Welcome back. In this module, we're going to explore how do we invoke, how do we activate or arouse our ideal self? How do we help someone else think about and identify a personal vision? We talked in the earlier modules about why this was so important, and how this is a key part of the technique for developing and triggering, if you will, the positive emotional attractor. The problem with the ideal self is that very often, we have a lot of selves out there. And in psychology, one has been labeled the ought self. The ought self is the part of the ideal self that other people are giving us. We grow in the, as Max Weber said, in the iron cage of others' expectations. So part of the ought self might come from parents, grandparents, a sense of obligation to our family. It could come from statements from teachers, managers, our spouse. But the ought self is the ideal self that other people want us to have, not the one that we want. Now it may overlap, but often what happens is the ought self. Starts to weigh heavy on us. And it crowds out our ability to dream about the person we would like to be, the life we would like to be living. Now, I'm not suggesting that the ideal self is an irresponsible or narcissistic issue. Of course, we all have a lot of social responsibilities to loved ones. Our families, our communities, our work organizations. But our ideal self is how would we love to be as a person. What would we love to be doing? What would we really enjoy, if life were going well, really well? Now, sports figures understand this. Almost every gold medal athlete in the Olympics will talk about positive visioning. I had the opportunity to be talking to Sylvie Bernier, who won the first gold medal in diving for Canada, and what Sylvie said was that she spent more time in the six or so weeks before the actual Olympics doing visual imagining exercises, many of them at the side of the pool, than actually diving into the water. She said during the two weeks before her actual event, she went to the pool where she would be doing the dives. She asked people where the cameras would be, where people would be moving, where the flower pots would be. She said she wanted to identify which seats her parents would be in. All because she wanted to make sure that by the time she showed up to do her dives the setting was deja vu. She could just focus on her dives. That's positive visioning. Ole Bjorndalen won four gold medals in the Salt Lake City Winter Olympics in the biathlon. He had been in two prior Olympics and hadn't won any medals. And every time he won a gold medal, he would introduce people to his shooting coach and his other coach. His other coach was a vacuum cleaner salesman from Trondheim. That happened to try to sell him a vacuum cleaner in between the two Olympics and started talking to him about how he uses positive visioning in his sales technique. And his sales training. Now, if you ever think about competitive shooting where you're lining up a rifle to get a bullet in a very small circle, very far away, how difficult it is. The problem, basically, is that you're trying to control your pulse rate and your breathing. Now, do it after you've skied for seven and a half kilometers and you all of a sudden sling the rifle up and you're going "a-huuuh, a-huuuh." So the person who actually can calm their body the quickest is the one who gets the higher scores. And that's where visioning is a part of feeding into some of the mindfulness techniques. And again we can go story after story, about great Oly- athletes who do this. And yet we forget to keep our dreams, to keep our personal vision in the forefront of what we're doing. We forget as we get older. As our expectations build up, we forget. It's not like we intentionally make a decision, and say, okay, I'm not going to pursue that dream. We literally let it slip away. It is one of the effects of preoccupation. It's one of the consequences of the kind of chronic annoying stress we talked about in module 2. And what happens is when we start to forget, nobody around us reminds us. I mean, how many times have you started a course in some university or program where a person doesn't say, well why are you taking this? They say here are the objectives. How many times have you gone to a company or government training program? Do they start by asking you why are you here? What is it you'd like to get out of this? What is it you want to learn? Typically not. Typically they say here are the objectives and you're supposed to salute and just do it. You know what, how, how did we get that way? When you start to think about, you know, you graduated from school really excited and. You're motivated and you get a job, and, you know, you're workin' really hard and you start to get a promotion. You know, and then, you get married and then maybe you have kids. Then maybe you get another promotion. And then you buy a house. And then you get another promotion. And after a while you wake up and look around and say how did I get here? As if you've been in a spiritual blackout. That's how it slips away. Somehow in between taking Janie to her tennis lesson and getting the storm door fixed and planning the family vacation and polishing off another 20 e-mails, we let it slip by. And yet, if we forget our dreams, a little bit of us dies inside. And without hope, without a dream, we start to move through life in a very hollow way. Dreams are very important. This personal vision is absolutely important. I'd like to use a Portuguese poem to illustrate this. This is a poem called [FOREIGN] by Antonio Gedeão. I'll read it, selected stanzas translated into English. and there's marvelous rendition of this put to music by Manuel Freire. But in these selected stanzas, what Gedeão is saying is they do not know that the dream is a constant in life. They do not know that the dream is wine, it's fizz, it's yeast, it's an eager and vivacious small animal that. With a pointy nose that pries through everything in a perpetual motion. They do not know that the dream is canvas and color and brush. They do not know, nor even dream, that dream commands life. When a man or woman dreams, the world leaps and moves forward like a colorful ball in the hands of a child. Dreaming is very powerful. Collectively it works the same way. I had the opportunity a few years ago to hear Tom Strauss, the CEO of Summa Health Systems, a healthcare company in in Ohio, based primarily in Ohio. And when he took over. He ended up. They had one hospital. Now I think they have seven general hospitals and seven outpatient clinics or something like that. But when he took over they had one main hospital. And he asked for a whole bunch of focus groups of doctors, and nurses, and families of patients, and patients, and receptionists. Everybody got involved. And one of the things that came out of it that alarmed him, a few of the things that came out of it alarmed him, but one of them was that people didn't feel connected. So, among other things that he wanted to work on, he commissioned a task force of a cross-section of people involved in the hospital to come up with some techniques where people could feel connected. One of the things they did is they drafted a vision statement. And then they spent three months walking it through different parts of the organization and editing it, getting it right. And then they put it on a little card, and for many years, they carry that card. I spent a few, I was so impressed with this when I heard him give a talk about it that, at a conference for nonprofits. I spent a few years checking out whether or not it was mirrors and blue smoke or it was true. I talked to doctors and nurses who worked there. I talked to, at Summa, I talked to doctors and nurses who had left. I even talked to a board member. And they convinced the skeptical scientist in me that it was true. I'd like to read you that vision statement from Summa Health Care. You are what people see when they arrive here. Yours are the eyes they look into when they're frightened and lonely. Yours are the voices people hear when they ride elevators when they try to, sleep, and when they try to forget their problems. You are what they hear on their way to appointments that could affect their destinies, and what they hear after they leave those appointments. Yours are the comments people hear when you think they can't. Yours is the intelligence and caring that people hope they'll find here. If you're noisy, so is the hospital. If you're rude, so is the hospital. And if you're wonderful, so is the hospital. No visitors, patients, physicians, or coworkers can ever know the real you unless. You let them see it. All they know is what they see and hear and experience. So we have a stake in your attitude and the attitudes of everyone that works at the hospital. We are judged by your performance. We are the care you give. The attention you pay. The courtesies you extend. Thank you for all you're doing. How's that for a vision statement? You notice that nowhere in there does it say that we want to be the number one healthcare provider of choice in central Ohio? Going back to a message I offered in the first module, that would be an example of confusing goals with purpose. A vision statement is about purpose. I love this vision statement because it ends up invoking the very essence of hope and compassion. People often hear me talk about this, and I got permission from Tom Strauss and, and the lawyers at Summa Health Systems to use this and reproduce it in our 2005 book Resonant Leadership. But part of it is that, it's just such a marvelous message. And people say, wow, I'd like to go there for healthcare. Hey, I'd like to work at a place like that. Now, as the hospital grew, recently some time in the past few years, they changed the business statement. So if you go online, you'll see what unfortunately I think of as a little more of a vanilla. Image that isn't quite as inspirational. But in the process what Tom did was absolutely amazing. In his, he has at least one weekly meeting of the heads of the operating units, all these different hospitals' outpatient clinics. And what he does, he has 60 minutes in this meeting, he asks two of them to bring in a story each week. And to kick off the meeting with hearing these two stories of a patient who was helped in their facility in a prior week. The man's brilliant. What he does, is he devotes ten minutes of his 60 minutes. To baking people feel in the positive emotional attractor. To bringing them in to remembering the core purpose that they have is to be healers and to feel proud about how they helped two people and their families. So for the rest of the 50 minutes left in the meeting he can move into the negative emotional attractor, talk about budget performance, talk about variances, talk about problems they need to fix. But it opens with people feeling open, lifted, and renewed. That's the power of vision. In a latter module we'll talk about how to curry or invoke or develop a shared vision. But for right now I just want to focus on. What this does for you when you're doing it. And if you're talking with someone as the assignment from the last module was. If you're engaging in an conversation that inspires or coaching with compassion, you're trying to help someone move back into this positive emotional attractor. [MUSIC]
