Introduction
Welcome to The ContraMind Code.
The ContraMind Code provides you with a system of principles, signals, and ideas to aid you in your pursuit of excellence.
The newsletter shares the source code through quick snapshots for a systems thinking approach to be the best in what you do.
The Code helps you reboot and reimagine your thinking by learning from the best and enables you to draw a blueprint on what it takes to get extraordinary things done. Please share your valuable thoughts and comments and start a conversation.
Take a journey to www.contraminds.com. Listen and watch some great minds talking to us about their journey of discovery of what went into making them craftsmen of their profession to drive peak performance.
The Everyday Supercommunicators Who Get Groups In Sync.
You may have wondered in the past about specific types of people who have a phenomenal ability to connect with people and align groups, and interestingly enough, groups, too, align with this person. What could be the driving factors behind this? Behaviour Scientist have found a set of powerful insights through a research study, which provides some interesting learnings:
When we absorb what someone is saying and they comprehend what we say, it’s because our brains are aligned to some degree.
Some people are exceptionally skilled at this kind of synchronisation. Some individuals—let’s call them supercommunicators—seem to synchronise effortlessly with just about anyone.
Charles Duhigg, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author of The Power of Habit, Smarter Faster Better, and, most recently, Supercommunicators, writes that anyone can become a supercommunicator—and, in fact, many of us already are if we learn to unlock our instincts.
According to the findings of this research, “Strong leaders often didn’t help people align. In fact, groups with a dominant leader had the least amount of neural synchrony.”
Groups with the greatest synchrony had one or two people who behaved very differently! These people tended to speak less than dominant leaders, and when they did open their mouths, it was usually to ask questions.
Read the entire article here.
Connecting The Dots - Building Habits That Stick.
Most often, it’s not the goal, dream, or aspiration you want to accomplish or achieve that is difficult to set or clearly articulate. It’s the habits that you need to follow relentlessly day in and day out that pave the way to achieving them.
In the Play to Potential podcast, Deepak Jayaraman vividly describes his legendary guests' lessons on developing, doing and maintaining habits. Every piece of advice these guests give is worth its weight in gold. Here is a quick summary of his learnings:
James Clear: We should increase the friction in the negative habits we want to eliminate and decrease the resistance in the positive habits we are trying to create.
B J Fogg: Build tiny, achievable habits and expand them. Consistent habit-building needs authentic celebration, not just rewards or incentives, which only helps sustain habits for a short time.
Katy Milkman: Being flexible is a crucial factor in habit-building.
Ayelet Fishbach: Build habits that help you stretch, but don’t allow them to burn you.
Marshall Goldsmith: Find an anchor to make you accountable for your habits.
You can listen to the entire episode:
How To Make Stress Your Friend.
In this TED Talk, Kelly McGonigal takes a contrarian view of stress. In her study, she says that people who did not consider stress harmful to their health had a lower chance of succumbing to it, including those with very little stress.
She says if you start thinking of stress response as helpful, as something that energises your body and helps you better meet the challenge, you will feel less anxious, more confident, and less stressed!
How you rethink stress matters rather than demonising stress. When you seek support or help from someone else as a stress response, you release more of the oxytocin hormone, and you actually recover faster from stress. The mechanism for stress resilience is human connection.
You can click on the above video and watch this brilliant talk about stress.
Why Habit-Building Without A Purpose Will Not Work
There are many books, concepts, frameworks, and ideas about what goes into building an enduring habit in your life. They seem to be constantly focused on consistency, building anchors, motivation, flexibility, practising doable tiny habits and expanding them continuously, etc., which is valuable and significant. Here’s something you may want to add on top of these, much like adding a cherry on top of a cake:
One of the fundamental factors in building an enduring habit is the conviction of purpose that you have in what you want to do or achieve. A goal is a subset of the larger purpose as goals may change from time to time, but the purpose will always remain constant. Most people think, reflect and set many goals or keep refining them, but not often enough time is spent on defining the purpose. Building a habit becomes very difficult when your purpose is not authentic and if you are not brutally honest about what you deeply believe in and want to do - irrespective of the outcome and rewards it may result in. Hence, this may not lead to a consistent practice of that habit over time. So, though you may have short-term support like a mentor or a coach, markers or motivators to keep doing it, over time, you tend to lose steam in cultivating that habit and stop doing it.
Therefore, before going on a habit-building binge, think about your purpose very hard. This is one thing you cannot change, as this is like a lighthouse that provides the direction in terms of the destination you want to reach. If you are not fixed on your destination, no amount of habit-building binge or process can help you as you are likely to lose motivation, or you will create lame excuses on why you cannot follow that habit. Most importantly, you will not do or follow that habit for life.
Remember, habit follows purpose. However, a purpose without consistent habits that are not done diligently will only end up as a pipe dream.
Some lessons we learnt from this week’s missions:
Supercommunicators have a phenomenal ability to connect with people and align groups of people effortlessly.
Habits planned and done consistently over time help you achieve your purpose and underlying goals.
Find ways to build stress-response mechanisms to energise you to deal with challenges.