COLINISM

THE COLINISTMANIFESTO

15 RULES FOR GETTING OUT OF YOUR OWN WAY

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COLINISM

OK ... SO JUST WHAT THE HELL IS THIS ANYWAY?Well fi rstly, it isn’t actually a manifesto at all in that it isn’t a statement of plans that I intend to carry out. I thought about that, but even I’m not arrogant enough to think you’d really care enough about those things to read a whole ebook on the subject.

By the time I’d reached that conclusion however, I’d already settled on the name and I really, really liked it, so I decided to stick with it. So here it is: The COLINIST MANIFESTO; a non-manifesto. Just cut me some slack, will you?

What it is, is a set of rules for getting out of your own way so you can stop sabotaging your own success. It’s not a comprehensive list ... I could probably lay down 100 others. But these are rules that are pretty close to my heart.

COLINISM

THE COLINISTMANIFESTO

15 RULES FOR GETTING OUT OF YOUR OWN WAY

For more ideas like these, visit the blog at

www.colinjbrowne.com or follow me at

twitter.com/colinjbrowne

I call the whole concept COLINISM because I’m the sort of guy who thinks I have enough to say that I can name a school of informal business and life-skills thinking after myself. What can I say, it’s cool to be me.

Aside from the fact that I hope you’ll think this is a decent read, another purpose of this document is to introduce you to the brand of thinking and the sorts of topics you can expect from me, when you choose to make a hiring decision for your next conference, sales meeting, staff gathering, company team building or wherever else you might need a great, enthu-siastic, original, fun, funny, but determined-to-make-you-think speaker.

That’s it in a nutshell. It’s a hell of a complicated way to get your atten-tion, but the way I see it, you’re making an investment and you deserve to hire someone who thinks you deserve some effort.

I hope you’ll enjoy it! It’s been fun to put it together. My contact details are at the back if you’d like to drop me a line about it, or anything else.

Colin

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Copyright infoThe copyright of this work belongs to the author. You may print this and distribute it electronically, via your website, by email or however you want to. The only things you cannot do are change it or charge for it. Play nice and everyone benefi ts.

LAUGH AT YOURSELF.You’re a jerk. Don’t think otherwise. You’re also cooler than you can imagine. Don’t think anything other than that either. But a big thing that allows people to take you seriously … that encourages them to do so for that matter … is your ability to laugh at yourself. I have an informal business mentor who tells me the plain truth all the time and I know he does it because he respects my ability to take it for what it is: the plain truth and nothing else. Not an attack. Not a baseless criticism. Not ver-bal venom borne of jealousy. He tells me I’m thinking like a dick head when I’m thinking like a dick head and in so doing, I’m able to not think like a dick head any more. He wouldn’t be able to do that if he thought I was unable to laugh at myself and as a consequence I wouldn’t hear the truths that prevent me from making stupid mistakes from time-to-time. If you’re afraid that laughing at yourself will make you look like a clown, let me tell you this: people are already laughing at you, so you may as well join them. Or at least if they’re not now, they’ll start as soon as they realize you can’t do it. If you ever have to make the choice between taking yourself seriously or being light, you’re better off with the latter almost every time. Stop short at making your business engagements like open mic night at the local comedy club, but you’ll see big relationship benefi ts if you’re able to lighten up a little. Or a lot.

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GIVE PEOPLE A BREAK & GET OUT OF THEIR WAY.For the most part, everyone is just trying to take a crack at life. They want to do what makes them happy and they’re fi guring out how to do so, the same as you are. Those that aren’t, likely have reasons for it. Those reasons are not yours and you don’t have to care about them, which is a good thing. What we all ought to do more is give other people the space they need to live their lives and not try to put ourselves in their way. In competitive pursuits such as business or sports, it may be necessary for things to move forward that there is a winner and a loser. But there is a reason for such things as fair play awards in sports … it’s possible to win without being an asshole to anyone. Also, you never know unless you’re in their lives, what anyone is up to from one moment to the next. You cannot know what they’re thinking or feeling or what their goal or mis-sion is for the day unless you feel like asking them, so you really don’t have enough information to allow you to judge. Here’s the general truth: most people are nicer than you think they are, more peace-loving, more focused on their own lives and their own stuff than anything else, and would prefer to be more helpful than obstructive pretty much every time. Give them a break. Expect the same in return. Most people will treat you exactly the same way.

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SAY WHAT YOU MEAN & DO WHAT YOU SAY.Look, there are normal rules for civilised behaviour and they were in-vented so that we can all co-exist without beating the crap out of each other. So when I tell you that I am happy to meet you, you know I’m really just saying that because it’s polite and you go ahead and lie right back and say ‘me too’. We’re all playing a very civilised game and those sorts of niceties are on the short list of things that enable us to organise into comforting and supportive tribes. But platitudes have no part to play in a gun fi ght. When you need to say it like it is, you ought to just do that. It’s remarkable how often this simply doesn’t happen in business and in life, and how much anxiety it can create. You see it all the time on the TV show The Apprentice where the Project Manager leads a group of people who are practically willing him or her to fail so they can torpedo them in the board room because they don’t agree with how they’re being led ... but without actually ever laying down their thoughts for the Proj-ect Manager to evaluate. If you disagree with something and don’t raise that disagreement, it’s no good saying everything is fi ne and then going off to sulk about it. Speaking up and saying what you need to say is criti-cal for self-respect, for others to respect you and to prevent your head from exploding. It’s also critical if you’re going to have any credibility.

COLINISM

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No problem at all! I‘m delighted with the way things have worked out!

i may have lost it all, but at least it’ll seem funny in three years time, right?

TAKE A MORE BALANCED VIEW OF YOUR LUCK.Navel-gazing is never pretty. We all do it from time-to-time; we obsess about our own lack of luck or pat ourselves on the back for an amazing success that partly just fell into our laps. Sure, we enjoy great achieve-ments that we richly deserve from time-to-time, and we experience bad luck from out of left fi eld on occasion. But I always go back to the early scenes in the movie TITANIC where Leonardo di Caprio’s character Jack has the immense good fortune to win tickets on the great liner in a game of chance against some poor bastard who, expecting to be boarding a ship to the freedom of America that very afternoon, fi nds himself left behind on the docks at Southampton without a ticket to ride. That was on the afternoon of April 10. Some time after midnight, four days later, Jack has the opportunity to discover how good and bad luck can be so heavily disguised and loses his life for the lesson. Now, I don’t wish to get all spacey and esoteric about this, but I think it’s a point worth mak-ing because we’re so conditioned to look at events in isolation and only on the surface. Take a look at the last three years of your life or your business however, and you’ll certainly see how seemingly triumphant or catastrophic events didn’t really turn out to have the level or type or impact you thought they would when they happened. That’s usually the way it works out.

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UN-NEEDNEED

SIMPLIFY YOUR NEEDS & ALWAYS BE GRATEFUL.When I was 14 years old, I got my fi rst subscription to Newsweek maga-zine. I was a current affairs nerd even then and it being 1984, that was the era that Ronnie and Maggie were working in tandem, sticking it to the Soviets. I liked that. In one of those early editions however, I read an obituary for a Newsweek editor whose name I regrettably cannot recall. This was a remarkable man apparently; as a journalist he had covered the war in Vietnam and he’d been to Biafra at the end of the 1960s to cover the atrocities there. The author of the obituary had asked him once how it was that he was able to spend long periods of time in farfl ung war-torn places where there were no creature comforts. His response: he’d learned to simplify his needs. He knew he needed food and water to live and a warm, dry place to sleep at night. He needed some emotional and intellectual nourishment; the contact of other human beings he could trust and a book to read. Everything else was a luxury he could live without. Luxuries are nice for sure, but you set yourself up for a much harder ride if you cannot distinguish between what you NEED and what is NICE TO HAVE. And you’re missing the point if you rue your lack of luxuries instead of being thankful that your needs are taken care of. You probably don’t have to look much further than the end of your road to meet people who’ll remind you to be grateful you have a bed at night.

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... but my life andcareer are going so well ... and i’m happy. honestly ...

YOU CAN DO ANYTHING IF YOU PUT IN THE TIME.The goal is that you’re happy all the time and doing things that you love. The difference between what you’re doing now and what you’d like to be doing ideally is usually just a matter of time, as long as you’re willing to be realistic about how long it might take. We’re all pretty wrapped up in our daily routines and when we daydream about doing cooler stuff than we’re doing, the fi rst things we think of are the obstacles. Maybe that’s normal; I’m not a psychologist so I can’t comment. I can tell you this though: the obstacles are usually a lot less impressive when you think about them rationally. Anyone can get a degree. It just takes time. Anyone can start a business. It just takes time. Anyone can re-skill and start again in a different fi eld as long as they’re prepared to accept that it is going to take some time. That seems to be sort of the challenge for the ‘want it now’ society that we are. I’m pretty sure however that if you draw up a plan of the things you’ll need to get into the career you’d most love to do every day (Study? Take a risk and start something? Volunteer somewhere to learn the ropes and work your way up?), you’ll discover that as long as you’re willing to accept it might take you fi ve years to achieve it, you can pretty much do anything you want. Those fi ve years are going to pass anyway whether you do anything about changing your path or not. You may as well get something special from them.

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BE TOTALLY DIFFERENT JUST BY GIVING A DAMN.Living in London really puts individuality into context. Last October around Halloween, I watched a tall punk with a mohican, his face cov-ered in open cuts and rotting fl esh, presumably making the journey on the Underground to one of the many zombie parties that were going on, share a support pole in the carriage with an elderly woman who was too busy enjoying her book to pay him any notice. Even the undead struggle to get attention in a melting pot like London. In business, it is even harder because the place is so thickly populated and moves so fast that it’s easy to drown. You can stand far ahead of the crowd however if you honestly choose to give it your all. If you don’t just settle for ‘good enough’ or ‘that’ll do’ and aim for the very highest standards you know you can achieve. It’s an open space because disappointingly, the one hallmark most of modern humankind shares is that most of us aren’t re-ally trying hard enough. Oh, you can tell yourself stories, but every one of us has given it absolutely everything at one or other point in our lives and we all know what it feels like. I’m betting your day-to-day doesn’t feel like that most days which means your results are probably not what you know they could be. Like all things though, you change that when you get serious. Luckily, you’ll have far fewer competitors than you’d expect.

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if this doesn’t make them notice me, nothing will. i mean grey flannel?

ALWAYS CHOOSE TO BE OUTRAGEOUSLY HAPPY.Groundbreaking research by Harvard psychologist Dan Gilbert com-pared the differences in happiness levels one year later, of someone who wins the lottery and someone who becomes paraplegic. Startlingly, they were equally as happy. Happiness apparently, isn’t what we think it is. I tell you what it is, from my own experience however: it’s motivating. It’s creative. It’s exciting. It’s full of promise. When I’m happy, however it comes, it makes a huge difference to the results I am able to achieve, whether that’s at work, in the gym or even whipping up lunch in the kitchen. As a wannabe writer, I used to fi nd the notion of living hand-to-mouth in a garret in Paris romantically appealing, but as I’ve got older I can think of nothing good that would come out of that misery. The facts as I see them are that my best chance of both seeing and project-ing awesomeness comes when I am practically bouncing off the walls with enthusiuasm. It also makes me more reckless and more stupid of course, but those things go with the whole ‘I’m too happy to give a crap, devil-may-care attitude’. Ultimately, you’ve got a choice: be happy and enjoy the expansion or don’t be and enjoy the self-involvement. They both have benefi ts, but only one really moves you forward. As former United States President Ronald Reagan said: “Enjoy life. It’s ungrateful not to.”

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i love jokes that concludewith the words ‘in the kitchen, where she belongs...’ and the morons that tell them!

LIKE WOMEN MORE.Most guys will tell you they like women, but that’s a statement of sexual preference, not a comment on their deep appreciation of the wonderful xx-chromosome members of the species. In the workplace today women still face discrimination and a salary imbalance that the facts don’t sup-port. The facts that do exist on the other hand show that women are more emotionally intuitive and nurturing and far less inclined to kick you when you’re down, without sacrifi cing anything in terms of raw intelligence, drive, determination, guts, humour, creativity or relative-size-and-strength physical prowess. Sure there’s pregnancy brain to deal with, maybe a couple of times in their lives, but what do you want from them? They’re growing a human being in there. Yet at least superfi cial misogyny seems to be alive and well in our corner of the food chain today, regardless of all that. Often it’s a hell of a lot more than merely superfi cial. Don’t be like that. Don’t think it, don’t feel it and sure as hell don’t act on it. Nothing will make your life better than a woman who feels you appreciate her whether it’s a matter of love or a strictly-professional colleague. Nobody will be a more loyal friend or supporter. Nothing is more awesome. If you desire to control, own, bully, or demean women, regardless of your gender, you’re about two centuries out-of-date and nobody worthwhile is impressed by it.

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LIKE KIDS MORE.They hang upside down. They act like monkeys. They think they’re robots and trucks and city-crushing Japanese monsters. They fi nd boxes entertaining and they don’t have to suspend their disblief to accept the existence of a rabbit, bearing chocolate eggs. Meals are playtime. Bath-time is playtime. You even have to make school fun for them if you want them to learn anything because they haven’t accepted yet that life is sup-posed to be a miserable trudge through hateful work and unfulfi lling re-lationships and long queues for things you hardly even want. That isn’t to say kids don’t have their downs when they are whiney little bastards, but if you only need one reason to spend more time with them it’s this: for a period of time, everything they see is brand new. The day will come when they’ll see a horse for the fi rst time. When they’ll eat ice cream for the fi rst time, go to the movies for the fi rst time, swim in the ocean, read a book and write their name for the fi rst time. With it all comes a sense of amusement and wonder that as adults we don’t really remember so well. The quickest way to fi gure some of that out and get some of it back, is to take the time watching as they discover that pushing buttons can make the TV change channel. Because truthfully ... the way they see it through their eyes ... that’s actually how amazing the world really is.

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first i’m gonna go and pay the bills, dear. then i‘m gonna go and get totally shit faced with the boys!

KNOW THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN ‘GUY’ & ‘MAN’.It’s awesome being male. Truly. Many male members of the species forget now and then that we have a duality which we need to constantly work on however. Consider the difference between the words ‘guy’ and ‘man’ for evidence. The part of you that drinks beer and watches sports from the couch all Saturday and which drives too fast, eyes up girls and likes practical jokes ... that’s the guy in you. He’s pretty awesome and he’s far and wide the most fun part of you. Don’t lose him and don’t al-low him to have the spirit sucked out of him. On the other hand, the part of you that pays your bills on time, respects the women in your life, puts your kids fi rst and turns the music down after midnight so as not to disturb the neighbours ... that’s the man. They’re not the same thing, but they are both important. Men who focus too heavily on being men, of-ten forget that there’s a guy inside of them dying for a beer and a sneaky bucket of chicken wings. They forget that far from being a waste of time, watching today’s match from beginning-to-end, including the pre-match commentary, is an essential for them to be complete. Guys who focus too heavily on those things however run the risk of failing to notice that she is mentally heading out the door and that nobody else is taking you any more seriously. Think balance. It may be effeminate to say it, but that doesn’t mean we don’t need it.

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how the hell is my behaviour my fault? i’m all dead parts!

LIVE & LOVE PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY.Nothing scores you more points, gets you more love, more respect or more business than being willing to be responsible for your own exis-tence. And nothing is more liberating. Once you rid yourself of the right to excuses, you have no option but to step up and get better and it shows from a mile away. It means you assume your own power and you make your own decisions. You stand up for what you believe in and you re-fuse to be pushed around. You get started without anyone having to push you, you stay the distance far longer than the people around you and you achieve better. You’re more in control, so you’re more easily motivated. It also means that you’re the one who is ultimately responsible for all the results and that you’re willing to take the consequences when things go wrong. That takes balls. It takes immense spirit. And people are drawn to it. To say it isn’t for everybody is like saying oxygen isn’t for everybody when the alternative is that you live in a headspace of blame and fear and indecision. When you accept personal responsibility as a mainstay of your life, better things start to happen. Making a decision isn’t anything like as scary when you’re willing to embrace the consequences. Ulti-mately however, it all comes down to a single question: who wants your success more than you? Who cares about it more? Nobody, that’s who. So why would you allow it to be in anyone else’s hands?

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i’m an airhead and i am gonna waste your time with a load of crap that will do absolutely nothing for you!

SAY NO TO DRAMA.Call it what you want, drama, politics, whatever. You don’t need it and it will only backfi re on you sooner-or-later. During his campaign of 2008, US Senator Barack Obama, presidential hopeful had a strict ‘no drama’ policy among his staffers. He knew, as we all do, that such distractions not only waste time, but they also create rifts in relationships which are damaging. There are people in your life right now who love nothing more than to create situations that don’t exist or greatly exaggerate ones that do, to speak about people behind their backs and meddle where they have no business. Do not allow them to be part of your agenda. Aside from the fact that you’ve got better things to do with your time, you stand a real chance of being sucked into it or tarnished by it. While it’s usually a good idea to treat people like the individuals they are, when it comes to time-sucks such as drama and the people who feel they need it to make their lives more meaningful, it will pay to have a single rule: leave it out-side the door. What will happen of course is that those who thrive on it will stop including you in their lives, but that’s no bad thing. Oh and by the way, if drama is your personal preference right now, do something about it, will you? You can’t solve a problem without a sane perspective and you can’t benefi t by making it bigger. So what’s the point?

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SAY NO TO ‘ME! ME! ME!’You know what you are? You’re a member of a species that numbers in the billions. And most of them have never heard of you. That doesn’t mean you’re not awesome; in your own community you almost certainly are. Your family and friends probably think so and so do some of your colleagues. But for most of us, that’s as far as it stretches. We could all do with putting the ego to bed. That doesn’t mean of course that you shouldn’t be wickedly confi dent and full of hope for the future and your role in it, whether that future is ten years from now or the middle of next week. Nor should you look down on yourself and see yourself as merely a member of a species that numbers in the billions. You’re an amazing, brilliant individual. It’s just that … well so is everyone else, so there’s no reason for anybody to really give a shit about you. Put it this way: if you’re a cool, fun, nice guy or girl, there are those that will warm to you for it and those that will speak about how you need to toughen up behind your back. If you’re a hard, driven, focused, business-only guy or girl, there are those that will respect you for it and those that will speak about how you need to lighten the hell up behind your back. That’s the system. You can’t beat it. Telling everyone how awesome you are will not change the landscape for you. But don’t forget that you really do actually rock!

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how times change! not that long ago, trusted guys like me would tell you a pack of luckies per day was good for you. hahaha! burned!

TAKE GREAT CARE OF YOUR MIND AND BODY.Your mind and your body: you should really feed the one more and the other less. You can probably guess which is which. It is one of mod-ern man’s biggest drawbacks that we spend most of our lives beyond our twenties expanding our waistlines and allowing our minds to remain the same rather than expanding our minds and maintaining our physical shape. More to the point, we poison the whole damn system by making all the wrong food and exercise choices while fi lling our minds with junk food for the brain through time wasters such as TV. Not preaching here: I’m pretty bad at it myself. For the most part though you’d be surprised at how well your body will react to being treated well. You’d be sur-prised at how ready your mind still is to absorb new skills. And you’d be surprised at how great it can all feel not only to achieve something like getting in great shape or learning a new language, but even just to get started. Every day we make choices that are too often the easier of two or three regardless of their relative merits because all around us we are tempted by people who are doing the same. It’s almost like we’re happy to have a place along the lowest rung of the ladder. But you know per-fectly well the reasons you feel lethargic and uninspired and bored and just want to go home by around three every afternoon. You’re holding yourself back. You really deserve better.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR.I’m Colin Browne. I’m a sort of a thinking, walking, talking, seething mass of I-want-to-do-stuff-better-ness. I don’t always claim to have all the answers, but I’ve been around the block a few times in business and in life and I’ve got some experience in how to keep things going well, and how to handle them when they go bad.

Basically though, I’m just a guy who spends a lot of time really trying to fi g-ure stuff out to help growing businesses make better decisions.

My credentials if you’re into that sort of thing are a whole mixture of related-but-different things:

I edited and developed magazines for a time in the UK and in Dubai. I de-veloped some others in South Africa: Marketing Mix, Creative Mix and The AIDS Management Report. In 2006, I co-founded SALESGURU in South Africa, a business which has grown into a national brand with a successful magazine, live events, training and sales recruitment business.

In 2010, I moved to London to set up a new speaking and writing operation, backed by the COLINISM blog at www.colinjbrowne.com.

You can contact me on colin@colinjbrowne.com. I hope you will.

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COLINISM

THE COLINISTMANIFESTO

15 RULES FOR GETTING OUT OF YOUR OWN WAY