Jamil Qureshi at NABS
On the face of it, a performance psychologist-come-stand-up-comedian might not fit with the usual NABS Tuesday Club Talk speaker line-up. But just as the England football team has been finding out on the way to the World Cup, a performance psychologist can be the perfect companion on the road to achieving your full potential.
And so we found out on Tuesday night as Jamil Qureshi, performance coach extraordinaire took to the floor at Posterscope, determined to teach us five values that can be useful for our industry and our careers.
For those who weren’t there to experience the talk for themselves we’ve outlined just a few snippets of his best advice:
1. The power of your inner dialogue
Successful people are motivated. They think about how they will succeed, rather than thinking about how they will fail. To put this into context Jamil used the example of the late footballer Gary Speed. Before taking a penalty he’d only ask himself one thing. And that would be which way he would be running to celebrate having scored the goal he knew he would score – left or right corner flag.
How many of us would approach this situation and think that we were going to scuff it? At NABS we’ve seen time and again the value positive thoughts can have on an individual; a happier mind equals better work and ultimately a more successful organisation. By harbouring negative feelings we’re more likely to fail. By doing the opposite we’re more likely to witness a positive change.
2. Changing the way you calculate E + R = O (event + reaction = outcome)
We have countless excuses and reasons to explain why we may not be where we want to be. This is normal. Most people automatically find excuses and blame others when things don’t work out the way they want. When people don’t like the outcomes, they will choose to blame the event. Successful people act differently. It’s not easy to do, but they change their reactions (R) to the events (E) until they get the outcomes (O) they want. So what are you waiting for? Challenge your thoughts, and rewire the way you view the things happening in your life.
3. Fear of failure
One of the biggest fears we have is the fear of failure. As a consequence, it’s estimated that 40% of everything we do as human beings is by habit alone; we enjoy being in our own comfort zone, and so to break through our fear of failure, we need to be disruptive. If not we’ll spend half of our lives doing something we don’t enjoy, because we never challenge what we are doing at any given moment.
Jamil finished the talk by stressing that we didn’t have to carry out all of his points to the letter to be successful. However, as we always say at NABS, making seemingly minor changes to the way that we approach things can make a massive difference to our success and most importantly our happiness at work.
All in all, it was an eye-opening, uplifting and rewarding Tuesday Club Talk for all. If you’d like to watch a clip from the talk, follow this link to our YouTube channel
Our next Tuesday Club event is on 16th of September with Rory Sutherland, ECD and vice-chairman at OgilvyOne and vice-chairmen at Ogilvy and Mather UK.