So let’s begin. Flip It thinking is everywhere. At times you do it without really thinking about it. There are other times when you don’t do it but probably should. When you look at the cover of this book you see this symbol:

What does this mean to you?

Some people just see the cloud and immediately think it’s going to be terribly dull and there’s a chance of rain. Others think it will be cloudy and we may get some sun. Then there are those who bank on the fact that there will be sun interspersed with white fluffy clouds. And finally there are the super positive who just see the sun and blank out the cloud altogether.

Which are you?

With Flip It I want to challenge your thinking on what you see, believe and think with an ultimate goal – to help you get the best out of everything.

So whether you are the kind of person who tends to dwell on life’s problems and wants to discover another way of being, or a natural optimist who wants to boost their skills, Flip It has dozens of tools, techniques and ideas designed to work quickly and effectively. And there’s never been a better time to learn how to be more resourceful, engage the real power of your mind and get the very best out of your life.

Let’s start you off with a simple Flip and then, as you progress, we’ll introduce new tools and techniques at various levels of complexity.

The power of questions

One of the most powerful tools in the Flip It toolbox is the power of intelligent questioning. The right questions can turn around any negative situation. The big question is: which questions should you ask?

Why versus How

Put on your best ringside announcer’s voice as you read this:

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the big fight. In the red corner, weighing in at an incredible 200 lbs, the most pondered word in anyone’s vocabulary of questions. Let’s hear it for: the prince of pity, the mother of misfortune, the saint of sadness, the undisputed champion of negative questioning – ‘WHY’.

And in the blue corner, weighing in at a lean, mean 140 lbs, the hero of hope, the champion of chatter, the secret of solution. He’s quick, he’s quirky (and a little bit flirty), let’s hear it for the contender – ‘HOW’.

Now wouldn’t that be a brawl worth watching?

The word why is often associated with the negative. Why me? Why now? Why should I? Whereas how is commonly associated with solution. How can I? How do I? How should we?

Here’s a classic example of why versus how.

You’re busy. You have only a few minutes to get to an important meeting and, can you believe it, you’re lost. In a blind panic you end up with a whole bunch of why questions in your head. Why do I always get lost? Why does this always happen to me? Why today of all days? The more you ask why?, the more your brilliant brain, with its infinite ability to keep on churning out the answers, will think of at least a dozen reasons why.

Now, let’s Flip It and ask how? How did I end up here? How can I quickly get to where I need to be now? How can I best communicate my situation to the people I’m due to meet? How can I stay calm?

Notice this isn’t some weak but positive ‘la la’, ‘isn’t everything wonderful’ thinking. You know, ‘Hooray I’m lost, perhaps the earth’s energy made this happen and I should embrace the situation.’ Oh no. This is a powerful way of thinking when you need to make speedy, rational decisions, then act on them.

Why do I worry so much?

How many of us anxiously brood over this classic? As it happens, asking why? too much is often a major contributor to worry. Why? rarely helps you to worry less. It’s often disempowering: Why can’t I? Why do people do that? Why is it always me?

So it’s time to Flip It and ask how?

How can I do this? How can I change the way people think? How can I stop that happening to me again?

Isn’t it amazing that just reading the how questions can make you feel better? Welcome to the world of Flip It.

Brain power

Isn’t your brain wonderful? It contains 100 billion neurons and is capable of dealing with trillions of thoughts. Yet most of it is sitting around twiddling its thumbs waiting for something to do. So why not get your brain busy and give it some graft?

By asking yourself questions rather than taking situations as a given, you give the old brain box a bit of a blast. Here are a few examples of given situations and how you may want to turn them into questions to get better results.

By using your brilliant brain in this way, not only will you get better results for what you are thinking about right now, but you will also exercise some of the more dormant areas of your brain. This gives you an opportunity to blow out the neural cobwebs so that you’ll be able to use those lesser used areas effortlessly in the future.

The power of positive language

I am often labelled a ‘positive thinker’. There’s nothing wrong with that. However, positive thinking alone is often nice but ineffective. I like to Flip It and incorporate positive action.

Here’s a quick question for your newly awakened curious brain: what is the most common action you take?

I believe it is your choice of words. Whether it’s your external talk (what you say to others) or your self-talk (what you say to yourself), you are constantly choosing, then using, words to communicate.

Negative to positive

This is an area where I love to use Flip It. The idea is so simple, just change your negative words and phrases to positive ones. It uses creativity, wit and wisdom, plus, as a bonus, it will do wonders for your Scrabble scores. Start by writing a list of all the negative words and phrases you use on a regular basis then ask yourself, ‘How can I say the same thing but use powerful, positive and empowering language?’

Here are a few to get you started.

With so many words (and meanings) in the English language, how could you Flip It and choose to use new or better words?

Time for a time out

So you’re a few pages in, and I’m guessing you’ll fall into one of four camps. It’s worth taking a minute to check where you are and see if you need to Flip your thinking to get the most out of this book.

Group 1: I know it

Nothing new so far? Brilliant! Whenever someone tells me they know it, my response is always, ‘But do you do it?’ The secret isn’t in the knowing, it’s in the doing.

Fear not Group 1, there are plenty of ideas and ways of thinking (new ones too) that will Flip your thinking for ever.

Group 2: Is it really that simple?

A question that provokes a yes and no answer. In theory yes, it is simple, but you have to test it out to see what works best for you. And if some bits don’t work for you straight away, that’s actually good news, as you’ll see later on.

Group 3: More, more, more!

You’ve already had your eyes opened and your ears are pinned back. Excellent! My advice to you is to push yourself a little further with every new chapter.

Group 4: Huh?

Don’t fit into any of the above? Perfect! You’re a natural Flip It thinker. Keep going, as I have a surprise for you very shortly.

What happens when you eliminate excuses?

When you were very small and your clever little brain was working stuff out, you realised that if you made an excuse for not doing something you would probably get away with it. That was fine when you were five. Now you’re grown up, but you might find you’re still using excuses to justify why you haven’t, can’t, won’t, or a myriad of other negative put-offs, to ensure you don’t need to see something through.

If excuses are so destructive, why do we use them? To discover the answer to that one you need to go back a couple of steps.

Let’s bite the bullet and face a fact: an excuse is often a straight-up lie. ‘I couldn’t do that today, I had far too much on.’

Which roughly translates as, ‘Oh crikey! I’ve sat half the day doing nothing when I should have been doing the important stuff. Quick, think of an excuse but make it a worthy one. I know, I’ll say I’ve been busy. No, better than that, I’ll imply I’ve been really busy and maybe get a bit of sympathy thrown in too.’

Maybe you didn’t even know you were thinking it. That’s because it’s hard-wired into your subconscious, so you can spout forth that kind of nonsense in a nanosecond. Well done!

So if it is ‘hard-wired’, can it be changed? Of course, but you’ll have to Flip It first. This is going to be your first big challenge. The next time you find yourself making an excuse, Flip It and make sure your explanation is the truth. That’s the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

Here are a couple of ways this may work.

A man goes to the shop. His wife asked him to pick something up while he was there and he completely forgot. When challenged, he probably said something like, ‘I looked all over the shop and they didn’t have any, they must have sold out.’

He could Flip It and say, ‘Oh no, I completely forgot. I’ve no explanation but I will go straight back out and get it.’

Here’s another one. ‘What? You didn’t get my email? We’ve been having a few technical problems with the system and my email must have been caught up in it.’

Instead you could Flip It and say, ‘I’m terribly sorry I haven’t sent it yet. Could you give me another hour to complete it please?’

Better? I don’t know about you but, compared to poor excuses, I love a bit of honesty.

A couple of caveats.

• Don’t lose your job, partner, friend or family member over this. Err on the side of caution.
• Do test yourself and push a little bit further than you would normally go.

Why bother?

There’s something quite liberating about getting rid of excuses. The need to justify your actions (or lack of them) is significantly reduced. People see a new side to you, and you’ll find they react to you in a different, more positive way.

Here’s the best bit:

Think about that one for a moment.

I once worked for a funny (unusual not humorous) boss who I found myself making excuses to and for. And because I didn’t want to upset her, I couldn’t say anything. I used to get myself into a real pickle with this. Then, one day, when I was umming and ahhing, she looked me in the eye and said, ‘The truth is freeing.’

Those words resonated in my head for a few moments then I took a deep breath and told her the truth. No one had ever told her about the problems she created and how they affected people. It was a little ugly at first, but when the air had settled she thanked me.

I’ve included a whole bunch of ideas to help with this kind of situation in Chapter 8: Flip It at work and in business.

Now, let’s move away from making excuses and I’ll share with you one of the most magnificent uses of Flip It thinking I have ever discovered.

How to be interesting – Flip It style

Hands up if you like the idea of being thought of as an interesting person. Well that’s just about everyone then. Traditional thinking dictates that if you want to be considered interesting, you first need to be well-read, bright, articulate, charming and witty. Well, before you subscribe to that thinking, read the extract overleaf.

A bright young psychologist took a month out from his normal work and flew back and forth every day from Los Angeles to New York (perhaps he hadn’t heard of deep vein thrombosis). He would always sit in the middle seat of three.

After take-off he would start a conversation with the person either side, but rather than trying to be interesting he would Flip It and focus instead on being interested. All he did was ask great questions and let the other person speak.

At the end of the journey he would ask for their details on the premise he could do something for them or that they would stay in touch. One week later a researcher would call the people he had sat next to. They all remembered him. They all said how much they liked him; although none could recall if he was married, what he did for a living or where he was from (because he never told them). However, the most amazing part of the research was the fact that over 70 per cent described him as one of the most interesting people they had EVER met!

Time to get a balance

This doesn’t mean you won’t ever have the opportunity to recount your hilarious anecdote about how Aunty Muriel almost blew up her village and how you single-handedly saved the day, but it does mean that when you Flip It you can become a master questioner and an interesting person too.

Paradigm shifts

Much of what you have read so far focuses on simple Flip It thinking and actions. So it’s probably about time we took it up a notch with the introduction of paradigm shifts. A paradigm shift can be described as a change in basic assumptions. We’ve all experienced a paradigm shift at one time or another. My challenge to you is to consciously create paradigm shifts by using Flip It thinking.

Here’s an example of a time when I experienced a profound paradigm shift and what it meant to me.

I was in Washington DC attending a conference in 1995. I didn’t know anyone in town and, because of my travel plans, I had arrived a day early. That night I went for a walk close to my hotel and ended up outside a cinema. Feeling a little spontaneous I asked for a ticket for whichever film was due to start next. The attendant said if I was quick a movie called Clockers was about to begin.

I sneaked into the darkened Screen 2, took a seat and watched the movie. As the final credits rolled and the house lights came up I looked around the room and something struck me. I was the only white person in there. I didn’t feel nervous, frightened or in any way intimidated but I did feel very aware, for the first time in my life, what it was really like to be a minority.

That paradigm shift made me realise how some people must feel because of their colour, ability, size, age, etc. My wife was the only black child in a school of 700, which is unheard of nowadays, but it must have had an impact on her life. Walking into that cinema taught me a wonderful lesson which I’ve recalled many times.

Now what if I hadn’t waited for the paradigm shift to happen to me but instead took the initiative and forced the paradigm shift to happen? Here are a few paradigm shifts that you could test.

• Try spending some time in a wheelchair to see how differently people behave around you.
• Ask how a situation can be improved rather than complaining about what’s wrong.
• Be your own customer.
• Fast for a day.
• Volunteer to work at a homeless shelter and talk to those attending about how they ended up there.
• Don’t buy anything from a supermarket for a week and use the spare resources you have in your cupboards, freezer, etc.
• Before you condemn a person’s behaviour, get all the facts.

 

Because we can become all too familiar with our surroundings, friends, family and ways of doing things, creating and forcing a paradigm shift is often a good way to experience a different view and, in some cases, to create a powerful reality check.

Being able to experience situations from multiple viewpoints can help you to understand people and their behaviours better. By doing this on a consistent and regular basis you can choose to get the best out of every situation, understand things more clearly and be more equipped to deal with whatever life might throw your way.

Found Flip It?

So that’s your Flip It apprenticeship over. You’ve got some basic thinking and some general Flip It skills. The next stage of your journey is to get specific and really master the techniques. The following chapters take many of the key areas of life and show you how to apply Flip It thinking and actions in each.

Remember to think transferable as you read each section. If you should catch yourself thinking, ‘I’m not sure how this applies to me’, then Flip It and ask, ‘How can this apply to me?’