Success can be measured in many ways. In this chapter I want to do some Flip It thinking around success and help you to discover success in some very unlikely places.

We often tend to disguise our faults and hope people won’t discover them. Let’s Flip It so the opposite is true. Flip It thinking suggests you can use faults and foibles in a positive way and, potentially, they could become the secret of your success.

Turning faults into fortunes

What’s your ‘thing’? Too tall, too small, fat or thin? Perhaps you think you are too old, too young or your teeth are too big?

By learning how to get the best out of these perceived negatives you’ll not only feel better about them, but you’ll also quickly realise your faults and foibles can offer some distinct benefits.

I once interviewed a very tall lad for a job. He was a semi-professional basketball player and at almost seven feet tall he had quite a presence. He knew his career in basketball was limited and wanted to know if he had a chance in sales. Unfortunately, as soon as he walked into the room, he looked as if he was almost apologising for his height.

After a while he brought up his tallness and suggested it might be a problem. ‘No way,’ I said. ‘In fact it’s a huge positive. You could use it as an ice-breaker,’ I suggested. ‘Why not say, “Before I used Michael Heppell’s techniques I was only five foot six”?’

Granted, this may not have been one of my best ideas, but the point is he was too close to his best asset, his amazing height. I knew he could use it as an asset in selling but unfortunately he chose to see it as a fault.

Here’s a Flip It for success challenge. Take the part of you that you think of as your greatest fault and ask how you can Flip It and use it for success. It won’t work every time but you’ll be surprised by your change of thinking around your perceived faults.

Take a break – break the rules

Don’t walk on the grass! OK, but what happens if you do? A friend of mine encourages his kids to walk on the lawns when he sees ‘Keep off the grass’ signs. Irresponsible? Maybe, but his argument is he wants his kids to break some rules so they don’t feel like they always have to do what they are told is ‘right’. He wants them to make their own minds up and have the confidence in later life to say no to drugs, etc., even if they find themselves in a room full of mates who are all taking something.

Studying successful people often leads you to realise that they too tend to break a few rules along the way to get different results. Flip It thinking here doesn’t necessarily mean turning it around 180 degrees. In fact, a slight shift may be all you need to get some fantastically different results.

In January 2005 Chad Hurley wanted to send some videos he and some friends had made at a dinner party to the other guests. Emails were rejected because of the file size and embedding video on websites was difficult. Not only that but he would also have had to share passwords and log ins. Hurley decided to beak a rule and create an easy video uplink that anyone could see. This method became popular and his crazy idea took off. Less than two years later he sold his company YouTube to Google for $1.65 billion.

The cure to procrastination

I’m world class at procrastination. If it were an Olympic event I’m sure I could bring home gold for Britain – not in the next Olympics though, I’d go for the one after that (bad procrastination joke, I know). When you are as naturally good at procrastinating as I am, you need a few tools and techniques up your sleeve to get past the big P or you just wouldn’t get anything done.

Using Flip It is a brilliant way to overcome procrastination, get things done and be more successful at the same time.

My first tool is maybe a little wayward for some readers, so stick with me. Basically it’s to tell a lovely lie. But when I say lie, I mean lie in a nice ‘little white’ way. Lie in a way which, when done correctly, ensures you feel motivated to take action – mainly so you won’t get caught out.

Come on, you’ve done it at one time or another. Perhaps you said you’d tidied up but hadn’t, then had to rush off home for a dust and clear. Or you said you had made that important call, then immediately made the call you’d just sworn you’d already completed (we’ve all done that one!).

I think one of the reasons we let procrastination beat us is because of the importance we give it. Let me explain. There are several types of procrastination.

• Not doing anything.
• Doing the wrong thing.
• Working on something more important.

If you are working on something more important than what may appear to be urgent then procrastination can be a good thing.

Richard Hamming was a mega researcher who worked for many years for Bell Laboratories. He got things done, won countless awards and changed the world we live in. Rather than trying to get everything done he would Flip It by suggesting that all you need to do to overcome procrastination is to ask three simple questions:

1. What are the most important problems in your field?
2. Are you working on one of them?
3. Why not?

That’s one of those so devastatingly simple formulas that you need to read it a couple of times. Don’t procrastinate, read it a couple of times – do it now!

Making deadlines deadly

Another way to overcome procrastination is to set outrageous deadlines. Dave is a film maker, and a very good one. But he procrastinates; he makes excuses about being busy, complains that he has problems with clients, etc. However, he’ll always hit a deadline. Often he tells me during his rants that there are 24 hours in a day and if necessary he can use all of them.

Dave makes many of our training and promotion films and knowing how he works gives me an advantage. I always shrink the deadline by a couple of days. This means if something does go wrong there’s always an opportunity to fix it before the real deadline.

Here’s the weird thing. Dave knows I do that but he still often ends up working all night to complete a piece of work to meet the earlier deadline. Why? He has a strong desire to please.

After discussing this with him he now uses his desire to please as a driver to motivate himself. He’ll ask clients, ‘When do you need this done by?’ and if they say ‘The 15th’, he’ll throw in, ‘I’ll see if I can get it done by the 12th.’

Rock to resolution

If I were to tell you that your biggest problems are actually the keys to your greatest successes, what would you think? And rightly so!

But let me challenge that thinking. I really do believe that problems are a gift. The more problems you have, the more you’re doing; the bigger the problems, the bigger the reward!

I worked for someone who frequently used to throw out the old cliché, ‘We don’t have problems – just opportunities’. There were days when I could have strung him up. Of course we have problems! Then he came back from a two-day management course and announced, ‘We don’t have problems, we only have solutions’.

That was the tipping point for me. I listed three major problems and asked how on earth they could be thought of as solutions. He then systematically showed me how each of my problems was in fact an opportunity to do something creative and different and that there was a solution for each of them. It was time for me to eat a hefty slice of humble pie.

Over the years I drifted in and out of this way of thinking until I realised that, as a procrastinator who needs simple tried-and-tested ideas that work (and work fast), I needed a tool to utilise this type of thinking.

Rock to resolution was created.

Here’s how it works.

• Step 1: This is the easy part as it involves identifying your rock. The rock is the big issue, which seems to be holding you back, causing a problem or putting you in a predicament. You’ll probably already have a good idea what the rock is. Write this clearly in the ‘rock’ box – see figure overleaf.
• Step 2: Break down the rock into specific problems. It doesn’t matter how many, but the more it’s broken down the easier it is to find your solutions. Write each individual challenge in the ‘problem column’.
• Step 3: Take each problem and write down a simple solution in the ‘solution column’. You don’t have to know all the how-tos at this point but make sure there is a brief note next to each problem.
• Step 4: Read your list of solutions and think how it would feel if you had all those solutions in place. How would the outcome look if all these solutions were in place? That’s the resolution. Finally write the resolution in the box. If you are into goal setting you may wish to write a target date beneath the resolution to encourage you to take early action.

Rock to resolution is a very powerful tool that works best if you write everything down. You can download rock to resolution templates from my website: www.michaelheppell.com

Stop listening to bad advice!

Have you noticed that as we grow older we focus more and more on what we can’t do rather than what we can? Consider the following. Hands up if you’re good at art. Having asked this of thousands of people, I know that only three in 100 readers will believe they are actually good at art.

Now take your mind back to when you were five years old. You’re in a school assembly and the headteacher says, ‘Hands up if you are good at art’. At that point what happens? Correct, all hands shoot up in the air.

So what happened between five and now? The simple answer is 11. Yes, good old 11 happened. At around 11 years old you went to ‘big school’. One day you were sitting in art focusing vigorously on your 2B pencil drawing of some carefully arranged fruit. Then mid flow, just as you were delicately shading a banana’s soft shadow on a plump plum, your best mate stood over your shoulder, gestured at your work and said, ‘That’s shit’.

I bet you wish you’d had the confidence then that you do now so you could Flip It and throw back a witty retort along the lines of, ‘No it’s not actually, this is my brilliant impressionist view of that fruit’. But unfortunately you didn’t. You looked at the page and thought, ‘Yes it is pretty crappy, isn’t it?’

The challenge is that before then everything you drew ended up on a wall or stuck to a fridge door. You could draw. Then suddenly your hopes were dashed. And once you started to believe you weren’t very good at art, you convinced yourself. So every time you had any lesson that involved art, you would say, ‘I can’t draw’ – from simple clouds in geography to flow charts in physics your mind was set. (The truth is I could introduce you to someone who will teach you how to draw in just two hours. I’ve seen him do it with a room of 3,000 people, where at the start of session 2,950 believed they couldn’t draw and after his instruction 2,995 believed they could. He just has a different way of teaching people and it works.)

However, that was at school and now you know differently, don’t you? Don’t you? Actually, no you don’t. You still believe what people say when they give you negative feedback. You take it to heart and make it personal.

Often we react to negative feedback in a negative way. When this happens it creates a ‘lose/lose’ situation. What if you were to Flip It and think about negative feedback with the same mindset as when you receive Marks & Spencer presents?

I’ll explain. It’s your birthday. Now imagine your aunt/mum/brother or whoever is eagerly waiting for you to unwrap their nicely gift-wrapped present. You open it and there nestled in the wrapping paper is the jumper from hell – wrong colour/pattern/batwings . . . just awful. Just when your fake smile is about to crack you spot the label, ‘Marks & Spencer’. Suddenly faking gratitude is easy because you know that now you have choice: you can take the jumper from hell back to good old M&S and exchange it for something you will like!

Sometimes people don’t give feedback well, or they don’t actually mean what they say and don’t for a second consider the consequences.

If you don’t want the feedback then just imagine that you can return it to the shop. I don’t mean literally say to someone, ‘I don’t want that feedback’. But you can say a polite ‘thank you’ then decide that it is not useful or relevant for you and choose not to take it on board.

Eliminate your ‘I’ve quit’ gestures

I’ve recently coached a couple of people from the wonderful world of sport. Watching a video of one of my clients I noticed the exact moment in a game when he quit. He had gestures, mannerisms and a distinct physiology which demonstrated that he’d quit the game long before the final whistle.

Before you become my dad and start to shout about how overpaid sportspeople are and how they quit too soon, etc, think about your own ‘I’ve quit’ gestures and ask how they may be affecting your game.

We all have certain gestures that we associate with quitting a task. Exasperated arms, shaking heads and some none too friendly profanities are among them.

Take a moment to consider what you do when you quit. Do you do any of the following?

Now what if you were to Flip It and take a moment to consider what you do when you feel super successful?

Congratulations! You have joined a very small percentage of people who are actually aware of their ‘I’ve quit’ and ‘I’m a success’ gestures.

What would happen if, during a time when you felt very successful, you started repeatedly to use your ‘I’ve quit’ gestures? It wouldn’t take long before you were sliding down the spiral of negativity and landing with a nasty bump.

So if that’s the case, wouldn’t it make sense now that you are aware of your ‘I’ve quit’ gestures, if you find yourself in that unresourceful state, you could repeatedly use your ‘I’m a success’ gestures to Flip It and move out of that pessimistic place?

Here’s a challenge. The next time you catch yourself using ‘I’ve quit’ gestures, say the words ‘Flip It’ and replace what you are doing with the opposite ‘I’m a success’ gesture. You’ll be amazed and surprised by the instant results!

By playing with your physiology, language and focus like this you’ll be able to Flip your emotional state very quickly. You’ll feel better faster and attract success.

Act like the meerkat – heads up!

Don’t you just love the meerkat? He sits with his head up tall searching for opportunities to feed and predators to avoid. The meerkat survives because it takes action.

Most people move through life with their heads down and complain later when they missed an opportunity. If you adopt the meerkat ‘heads-up’ approach you’ll spot multiple opportunities for success.

The best bit is, by looking for opportunities like this, with an open mind, each opportunity spotted often leads to another. It gets easier.

Change your view – become a master reframer

You may have been taught that successful people are very ‘single-minded’. I disagree. Most successful people I meet are open to many views and ways of thinking. Consciously or not they use a technique called reframing. This simply means you are able to look at things from several points of view.

There are many uses for this skill, but when it’s combined with a ‘heads-up’ approach reframing gives you very powerful results.

By learning how to see multiple viewpoints you immediately see solutions that were hiding behind a traditional one-dimensional outlook.

What do you do when you have one shot at promoting your business to your most influential customer? Five-star service is the minimum expectation, along with a whole host of boxes to tick.

When the Milestone Hotel in Kensington, London, was faced with this challenge they decided to Flip It. By looking closely at what Amex customers wanted, the team at the Milestone quickly discovered there was a lot of competition for the normal five-star offering, so they reframed their meeting with Amex and asked them a brilliant question: ‘If there was one commodity you could provide for your customers that money could not buy, what would it be?’ Their answer was ‘time’.

That’s when the Milestone created a unique package for Amex guests, ‘The 24-hour stay’. No matter what time you arrive, the room is yours for 24 hours. Imagine being able to check in at 6 pm and leave at 6 pm the next day? No rushing to check out, no storing of bags, no late check-out fees. Perfect.

Chunky and sautéed elephants

Question: How do you eat an elephant?

Answer: A bite at a time!

Old joke, not particularly funny and often used to describe overcoming a large task.

Now let’s bring it up to date and add some Flip It thinking.

Question: How do you eat an elephant?

Answer: Sautéed, with a mild curry sauce, lots of fresh spring vegetables, a couple of glasses of a deliciously chilled Sauvignon Blanc and don’t forget to invite a few friends round – chances are they won’t have tried sautéed elephant.

Remember that with Flip It you can get the very best out of any given situation. So if your task was to eat an elephant, why would you want to do it a bite at a time when it could be a fabulous feast with friends?

Let’s use this chunky method for one of the most exciting tasks we have to do – the housework!

• Step 1: Make a list. Isn’t it funny how big tasks are more manageable when they’re turned into lists? Plus, as you achieve each part of the task, it feels fab when you add a giant tick.
• Step 2: Create a reward system for yourself. People normally say, ‘I’ll have a cup of tea and then I’ll get started.’ No! Have your cup of tea after the vacuuming.
• Step 3: Turn the music up. It’s always easier to do housework with great music. If you have an iPod, create a happy housework playlist.
• Step 4: Add smells. As you complete a room, finish by spraying a nice scent. Your desk feels cleaner with the smell of polish, a loo feels fresh with a nice de-pong . . . you get the idea.
• Step 5: Set a target time. If you think you can get everything done in three hours, then set the time and go for beating it. You may want to add a reward for every 10 minutes you beat it by.

Any task can be made more manageable and enjoyable by creatively chunking it into tasty bite-sized pieces.

Developing your intuition

What happens when you flip a coin to make a decision? Hundreds of thoughts fly through your mind from the moment the coin leaves your hand to the final reveal of a head or tail. Hidden in these messages is the actual result you really want.

If I am working with someone who can’t make their mind up between A and B I say, ‘OK let’s flip a coin’. We then decide, heads it’s A and tails it’s B. Then I flick the coin making sure it’s spinning vigorously. As soon as I catch it, I cover it up and ask them quickly, ‘Which one did you want it to be?’ and 90 per cent of the time they’ll respond. At that point I put the coin in my pocket and never reveal which side it actually landed on.

If you learn how to develop this intuitive thinking then you won’t need to flip it again – the coin that is.

Intuition is a master skill that needs to be developed through use. Have you ever been in one of those situations where, after an unusual event occurs, you just knew it was going to happen? How did you know?

Experience, subconscious, unique ability all play a part. The challenge is that we often only realise our intuition was talking to us after the event. Think of your intuition as an associate who is there with you all the time. The only challenge is this partner doesn’t always speak the same language as you. In fact sometimes your partner doesn’t speak at all, preferring to mime a message or draw clues. The challenge is if you choose to ignore these messages and clues then you won’t ever get any better at reading them.

The trusted translator

Now imagine you have a tiny translator who is sitting on your shoulder whispering in your ear. You trust your translator as they always give you good advice, so let’s call them your ‘trusted translator’.

The more you use your trusted translator the better you get at understanding your intuition and what it’s really telling you.

Here are three ways to develop your trusted translator.

1. Listen to that hunch:
   I taught a leadership programme to the High Performance Officers Scheme of the Metropolitan Police. One day we ended up talking about individual safety. I asked a seasoned officer about the best way to increase personal protection. His response was fascinating. He said, ‘You know that feeling that you get when you’re walking down the street and you just know you shouldn’t be there? Well, listen to it, as you’re absolutely right – you shouldn’t.’
   That’s your intuition talking. You can’t see anything and there is no logical reason why something should be wrong but listening to that hunch could be the best move you ever make.
2. Make it real: Who do you trust? What if you were to make your trusted translator that person? You could have more than one if you’d like a range of opinions to consider, but ensure you trust them all. The next time you need to tap in to your intuition, simply close your eyes, visualise your trusted translator(s) and listen to what’s said.
3. Turn it into a question: Sometimes our intuition needs a prompt. By turning how we are feeling into a question it’s amazing how often the right answer pops up. Here are a few to get you started:
   • Why am I feeling this?
   • What action should I take next?
   • How can I handle this for the best results?
   • What’s best for all concerned?
   If you write the question down, this technique seems to be even more effective.

What next?

Flip It for success is the most challenging and rewarding chapter in this book. It favours the brave and those who are prepared to turn their ideas into actions.

I’m now challenged with what to write to link this chapter with the next. I know what I need, it’s . . .