Strategic Discipline Blog

Many of you believe your thoughts have something to do with your destiny and fulfilling your future.

There are still many who believe our thoughts have nothing to do with getting cancer, or a cold, or perhaps the flu.

On Saturday, February 25^th, 2012, I received my diagnosis of Acute Myeloid Leukemia.

Last week, just over 12 years from the moment I received a message on my computer screen at the University of Iowa Hospital, telling me I am “CANCER CURED,” I attended a weeklong training for Neuro Change Solutions coaching in Denver Colorado. Neuro Change Solutions is Dr. Joe Dispensa's coaching to help individuals and organizations change to achieve their potential.

Neuro Change Solutions comes from the book I read in the hospital, Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself: How to Lose Your Mind and Create a New One. The book, the meditations, and its principles provided me with the opportunity to evolve from who I was when I created my cancer, to believe by changing my thoughts I could eliminate it!

Neuro Change Solutions is a proprietary program based on the neuroscience of change. Taking an organization’s vision for itself, individuals are empowered to change. This, in turn, transforms the individual, their teams, and, ultimately, the organization. Neuro Change Solutions teaches how to break old habits that no longer serve and bring about true, lasting change — from the inside out.

Changing the Habit of Being Myself (My Story)

In 2012 when I entered the University of Iowa Hospital 84% of my bone marrow was cancer! The very first week in the hospital I learned I had Monosomy 7. Follow this link, and you’ll discover my chances for survival were 0-3%.

After self-flagellating on myself on Saturday and Sunday for making myself get cancer, the Monday when I woke up at the University of Iowa Hospital I began to think differently. I realized: that if my thoughts had given me cancer, then my thoughts could cure cancer.

Most people don’t think this way. I learned from studying spirituality, metaphysics, and personal development you need to control your thoughts. You can’t prevent what happens to you, consciously or unconsciously. You can control how you respond to it. From Brian Tracy’s Psychology of Achievement Cancer Cured: No One Is Guilty, I Am Responsible, I discovered all blame is a waste of time.

I believe accepting responsibility puts me in control of the outcome. Change your thoughts; change your results.

All of us live in the past. Each day our days are surprisingly similar. We get up from the same side of the bed, shower, shave, drink coffee, and go to work, following the same routine and habits we follow every day. It’s impossible to change following the same predictable familiar patterns we do each day.

We need to Break the Habit of Being Ourselves to create a new future.

This is what the Neuro Change Solutions training is all about.

It’s exactly what I did at the University of Iowa Hospital.

To Change We Need to Be Greater Than Our Environment, Our Body, and Time

You may feel you have to wear the gowns the hospital requires, see the doctors and nurses when they want to see you and observe all their rules.

I didn’t.

Each day I got up and put on my dress clothes as if I were in my office at home. And yes, I did work from the hospital for the 7 months I was confined to a private room (due to the nature of my cancer.) Nurses and doctors would get upset with me for having a sign on my door sharing that I was in a “Meeting, or Meditating,” and not to disturb me.

Five chemotherapies failed to reduce the cancer in my bone marrow to less than 42%. To qualify for a bone marrow transplant, your cancer needs to be reduced to less than 10%.

The doctors at the University of Iowa allowed me to go home to decide on a clinical trial there or at possibly two other hospitals where I’d sent my medical records.

While home, I needed to get infusions since my blood counts were low; often platelets, magnesium, or white cells needed boosting. At the infusion center on my last visit, the doctor who oversaw my treatments asked my wife and me to step into her office. After listening politely to what we thought our options were for moving forward, she offered her opinion, suggesting not so subtly. “At some point, you simply decide to spend the little time you have remaining with the people you love, rather than enduring another chemotherapy treatment.”  

I was upset! While my wife cried, I immediately began to think about how I needed to correct my meditation process. I’d been self-teaching myself how to apply the meditation principles in Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself with my friend Alan Fendrich, who suggested the book in our regular Wednesday Skype call the week after I entered the hospital. Alan and I had been meeting every Wednesday for over ten years.

Alan ran a business,  Advanced Hiring Systems, and after I had coached him on the E-Myth, he suggested we become accountability partners. His suggestion to read Dr. Joe Dispensa’s book saved my life.

I can recall many times Alan goading me, “Doug, you’re not doing it right!”

My response too often was, “Alan, I don’t know if I have time to do it right!”

His efforts, reminders, direction, and insights proved invaluable in my efforts to eliminate my cancer through meditation.

Learn to Change.

With Artificial Intelligence, global market dynamics, and technology disrupting every industry, there’s never been a more important time to know how to change.

YOU are the Chief Change Officer in your organization.

TO change MEANS to make sure the choices YOU make today, are different from what YOU did yesterday.

That’s the hardest thing!

Why?

You have upwards of 60,000 thoughts a day! 90% are repetitive! Meaning… we think the same thoughts day after day after day. 75% of your thoughts are negative!

This is why you must be aware of your subconscious thoughts and change your thoughts first!

The only place we can change is in the present moment.

Leaders who become aware, and consciously uncover the behavior, attitudes, and actions that betray this desire to improve, can strengthen their organization, grow themselves, and achieve dramatic results.

Rewire Our Brain

Change starts with awareness, behaving differently, and committing to change each day to become greater than your environment, the body, and time.

The only way to get into the software of the brain to allow us to change is through meditation and constant repetition.

My mediation process helped me become greater than my environment, my body, and time to produce the outcome I received; your solution may not be as difficult as what I faced.

Even a slight modification in your thinking, through meditation, can produce impactful changes in your life and your career!

In coming blogs, you’ll learn more about how to change, what I learned about Neuro Change Solutions, and Dr. Joe Dispensa’s revolutionary methods to create change in your organization. In the next 90 days, I’ll provide how your leadership team and your organization can achieve greater teamwork, collaboration, innovation, and engagement through Neuro Change Solutions training.

To create an environment where everyone is inspired to give their best, contact Positioning Systems to schedule a free exploratory meeting.

Let’s turn your business into a growth organization!  

Growth demands Strategic Discipline.

In What to Ask the Person in the Mirror, Robert Steven Kaplan emphasizes you don’t need to know all the answers. You need to ask the right questions. Next blog we’ll explore why you routinely need to make a conscious effort to step back, reflect, identify, and frame what issues are central to leading your organization effectively into the future.

Building an enduring great organization requires disciplined people, disciplined thought, disciplined action, superior results, producing a distinctive impact on the world.

Discipline sustains momentum, over a long period of time, laying the foundations for lasting endurance.

A winning habit starts with 3 Strategic Disciplines: Priority, Metrics, and Meeting Rhythms.   Forecasting, accountability, individual, and team performance improve dramatically.

Meeting Rhythms achieve a disciplined focus on performance metrics to drive growth.

Let Positioning Systems help your business achieve these outcomes on the Four most Important Decisions your business faces:

Positioning Systems helps mid-sized ($5M - $500M+) businesses Scale-UP. We align your business to focus on Your One Thing! Contact dwick@positioningsystems.com to Scale Up your business! Take our Four Decisions Needs Assessment to discover how your business measures against other Scaled Up companies. We’ll contact you.

NEXT BLOG – Gaining Perspective – What to Ask the Person in the Mirror