When you change your environment, you will inevitably change

22 November 2009

I have a number of friends who have moved overseas and it’s really interesting to talk to them about changes they have made in order to adapt to where their new environment is. To give you a quick update, I’m now in Sydney and I have 2 really good friends of mine who have made a new life here and I’m looking forward to catching up properly with them later on today.

I’ve come here after a gruelling and totally amazing 7 days training in Fiji at this Billionaire Bootcamp seminar I have mentioned several times before. This was one of the most intensive things I’ve done and it truly challenged my perception of the world and what is possible when you look at the bigger picture.

One of the challenges we faced was a classic “The Apprentice” style game where we had to trade items from a paperclip up to as high a value as possible. We had 2 hours and a whole lot of intention as we set out into the unknowing public and after setting up the plan and idea we forged ahead. I was made the team leader and I learnt a lot about leading too. I needed to be more assertive. Though I had some nice ideas on how to play big, there were people who were only looking to play a small game and my voice got lost in the foray. All due respect to them for going out to get single upward trades because we still came back with over $300 worth of goods from a single paperclip, however I was looking for more intelligent deal making to create even more value. There were teams which managed to come back with agreements for properties and other such high value items.

That was a good lesson for me, and it was only one of about 100 valuable lessons, and 100 is probably an understatement. We also had a guest presenter in Clinton Swaine who came to teach us some experiential games to teach business lessons. It was a very challenging day, however we managed to get through it with even more understandings about our own issues with doing big business. Contracts is key, deal making is all about getting contracts. If nothing else, that tip alone will help you increase your business multiple times over. If you are really interested to learn more about what I mean by contracts, drop me an email. It’s far too much info for me to type up right now.

This morning I had another breakthrough in understanding. As I was writing my journal, I realised something really key to understanding how differences came to be with me and my parents’ belief systems. It was no wonder that in the early years, there were clashes of identity happening because we grew up in a completely different set of value structures to what my parents grew up in.

Furthermore, there are various levels of change that happen to create identity, and these list as follows; values, beliefs, attitudes, skills & strategies, environment.

You see, what I got clear on this morning was that the values, beliefs and attitudes required a skill first and that was the skill of language. If you change your environment by moving to a country where you do not speak the local language, then you will only get a certain level of growth beause without language you don’t get to hear all their local values, beliefs and attitudes. So you inevitably create a glass ceiling of growth for yourself. Now that is what happened to my parents. They did the best they could with the resources they had available and I am massively proud of them for doing that.

Still it does go towards explaining the difficulties I had with identity in the early years, and I suspect it is the same type of issues experienced today with the many people in the world where they are growing up as the first generation in their family in a foreign land. The issue of identity is always going to present value and belief conflicts.

That’s why I’m going to write a book about it and I believe I come from a position of knowing.