Chapter 26
World Altering Strategies
Construction Stage 3.4 Carpeting, painting, woodwork, and interior decoration
SAL Model Stage 3.4 World-altering Strategies
Just as an architectural firm seeks to invoke an attractive, pleasant, and professional ambiance with its interior and exterior designs, YOU can create an environment around you that inspires and uplifts yourself as a self-action leader.
Construction stage 3.4 involves adding carpets, tiles, woodwork, painting, and interior decoration. It is analogous to the SAL Model Stage 3.4, which involves employing world-altering strategies to remove negative cues and add positive cues to your environment (1) that will inspire you and uplift you to be your best as a self-action leader.
Removing negative cues involves getting rid of visual or auditory triggers that might tempt you to engage in behaviors you're trying to avoid. Increasing positive cues involves decorating your environment with reminders that encourage you to engage in healthy and productive actions, pursue worthy goals, and rise to your potential.
For example, if you want to cultivate a healthier diet, don't fill your pantry with junk food or browse the Internet for dessert recipes. Instead, prepare healthy snacks, visualize yourself achieving your goals, and fill your mind with images and success stories of others who have accomplished what you desire to achieve.
Since I was just a little boy, I have always found it inspiring to adorn my personal work and living spaces with pictures, posters, awards, quotes, symbols, and other visual reminders of what is most important to me. These visual cues help me to continually re-energize and refocus on my vision, mission, values, and goals.
Purposely arranging and decorating your environment will help you develop the habit of positive visualization, which focuses your mental energy and creativity on solutions and successes rather than on problem and failures. It also helps you rid yourself of negative self-talk. Perhaps most importantly, it assists you in maintaining an ongoing vision of what you want most in your life, relationships, and career.
Stephen R. Covey calls this process the "mental or first creation," (2) which always precedes the "physical or second creation" of whatever you are seeking to animate in your life.
REMEMBER: Envisioning yourself mastering a task is prerequisite to actually doing it well.
Utilizing Positive Cues to Become a Champion
This section details how I used positive cues to help me achieve an important goal I set for myself in high school: winning the State Championship cross-country meet as both an individual and as a team.
My oldest brother, Paul, worked for a sales and marketing organization for over a decade. His career path led him to become deeply interested in personal development literature and related audio-visual material. Our mutual interest in this subject led, in-turn, to discussions where we would share what we were learning.
I also had the opportunity to listen to several of his company's charismatic speakers as they delivered motivational messages on personal and professional development as it related to personal achievement and sales training. These experiences, and others like them, exposed me to the art of utilizing positive cues (and removing negative cues) as a tool for achieving personal goals and growth.
I used these tools extensively while setting athletic goals for myself in high school.
My freshman year (9th grade), I finished 15th at the State cross-country meet for my school's classification (2A). My sophomore year, I finished fourth. My junior year, my goal was to finish FIRST. To make this goal both explicit and visible, I wrote it down and hung it in my room where I would see it every day.
I also added a couple of other visual reminders in the form of inspiring quotes and pictures that positively reaffirmed my desire and commitment. These positive cues helped me stay focused and driven throughout the duration of the cross-country season.
On race day, as I stood behind the starting line as the recently crowned Region 13 Champion, I glanced over at the Region 12 Champion as he was preparing for our race to begin. As I did so, doubts began to creep into my mind. To combat this, I began repeating (sotto voce in my mind) positive affirmations that reflected my goal, preparation, talent, and work ethic. These confident mantras helped quell my doubts and anxieties and kept me focused on my positive intentions for the day's outcome.
Such affirmations may
seem like a small thing, but there's no doubt in my mind they played a role in my individual and team victory that day in late October 1996.
The next spring, I learned the hard way that such strategies, while certainly helpful, don't always guarantee you will reach every goal you set for yourself. After winning GOLD as both an individual and team in cross-country, I confess I got a little greedy. My new goal for the upcoming track season was to win ALL FOUR (4) of my events and thereby quadruple the gold medals I currently possessed in one fell swoop. I also desired to break the State Record in all three of my individual events. It was an extremely ambitious, but theoretically doable goal (based on my past results).
Unfortunately—or fortunately, depending on how you look at it—I did not achieve any of my track goals. It was "unfortunate" because I really wanted those gold medals and state records. However, it was "fortunate" because I learned a good SAL lesson from the experience.
Despite my disappointment at having fallen short of my ideal goals, I also recognized that I made personal improvements in three of my four events, and from a SAL perspective, self-improvement is always more important than defeating others. So, while I may not have realized the lofty goals displayed on my positive cue card in my bedroom, there is no doubt that displaying that card helped fuel my best performances, which represented tangible personal improvements on my past times.
SAL Master Challenge
EXERCISE #23
Take inventory of your surroundings. Are there any negative cues bringing you down? If so, remove them if possible.
What about visual reminders (positive cues) of your goals or important priorities; do you have any of them?
If not, creatively add at least three (3) such reminders (cues). If so, then add three (3) additional cues to the ones you already have. Make sure your cues are displayed so that you will see them regularly. Do this today or before the end of the week.
Negative cues and reminders I will remove from my living and/or work space include:
Positive cues and reminders I will add to my living and/or work space include:
I have completed the SAL Master Challenge EXERCISE #23
Your initials:__________ AP initials:__________
—Dr. JJ
Wednesday, July 2, 2025
Palm Beach Gardens, Florida, USA
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Chapter 26 Notes
1. Neck, C. P., & Manz, C. C. (2010). Mastering Self-Leadership: Empowering
Yourself for Personal Excellence (Fifth Edition). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.
Pages 15-16.
2. Covey, S. R. (1989). The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons
in Personal Change. New York, NY: Fireside. Page 100.
