If you’re serious about developing yourself you already know the hardest part.
You’ve gotten clear on what ways you want to transform.
You know exactly how you’re doing it.
But, damn, it can be hard to get yourself to do it, right?
How Do You Actually Do It?
A client is focused on being an “Enhanced” version of himself.
Akin to the movie Limitless, he has two ways of being.
“Regular” he walks, talks, thinks, be’s a certain way.
Regular is good, in fact, regular is very good because he’s already spent years developing himself he’s very much the man he wants to be.
But Enhanced is a level beyond.
Here he’s unstoppable. Nothing phases him. Worries him. He’s never short on confidence or belief or the will to keep creating his dream life.
Over years he’s modeled the “Enhanced Character.”
He knows exactly how he wants to be but as we discussed last night, he’s still not good enough at being it.
It’s All Good
I told him.
What he’s doing is positively herculean.
Few people ever change.
You meet them 10 years later and they are more or less the same person, walking, talking, being the same way.
Our brains are set up for consistency.
They revert back to our Regular / habituated / conditioned thoughts and behaviors, which changing can take a massive amount of personal power.
Power Isn’t Enough
Grrrrrrrr I heard the guy at the gym screaming as he was putting up a big weight.
It’s not enough. Power can only take you so far.
So too can motivation. It might get you to want to change, but really, truly making transformational change takes a lot more than desire.
Or will.
Like developing a business, it takes a disciplined approach that you put to work every day, possibly for years, decades, a lifetime.
5 Steps For Transforming
For 20 years I’ve been researching personal development figuring out how you actually do it.
Reading thousands of books took a lot of time, and gave me a lot of amazing ideas, but it failed to teach me how to actually transform.
Interesting ideas make for good conversation.
Warm and fuzzy ideas might inspire someone to think about changing, but how you actually transform yourself is an entirely different question.
Even learning at the feet of the best wizards only took me so far because most people are focused on incremental change, rather than transforming better and better every day.
For years it was incredibly complicated to me, yet today it’s become obvious, simple, but still far from easy to do.
It’s “just” training, and the trick is, how, specifically, do you get yourself to do it.
These are 5 cascading steps that I have developed over the years.
1. Do It Unconsciously
I know this idea is a little foreign to some people, but, straight up, the absolute best way to develop is to train unconsciously.
While this might sound “advanced,” think of it simply as Michael Phelps every night before bed watching a mental movie of his perfect swim, as I wrote about here.
Oddly even few psychologists work directly with unconscious processes (because many are in the business of talk, not change) even though they recognize that EVERYTHING we do is happening unconsciously.
For my client, I’ve hypnotized him. Trained him in tools of NLP. And other proprietary tech I’ve developed to change his “energetic power” and “blueprint.”
He has enough “Reference Experiences” in his brain of the person he is training to be, but that’s not enough.
See, even many hypnotists believe that their craft is one and done, which, in some basic cases like changing a phobia or bad memory it is.
But nobody can unconsciously change you to lose 50 pounds, or to play the piano, only to keep doing the training.
I create hypnotic recordings for my clients, which, to condition the change, I recommend they set aside a specific time to do every day.
In some cases this is plenty, but in the context of transformation, literally, who you are being every second of your day, you also want to recruit “Conscious Resources” to execute on the change.
2. Daily Exercises
To develop your body, you hit the gym regularly and do your exercises.
It ain’t rocket science, in fact, it might be the most obvious, basic type of developing we do, yet, it can still be very hard, right?
My client is doing something much harder. He’s training himself to monitor every single thought and feeling to “upgrade” it from Regular to Enhanced.
In the movie Limitless Eddie Morra “cheats.”
He pops a pill. Becomes Enhanced Eddie, which makes him limitless.
Like weight loss, there is no magic pill for becoming the person you dream to be, there is only training you wake up and do every day.
The best way to do daily exercises is, just like the gym, figure out when it best works for you, and “force” yourself to do it… at least until it becomes a habit you love doing.
3. Intraday Practices
How do you actually develop yourself into the person you dream to be?
Well, if you have done the unconscious work and have your daily exercises, you’re doing a lot, but for most of us it’s not enough.
To keep drilling, you want to set up reminders throughout the day.
A number of my clients have calendar reminders that pop up on the hour, and his says “How am I training Enhanced?”
He then turns to his daily exercises and does at least one of them.
Yes, I know we are talking extreme here, but we haven’t even gotten to the serious part…
4. Continuous Practices
Someone was talking to me yesterday about Ray Dalio and this report.
He said, “OK, I totally get it, but, how do I get myself to follow my principles?”
“ATFT,” I responded, All The Fucking Time.
Someone who is serious about losing weight watches every calorie they put in and out.
We would expect an Olympic athlete to be focused every second on how they keep optimizing themselves and their performance, and anyone serious about developing does the same.
“But, how do I do that?” he legitimately asked?
“How do you not?” I mind-fucked him back.
“By being Regular instead of Enhanced, right?”
Exactly. Every second. Every day. If he’s being that old Regular version of him, he’s failing to be Enhanced.
“But, how do I remind myself to do this?”
I showed him my tattoos, discussed the signs on my walls, things stuck all over my desk, the thousands of audio recordings I have used over the years to condition my head…
If you’re a pro, ATFT you do whatever you can to remind yourself of who you are training to be.
5. Bail Out Buddy
Assuming that the previous 4 steps will still “fail” many of us…
You want to rope someone else into what you’re doing.
It’s SO MUCH EASIER to do this if you have someone to show you when you’re being that old way, and to help you keep developing yourself into the person you dream.
This takes trust. And love. And someone who is as serious about you being your best as you are.
I’m not talking about a coach. That’s not enough.
Training with a coach is only the regular practice, which we’ve assumed is insufficient, and you want someone who is around you a lot of the time to help you monitor your developing.
A spouse. Training partner. Business associate. Mother. Brother. Whoever it is, find someone who buys into this lunacy, and have them help you do it every day.
But you can’t rely on that person.
They are only a “device,” like a coach or a trainer or a doctor or a guide, they can only keep reminding you, but only you can keep training.
Never Stop Training…
If you’re serious about developing yourself you never let a minute go by where you’re not focused on it.
A student who is serious about their grades is always thinking about how they learn better.
Someone losing weight is always, losing weight.
An Olympic athlete is always training their sights on gold.
A CEO building the best business is always focused on being their best.
And any of us who are serious about developing never stop training.