Copyright (c) 2009 Willie Horton
As a once senior banker, I know all about inertia. Studies from various parts of the world show that the majority of bank customers are unhappy with the levels of service they receive. In addition, many bank customers are aware that, at various times in their “relationship” with their bank, they have been inappropriately treated or overcharged. However, when it comes to current or checking accounts, the rate of customer movement between banks is tiny in comparison to the amount of customer dissatisfaction - they’re simply not dissatisfied enough to bother to make the change and, as a result, they decide to simply put up with their dissatisfaction. The phenomenon is called inertia.
I’ve now been working with clients in the area of so-called personal development for nearly fourteen years. Almost all those with whom I work experience immediate positive benefits - in their personal, business and financial lives. For some, the change is so dramatic that they commit to maintaining a clear and present state of mind on an ongoing basis (as that’s the only state of mind in which you can be at your most effective, efficient and, most importantly, alert to the next opportunity). For many, however, they drift in and out of commitment - they revert to their normal state of mind (a word about that in a moment) and only mentally pull themselves together when things start going wrong - as, in every life, they inevitably do from time to time.
The big problem is, however, that their normal state of mind - your normal state of mind for that matter - resembles something not far short of technical insanity. Consider the decades of research that prove that the normal adult is incapable of paying attention, that the normal adult rarely experiences meeting new people during the course of their adult lives (sure, we all meet lots of new people regularly, but the research indicates that we pigeon-hole them within four minutes and never actually experience the new person we’ve just met) and that the normal adult’s subconscious mind, through automatically paying attention to internal programs and conditioning, controls the normal adult - not the other way around. If that’s not a definition of insanity - that we’re not in control of our own minds - perhaps someone would correct me!
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