Rule 8

The most important part of Taming Tigers is not the achievement of goals.  It is setting ourselves free from our tired, well-rehearsed, out dated and unhelpful reactions to certain situations.  Setting ourselves free to make our own choices and then to act from our core rather than merely react “instinctively” (it’s not instinct, although it feels like it, it’s learned).

The only disadvantage of bringing the book alive with my journey to the race course is that the “big goal” thing can sometimes overshadow this more important point.  You don’t need to have a big scary goal to set about taming a Tiger or two.

Taming Tigers is all about self awareness.

Once you have started on that path – noticing how the Tiger affects you, what the consequences are for you and others and how to alter this process – something very powerful has begun.  Slowly you begin to notice the Tiger and reject its advances more easily, whether in pursuit of a great goal or whether in order to speak your truth, in a moment of pressure, to somebody whom you previously permitted to intimidate you, to light up your Tiger.

If you keep on that path (see the Change Rules:w Rules 7-9) who knows where it will lead?

Over to you.

Jim

If you are a regular subscriber, you’ll know that I am giving a piece of the Taming Tigers jigsaw that cannot be explained during a presentation over four blogs. If you are new to the blog, you can find the previous installments here 

 The Ten Rules for Taming Tigers are divided into four groups.

·         The Integrity Rules (Rules 1-3)

·         The Leadership Rules (Rules 4-6)

·         The Change Rules (Rules 7-9)

·         The Esteem Rule (Rule 10)

Today it is the turn of the Change Rules to come under the spotlight.

The Change Rules

Rules 7-9 are the Change Rules.   It is through these Rules that we begin to form new habits and make consistent and lasting the changes that Rules 1-6 began. Rule 7 – Do something scary every day -challenges us to create Tigers to confront on a daily basis, notice the emotional and mental reactions, grow in self awareness and mindfulness of this reaction and develop our ability to defeat the internal barrier – the Tiger.

Rule 8 – Understand and control your time to create change – invites us to form a new relationship with the most precious commodity – our time. The activities we choose to fill our time with are how we devote our energy – our life on earth. It is the notebook in which we are writing our story. When our need for approval or our neediness, our dependence on the chase for irrelevant prizes, our unwillingness to speak our truth (we often call this being “nice”) means that our time is “no longer our own we are deluding ourselves”. It is our own. We are making choices. The Tiger is roaring. We are not free. Our ego is in control.

Rule 9 – Create disciplines and do the basics brilliantly –  invites us explicitly to create new habits. New disciplines and basic standards of behaviour that will assist us to be the person that we know we are or that we wish to grow to become. They are also vital to the achievement of goals and prizes, of course. Vital to surviving and growing on our Quest. They are easy to write down. They require the previous eight Rules to actually practice daily. And they pay great dividends in terms of growth and self esteem and other more tangible rewards.

 Through these three Rules, we begin to consolidate the changes – to grow.

Please feel free to post comments, thoughts and experiences.

Jim.

Click on the image to view the Rule 7 video.

Click on the image to view the Rule 8 video

Click on the image to view the Rule 9 video

I spent a day with 100 shipbuilders last week. Just think about that. Building a ship!  Where is the shortcut? Where is there to hide if you get a bit wrong? What a timescale to work to. I always have a healthy respect for my audiences (I turn down the jobs where I don’t) but I found my respect growing for this lot during our day together.

The shipbuilders got me thinking about “time” on my journey home (Rule 8 is all about time). And planning (Rule 3). And the quick fix (no rule for that in TT). The Taming Tigers way is that there is unlikely to be a quick fix. Some things take time. There is no mantra. We cannot “re-program our minds”, we need to graft. The media-generated, modern idea of the quick fix conflicts with us though. It demands that “something must be done!”, that we can and must fix anything and “we can and must fix it now!”

Do you believe in the quick fix?  Or is your faith placed in the right fix?

I rarely see the quick fix in business. It’s there, for sure. But it’s rare – because it is rarely effective. It’s usually a fallacy. And as those bankers who quick fixed their bonuses from gambling their colleagues’ jobs on “sub-prime” (what a phrase) debt discovered, a fallacy is a dangerous foundation to build a business strategy upon.

Sometimes “it” can’t be fixed. Sometimes “it” has to fix itself. Sometimes “it” will take time, effort and a mass change of attitude and behaviour. In business there are consequences for failure. In business it should be that the lure of the quick fix is in inverse proportion to the likelihood of the slow lingering cock-up (see “sub-prime” above). The real world is not about today’s headline or a cabinet “re-shuffle” (what a phrase). It’s the world of the result or of the sacking.

But in the media and politics “something must be done [today]!” Really?

So as our appetite for borrowing more than we can afford to decreases, the UK government is to make debt compulsory for us, lumping that debt onto every man, woman and child in the country without asking nicely first. Interesting philosophy. But can you “quick fix” a clear message from the market?

I don’t think that my new shipbuilding friends would make the mistake of building or operating a ship based on a fallacy – we’ve seen the consequences of that. I do hope we are not building an economic future on one.

PS – I have – rashly – signed up to run the London Marathon for Racing Welfare in April 2009. If anybody knows of a “quick fix” to get fit for that, please let me know urgently. It’s getting cold and dark out there!