The Power of Programming

During a speech he made back in the late thirties, Dr Murray Banks, a New York psychologist, said that some people turn to insanity as an adjustment to a perceived tough life. Some people get knocked down and they get back up again. Others in the same situation whinge; a few turn to insanity as an escape, according to Banks.He believes that humans turn their fears into physical complaints. Fear of death, fear of old age, fear of losing money, fear of being found out, fear of failure, is turned by our mind into a nervous stomach, a weak heart, headaches, constant tiredness. A person complains, “I don’t know why it is but I’m always tired. No matter how much I sleep I’m tired.“

It is not long before such chronic complainers develop physical aches and pains.Dr Banks gives a childhood example: little Johnny realises on his way to school that he has a maths test that he has not studied for. “What would happen if I threw up? What effect would that have?” he thinks.The test starts out pretty well: Johnny does the first and second problem easily, but on the third he baulks. He cannot solve the problem. He forces himself to vomit and the principal sends him home.Mum puts him into bed, tucks him in and makes him a hot drink. His sister comes and reads to him. When his Dad comes home from work, he brings him a toy. Johnny gets fussed over.

When the test results come out, Johnny’s parents say, “Johnny got a fifty in the maths test and he was sick, imagine what would have happened if he hadn’t been sick. This kid is a genius!” Johnny has learned the value of excuses. Over the years, Johnny becomes a master of excuses.

If you put Dr Banks’s seventy-year-old theory to psychologists today they may disagree with it. But even a modern-day psychologist would have to admit that excuses only have value because they often produce results. People use excuses to get out of being held accountable.

Any person who wants to be successful will find it useful to examine their attitudes of today and trace them back to past programming. Much of what we learned while growing up is the basis of our values and standards. Never should these be compromised. But other things we were taught are old beliefs that are downright wrong. These programs are defective. We need to get rid of these.

Our parents told us, for example, that we had to have job security. “Get a trade,” or “Get a degree,” we were told. The Public Service was touted as a secure position. Examine this advice today and you will see that job security is a myth.

I had a friend who was an engineer. Every time there was a downturn in the economy he was out of work. I do not have a university degree, but I have never been out of work in my life, yet my trained engineer friend was laid off three times in fifteen years.

And is the Public Service a secure position these days? I don’t think so. Thanks to my training I learned that job security comes from within – it is a feeling that, thanks to the skill you have developed, you will always be able to make a living no matter what happens.

Defective programs must go. We have got to cut all ties to our past training – programming – that is based on error.

We were taught, “It’s rude to pry.” Yet what value is a salesperson that listens to this piece of parental advice? Answer: useless. Salespeople – the good ones at least – have to pry.

Weak salespeople do not want to risk customers’ displeasure by asking them to buy. Weak leaders allow weak salespeople to get away with it.

Asking a customer to either sign a contract or an agency agreement is doing just that – asking them to buy. Weak salespeople avoid this. They will return to the office and say to their leader, “They’re very interested,” and weak leaders will let them get away with not closing.

Salespeople fall for such put-off lines as, ‘They’re very interested‘ or ‘They want to think it over‘ so often that they are programmed into walking away from the order without so much as a single attempt to overcome the objection and close for the order. These people are self-programmed to fail.

Never underestimate the power of programming. Defective programming will cost you hundreds of thousands of dollars, and many years of your life. You can replace these programs with positive ones. It calls for a good internal soul search, but this exercise is worth the effort.

It is easy to look ‘out there’ for the source of your problems. The answers lie within. Debug those defective programs