The thinking man's trumpet

HE left school at 16, but now Michael Heppell lives in a smart house in the country, drives a Mercedes and reckons he has a fairly good life. And last year he spent £10,000 on improving himself even more.

But this money has not gone on cosmetic surgery, a personal trainer or even a hair transplant, for the bit Michael is keen to improve is his mind. And not only his mind - he believes he can help other people improve their minds too.

And all this is because he has dedicated much of his adult life to trying to find out why some people are successful and others are not, and then to passing on this information to anyone who will listen. "I genuinely just love what I do so much, I can't imagine doing anything else other than this. This is my destiny - I must get this message out. I have got to get it to as many people as possible," he says.

The message is how to be successful, which he has pinned down to five characteristics, of which more later. But his own particular journey towards success really began when he was given the chance to manage the charity side of the National Garden Festival in Gateshead in 1990. After working in the family roofing firm, W Heppell and Sons of Consett, County Durham, he became a youth worker before his involvement in the Garden Festival.

"I realised that 20 per cent of the organisations were raising 80 per cent of the money. It wasn't due to the type of charity, it was not due to much at all other than the organisations who were doing really well had certain skills. They were motivated, they were up for it," he says.

From there, he moved on to work for the Yellow Brick Road Appeal and, as senior fund-raiser, helped bring in close to £12m in three years. And from there he became director of the County Durham Foundation, which supported community organisations.

Both posts brought him into contact with many of the North-East's most successful businessmen and women, and gave him an insight into how they had got there. He started reading books on self-improvement and going on courses, hungry to better himself.

"I was wanting to step up and improve myself, and I knew that I needed tools to do that and I also knew, by meeting a lot of successful people, that they weren't successful by accident. I realised there were these characteristics of success, but I was not quite sure what they were."

Eventually, he turned to scientific research to create programmes aimed at helping children do better at school, presenting his findings at the World Thinking Conference in Singapore in 1997, which brought together more than 2,500 people from 50 different countries.

And it was then he decided he wanted to do something for his home region, setting up Michael Heppell Limited to offer courses for both organisations and individuals. A two-day course costs £395, and aims to provide the tools to help anyone become a success.

The 34-year-old divorced father-of-three will be further honing his programmes as a result of this year's World Thinking Conference in Harrogate, which runs until tomorrow.

"It is having an understanding of where you are now, and then finding out where you want to go and then creating a plan, getting the tools to help you get there. I don't believe you can do this stuff without tools and techniques. Pure determination alone will work for some people but not for everyone," he says.

This brings him neatly to his five characteristics of success. The first is positive thinking. It may seem like Californian psycho-babble to some, but Michael insists it works. If you tell people you feel fantastic, you will start to feel fantastic. But it's not enough just to say it. With only eight per cent of communication being verbal, you have to have the body language to go along with it.

Second, is breaking out of limiting beliefs, he says, the sort of belief which says 'My business can only grow so far', or 'I'm terrified of rejection', or 'I'm too old to learn'. By overcoming these beliefs, we can expand the horizon of our ambitions.

Third, is thinking differently. Michael claims he can teach people to use their brains in a different way, and embarks on an explanation involving the reptilian part of the brain and the neo-cortex. An example is what he calls a "moany-faced sod" who wins the Lottery and then thinks no one will like him. The upshot, I think, is that the brain can be trained to get results by thinking in a different way. It sounds a bit like the positive thinking one, but maybe I'm missing something.

The fourth one is a little easier to follow, and that is being able to manage stress, by choosing to think about things in a different way. The example he uses is David Beckham taking a free kick.

"He is not stressed, because he is mentally rehearsed, and physically rehearsed and anchored with successful results. He can't wait to take a free kick in a high pressure game, whereas you or I couldn't kick the ball, never mind into the top corner of the net," he says.

When I point out that Beckham hasn't been doing too much of that recently, it's obvious I've fallen into the trap of negative thinking, allowing Michael to bring out one of his favourite phrases again. "Even if he scored nine out of ten, we would say 'What did he miss that one for?' We're a nation of moany-faced sods. If that were an Olympic event, we would win gold," he says.

Then he comes onto his fifth and final key to success: taking massive action in the right direction. Getting things done when we have to, shows what we can achieve when we put our minds to it. While taking action to avoid pain may show us how it's done, eventually we can learn to do it for our own pleasure.

He accepts that much of what he says seems like common sense, although we often need help to get us started. But, of course, if it were so obvious we would all be doing it.

"The reason why we don't do it is that our society dictates that we should be moany-faced sods," he says. "Very few people have peers who pull them to a new standard, that encourage them to step up and do better. Most people gravitate to a lower, easier level and stop growing."

The problem, he says, is that most of us don't know that we don't know how to be successful, we are unconsciously incompetent. Then we become aware that we don't know, and become consciously incompetent.

After that, if we use Michael's tools, we can learn how to be successful, and become consciously competent. But we still have to think about what we're doing, and it is only when it becomes second nature, when we are unconsciously competent, that we have arrived, although we can still keep on developing, of course.

Naturally, Michael claims his courses work. Children do better at school, businesses become more successful, and people even improve their personal relationships. "I have seen people six months later and they've said 'Your stuff works'. I'm so excited about the future. The past has never equalled the future. You can choose how you feel about the past, but I'm much in interested in what we're creating," he says.

It is easy to be cynical, and sneer and be a moany-faced sod about personal development, but then it is hard not to be caught up by Michael's enthusiasm. It might be a load of twaddle, but - and let's be positive here - it might just work.

Michael Heppell Limited can be contacted on (01434) 367326.