I Won’t Do That

I Won’t Do That 150 150 Ben Coker

I Won’t Do That

The lyrics of Meatloaf’s song don’t actually cover exactly what is was that he wouldn’t do for love – please correct me if I’m wrong!

Outside the realm of those things which are illegal, immoral, unethical, would result in personal injury, or are just plain stupid there seem to be a huge catalogue of things that people ‘won’t do’.

  • “I won’t pay by direct debit”
  • “I won’t change my energy supplier/bank/where I shop” etc. etc.
  • “I won’t give out my phone number/email address” etc. etc.
  • “I won’t answer the phone unless I know who’s calling”
  • “I won’t watch a certain TV programme or film or read a certain book”

And so on.

Sometimes this is translated into “I don’t like”, “I can’t” or “I don’t want to”.

  • “I don’t like food that’s purple” (That’s me by the way!)
  • “I don’t want to change anything”
  • “I can’t travel by plane”

You get the idea.

All of this is a result of the limiting beliefs we’ve built into our psyche over the years; mostly when we were very young and mostly that we’ve taken on from other people.

“Don’t speak to strangers”, Only speak when you’re spoken to” – not a good philosophy for anyone who wants to be a communicator.

A lot of the beliefs we take on are based on fear of the unknown – we don’t know what’s going to happen.

There’s nothing wrong about fear itself provided it’s kept in the right context of the ‘fight or flight’ reaction to ensure survival. But fear has no place in communications.

When you and I make these decisions about things we won’t, don’t like., can’t or don’t want to do we are, based on fear of the unknown, prejudging the situation.

We look at the book cover and decide we ‘don’t like’ the title, illustration, name of the author or even the colour it’s printed in and go on to decide that we won’t read it.

We all ‘judge books by their covers’ even though we all know that’s just stupid.

The title of one of Sir Richard Branson’s books is ‘Screw It, Let’s Do It’ and in Lord Sugar’s ‘What You See Is What You Get’ he describes how, many times, he’s just tried something that no-one has done before to see if it would work commercially.

They are willing to give things a go – even if they don’t work out.

On the whole it seems to have worked out quite well for both of them . . .

Prejudging stuff is essentially a defence mechanism based on our own personal limiting beliefs.

Think about what those ‘beliefs’ are and make a start on clearing them out.

Give it a go – follow your ‘gut feeling’ that comes from your subconscious mind that’s being suppressed by those limiting beliefs

Sometimes you’re wrong – but sometimes you’re right.

I’m off to give it a go