Open your eyes and take a look at the view.

Sometimes a complaining co-worker can drag you down, other days you got the huge electric bill. You might have a boss that is giving you a hard time. You might hate the weather, and the bus is late. You can’t control the weather, but you can control how you feel about the weather. Try whistling in the rain. Try walking with an upbeat joyful body posture in the blizzard when everybody is crouching. It is amazing. Being annoyed at the bus driver for being late will not get you any faster to work. Rather thank him for doing a great job, that might remove his stress and he might get you faster to work. Life is long and some periods might be super boring. This is when you must stop, and move your eyes away from the cracks in the road of life. Take a birds view and look at the long run. You might have a good marriage; your spouse might even love you. When you think about it you might even love your job! Think about why you like stuff in the first place. You might suddenly find yourself moving your eyes from the crack in the road to looking at the scenery of your life. I said to my friend stop looking at the cracks and rocks on your path and look up and around you. What do you see?

Why you ask?

I have been working as a web developer more or less professional for 12 years. I have been creating everything from static one page HTML sites to full blown publish/shop solutions. My ultimate goal was to make more values for my customer. But the interaction of today’s social media is finally giving a solution to what you want to achieve in the first place, interaction with your customers. And guess what, your customers might have a great idea or two when it gets to your products and services. All you need to do is active listening and informing.

M(w)ake up

My wife have been participating in online make up forums with 100.000 users that order make up all around the world. They swap stuff, they interact with the company, and the company gives names to new types of eye shadow based on direct user feedback. They inform about upcoming events and product launches, and I am sitting in my living room regretting not picking up on how to make cosmetics when I was young. What an amazing business idea. My wife has gotten friends all around the world swapping cosmetics and advices and staying loyal to one company. Well almost, this company made one error of judgment, they did not listen to the customer and walked out on a promise, resulting in thousands of customers moving to the competition.

Online support Center

I work at a broadband company, our site is new and nice, but static, showing products and prices. New social media has still not quite reached our marketing department. I would love it if we made a blog, a customer forum, a twitter account, a facebook profile and … alright we got an online chat. What if we had some technical difficulties, we could inform in an instance. What if we told our customers that five people are sick today, wish them well, but please understand that the phone lines might queue up.
What if we launched a new product right into an active community of thousands of customers? What if a customer had some great ideas that we could adapt? The customers could teach us what they want, and we could teach the customers about how we operate. And I bet that we could save us a bunch of money that went to a marketing company financing their fancy coffee habits. And just let us listen…

One man is doing it right.

In Norway, one man in particular has gotten the idea of social media. Steinar J Olsen founder and CEO at Stormberg is using his blog, communicating with not only his customers, but also state leading politicians and journalists. His twitter account has 4744 followers, and his blog is quoted in national media all the time. The company facebook profile has 9166 friends. Customers are providing feedback, example a print error in a calendar, with the marketing director giving an instant feedback. Customers are asking about the quality of boots, resulting in recommendations from other customers. In comparison I tried to locate one of the competitors facebook profile and found a profile with 133 friends.. I wonder who is getting the most impact in this advertising channel?

Replace your company website with a blog; do not hide behind your boring web site. NOW!

For instance, I am a chocoholic, I have tried for years to quit eating chocolate. But the only way for me to manage that is to experience a successful way to not be eating chocolate. I have been spending months thinking that I do not like chocolate, and why do I eat chocolate when fruit is so much more tasteful? I have been thinking and thinking for months and suddenly I could manage to go days and weeks without it. I am still training my brain to avoid the cravings each day. When I eat salad for lunch at work I am thinking about the great flavors and its magnificent tastes. I am looking at my pure glass of water and enjoying its cold refreshing taste that no other liquids can provide. I am not dieting, so losing weight is not the goal, I am trying to change one habit at the time.

That was personal, and not very work related, but the concept is the same. So if you fail at work, tasks that you just can’t get the hang of, or never makes it within timelines. Most likely you hate this task, and have never experienced success with this task. Remember when performing a task there is only two outcomes, either you make it or you won’t. But if you do not make it, you are not failing, you are just mind mapping ways that do not work, and you are getting an experience. Why is it failing? If you manage to learn, and stay positive you might find one way of not performing this task. Spend time thinking, reflect and ask why it went wrong. You are learning. Keep trying and correcting if you need to. You need to picture success in your head. Teach your brain to know what success looks like. Is it timing? Is it prioritizing? Is it knowledge? What does it take?

The mind trap.

As you do fail, your mind will try spare you. It will make up excuses and explanations to why you are failing and it will make barriers to prevent you from doing this again. Do not let your brain build barriers. “I do not get a date because I am so shy” – Your mind will persuade you to never try again to protect your feelings, and if you do not ask, you will not get any answers. If your boss yells at you and you are being called into the office a week later, your stomach will be in turmoil and you’ll be all sweaty and nervous. Are you a psychic? Do you know what the meeting is all about? No, this is your brain working with experience and trying to prepare you for what might come. Your mind has a few basic functions, learn, act and anticipate. Based on earlier experience your brain will try to tell you what is up ahead. When it comes to doing the boring tasks at work that you always fail at, remember your mind is already anticipation your failure. You need to set it straight. The good news you can.

I am being a bit personal again as I have a fresh example in my head. I have several times tried to quit my sugar addiction and my mind was always craving chocolate from I woke up until I fell asleep. I once managed 21 days without chocolate and I was in hell every single day. Today I have not eaten chocolate in 12 days, and I have only had a bad craving once. But I do not like chocolate anymore, I am telling my mind that I hate the bad feeling it provides. I am remembering and programming how bad this is for me. And at the same time I am praising my tasteful salad replacement. I am mind mapping the great taste, the great way it makes me feel. And sitting here close to bedtime, I am starting to crave some salad.

At work I have yet not found the winning formula for holding a group meeting without queuing up the phone lines. We need group meetings once in a while and holding it outside opening hours is not a solution. I need to divide my staff in half and hold two meetings during the day. I have failed at this before. I have learned that it is not wise to hold such a meeting at a day with high traffic. I have learned that I should ask for help from other departments taking some load of the remaining employees. I am still going to hold a great group meeting without anything failing. I am very result oriented so if the meeting is causing one customer waiting, I will consider it a failure. So I need to figure it out what it takes to achieve success.

But figuring out what you are doing wrong, might be hard, so do not be afraid of talking about your challenges as it might only provide helpful input. Ask about what others do to succeed instead of talking about what you are doing wrong. You are still putting your hand on a hot plate; you’ll need to figure out how to turn off the heat. Why is someone always getting greater sales results? What do they do? And keep a positive mind. Failures are a chance of learning, process the learning and store it in your brain. Think about what worked out great.

This is just some few practical pointers. You should also provide positive actions in your life. Smile, make other people smile, do some volunteer work, make other people happy. Your role in life should be to make it easy on everybody while making them smile and enjoy their day. As you teach this thinking to other people around you it will come back with interests. This is positive thinking, and positive actions. It is about learning, sharing, caring.

The GIKA SPICT – I am really not sure about the name, feel free to suggest a better name for this  I just made it up from the input and output of this circle – Goals, Inspiration, Knowledge and Abilities on one side and Share, Produce, Inspire, Care and Teach on the other side, not very creative, but it helps me remember when I try to teach this to others.

I have come to believe that humans thrive when they feel some progress in any field. People quit their dead end jobs when they imagine that this is all they can get. I work at a call center and deal with the “after one year I know all there is to it”-syndrome all the time. They get bored and start looking for new jobs and production is dropping. Unless we get the GIKA SPICT-philosophy flowing.

You can use this in any setting to create growth and meaning, at work, at home, in sports you name it. This is probably why people teach with low or no pay at all, it creates a greater purpose in life, and you do something greater than yourself.

Challenge yourself to get new abilities, acquire some new skills or knowledge, find inspiration in others and set yourself goals. This is what I am looking for; this is why I am currently trying to obtain a stronger mid-game in chess. This is why I read books about coaching and leadership. This is why I have started a political career. This is why I have found a good cause to support at Arc Kenya.

But that is not enough. One way of making sure you are untouchable at work is to acquire a critical skill that no one else possesses. You won’t get fired, but it will not make you evolve unless you are unselfish and share and teach. This is why you should fire people that won’t share as they prey on knowledge your company would benefit by, if it was taught to the masses. Transferring knowledge is a strong unselfish act that will give you a greater meaning in life. Do not underestimate the power of sharing and teaching. I am trying to teach my kids to play chess; it is a rewarding gift of fun and joy. Teaching my kids to play chess is just a small part of it, but it shows that this philosophy is scalable to the little things as well.

Are you having a productive day today? How does it make you feel? We like to feel productive; if I do not clean the kitchen for a day my wife feels unproductive and shares the wisdom of delegating work with (to) me. But seriously a productive day provide more self esteem, your time is not wasted. What productive really is, depends on the individual, but you can recognize it by a feeling of wasting time.

Care about others, care about your co-workers, show your family that you care. Appreciate important people in your life. This creates a good feeling in both you and the ones being appreciated. Care for a cause if you can, it all helps you to feel useful. If you care about the people around you, and teach them to care about the people around them you will end up with people caring about you. This is Karma baby! – But it works!

By following this philosophy you will inspire other people as you go along. And this is where the circle is completed and you start evolving. As you help other people to evolve and as you motivate people to complete achievements this will in return be very fulfilling to you. If you as a co-worker, manager, family individual or in any other setting strive to help other people evolve and grow, you will experience a greater meaning in life. It might still not be the meaning of life, but for me it is as close as it gets.

Positive thinking is also a strong element in my strangely named GIKA SPICT philosophy. Read more about positive thinking here