“This is your life and it’s ending one minute at a time” – Chuck Palahniuk
Everything you’ve ever wanted – along with the rest of human potential – lies in the gap between good intentions and concrete action. And it’s time for you to cross the chasm.
The majority slouch and gaze across the gulf at the much smaller (better looking) group who have made the leap. Anyone can do it, but there’s a thousand reasons why you can’t.
On the other side, they call those reasons “excuses”.
This article breaks down the psychological principle you NEED to traverse the void. It’s a tactic that I’ve road-tested on some of the world’s smartest entrepreneurs and when you use it, you’ll create rapid results instead of reasons-why-you-can’t.
Want wings? Read on…
Hacking Mental Alignment and Integration aka “Check thyself before thou wrecks thyself”
Ever tried to literally make a big jump… on skis, a skateboard or something like a diving board?
If you’ve ever even seen someone attempt a minor acrobatic stunt, you know the pain of last second hesitation. It’s what happens when – the moment you commit to the leap – some weird part of you twists in the other direction and screams “NO GO BACK!”
The inevitable outcome? Face plant into the ground.
You must commit, or not leave the ground at all. The last second hesitation costs amateurs a hot flush of embarrassment (at best!) and can cost the pros their lives. And it doesn’t matter if we’re talking about extreme sports or business.
When you want to make the leap into being a serial action-taker – someone who makes extraordinary and huge things happen – you have to be integrated.
You have to be aligned. Whole of heart and mind.
That means one hundred percent of you has to lock onto your target and leap. No hesitation, no flinch, no twisting away in the wrong direction.
All the work I do as The Shrink for Entrepreneurs has to do with this. My clients – though they don’t always know it – seek out my services because their conscious mind wants one thing but their unconscious mind wants something else. When they gather the courage to leap, part of them wavers and tugs in the wrong direction.
The jump, when it comes, will never succeed while part of them wants to stay on the ground.
The void is huge. You need your mind and muscles coiled in the same direction when the time comes to spring.
Inner Conflict is the enemy of Integration, and it’s caused by a dissonance between the goals of the conscious self and the prime directives of the unconscious mind.
If you want to make huge leaps and bounds in life and business, you need to get the two minds lined up – which means understanding what your unconscious really wants.
I talk about this all the time, and the gist is this: The unconscious mind is an emotional beast, concerned with your safety and pleasure. It just wants you to be safe, and to have a good time.
The coolest secret of peak performance psychology – the one the billionaire playboys have figured out – is that the unconscious mind will temporarily set aside it’s safety concerns IF it believes there’s enough pleasure on the horizon to justify it. This is why roller coasters and startups were invented!
If you keep hesitating and half-leaping with false starts, it’s because your unconscious believes life on the other side of the chasm – at least the part you’re aiming at – is MORE dangerous and LESS pleasurable than where you’re at now.
So it won’t let you make the jump.
Finding true integration is a matter of mental ecology
You have to see the bigger picture, which means knowing the consequences of success, including all the peripheral unintended side effects. Your unconscious mind is aware of this stuff already. The root cause of the dissonance is the fact that – at least at the conscious mind level – you are not.
The unconscious mind is constantly running an early-warning radar detection system, projecting your goals and dreams out into the future to see how they’ll pan out. It’s looking for pain and energy drain – dangerous traps where it needs to protect the conscious ego-self from getting into all kinds of trouble.
For some people, the unconscious mind is just protecting them from leaping into a horrendous business model that will never work out!
The other side of the chasm is a place you have to live sustainable. It’s not all bathtubs of champagne. You need the eyes-wide street smarts to know what energy expenditure will be required to keep crushing goals once you arrive in the action zone.
If finding all that sounds overwhelming, don’t forget you can borrow someone else’s hard earned experience while you’re trying to figure out what life looks like as a serial action-taker.
Small business owners who want to double their revenue, but don’t really have scale worked out, can never make the leap. Same deal with the start-up people who want the kudos of raising capital, but don’t really want to work like bastards to produce a return on their investor’s dollars.
The unconscious mind knows what’s on the other side. It’ll only let you go there if it’s somewhere groovy.
Know where you’re going and get informed about what it’ll be like when you get there. Make sure your inner child is going to get it’s kicks there too – otherwise it’s not really real success anyway.
Eyes wide open awareness and mental wholeness of desire – that’s what rockets you across the void of inaction, to the promised land beyond. You already have everything you need, now you just need to look where you’re going… and leap.
This is an inspiring post Peter, it is also timely for me because I’m in that mental mode that is keeping me from taking action. For me, my unconsious/subconcious mind is operating in fear. The fear of not having the money to start something or fear of not having the skills, it’s frustrating because I feel I’m swimming upstream and with each positive step I take I take 2 steps backwards. I’m slowly learning to combat the self limiting beliefs but it’s a challenge to undo long standing beliefs that live deep in our mental world.
Thank you for the post, it’s one I’ll re-read often in my journey!
Best regards,
Tony R
Hey Tony! Thanks for stopping by and dropping a comment.
Fear of failure is one factor to consider, as is fear of success – both can be deadly. Very often the fear response comes from your unconscious mind as it attempts to prevent you from BLINDLY leaping. It’s simply a call to learn more and see more… first.
Wow super timely for me too. Haven’t been round to read in some time but today this came and I was drawn right to it.
I too have that fear of success, will it cause too much energy drainage from me, going on. Explains why things have not been moving forward for me I think because I don’t feel safe with my awareness of the other side yet. Did the leap once without full awareness, that was bad….Now I have my toes almost to the starting line but not ready to get on the blocks quite yet. That’s ok too.
This line: “is that the unconscious mind will temporarily set aside it’s safety concerns IF it believes there’s enough pleasure on the horizon to justify it. ” is really an important one for me. Printing it out to post in my office. Actually has big implications for the type of training work that I do! So thanks!! Backs up a theory I have been working on. Now if only I would get working on writing all this down….:)
Hey Sarah! Sounds like you really, really get this.
Looking forward to seeing where you end up landing 🙂
This post reminds me of my equestrian years, when I was jumping professionally in competitions. (The horse, not me.) Jumps can look REALLY big when you’re coming up to them fast, and that split-second moment of hesitation is SO familiar to me, because we had to continually train against it.
Or we’d crash. On top of the jump. (Got the once-broken wrist to prove it.) Horses have incredible senses, and at the slightest hesitation – the kind even YOU aren’t aware of – they’d hit the brakes.
You’d eat dirt.
The solution was simple – not easy to apply, but simple. We had to canter up to the jump looking *past* it where we wanted to go. By doing so, we tricked our brain to think ahead to the clear spot versus focusing on the large fence in front of us.
The horse sensed confidence and calm – and over the fence we’d go.
Thanks for the memories, because you made me smile… and thanks for pointing out the way this connects to my life today, in business.
Yikes… and I thought I was being ballsy with skiing! No way will I ever get on one of those four legged demons! :O
But yes, good lessons from Mr Ed all the same!
Right on Peter… I’m facing this with my diet knowing a specific version works best for me to stay more confident, stable, grounded and clear headed, but a part of me thinks it won’t be worth it to wait for what I’m going for with choosing this and sticking with it or “committing” as you say.
I’m also facing this with my business so I can see how this plays out no matter what domain I want to apply the full out commitment to what I really want vs. what I’m comfortable with and used to.
Hey Brian, glad this one clicked for you.
Love this post, Peter. When you’re like me and you’ve read self-help and success literature for years, there aren’t many new insights. This is a new insight for me. I look at my friends and family and others who are proven serial action-takers, who have taken the leap, and I find it very hard to relate.
I think what I’m getting from this is that my unconscious needs to be able to see me as capable of making the leap, and to imagine me actually making it?
If that’s it, frankly I’m at a loss for how I go about it. Visualization? Spending more time with people who have done it?
Hey Jim!
Glad to hear this was new to you! I read a ton of psychology and self help too, so that’s what I strive to do in general on this blog: Say something new.
It’s more about understanding the ins and outs of day life on the other side of the chasm. What are your goals? What is life going to be like when you get there? If it’s fuzzy, who can you role model who is already there?
The answer is just about trying to get clarity on what the consequences of success really look like in your chosen endeavor. And what it’ll take to get there.
Does that make sense?
This article was more than brilliant, it is actually life changing… my question is, do you have any specific steps or methods to calm the fear of the subconscious mind? How can we make it believe that the other side will be super groovy and fun??
Thank you so much again!