Installment 5: Emergence

The great advantage of being in a rut is that when one is in a rut, one knows exactly where one is. - Arnold Bennett

Intentionally seeking and working toward your personal breakthrough moment can be exhausting if it is visualized as one finish line or one mountain peak. We're likely misinterpreting this sought-after moment of attainment as one of completion. This perception is quite the illusion. We've become so focused on connecting ourselves to that ecstatic feeling of fulfillment, we've likely narrowed down our strategic efforts into too simple a framework. If we cannot relish the achievement, what are we driving ourselves toward anyway? According to all the self-help gurus on Facebook who keep launching sponsored ads to purchase their 3-step secret to success, that illusion is what I'm supposed to be chasing in my life. [insert sarcastic emoji]. Do you know what a mountain climber sees when they've reached one mountain peak? That's right. They've got a whole new perspective of the other unclimbed mountain peaks.

We're not here today to address your "big why", coined by Simon Sinek, connected to your passion and purpose. We're here to contemplate the idea that a breakthrough is not synonymous with a fixed endpoint. It is at this juncture of these personal breakthrough moments when we must recognize we're simply at a rest stop across a series of exponentially compounded progressions. To see it any differently is simply a mechanism we've individually crafted to rationalize our deep celebrations of arrival. It's what we've conjured to manage our inadequacies under a controlled setting. And that's the fallacy of it all. There is no control. The only control we'll manage to develop in this limited thinking is to effectively hinder our pure and unrealized growth potential.

There's so much more within your reach after these breakthrough moments. The sooner you come to this realization, the more prepared you'll be to tap into the momentum you've catalyzed. Today we'll discuss why basking in the glory of one singular breakthrough moment not only has its limits but also why this growth-hindering trap is so difficult to even recognize. We're not all mountain climbers, so let's simply focus on the tools and the mental journey itself. You see, it's not the journey toward a breakthrough moment that's exhausting. That part should be fun. It's the fact that we've boxed ourselves into thinking we've already imagined the end state of our true journey. I'm here to tell you, we've likely never imagined what we're capable of achieving because that perspective would only be based on everything we currently know today. What's to be discovered hasn't even begun to come into view.

This is Installment 5: Emergence

I spoke at length with a personal trainer the other day, outside of the gym. I'm convinced I would have gotten different responses had this conversation taken place at her gym. The sheer proximity to the physical space where she works with her clientele would have boxed in her focus and limited her answers. It's the same reason we'll ask for business meetings outside the office, on neutral ground. Developing the best questions and contemplating the best solutions requires a massive reduction in distractions. But I digress.

So I asked her why people without personal trainers tend to not make meaningful and sustainable progress. I had already calculated the probabilities of getting canned answers from her. I expected she would feel as if people needed more inspiration, more information, more motivation, and deeper levels of discipline. I expected her to say that people just want access to the simplest solutions that will deliver immediate results. I expressed those were the answers I expected to hear from her, effectively removing them from the list of acceptable responses. And that's when she had a light bulb moment. I could see it in her eyes and her body language. She was finally in a setting where it was completely acceptable to say it out loud in the presence of someone else. So what did she say?

The industry has conditioned us to seek optimal results through one adjustment. We've developed tunnel-vision, moving through various diets and workout plans, one-by-one, looking for quick answers in disparate places.

Follow-up question to her. So what's the result of that?

There is never a full dedication toward all of the necessary components of a plan suited to chase specific fitness goals. Sleep, nutrition, mindset, hydration, recovery, supplements, stretching, cardio, are all necessary components of a plan for a customer who says they want to lift weights and reshape their body with more lean muscle. That's not what customers want to hear. And if it's not what they want to hear, then their journey simply becomes more challenging than what it needs to be. And in the end, it becomes more temporary of a lifestyle shift than a permanent one.

Our conversation around this subject went on for an hour. I was mesmerized and now have enough fodder for the reconciliation of at least three more topics on leadership dynamics and performance just from the aha moments she helped me uncover.

Emergence is about your awareness, understanding, and management of the complicated framework of it all. It's not simply the notion of the whole being greater than the sum of its parts, but truly about the reality that the whole cannot even exist without all the parts. Imagination and creativity are not enough on their own. Willingness, determination, and discipline are not enough on their own. Skill and expertise are not enough on their own. But together, weaved into your personal web of life, these disparate tools, concepts, traits, and principles can inform your own personal level of emergence. To not see it this way is to give in to safety, without condition. To not see it this way allows us to hover in the world of hope rather than the certainty that valuable change opportunities will continue knocking at our door looking to be let into our lives.

Emergence is defined in two ways. 1) the process of coming into view or becoming exposed after being concealed and 2) the process of coming into being

In order to tap into higher levels of growth and emerge into our most bad-ass interpretation and revelation of self, we'll need to focus on the juxtaposition of two key points. One - We need to reorient how we think about the entire and complex framework and its correlative components. And Two - we'll need to walk the path of continuously chipping away at our inability to focus on the complexity of the framework and the sheer simplicity of its components. Hey, that's confusing as hell, but we've gotta go meta for a few moments here. Only in this type of mindset could we even begin to realize an emergence was even taking hold in our lives. The reality is you won't even know you're emerging until it's already happening. New thoughts, new patterns that result from reactions of pure instinct rather than a conscious application of knowledge, that's when you'll know. When you look back at how you're thinking, what actions you're taking, what limiting beliefs you've left behind, that's when you'll understand.

Let's look back at the personal trainer story from earlier. Let's say one of her clients, we'll call him Rob, has a mental lapse one day and demolishes a bacon-cheeseburger, fries, and milkshake for lunch. Not the best nutritional decision, but hey...we're human. So imagine Rob continues to replay the game he's been playing over time and beats himself up for making a poor decision (cue disappointment and regret) and decides his next session at the gym will be more intense (cue overcompensation and misdirection). Do you see how easy it is to get off course when we lose sight of the grouping of simple ideas and concepts toward physical fitness that aren't always in consideration? This is how we get stuck. This is how we develop ruts of repeatable and challenging outcomes for ourselves. It's a mental lapse. How about downloading some tools to deal with willpower and acceptance? How about doing the math on caloric adjustments and figuring out how much of a bad thing you could have, in moderation? So many other games could be better than the original game Rob was playing, right?!?! So many.

Today, all that we believe and know as our objective reality is comprised of our various interpretations and held into form by our own levels of resistance. If we cannot teach ourselves to suspend our own interpretations and resistance, even our imagination comes with limitations. You see, instead of imagining what we could become, we've become content with what we have become. And even imagining what we could become has its limits unless we're constantly adding new information and input into our decision framework. Without question, we've accepted who we are. Even if we don't like it, we've accepted it. And instead of simply imagining and attempting to manifest where we'd like to go, we're better served imagining the complete absence of our interpretations and resistance and simply taking small and consecutive steps forward. For when we're able to imagine where we can go without limit, we'll unlock the mechanism needed for emergence to begin.

Onward & Upward