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Harvard Research + Justin Timberlake Movie: How To Upgrade Your Economic Status

Image link“Just once I’d like to wake up with more time on my hand than hours in the day.” — Will Salas

In the Science Fiction film, “In Time,” Justin Timberlake portrays a character named Will Salas, who lives in the ghetto.

In the movie, there is no “money.” Instead, time is the only currency, and everyone has a digital clock embedded into their arms.

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Until the age of 25, your clock doesn’t start ticking. Once you hit your 25th birthday, you have just one year of life that starts ticking down immediately.

Everything costs time. For example, in the movie, a cup of coffee doesn’t cost 4 dollars, but rather, 4 minutes.

There are small devices, similar to the devices we plug our credit cards into, that add or take away time when scanned on a person’s arm clock.

After age 25, you stop physically aging. Whether you’re 28, 49, or 302, you look as you did when your clock started ticking.

You live as long as you have time.

The people living in the ghetto are living day-to-day, while those in the highest “Time Zone” can conceivably live forever.

In the ghetto, people literally are living day-to-day. They get time added to their “clocks” at the end of every shift — enough to get them to the end of the next shift. They rarely have more than 24 hours on their clocks. As a result, they can’t stop thinking about or “checking” their time.

They are required to work, every single day, in order to survive.

As soon as your clock runs out, you die.

Changing Time Zones

In the movie, Economic Status is portrayed as “Time Zones,” which are not easy to transfer one for another.

You have to pay a great deal of time to get from one zone to the next. Here’s the break-down:

To get out of the ghetto and into the lower-middle class Time Zone costs One month’s TimeTo get from the lower-middle-class Time Zone into the middle-class costs Two month’s TimeTo get from the middle-class Time Zone into the upper-middle-class costs Six month’s TimeTo get from the upper-middle-class Time Zone into “New Grenich,” which represents the mega-wealthy (i.e., 1% of 1%) costs One Year‘s Time

To cross a Time Zone, you are required to pay a great deal of money.

For someone living in the ghetto, the system is not designed to ever have a full month saved-up. Thus, ever getting out the ghetto is practically impossible.

Time Slows Down In The Higher Zones

When you’re living day-to-day, time goes very quickly. You have no future to look forward to. You don’t have time to vacation and think. You’re in survival mode.

Hence, time goes very quickly.

Will Salas (played by Timberlake) finds his way out of the ghetto and into New Grenich and despite his best acting, is clearly perceived by others as being from somewhere else.

“You’re not from here are you, Mr. Salas?” the waitress asks him.

“What gives you that impression?” Will responds.

“You do everything too quickly,” she responds back.

As you go up in “Time Zones,” life slows down. You’re no longer living day-to-day, perhaps now you’re living month-to-month.

You have a little more time to waste on entertainment and, perhaps, if you’re one of the smart ones, you begin investing a little here and a little there into your future.

But even still, the cost of living goes up with each Time Zone you’re in. So it’s not exactly easy to save up.

You have to keep up with your neighbors, for example. You’re required, socially, to have a car and home that fits the culture. The food costs just a little bit more, and so do your clothes. Life is driven by marketing and social acceptance for most people.

Making money is one thing, managing it is entirely different.

In New Grenich, it can cost a few month’s of “Time” to stay in a hotel and several weeks to eat a fancy meal.

Money, or in this case, “Time,” doesn’t mean the same in different zones.

Spending 8 weeks for a meal can, strangely, make complete sense in one situation, where that much “Time” is enough to get you killed in the ghetto. Those 8 weeks could change the entire trajectory of a family living in the ghetto…if they knew what to do with it.

To even get into New Grenich (i.e., among the mega-wealthy) costs One Year of Time. Once you’re in, everything costs a fortune. However, the ability to make money in that Zone is also completely skewed as well.

Although the ideas from In Time is science-fiction in nature, they actually have real life application based on Harvard Economics.

Economic Mobility In America

A few economists at Harvard began a project known as “The Equality Of Opportunities Project,” several years ago. The research was so revolutionary and important that it has since expanded into something much bigger and more global.

The goal of the project, “Is to develop scalable policy solutions that will empower families throughout the United States to rise out of poverty and achieve better life outcomes.”

One of the fundamental outcomes they’ve discovered in their research is that location matters, a lot. As it states on the website: Children’s lives are shaped by the neighborhood they grow up in.

As part of the research, each county within each state was measured for its “social mobility,” which is a term that explains the chances of someone advancing in economic status within their lifetime.

As they state on the website:

In a series of studies beginning in 2014, we have shown how the neighborhoods in which children grow up shape children’s outcomes in adulthood…

Social mobility varies widely both across cities and across neighborhoods within cities in the U.S. On average, a child from a low-income family raised in San Jose or Salt Lake City has a much greater chance of reaching the top than a low-income child raised in Baltimore or Charlotte. However, the Opportunity Atlas shows that there are neighborhoods within Baltimore and Charlotte that have higher rates of upward mobility than the average neighborhood in San Jose or Salt Lake City.

Put simply, proximity matters. Environment matters. Where you are born matters. Where you choose to stay matters.

The reason is very simple; within any given environment or “system,” are a set of options. You can only make choices if you have options. Let me repeat that, you can only make choices if you have options.

This idea became starkly real to me when my wife and I moved from Orem, Utah, a county in the 90th percentile for upward social mobility, to Clemson, South Carolina where I began my PhD research in Organizational Psychology.

Shortly after moving to Clemson, my wife and I became foster parents of three children who were from a county bordering Clemson, Oconee, which happens to be in the 9% percentile of upward social mobility.

Put simply, if you’re born poor in Oconee County, your chances of breaking out of poverty are slim to none if you stay in Oconee County. As economic strategists and analyst, Mark Caine, has said, “The first step toward success is taken when you refuse to be a captive of the environment in which you first find yourself.”

It was clear when we got our children that they came from a different world than we did. They didn’t really know how to act in our environment, and we had to learn patience, empathy, and love beyond anything we’d previously been exposed to.

As they say, you can’t develop courage without the lion. You can’t develop empathy and love without being required to give it. Life, then, becomes the ultimate context for growth if you’re willing to put yourself in situations that force you out of your comfort zone.

Our three kids were incredibly limited by their prior environment. They didn’t have many options. They had parents who were generally high on drugs and didn’t have the capacity to provide a good life, let alone healthy food and a ride to school, to their children.

When our kids were placed in our care, their availability of options radically expanded. Because they had more and better options to choose from, they then had a different set of choices. In other words, their ability to exercise their “free-will” was expanded.

Again, you cannot make choices without options. And options are context-dependent, which means every environment or “context” provides different options.

Because no two people have the same context, no two people have the same “free-will.” Instead, we all have what social psychologist, Jeffrey Reber, calls, “Contextual Agency” — which is to say, our ability to make choices is shaped by the context we are in.

For instance, you wouldn’t be able to read these words on your computer or smartphone if you were living 30+ years ago. The technology didn’t exist. You’d be reading on a newspaper or through some other means.

If you lived 150 years ago, you wouldn’t be able to fly across the world. That simply wasn’t an option given the situation. Thus, there are many things we take for granted, which are purely based on the situation we find ourselves.

According to Dr. Ellen Langer, a prominent Harvard psychologist:

“Social psychologists argue that who we are at any one time depends mostly on the context in which we find ourselves.”

But then, Langer takes this idea a step further by asking a key question and then providing the solution (emphasis mine):

“But who creates the context? The more mindful we are, the more we can create the contexts we are in. When we create the context, we are more likely to be authentic. Mindfulness lets us see things in a new light and believe in the possibility of change.”

It is our greatest responsibility to shape our individual and collective environments to match our values and ambitions. Or, as Dr. Marshall Goldmish said in his book, Triggers: Creating Behavior That Lasts — Becoming the Person You Want to Be, “If we do not create and control our environment, our environment creates and controls us.”

5 Stages Of Tribal Culture

There is a brilliant book, Tribal Leadership: Leveraging Natural Groups to Build a Thriving Organization, Dave Logan, John King, and Halee Fischer-Wright share their expansive research on different cultural groups in America.

They break-down “Tribal Culture” into 5 levels, similar to how “In Time” breaks-down Time Zones.

5 Stages of Tribal CulturePeople in Stage 1 “Cultures” feel alienated from other people. These are like gangs, prison-style cultures, and ghettos. People within these cultures sabotage themselves from all relationships and end up being around other people with no loyalty or trust. The language in Stage 1 is “Life sucks.” There is a belief that nothing could possibly get better. People in this culture will do whatever is required to survive, even kill.People in Stage 2 “Cultures” feel separate from other people. An example Dr. Logan gives in his TEDx talk is the Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV), wherein he says the “Culture” makes people act dumb in these environments. The language in these cultures is, “My life sucks.” There is a disdain and envy for people whose lives are better. But there is a victim mentality and scarcity mindset, and so these people don’t believe they themselves can have a better life, and that those who do have a better life are somehow different, and lucky, and privileged, etc. Put simply, there is no responsibility for outcomes and no ability to regulate emotions when in difficult situations (and these are the two fundamental things for people to learn in order to succeed in life).People in Stage 3 “Cultures” are heavily focused on themselves. They are highly individualistic and are very competitive. This is the primary culture in most business organizations throughout the United States. This is where most people stop in the emotional and social development. The language of these environments is, “I’m great, and you’re not.” There is a continual comparison and competing. There are little skills in the form of collaboration, teamwork, team-building, delegation, etc. Additionally, the public school system in America, which doesn’t help students learn to work with each other but instead to compete, leads people to stay with these mindsets and social groups throughout their lives.People in Stage 4 “Cultures” are far more collaborative. They’ve learned how to be successful on their own. But they also realize how much further and faster they could go in working with other people. They are more likely to connect parties together for mutual benefit. There is an abundance of opportunity mindset — wherein opportunities are perceived as something to be created rather than found. The language of these groups is “We’re great.”Finally, people in Stage 5 “Cultures” are comprised of highly skilled teams who come together and change the world. They are in what Dr. Logan calls, “No man’s land,” because they aren’t competing with anyone. They are so innovative and inventive that no one else can compete with them. They’ve created their own “Blue Ocean” and are, quite literally, changing the world. This is where words like synergy and 100X and exponential come into play. The language of people in these groups is “Life is great.”

It’s important to note that the mindset and cultural values of the first three Cultural stages are highly “individualistic.” The emphasis is on the individual.

Me, me, me.

In order to get out of Stage 3 and into Stage 4, you need to start working with other people. As a friend of mine and near billionaire has said, “You go from ‘I do it,’ to ‘We do it,’ to ‘They do it.’”

Most people never get beyond “I do it,” in their work. They never learn to delegate or collaborate. They have their own jobs and they get paid to do them.

Even most entrepreneurs and freelance creative people never get beyond Stage 3 thinking. Very few realize that the skills that get you out of Egypt are not the same skills that get you into the Promised Land (to use a Biblical analogy I learned from Dan Sullivan).

In other words, what got you here won’t get you there.

The thinking that got you here won’t get you there. As Albert Einstein has said, “We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.” Your thinking fundamentally needs to change as you upgrade environments, or else you won’t stay in those environments for long.

In the important book, The Lessons of History, famed historians Will and Ariel Durrant explain the key lessons they gleaned while studying the history of the world for several decades.

One of those key lessons is that, as a society has an increase in freedoms, they must simultaneously increase their intelligence to match the level of their freedom, or their freedom will eventually be lost.

This is one of the key themes influencing the rise and fall of nations. There is a surge of energy and enthusiasm which generally comes in the form of revolting against an existing system. There are a new law and order created and particular Stage 4 group band together and becomes a Stage 5 Phenom that changes the world.

However, according to the Durrants, when a social group experiences an intense increase of social freedoms — wherein they have an abundance of freedom and choice — their level of intelligence needs to increase to match their level of freedom, or else that freedom will be squandered, which is often the case.

Hence, America has a high potential of collapsing as the world superpower. The Durrants expect that the American fall will occur sometime in the next 200–300 years. However, they may not have accounted for globalization and the internet and exponential technologies.

The important point here is that, in order to thrive in a higher-level environment, your level of intelligence needs to rise to meet the new rules and demands of the higher-level environment. Otherwise, you won’t remain in that environment for long. The skills that got you out of the ghetto are not the skills that will allow you to thrive in New Grenich.

The rugged individualist mindset that got you out of the ghetto won’t get you very far among the super-wealthy, where connections and mutual trust are everything.

It’s been very interesting to observe these social principles within the walls of my own home. When we brought our beautiful children into our home, they had no comprehension of the “rules” they needed to understand to thrive in our middle-class to upper-middle-class environment. They needed to be taught the rules. They’re still learning the rules.

And these rules aren’t meant to stamp out individuality. Rather, they are social and economic rules for not destroying themselves and going back into the ghetto, their principles for thriving and succeeding in society, in work, and with people. In other words, we attempt to teach correct principles and let them govern themselves.

At some point, it will be their choice to live what we taught them, to revert back to their native environment, or to advance beyond what we’ve taught them.

Conclusion

Getting from one “Time Zone” to another isn’t necessarily easy. The movie, In Time, makes that abundantly clear.

The system isn’t set up for people to advance easily.

Social cultures make it even harder. By very nature, human beings are the social product of their environments. We develop bonds and those bonds keep us from wanting to advance ourselves and potentially destroy those bonds.

The hardest leap from one economic status to another is likely from Stage 1 to Stage 2 — getting out of the ghettos and living from day-to-day to lower-middle-class where you’re living month-to-month.

The easiest jump is likely from Stage 2 to Stage 3 — getting out of the victim mindset and developing a sense of responsibility for the outcomes you create in your life. One reason this isn’t that hard of a leap is that you can generally maintain the same peer and social groups, even though a disconnect will develop. You can generally get into Stage 3 by getting educated, reading some books, and having a little bit of personal ambition.

Without question, making any one of these jumps is difficult — even going from lower-middle-class to middle-class.

The fastest way to make a jump is through proximity. You want to get yourself around people who are in higher-level systems and learn from them. You want to understand the laws and principles that generate their success. You need to understand how they operate socially. Because socially, there are fundamentally different rules at each stage for thriving. Again, the skills that got you out of Egypt will keep you stuck in the desert.

Dr. David Hawkins explains, “The unconscious will only allow us to have what we believe we deserve. If we have a small view of ourselves, then what we deserve is poverty. And our unconscious will see to it that we have that actuality.”

Every culture has an embedded mindset and belief system. Hence, 95% of all behavior is unconscious and outsourced to the environment.

Your environment is the ultimate feedback loop, demonstrating where you are at the subconscious level. Your environment is a pretty accurate mirror reflecting back to you your subconscious belief system.

How you behave and treat other people is a reflection of your current situation. Different thinking, different behaviors, and relating differently to others will create a fundamentally different situation around you.

You can definitely jump from one Time Zone or Economic Status to another. However, you can never get out of one and stay in another on your own. You always need help from other people and other sources.

The most help is needed in getting people from Stage 1 to Stage 2. Radical interventions, extreme separation from family and friends, and economic help from outside parties is almost always required

Another extremely difficult leap is from Stage 3 thinking and cultures to Stage 4. In order to make this leap, you have to unlearn all of the rules that made you relatively successful in the first place. You have to put off your rugged individuality and begin thinking much, much bigger. You need to realize that individuality can actually be a poison. As Dr. David Hawkins explains in his book, LETTING GO, “It is the illusion of individuality that is the origin of all suffering.”

Instead of seeing yourself as a lone individual, you recognize yourself as a single factor within a larger system. You realize that your possibilities are shaped by context and that self-made is an illusion. Rather than trying to see what you can do alone, you now recognize that you could go 100X further and faster by collaborating with other people.

According to Harvard psychologist, Robert Kegan, only 8% of the population reaches this level of “conscious evolution,” wherein they move from an individual to a part of a collective. But not just any collective. You become a part of collaborative and synergistic groups where highly creative and innovative thinking occurs. This is where “mission” and the desire to do real good happens — where all parties are completely secure in their own ability to survive and take care of their base needs. Abundance, giving, creativity, gratitude, and growth are the focus of these groups.

Always learning and upgrading.

The third most difficult leap is from Stage 4 to Stage 5. This is basically going from the top 3–5% of the population to the top 1%, and more accurately, the 1% of the 1% — Those who are the best in the world at what they do, and are the highest paid.

This is equivalent to going from college to professional athletics. It’s much easier to go from High School (Stage 3) to College (Stage 4), but much much harder going from Stage 4 to Stage 5.

Be → Do → Have

You have to ‘Be’ the right kind of person first, then you must ‘Do’ the right things before you can expect to ‘Have.’” — Zig Ziglar

Making any of these jumps is completely possible.

Perhaps the most fundamental decision any person can ever make is this one:

You can choose to believe that the people who succeed, like Michael Jordan, for example, were born to become what they didOr, you can choose to believe that at some point, they chose to become what they did

That is the most fundamental decision you can make about life as a human being. It is what some would call a “watershed issue” — whichever side of the equation you pick will put you down a course that will influence all of your other decisions, mindsets, and beliefs.

Do you believe you can choose what you become?

Or do you believe your course is set for you at birth?

Do you “discover” yourself or do you “create” yourself?

You can’t change nature…. or, nature is change….Which side of the coin do you choose?

Whichever perspective you choose, your brain will go about finding any and all information it can to support that bias. As Dan Sullivan has said, “Your eyes can only see and your ears can only hear what your brain is looking for.” Psychologists call this “selective attention.”

What you focus on expands.

You see what you believe is real — and then it becomes real for you in a self-fulfilling prophecy. As Dr. Stephen Covey said, “You see the world, not as it is, but as you’ve been conditioned to see it.”

Making this shift starts by recognizing that for quite a while, you’ve been going through the motions. Your thoughts, beliefs, attitudes, behaviors, and even desires are the product of your environment.

Thanks to a global world that makes information abundant, it isn’t hard to become exposed to other ways of life. However, you must realize quickly that most of the information online is complete trash. Which is why Basecamp Founder, Jason Fried, has said, “I’m pretty oblivious to a lot of things intentionally. I don’t want to be influenced that much.”

Once you begin upgrading your mindset and environment, and once your priorities and goals are clear — then you don’t want to be swayed or distracted by most of the low-level information out there.

You must realize that most of the information produced is from Stage 2 and Stage 3 cultures. Therefore, if you consume that level of information, then those mindsets will be embedded into your subconscious thinking.

People in Stage 4 and Stage 5 cultures do not consume the same information as do people in Stage 2 and 3 cultures. For example, I recently spoke at a mastermind done by Bo Eason, who used to be a professional football player and is now a very highly paid public speaker.

Bo’s son, Axel, intends on being the first person to go pro in both football and basketball. Therefore, Bo doesn’t allow Axel to watch the NFL on public television. According to Bo, sports on TV is made for fans and consumers, not the players.

“The pro’s don’t want that crap,” Bo told me.

Pro’s study film, practice, and play the game.

When you’re a real pro, you don’t consume how fans consume. You do the work. You’re too busy creating and learning and growing and living your life.

Are you a fan or a pro?

Are you a consumer or creator?

A key strategy for making any jump is to, “Assume the feeling of your wish fulfilled,” meaning, you assume the posture, attitude, and emotions of the people operating at the higher level.

You affirm to yourself who you are and then operate from that affirmation. This may sound like “acting as if,” and it actually is.

But it’s important to realize that we are always “acting” in a role. All of life is acting. In every situation, you are assuming a character. You’re playing a role based on the other people around you. In some situations, your role may be an employee, while in others it may be a parent, or child, or friend.

In all cases, you are acting a part.

You can change your role.

You can change the stage.

You can choose to be different. But it must start in your state of being. Rather than operating subconsciously as the majority of people do, you must make a conscious decision about who you intend to be and where you intend to go. You must then BEHAVE from that decision. When you act from that decision, then you create the outcomes you are seeking. You will become the person you intend to be, rather than the person your circumstances led you to be.

Ready to Upgrade?

I’ve created a cheat sheet for putting yourself into a PEAK-STATE, immediately. You follow this daily, your life will change very quickly.

Get the cheat sheet here!

Harvard Research + Justin Timberlake Movie: How To Upgrade Your Economic Status was originally published in Thrive Global on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

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Published on November 19, 2018 06:34

This is a really great article… and is not well understood by most Medium writers.

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Published on November 12, 2018 17:14

The 20% Of Activities That Got You Here Are The 80% Keeping You Stuck

Photo by Dylan Luder on Unsplash“To keep up with the world of 2050, you will need to do more than merely invent new ideas and products, but above all, reinvent yourself again and again.” — Yuval Noah Harari

What got you here won’t get you there.

You have to ask yourself: What’s your ultimate goal?

Is it a specific destination (status)? Or is it continuous expansion (growth)?

If it’s the former — then you actually can continue doing the same thing over and over and over.

But if your ultimate goal is continuous growth and expansion, then you must continuously disrupt your current approach. You can never get stuck. Even when you’re doing is working, you can’t allow yourself to peak and plateau.

The world’s most creative and successful people are willing to disrupt even the most successful businesses and processes to get to the next level.

What got you here can’t get you there. The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.

Your behavior and environment generate your results. Repetition, although vital, becomes the very things that get you stuck in a rut.

For the few willing to continuously chase the next wave of growth, regardless of the waves they’ve ridden in the past, this post is for you:

The 80/20 Rule

The Pareto principle (also known as the 80/20 rule, the law of the vital few, or the principle of factor sparsity) states that, for many events, roughly 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes.

80% of your success comes from 20% of what you’re doing.

The logic, then, is to cut out the “trivial many” and focus directly the “vital few” — those activities, relationships, rituals, and environments that are actually pulling you forward.

This isn’t necessarily easy to do in a world of constant distraction, not to mention the need to pay bills, etc.

But for the brave souls who decide to take a step back and examine the situation of their lives more mindfully, they quickly realize they were playing someone else’s game in the first place.

They don’t need to do everything they believed they needed to do. In fact, they could actually begin living their dreams, today. Sure, it may be messy. They may have to wake up an hour earlier to sneak some work in before the kids wake up, or before their college exam.

But their behavior begins to align more congruently with the future they want, with the life that they want.

Those behaviors begin to have a subconscious effect. They begin disconnecting increasingly more with the typical ways most people operate. They discover more ways to focus on their priorities and goals.

Over time, their life starts to change. They become more confident and capable. They begin making progress and seeing results.

Chances are, they’ve initiated what psychologists call a “keystone” habit or behavior, which ripples into all the other areas of their life. Their standards for themselves increase, so they begin listening to and reading more stimulating information. They begin working out. They become more thoughtful in their relationships.

They change.

They become “successful.”

And then, at some point or another, they get stuck.

The 20% of activities that elevated them out of the rat-race become the new 80% of activities that keep them stuck in a new one.

They now are left scratching their head and wondering: Is this what I really want?

An existential crisis ensues, wherein they begin to question everything. They think back on their successes and failures over the prior years and become scared.

Their mind fixates on the past.

They no longer have a deep connection to their future because they’ve powerfully achieved most of their goals, faster than they thought possible.

They lose connection with their WHY and feel lethargic. Just at the pivotal moment when they became world-class at what they were doing, they became bored.

That’s a costly place to be.

At the very moment when your work is worth potentially millions, you are no longer connected to that same passion.

You’re lost.

And this is exactly where you’re supposed to be.

The remainder of this article breaks down the four fundamental stages of learning and high-performance.

Following that break-down, I will highlight the powerful strategy and mindset of “lateral thinking,” and how you can apply it to continuously leverage your prior successes, never get stuck, and continuously upgrade your vision and your future.

The Four Stages Of Competence

Here are the four stages of knowledge/skill acquisition:

Unconscious incompetence: This is where you have no comprehension that you don’t have a particular skill or ability. You don’t see the usefulness of it. You must recognize your own incompetence and the value of the new skill before moving to the next stage.Conscious incompetence: At this stage, you don’t have the skill developed but you can at least now see your own inability. You can also see the value of the particular skill, and it becomes desirable to you. At this stage, you need to start making mistakes and stumbling your way through the early learning process. Most people stop here because they don’t want to face the failures or the seeming mountain of learning the new skill. They give up before they really start, due to either a fixed-mindset or a belief that the amount of work isn’t worth the uncertainty of the outcome.Conscious competence: At this stage, you know how to do something. However, in order to perform the skill, you need to concentrate. You can break your process down into steps but there still remains conscious involvement in executing your skill.

Hitting the ceiling of this third stage is where “successful” people stop. You can get paid really well for being at this level.

This is where you are really good at what you do, but you haven’t drifted back to the childlike play — where everything is instinctive and nothing really matters. You haven’t fully become absorbed in what you’re doing for the sake of it, where you’ve left all competition behind.

But once you take that next leap out of conscious control and into deep intuition, then you’re now in your own world. You have deep mastery, and you also have complete freedom.

You now have a completely open pasture. You’re no longer bound to doing your work, your “craft,” for money. You’ve developed the inner freedom to know that money is something you can have whenever you want it.

You can create wealth — because creativity is a realm you’ve become highly comfortable with. You create results, you don’t wait for them. You know that the thoughts and ideas you have can quickly translate into physical equivalents.

You’re no longer bound by the chains of needing to make ends meat. If you need to make something happen, you’ll do it.

So now you’re free.

Free to roam and create — or, if you want, to go to the next level where few people are willing to venture.

This final stage is where pure creativity can thrive. This is where the true masters go, and for them, their greatest joy is going deeper down the rabbit hole. Their mission has become to serve the broader world. They are no longer concerned about their own needs. Thoughts about themselves and their situation rarely arise to their conscious awareness.

They are radically interested in solving bigger problems. They’re interested in inventing new systems, processes, ideas, products, and solutions. This is the highest level of skill-development.

Specialists work.

Experts solve problems.

Craftsman invent.

Specialists are a member of a team or part of an already established system or process.

Experts focus on mastery.

Craftsman focus on mission.

Unconscious competence: The final stage of skill development and knowledge acquisition is where your identity has entirely reformed — wherein you can not only perform your skill instinctually and without thinking, but you can teach your knowledge, skills, and abilities to others in multiple contexts and at different levels. You know your stuff inside and out and can connect it to broader and seemingly disconnected topics/concepts.

Perhaps the most fascinating part about reaching this level is that you stop playing by the “rules” of even masters. At this stage, you begin inventing new systems and processes and concepts. You begin changing the world.

Because your knowledge is so deep and wide — and your skill so instinctual and polished — your mind can wander beautiful places while you do your work. You begin exploring realms far outside your typical “work” or “craft.”

You begin thinking far bigger picture.

And here’s where lateral thinking comes in.

Lateral Thinking

“The system will always be defended by those countless people who have enough intellect to defend but not quite enough to innovate.” — Edward de Bono

In the book, Smartcuts: How Hackers, Innovators, and Icons Accelerate Success, journalist and entrepreneur, Shane Snow, breaks down the topic of lateral thinking.

He explains that the most successful people in the world didn’t get there by climbing vertically up the ladder, as is customary in corporate America.

Instead, you climb a few rungs or develop a few skills, and then laterally shift to a different ladder. This is akin to going from student to teacher faster than you feel ready, but it then forces you to really know your stuff.

You take what you’ve learned and you transfer it to something else. Interestingly, a true definition of learning is the ability to transfer a skill or knowledge from one domain or context to another.

Snow provides an example, showing that most of the United States Presidents spent less time in politics than the average congressman. Moreover, the best, and most popular Presidents, generally spent the least amount of time in politics. Rather than spending decades climbing the tedious ladder with glass ceilings, they simply jumped laterally from a different, non-political ladder.

Ronald Reagan was an actor. Dwight Eisenhower laterally shifted from the military. Woodrow Wilson bounced over from academia. These men spent considerably little time in politics and became fabulous Presidents. They reached the top by skipping the unnecessary “dues-paying” steps.

Insanely productive people think the same way. Rather than climbing up ladders the traditional ways, they think of alternative routes. They skip unnecessary steps by pivoting and shifting.

As Snow says, “Lateral thinking doesn’t replace hard work; it eliminates unnecessary cycles.”

The moment you attain skill or success in something, leverage it. Use it, and then parlay it into something else.

Continue developing the skills, knowledge, and mindset. But apply them in a way different from the norm. Apply them laterally, not vertically.

Use your skills to help people in other industries.

Perhaps be in a different industry than everyone else with your skill-set.

Once your reach a plateau, rather than trying to bust through it, just do something different altogether. This isn’t how you stop you’re skill and knowledge development. It’s actually how you expand it. It’s how you make your learning, thinking, and skills more fluid and dynamic.

You can jump laterally to a different project or team for a while — which will be fundamentally good for your brain. But also, you can eventually jump back into your previous realm but at 10 or 100 or 1,000 steps higher than you were previously.

In other words, you can avoid most of the glass ceilings and ridiculousness by skipping those steps.

You develop skills, apply them in unique ways, and never get stuck. Then, if you want, you leverage your skills, insights, connections, and successes to apply them in a different way — but at a different level than you could ever achieve in a traditional manner.

This is a highly adaptive and collaborative approach.

Most people will prefer the routine of doing the same work in the same environments. It’s safer. It’s more predictable. It’s slower, but at least there is security.

It also stunts creativity and innovative thinking.

It stunts experiencing wild new ideas and emotions.

It stunts 10X or 100X thinking, where you’re now collaborating with people wildly different from you.

When you begin to shift laterally, and try new things then you’ve done in the past, your prior skills actually deepen, because you use them more subconsciously to guide your new insights.

You take what you’ve learned before and apply it to something new to quickly bring a new insight or project or challenge to success. You eventually become a master-learner.

With these skills and mindsets, you can then evolve way beyond the realm of mastery, where everything is about personal growth and skill development. You truly can become an inventor with a sacred and powerful mission — and you’ll have enough context, connections, and adaptability to take the mission to success.

Don’t Get Stuck With What Worked Before

“The step-by-step advice that made an ancient Greek hero rapidly prosperous will be entirely different from what makes a 21st-century businesswoman successful, just as the exact methods an Internet startup uses to grow today will be irrelevant in five years.” — Shane Snow

The 20% of strategies that made you successful can quickly become the 80% that keep you stuck beneath a glass ceiling.

Eventually, you’ll need to pivot.

You’ll need to become more fluid and dynamic.

You’ll need to think laterally about how you can take your skills and abilities and apply them in a fundamentally different way then is typical.

This is a far more creative and collaborative approach — but ultimately, it’s required to go 10X or 100X bigger than most people are willing to go.

From a psychological standpoint, it’s also how you keep your brain continuously adapting, expanding, and becoming more creative. This is how you don’t get rigid, stiff, and stuck.

Do you want status? Or do you want growth?

Is this about your skill-development and mastery? Or is this about changing the world and being a part of an important mission to improve the lives of other people?

Those are questions only you can answer.

Ready to Upgrade?

I’ve created a cheat sheet for putting yourself into a PEAK-STATE, immediately. You follow this daily, your life will change very quickly.

Get the cheat sheet here!

The 20% Of Activities That Got You Here Are The 80% Keeping You Stuck was originally published in Thrive Global on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

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Published on November 09, 2018 06:58

Here’s How To Become Courageous And Stop Following The Pack

Photo by Justin Luebke on Unsplash

According to Dr. Cynthia Pury, one of the world’s leading scholars on the science of courage — courage involves three crucial elements:

A voluntary actIn response to a perceived threat or riskIn pursuit of a personally meaningful and often moral outcome or goal

Put simply, courage means you proactively acted, in spite of risks, toward something you believed to be important or meaningful.

It’s not courage if it’s not risky.

It’s not courage if it’s not important to you.

It’s not courage if it wasn’t purely your choice to do it.

Know The Rules So You Can Break Them

“Learn the rules like a pro so you can break them like an artist.” — Pablo Picasso

Humans are really good at creating rules.

Without rules, it would be hard to understand the world and ourselves. Our brains naturally create rules as we are developing as children — such as forming rules to separate things like colors from sounds, addition from subtraction, cats from dogs.

Interestingly, though, the development of rules can ultimately have detrimental effects on a person’s ability to freely express themselves.

Usually, between the ages of 6–11, children develop a “concrete” version of themselves, wherein they have developed a sense of identity. They realize that how they think and feel is different from how other people think and feel.

In their teens, they attempt to test out these rules. This usually doesn’t go very well for them. A few possible scenarios occur:

They get in trouble from their parentsThey get in trouble at school or with the lawThey rebel against their family and join more radical social groups

For most people, the testing of “rules” is either rejected entirely or pushes people to become outcasts in some form or fashion.

As a result, a “concrete” identity becomes solidified and the person develops a fairly stable personality, which they have for the majority or remainder of their lives.

This concrete-self becomes a fixed identity or fixed-mindset.

When a person has a fixed mindset, they’re not likely to act courageously very often — only when the situation really requires it, like when a loved one is in danger.

But’s that’s reactive courage. That’s courage that wasn’t planned for. Yes, it was voluntary. Yes, it was a choice to act. But it was also a response.

But what about pre-planned courage?

What about choosing to act courageously because you designed a situation to rise up to?

What if you decided to break the rules of how most people do things, but in a mature manner?

When you really dig into the lives of the most creative and successful people in the world, you notice that at some point, they stopped following the “rules.”

You cannot be authentic if you’re following other people’s rules.

You can’t be authentic if you’re copying someone else’s style.

Authenticity doesn’t mean you’re being true to yourself. Rather, authenticity means you have the inner freedom to be and do whatever you want and believe. Who you are is continuously transforming through courageous creativity and a deep commitment to what you believe.

Being authentic means you can hear your own voice, and you have the freedom and emotional security to make your own decisions.

It takes courage to be authentic because authenticity isn’t a fixed trait. Authenticity means you did something for your own reasons — not for someone else’s reasons.

Very few people are truly authentic.

How can you tell?

Most people’s lives and work look quite a bit like other people’s lives and work.

They’re still operating under rules that someone else created, rather than rules they’ve formed themselves.

They are still learning the rules like a “pro,” and haven’t developed the emotional maturity to break those rules and create their own. They’re still following in someone else’s footsteps.

You Can’t Read The Label From Inside The Jar

“When you’re inside the bottle, you can’t read the label. Get out of the bottle so that you can read the label.” — Unknown

According to Gödel’s incompleteness theorems:

The truth of any component of a system is unprovable within the systemAny system cannot demonstrate its own consistency

You cannot comprehend or appreciate the nature of something from within it.

You can only see how your family works by experiencing how different families work.

You can only begin to understand your own worldview by experiencing other worldviews.

This is why it can be extremely limiting to be entrenched in a certain field or profession. You operate mindlessly under the rules everyone else is operating under, and your creativity is incredibly capped.

Your ability to be courageous is capped as well because you have no perspective to innovate.

In an interview with Tim Ferriss, Nick Kokonas, an innovative entrepreneur said, “I just look at some things and go, ‘Why is that? Why does it work that way?’ Oftentimes, the people most entrenched in a system have no idea why.”

If your work looks and feels quite a bit like other people’s work — then you’re entrenched in a system.

You can’t see the label because you’re too far inside the jar.

You haven’t begun questioning enough.

You haven’t developed your own authentic sense and views.

You’re still operating under rules that, in reality, only exist in respect to that system. But they certainly don’t exist outside of that system.

The only way to break the jar is to stop playing by the rules of that jar. You need to get way outside of it and start innovating. Start getting new perspectives. And stop caring what the people in that jar think about you.

This takes an incredible amount of courage and creativity. It takes depth and reason for doing so.

Authenticity Is Pursuing What You Want (And This Is Very Good For Your Brain)

In a beautiful lecture by Dr. Susan David, she explains how our brains re-organize the entire world around us when we shift from “needing” to do something to “wanting” to do it.

When you believe you should do something, you operate out of willpower. For example, when you believe you shouldn’t eat the chocolate cake, then you’re suppressing an emotion that creates increasing fixation on that cake. Eventually, you eat the cake.

Willpower is never a way to success. Willpower is how you suppress your emotions even further. It’s based entirely on should’s and should not’s.

Interestingly, Dr. David references lots of research explaining how to become more emotionally agile or flexible. For instance, research has looked at what happens when children spend 10 minutes writing down their deepest held values. They reframe temptations and are less inclined to peer pressure. They can choose to act for themselves as an agent, rather than being acted upon as an object.

When you become clear on your WHY — on the values you believe in most — then you re-orient your perspective of the entire world. The jar dissolves. You see things more clearly and have entirely new levels of freedom to create as you see fit.

When you remind yourself daily of your WHY, you see the world differently. You stop wanting the chocolate cake. It becomes less of an impulse. Of course, from time-to-time, you’ll be triggered to do something, but you will no longer be at the mercy of your emotions. Instead, you’ll be flexible to the situation. At that moment, you’ll also be reminded of your values, and thus, despite the emotions you experience, you’ll be able to make values-based decisions.

https://medium.com/media/fc2c4274841b71e99e9c446e71f1c216/href

According to Dan Sullivan:

Needers are externally motivated, seek security, have a scarcity mindset, and are reactive to what other people are doing. Wanters are internally motivated, pursue freedom, have an abundance attitude, and are highly creative.

Being authentic requires emotional flexibility. It requires the courage to break out of the norms of what is happening around you.

For many people, it takes courage to break out of the rat-race of the 9–5 to pursue “their dreams.” But then, quickly they fall prey to another rat-race, the one where they are following someone else’s footsteps toward success.

Eventually, you must reach a place of complete authenticity — where you no longer pay attention to how anyone else is doing their work. You have the confidence and the courage to do what you want, how you want to.

You stop following the rules. You start inventing your own.

You stop competing with others. You make them compete with you.

You stop playing the game. And you start innovating and changing the game.

Are you playing the game other people are playing?

Or have you redefined the game altogether?

Have you created a new game that others are now playing?

In the book, Relentless, Tim Grover explains that “cleaners” — those who are unstoppable — create the context in which other people operate. These are the people who re-invent their industries and allow other people the privilege of starting from a new vantage point.

Usually, those operating in the new jar don’t realize or appreciate that their ability to act and operate is based on the rules set by someone else. Most people take this for granted. They can’t see themselves from within the jar. Think believe they are acting “independently,” and thus, lack gratitude for the innovators who courageously and creatively shaped the new system.

Evolving Beyond Your “Concrete” Self

In the book, The Body Keeps The Score, Bessel van der Kolk M.D. explains that traumatic experiences halt or “freeze” a person’s development. When a person experiences emotional pain and doesn’t allow that pressure to pass, but instead bottles it, they become frozen and rigid at that moment.

They become concrete and inflexible.

To some extent, we all have suppressed emotions. However, we will always remain stuck until we decide 1) what we believe in (our values) and 2) what we want.

Until we decide what we believe in, we will always be operating out of “shoulds” and “needs.”

This keeps us from authentically creating our own rules. This keeps us in a place of scarcity, fear, and the need for security.

Once you know what you believe and what you want, and you develop a sense of inner freedom and emotional flexibility, you evolve beyond the “concrete” self.

You are then enabled to design your identity and your life. You begin to see the world differently. You stop paying so close attention to what others are doing and you begin asking far bigger and deeper questions.

You begin to step outside the jar.

You step outside of the rules.

You begin to see new things.

You begin to make more compelling connections.

You begin to set more ambitious goals — one’s those in the jar could never comprehend — but one’s they’ll soon desire themselves once they see what you’re doing.

You immediately remove all of the things in your life that conflict with your values and goals.

Your time immediately free’s up.

You no longer operate with fear or worry about the judgments of other people.

You also stop attaching to outcomes altogether. Your internal sense of freedom provides you the ability and confidence to limitless creativity. You no longer worry about success or failure — because ultimately, you know that you cannot be stopped.

You will fail plenty of times.

You aren’t worried about potentially squandering everything you’ve built to this point.

Your future is what you’re focused on, not your past.

Growth is your agenda, not status.

You live completely authentic and fluidly — being willing to step into unknown situations and create what you believe could and should be created.

Forget “Blue Ocean Strategy,” you now live in a Blue Universe.

You’re not in any oceans. You’re not even swimming. You’re now flying or floating or some other thing that doesn’t even remotely reflect what others in your “industry” or “field” are doing.

You’ve redefined what water is.

You’ve built a new language and model for living and thriving.

You’ve stepped outside of a jar, and now realize that there is no ceiling. And this is where your creative potential really takes off. This is where you begin creating things that may make no sense to most people — and you no longer care.

You now have nothing to lose — because you’re no longer attached to what will happen. You’re living in what Dr. David Logan, the author of Tribal Leadership, calls “No man’s land.”

No one can compete with you, because you’re no longer playing their game.

No one can follow what you’re doing because you only know the next step of where you’re going. You’re completely guided by values and reasons — but radically iterative in your process.

The moment you summit an enormous goal, you begin summiting another. As Dan Sullivan has said, “The moment you arrive is the perfect time to start back over.”

You never get stuck. You never stay stagnant. You’re always re-inventing and innovating and shaking things up. Or as Seth Godin would say, “Make a ruckus!”

You take action first, and then gather relevant information based on the feedback you get. You’re fine looking stupid. You’re fine failing. Because you know that these things are only the perceptions of other people. And they have no clue what you’re building. They have no orientation toward the world or future or universe that you’re living in.

They are still operating by the rules.

They’re still inside the jar.

They’re still concrete and frozen — bound to their emotions and fears and rules.

Now that you’ve developed emotional flexibility, you are fluid and authentic. Your personality becomes formless and you have the freedom to invent and re-invent yourself over and over.

You have the confidence to design your life, right now, based on your highest values and aspirations.

You know that when you take bold action, your universe will re-arrange itself to fit the new standard you’ve set.

You no longer wait until you have enough connections, money, knowledge, or any other excuses you have built in your mind for why you’re not living your life completely how you want, right now.

You make bold decisions and then figure out how to make it work after. This is experiential learning. This is gathering relevant and timely information. Unlike most people who use “learning” or “information” as a form of distraction — you only learn that which will produce the needed outcome you need, right now.

You apply Parkinson’s law, which means you put FIRST THINGS FIRST and proactively procrastinate the “urgent and non-important” stuff. You let those smaller balls drop. If there’s time for them, you’ll get to them. But you’ve put only your top priorities first.

Everything else is what it is.

Your life is how you want it.

You design the rules.

You create the game.

You now have the courage to be authentic — and your authentic self is never set in stone but always evolving based on the values you have and the dreams you pursue.

Ready to Upgrade?

I’ve created a cheat sheet for putting yourself into a PEAK-STATE, immediately. You follow this daily, your life will change very quickly.

Get the cheat sheet here!

Here’s How To Become Courageous And Stop Following The Pack was originally published in Thrive Global on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

View more on Benjamin P. Hardy's website »

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Published on November 08, 2018 06:25

How To Develop The Courage To Be Authentic