For a little Christmas cheer I thought I’d be creative. Have fun reading this:

Top 25 reasons WHY I lost my arm:

1. I went bowling with my friends. As I threw a heavy ball, my arm got ripped off.
2. I was saving a school of orphaned children from a shark. I killed the shark, but the Piranha next to it took my arm. But, I saved the orphans!
3. While fighting a crocodile, a truck sped past just as the croc pushed me onto a samurai sword, which cut my arm clean off.
4. My teacher gave me the cane, but she picked up a knife instead of the cane.
5. I was jogging on a treadmill, when I slipped & fell on some soap. The guy next to me with heavy weights collapsed, dropping the weights on my arm. The arm came clean off.
6. I had the red pill, not the blue pill. The red pill packet said, ‘eat this & your right arm will drop off’.
7. When lighting a candle, I saw my guitar and wondered what it would be like playing with one arm. So, I went to look for a cleaver.
8. Someone dared me to stick my arm outside of a train while another train went past.
9. I was hungry and wanted to know what right arm curry tasted like.
10. My mum got angry at me so she decided to discipline me.
11. I wanted to be a motivational speaker, and I heard the amputated speakers are the best.
12. I super-glued my arm to the outside of a plane.
13. I wanted to feel phantom pain, and after reading Phantom comics I got bored. So, I got creative.
14. I saw a bionic arm and thought, ‘I will do anything it takes to get one of those.’
15. I thought to myself that disabled people are better looking, and I knew that I didn’t fit in with able-bodied people.
16. I wanted to use an insurance claim as I needed the money.
17. A Lion, Tiger and an Elephant were fighting over who had bigger muscles, then they saw me, became jealous & ate my biggest arm.
18. It was an alien.
19. I wanted people to stare at me when I walked past.
20. I already had 2 arms and I didn’t want to be greedy.
21. I wanted to see what it was like to fall asleep while driving over 100km.
22. A helicopter blade flew off the helicopter, just missing me. Then Arnold Schwarzenegger stepped out of the helicopter and cut my arm off.
23. The Taliban needed a helping hand.
24. My iPhone 5 transformed into a ninja, and while fighting the ninja a 1986 Ford Escort drove through McDonalds while an eagle grabbed my arm to feed it’s young.
25. …

If you an help me out with Number #25. Just tweet it and Hashtag 25thReason (#25thReason) and make sure you you link me in @samcawthorn AWESOME, have fun and Merry Christmas!!

Leading into the new financial year our research shows that there are patterns that slows or even stops productivity. While we are all looking for new and innovative ways to boost productivity and raise profits, there are patterns that show that there are loopholes in the system and we are losing valuable opportunity if not addressed.

Below are 5 patterns that disrupt our productivity:

1.              Poor Communication of the ‘WHY’

Failure to communicate the organizational story with staff, clients and stakeholders will cause meaningless motivation. Humans need a reason why we do what we do.

Recently talking to an executive of a major Australian bank, he explained that they had gone through some major changes and the biggest change was the vision and mission statement for the company. When asked what it was, he then needed to go through his notes to remember what they were. The vision, mission and story HAS TO BE communicated and instilled into the fabrics of an organisation and the team. It gives us a WHY.

2.            Reactive Innovation

Most innovation is a result of a crisis or problem that forces change. Though we are capturing an opportunity, it is still a reactive one. However being pro-active with innovation keeps you one step ahead of the competition.

A few months ago I wrote about Irresponsible Innovation and the differences between reactive innovation and proactive innovation. The reality is that encouraging proactive innovation is the secret ingredient for growth & ensures long-term sustainability.

3.            Bouncing Back

I have immersed myself and become a little obsessed with this phrase ‘Bouncing Back’. To be quite honest this phrase is wrong, completely wrong as it implies that we have had a struggle or a crisis ad now we are bouncing back to where we were before the crisis hit. This is wrong and reactive thinking.

So stop focussing and talking about Bouncing Back and Bounce Forward.

4.             Segregation of Work & Life

The word ‘work’, can be taken as a negative connotation. Too often I hear people say, “I have no life, all I do is work”. There is a way we can blur the lines between work and life and realize that there is life at work and work in life. The more we can communicate the WHY and allow people to see the vision and just ‘do life’ with people at work will ensure greater collaboration and communication.

Work is life and life is work and it is a positive.

5.            Losing Relevance

How relevant would you and your products and services be in the future? My friend Michael McQueen an expert in relevance says, “Relevance is not just about success, it’s about your very survival”. Losing relevance will ensure that you will not be here in the future, we need to constantly evaluate our relevance with our wider audience to ultimately be one step ahead of our client expectations.

Constant and never ending improvements with our services and product will ensure a successful and more productive and profitable future in the years to come.

We all have stories that link to the way we look at things. These stories can be developed through our experiences as a child, or events that have happened throughout our lives.

I once thought that I was indestructible and that I’d never have a major accident. Boy, was that story wrong!!! We have stories about different foods, religion, relationships, crises or really anything that has happened throughout our lives that give us an opinion on how to look at that situation, thus giving us a story. Phobias, insecurities, fears, depression and anxiety – all can derive from an experience that has developed into a story that we tell ourselves.

So to gain more resilience, we MUST change our story or how we view certain situations. I have below ‘The 6 Levels’ to creating breakthrough stories to build resilience in business & life.

1. Master Story Teller
Consistent affirmation, speaking it out and telling others is a MUST for constant never-ending improvement and change. One of the most powerful things you can do is speaking it out until such time as you own it, and it becomes a sub-conscious pattern.

2. Imagine & Press
Our imagination can be the only thing that stops us from moving forward, and creating compelling stories that give us a different state. The Imagine and Press theory is a concept of imagining the NEW story, then pressing into the reality of it until it becomes you.

3. Social Security
Having a social life and learning to tell stories to your own communities about your new ideas brings a strong sense of security. The more you communicate your NEW story through conversation – both verbally & also through social media – helps spread your message while giving you the confidence & security of owning that space.

4. Your Decision
The most powerful thing that we have is our choice. Making a decision to craft a new story to overcome a situation is essential. Through all our situations, circumstances and uncertainty, we NEED to make the tough decisions to ensure long-term growth and market dominance.

5. Constant Improvement
Constant and never ending improvement within our workplaces and ourselves is fundamental. Creating new stories to develop new mindsets and thought patterns is essential in the constant improvement process.

6. Creating Breakthrough Moments for Others
Creating compelling stories to disrupt human behaviour and igniting people to take action is critical in business & life. Maximizing moments that you spend with people, and telling powerful stories to change their thinking, is an influential art to master. Giving clients/friends a breakthrough moment is a rewarding feeling.

“It is NOT the strongest, nor the smartest, but the ones who are the most powerful story tellers” Sam Cawthorn

Anyone who tells you to have a 3-5 year plan set in stone, is completely nuts…

Returning to the office after having 3 weeks vacation is a little difficult, yet organizing and strategically planning for the year ahead is somewhat stressing. Being in the event industry for a few years now, I have had many discussions with clients about speakers that they invite – particularly economist & futurists. They always say the same thing to me, they specifically look for speakers that are optimistic about the future and speak positively about tomorrow.

Yet, the reality of it all is that many signs are showing that Europe is facing its worst year in recent years, India and China are slowing down and predicting their worst year in a decade, and America faces another year of uncertainty. So the only ‘known’ is not looking good.

Recently I was trying to find out what the differences are between pessimists and optimists. I came up with this formula:

“Pessimists get it right more often because they can see the world in its current form. Optimists can see the world the way it can become. So, pessimists will never change the world, only optimists can”

The world is changing so fast and you need a map that can guide you and give you the flexibility of change. We need to speak into the uncertainty of today and change our pessimistic view to an optimistic one of positive future growth.

Below are 5 pillars to start 2012 optimistically.

Anticipation – knowing what’s coming so you can take advantage of it…
Reacting – Building systems for stronger resilience and better crisis management
Product – Continuous improvement strategies in service and product
Marketing – World class marketing and leveraging off industry best practice
Innovation – Being ahead of the rest and creating encouraging environments insures a sustainable future.

I’m excited and optimistic about 2012 and know that teams of optimistic people will ensure long term growth, greater productivity and will prove that together, optimistically, we can change the world.

The 3 Pillars guaranteeing a successful year!!!

Welcome to a new financial year.

We all feel the pressures and stress of finishing a financial year and bouncing forward into a new financial year yet with an all time high of workers being unhappy in their current job, and an all time high rates of depression, the pressures continue to increase.

45% of workers are currently unhappy in their jobs

Depression rates today are 10X greater as what they were in the great depression

The mean on-set age of depression 35years ago was 29yo, today it’s 14 years old

Coming into the new financial year we need answers to address this, so I’ve developed 3 pillars that will help you and your teams to bounce forward to create the new financial year you want.

Pillar 1: Leveraging Positivity that fuels success

All the latest research and studies show that when we are positive, this fuels greater productivity, performance and optimum levels. We also have less sick days, become depressed or even quit.

Recent research shows that Positive sales people out perform their peers by 56%

Coal miners that are positive show 45% greater productivity and performance

Happy Doctors perform better diagnosis then unhappy doctors by up to 50%

If we are not priming out employees to think positive and raise their levels of happiness, we are handicapping them in regards to their performance, productivity and results by up to 50%

Pillar 2: Altruism ignites high performance

When we perform good deeds, we experience a myriad of physiological benefits from feeling more calm and peaceful, to overcoming depression, to better recovery from heart attacks and even increased longevity.

When we started a foundation recently helping the true poorest of the poor which are the children living with a disability, we had no idea how much we would get out of helping others. Recently helping a 14yo kids that has no schooling because he was born with a physical disability, but now helping him with a wheelchair and seeing him wheel to school makes me feel awesome!

A necessity in our workplaces is cultivating altruistic acts within out teams. Shouting someone for lunch, encouraging voluntarism or just donating money to a charity.

Pillar 3: Creating collaborative environments

Workplace communication and collaboration is important for growth & results. When we provide inclusive environments to allow for open communication channels, we empower our teams to bounce forward into the new financial year.

While many fortune 500 companies where laying off and going through massive changes at the start of the Global Financial Meltdown, PepsiCo CEO Indra Nooyi decided to do something different. She travelled around the world boosting her employee’s morale and encouraging them to see the good in every bad situation. This action had a profound impact on the company and also her as a leader. In fact Fortune Magazine named her the most powerful woman in the world in 2009.

Creating collaborative environments and opening the lines of communication within our teams is the secret recipe for bouncing forward into the new financial year.

So to recap, the 3 Pillars to help you and your team to bouncing into the new financial year are: Leveraging Positivity that fuels success: Altruism Ignites High Performance & Creating Collaborative Environments

I hope you have a sensational start to your new financial year!!!