The most decisive people are not afraid to change their position when new information comes in.
The alternative is never wanting to budge on the assumptions, opinions and conclusions a person has already made based on prior information and experiences.
Which one do you think is more conducive to exponential growth and expansion?
I used to wake up each day…
Look in the mirror, and ask myself – help me see what I think I know that just isn’t so.
It kept me open to all kinds of perspectives, viewpoints, data… from which I could make my own personal conclusions and insightful decisions.
Many times my mind was blown. My world was taken under me. Yet I kept going.
After working with hundreds of high performers, thousands of hours of conversations, this is the lowest hanging fruit to help anybody reflect on.
What do you think you know that may just not be so?
This is the hardest lens to see for anybody who’s used to operating as they know themselves to be.
So much is hanging onto this identity we’ve built.
Many times we sabotage unknowingly just to make sure the world still fits the picture we’ve created in our minds.
It makes continuity possible.
Otherwise the untrained mind may experience discontinuity. A breaking apart of some sort. Knowing is the safest place to be for a mind. That’s why we seek clarity, vision and direction.
Without it? We fall apart.
What I’m seeing happening now with high achievers in particular, those who’ve mastered their outcome-getting strategies, life is specifically taking the foundation away right under their feet.
This limbo, the space of not knowing, is the most uncomfortable experience for a mind trained on certainty, focused on results, control, leadership.
And do you know why this is happening?
So that you get to slow down just a bit and notice the blindspots you’ve been operating from that are no longer serving you, and ready for an upgrade.
Learning to be open minded like this, to question prior assumptions, to me, is the highest “soft skill” a leader, performer, founder can ever acquire.
Because when you setup a plan to execute on, with goals, habits, processes, teams and systems to match… all sitting on a foundation of misperceived presumptions that are just plain wrong is going to take your spaceship absolutely nowhere until you notice, clearly see, question, and become aware of other options that could become the new foundation of your execution.
Publicly accepted and reinforced assumptions are the hardest to shift
It’s like that metaphor of crabs in the bucket.
When you’ve been in the same industry, in agreement of how things have always been operating and a certain mass-vision of where things are going – any deviation from these points of view will oust you from that conglomerate and label you as the outsider.
When change is the only constant in life, for a human mind it is the scariest thing.
Building on the muscle for change, to become comfortable with change, learning that change is safe, and even becoming excited about change (because that’s the only constant in life!) is the true path to personal power, leadership and frankly… freedom.
Not everybody is naturally built for change.
That’s why there are founders, entrepreneurs, explorers who go out, risk, fail, discover.
And there are business managers, CEOs, compliance officers, rule keepers – whose only job is to keep a well-oiled machine operating.
If you’re in this second category, you love systems, conformity, consistency, repetition – this particular message and article may not be for you. Although if you’re still here, reading, you may be coming to a point where you still get to keep your genius that loves mechanics, and now ready to open up to different, albeit more adventurous points of view.
This is my area of work.
I’ve been working with mentors for decades – traveling around the world, gathering these lenses, points of view, and various presumptions about how life works, how business works, how leadership and relationships work.
The greatest benefit of lens exploration is to become aware of options you could then consciously choose from.
Without seeing any other options, something you’ve been trained on and you learned since your childhood and upbringing – the programming you operate from is unconscious, and you don’t really have a choice or a say about what you do, think and feel around money, performance, goals, strategies, desires, and frankly how you relate to yourself, others, life and the world you perceivable live in.
The Art Form of Lenscoding
The way I describe doing this work of exploring perspectives is that we have many presumptions loaded into our psyche as solid bricks.
They’re unmovable, unshakeable, and many times even invisible – generating the foundation of everything that makes us feel, think and move.
Finding, discovering, and noticing these bricks is 80% of the work most of the time. Because just like with business, performance, and metrics… you can’t really change, shift or improve something you’re not seeing or measuring.
Once we land on such a presumption “brick” – we go into cracking, softening it.
Things like…
Life is hard work.
The world is not safe.
Peak performance must come with pressure – from my higher ups, from myself, for my team.
The one and only question that begins this cracking process is…
Are you 100% certain, without a shadow of a doubt, out of all possibilities that the thought, view point, belief, lens that you hold is the one and only “truth” ever possible?
Most of the time the answer becomes, “No, I’m not 100% sure without a shadow of a doubt”. If it doesn’t come right away, we simply ask, “Is there a possibility out of all dimensions there could be a different way to see this?”
Majority of the time, even if we don’t yet see whatever this other option of seeing could be, at least now we arrive there’s a possibility of a different perspective.
This begins the lens “brick cracking”
Before we arrive at this point, it is next to impossible to affect real change. The mind will fight to hold onto it’s long-held beliefs that keep reality tangible.
Your mind will continue to look for fixes and solutions from within the world you have been born into.
And what do you think is an easier way to create change? Continue to fight the reality you’ve already built that generated the problems and challenges you may be experiencing, or shift out of the view that created them in the first place?
Right, this adds to and expands the Einstein’s quote that it’s better to spend 55 minutes questioning the problem, and 5 minutes on the solution than trying to solve your way out of the lens that created it, and keeps creating it in the first place.
Because when you get to see things differently, the answers become obvious.
Like really obvious.
You simply rest in not knowing until knowing becomes obvious. Including choices and decisions that may not be available at the moment and you trust that the fact they’re not there yet only means they’re not supposed to be there yet. There’s simply more here to see, experience and explore.
Or the insights, decisions, choices and actions simply happen. They become obvious. You simply watch yourself move.
Not surprisingly, people only come to me when they’re not in this obvious decisiveness and movement. When the discomfort with not knowing is at the highest, and no clarity, action or decisions are visible.
This is the perfect moment for you to reflect on what assumptions, presumptions, lenses, and perspectives could either be keeping the obvious answers and actions away…
OR…
What assumptions, presumptions, lenses, and perspectives are actually creating friction with this not knowing, not moving, not seeing choices, decisions, and clarity.
Because when you uncover the actual source of friction with what is occurring, you get to see it, hold it, explore it, and eventually dissolve it… is when movement, clarity, action, opportunities, and momentum return.
You simply receive them. You no longer need to fight to generate them.
That’s why you hear the greatest insights drop in showers, on walks, on ski-hills while you’re out and about having fun. The mind becomes open to receive.
Until then, what if pretty much anything and everything you’ve ever known is simply not so? And before you fight me on this, are you 100%, absolutely, without a shadow of a doubt sure about that? That not even a tiny possibility exists it may just not be so?
You’re absolutely welcome to fight for your opinions, programming and conclusions.
The only question is if you’d like to continue living this way, or you may become open to a different perspective.
Especially if it could shift the greatest challenges you may be dealing with.
– Dmitri “Your Local Perspective Dealer” Sennikov