RePOsting from the Illuminated Mind

The Seductive Art of Paradigm Shifts
Life hinges upon paradigm shifts – those “big bang” moments that revolutionize thought by seemingly inverting the planet on its axis. Such has been true of history.Such is true now. And so it shall be this new year and every year in our future. There can be no denying.

The wise man reflects upon where he has been as a measure of knowing where he is going. Let’s be wise together now…

* All of mankind once knew the earth was flat. Until they all knew it wasn’t.
* It was fact that the sun orbited the earth. Until that fact was a lie.
* Achieving flight in a man-made machine was impossible. Until it flew.
* Walking on the moon? A fairytale; until that one small step for man.

These are epic case studies to be sure. But they illustrate the point – life doesn’t advance smoothly or evenly from detail-to-detail, day-to-day.

Life leaps from paradigm-shifting-moment to paradigm-shifting-moment like a kangaroo buzzed on too much caffeine.

Indeed, paradigm shifts lurk all around us disguised in other names.

* Malcolm Gladwell classifies them as “Tipping Points.”
* Tim Ferriss (in his new book) calls them “Harajuku Moments.”
* Seth Godin labels them “Purple Cows.”
* Nassim Taleb anoints them “Black Swans.”

Listen. I know each of these metaphors has its own flavor and subtleties. I’m not trying to oversimplify or paint with too broad a brush. But I am attempting to showcase that achieving substantial impact by doing the remarkable is born of a common origin.

According to Wikipedia, paradigm shifts are…

“a change in basic assumptions within the ruling theory of science. It is in contrast to [the] idea of normal science.”

Granted, we’re not talking hard science here. We’re exploring social sciences (at most) and humanities (at least). But the condition of changing basic assumptions holds, I think, for our purpose. So let this be our footing as we trek forward into the seductive art of paradigm shifts…
Unplug From the Propaganda (Resistance is NOT Futile)

The volume of new age information (much mis-information) is barely conceivable in its weight and scope. As it pertains to “real journalism,” Carl Bernstein (who knows a thing or two about the subject) has said that “contempt for the truth or the reality of most people’s lives has overrun real journalism. Today, ordinary [citizens] are being stuffed with garbage.”

I happen to agree. Though I take “garbage” one step further.

I call it propaganda.

Everyone has an agenda (even me, now, with this article). But all agendas aren’t created equal. My agenda is to enlighten, which is to say spark your illuminated mind. I want you to challenge my ideas. I want you to wrestle with your own. And I want you to do so far away from the crushing hype and hyperbole of mainstream propaganda.

Compare this with agendas intended to legitimize coercion or mandate compliance.

These insidious aims of mis-information syphon off the creative oxygen vital to paradigm shifts. Examples are too numerous to describe. Flip on the telly or wander over to your favorite news website. As Fox Mulder is famous for believing, “the truth is out there.”

Given this dark state of affairs, we would-be paradigm shifters have but one option – to unplug from the propaganda.

Precisely how you unplug is up to you. Some filter down the television that they watch. Some switch from mainstream programming to public broadcasting. Others purge television completely. The same process can (and probably should) apply to publication subscriptions, personal obligations, work environments, etc.

Suffice to say, wherever mis-information penetrates you life begin to devise actions to repeal it.

Skepticism is the shared quality in all these maneuvers. I’ll go so far as to say skepticism is required for propaganda detachment. Remember the premise of paradigm shifts – “a change in basic assumptions.” So don’t assume anything. Be skeptical.

But skepticism alone isn’t enough. You must…
Upgrade Your Motivation

Unplugging from propaganda grants you creative latitude and ample space with which to explore new ideas.

This is fertile soil for paradigm shifts of any variety. But the process of sowing and reaping your “purple cows” isn’t always (if ever) a picnic. In fact it’s hard, damn hard. Success isn’t guaranteed. And you’ll want to quit more times than are worth counting.

Those that fight through this blockade deploy a powerful weapon – what Daniel Pink (in his book, DRIVE) calls “Motivation 3.0″, or the “third drive.”

According to Pink (via his research), mankind’s motivation has evolved through three distinct phases…

Motivation 1.0 was rooted in the basic primal urge to survive. This “drive” worked well. Until it, alone, didn’t. As humans became more complex creatures forming more complex societies a behavioral paradigm shift was required. And it took the form of Motivation 2.0.

Motivation 2.0 was born of a new mental model that Pink summarizes as “humans are more than the sum of our biological urges.” This paradigm is predicated on, to quote Pink again, the belief that “the way to improve performance, increase productivity, and encourage excellence is to reward the good and punish the bad.” This view has dominated human existence till this very day – in classrooms, boardrooms, factories, diplomacy, you name it.

Motivation 2.0 worked well for economic progress and technological advancement the last several centuries. Until, now, it doesn’t.

Human society is evolving again – big time. Knowledge work, which is to say linear-minded widget making and analytical overkill, is a dime-a-dozen. And most everything of need is readily abundant. So, for today (and in the future), the far more precious and game-changing attributes of value sprout from non-linear creative thinking. And this form of advanced creation requires a new means of motivation.

Enter Motivation 3.0.

This third drive upgrade is fueled by intrinsic motivators (as compared to Motivation 2.0′s extrinsic motivators). Such motivation stems not from external rewards like money but from the inherent joy of the creative process. This is personal fulfillment of the purest proof. And it’s catalyzed by three ingredients – autonomy, mastery, and purpose.

The bottom line is this – you’ll never harvest your paradigm shifts with Motivation 2.0. Plant as many awesome ideas as you like. In time, they’ll all wither to dust because they haven’t been nourished with the real juices of innovation – intrinsic rewards.

Alas, skepticism imbued with third drive motivation still falls short. To unleash your full creative potential, thus triggering those “tipping point” moments, you must…
Dare To Be Heretical

Heretics have an abused reputation. Popular compliance has always been the whip flogging those who think, speak, and live outside the lines. But as history teaches us, best epitomized by Oscar Wilde, “everything popular is wrong.”

Which brings us to this article’s little yet significant tipping point moment – to dare to be heretical.

You must take up this dare if you are to foster meaningful paradigm shifts. Lesser ambitions won’t do. As Seth Godin puts it, “Heretics are the new leaders. The ones who challenge the status quo, who get out in front of their tribes, who create movements.”

So ask questions of authority. Live in defiance of apathy. Listen with empathy to the stories of those in need. Tell your own stories, and speak them loudly. Be persistent. Grit it out. Make change. Do all that and one day your mounting paradigm shifting potential will burst open!

And it is this eruption of genuine conviction that is seductive. No, not in a perverse and manipulative way. In a tempting and attractive way. Such is the art of seduction – to radiate an energy that is exciting, alluring, and inspiring.

Here are some remarkable heretics doing just that…

* Corbett Barr – The 5-Point Plan to Accomplishing Anything
* Danielle LaPorte - Ode to the Entrepreneurial Spirit
* Everett Bogue – A Modest Proposal to Save The World
* Julien Smith – Maybe You Should Just Stop Being a Fucking Pussy
* Todd Henry – Chasing Vapor

Heretics aren’t saints. Heretics are avengers. Fearlessness and perfection aren’t the goals. Courage and impact are.

Now you know. And as the G.I. Joe’s exclaim, “Knowing is half the battle.” But that begs one question…

…What new paradigm will you eat for breakfast? Share with us down below.

About the Author: Matt Gartland is an anti-hero avenging injustices of creativity. His legacy project is to chronicle 10,000 Random Acts of Greatness in 5 years. And he shares bold ideas for confidently living above low expectations on his Modern Audacity blog. Learn more about Matt’s audacious pursuits to spark change!

* Acceptance vs. Complacence
* Inspiration vs. Motivation
* What’s the Point of Life After Total Enlightenment?
* Transcending and Including the Ego
* Kill Your Curiosity

and, furthermore
A 5-Point Plan for Achieving Anything

It’s that time of year again. The time when many of us think about what we’ve accom­plished over the past year and what we might want to accom­plish next year.

I’ve made huge changes over the past two years and I’ve watched many of my friends and peers trans­form their lives. Some peo­ple seem to be able to do just about anything.

And yet most peo­ple will set goals for the new year with good inten­tions only to aban­don them just days or weeks later.

Why is that? Why is it so hard to achieve what we know we need to do?

I’m not talk­ing about trite lit­tle goals here. I know many of you read­ing this have big things you want to do or change. Maybe you’re dan­ger­ously unhealthy or over­weight. Maybe you hate your job. Maybe you have a habit that’s killing you slowly.

Maybe you know that you’re not serv­ing your life’s pur­pose and that you’re not doing any­thing to change that. Every day you’re not radi­antly alive and pur­su­ing your life’s pur­pose is a day wasted.

This isn’t a dress rehearsal, peo­ple. I don’t care how cliche it sounds. You only get one life. In that life, the feel­ing of time accel­er­ates dra­mat­i­cally as you get older. Don’t fool your­self by think­ing you have plenty of time to make the impor­tant changes later. That atti­tude can eas­ily con­sume a decade or more.

In fact, I have some­thing to say that some of you might not like. Maybe some of you will unsub­scribe from my blog after read­ing this. That’s fine with me, so lis­ten up. I know some of you read every­thing you can about chang­ing your life or liv­ing excep­tion­ally. Maybe you fol­low my blog or Chris Guille­beau or Everett Bogue or Jonathan Mead and enjoy what you read.

I’m glad you enjoy what you read, but hon­estly this isn’t about enter­tain­ment. This is about your life and your future. It’s about liv­ing to the fullest for your­self, not just read­ing about what other peo­ple are doing like it’s some kind of sur­ro­gate TV show.

I don’t write just to be read. I write to help you get your ass in gear so you can start pur­su­ing your life’s pur­pose with every fiber of your being.

I don’t care if you’re 22 or 35 or 60. You owe it to your­self to live the life you know deep down you were meant to ful­fill. You know it’s there. Mak­ing it hap­pens all starts with admit­ting to your­self what you want.

I think it was Tim Fer­riss who I recently read say­ing 99% of peo­ple don’t think excep­tional things are pos­si­ble. That makes it sur­pris­ingly easy for the other 1% of peo­ple to achieve the exceptional.

This is about join­ing that 1%. It’s about being unreal­is­tic. Start by com­mit­ting to your­self that you want to be excep­tional. Then, work to put a plan in place to achieve it.

From watch­ing dozens of peo­ple become hugely suc­cess­ful online over the past two years, I’ve noticed 5 core prin­ci­ples all of them have fol­lowed. These aren’t just casual out­side obser­va­tions. These are deep insights from hours of con­ver­sa­tion with these peo­ple who I con­sider both friends and peers.

If you’re seri­ous about join­ing the 1%, let this 5-point plan be your guide to achiev­ing anything.

1. Stop look­ing for a shortcuts.

I would revise Tim Fer­riss’ state­ment about the 99% above slightly. In my expe­ri­ence, 90% of peo­ple don’t think excep­tional things are pos­si­ble, 1% actu­ally make the excep­tional pos­si­ble and the other 9% con­stantly spin their wheels in a never-ending quest for a golden shortcut.

You see this all the time in inter­views and when­ever peo­ple get to ask their men­tors a ques­tion. Maybe you’ve heard this ques­tion before (or thought of ask­ing it your­self): “what’s the ONE thing that led to your success?”

The ques­tion is unan­swer­able as far as I’m con­cerned. There are no secret short­cuts to suc­cess. If the only way you’re will­ing to achieve your goal is through mirac­u­lous luck (like win­ning the lot­tery), then I say your goal isn’t some­thing you really want. If you really wanted the goal, you’d stop fuck­ing around play­ing the lot­tery and com­mit to doing what­ever it takes to achieve it.

Get-rich-quick men­tal­ity is a dis­ease, just like drink­ing or gam­bling. It can ruin your life if you don’t stop it, and you won’t make any real progress towards your goal until you give it up.

Want­ing “pas­sive income” or a 4-hour work­week or what­ever can be a wor­thy goal, but only if you’re will­ing to work your ass off to achieve it. If you aren’t will­ing to work hard, you may as well give up now.

2. Learn from the best.

Vir­tu­ally any­thing you want to achieve has already been achieved in some form by other peo­ple. Your job is to seek out those peo­ple and learn from them, whether through books or the Inter­net or in person.

And when I say learn from “the best,” I mean it. The best peo­ple in any field are 100x more suc­cess­ful than the aver­age per­son. Plenty of aver­age peo­ple are will­ing to give advice to any­one who will lis­ten. Don’t lis­ten to aver­age. Ignore the arm­chair quarterbacks.

The only excep­tion here are peo­ple who are going to be excep­tional. I’m talk­ing about the ris­ing stars in your field. It’s good to pay atten­tion to them for per­spec­tive and inspi­ra­tion. Just be care­ful about who you pre­dict will become a big suc­cess. If you don’t have a good sense for that, you’re bet­ter off stick­ing with the proven experts.

3. Make new friends.

Social norms are some of the most psy­cho­log­i­cally pow­er­ful and con­trol­ling forces in our lives. Ask your­self why you do some­thing you reg­u­larly do, any­thing, and the answer will prob­a­bly involve “because that’s what peo­ple do,” or “because so-and-so does it.”

Why do you com­mute 45 min­utes every day? Why do you put up with work­ing in a cubi­cle? Why do you accept being chron­i­cally out of shape? You prob­a­bly don’t have a good answer other than, “that’s what every­body else does” or “I didn’t know there was another way to live.”

Luck­ily, just as social norms can be pow­er­ful in a neg­a­tive way, they can be equally pow­er­ful in a pos­i­tive way. My wife and I agree that if we had kids (which we’re lean­ing towards not hav­ing), we would want to raise them in a big city. Why? Because peo­ple who live in cities tend to be more adven­tur­ous, fit­ter, hap­pier and con­cerned with learn­ing new things than peo­ple who don’t live in cities. We would want to put those social norms to good use in shap­ing the lives of our kids.

When you com­mit to chang­ing some­thing major in your life, you need to estab­lish new social norms for your­self. Find peo­ple who are work­ing towards what you want to achieve and make new friends. Spend lots of time with those peo­ple (in-person is pre­ferred, but online can work too) and become part of that cul­ture. You can keep your old friends too, but you might need to divorce some of them if they’re par­tic­u­larly neg­a­tive influences.

4. Obses­sively mea­sure your results.

Did you know the mere act of step­ping on a scale every day can cause you to lose weight? If you want to change some­thing you have to start by choos­ing your mea­sure of suc­cess. Then start mea­sur­ing it obsessively.

“That which gets mea­sured gets done,” is how Peter Drucker famously put it. Tim Fer­riss has a mas­ter­ful chap­ter on the impor­tance of mea­sure­ment in his new book The 4-Hour Body. I bought the Kin­dle edi­tion of the book yes­ter­day and couldn’t put it down.

Choose what you mea­sure care­fully, how­ever. Mea­sure things you can con­trol and mea­sure that which will lead to the results you want. Mea­sure the result itself as well, but know that you can’t con­trol the result directly.

For exam­ple, if you’re try­ing to become an incred­i­ble investor in the stock mar­ket, you have to choose a phi­los­o­phy. If you’re smart like my friend Scott Dins­more, you’ll prob­a­bly choose the War­ren Buf­fet value approach to invest­ing. Once you’ve cho­sen a method that you know has worked for other peo­ple, you should mea­sure your progress against the method itself more than against the results. Mea­sure how well you stuck to the core Buf­fett invest­ing prin­ci­ples (or your own mod­i­fied prin­ci­ples) and know the results will fol­low eventually.
5. Suc­ceed by help­ing other peo­ple succeed.

I guess I’m all about cliches lately. You’ve prob­a­bly heard this say­ing before from Napoleon Hill’s book Think and Grow Rich: “It is lit­er­ally true that you can suc­ceed best and quick­est by help­ing oth­ers to succeed.”

Why does help­ing oth­ers lead to your own suc­cess? First, when you focus on help­ing oth­ers, you ensure your prod­ucts or ser­vices will have demand. Sec­ond, help­ing oth­ers can be a great form of mar­ket research, learn­ing what works and what doesn’t work. Third, peo­ple you help are likely to rec­i­p­ro­cate and help you back.

If all that isn’t rea­son enough to help oth­ers, it also makes you feel great. And when you feel great about your­self, you’re likely to do more great work.
6. Bonus tip: don’t give your­self an out.

There is only one way you can guar­an­tee suc­cess in any­thing you do. Make it your goal to do your absolute best on the jour­ney towards your des­ti­na­tion instead of mak­ing the des­ti­na­tion itself your goal. If you com­mit to doing your best every day, that’s some­thing you can con­trol and achieve with­out luck or circumstance.

Once you’ve com­mit­ted to the jour­ney, it’s time to burn your boats.

Don’t give your­self the option of fail­ing. Tell peo­ple about your plan. Hold your­self account­able, pub­licly if pos­si­ble. Make the jour­ney your new real­ity and know that if you do your best, you’ll suc­ceed no mat­ter what. Fail­ure doesn’t exist if you con­sider every fail­ure a building-block towards your ulti­mate suc­cess. You’ll win the war even if you don’t win every battle.

If you’ve been read­ing about how to change your life just for the enter­tain­ment value, it’s time to have an hon­est con­ver­sa­tion with your­self.

If you’re ready to com­mit to pur­su­ing your life’s pur­pose from this moment for­ward, sub­scribe for free updates from me and I’ll be here to hold you accountable.

This isn’t a dress rehearsal. You owe it to your­self to live the life you know deep down you were meant to live. Every day you aren’t radi­antly alive and pur­su­ing your life’s pur­pose is a day wasted.

“That which gets mea­sured gets done,”

This is some­thing that I failed to do so in the past and it came back to haunt me. I found that track­ing your results help to keep your eyes glued to your goals. It also set your brain to the goal-searching-mode, which you will keep think­ing about strate­gies to move your­self nearer to your goals.

I set up excel sheets and do weekly reviews to help me track my goals and num­bers this year and the results are amaz­ing. I’m going to do the same thing for 2011 and I’m really excited about it.

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