Teaching fleas not to jump out of a jar takes about a week of time and minimal effort. Just put the fleas in a jar with a lid. For about three days, the fleas hurl themselves furiously at the closed lid. By the end of the week, you can remove the lid and not a single flea will jump out. They’ve learned that escape is impossible.
When I first heard that story I thought, 'Sure, that’s why they’re fleas — because they’re so stupid.' Then the real meaning of the story began to sink in. People are the same way.
Convince a person that something is impossible, and it is. Put a man or woman in a box — be it a job, a station in life, or a particular role — and they’ll remain in that box until one of two things happens: either they die, or they’re exposed to something so compelling that they must break out of the box.
So how does one find these people or ideas compelling enough to inspire major changes? We can sit and wait for them to reveal themselves, or we can actively look for them. There’s a saying in education, 'The teacher will appear when the student is ready.'
A PLAN
There are many ways to seek change, almost as many as there are to avoid it. The plan outlined below is one way to make the right kind of changes actively and carefully — the ones that help you move forward without too much pain.
I said 'without too much pain' because change can be painful. Let’s devise a plan that gives us maximum positive change. Work with this plan for about a month. Use it on some goal or aspect of your life that’s been bothering you for years. If you follow through honestly and apply your many gifts to this challenge, you will succeed. You’ll establish a path that works to overcome any challenge:
- Suspend belief
- Focus on results
- Seek failure
- Get uncomfortable
Think about how you can use these steps to achieve results you never thought possible.
SUSPEND BELIEF
Many of us know that we’re doing as well as we can. Do you really believe that? Look back to the exercise in Lesson 37. You made a list of all the reasons why you’ve tapped out your current market. Hopefully, you realized how silly this was about halfway through the exercise.
Challenge your other limiting beliefs. Choose to disbelieve them. If we were sitting across from each other, and I asked you to defend some of your limiting beliefs, could you? Would you? Or would defending them seem ridiculous? Try it.
EXERCISE:
Common beliefs that prevent you from selling more:
- I don’t have enough experience.
- I’m not a very good salesperson.
- We’re too expensive.
Write down two or three beliefs about your abilities that hold you back. Then try your best to defend them, thinking of every reason why these beliefs are absolutely true and unchangeable.
FOCUS ON RESULTS
Olympic jumpers learn to focus on where they’re going. That’s what matters. Everything else is just a barrier to that end. So they focus on the distance marker. What happens during the jump isn’t relevant. All they see is the end point.
People achieve greatness by focusing on the result or outcome. Between here and there is a gulf of uncertainty. So be it.
One way to remove much of the uncertainty is to plan. Planning brings some order to the uncertainty. But you shouldn’t allow it to take precedence over flexibility. As soon as it does, you’re locked in. Results take a back seat to the plan, or the process. If you feel an urge to seek comfort in 'the plan,' run the other way. Fast. The outcome you seek isn’t found in the plan — but in the results. Stay focused and inflexible on your outcome. Let the other parts of the plan vary to support you.
EXERCISE:
Write down two things that you really want. If you were committed to achieving these things, could you? There’s no great success without commitment. Make up your mind to do them. An ounce of commitment is worth 20 pounds of planning.
SEEK FAILURE
The trick to playing good football is learning to fall forward. On almost every play, a fall is expected and planned for. The winners learn that falling forward brings you a little closer to the goal.
A reporter asked Thomas Edison if the thousands of failures he’d experienced while working on the light bulb were wearing him down. He replied, 'I’m not discouraged, for every wrong attempt discarded puts me that much closer to my goal.' Edison knew to fall forward, not down. And he was perhaps the greatest inventor of the 19th century.
Do you fall forward? Have you made it a habit to learn from your mistakes? There’s incredible power in knowing that you learn from initial, discarded attempts. It means you’re closer to your goal.
EXERCISE:
Write down two mistakes you made today. What did they teach you? Commit to remembering that lesson, and you’ll never make the same mistake.
GET UNCOMFORTABLE
Perhaps the greatest threat to your success is comfort. When you feel comfortable, things are probably moving along pretty much as they’ve been for some time. Little is changing.
So, are you completely happy with where you are? If so, great! You have it made. You’re one of the select few who’ve achieved all they want, done all they want, and experienced all they want. That’s a blissful state.
If you’re not in that state, you have a simple choice. Keep doing what you’ve been doing and keep getting what you’ve been getting. Or get uncomfortable.
Discomfort isn’t a bad thing. In fact, it’s a symptom of change underway. The trick is managing the change so that it leads to your desired outcome.
The only way to prevent discomfort is to avoid change. So the question you have to ask yourself is, 'Am I completely content?' If the answer is no, get ready for some discomfort. You can either stay where you are, avoiding change and progress, or you can get ready to fall forward. Is either option very comfortable?
If you believe that discomfort is coming, your job is to prepare to focus it — not avoid it. Fearlessness isn’t courage; mastering fear is.
EXERCISE:
Regarding the two things you really want that you wrote down earlier in this lesson:
- How does the prospect of never having them feel? A little uncomfortable?
- How does the feeling of moving toward them feel? A bit uncomfortable?