The Invisible Mentor

Posts Tagged ‘Seth Godin’

The Flinch is a great book for mentoring because it teaches us to step outside our comfort zone, and it assures us that we are not our mistakes. Because we have failed before, doesn’t mean we will not succeed. Failure is feedback, inventor Thomas Edison said, “If I find 10,000 ways something won’t work, I haven’t failed. I am not discouraged, because every wrong attempt discarded is another step forward.”

The Flinch by Julien Smith is one of the books in Seth Godin’s Domino Project, and is distributed for free to spread the message. I read it on my computer (I have the Kindle apps) and it takes under an hour to read. Smith includes homework assignments for the reader to do.

According to Smith, “This is a book about being a champion, and what it takes to get there. It’s about decisions, and how to know when you’re making the right ones. It’s about you: the current, present you; the potential, future you; and the one, single difference between them. It’s about an instinct – the flinch – and why mastering it is vital.”

The content of the book isn’t new, but it is presented in a different way, and it is easy to consume. This shouldn’t prevent you from reading The Flinch, because we often have to hear a message about nine times before it sticks. As I was reading the book, I was reminded of Martin Luther King’s quote, “Faith is taking the first step even when you don’t see the whole staircase,” and Susan Jeffers’ awesome book, Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway.

There are many times in our life, when we flinch, and do not do the things that we know will make a major difference for us, and to make ourselves feel better, we work hard at justifying our actions, yet we wonder why we never have major breakthroughs in life. The Flinch is not about feeling no fear, it is about having the courage to move forward despite the fear. We avoid the perceived pain and flinch, instead of dealing with it.

I have heard that 92 percent of the times, what we worry about never occurs, yet we waste time worrying and not take action because of what we think may happen. But the funny thing is that most of the time what we worry about never occurs, and if it does, it seldom is as bad as we imagined. The author encourages us to take back our life, to take control and stop flinching.

If we stop flinching and just do the work, our future self will thank us. When you see children playing in a park, they are fearless, and when they fall down, they get up, dust themselves off and continue like nothing happened. The Flinch is about going back to that time, when we brushed ourselves off when we got knocked down. The formula for success in life is really about trial and error, experimenting until we find what works, and it helps us to understand the environment that we exist in.

In The Flinch, Julien Smith says, “…The lessons you learn best are the ones you get burned by. Without the scar, there is no evidence or strong memory…Firsthand knowledge, however, is visceral, painful, and necessary. It uses the conscious and the unconscious to process the lesson, and it uses all your senses. You fall down, your whole motor system is involved…”

A research report by The William Glasser Institute about how we learn backs up what Smith says, we learn:

• 10 percent of what we Read
• 20 percent of what we Hear
• 30 percent of what we See
• 50 percent of what we See and Hear
• 70 percent of what we Discuss with Others
• 80 percent of what we Experience Personally
• 95 percent of what we Teach to Others

 If you experience something, you are 80 percent likely to learn from it. Nothing beats trying and testing your limits besides teaching what your learned from the experience to another person. You constantly have to test yourself to see how far you can go.

Smith recommends that you do the opposite of your habits to build your tolerance to the flinch, and the power it holds over you. In a Seinfeld episode, George Louis Costanza discovered that when he did the opposite of what he usually did, he had great success. We are socialized to respond a certain way, which is seldom the way to blaze a new trail.

The Flinch by Julien Smith is a great reminder of how important it is to stretch ourselves beyond our comfort zone. And the best part is he demonstrates how to do so in the book. Give The Flinch a read, all it will cost is an hour of your time. Even though the content isn’t new, we need a reminder. Download The Flinch today.

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Reading gives me great pleasure, so I spend a lot of time indulging myself. I also find that I am mentored by the books that I read, even novels, and books often shape my thinking. I try to read many different genres in a quest to be more creative in my thinking. I recently discovered that the books that I read were not as diverse as I thought, if you look at where the authors originate from.

Below is a list of some of the books that I have enjoyed this year, how many on the list have you read? This is a sampling because I have read over 150 books since the start of 2011. If I have reviewed the book, I have included the link to the review. From now on, when you read, assume that the book that you are reading is an invisible mentor and try to glean as much as possible from it.

Cover of The Hunger Games

Isaac Asimov’s Foundation Series

1. Foundation
2. Foundation and Empire
3. Second Foundation
4. Foundation’s Edge
5. Foundation and Earth
6. Forward the Foundation

Review of Foundation Trilogy by Isaac Asimov

A Look at Foundation’s Edge, Foundation and Earth and Forward the Foundation by Isaac Asimov

After reading most of the books from the Foundation series, I started to enjoy science fiction and fantasy more.

Alex Archer’s Rogue Angel Series

Alex Archer is a pen name for a number of authors who write the books which come out every other month. The books will unlikely win any literary award but I happen to like the protagonist Anja Creed. Trouble finds Anja wherever she goes, and I like the books best when she uses her brain to get her out of tight situations. She has inherited Joan of Arc’s sword, which she uses in fights. Anja is a globetrotting archaeologist.

1. Phantom Prospect
2. Restless Soul
3. False Horizon
4. The Other Crowd
5. The Oracle’s Message
6. Tears of the Gods

Suzanne Collins’ The Hunger Games Trilogy

1. The Hunger Games Boxed Set
2. Catching Fire
3. Mockingjay

The Hunger Games is This Year’s The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo

Catching Fire and Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins

Other Books

1. The Great Gatsby, F Scott Fitzgerald
2. Enchantment, Guy Kawasaki
3. The Way of the Samurai, Inazo Nitobe
4. How to Read Like a Professor, Thomas Foster
5. The Rime of The Ancient Mariner, Samuel Taylor Coleridge
6. The Collectibles, James Kaufman
7. Hold Tight, Harlan Coben
8. The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, Agatha Christie
9. Four Seasons The Story of a Business Philosophy, Isadore Sharp
10. How to Write & Sell Simple Information for Fun and Profit, Bob Bly
11. The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayam, Translated by Edward Fitzgerald
12. Tao Te Ching, Lao Tzu
13. The Art of War, Sun Tzu
14. Analects of Confucius
15. Keeper of the Light, Diane Chamberlain
16. A Doll’s House, Henrik Ibsen
17. Madame Bovary, Gustave Flaubert
18. Evil Plans, Hugh MacLeod
19. Poke the Box, Seth Godin
20. Lady Chatterley’s Lover, D H Lawrence
21. The Last Lecture, Randy Pausch
22. Empire State of Mind, Zack O’Malley Greenburg
23. The Big Leap, Gay Hendriks
24. The Gambler, Fyodor Dostoyevsky
25. Geronimo’s Story of His Life, S. M. Barrett
26. The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, Anne Bronte
27. A Short History of the World, J. Milnor Dorey
28. Greek Gods and Heroes, Robert Graves
29. Stories from Greek Drama, Winifred Mulley
30. The Hypnotist, Lars Kepler
31. The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
32. The Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde
33. Agnes Grey, Anne Bronte

How can you use this information? What do you have to add to the conversation? Let’s keep the conversation flowing, please let me know your thoughts in the comments section below. Many readers read this blog from other sites, so why don’t you pop over to The Invisible Mentor and subscribe (top on the right hand side) by email or RSS Feed.

Some of the book links are affiliate links.

I finally got around to reading my complimentary copy of Zarrella’s Hierarchy of Contagiousness: The Science, Design, and Engineering of Contagious Ideas by Dan Zarrella, which is a manifesto from Seth Godin’s Domino Project. The manifesto is a short read but it is packed with a lot of punch.

We’ve all seen videos, blog posts and ideas that spread like wildfire over the internet.

But what makes them spreadable? Is it because they are good?

Not necessarily, says Dan Zarrella, since some of those videos, blog posts and ideas aren’t good. They spread because they have contagiousness factors.  They spread because they are able to reproduce themselves. “In his 1976 book The Selfish Gene, Richard Dawkins coined the word “meme” to mean a “unit of cultural inheritance.” His point was ideas evolve like genes do, and their success is based on their ability to spread, not on their benefit to provide to their hosts,” says Zarrella.

What I liked about the manifesto is that it’s researched-based and the author loves to tests things. Before an idea is spread, there are three criteria that must be met first:

1. Exposure: People have to be exposed to your content, so that means that they have to subscribe to your blog, be on your email list, or follow you on LinkedIn, Twitter or Facebook. To win at this you have to increase the number of people who subscribe to you blog, are on your email lists, and who connect or follow you on the various social networks.
2. Attention: They have to be aware of the content that you want to spread, so they have to read you blog post, open your email or read you status update. To win at this, you have to write better headlines/subject lines for your blog posts and emails, as well as more engaging status updates.
3. Motivation: They have to be motivated to share your content. Always have a call to action so people know what they are supposed to do next.

And the key to the above is really to experiment to determine what works and what doesn’t work so well.

Zarrella takes each criteria, and delves into them in their own chapter and gives deeper insight into exactly what he means. For instance, we are often told that if we have a small engaged list, our idea will spread, but the science doesn’t really support that. Yes, there are times we’ll get lucky, but for an idea to spread, it’s better if it’s exposed to a larger audience because not everyone will read it, and of those who read about your idea, even less will be motivated to share it.

In addition, certain words such as official, founder, speaker, expert and so on give us authority and increases our exposure. Another interesting piece of information is that people prefer information from you that’s positive because they are bombarded with so much negative information every day. And when you write, they want to hear your voice, your unique take, they want you to be authentic, but they do not want to hear about you. It’s what’s in it for them.

To grab attention you have to cut through all the clutter, but to do so, you have to say something new in a way that is familiar, or say something old in a new way, and one of the examples Zarrella gave was new adaptations of Romeo and Juliet. Another way is to personalize your message, or even broadcast your message at counterintuitive times such as on the weekends. Email messages that were sent between 5 and 6 am had the highest click through rates.

Certain types of information are more spreadable than others:

1. People have to be eager for the information.
2. Have to know what information people already have and what they lack.
3. Have to have an understanding of what moves them – their hopes, fears, hostilities.
4. Have an understanding of how they deal with their hopes, fears, hostilities, and so on.

Some of the reasons people are motivated to spread your ideas include: Personal relevance, humour, usefulness, shared common interest and so on. And the easier it is to read and understand your idea, the more spreadable it becomes.

3 Great Ideas

1. Talk as yourself, not about yourself.
2. Add to the conversation with interesting content.
3. Scarce knowledge is power

I recommend Zarrella’s Hierarchy of Contagiousness: The Science, Design, and Engineering of Contagious Ideas by Dan Zarrella because it has tips that you can readily implement to test for yourself.

Other Resources

 How to Write Magnetic Headlines, Copyblogger.com

How to Write Headlines That Work, Copyblogger.com

102 Proven Social Media Headline Formulas, Chris Garrett

Idea Starters: 52 Headline Archetypes to Get Your Creative Juices Flowing

How to Spread Your Ideas, Leo Babauta

How can you use this information? What do you have to add to the conversation? Let’s keep the conversation flowing, please let me know your thoughts in the comments section below. Many readers read this blog from other sites, so why don’t you pop over to The Invisible Mentor and subscribe (top on the right hand side) by email or RSS Feed.

Book link is affiliate link.

Image via Wikipedia

“Good enchanters are likable, but great enchanters are likable and trustworthy.”

Guy Kawasaki in his new book, Enchantment: The Art of Changing Hearts, Minds, and Actions defines enchantment as “the process of delighting people with a product, service, organization, or idea. The outcome of enchantment is voluntary and long-lasting support that is mutually beneficial….It causes voluntary change of hearts and minds and therefore actions….Enchantment transforms situations and relationships. ”

There is a shift taking place in the universe today. The consciousness is changing as evidenced by the kind of books that are being written. We have passed through the Information Age and entering into a new one, one that is more tribal in nature. Power and information is no longer filtering down from the top. Instead, the funnel has been turned upside down and information is moving from the grassroots up to the top.

More and more people realize that life is more than about them, and they are interested in causes that matter, that change lives. Success now comes with greater responsibilities, and to captivate audiences require different actions. And you have to be likeable and trustworthy – you have to be authentic.

That means you have to become an enchanter!

And that’s where Enchantment: The Art of Changing Hearts, Minds, and Actions comes in. The book has 12 chapters with titles such as:

1. Why Enchantment?
2. How to Achieve Likability
3. How to Achieve Trustworthiness
4. How to Prepare
5. How to Launch
6. How to Overcome Resistance
7. How to Make Enchantment Endure
8. How to Use Push Technology
9. How to Use Pull Technology
10. How to Enchant Employees
11. How to Enchant Your Boss
12. How to Resist Enchantment

To become likeable, Guy Kawasaki suggests you should strive to create win-win situations, accept others, seek common ground, not impose your values on others, try to default to yes, among other things. To be trustworthy, you first have to trust others, be a Mensch, disclose your interests, give for intrinsic reason, gain knowledge and competence, show up, bake a bigger pie, enchant people on their own terms, position yourself  and be a hero. And he goes into great detail to explain what he means.

For instance, to be a mensch, Guy Kawasaki paraphrased his friend, Bruna Martinuzzi’s 10 ways to achieve menschdom and added two of his own.

1. Always act with honesty.
2. Treat people who have wronged you with civility.
3. Fulfill your unkept promises from the past.
4. Help someone who can be of absolutely no use to you.
5. Suspend blame when something goes wrong, ask “What can we learn?”
6. Hire people who are as smart as or smarter than you are and give them opportunities for growth.
7. Don’t interrupt people; don’t dismiss their concerns offhand; don’t rush to give advice; don’t change the subject. Allow people their moment.
8. Do no harm in anything you undertake.
9. Don’t be too quick to shoot down others’ ideas.
10. Share your knowledge, expertise, and best practices with others.
11. Focus on goodwill.
12. Give others the benefit of the doubt.

To me, living the 12 precepts of “menschdom” is not easy but it’s something to strive for. And we have to recognize that we won’t be on top of them all the time.

Guy Kawasaki: The Pillars of Enchantment

If you cannot view this YouTube video from Forbes Video, please click here.

There is some unexpected wisdom in Enchantment. I particularly liked the idea of conducting a pre-mortem. A post-mortem is dissecting after the fact to determine cause, but in a pre-mortem, before you launch a new product, service or whatever, you project into the future with a mindset that you failed and why. The team is uninhibited in brainstorming the many reasons for failing because the project hasn’t launched yet so they will not be offending anyone. After the failure brainstorming session, they make the necessary changes to the product, service or whatever, to safeguard against those failures. Isn’t that a brilliant idea?

I also liked the sections on how to use technology to become an enchanter, and I appreciated that Kawasaki consulted with experts to get their tips to share, and they are tips that you can implement right away. Enchantment: The Art of Changing Hearts, Minds, and Actions by Guy Kawasaki is well researched and as a reformed researcher, that gave him even more credibility in my eyes. At the end of each chapter, you experience enchantment in action via vignettes from many ordinary people. There is also a quiz at the end of the book.

If you want to be more likeable and trustworthy, then Enchantment: The Art of Changing Hearts, Minds, and Actions is the book for you because it has concrete steps on how to become an enchanter. But I also recommend that you read Linchpin and Poke the Box by Seth Godin, Do the Work by Steven Pressfield, Evil Plans by Hugh MacLeod because all these books help you to reach your highest potential, which I think is part of being enchanting.

Guy Kawasaki mentions Apple and its products a lot in Enchantment, and people may find that annoying or offensive, but I know that he is an Apple evangelist so it doesn’t bother me. I would like to mention that I received a copy of Enchantment: The Art of Changing Hearts, Minds and Actions from the publisher to review.

How can you use this information? What do you have to add to the conversation? Let’s keep the conversation flowing, please let me know your thoughts in the comments section below. Many readers read this blog from other sites, so why don’t you pop over to The Invisible Mentor and subscribe (top on the right hand side) by email or RSS Feed.

Book links are affiliate links.

Cover via Amazon

I read a lot, about three to four books each week. Included in this list are books that I have reviewed as well as some that I enjoyed but chose not to review.

The Hunger Games Trilogy: The Hunger Games, Catching Fire and Mockingkay by Suzanne Collins

The Hunger Games series of books is science fantasy written for young adults. The Hunger Games, the first instalment was a page turner so I decided to read the other two, Catching Fire and Mockingjay. Out of the three books the only one that cannot stand by itself is Catching Fire. If you read Catching Fire you have to read Mockingjay or else you’d be disappointed. I enjoyed The Hunger Games series, but in Mockingjay, I felt like a chapter was missing from the book. I will review Catching Fire and Mockingjay jointly tomorrow.

The Hunger Games is This Year’s The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo

The Foundation Novels: Forward the Foundation, Foundation, Foundation and Empire, Second Foundation, Foundation’s Edge, and Foundation and Earth by Isaac Asimov

Mathematician Hari Seldon developed a field called psychohistory which is supposed to predict the future, and the novel revolves around The Seldon Plan which talks about different crises. The novels in the series push the imagination. I have never been a big fan of science fiction but I forced myself to read Foundation, which was the first instalment in the series that I read. After a while I got into the book and I ended up reading six out of the seven books in the series. I didn’t read the seventh because it was actually the first one and it seemed silly to me to read it after I knew how things turned out.

Review of Foundation Trilogy by Isaac Asimov

A Look at Foundation’s Edge, Foundation and Earth and Forward the Foundation by Isaac Asimov

The Midwife’s Confession, Diane Chamberlain

Diane Chamberlain is an excellent writer, and all her novels that I have read so far are about love, loss, deception, bertrayal, and redemption. There are instances when I hurt so badly because of what the characters go through in her novels. I promised myself that I would take a break from her novels and yet I read The Midwife’s Confession, which is brand new. There are many profound life lessons embedded in her novels.

Review: Keeper of the Light by Diane Chamberlain

The Bricklayer and Agent X by Noah Boyd

Last summer Seth Godin recommended The Bricklayer so I read and enjoyed it. I loved the novel because the protagonist Steve Vail an ex FBI agent is asked to work on a difficult case because they needed someone who could work outside of the system. Vail doesn’t suffer from group think, and he sees problems very differently from others and that’s what makes him so good. But like anything in life, any trait can be a double edged sword. Vail is not good at working as part of a team. Agent X is the sequel to The Bricklayer. Well written fiction books often teach lessons that are relevant to our workplace today, and The Bricklayer and Agent X teach great lessons about working in a team, as well as looking at problems from many angles.

I had intended to have more books for you, but I thought this is more than enough to keep you busy. If you are interested in what I’ll be reading in the next two months, here are some of the books.

• Sunset Bridge, Emilie Richards
• The Social Contract, Jean-Jacques Rousseau
• A Vindication of the Rights of Woman and A Vindication of the Rights of Men, Mary Wollstonecraft
• Enchantment, Guy Kawasaki
• Ten Steps Ahead, Erik Calonius
• Killing Giants, Stephen Denny

How can you use this information? What do you have to add to the conversation? Let’s keep the conversation flowing, please let me know your thoughts in the comments section below. Many readers read this blog from other sites, so why don’t you pop over to The Invisible Mentor and subscribe (top on the right hand side) by email or RSS Feed.

Book links are affiliate links.