Article: The Next Level

You’ve plateaued – your performance hasn’t changed for a long time and you’d like to do something about this. Perhaps your extra efforts only seem to have tiny effects and you sense that a new approach is called for. You’d like to move to the next level. How to do this?

First, what sorts of thing might we want to move to the next level?

• Our batting average into double figures?
• A 50% increase in our business’ turnover?
• Our lead climbing grade to HS?
• The number of weekends we spend away with friends from once a year to once a month?
• Arguments from one per day to one per week?

If we are wanting to improve our performance we have a choice:

• Try harder: Do more of what we are doing already – do whatever we are doing harder, longer or with a bigger hammer. This is what we tend to do naturally. It makes sense – if something works then twice the effort will produce twice the results. We also tend to do this because it avoids the c-word.

•  Change.

1. Change is risky. What if the changes harm our performance instead of improving it? Why fix it if it isn’t broken? I don’t go ten-pin bowling very often. When I do I’m probably an average player – my ball nearly always ends up in the lane we’ve paid for. I can usually hit the one at the front but this doesn’t always result in a high score. I’ve noticed that putting spin on the ball so that it hits the lead pin from the side increases the chances of a strike. If I try to do this, however, it usually doesn’t work and my score is lower than if I bowl straight. Because not losing is important to me I tend to bowl straight and stay mediocre rather than risk losing by attempting to improve my style. This is the classic bind. We can know no significant improvement in performance unless we risk damaging our performance.

1. Change feels unnatural - I’m happy doing things this way, I don’t want to change, change means becoming a different person, someone who isn’t me. When I trained to be a life coach I remember the challenge of doing unnatural, even scary things – talking about feelings, for example. It was all very exhilarating and afterwards I knew that my communication skills had benefitted greatly. For several hours I even believed that I would be able to hold a meaningful conversation with a woman. But it left me feeling rather uncomfortable, rather unnatural.

3. Change can be painful. It involves letting go of things that may be dear to us and are actually a part of us. “That’s me, that’s what I do”. It’s akin to mourning. I remember choosing to invest less time in competitive cycling. It was pretty traumatic. A friend of mine tells me about his friend who is totally blown apart by retirement. Retirement involved a loss of something that had become essential to him. For him, ending his life of work seems no different to ending his life.

Change is the only realistic and renewable strategy for moving on to the next level. However, because commitment to change requires a willingness to live with fear and discomfort we tend to resist change. Because of this, in order for us to overcome our resistance to change at a fruitful level we need to find a high degree of persistent motivation. My guess is, the Olympics has a positive effect on humanity’s health across the globe. For a few weeks. This isn’t for lack of genetic potential or opportunity but for lack of persistent motivation. When we run out of motivation we tend to revert to our “natural” behaviour and our performance returns to what it was. How can we renew our motivation to change so we can overcome our natural tendency to revert to familiar behaviours and levels of performance?

Our behaviour is determined by our beliefs. Unless we change our beliefs we won’t make lasting changes to our behaviour.

If you doubt that our beliefs determine our behaviour, why is it that we defend our behaviour in terms of belief? “Of course I work long hours, the only way I can know personal and financial happiness is by building a successful business”, “I just did what any red-blooded male would have done” and so on.

What if the beliefs that determine our behaviour are flawed? – based on fear or deception?

What if the beliefs that determine our behaviour are changeable?

How can we change our beliefs? We choose new ones. The best place to find new beliefs is truth. I know that truth is unfashionable – seen as outdated, romantic and confined to fiction but if we think of truth in a functional kind of way; if we see truth as reliable, constant principles that serve us if we take notice of them (e.g. “I’ll assume gravity will affect this hot mug of tea so I’ll release my grip on it when it’s just above the table rather than a foot above my groin”) then truth becomes a tremendously liberating thing. It frees us from all sorts of pain and inconvenience.

If we have the courage to seek truth even though finding it might mean finding we’ve been deceived, even though finding it might mean admitting some of our most fundamental beliefs up to this point have been foolish, even though finding it might mean we have to write off years of our life as misguided, even though finding it might mean having to admit we have been unwise, then we might just discover foundations for new, liberating beliefs upon which we can build a new identity and with which we can move to the next level.

Often the hardest part of change is, not acquiring the new thing but getting rid of the old one. See your loft / attic / garage for examples. Thought patterns are no different. The cleverest of these beliefs (even though they really don’t stand much criticism) are the ones that run along the lines: I can’t change. This is the way I’m genetically predisposed. My beliefs and behaviour are controlled by my past. My beliefs are me. I can’t change my beliefs without being unfaithful to myself. I’ll always return to type… Old beliefs have to be diligently discarded just as the new ones are taken on.

The process might go like this: Man’s doctor tells him he is in the top 1% of the population in line for a heart attack. Man accepts this as truth. Man struggles to discard his decades old belief that thinking about food and exercise is unnecessary. His newly found and accepted truth persuades him that this is necessary. In time he does so and as he does so his behaviour changes and his health improves. Next visit to the doctor reveals that his new belief has freed him from the top 1% in line for a heart attack. He is pleased with his new belief and cherishes it. Within a year he is out of the top 10% in line. He goes looking for new truth.

There’s a word for this. Unfortunately it has become mystified and reserved for religious use: Repentance. Thinking again, changing the way we think. This is what will really make a difference to our performance. This is what will get us to the next level.

1. Believe there is such a thing as truth
2. Be hungry for truth
3. Be open to hear what people have to say to us
4. Have the courage to be willing to admit we are wrong
5. Test what they say
6. Reject it if it isn’t true
7. Accept it if it is true
8. Identify our old, unhelpful belief
9. Deliberately, repeatedly discard it
10. Choose new belief
11. Deliberately, repeatedly accept it
12. Enjoy the freedom our belief brings as it changes our behaviour

As with many things the way to minimise the damage of a harmful change is the trial. Try out a new belief based on something you think is probably true and then reject it later if it proves to be otherwise.

A good life coach can be a great catalyst in this process. Not as a judge but more like an accountant – someone who will ask questions that will enable you to identify and assess your beliefs, who won’t let you get away with ignoring things in the hope that they will go away, who will remind you of your good intentions.