Secrets of Success Shared

“The greatest achievement was at first and for a time a dream. The oak sleeps in the acorn, the bird waits in the egg, and in the highest vision of the soul a waking angel stirs. Dreams are the seedlings of realities.” (James Allen)


What a wonderful notion that great possibilities or achievements lie dormant in all of us? For some people the dream becomes a reality but unfortunately for others, the dream or aspiration is never realised. Why? Hundreds of books have been written about achieving success and back-stories and histories of successful people and not surprisingly, there is no one single factor that brings about their ultimate success or why others fail.

Malcolm Gladwell suggests in his 2008 book “Outliers: The Story of Success” that it has more to do with good luck and circumstance than anything else. Success is a serendipitous event where a person is born in the right place at the right time with the right resources. Think, Bill Gates and Steve Jobs living in Silicon Valley, California in the early sixties. Gladwell does note though, that practice in a skill is all important to later success.

Other authors like Sir Ken Robinson argue that some people have innate talents that are unleashed by their passion and ‘being in the flow’ amongst similarly talented and creative people. In his 2009 book, ”The Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything”, Robinson shares many stories of famous people who only started on the path of great achievement through finding their ‘element’ which he describes as ‘the point at which natural talent meets personal passion’.

Dr. Kerry Spackman,(2009), author of “The Winner’s Bible: Rewire Your Brain for Permanent Change”, discusses how ‘rewiring your brain’ for success can ultimately bring about a powerful belief – an unshakeable self belief - that results in a person having the confidence and unshakeable certainty about his or her ultimate success. Familiarising yourself with a daily review of your goals, aspirations and plan of attack, accompanied by a self-made subliminal cd has worked on many a famous and elite Olympic sportspersons, coaches, or musicians that Spackman has worked with over the years.

In many scientific and educational research projects, success has been measured in lots of different ways. The great performers or sportspeople of our time have often claimed that they are not geniuses or people of superior talent but are simply hard workers. Doesn’t sound very romantic does it? The truth of the matter is that great artists, sportspeople, musicians, chess players, and academics put in thousands of regular and specific hours of practice. “What is the secret number of hours?” I hear you ask. Ten thousand hours. Yes, ten thousand hours.

Dr. Anders Ericsson’s research (2000), “Expert Performance and Deliberate Practice” underlines the point that successful people are often experts in their field who have through their relentless training and practice achieved this expertise. However, when scientists began measuring the experts' supposedly superior powers of speed, memory and intelligence with psychometric tests, no general superiority was found, in fact, the demonstrated superiority was domain specific.

For example, the superiority of the chess experts' memory was constrained to regular chess positions and did not generalize to other types of materials (Djakow, Petrowski & Rudik, 1927). Not even IQ could distinguish the best among chess players (Doll & Mayr, 1987) nor the most successful and creative among artists and scientists (Taylor, 1975).

In a recent review, Ericsson and Lehmann (1996) found that (1) measures of general basic capacities do not predict success in a domain, (2) the superior performance of experts is often very domain specific and transfer outside their narrow area of expertise is surprisingly limited and (3) systematic differences between experts and less proficient individuals nearly always reflect attributes acquired by the experts during their lengthy training.

So given this extensive research on expertise and successful people, how does this information help our students and teachers better understand what they need to do to learn at a superior level, achieve better and ultimately achieve success? Eminent educator and researcher, John Hattie who is Director of the Melbourne Education Research Institute at the University of Melbourne, notes in his book, “Visible Learning for Teachers”,(2012, p14) notes:

“Visible teaching and learning occurs when there is deliberate practice aimed at attaining mastery of the goal, when there is feedback given and sought, and when there are active, passionate, and engaging people (teacher, students, peers) participating in the act of learning.”

What can we glean from the research about how to achieve and succeed? It doesn’t really matter if your desire is to be a great musician, artist, singer, sportsperson, business person, academic, teacher, student or parent, these are the ‘take-outs’ for great achievement and future success:

• Passion – we must believe ardently in what we do or what we want to achieve in this life

• Belief in yourself – your skills, your talents, your knowledge, you are unique

• Plan of action – building success requires a plan of action, not just goals

• Practice – 10,000 hours - there is no success without practice, think ‘no pain, no gain’

• Learn from your mistakes – mistakes are powerful lessons on what not to do next time you try

• Seek specific feedback on how to improve on your knowledge, skills and performance; and

• Remind yourself daily of your goals, plan of action and dreams – write them down and read them every single day.

Anything is possible. Remember we all have to start somewhere. As Robert Louis Stevenson wrote:

"Everyone who got where he is has had to begin where he was."

Karon Graham

Look! A Book!

“Look , a Book!....

Let’s hold it close…….
And then we can read it,
Again, and again, and again.”
(From "Look, a Book! by Libby Gleeson and Freya Blackwood)

“Look, A Book!” shouts the title of one of the delightful books shortlisted by the Children’s Book Council of Australia for 2012. Somehow, this simple exclamation captures the excitement, the wonder, and the joy of discovering a book to read.

While naysayers suggest that the shelf life of books, that is of physical books, is limited with the advent of eBooks, no one who has read a beautifully illustrated book to a child lately, or picked up a glossy covered book will doubt the joy of reading a real book. Long live books!

Yes I admit I’m biased. Call me old-fashioned, but I am a product of my upbringing after all. Opening the first page of a real life book is still as exciting an experience, as it was when I was a child. Books come in all shapes and sizes and while I appreciate the ease of opening and reading a book on a tablet or kindle, I enjoy far more the reading experience of a real life book.

I love the fact that books come in all shapes and sizes, as messy as this might be for those of us who collect books, but isn’t that the real beauty of books? As John Hunt suggests in “The Art of the Idea”, logic can be kryptonite because it carries with it, terrifying weight and can stop dreamers dead in their tracks. Real books live and breathe for those of us who read them. Don’t you just love the colourfully illustrated books where the characters seem to jump out off the page and enter your own world?

Imagine giving all students an A4 page only and telling them that they can draw anything they like as long as it was A4 size? How limiting? How stifling? How unimaginative? How awful? Imagine shortlisted book, the Queensland Art Gallery’s “Surrealism for Kids” in A4 black and white pages, with no cute cut-outs or weird characters or iconography? Dull! Dull! Dull!

Imagine shortlisted “For All Creatures” written by Glenda Millard and Rebecca Cool, without wonderful coloured stylised images of all manner of creatures from the animal kingdom. Where’s the inspiration to engage our children’s mind without such creative images? Books are tactile, they are visual, and they are a window into another’s person’s creative mind of stories, colour and emotion.

Books make us think, they make us dream of possibilities and they engage in a way that is very personal. Each of us takes from the same story a different message. Some of us will think deeply about the subject while others will be quite dismissive and sceptical of the topic. Some will experience a real ‘aha’ moment and be forever changed by the words on a page. Books, whether positive or negative, leave an indelible mark on our psyche.

“Ailing am I,
In cage of twisty wire, cold concrete.
Mourn,
Ache,
Yearn….”
(From: "The Dream of theThylacine")

The lament of the Thylacine is palpable in the honourable mentioned book, ”The Dream of the Thylacine” by Margaret Wild and Ron Brooks. The reader is left with a great sense of loss and sadness for the Tasmanian Tiger and what could have been. Books help us empathise with animals as well as humans too.

“As the pirates were leaving, one of them felt sorry for us, and threw us a bottle of water. It wasn’t much, but it saved our lives.”
(From: "The Little Refugee")

“The Little Refugee”, written by Anh Do and Suzanne Do is the inspiring true story of Australia’s Happiest Refugee, Anh Do and family, who made their way to Australia in a rickety boat of dubious seaworthiness. The authors are donating 100 per cent of their profits from the sale of this book to the Loreto Vietnam – Australia Program which was started by Loreto nun Sister Trish Franklin. This charity looks after extremely poor and disabled children in Vietnam. Not only is the story itself inspiring but the authors are making a real difference to other people’s lives by their generous donation back to those less fortunate in the villages of Vietnam.

Books are alive and the child's love of reading will only grow with parents reading more to them. As the back cover of the “Look, a Book” suggests……

“You never know where it might take you.”

Perhaps today is as good day as any to start reading a book ourselves and reading to our sons and daughters, in this week, of all weeks, Book Week.

Karon Graham

The Happiness of Giving

“You make a living by what you get, but you make a life by what you give.” (Winston Churchill)


How much are you willing to give? Yes, a difficult question to answer, because most of us would say, “It depends”. It depends on lots of things doesn’t it? Immediately racing through my mind would be the following questions: Who is it for? What does it involve? What commitment is required? How much time or money? When and where?

Yes, the answer to this question is not as simple as you might think. Everyone is different; some people seem to give endlessly while others give very rarely or not at all. Some people give unstintingly of their own time, while others prefer to give money. So what causes some people to ‘give’ more than others?

Volunteering has long been a common ethic in Australia, with people giving their time without any expectation of compensation. While these volunteer activities may be performed with the core intention of helping others, research (like that found in “The Health Benefits of Volunteering” by the American National and Community Service) indicates that there is a common wisdom that those who give of themselves also receive. As Gaylla LeMaire quipped:

“Volunteers are paid in six figures... S-M-I-L-E-S.”

Indeed there is a growing body of evidence that shows that people feel a rush of happiness when they help others (Gilbert 2006; William and Lee 2007). Recent research relying on MRIs demonstrates that reward centres in the brain are activated when people help a charity. Oprah Winfrey has been known to comment that her favourite moments were in her ‘give-away shows’, She says that “every gift I’ve ever given has brought at least as much happiness to me as it has to the person I’ve given it to.”

Research reveals also that those who volunteer have lower mortality rates, greater functional ability, and lower rates of depression later in life than those who do not volunteer. Significantly, volunteering also provides individuals with a sense of purpose and life satisfaction. What could be better than having a sense of purpose and a sense of well being by helping someone else less fortunate or in need of our assistance?

American research carried out by Liu and Aaker, (The Happiness of Giving: The Time-Ask Effect, Journal of Consumer Research. 35 ,October), reveals that the focus on time versus money lead to two distinct mindsets that impact consumers’ willingness to donate to charitable causes. Interestingly Liu and Aaker found that thoughts of spending time for a charity or a good cause, appear to activate an emotional mind-set, resulting in a real connection between personal happiness and charitable giving – and possibly, according to the researchers, infecting the desire to achieve meaning and happiness in life.

Volunteering has other benefits too. It can assist people in making new friends and contacts, it can increase and improve social and relationship skills, it increases self-confidence, it can provide improved job skills and knowledge and ultimately help in some peoples’ career pathway. Don’t underestimate the power of volunteering.

“Noah's Ark was built by volunteers; the Titanic was built by professionals.”

“Mmmm, food for thought” ….. Many large scale projects, like hosting the Olympic Games for example, are dependent upon thousands of volunteers and in many respects owe its very success and efficiency to the work of willing volunteers. Remember the devastating Queensland floods of 2011? The massive cleanup would not have been achieved so quickly without the battalion of volunteers who came forward to help without a moments’ hesitation.

“Unselfish and noble actions are the most radiant pages in the biography of souls.” (David Thomas)

We can all make a greater effort to volunteer more generously of our time. After all, it seems to me that it would be a 'win-win' for all of society and think of the sense of well being and accomplishment that we would all feel in helping others. There are lots of ways that we can volunteer, consider some of the following:

• helping at your child's school
• volunteering for "Meals on Wheels" or some similar program that gives assistance to the elderly
• joining an organisation committed to helping others like: Rotary, Lions, and Zonta
• volunteer at some of LifeLine stores
• joining in designated days like: "Clean Up Australia" 
• volunteering to help in hospitals, reading or talking with elderly residents in nursing homes.

Let's face it, there are hundreds of organisations that could do with our help, our knowledge and expertise. Why not start with a simple project and see how you go? Not only will you make someone else feel better for your efforts but you will feel better about yourself too. You're never too young or old to start :)

“The world is hugged by the faithful arms of volunteers.”

(Terri Guillemets)

Karon Graham

Dealing with Disappointment

“Few things are impossible to diligence and skill. Great works are performed not by strength, but perseverance.” (Samuel Johnson)


Everyone has to deal with disappointment at some point in their lives. For some people this disappointment occurs on a world stage where it seems everyone is watching. For most of us mere mortals though it happens quietly and without fanfare and publicity.

Tom Slingsby was expected to win gold in the 2008 Olympics Laser class. Everyone from the selectors, the Australian Olympic Committee, the sports commentators and a legion of sailing fans knew that Tom had what it took to win gold in Beijing. But Tom didn’t win the gold medal, he came second. He was devastated, because he had spent the last eight years preparing for this Olympic event. He was so focused that it never entered his mind that he would not win gold. Slingsby spent many months trying to come to terms with his loss to Paul Goodison and in the end wrote down his thoughts and feelings in an account he called, “What Happened”. This was a significant turning point for Slingsby and his decision to work towards the 2012 Olympics.

Australian gold medal winner, Anna Meares is one of the most successful female track cyclists ever, winning the Olympic gold medal in the sprint after a 2-0 win against her English nemesis, Pendleton. Meares has been successful in the 500 m time trial, winning three world titles (2004, 2007, 2009), one Olympic title (2004) and two Commonwealth Games gold medals in 2006, and 2010. She also won two team sprint gold medals at the World Championships (2009-10), and won five silvers and five bronzes in all speed disciplines, including the sprint and keirin. Meares also gained two Olympic medals in the sprint, with silver in 2008 and bronze in 2004.

Anna Meares was a doubtful competitor for the 2008 Olympics though, after falling heavily from her bike in the January before the Games at the World Cup event in Los Angeles, fracturing her C2 vertebra as well as suffering other injuries. Meares went within a fraction of a centimetre of paralysis and yet in spite of this setback, she pulled herself through a torturous training regime to be ready for the 2008 Olympics; it was nothing short of a miracle.

Sometimes it is through such adversity, that people triumph most. As American writer Marsha Sinetar notes:

. “Burning desire to be or do something gives us staying power - a reason to get up every morning or to pick ourselves up and start in again after a disappointment. “

It was a sweet victory for both Slingsby and Meares to win a gold medal this week in the face of disappointments of the past Olympics, and in Meares’ case, in other cycling events during the London Olympics which she ‘bombed’. Had either of the athletes simply given in to their disappointment and not come back from the brink of leaving their beloved sports or competing for the Olympics again, they would not have savoured the glorious moments of victory in individual gold medals at this year’s Olympics.

It’s often difficult to see that in the moment of our greatest disappointment that good can come from such a bad situation. There are many lessons we learn through life that come from facing disappointments, failure and setbacks. Building resilience, tenacity and determination only come about through a desire to improve or succeed after a disappointment. The desire to overcome a past failure is indeed a powerful motivator towards changing patterns of behaviour, working harder and smarter and changing our perspective for the better.

Young people sometimes expect everything to fall into place and sometimes as a parent we want to protect our young people from disappointments of life. Yet talking through our son or daughter’s setback and helping them to see a way forward is a positive step towards building resilience and determination in our young boys and girls. We all learn through experience and particularly by experiencing defeat.

As author and psychologist ,Barton Goldsmith comments:

“Disappointment takes the wind out of your sails. You can sit, becalmed, in the middle of your regret, or you can choose to get out your paddle and start working your way to shore. Whether you end up on a deserted island or a tropical paradise I can’t say. But staying, where you will surely turn you into fish food, so the only real choice is to start rowing.”

So to all those who have suffered setbacks and disappointments, keep faith with your goals, dreams and aspirations, and continue to work steadfastly towards your ultimate goals. Perseverance and hard work is everything, when it comes to achieving success. There is rarely any success without some setback along the way. It’s what we do after the setback that determines our future success, whether it be in sport, music or academics. Determination and perseverance will win out in the end.

Karon Graham

Why Expectations Can Fail Us

Oft expectation fails, and most oft where most it promises; and oft it hits where hope is coldest; and despair most sits.

(William Shakespeare’s: “All’s Well That Ends Well”, Act Two: Scene 1)

The lead up to the ultimate international sporting competition, the London Olympic Games, has been a juggernaut for athletes, who have pushed themselves to the limit in preparation for the Games. The pressure on elite athletes competing in the London Olympics is gargantuan by any measure. Meeting the expectations of the media, the entire country, and the crowd of wild supporters at the event, let alone their own expectations, is unbelievably daunting. Is it any wonder then that more elite athletes don’t choke at the critical moment?

Consider how James Magnussen felt after the humbling 4x100metre freestyle relay result, when the team came fourth. Consider what emotions were raging through Emily Seebohm’s mind when she felt so much pressure to come first, that she broke down, cried and apologised for winning the silver medal in the 100metre backstroke final. Most of us would be deliriously happy at getting to compete at such a high level of competition, let alone win a medal, but not so, our elite athletes. Let’s face it, the build up by the media doesn’t help the situation, it just piles on the pressure.

Believe it or not, there is a ‘science of choking’ as reported in the latest “Time Magazine”, (July 30 – August 6, 2012). Psychology professor at University of Chicago, Sian Beilock, explains in her 2010 book, “Choke: What the Secrets of the Brain Reveal About Getting It Right When You Have To”, that often when athletes choke, they can tell you exactly what was going through their mind and what they were doing at the time.

Surprisingly it seems that athletes can ‘over-think’ the race or competition and because of the stress and worry, the athlete’s brain becomes ‘too busy’. The science behind ‘choking’ suggests that the prefrontal cortex of the brain – the part that houses informational memory – is flooded with too many thoughts.

Athletes who are more relaxed and not stressed are more likely to be drawing on their motor cortex, which controls the planning and execution of movements, according to Beilock. Winning athletes, who are ‘in the zone’ often can’t tell you a thing about what was going through their mind or what was happening when they won the event. Basically it seems that if top athletes start thinking about the details of their techniques instead of letting muscle memory naturally take control, then they ‘tend to mess up’ according to the scientists.

So what can be done to calm the mind? According to Davis, a psychologist for the Canadian swimming team, reliving the failure through video, without discussion, triggered the same terrible emotions that the swimmers experienced in the ‘failed’ event. However, Davis found that when he used ‘cognitive intervention’, that requires the athletes to share their feelings about the race and discuss ways to correct their errors, that the athletes could then watch the video without reliving the stress of the race. The MRI showed that the athletes’ brains changed with the blood flow increasing in the motor areas and decreased in the prefrontal cortex. Davis reported that: “Watching the failure washed out the negative emotions.” It was as if the athletes saw the failure in a different light. “Now I can discuss it with you, and it’s no big deal.”

Maybe there’s a lesson here for all of us. The more we build up our own expectations, stressing and worrying about an event or situation, the more difficult it becomes to find a way to move forward. Overanalysing a bad situation doesn’t bring about a better outcome and in fact can hinder us when we are next faced with a similar situation. The secret seems to be, to talk through the bad situation or failure objectively with someone ‘in the know’ and talk about how we might be able to handle the situation better in the future.

Students often repeat the same mistakes at school and rather than seeking the help of their teachers, stress and worry unnecessarily. Talking through past failures and finding better strategies with their teachers and parents, is one sure way to move forward and to improve on previous performances. The teachers are only too happy to help students who ask for help and to assist them in improving on their results. As Patricia Neal once said:

A master can tell you what he or she expects of you. A teacher, though, awakens your own expectations.

Sometimes it’s a simple case of we don’t know what we don’t know until we do something about it. Some of the greatest procrastinators of this world suffer because of the desire to be perfect in what they do or achieve. History reveals that in fact, it is through the mistakes we make and then correct that moves us towards a better outcome – not perfection – but something that approximates perfection. Being less stressed and not worrying about a problem will certainly improve our chances of success, if we seek guidance and counsel from the people around us who know more and have experienced more that we have.

Hiding our heads in the sand is not a solution either. At some point we have to face our worst fears and our failures. It’s how we tackle these fears and failures that will determine our future success (or lack thereof). Take heart from the fact that many famous scientists and athletes failed many time before experiencing success but remember, that the success only came after analysing what went wrong and deciding on a new course of action or strategy.

Maybe we should all take a collective deep breath and take to heart the words of the well known song, “Don’t Worry, Be Happy”:

Don’t worry, be happy!...
In every life we have some trouble,
But when you worry, you make it double,
Don’t worry, be happy.
(Bobby McFerrin)

Maybe this is the solution we are looking for in our lives.
Karon Graham