they can only dream of.
‘If only I was more creative or innovative, I would be able to take advantage of that opportunity.’ Heard that one before? Yes, so many people believe that they have to wait for resources to appear (a lottery win or share bonanza), in order for them to use it to get what they want.
‘When I have more money, then I can think of starting my own business.’ ‘When I am more mature, with a lot more experience behind me, then I can take on that challenge.’ ‘When I have more time, then I can start to plan my finances.’ ‘When I find a better partner, then I can enjoy a happier relationship.’ Heard all these before?
The truth is that you already possess all the resources you need to get anything you want and produce any result you desire in your life! That’s right! The resources I am referring to are your in-born, in-built resources of Brain and Body working together.
Our Brain and Body are the most powerful resources that each and every one of us were born with on this planet. If used and run effectively, your internal resources will enable you to get any physical-external resource you require to help you achieve any goal you desire.
Most people cite lack of MONEY as their number one excuse for not taking advantage of opportunities and taking action. Yet we all know that some of the most successful corporate-household names in the world started with little or no money. Take Honda and Sony Corporation’s founders, Soichiro Honda and Akio Morita or even Apple’s founder Steve Jobs. They started with nothing but their own ingenuity and personal power to create winning, innovative products and wealth followed naturally, which then allowed them to create even greater wealth.
TIME is the next most common resource that people say they lack. Yet we all work by the same clocks. All of us have twenty-four hours a day within which we have to eat, sleep, relax, recharge and work, smart or otherwise. It is surely therefore our ability to plan, manage and control how we use time that creates results, or lack of results. Again, it comes back to how we control our own internal resources. Use them effectively or squander them.
How about OTHER PEOPLE as a resource?
Here again, many people believe that they just don’t have the right partners, customers, colleagues, family or bosses to support their life or career goals. Again, if you have the internal resources of knowing how to build rapport, influence and direct the thoughts and behaviors of others positively, you WILL attract the kind of people you need to help you succeed. So it is truly how we manage our internal resources that make all the difference.
We All Have Basically the Same Hardware
But do all of us have the same internal resources available to us? Do we all have the same mental resources to be influential, confident, creative, intelligent and so on? The answer is YES!
At first this may seem a bit hard to believe but if you study the human brain and the science of neurology (and in recent decades we have made quantum leaps in our understanding of our Brain), you will learn that we all share the same basic neurology or nervous system.
In other words, we all have got basically the same hardware. If someone appears more superior to you in intellect or is a much more effective communicator, it is not because they have a better ‘bio-computer’. They just have better programs running in their ‘bio-computer’ than you have (currently). It is these
programs or thought patterns that enable them to be more motivated, more focused, more analytical, more powerful or to be a better communicator.
When run in optimal mode your brain is truly capable of producing any kind of positive and empowering thought or behavioral pattern, and hence any result that you want. Every one of us was born with almost the same basic neurological makeup. We have approximately 1000 billion neurons (nerve cells) in our brain, each capable of processing information at a speed greater than a Pentium four personal computer
It has been calculated that if a super computer were to be built to have anywhere near the storage capacity and processing capability of the human brain, it would have to be the length of fifty football fields and the height of the Statue of Liberty. And yet, your mega brain is powered daily with less electricity than a ten watt light bulb! How awesome. Think about the miracle your brain is and what you can do with it.
Neuro-Connections: The Key to Our Thoughts & Behavioral Patterns
If all of us have such powerful internal resources, why do so few produce exceptional results? Why is it that only a handful in every society or country are able to generate brilliant ideas, stay focused and motivated, take consistent action and produce a level of success we can only admire? The difference lies again in the way we use our brain. Or waste it.
Your thoughts, behaviors, abilities and skills are determined not by the number of brain cells you have, but rather by how your neurons are connected together. All of us have different neuro-connections and that is why we think and behave differently.
If someone you know is extremely good in numbers, it is because he has a lot richer neuro-connections in the area of mathematical-logical thinking. At the same time this person may not be very confident in the way he communicates, because he may have poorer neural connections in this different area of intellect.
The same goes for our emotions and habits. If you are always lazy and unmotivated , it is because your brain cells are wired in such a way that you consistently fire off negative emotions like procrastination.
People who are constantly focused and motivated have a very different set of neural patterns wired up in their brain. The kind of neuro-connections you have now is determined by how your brain has been exposed and stimulated, even before you were born.
Your neural patterns began developing twenty weeks from the time of conception, in your mother’s womb. If you have a gift for mathematics, it could be because your brain had been exposed to a lot of mathematical stimuli by your mother or the people around you. Then, after birth, in your growing-up years, especially before the age of fourteen, behavioral traits like patience or determination, impatience or stubbornness were also installed in your brain through your exposure to role models around you. That is how you got programmed to become the person you are today.
The good news is that if you have insufficient or ineffective neural connections in any area, you can create more useful connections through stimulating your brain in the right way and creating the right kind of mental patterns. You can also reprogram limiting patterns such as phobias and bad habits.
In my ‘I Am Gifted, So Are You!™’ training programs, I teach students who have very bad memory to use an effective memory strategy and rehearse it until it becomes a new pattern in their brain. Within half an hour of stimulation, they find themselves able to memorize a list of 50 words in sequence in
less than five minutes.
In our Patterns of Excellence™ program, we use a technique called the Swish Pattern to help people change their old neural patterns of constantly procrastinating into taking consistent action. Remember that every habitual pattern is the result of the way our neural connections are wired. When we learn how to reprogram these neural patterns, we can change and create any result we want.
Research into the brain has shown that in a lifetime, the average person uses less than one percent of the total number of possible neural connections that can be formed in their brains. With 1000 billions neurons, each having the capability of making thousands of neural connections with one another, the total possible number of connections, if permutated, would be far in excess of the number of atoms in the universe. In other words, there is nothing the human brain cannot achieve, with the right strategy and stimulation.
If We Can Replicate A Winner’s Mental Blueprint, We Can Replicate their Success
If we can replicate the way a winner runs his brain, then we can replicate the way they think and behave, and hence the results they produce. If others can walk on stage and deliver a speech with confidence, so can you. If others are able to constantly direct their emotions to feel motivated and confident, so can you! If others display highly creative skills, you can do so too. Remember, they are able to do so because they are running effective mental programs. With the same neurology, you just have to unlock their secrets and run your brain in exactly the same way. Think about this for a while.
Are you afraid of public speaking? Some people get terrified just by looking at a large audience in front of them. Their hands turn cold, their legs shake uncontrollably, their face turns white and they start to stutter when they open their mouths. This is close to the psychiatric definition of a phobia and all of us have these intense and uncontrollable fears of one thing or another.
Yet at the same time, why is it that another person, seeing exactly the same audience can feel comfortable, relaxed, confident – even eager to speak. Such seemingly natural orators speak to an entire auditorium as easily as if there was only one person in front of them. They may even be able to entertain the audience, make people loosen up and laugh, and they feel great about being up there too.
Again, what is it that makes the confident speaker different from the fearful one? They have the same mental resources available to them. The difference lies in how they represent the experience of the audience and the stage in their brains. You see, the thought and behavioral patterns they run through their neuro-connections are completely different. The first person’s brain is wired up in such a way that seeing the audience immediately triggers off a ‘fear’ program that shuts their entire body down. This is expressed physically in sweaty palms and brow, butterflies in the stomach. Quite the opposite occurs when the confident speaker sees the audience. His neural connections fires off a ‘relaxed and confident’ pattern that allows him to perform at his best!
Unfortunately, most people have never learned how to direct and re-program the limiting patterns they run. They are not in charge of their brains. Instead, their brains take charge of them. They let their brains go on ‘auto pilot’, running mediocre programs that keep limiting their performance. As a result, they will always feel that there are things they can never do, simply because they believe that it is not within their control. Or ability.
Once you learn how to change a program in your brain, in fact any program, it will ultimately change how your body reacts. And you can accomplish anything you set your mind to.
You too can do what you thought was impossible before, like exercising consistently until you get to your ideal weight. Or give a powerful speech and inspire a two-thousand strong
audience.
The science I have learned in order to do this, and which I will share with you in the chapters of this book, is the science of personal development known as Neuro-linguistic Programming
or NLP.
It is the technology of the mind that teaches you to use the language of the mind (linguistic) in order to program and reprogram your nervous system (neuro) to consistently achieve a particular desirable result. NLP was first developed by Dr. Richard Bandler & Dr. John Grinder in the 1970s.
How I Took Charge of My Life
I was 13 when I was first exposed to NLP’s mind-boggling ideas and strategies. I was with a bunch of students of assorted ages, boys and girls from various secondary schools, and we had been sent to a residential motivational camp for teens.
Looking back I can say I was at a very low point in my young life. I had just squeaked into one of the lower ranked secondary schools in the country. Earlier on, at the age of eight, I had been expelled from a primary school for misbehavior: my poor academic results did not help. I did so poorly for the Primary School Leaving Examinations (PSLE), I was rejected by every one of the six secondary schools my parents had chosen. So I ended up in a government school called Ping Yi. Initially, I was still academically very weak. I had passed only four subjects out of eight and was placed near the bottom of the school. Not only was I poor in my studies, but I was also physically weak and mentally lethargic. I had very poor social skills, I was bored, indifferent and soon became a ‘problem student’. I joined the Scouts movement only to be thrown out after six months for not being able to pass the ‘Scout standard’, the most basic test needed to qualify to be a scout. Did I try? Not at all.
Like all other troubled and troublesome teenagers, I was addicted to arcade games and moronic TV programs. You could say I stirred to some semblance of life (pushing levers/buttons) in front of those violent games and sank into a stupor in front of the goggle box.
So, it was that I, a bored, boring and thoroughly indifferent teenager, was first exposed to Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP) ideas. So radical from anything I had ever been taught or shown. Somehow, something stirred in that sluggish brain I had so underutilized for so long. The first and most fundamental principle I learnt in NLP was that our beliefs act as the ‘on’ and ‘off’ switch to our brain’s potential.
This whole new way of thinking began to excite me, to challenge me as nothing had ever done before. Bing! Like a light bulb going off in my face, I realized that all my negative beliefs were the first (possibly the only) thing that was holding me back.
I used to believe that I was not as intelligent as other kids. Being in a close-knit extended family with cousins in gifted streams and in the best schools didn’t help! I used to believe that I was born lazy, slow, unmotivated, maybe even stupid. That no matter what I did, I would never excel in anything. I was not gifted musically nor did I show any sporting prowess. I was just so very average in those departments.
What I learnt from my many mentors inspired, stimulated and challenged me. I decided to adopt a new belief that ‘if it was possible for others, it would be possible for me. It was only a question of strategy.’
That if I could model someone’s strategy and adopt it, then I could achieve any goal. Suddenly, the 13 year-old that I was had kindled in myself a burning desire to see if it was truly possible. Wow, what could it do for me?
So I decided to test it out. I set three seemingly impossible goals at the time. My first goal was to top my school within a year. My second goal was to do well enough to qualify for the top junior college in Singapore (reserved for only the top 5% of students in the country). My third goal was to qualify for the National University of Singapore and rank among its top students. You can imagine that ambition, coming from someone who was probably near the bottom 20% of students in the country, seemed like a crazy fantasy.
Using the principle of modeling, I went out and started to study the strategies that top students were using to get such fantastic results. I operated from the framework that if I used my brain in the same way, I would be able to replicate their success. So, I modeled their patterns of excellence. How did they take notes? How did they stay motivated? How did they concentrate? How did they memorize so easily? How did they grasp difficult concepts? How did they tackle tough examination questions? I started to compile all these mental success blueprints and then proceeded to install these strategies within myself.
From Below Average to Gifted Student
I started thinking and doing exactly what they did. I took notes the same way, asked the same kind of questions and approached questions in the same manner. By constantly stimulating my brain like they did theirs, I inevitably started creating the same excellent results they had.
Within a year, from passing just two subjects, I scored 7As and ranked among the top ten students in my school. In three years, I topped the school with the lowest scoring aggregate and I became the first and only student from my school to qualify for the number one junior college in Singapore that year, Victoria Junior College. I later went on to qualify for the National University of Singapore (open to only the top 10% of students in the country) and was ranked the top one percent of academic achievers there within a year. Within six short years, I found myself being ranked among the top one percent of students in the country.
I Am Gifted, So Are You!
The phenomenal results I managed to create reinforced my belief that with the right strategy (I call it the patterns of excellence), anybody can mentally orientate himself or herself to achieve success in any area.
I began teaching my ‘Genius strategy’ to other students, many of them below average in their academic studies, some of them even having learning disabilities. The results were amazing and most encouraging. Many of those who used my strategy experienced the same phenomenal improvements in their grades as well.
While still an undergraduate I decided to write a book compiling all these success blueprints for academic excellence. The book, ‘I Am Gifted, So Are You!’ was launched in 1998 and became a national number one bestseller within 6 months.
If I Could Achieve this, then I Can Achieve Anything!
As you all know success in school has very little to do with a person’s ability to be successful in the real world of business. So my next challenge was to be able to create success beyond the classroom. I knew that if I applied the very same principles of modeling and replicating patterns of excellence, then nothing was impossible. My major career goals were to make my first million by the age of 26, to start and build a million dollar business and to become one of the best speakers in Asia. So again I dedicated all my time and energy to study and model the best speakers and entrepreneurs in the world.
I read over four hundred books. (Quite a feat for someone who never read anything more challenging than Archie comics until ideas of personal development germinated in my brain). I read biographies of self-made millionaires and inventors, I read books on wealth creation, psychology, linguistics and personal
development.
I then started putting into practice what I learnt by taking massive action. I started my first business (a mobile disco which grew into event management) at the age of 15, and a second business (training and consulting) at the age of 21 and started property and equity investing at 22.
While studying hard for my exams (O levels, A levels, University) I spent my free time making deals, running my businesses and taking on as many speaking engagements as I could find. Within two years after graduation from university, at age 26, I had created a net worth of over $1.2 million, was running two successful businesses and commanding up to $2,000 an hour in speaking fees.
I had spoken to over 50,000 teachers, students, professionals, managers and CEOs in the area of accelerated learning and personal excellence.
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