Are You a 'Show' or a 'No Show?'

A person who used to exist and was famous before some custodians of correctness  decided to cancel him once said, “80% of success is showing up.”

And probably 80% of that success is 80% due to showing up.

Let me explain.

There’s showing up and there’s showing up.

Showing up on time in your suit and shiny shoes, made-up or shaved (whatever your preference) and with a proposition you know inside out is showing up.

Showing up full of interest, passion, enthusiasm and a focus on whomever you’re going to be working with to the extent they can feel your energy is showing up.

I invite you to consider the proposition that showing up without showing up is discourteous, unprofessional and counterproductive.

I’m a practitioner of hypnosis and use it with my private clients as well as those folks who express an interest in what it can do for them when I’m doing corporate training work. My early personal experiences of being a hypnotic subject were uninspiring and nearly terminal.

A few years ago I was on an ‘entry-level’ hypnotherapy course and the process of teaching revolved around the reading of ‘hypnotic’ scripts. The inductions were simple, easy to understand and to execute. But there was a problem.

They were dull. Dull, dull, dull. And they didn’t work on me. The people ‘doing the hypnosis’ were nice enough but they were dull as well and the experience left me feeling a sense of betrayed indifference. That’s a really bad place to leave somebody. In a ‘neither good nor bad’, uninterested meh-kinda-place. Where do you go from there? Who cares.

The course leader realised she had a problem pupil and asked what was bothering me. I thought it best to be candid.

“Let me get Joseph,” she said.

Woo hoo! Yay! Let’s get Joseph! Who’s Joseph and what’s he going to do to compensate for the wasted time, effort, money and the precious and irrecoverable beats of my heart?

Joseph arrived.

No, that’s not accurate. He showed up.

He showed up with energy, interest, humour, understanding, grace, charm and talent.

I knew instantly, before he uttered a word, that he arrived with all those things available for me and my attitude changed.

Joseph used the same simple, easy to understand and execute induction on me that had failed so spectacularly earlier in the day and I was soon in a great place. Fully concentrated, alive and ready for anything.

3-2-1 back in the room.

It wasn’t the scripts. It wasn’t the process.

It was the attitude. The attitude of showing up and giving 100% of his energy and attention to the most important person in his life at that moment. He knew it was happening, I knew it was happening. It made the difference. It turned a potentially career scrubbing moment into one of brilliant clarity, purpose and commitment. That moment paid for the course many times over.

It’s clear that people are capable of humungous changes in attitude and performance through hypnosis and training but here’s the simplest of magic ingredients:

the more I focus on showing up for them  the more they know they can and choose to do it for themselves.

Try it today – with anyone. Give them 100% of your attention. Make a point of turning off your phone, closing your laptop, switching off the telly, put your sandwich down. Smile and connect. Listen. Show up.

Notice what happens.