Jolt! by Phil Cooke (whitelam books .TXT) 📕

18. The Power of Perception

Why It Is Just as Important as Reality

19. Change Your Thinking and Change Your Future

The Incredible Influence of Your Thought Life

20. Discover the Power of Faith

The Awesome Power in Looking Beyond Yourself

JOLT YOUR FUTURE

21. Eliminate Destructive Distractions

Releasing Negative Baggage

22. Failure Is the Key to Success

Mistakes Are Just Part of the Process

23. Get Over Yourself!

It Is Not About You

24. Leave a Legacy of Change

How Will You Be Remembered?

25. Live a Blockbuster Life

Discover the Far-Reaching Power of Influence

Acknowledgments

Credits

About the Author

» INTRODUCTION

LIVING IN A DISRUPTED WORLD

Jolt : To disturb. To shock. To interfere with abruptly. To shake things up.

I don’t have to convince you the world is changing. Globalization has changed business, the media have changed our perceptions, culture has changed our values, and technology has changed everything. We I live in the instant world of mobile phones, text messaging, and social networking. In the digital universe, word travels fast and change is overwhelming, often happening without warning.

For better or worse, disruption is the word that best describes twenty-first-century living.

But the question is, as the world around us changes, have we changed? How have we adapted to the turmoil that surrounds our lives? Perhaps more important, have our personal lives kept pace with radically escalating technology?

You’re about to begin a journey that will have enormous impact on your life. The principles of this book will work for those with a passion to change their company, their community, or their lives. From corporate CEOs to rising visionaries to housewives, this book could be the answer you’ve been looking for. In a world where the very foundations you’ve believed in all your life are crumbling, how do you move forward toward your purpose?

Sure, everyone tells us we need to change, but how do we actually do it? Especially in a world where it seems as if the rules are just being made up? And it’s not getting any easier.

» DISRUPTION IS NOT JUST THEORETICAL; IT’S PERSONAL.

According to John Freeman, author of The Tyranny of E-mail:

• 65 percent of North Americans spend more time with their computer than their spouse.

• E-mail is addictive in the same way slot machines have been shown to be addictive.

• In 2009, it’s been estimated, the average corporate worker spent more than 40 percent of his or her day sending or receiving some 200 e-mail messages.

• Information overload is a $650 billion drag on our economy each year.

• In a world home to 6 billion people, roughly 600 million e-mails are sent every 10 minutes.

• E-mail is changing the way we read and communicate.

• 77 percent of workers report that e-mail downtime causes major stress at work, with 10 percent actually assaulting their computers.

• As a result, some psychologists are actually pushing to have “Internet Addiction” broadly classified as a clinical disorder. (136)

But Freeman isn’t the only media prophet warning us about the impact of technological disruption. In his blog (http://socialnomics.net/) based on the book Socialnomics, Erik Qualman lists mind-boggling statistics about how social media has impacted our culture:

• In 2010, Generation Y outnumbered Baby Boomers . . . 96 percent of them have already joined a social network.

• One out of eight couples married in the United States in the last year met via social media.

• If Facebook were a country, it would be the world’s third largest, between the United States and India.

• A 2009 U.S. Department of Education study revealed that, on average, online students outperformed those receiving face-to-face instruction. One in six higher education students is enrolled in online curriculum.

• The fastest-growing segment on Facebook is 55-to-65-year-old females.

• Ashton Kutcher and Ellen Degeneres (combined) have more Twitter followers than the populations of Ireland, Norway, or Panama.

• Generation Y and Z consider e-mail passé . . . In 2009, Boston College stopped distributing e-mail addresses to incoming freshmen.

• There are more than 200,000,000 blogs—increasing daily and 54 percent of bloggers post content or tweet daily. Because of the speed in which social media enables communication, word of mouth now becomes world of mouth.

• 78 percent of consumers trust peer recommendations, but only 14 percent trust advertisements.

• 25 percent of Americans in the past month said they watched a short video . . . on their phone.

• In the near future we will no longer search for products and services, they will find us via social media.

At the start of 2010, marketing expert Seth Godin called the upcoming ten years the decade of change and frustration. As Seth elaborated on his online blog:

Change: The infrastructure of massive connection is now real. People around the world have cell phones. The first Internet generation is old enough to spend money, go to work, and build companies. Industries are being built every day (and old ones are fading). The revolution is in full swing, and an entire generation is eager to change everything because of it. Hint: it won’t look like the last one with a few bells and whistles added.

Frustration: Baby boomers are getting old. Dreams are fading, and so is health. Boomers love to whine, and we love to imagine that we’ll live forever and accomplish everything. This is the decade that reality kicks in. And, to top it off, savings are thin and resource availability isn’t what it used to be. A lot of people ate their emergency rations during the last decade. Look for this frustration to be acted out in public, and often. (http://sethgodin.typepad.com/)

In so many ways, media and technology have overtaken our lives, and along with great benefits, they have also brought great frustration. We can’t escape the advertisements from video monitors embedded in gas pumps and elevators. We used to fear “billboard jungles” in major cities, but today, technology is allowing companies to target us far more effectively—often