Expert Identifies How to Power Your Way Through 2011 Using The 1% Solution

Over the past few years, world renowned performance expert and NY Times bestselling author Tom Connellan became fascinated with the exquisitely small differences in performances demonstrated by top performers in business, academics, and sports. He looked at the success patterns of Olympians, Rhodes Scholars, astronauts, CEO’s, female world leaders, elite Canadian athletes, top students, top performing sales reps, military achievers, U.S. presidents, and others. His findings showed what we intuitively know to be true – that the difference between really good and great is amazingly small.

In looking at the Men’s Downhill in the 2006 Winter Olympics, for example, Tom found that the difference between a Gold Medal and no medal was 1.08 seconds or .9%.

No matter where he looked, he found pretty much the same thing. The difference between a Gold Medal and no medal averaged a shade under 1%.

In his new book, The 1% Solution for Work and Life, Tom shares his research findings about exactly what the very best performers do that make this incredibly important difference.

“The key”, he says, “is that winners have a structure for making the necessary changes and the losers don’t.”

The 1% Solution for Work and Life: How to Make Your Next 30 Days the Best Ever gives them the missing structure.

Tom recognizes that most of us aren’t going to compete in the Olympics. But because the tools he advocates are not based on opinion but on solid research and testing, they produce results for anyone willing to take certain steps that leave behind old habits and beliefs, replacing them with the proper structure.

“The real discovery,” he says “is that there are just a few key actionable ideas that you need to improve yourself in whatever you do. You don’t have to compete with other people. You just have to focus on being better today than you were yesterday.”

His examples land like a velvet coated sledgehammer! His book is chock full of simple, easy- to-understand tools and techniques that teach you how to make a difference. Here’s a sample of five actionable ideas from the book that make it easier to power up and get your work and life going on a higher level.

• Be 1% better in 100’s of things. There’s no way a company can be 100% better than the competition. But it can be 1% better in 100’s of things. A company that executes better on 100’s of things will smash the competition every time.
• Pick one thing to change and stick with that change for 30 days. The time frame works because research shows that it takes between 21 and 30 days for the new way to become a habit. You can even change a negative emotion, a facial expression, or voice tonality as a small initial change.
• Be better today than you were yesterday. You may never be the very best in the world at what you do, but you can be better than you are right now. The Olympic motto is Citius Altius Fortius which translates into “swifter, higher, stronger” not into “swiftest, highest, strongest.” That means working at getting better every day.
• Use the Power of Yet. “I’m not a millionaire” is different than “I’m not a millionaire yet.” Each resonates within the body in a different way. Think of your body as an electromagnetic field and you’ll find that even something as small as simply adding “yet” to a statement, changes the way your body feels. Try it with different statements. Ask friends and family to try it.
• Know that even positive change feels uncomfortable. Clasp your hands together. Note which thumb is on top. Now take your hands apart and put them back together again – this time with the other thumb on top. How does that feel? If you used words like “weird”, “awkward”, ‘strange” or “uncomfortable”, that’s normal. Realize that when you make a change – however small – that’s the initial (and normal) response. At about the 21st day, that feeling goes away; this is when the new habit gets locked in.

It’s easy for people to identify many places and ways they can make improvements in their life, but because they lack a structure for making improvements, the improvements seldom last.

The 1% Solution for Work and Life: How to Make Your Next 30 Days the Best Ever gives you the tools to make improvements permanent.