11,99 €
Mehr erfahren.
- Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
- Kategorie: Fachliteratur
- Sprache: Englisch
Simple behaviours that unclutter your mind and help you realise your true potential
Awaken your passion and tap into your inner greatness as you remove the metaphorical clutter from your life with Simple Thinking. You'll learn how to expand your mind and understand your true potential through the power of thinking simply, while stripping back the jargon and digging to the core of any obstacle in your way.
Let's be honest, life is full of unnecessary complexity and it's left most of us confused, angry and disenfranchised. This book will help you to remove the baggage, cut through the clutter and begin your smooth path to success.
Learn how to:
- Live and act with resiliency, authenticity and passion
- Learn to trust your instincts again and see the world through new eyes
- Recalibrate your thoughts, behaviours and actions
- Declutter your mind, streamline your day and be successful at life
Simple wisdom, simply shared, is personal development unplugged – and when you begin peeling back the layers to expose the heart of the problem, you become well-equipped to devise a simpler, yet more effective solution. Simple Thinking will help you in achieving this state of clarity and confidence.
Sie lesen das E-Book in den Legimi-Apps auf:
Seitenzahl: 211
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2016
Ähnliche
“Colin Powell says ‘Great leaders are almost always great simplifiers’ – Richard's book Simple Thinking helps you search for ways to simplify things so you too can become a great leader.”
Nick Raphael, President of Capitol Records UK
“Success is not complicated; it doesn't have a secret formula; it is about people, behaviours and attitudes; Richard's brilliant book covers all three.”
Dave Bassett, former Football Manager
“This new book by the remarkable Richard Gerver packs in more of that rarest commodity, common sense, than most of us encounter in a lifetime. There is so much of real value here that just one reading is nothing like enough: I will be returning to it again and again, for reassurance as well as inspiration. It is a boon in waiting.”
Duke of Devonshire
“A fascinating subject, expertly addressed by a very talented author. This book will provide a very real insight into how the answers we strive for are not quite as complicated as we may think they are.”
Sam Rush, CEO and President of Derby County FC
SIMPLE THINKING
How to remove complexity from life and work
RICHARD GERVER
This edition first published 2016 © 2016 Richard Gerver
Registered officeJohn Wiley & Sons Ltd, The Atrium, Southern Gate, Chichester, West Sussex, PO19 8SQ, United Kingdom
For details of our global editorial offices, for customer services and for information about how to apply for permission to reuse the copyright material in this book please see our website at www.wiley.com.
The right of the author to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, except as permitted by the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, without the prior permission of the publisher.
Wiley publishes in a variety of print and electronic formats and by print-on-demand. Some material included with standard print versions of this book may not be included in e-books or in print-on-demand. If this book refers to media such as a CD or DVD that is not included in the version you purchased, you may download this material at http://booksupport.wiley.com. For more information about Wiley products, visit www.wiley.com.
Designations used by companies to distinguish their products are often claimed as trademarks. All brand names and product names used in this book and on its cover are trade names, service marks, trademark or registered trademarks of their respective owners. The publisher and the book are not associated with any product or vendor mentioned in this book. None of the companies referenced within the book have endorsed the book.
Limit of Liability/Disclaimer of Warranty: While the publisher and author have used their best efforts in preparing this book, they make no representations or warranties with the respect to the accuracy or completeness of the contents of this book and specifically disclaim any implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. It is sold on the understanding that the publisher is not engaged in rendering professional services and neither the publisher nor the author shall be liable for damages arising herefrom. If professional advice or other expert assistance is required, the services of a competent professional should be sought.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Gerver, Richard, author. Title: Simple Thinking : how to remove complexity from life and work / Richard Gerver. Description: Chichester, West Sussex, United Kingdom : John Wiley & Sons, 2016. | Includes index. Identifiers: LCCN 2016010577 | ISBN 9780857086877 (pbk.) | ISBN 9780857086891 (epub) Subjects: LCSH: Success. | Self-realization. | Simplicity. Classification: LCC BF637.S8 .G424 2016 | DDC 650.1–dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016010577
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 978-0-857-08687-7 (paperback) ISBN 978-0-857-08685-3 (ebk) ISBN 978-0-857-08689-1 (ebk)
Cover design: Wiley
To Stuart
R.I.P.
CONTENTS
Introduction
1: The Child
Taking it back to basics
There's failure and then there's FAILURE!
2: Interested?
Out of the box?
Bingo!
3: Problems?
The present of a problem…
Thinking for ourselves…
World class!
4: Focus
Arrogance and ignorance
Let's be clear
Real focus
5: Be Prepared
Who is it for?
Visualization
Learned behaviour
6: Belief
Controlling the voice
Snapshot moments
Is it arrogant?
7: The Word
Sometimes…silence is golden!
Be yourself!
The quiet ones
Talk shouldn't be cheap
8: Together
Tribes
Are you likeable?
Organic collaboration
Avoid YES people
9: Shatterproof
The reward molecule
Material obesity
Note
10: In the End
Cheap shots
Success runs deep
Lifelong learning
Disney did it
About the Author
Acknowledgements
Index
EULA
Guide
Cover
Table of Contents
1
Pages
1
3
4
5
6
7
9
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
39
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
57
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
75
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
93
94
95
96
97
98
99
100
101
102
103
104
105
107
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120
121
122
123
124
125
127
128
129
130
131
132
133
134
135
136
137
138
139
140
141
143
144
145
146
147
148
149
150
151
152
153
154
155
157
159
160
161
162
163
164
165
166
167
168
169
170
171
172
173
175
176
177
178
179
180
181
182
Introduction
“Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius – and a lot of courage – to move in the opposite direction.”
Ernst F. Schumacher
I was recently in Seattle for work and on my day off I visited the commercial Mecca of coffee: Starbuck's original store next to Pike Place Market. I arrived mid-afternoon and the queue was huge, spilling out of the door and at least two blocks long. Outside was an old guy picking on a banjo. The smell of the freshly roasted coffee mixed with the other smells of the market was intoxicating. As the queue moved forward and as I got closer to the store, I began to feel a growing sense of anxiety. You see, I'm not a coffee connoisseur; I love coffee but I drink it black, no sugar: simple. As I tuned into the conversations around me I heard people discussing what they were going to have from this historic shop. I had no idea what they were talking about, “Quad venti half caf breve no foam with whip two splenda stirred skinny three pump peppermint mocha.”
Seriously?
What happened to having a simple cup of…coffee?
We are born simple; we are instinctive and gloriously uncomplicated; primal. Our needs are to be nourished and nurtured. As we spring miraculously to life, we know nothing.
Yet when you imagine the complexity of those first few days, weeks and months, it is truly mind-blowing. We have to make sense of everything and most of us learn at an incredible rate; from body language to vocal intonation, facial expressions, sounds, sights, smells. Later we learn to walk and talk. Successful or what? We are amazing.
I have spent most of my adult life hanging out with children; I have two of my own and did, for over 15 years, have the privilege of teaching in schools filled with young people between the ages of three and 11.
Over the last ten years or so I have spent much of my time in the “adult world”, in some pretty huge organizations, businesses and sports teams. When I first left the world of schooling, I found them to be daunting and quite scary places. I was filled with a sense of inadequacy; an imposter syndrome I guess. I was like an infant, suddenly born into the world outside the protective womb of the classroom and playground gates. A world filled with noises and behaviours that seemed, on the surface, to be alien. For a while I worried about my own sanity and sense of perspective, wondering if I was just better off in the company of young, small people. Then I started to ask different kinds of questions. I started to explore how much of what we create around us, as adults, actually helps as we go about our lives and how much of it weighs us down. How peer pressure, the perceptions of intelligence and hierarchies influence the way we see ourselves, our potential and the world around us.
I have been fascinated by the perception of success and, more importantly, the belief that it must somehow be complex and only attainable for a rare, superhuman few.
Simplicity seems to be the catchword of the post-financial crash era. The crisis that at the start of this millennium seemed to have forced people to come up for air, breathe and take a meerkat-style look around them before many went back to staring at their feet, consigned to the belief that they had better stick to what they know and do. I want us to take the idea of simple thinking seriously.
To a young child, success is getting fed when you are hungry, having your nappy changed when it's soiled and learning to shuffle over to that big object you've been curious about on the other side of the living room. Success becomes building a tower of blocks that falls over and in so doing makes people laugh, and then building one that stands up, or painting a picture that was most fun in the making and that is now displayed proudly on the door of the family refrigerator. It was easy then, we just got on and did stuff; we didn't know that we couldn't or that we shouldn't. We didn't know that we couldn't paint as well as Jenny down the road or Picasso. We didn't know that we couldn't sing as well as Sam next door or Streisand. When we learned to walk, no one had yet told us that we couldn't move as well or as fast as Usain Bolt or as gracefully as Sylvie Guillem. When we began counting the raisins on our plate, who knew that we weren't in the same league as Ada Lovelace or Alan Turing?
Our perceptions of success and of its complexity can hamper our potential to be more, to be better and, most importantly, to be happier. As we grow and evolve, something happens along the way that fills so many with a sense of doubt. I have come across so many people who in their lives feel that a personal sense of inadequacy has led to them never striving to reach their dreams, aspirations or potential. For many years, I was one of them. I went to a top quality school, a school with a fantastic reputation for academic achievement and sporting excellence. Sadly, I was neither overly academic nor particularly sporty. When I was 18, I began my journey into the world feeling a profound sense of “average”. I had not got a great deal of self-esteem. I was average looking, averagely intelligent, ordinary and unremarkable. I was easily intimidated by those around me. It didn't take a lot: the way people spoke, the clothes they wore, the cars they drove, the jobs and lifestyles, the words they used, the people they hung out with. Even now, despite my age, experiences and achievements, I find that I can be intimidated by the success and status of others. Every time I take to the stage, or put pen to paper, I wait for the experts to tell me I am a fraud. New and challenging situations in the most common of environments can send me wobbly.
This is symptomatic of what I want to explore in this book. Both the belief that to really be worthy, you have to know everything and that if you don't, you have no chance.
Let's go back to Starbucks for a minute. Interestingly, the Starbucks story is in itself elegant and simple in its evolution. Founded in 1971 by three friends, former teachers Jerry Baldwin and Zev Siegl, together with writer Gordon Bowker, Starbucks, named after a character from Moby Dick, was opened to sell high-quality coffee beans and coffee-making equipment. In 1987 the business was sold to former employee and coffee shop owner Howard Shultz, who saw that the way to reinvigorate a slumping coffee market was not to sell the beans and equipment but to sell the drink by the cup. The rest, as they say, is history. He realized that in an increasingly complex and busy world, people wanted gourmet to go. Simple.
That's what this book is. It is personal development to go.
I do not and will not pretend to have all of the answers to your problems; I will not blind you with science, research, facts and figures. I want you to reflect on yourself, who you are, how you work and how complicated you have made your own journey. I want to act as a cleaning agent by provoking your thinking and reflections so that you can ultimately see things more simply, making your version of success more attainable by making the route clearer. Through the book I will share thoughts, stories and reflections of my own and suggest points for reflection and development.
I used to say to my former students that the difference between a dream and an aspiration is that an aspiration has a ladder that will help you climb towards it; a dream is beautiful but always out of reach.
I am going to explore the behaviours and ways of thinking that will help you build your ladder rung by rung. I will take you back to the traits of early childhood and celebrate the primal, instinctive days of awe and wonder, of curiosity, exploration, risk taking and fearlessness; those simple traits that saw us through the greatest moments of development in our lives. I will show you how, by rediscovering them, you can fulfil your potential and experience greater success in your life.
Let's get started.
