Word count:2629
hey this is Leo for actualised dari and I want to talk to you about the defining moment what is the defining moment the defining moment is that point in an endeavor that you're undertaking or a project that you're working on or anything that you're trying to master where you feel like giving up it's when your brain says ah you know I don't want to do this anymore let's quit it's too hard or you know what I'm just bored let's go watch TV or you know what this project isn't going to be a successful I thought it would so I'm just going to drop it so all the excuses that your mind will come up with to get you to go back to the status quo that you were at before and to stop working on this thing that you are working on you know whatever project or endeavor it might be might be something at work might be something hobby related whatever you're trying to master and I think what really sets people apart the people that get success in their life and the people that are able to accomplish something the people that are able to get really good and master something versus those people that are kind of ordinary and mediocre and are not good at anything and I'm not accomplished anything is that they lean in to those moments those defining moments right when their brain is telling them to give up because those moments you actually do a reframe here and you can refrain yourself when in the middle of a project and something just goes horribly wrong and you want to quit what you can say is that this is exactly what happens with everybody else out there right with the six billion people they're living on the earth whenever they undertake something the reason that most of these people are average or mediocre by definition is because they want to do the things that are easy the things that are comfortable and so when they get an idea to go out there do something new like learn a new hobby or start a new business or advance their career what ends up happening is that at first they're gung-ho and they jump on it and they work eagerly and they're getting some success but then they start seeing obstacles in the resistance and also their brain starts to send them signals of discomfort because now they're actually advancing out of their comfort zone and their life situation is changing but your body in your brain has to want to keep you in homeostasis even if you're advancing in a positive direction it still wants to keep you in homeostasis just because that's kind of how your biology is wired so whether it's a fitness goal or a business goal this tends to happen you don't have like a thermostat setpoint with your with your body in your brain and so what happens is that as you're hitting those boundaries as you're getting to the upper boundary of your thermostat setpoint then you start getting these these excuses coming up from your brain and this discomfort and most people start giving up at that point you if you're smart what you're going to recognize is that this is happening this is a normal process that you're going through and that every project every endeavor is going to have its setbacks is roadblocks and that the reason that more people aren't successful doing whatever it is you're trying to do especially let's say with your career or your business the reason that you're trying to go after in the first place is because let's say it's profitable right if you're trying to become a doctor that's a long path to becoming a doctor and it's also a profitable path there's a reason why you're doing that hopefully there's more to it than just profit but let's just talk about profit for a second there's that if you're starting a new business right in some area of the market that you have to work at hard to get success in well the reason that you're working hard is probably because you see that there's some money to be made there there's some potential but the reason that there's actually potential there is because nobody else has come in and taken that that niche yet the reason they haven't taken it is exactly for this reason because it is an uphill battle if it was super easy if it was just a cakewalk someone would have come in and already gotten it and then it wouldn't be very valuable to you anymore and the same thing with being a doctor the reason that a doctor gets paid so much is because they do have to go through hell to become doctors right whereas someone works at McDonald's they don't really need a lot of education or training to do that and so they get paid appropriately so if you're chasing after something valuable if you're pursuing rather something valuable in your business or in your career then the point here is when you're feeling discouraged that's the time when you actually want to get excited because here's how you have to reframe in your mind it's like oh okay I'm about to quit that means that if I make it through this obstacle I just burned a good chunk of my competition right it's kind of like when you're running a race and I don't like to make this competitive but I think sometimes you know life is competitive and I think in the marketplace there are competitive forces that determine how much someone gets paid whether in business or in career and so I don't think that you're always competing against other people by no means is that true but let's say that you're running a race right and you're running like a marathon race with a thousand other people and you're running a big big tall mountain obstacle course you're doing something something gnarly where you have pits and falls and people are falling by the wayside and people getting tired all this is happening you know every extra mile that you make it that's an extra mile that somebody else refused to go through because it was too tough they quit they gave up for whatever reason so if there's an obstacle it's almost like if you were running that race and you saw that there was like a pit full of alligators and there's like a rope that you had to swing through and that your chances of swinging through that pit with alligators was like 5% on the one hand it's kind of scary right it's like damn well I don't want to follow that alligator pit okay fair enough but if you do make it through think of think of the flip side of it what does it mean if you make it through if you had a 5% chance of making it through and you did then you just beat 95% of everybody else right you're at the top you're all of a sudden there's something that you did something exceptional that other people didn't do and in most cases we're not ever faced with a such life in death situation like that but I think like in your career just something simple you know even if you're bored right now on your career and you're feeling like oh you know I put in a couple of years and now I'm getting to this phase where I'm just kind of bored with my career it doesn't seem to be advancing as quickly as it used to be well think about it most people are probably that same exact position in your career and if you want to really advance the to the top ranks of your career you got to figure that you're going to to go through that phase and you got to ask yourself if you really want it then you should stick with it and the silver lining is that a lot of people are going to be deterred by that by that lull that you're now going through and a lot of people will decide to quit because of that but you can decide to be different and that's the defining moment that's why I called the defining moment and Seth Godin talks about this beautifully in his book the dip that I highly recommend he talks all about this is that when you're feeling this dip he calls it the dip when you're feeling this moment of discouragement in whatever it is that you're pursuing then you got to really ask yourself is this worthwhile and if it is worthwhile this is a an endeavor a purpose for you that's really meaningful that you can see has a lot of long-term potential down the road then what you got to do is you've got to plow through no matter what and you can't quit despite how you feel in a moment and in fact you've got to reframe it and tell yourself that this is a defining moment and that this dip is going to stop a lot of the competition it's going to it's going to really create me this dip is also something that's challenging you and quite literally making you better right because it's asking more of you counter kind of counterintuitive Lee this little lull that you're going through maybe you're actually not very productive in it maybe you're actually not learning a lot of stuff but the fact that you're going to make it through this lull in your career this this phase where nothing much is happening that's still growing you because you're learning to cope with that maybe you're learning to cope with boredom maybe you're learning that you need to take yourself up another notch right maybe you're learning that there's something that you're doing or something you don't know that could take you and take that lull and turn it into an expansion and so that Lowell is going to make you aware of that fact and maybe that's going to prompt you and kick you in the ass to go out there and actually do something learn something new ask somebody else how they dealt with the problem and eventually get through that whereas a lot of other people will just give up and so that's ultimately how you get to those to that rarified top you know if you if you're interested in being world class a world class athlete a world class entrepreneur world class any profession that you're trying to master world class out of any hobby or trying to mask if you're trying to come really good the reason that you're going to get world-class is because you're going to go through all these obstacles that have being basically like filters that are filtered out one layer of candidates another layer of candidates another layer of candidates and another layer of candidates and the reason that's happened is because there's emotional labor involved and most people are too lazy to go through the emotional labor of achieving their goals that's why you have to be super driven usually to achieve your goals especially if you want to be in some high-level position in life right if you want to be like a really well-paid movie star or you want to be a politician or you want to be a leader in your industry or you want to be running like a hundred million dollar business the way you do that is because because those positions are so an vehicle everybody wants one of those positions the question is are you willing to work for it because there's billions of people in the world everybody would want one for free and everybody would probably want it for a small cost and maybe a lot of people would still even want it for a medium cost and maybe even still a lot of people would want for even a high cost but are people going to want it for the extreme cost probably not and that's why most people are not highly paid athletes or actors or the President of the United States or owning a hundred million dollar business right because they've been filtered out and then want it bad enough and the ultimate solution to that is to have a vision have a purpose that's why I'm so big on life purpose and I'm telling you that you got to get that really straightened out for yourself because I want you to go to the top I want you to achieve your full potential and I know that to do that you're gonna have to go through quite a bit of obstacles it's going to be a gauntlet that you're going to run and you're going to have these moments for you I want to give up and I want to set you up for success in the long run and to be world-class to get there to be super successful to have all the high high level peak experiences that you get when you're really on the top of your game in position like that well to do that you need to have really vision you need to be extra motivated and if you don't have that vision right now don't despair that's something that can be corrected so I don't want you to think that well I don't have a vision so I'm kind of stuck I'm ordinary I'm not going to be successful that's not the case at all you can build vision and I thought it might in my life there been points where I've had no vision at all and I built it up it's a process right I have a lot of videos and techniques and strategies for how to build up vision so I'm not going to cover that here but the point being is that when you face those defining moments I want you to think about them differently start to see them as something really positive because those defining moments are really defining how motivated and committed you are to your goal and really each of those moments that you see you should be thanking yourself and saying wow this is an opportunity for me to really advance if I just if I just go through it you know if I just make it past this little obstacle that's a huge advance for me so that can be a nice reframe where you're going through a tough time I know sometimes you know you're at the gym and you want to quit or you're on the middle of a project and something goes wrong your hard drive crashes you lose some data or whatever happens your boss gets mad at you customers get upset something catastrophic happens and you want to quit and really what you got to tell yourself is that this is the time when you got to keep going alright this is Leo I'm going to sign off now go ahead and share your comments about the dip tell me about where you've experienced the dip and maybe some of the struggles that you're facing right now and maybe how you persevered and how that's paid off for you and then if you like this of course please share it and like it I want to spread this message around Thanks you