If you’re like most ambitious and growth minded people, then you are probably ready to make the shift from Incremental to Exponential growth.
You have the expertise and experience that make you more than worthy of serving the world at a greater scale.
You feel the calling to Be more, and Do more (which might actually be your brain tricking you, more on that later).
You’ve already set, what you currently think, are big goals.
And you’re already doing, what you currently think, is the work to get there.
But here’s the thing about Quantum Leaping…
It doesn’t come from your current way of thinking or doing.
Quantum Leaps require you to:
- Change The Position Of Your Thinking
- Let Go Of Things You Don’t Realize You’re Holding
- Shift Gears To Create More Force And Speed With Less Effort
This is what the book You2 from Price Pritchett is all about.
It’s not about grinding harder.
It’s not about banging your head against the wall trying to break through, when you could simply walk across the room and out the open door.
It’s about an adjustment in your perspectives, beliefs, and actions that take you to a level magnitudes higher than you’re currently at.
Lesson One: Change Your Level Of Thinking
“If you will rethink how you’re thinking, you can multiply your performance potential. You must let your desires guide you, instead of allowing yourself to be boxed in by perceived constraints.”
What is your current mindset around leveling up?
It’s most likely based on where you are and where you’ve been.
This is also the power of being in the room with people ahead of you, and having mentors to help pull you forward out of your old way of thinking.
Congrats, because subscribing to this Digest means you’re already on that path.
The tricky thing is that Quantum Leaping looks like a paradox at first, which is why most people never make quantum leaps. They don’t even try.
Fortunately, you’re not most people.
Get A Better Perspective
The book starts off with a great story about a fly trying to escape by zooming headfirst into a window over and over again.
No matter how hard that fly tries to hit the window, it’s never getting through.
But if it would simply fly further back to get a wider view, it would see there’s a wide open door on the other side of the room it could easily fly out of.
Where are you so close to a situation that you are banging your head against it when you could zoom out for a wider perspective to find the “open door” you can more easily walk through?
Our old habits, our old ways of thinking, they keep us “too close” to see there are other ways to achieve our goals that could be way easier.
Who Is This Easy For?
Is 100 lb a lot of weight to lift?
It is for my 4 year old daughter.
It’s definitely not for a professional bodybuilder.
Your goals might seem heavy for you from your current perspective, but unless you’re planning to colonize a planet, someone else has likely gotten there (or somewhere similar) already.
Let’s say your goal is to build a $5,000,000 consultancy and you’re currently at $500,000. That’s a 10x jump. From thinking at the $500k level, it’s extremely heavy.
But what about for a $60,000,000 company? They make five million in a month. It’s easy.
Try thinking from your goal’s perspective, not from your current perspective.
Use this as the exercise thinking prompt, “What does a person who has already achieved my target goal do?”
Not the default, “What do I normally do now?”
For example, “What does a $5,000,000 consultancy do?”
Not, “What does a $500k consultancy do?”
Now you’re starting to break out of the incremental steps into the quantum leaps.
And when you start thinking this way, and visualize yourself as that “$5M consultancy,” feeling what it’s like to be in that position, you will send out a frequency to the universe that will align you with that reality.
Pritchett talks about this as “relying on the unseen forces.”
Lesson Two: Letting Go
“We fall into the habit of relying on behaviors that seem to have worked best for us over the years.”
Why do we get stuck in our ways?
Not even from a stubborn perspective, but from a habitual act that we might not even notice happening?
That’s the biggest reason self-limiting beliefs hold us back.
When we have a belief, that means we accept it as a true fact of reality that we don’t question or wonder about. It’s not something we even see on our radar that needs to change.
We aren’t held back simply from having self-limiting beliefs. The dangerous self-limiting beliefs are the ones we don’t see, thus we don’t move them and grow past them.
Our brains are wired for safety.
There is safety in the known, because we have more certainty about what will happen and that gives us the (false) belief that we can control it and keep ourselves safe.
Going out into the unknown is uncertain, therefore our brains deem it as not safe.
Doing something new is uncertain, therefore our brains deem it as not safe.
And so we stay in what’s familiar and what we’re used to doing.
Our brains are wired for conserving energy.
This means we tend towards things that feel easier for us to do. Things we do often are things that are easier to do. The longer we’ve been doing something, the more likely we are to have our subconscious force us to keep doing it, because it does not cost us as much energy.
If you’re right handed, it’s clunky and awkward to brush your teeth with your left hand. Because you’ve never done it before. It’s not harder because it’s difficult, it’s harder because it’s different.
Remember back in the intro when I said that feeling to “Do more” is your brain tricking you?
It’s because you feel called for more, but your thinking is still from that habitual, comfort zone.
Then your brain is saying “you are called for more, so you must do more.” The problem is that just Doing more of the same, from your current level, is only going to lead to incremental growth at best, likely followed by a burnout season.
So what could you do instead of more of the same to achieve Quantum Leaps and avoid burnout?
It’s time for you to shift gears.
Lesson Three: Shifting Gears
“Quantum Leaps cannot be achieved through incremental steps or through ‘more of the same.’ You’ve got to shift gears. You have to follow new patterns of thought and action.”
When a car shifts gears, it doesn’t increase how many times the engine is rotating (RPMs). It creates more force and speed without exerting more effort, because more rotations would blow up the engine.
When you shift gears, it’s not about exerting more effort and doing more of the same, it’s about using your effort in different ways.
This is how you can achieve Quantum Leaps without burning out.
Because you are creating more force and speed without exerting more effort.
This is your invitation to get off the hamster wheel and start moving forward exponentially.
In order to shift gears, you need to think creatively, question your status quo, and be bold in your pursuits.
Acknowledge that the path to extraordinary achievements is paved with change, not just more effort.
It will be new which can feel awkward, and uncomfortable. Remember that uncertainty will make your brain trick you into thinking that you’re not safe and it will try to hold you back.
Stay on the lookout for when these self-limiting beliefs pop up so you can avoid them. Look at them, say “thank you for trying to keep me safe,” and move on.
You must let go of what you’ve been doing so that you can shift gears into the new perspectives, beliefs, and actions that your future self has at your desired destination.