Why do we recommend the books we do?

As we worked delivering  development programmes over the 25 years or so that Sales Academy Ltd operated globally, we found many people who by their own judgement were not as successful as they wanted to be. Many of these people were clever, smart, kind and decent people who were slightly confused about the link between what they did and what subsequently happened ‘to them’.

This understanding of what was really happening, what they could successfully nudge to give them more of what they wanted or less of what they didn’t want was poor. Most of these people were busy and many of the choices they made were made without conscious involvement.

They would instinctively react. Often there was no gap between any stimulus and their response. They had trouble distancing stepping away or up to take a moment to consider causes and effects. From allocation of priority to giving away their time to ‘worthy’ causes choices were made instinctively that took them no where they really wanted to go.

Often they didn’t know where they were going, why they did the things they did, what they expected for all the effort they put in. Some had worked years climbing long hard ladders to get to the top only to find they had not arrived anywhere they wanted to be.

Why would intelligent people repeat patterns of behaviour that gave them poor results?

Why would they instinctively revert to methods ideas beliefs that had not worked for them previously ?

Why couldn’t people change quickly and easily when faced with proven better options that would give them what they want?

One pragmatic explanation that lets us do something about it is to consider we are hard wired. We have a system within us that we use as a default operating system. Sometimes we override this with new beliefs, new ideas or new learned behaviours that contradict our natural set up to get us better results.

We now look upon this operating system as our model of the world. We all have one. It provides the rules and beliefs we need to analyse a situation come up with our plan and to finally assess any results we get.

These models all seem to encompass some core beliefs or rules. These include continuums like

I believe I can change to get better results through to I do not believe I can change to get better results.

We all seem to sit somewhere on these continuums and we call these specific points belief points. Your collection of belief points is what makes a model of the world your model of the world. We call this evolved or personalised version your Personal Paradigm.

Books and Reading

We choose our books to help you consider the idea of models of the world an duo help you make some choices and changes to get the Personal Paradigm that really works for you to deliver the life you really want.

Obviously we also include recommendations that also help you work towards a better understanding of what your definition of a life you really want is.

Everything we recommend has either been written specifically to help or is something we have read and found useful along the way.

You can see our stories  here 

You can see our Book recommendations here