Even fleas are trainable. Apparently some scientists put a bunch of fleas into a jar with a low lid, and watched these poor creatures for a while. Fleas are lively little pests, and these fellows [I don't quite know what sex fleas are, but I know that I don't much like them.] kept hitting their heads onto the lid each time they jumped. It didn't take them long to realise that this hurt, so they changed their behaviour to jump a little less high. And, you guessed it, when the lid was later removed these fleas weren't able to jump out the jar because they "knew" that if they jumped too high it would hurt. So they didn't!

The point of the story for us more complex and more intelligent creatures is that we are not much different in handling the stuff we "know". Somehow or other we accumulate a bunch of factoids - usually our interpretation of events in our lives - and these "facts" become part of our lives. Then they become the rules by which we live. And most of these "facts"are like the low lid of the flea jar - not necessarily correct, or temporarily correct. They need to challenged every now and then.

This is important because we don't challenge the facts we know to be true. When something eventful happens in our lives, we are stunned that something we held to be true is so patently false.

That's the reason for this email. We are usually so limited by our beliefs that we often don't progress. We repeat that first year of experience for the next 10 years, instead of seeking out new challenges and exploring new ideas.

Of course, the fact that we are almost comfortable in our discomfort [because we don't think it could really be better] doesn't make it easy to challenge anything.

Here are a few ideas that might illustrate this better. What would happen if we purposefully lost our 20 worst clients? What would happen if we stopped doing seminars, and did everything via the web instead? What would happen if we stopped being a one-stop shop and focused on the top 20% of products that make all our money? How could we improve service while reducing staff? How could we improve delivery with fewer vehicles? And so on.

The sacred cows we hold most dear are the result of our perceptions of past events - and those perceptions are notoriously deceptive. Assume nothing, and you can't go too wrong.

© Peter Carruthers, www.petesweekly.co.za

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