The Hidden Formula Behind Every Breakthrough
In a Nutshell
Breakthroughs require the right sequence: first change your emotional state, then adopt an empowering story, and only then pursue strategy. Most people fail because they start with strategy, which triggers uncertainty and gets filtered through limiting beliefs. State controls what stories you believe, and stories determine what solutions you can see or create.
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A breakthrough is a moment in time which what once was impossible becomes possible and you act on it. It's a moment in time when the impossible suddenly becomes possible and you act on it. Not just having an insight, but acting on it.
You can go from not having the answer to having the answer how fast, in a heartbeat. If you get in the right state, you'll get the right answer. If you stay in the same state, it's impossible. You're stuck.
There are three keys to a breakthrough. The same three things apply whether breaking through in business, finances, body, or relationships. The speaker spent their whole life studying breakthroughs and trying to make it more simple because complexity is the enemy of execution.
The three S's are: strategy, story, and state. The keys are presented in reverse order of importance because this is the order people do it in and why they don't get a breakthrough.
Strategy is the first key to a breakthrough. A strategist finds the answers, the solutions, the tools to compress decades into days. Someone's figured something out, took them 15 years. The speaker can figure out how they did it and teach it to somebody in 6 hours, 6 days, but it's not going to be 16 years. Strategy is the worst place to start. It's where everybody starts. There is a sequence to breakthroughs. If you do the wrong sequence, it's like knowing someone's phone number. You have the right number, put in the wrong order, you don't reach them.
The one most people pursue is starting with strategy. 75% of America's overweight. It's the fattest country in the history of the world. The speaker used to be 38 lbs heavier than they are now. The speaker told people they were big-boned, but they were fat. The strategy for being fit and healthy and strong is not so complex that only the most intellectual humans can understand it. It's not because it's so expensive to find those answers only the top 0.1% can get access to the answers that'll be fit and strong.
The problem is people start to figure out start with how. When you start with how to do something that you've never done successfully, your brain feels uncertain and it rejects it. It's like, I'm not going to, I don't want to fail. I've never done this before. I don't know what to do. If you do it with a team of people, you're going to fail as a team. As a culture, you can't start with strategy or most of the times you're going to get limited results or no results.
How many times has somebody gone to McKinsey and paid tens of millions of dollars for a strategy which comes to the company and it never gets implemented? The problem isn't strategy first. Some people might have the wrong strategy for losing weight, but it's not that complex. How far would you have to go from this building to get someone help you to lose weight? There's gyms in the hotels. You could walk to the gym, you could drive to it. You could download the answers onto your iPad or phone right now. You could hire a trainer. You have to work to not know how to be fit. And most people do because they're starting with strategy. It's not a strategy problem in most cases.
The second thing needed for a breakthrough is a story problem. A story is a set of beliefs that you tell yourself over and over again till you believe the story. There's an old phrase: you tell us a lie big enough, loud enough and long enough, sooner or later people believe you. Goebbels for Hitler did that. But most of us are Hitler to ourselves. We keep telling ourselves, oh, I want to lose weight but I can't because I've tried everything.
If you tried everything, you'd be fit. When people say they've tried everything, they mean they did these two stupid things over and over again that don't work. Or why you don't have the relationship you want. All the good ones are gone or they're gay and I'm not, or I'm gay and they're not. Most people start with a strategy where you don't feel successful because you haven't been before. You have a story that tells you it won't work. If you tell yourself a story over and over again, you'll believe it.
Once you believe something, you only find things that support what you believe. The speaker gives a test: sit up in your chair with some energy. Look around this room as fast as you can and notice everything you can find that's brown. Try to see everything as brown. Brown people, brown clothing, brown anything. Then close your eyes and tell everything you just saw that was red. How many see a lot more brown? Then open your eyes and look for red. You have to find it. How many found more red this time? You found more red this time because you looked for it. Seek and you shall find.
Once you believe something, you only find what supports what you believe, whether it's true or not. Seek and you shall find, even if it's not there. How many saw beige, called it brown just so you could get a higher score? How many of you saw burgundy, called it red just so you could feel successful? Our beliefs color what's going on. Change your story, change your life. If you want to change things, don't start with strategy.
How many times have you ever tried to help somebody and you start to help them and then they start fighting you on it? Because their story says nothing will work. And they're certain. A belief is a building of certainty. And the certainty is they told themselves over and again. A new story is a new life. How do you change it all in reality? You start with a third S and you make it number one.
The third S is your state. There is nothing more powerful to change human performance than changing your state. Every athlete knows it, anybody who's a performer knows it, anybody who performs at a high level in business knows it. State is everything, mental emotional state.
Have you ever been pissed off at somebody? And then you noticed, you remembered everything they've ever done that's ever pissed you off. Or when you fall in love. When you're in love, what's wrong with life? You don't have any money, you go we don't have any money, but it's okay. When you're in love with someone, what will you do for them? Anything. If they go, could you take out the trash? You go, take out the trash? Of course. What else can I do for you?
But after 7 days, 7 weeks, 7 months, or 70 years, somewhere in there. One day they say you take out the trash, you go, what I look like your janitor? You don't know what happened, we used to have so much passion. What happened? Your state controls your story. Your story controls whether you find a strategy or whether you make one. Sometimes there isn't a strategy, but if you have the right state and the right story, you'll come up with one.
Who's told you there's something that couldn't be done, but you got so in state about it, it was so committed to it, you figured a way, you made a new way? So, makes you an innovator. From this day forward, you want to change your relationship, you want to change your body, want to change your finances, you want to change your business, change the state of yourself and the team. That's what every quarterback knows how to do. If they don't, people will not perform.
Second, come up with a story that empowers you. And then third, in those states with those stories, find a strategy that's proven or make one up. That's how breakthroughs happen.
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