Chris Crouch's Blog

Things That Jump Out of the Water

I recently spent a week at the beach and have a question for you. Why do you suppose humans are so mesmerized by marine mammals and fish that jump out of the water?

Last week from my vantage point on our balcony overlooking the beach, I had a global view of several fish-jumping events (yeah...I know most of them are mammals, but people don't usually say, "Look at the mammals jumping out of the water!"). Anyhow...the marine creatures jumping out of the water were mildly interesting to me; however, my brain is primarily tuned-in to notice human behavior. That's what gets my attention. The fact that these leaping aquatic creatures seemed to stop all other human activity on the beach was more interesting to me. As the creatures began their jumping show, I looked to the left as far as I could see...and looked to the right as far as I could see...and everyone seemed to be totally focused on the aquatic show. Most people were not content just to watch it on their own; they wanted to make sure everyone else saw the show. There was a lot of pointing and yelling, "Look...look...look out there!"

What's that all about?

I don't know the answer yet...but I've got some ideas. I would be especially interested in finding out the answer if I were in sales, marketing, or any other line of business that wanted to attract and hold the attention of otherwise occupied people. Wait a minute! That's all businesses, isn't it? Including mine! I'll bet even my good friend Phil Mitchell in Atchison, Kansas would be interested in this issue. He's got an incredibly creative brain and he's trying to figure out ways to attract people to hardware stores with his brainpower. I'll bet ol' Matt Cornell up in Massachusetts would be pretty interested in this question. He likes to think about stuff like this and he's trying to attract people to his business. When I think about it, I'll bet a lot of people would like to know the answer to this question. I suspect all of you reading this could figure out some way to use this knowledge.

I'd better go now and see if I can figure this out. When I do, I'll write about it in a book and see if I can attract a lot of readers. Wouldn't it be interesting in the future if you were walking down the beach and saw people reading my book on why people pay attention to fish jumping out of the water? I wonder what would happen if they were reading my book about why people pay so much attention to fish jumping out of the water and fish actually started jumping out of the water. Oh...the dilemma they would face!

I've got to get to work on this issue. It's got my attention now!    

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Chris Crouch, president of DME Training and Consulting, has spent years researching and studying both the mental and physical aspects of being productive.

Revising Unproductive Tapes - Part 3

In the last two postings, I discussed the importance of awareness and understanding if you want to revise or eliminate unproductive behavioral tapes. Sometimes awareness and understanding alone can help you minimize any negative consequences of a tape. In this third and final posting on this topic, I will offer a bizarre tip for rewriting unproductive tapes. First let's explain survival tapes and then explore some common survival tapes to illustrate the bizarre method of revising tapes.

By survival tape, I simply mean a tape that was formed when you were very young and still viewed your parents (or primary caregivers) as your primary link to food, shelter, protection, and other elements of life that were critical to your survival. As you can imagine, the actions and viewpoints of the people critical to your survival were extremely important to you at that point in your life. You looked at your parents or caregivers as role models when you were learning about, and deciding how, the world works. For example, if they possessed a fear-based, scarcity mentality...odds are you picked up on it at an early age and adopted this as your worldview. If they possessed a trusting, abundance mentality...odds are you adopted this worldview. It is also likely that you initially adopted their views on money, religion, politics, nutritional habits, careers, and many other aspects of life. Some of these viewpoints may still be serving you well to this day; some of them may not. As you matured and took more responsibility for your survival, maybe you challenged and revised your viewpoint on some of these issues. Maybe not. That's the critical issue to explore! Have you developed your own worldview or is someone else's worldview still driving your behavior? With this in mind, let's take another look at some of the "clues" that a tape might be driving your behavior that I listed in the first posting on this topic (February 19, 2008 posting).

• Thinking that struggling is the norm
• Possessing a scarcity (versus abundance) mentality
• Feeling the need to stay busy all the time (workaholic behavior)
• Over-medicating yourself with food, alcohol, drugs, etc.
• Feeling that you (or your work) are not good enough
• Difficulty accepting praise or compliments
• Difficulty accepting criticism
• Difficulty asking for or accepting help from others
• Feeling that what you have is never enough
• Irrational or illogical guilt feelings
• Being outwardly successful but feeling like an impostor

If these, or similar, tapes are creating problems in your life, or limiting your potential...you probably picked them up at some point during the "rely on others for survival phase" of your life. Therefore, it would not be unusual for you to feel strongly about these beliefs and hang on to them even if you know they are not currently serving you well. Guess what? Going along with these beliefs is no longer a matter of survival! You can challenge these beliefs if you want to do so. With all due respect to your parents...you should challenge these beliefs and either willingly adopt them as your own on revise them as appropriate. In other words, you must think through your belief inventory and make sure your beliefs are really yours. If you think long enough, you will come to the following conclusion about some of your beliefs:

"How bizarre is that...that I am 30 years old (or 40, 55, 62, 76, etc.) and I am still letting my parents control my behavior! It's time for me to make my own decisions and adopt my own worldview."

That's my bizarre tip for today. Have fun playing around with it!

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Chris Crouch, president of DME Training and Consulting, has spent years researching and studying both the mental and physical aspects of being productive.