Author Steve Pressfield’s excellent book The Artist’s Journey presents one of life’s most incredible choices to us.

Pressfield outlines the typical path of our first journey, The Hero’s Journey. This journey is our initial career which is typically a planned and unspectacular progression down a ‘proven’ path.

Pressfield then presents us with the paradox of a second journey, The Artist’s Journey. Here the individual feels a pull or yearning towards another path – one quite different and challenging – requiring the individual to step away from the comfort or familiarity of life’s current position.

Let’s challenge ourselves to understand Pressfield’s proposition.

Many years ago, I was introduced to affirmations as a tool to enhance performance.

Affirmations accelerate your goal achievement based on the cognitive process of ‘Think. Say. Do.’

Think of a behaviour or attribute that you want to demonstrate or possess.

Say it (literally speak it out aloud) in the presence tense as if you demonstrated or possessed it now.

Do it. The combination of thinking and saying that you possess this attribute now, causes cognitive dissonance. Cognitive dissidence is a state when your mind can’t hold two competing beliefs at the same time. It causes a feeling of mental discomfort or imbalance. The mind then gets drawn to one of the two competing pictures to restore balance.

It is foolish to think you will miraculously produce great work from a small sample of your offerings.

Soon your work will be supported by a congo line of raving fans.

Right?

Wrong!

To produce the ‘Hits’ you have to produce many ‘Misses’.

To get noticed in your niche, you have to be prepared to produce work prodigiously. There are no shortcuts in mining the fields because you don’t know where the diamonds are.

To demonstrate, let’s look at some of the greatest performers.

There is no doubt that 2020 taught us we don’t truly control anything.

The pandemic has taught us how little we control. In fact, the real lesson is that we only truly control our attitudes in responding to us losing control - the way in which we perceive, react and reflect upon the circumstances presented.

I’ve never seen or experienced so many of us facing mental health challenges and we are not out of this yet by a long way.

So what can we do for ourselves, our co-workers, friends and family to help us deal with challenges to our mental health?

Possibly the biggest decision for Business Owners in 2021 is what their workplace will look like.

My clients and I have been working through creating a Workplace Plan for 2021 where we map out the workplace in relation to physical (employees attending business premises) and remote working arrangements (employees working from home).

Let’s pull apart the physical & remote workplace dilemma.

It starts with an assessment of the pros and cons of the two options.

Pattern recognition is where information is classified based on information already gained, or from information extracted from patterns identified. Pattern recognition can be automated pattern recognition through computerised machine-learning. Alternatively, personal pattern recognition can be performed mentally (subconsciously) by individuals with expertise in a field.

In this blog, I explore how we use personal pattern recognition to support executing our edge in business.