Jeffrey Magee
Your Trajectory Code
Cover Design: Michael J. Freeland
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Copyright © 2015 by Jeffrey Magee. All rights reserved
Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey
Published simultaneously in Canada
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978-1-119-04323-2 (hbk)
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Introduction–Your Trajectory Code
The Mental DNA Imprint to Who You Are, What You Do, and How to Design an Adaptive Attitude for Achievement!
The Trajectory Code™
Watch Jeff live before you read this chapter online at www.TrajectoryCode.com.
Imagine being able to reboot your life, beginning at this very moment, given all you know and mentally possess. Imagine if you could bridge the gap from where you are in life to where you want to be, and then maintain that trajectory as you make greater gains, greater wins, and greater contributions to others.
The conscious and unconscious imprints upon your life from birth to the present date directly impact the trajectory that you take and the destinations you reach. Understanding your current, past, and future imprints allows you to manage your Line. This is how you'll get from where you are to where you want to be.
That is what this book will do. Your Trajectory Code is the universal truth for a better you. And if you understand what your Line is – where it is at all times, and the forces that influence it – you can do exactly that. Moving from good to great to significant requires that you understand and take ownership of your Trajectory Code (TC). These are the imprints we have unconsciously allowed to shape our psychology, and are therefore the behaviors that are consciously self-directed and accepted, and that guide our trajectory through life.
Nothing happens by accident. The impressions you carry, acknowledge, understand, and manage will influence your trajectory direction in the present, intermediate, and long term. Understanding these imprints and recognizing subsequent future conscious imprinting allows you to make a trajectory change at any time and attain even greater things – on both a personal level and on a professional level.
Your Trajectory Code will be the beginning of your journey, quest, and conversation along this pathway, but will by no means be the complete work you will undergo. The way in which you engineer your relationships, and experience the environments and culture for what you accept and internalize are all part of the process as well.
People in today's world are looking for new ways to achieve or deceive, to excel or derail, to grace or deface, to contribute meaningfully or make the case for ever-increasing entitlements. The question at either end of the pendulum is, what calibrates individuals and groups to have these polarizing mindsets and associated behaviors? It is the Trajectory Code™ that has wittingly or unwittingly been calibrated within each of us. We either expect that someone else will take care of things for us, or we recognize that we are responsible for our needs and goals. It is the latter group that sees the need to apply mental and physical labor into the equation.
There are countless examples within politics, labor, management, business, communities, families, personal relationships, religion, and even within our own internal dialogue over our imprinting. Often, our past experiences – whether personal or professional – influence our internal dialogue and cause us to believe that future interactions will be the same. A single negative interaction with a coworker, for instance, may lead us to assume that all future interactions will be just as negative – and we end up receiving exactly what we tolerate and condone.
Your Lines – the pathways of what you say, do, feel, and act – are represented by your motives, values, and psychological needs, each of which calibrate your trajectory on a daily basis. You design your own Trajectory Code to accept or reject any signal consistent or inconsistent with its architecture. In this way, you already possess everything you will ever need to attain greatness. You train your thoughts, cells, and behaviors to act and respond the way they do. Once trained, these elements want to maintain that trajectory. They remain open to anything consistent with that training and resist anything that challenges it or seems out of context. You can take ownership of your code and attain even deeper and more meaningful levels of greatness; or you can abdicate responsibility and allow others to determine your code and thus your destiny.
The Conference Board and Harvard Business Review reported in 2012 that research surveys show thousands of American workers had the lowest job satisfaction in 22 years. Research by Deloitte, HBR, and Gallup indicates that job satisfaction, individual happiness ratings, and increased quality of work is significantly linked to productivity and profitability. Some research even indicates as much as doubled profitability linkage to happiness factors. In fact, a 2012 New York Times article indicated that the cost of disengagement on America's productivity is more than $300 billion annually.
In 2012, Deloitte compiled a research white paper on technical professional skills and knowledge development. Seventy-two percent of Deloitte's top clients worldwide clearly indicated that this is the single greatest make-or-break point to business succession, while less than 7 percent believed their organizations weren't actually doing anything to secure their future and their success.
Even more alarming is that this level of disengagement occupied protestors' entitlement beliefs. And an individual's or an organization's Trajectory Code influences how we see ourselves