The book focuses on the necessary elements to effectively creating a change – in your personal or professional life or in your business or organization.

**Elephant, Rider, and Path**

The book investigates change through three metaphors: two for different aspects of the personalities of the people affected by a change, and one representing the environment surrounding that change.

The metaphor used in Switch was originally from a book called The Happiness Hypothesis by Jonathan Haidt (I haven’t had a chance to read Haidt’s book myself yet, but I’ve added it to my list!).

I recently read an interesting book called Switch, by Dan and Chip Heath.

The book focuses on the necessary elements to effectively creating a change – in your personal or professional life or in your business or organization.

**Elephant, Rider, and Path**

Switch investigates successful change efforts by assigning metaphors to different aspects of people’s personalities and the environment that surrounds them.

The three-pronged analogy is borrowed from a book the authors read prior to writing Switch called The Happiness Hypothesis by a psychologist named Jonathan Haidt (I haven’t read this book yet myself, but it’s been added to my ever growing list of required reading!).

As impressed as I am by the effectiveness of the metaphor used in switch, I’ll try to keep it short – because I am quite certain I could go on for hours.

In a nutshell, your personality is made up of two main components (similar to Freud’s ego and superego) – an Elephant and a Rider sitting on that Elephant’s back holding the reigns and attempting to guide the Elephant along.

The problem is the fact that the Elephant sometimes wants to go in a direction that the Rider disagrees with, and since the Elephant is so much larger than the tiny Rider, there’s not a lot he can do about it – he can only pull on the reigns for so long until the Elephant wears him out and does whatever it wants.

Dan and Chip Heath describe our “Elephant” side as the part of our mind that is prone to emotional responses and reactions, as well as our tendency to “go with the flow” and react without really thinking things through first. Our Elephants are most comfortable with familiar patterns and circumstances, so they aren’t always helpful to making a change. They don’t analyze or look at the “big picture”, so they generally need some help breaking into a new pattern.

The “weakness” of the Elephant is that it relies on emotions, habits, and instincts that don’t always coincide with the changes we are trying to make. Often times the Elephant – which is really ourselves – needs help being convinced to go with a less familiar option.

This is where the Rider comes in. His job is to guide the Elephant along, even when the Path (which is the third part of our metaphor) isn’t so easy to travel.

The Rider is the part of our mind that analyzes situations and looks to the future, rather than his immediate surroundings.

The problem with the Rider is that he can spend too much time over-analyzing a change and then nothing happens (that familiar “spinning your wheels” feeling we’ve all felt when undertaking a new challenge).

Haidt’s metaphor also describes the environment (the third critical component to an effective change) surrounding us as the Path that the Elephant and Rider must travel. Things that effect the Path can include the attitudes of others, social norms, laws and systems – or any other factors that impact the changes we are making.

Seeing The Metaphor In Action

Applying the different components described above to a change in your life is described in the book as a three step process:

* Motivate the Elephant
* Direct the Rider
* Shape the Path

These steps represent the three main sections in the book. The process basically states that you need to get your emotional Elephant moving, while showing your long-term-thinking Rider what direction to take and do whatever you can to make the Path you are traveling on easier to follow.

Each of these chapters is broken down into finer points that provide more specific steps.

The concepts of Switch are demonstrated through a series of stories about unrelated change efforts from all over the world, and how the three step process above helped them succeed. From individual problems like drug addiction to national issues like government spending, the changes in Switch are as varied as they are inspirational.

Why This Book Works So Well

While I fully enjoyed this book, I certainly recognize that it probably doesn’t sound like the most entertaining material ever written. In spite of that fact, the authors did a very good job of making it an extremely entertaining book to read.

The structure of the book is extremely well organized, allowing the different chapters to reinforce one another.

There are also plenty of humorous asides scattered throughout the book, so it keeps the text from becoming mundane.

Dan and Chip Heath do a remarkable job of drawing parallels between different types of change efforts, allowing you to see some of your own habits and tendencies as they exist on a national or corporate level.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that this book is loaded with moments that leave you thinking “Yup. I totally do that…”

All in all, Switch by Dan and Chip Heath is a great read for anyone who has something they’d like to change in thier lives, especially those who are involved in, or starting an online business.

Not to be overly sentimental or anything, but it really was a great moment. It was the kind of “relaxing and enjoying life because everything is right with the world” moment that so many people strive towards. It was the kind of evening that so many of us want to be every evening. It was an evening that represented the kind of life many people dream of having: a simple life, full of simple pleasures and devoid of stress.

Evenings like that are what it’s all about.

As I sat there and reflected, I realized what one of the biggest things holding some folks back might actually be: they dream of having the things they want instead of planning for them. There’s a big difference. Having big dreams is great, don’t get me wrong. Dreams are where it all begins: when your mind and your heart get together and say “wouldn’t it be great if…” and from there, great things are born. Dreams can often times become reality, and the results can be wonderful, even life changing.

The important factor though, is turning those dreams into plans.

It’s one thing to dream of a relaxing life. Maybe a nice big house, perhaps on a lake… where you can sit on your porch with your family and watch the sunset as the fading rays of sunlight flash on the surface of the water like diamonds. That, or whatever you would personally envision, is a wonderful dream. But is that all it is?

If you truly want these things, that life, that future, you need to do more than dream… more than enjoy wistful “what if’s.” At some point it becomes necessary to stop dreaming and start planning. Where is that lake? Where is that house? What does it look like? Start deciding how many bedrooms you want in your dream home, how many baths? What will your neighborhood, town and the surrounding area be like? If you want to relocate one day, start researching different communities, deciding where and how you want your dreams to come true. Plan out when you are going to make the things in your dreams happen… set a time frame and hold yourself to it!

The more specifically you plan out the steps to make your dreams a reality, the closer you will find yourself to attaining them. Simply by beginning to plan, you will begin moving towards that future one step at a time, becuase as you plan you will accutely identify the things that stand in your way.

Everything begins with a dream. Making that dream come true is up to you and your ability to plan for it.

So it’s time to ask yourself… at the end of the day, are you a dreamer? Or a planner?

“Caterpillar Moves to Cut 20,000 Jobs“

“Starbucks Will Close 300 Stores and Open Fewer New Ones“

“ING Will Cut 7,000 Jobs and Its Chief Will Leave“

“62,000 Jobs Are Cut By U.S. and Foreign Companies“

What (aside from being disheartening and intimidating) do the above have in common? Several things:

• They are all headlines pulled from the New York Times
• They are all headlines from this week
• They are all signs of a growing problem

Take a look again at that last headline. On Monday, January 26, 2009 62,000 jobs were lost.

62,000.

And those weren’t all. Pfizer and Wyeth are in the midst of a huge merger that will cut 19,500 more jobs. On Wednesday (1/28/09) Starbucks announced they were closing 300 stores and cutting up to 6,700 jobs. Home Depot cut 8,000 jobs. Circuit City, with more than 30,000 employees is closing it’s doors.

Now, we are sorry that the picture is so bleak… and we truly hope that no one reading this post has been affected by these events – and if you have, we are sorry and wish you the very best.

The reason we are bringing this up is because while it is unpleasant, the truth is that this isn’t going to go away… things will likely take some time to turn around, and could very well get worse before they get better. A lot of people, literally more and more every single day, are feeling the effects of this situation in a very big way. We personally know someone who was laid off by a company he had been with for years. Eventually, that company bought out his next employer and guess what they did? Laid him off again!

So the big question becomes “What do I do if this happens to me?” or “How do I protect myself and my family?” The answer is to literally take matters into your own hands. There are so many different ways to make money from home, on your own time, on your own terms.

The events of the last week have shown, more strongly than ever, that “job security” is a thing of the past.

We strongly encourage anyone reading this, or other articles on the topic to start looking for alternatives. For ways to take control of your financial future and rely less on a big company and more on yourself.

It’s a story about a nine-year-old girl named Hanna who was diagnosed with a rare form of cancer called Burkitt’s Lymphoma when she was only seven. She spent an entire summer at Children’s Hospital in Boston, heroically battling the cancer and undergoing chemotherapy. This seven year old girl barely survived – and once the chemo was finished she got a visit from the Make-A-Wish Foundation of Massachusetts.

The Foundation sent Hanna and her parents to Disney World, where she had always wanted to go and meet Minnie Mouse and the Disney Princesses. The trip was a dream come true – but it was also the beginning of something bigger.

One day after the trip, Hanna was playing in her Nana’s back yard and found the shell of a black walnut that had been left behind by a squirrel. She picked it up and noticed that once the meat of the nut is removed, a small heart-shaped hole is left. After cleaning the nutshell, Hanna and her dad melted down some crayons and poured the colored wax into the shell, let it to cool and turned it into a necklace. Hanna was inspired and Hanna’s Hearts of Hope was born.

Hanna knew from her own experience how important the Make-A-Wish foundation is to children suffering from serious diseases, and she also knew they could use all they help they could get, so Hanna now works with her dad to create more colorful heart necklaces. The necklaces are available on HannasHeartsOfHope.org for a small donation – all proceeds go to the Make-A-Wish foundation of Massachusetts to help grant the wishes of other children like Hanna.

You can read Hanna’s story in more detail on the website.

So many young people are helped by the Make-A-Wish Foundation, but they can’t do it without the support of people like Hanna. It is remarkable that so in a world where so many of us feel that we can’t make a difference, that we can’t have any real impact, this nine-year-old girl is able to set such a remarkable example – and with nothing more than some cleaned out walnut shells and melted down crayons.

The fact that a little girl, whose biggest resources are a little imagination and a lot of heart, can make a bigger difference than a lot of people with much greater means is both inspirational and humbling. Hanna’s story isn’t one we’ll be forgetting, and her example is one we intend to focus on following.

To learn more about Hanna, her Hearts of Hope Necklaces or Burkitt’s Lymphoma, visit HannasHeartsOfHope.org

Ok, here’s the rub. The universe is massive. You, by comparison, are not. The universe will react to your energy, the energy you create with the thoughts you think and actions you take. The universe cannot however, read your mind. You need to be presenting the universe with the energy you want it to align itself with in reference to your life. Let’s say you have a job you dislike or even hate, or maybe just don’t want to continue forever. I know that’s probably hard for you to imagine, I know everyone loves their jobs, but see if you can stretch your imagination a little. Now the universe picks up on two things, action energy and attitude energy.

Action energy is what the universe uses to interpret actions you take and the events in your life. Attitude energy is how you react to those actions and events. When you go to work, the action energy you put out is “money energy.” You are taking action to make money. The universe perceives this and immediately looks at how you are reacting to that action. If you go every day thinking about how much you hate your job, how miserable it makes you and how awful everything about it is, the universe is going to interpret your attitude as not being happy making money. Like I said, the universe is huge, it can’t read deeply into every nuance of what you’re thinking, it just gets the broader message. All the universe sees is you making money and being miserable, which translates to “I don’t like money.”

Since the universe is a system, it will align itself to your desires. And the desire it perceives is to stop making money. Think of it this way: Compare the universes relationship with you to your relationship with an ant. You are huge, an ant is not. When you look down and see an ant running in a particular direction, you can instantly interpret which direction it wants to be moving in. What you can’t see is why. Just like you can’t guess why an ant wants to go where it wants to go, the universe can’t determine why you are thinking the thoughts you think. It gets the general direction you are trying to move in relative to the actions you are taking. I don’t want you to start thinking of yourself as small or insignificant with my ant analogy, I merely want to illustrate the scale of what you are able to perceive so you will understand what it is the universe is able to perceive when it looks at you.

By remembering that the universe only picks up on your action and your attitude, you can clarify your desires. The best thing you can do in this example is shift your focus at work. Focus on the fact that you are making money and that money is a good thing. Be glad that at the end of the day you will have made more than you woke up with. Let the universe see you being happy making money and it will support you in making more. By removing the negativity you feel about working, you remove the negativity the universe perceives that you are feeling about money. Once you actually replace that negativity with positive thoughts and energy, the universe will see that you unequivocally want to be successful financially, that you enjoy and desire the opportunity to make money. The universe will then align itself to the energy and goals that you are demonstrating and start helping you earn whatever you want. With enough of the right focus and energy, you can convince the universe to virtually throw money and opportunities at you. Remember, systems work best when all of the components are working in comfortable harmony. As soon as the universe starts seeing you as desiring money and success, it will feed you as much as it feels you can handle, because the happier you are as a component of the system, the better off the system as a whole will be.

In the example we just outlined, we talked about two extreme ends of the spectrum. At one end, you are a miserable employee, at the other you are the most positive and driven person you can be. There is obviously a bit of a divide here. Many people fall somewhere in between: there are good days where they are happy with their jobs and bad days where they are miserable. For these people (for most people that is) the universe is never going to get a clear impression of what they want.

You need to train yourself to control your attitude and outlook. If you are constantly switching back and forth between two extreme attitudes, the universe has no choice but to try and average out what you seem to want. Basically if you spend half of your time happy and half of your time miserable, the universe can’t really do much. It will ultimately average out your attitude over time and leave you pretty much where you started.

Accept that the universe is watching, and be glad that it naturally wants to help. Demonstrate, every day, with as much conviction as you can, the things you want for your future. Train yourself, as strictly as possible, to send a consistent message to the universe, and always be grateful when the universe responds.

Definitely take the time to read through this article… you’ll be glad you did:

How To Combine Your Brain And Willpower To Break The Pattern Of Average Results

To learn more about Yaro, you can visit his blog or you can follow him on Twitter.

Every part of a system is connected and impacts the other parts. The components of a system naturally seek harmony and balance with one another, as long as each component is still aligned towards the system’s goal. Due to the fact that all of these components are interconnected and naturally balancing, each component has the ability to impact the whole. Every component can have a direct and noticeable effect on the entire system on one level or another. Consider the highways in your own city or town. They make up part of a system. If there is trouble on one particular freeway, the effects often spill out onto nearby freeways and surface roads: one component affecting another.

These days everyone understands, or should understand the environmental problems we are currently facing. This is a perfect example of individual components affecting the entire system. A great source of information on the effects we have on our planetary system is Al Gore’s documentary “An Inconvenient Truth.” Anyone who hasn’t seen this film should set aside time and rent it as soon as possible. The planet we live on is a system, all of its components working together and impacting one another, either on a large or small scale.

Everything is part of a system. Every system is actually part of a larger system. We are surrounded by them, and therefore must appreciate the profound level of impact that they have on our lives. Your body is a system, from your mind, to your heart, to your arms, legs and ears; and because all of these components are all interconnected, something as simple as a poor diet can lead to massive problems in virtually every other component of your system. Each component has the ability to affect the whole.

Consider the side effects that commonly come with medications: impacting one component of your bodily system ultimately affects other components as well. A more personal example of the human body system being impacted by individual components is comes from Lynne’s own personal experience.

Several years back, Lynne was suffering from terrible heartburn, so much so that one night she was having trouble sleeping, and at 3 A.M. decided she needed to go to the emergency room. In the hours that followed, it was determined that she had Gastro-Esophageal Reflux Disease (GERD) and was prescribed a medication to counter the reflux. For the next two years she took a pill for her reflux every day. The reflux dissipated, only to be replaced by severe abdominal pain. One component of her system was affecting the rest of her system dramatically: to the point where she couldn’t even eat without experiencing intense discomfort.

After two years of anxiety and pain she took the step to visit a naturopathic doctor. For anyone who isn’t familiar with naturopathy, it is a branch of medicine that focuses on the source of the problem rather than treating the symptoms (for example, find the cause of the reflux, rather than suppressing it with a pill.) This doctor tested Lynne for food intolerances, and quickly discovered her body, her system, did not react well to soy products.

Since this breakthrough, Lynne has cut soy out of her diet (it is in a lot more things than you think, just start looking at ingredient labels) and is no longer on any prescriptions. Once Lynne understood what was happening to one part of her body, she was able to impact her body (her system) as a whole.

These examples give a very clear picture of the dramatic effect the parts and components of a system can have on one another. Millionaires understand the principles that govern systems, and how important it is not to underestimate one compenent can have on the others. In a few days, we’ll talk about the largest system of all, how it affects you, and how you actually affect it.

DominatePPCMarketing.com

We were fortunate enough to be a part of the beta release of this course and we honestly couldn’t believe how comprehensive it was. This course was literally designed for internet marketers and teaches you everything you need to know from start to finish about using pay-per-click marketing to build your business. From setting up an account, to performing effective keyword research, to targeting the right prospects with the right ads and how to write those ads effectively, this course is the kind of opportunity that comes along and literally changes everything.

Go check out the videos and see for yourself. If you’re an internet marketer who wants to get into PPC marketing, or if you’ve been stuggling to make your marketing profitable, this is what you’ve been waiting for.

“I’m going to visit the Grand Canyon.”

Great! We have an Action, a “what,” something we are going to do. That’s it though, that’s all we have. The reason goals are so useful is that they give people a reason to push themselves towards a particular accomplishment. The problem with a simple goal like this one is that it doesn’t have that “push.” There is nothing in this goal that drives a person towards achieving it. When qualifiers are left out, they don’t go away, they just take on a state of being implied rather than defined. The goal, with its implied qualifiers actually reads:

“I’m going to visit the Grand Canyon eventually, at least once.“

Pretty vague. Doesn’t exactly portray any real sense of determination, does it? It also doesn’t set us up for constructive goal revising. With this goal we’ll ask ourselves “Have I gone to the Grand Canyon, at least once, yet?” and the answer will be “No, but I said “eventually” so there is still time,” and we are left with no reason to revise anything.

Now, if we add or rather define a qualifier (remember, undefined qualifiers don’t disappear, they just become implied), this simple goal takes on totally new life:

“I’m going to visit the Grand Canyon before I’m 40.”

Wow! All we did was define a simple Deadline and we now have a goal that will actually drive us toward achieving our Action. Now when we evaluate our goal we will be getting closer and closer to that deadline, which will drive us to act.

What about a Quantity? Or a Method?

“I’m going to visit the Grand Canyon 6 times before I’m 40, by setting aside $30 dollars a week.”

There. Replace your original, Action only goal with this new qualified goal and I’m pretty sure you’ll be going on a lot more vacations. This goal will drive you to look at how far off your Deadline is, how much of your Quantity is still to be met in that time and a Method of how you will accomplish what you are striving for. It allows you to assess if your Method is effective enough as you approach the Deadline and perhaps modify one, or both of those qualifiers as needed.

Ultimately, the more you qualify your goal, the more effectively it can drive you to succeed, and the more readily it can be revised to be attained in the future. Obviously, not all goals are created equal. Sometimes you will need to replace your Deadline with a Frequency, for example if you wanted to visit the Grand Canyon once a year, or make ten sales every month. Along with your Frequency you might want to add a Duration, determining how long you want to maintain the Action.

The important lesson to learn is that the different aspects of your goals are important keys to your success. When a goal seems out of reach, don’t despair, simply reevaluate, revise and retry.

In the next post of this series, we are going to change gears a little, and shift our focus from goals to the importance of systems in your life.

One of life's slightly frustrating, yet incredibly comical moments

It was hard not to laugh