Congruent Actions

The customer does not care about you. They care about themselves, their needs and wants. Marketing requires a context shift. Back In January I suggested that you Turn Down The Volume, Turn Up the Value because:

Many small businesses simply do not have enough money to spend on a creative advertising campaign to ‘out shout’ the competition. The way I see it you can try and slug it out with all the other marketers and advertisers shouting at your market, or you can shift gears by quietly helping your customers with the information they want and need.

Invest in them. Create value. Help them today, even if they do not buy anything from you. In a previous article Do Not Build A Web Site - Build A Value Engine I proposed that you find ways to add value before, during and after the sale…. Create a sense of community.

Nothing earth shattering in these posts, very much 1.0 ideas and valid. In order to begin to experience Relationship 2.0 required that I reshape my thinking. First I had to break a bad habit.

Breaking My Goal Setting Addiction

One of the greatest addictions I have personally battled with is constantly setting, modifying, and re-setting goals. The frustrating part was that despite my best efforts I was disappointed with my results. I made a living but I never felt like I prospered. Do you know the reason goal setting fails? Because, it fails to address the source of the problem, my behaviors. Like Mike Vance states:

“We do what we are. We are what we think. What we think is determined by what we learn. What we learn is determined by what we experience and what we experience is determined by what we expose ourselves to and what we do with that experience.” - Mike Vance, founder and dean of Walt Disney University

My behaviors and actions are what people see. What they cannot normally see is the knowledge, belief system, values, and the principles that shaped my behavior. Answer this question:

Am I listening to my own voice or someone else’s?

When I first started examining what was influencing my behaviors and answering that question I was shocked by my answers. I discovered that I did not have an original thought in my head. I was pissed.

To ‘Behave Different’ Required I Conduct a ‘Thought Audit’

What I learned was that if I was going to reshape my thinking I first had to decide whether my beliefs, values, and principles were appropriate to my position in life. My thought audit was not about positive thinking but critically examining if what I believed was really what I felt was true, appropriate and serving me. Or had I simply recycled gibberish from someone else?

I made up my mind to begin to ‘audit my thoughts’ and rebuild my values, beliefs, and principles. I am not done and hopefully never will be. The liberty and freedom I experience daily is the best drug. As I began to purge my addiction to living as an unconscious competent and formed a new perspective my intent changed. Then “the content of my intent became the content of my results.”

Why is this important for me? Well as an analytical, information geek personal congruence is essential if I want to live and work with passion and conviction. I am a lousy actor and I wear my emotions on my sleeve. I discovered that as my congruence grew, not only did it increase my passion and conviction it also brought incredible clarity and transparency to my thoughts, which came out in my writing.

Goodbye Introvert, Hello Relationship Geek

All right, I will never be a relationship geek like my buddy Phil but for me it is a huge shift that is now impacting my approach to how I market, promote, and write. Simply being creative, unique and good does not cut it anymore. I had to pull my head out of my ass and examine my beliefs, values, and principles. Until I audited my beliefs, values, and principles - I would not know if I was thinking for myself or if I was simply the world’s greatest recycling machine.

Relationship 2.0 + Value Engine = Congruent Action

Your customers have really good crap detectors and they can sense when you do not believe what you are saying. They might not be able to put it into words but they just feel uneasy.

Blogging and relationships are like farming. Before you can reap a harvest you first have to sow good seed, tend the garden of your mind, then reap a harvest.

Are you unknowingly planting orange seeds but expecting a harvest of apples? Is your blog congruent with who you are? If not you need a ‘thought audit’.

Once you do that you will begin to sow good seed and create a true Value Engine which when successful becomes a network of interdependent users with each one benefiting when another joins. In the connected world there will always be a gap between people. You close the gap by building relationships, which helps build positive perceptions and momentum of reciprocity (a topic for another day, stay tuned).

How To Conduct a Thought Audit

Get it down on paper. First, make a list of your values, beliefs, morals, ethics and principles - those things you hold as true. Then categorize them into separate lists placing your values, beliefs, morals, ethics and principles in the appropriate category. Values go into the values list then morals onto your morals list etc. until you have them all organized.

Examine each, one at a time and answer the question Am I thinking for myself or is this someone else’s thought? When you identify one that is not your own, cross it off your list. Once you have reviewed them all you can now clean up the list.

Next add new values, beliefs, morals, ethics and principles to your lists. Using the lists is simple. Whenever you feel uncomfortable, conflicted, and incongruent pull out your lists and see if your thoughts are in alignment with your lists. If not, simply read the appropriate item. What does this accomplish?

It is like what happens when you rewrite a hard drive the old data gets over written. You have a new Operating System and it will gradually begin to become apparent as you begin to reap the reward of the good seeds you are planting.