I woke up this morning with a clarity that I should share with you some of the fascinating

Is this courage or what!

leadership research I’ve been doing over the last six months.

Have you heard of the Map of Consciousness? I doubt it. It’s not exactly mainstream, yet it is quite profound. And it has a huge impact on personal behaviors and performance. Therefore, it relates to a huge leadership issue and opportunity.

Dr. David Hawkins, MD, wrote Power vs Force: the Hidden Determinants of Human Behavior in 1995, and introduced the Map of Consciousness in it. I’ll call it MOC.

The MOC is a logarithmic scale 1 to 1,000 that defines levels of consciousness and the characteristics of each level. Depending upon your current level of consciousness, your behaviors and performance–both supportive and limiting–will follow.

FYI: your MOC number can be measured. How? We’ll discuss that in another post.

Do you remember our model of Personal DNA™? It stands for Decide, Notice, and Acknowledge. It is a model of self-fulfilling prophecy. Once we make a decision, we automatically look for indications it is true. When we spot evidence that supports the decision, we acknowledge our decision, and the decision is even more solidified.

So, if your decision is “limiting,” the natural process will work to prove your limiting decision is correct. If you say, for example, “I’m so forgetful,” the mind will support your decision by looking for and finding indications that your decision is true. And when it spots an indication, it points it out, and you say, “See there? I knew was forgetful.” This is a no-win game. You don’t even notice the times you DID remember, because that wasn’t your decision.

If you made a “supportive” decision instead, like “I have a good memory,” your mind will look for and find indications that is true. It will spot and point out an example of your memory being good and you’ll acknowledge, “See there? I knew my memory was good.” That supportive decision supports you in continuing to improve your memory.

Folks, this is very real. You can spiral downward with a limiting decision or spiral upward to develop your strengths with a supportive decision. I invite you to correct those decisions that you’ve made which are holding you back. Here is a video we did on Personal DNA.

Now, back to MOC. It’s amazing how Personal DNA and MOC align. There are supportive MOC levels and limiting MOC levels. If we want people to contribute more and disturb less, we need to look at this from a leadership perspective.

For this series of posts, I’m only going to look at the MOC between 0 and 600, because above 600 is Enlightenment, and not too many people I know will relate to that. To put it in perspective, Jesus Christ and Buddha calibrate at 1,000. Other historical spiritual/religious leaders calibrate between 600 and 1,000.

So, let’s look at the lower part of the scale:

“0″ on the scale represents Death. No human consciousness.

For today’s discussion, I’m going to focus up to the level of 250, which is defined as Neutral, the point above which consciousness shifts to supportive, reinforcing, positive, etc.

Below the Neutral band is negative, energy-draining, “what’s wrong”-oriented consciousness. This is exactly like a limiting decision in Personal DNA.

Above Neutral is positive, energy-adding, “what’s right”-oriented consciousness. This is exactly like a supportive decision in Personal DNA.

There’s good news and bad news.

The bad news first. According to Dr. Hawkins, the average person never changes their Map of Consciousness number by more than five points in a lifetime. That’s scary – unless you happened to be born with a high MOC level.

The good news. You CAN change your MOC # rather dramatically(e.g., 100 point improvement) by deciding to do so, then focusing attention on doing what it takes. I’ve personally seen this happen.

Now, before this post gets too long, let’s look at some of the levels below 250, the Neutral point of MOC – just to give you something to think about.

• Death – 0
• Shame – 20
• Guilt – 30
• Apathy – 50
• Grief – 75
• Fear – 100
• Desire – 125
• Anger – 150
• Pride – 175
• Courage – 200 (This is a crucial point. Neutral actually begins here and stays until level 250. When we reach the courage level, we’ve made a major shift for the better. There is also much more energy at this level than at the Anger level of 150.)
• Neutrality 250.  At 251, you’re in the supportive, positive territory!

Now, don’t panic when you see this list. You’ve been very angry, so you wonder if you’re at 150? Not likely. I, too, have been very angry, and when I was in that anger, I WAS at 150. But once through the anger and out the other side, I moved back to my “normal” consciousness level.

The thing I’m working on is how to spend less and less of my time at levels below 250, and certainly below 200! And, of course, spending more and more time at levels above these.

Ok, that’s enough for now. This will be a short series of posts if this is of interest. Would love to have comments from you about whether this is interesting or not?

Best wishes to the Enlightened Leader in you!

Ed

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The last 100 days of 2010, I did this 100 Day Challenge and found it very useful for keeping me focused on the results I wanted to accomplish. I know I got much closer to the goals because of it.

The quality of the program is excellent. I recommend it for any important goal you might have.

Check out the video to see if this might help you excel over the most important 100 days of the new year – the FIRST ones! It’s so important to get a great start. It defines the entire year!

If it sounds interesting to you, get more information by clicking here.

Either way, may your first 100 days of 2011 be an awesome start to your greatest year yet.

The Enlightened Leadership Team

As I’ve enjoyed family time in the mountains of Colorado (the snow is excellent this year!), I have realized the importance of completing 2010 and mentally preparing for 2011—before I’m in the middle of it.

So I took time over several sittings, using our Framework for Review and Planning, to do just that. The process was so inspiring and mind-clearing that I thought I should suggest it to you.

Now I realize that you’ve already done review and planning with your key team and this does not replace that. What this does is completes the past year in your own mind, in such a way that is encouraging and inspiring—regardless of how your year went. It also clarifies new year strategies and tactics in a way that clears your mind and readies you for specific action.

One more comment before sharing the process: you might want to do this separately for different parts of your life: business, personal, relational, etc.

So, here is the process:

1. Think about “What worked or is working” from this past year. I went back through my 2010 calendar to remind myself of some of the activities over the year. From those, I was reminded of successes, small and large, that I then captured onto my list. This list will be long and encouraging. Seldom do we give ourselves enough credit for our successes. I actually did this process over two days. Sleeping on my initial list allowed for some additional processing and insights overnight. I probably spent a total of an hour during this step.
2. As I captured each success, I often realized the next steps in order to take advantage of the initial success.  Then I would scroll down on the page (on the computer for editing ease), create a Step 5, which is “What can I do more, better, or differently to move closer to my objectives?” Whenever I had an insight about additional steps, I captured it right away. This is incredibly freeing for the mind, as I knew I wasn’t going to lose those insights. By time I finished my long list of successes, I had an accompanying long list of action steps—many of which were, “Plan how to utilize XYZ success.”
3. While I could have stopped the process right there and still received a great deal of value, I knew a bit more work would go a long way towards achieving my goals. So I went to Step 3: “What are my primary objectives for 2011?” Again, I already knew these objectives, but there is a special value in revisiting them from the standpoint of successes I had had over previous months. Sure enough, the creativity that was opened up by remembering a lot of successes in a short period of time gave me fresh insights about 2011 objectives. Those new insights were particularly inspiring.
4. Step 3 was so useful that I decided to spend a few additional minutes on Step 4, which is “What are the benefits to all stakeholders for accomplishing the objectives?” In my case, there was nothing earth-shaking here, but worth reflecting about.
5. That brings us again to Step 5, which is mostly complete. Nevertheless, I reflected again, based on new clarity of the objectives, “What can I do more, better or different to move closer to those objectives?” New action steps came up, several of which required some additional thought and planning. Even though the action list was long and a bit daunting, how freeing it was to get it down on paper, thus freeing my mind to enjoy my family time, knowing I was ready and excited to launch into the new year.

This didn’t feel like work to me. It was quite encouraging, inspiring, and energizing. I encourage you to give yourself this gift. It likely won’t take more than an hour or two over a couple of days. If it takes more time than that, it will be because you’re so engaged that you want to put more time into it! Enjoy the process.

We are so grateful for our subscribers and we wish you the most joy-filled and prosperous 2011.

I’m really impressed with how a local organization that promotes a service called WeeklyPlus has distinguished themselves!

What they do is send out by email a weekly coupon for a service in the Denver, CO area. The deals are often very good. For example, I’ve paid $2 for a $12 car wash and $29 for a full-hour massage. I like it because I can quickly determine if I have any interest in their current offer. If I do, I next look at the location of the service to see if it is convenient for me. I waste very little time with the decision. I like that.

How did they distinguish themselves?

Here’s what happened. I bought six weeks of personal training for only $29. It was an amazing deal. I had a few months to cash it in, and guess what I did. I waited until the last minute. Anybody else ever do that?

But, finally I was ready to set my first appointment, so I called the number – twice, because I got a disconnected number message. Well, you guessed it. They had gone out of business.

Since I wasn’t sure, I contacted WeeklyPlus to see if they knew about the situation. They didn’t know it either, but agreed to look into it. They called back with confirmation that the company was out of business. They shocked me with what happened next!

They offered to return my money or give me credit! No hesitation whatsoever. They wanted me to be happy. That was a distinguishing decision, and you can bet that I am a happy customer who promotes their business. That was totally unexpected!

What are you doing to distinguish yourself and/or your business? It could make all the difference in the demand for your services.

Are you distinguishing yourself through leadership? It’s a great way for all of us as individuals.

Here’s to Distinguishing Yourself!

Ed Oakley