Your beliefs and behaviors have brought you to this point. If you want to break through to the next level of success, however, you might define it, you are going to need to acquire new beliefs and take new actions. If what you were doing was capable of producing the better result you want, you would need to do nothing different. Here is how you reach new levels of success and transform yourself.
How You Evolve
You evolve when your new beliefs and behaviors transcend and include what came before them. You don’t eliminate everything that came before, including what’s working and adding some new novelty or making some adjustments. You may not need to make a 180-degree adjustment. A modification of, say, 11-degrees, might put you on the right track.
Maybe what you believe is good, right, and true. The adjustment you may need to make to reach the next level of success requires that you increase the amount of time and energy you put towards what you want. That might be a significant change that only requires and evolution in your effort.
We're reaching levels of small shift in your strategy to produce better results if your effort is adequate to create the next level of success. If what you are doing isn’t working, evolution means making improvements, modifying your approach.
Evolutionary change doesn’t require that you scrap everything to get to the next level. It requires you to use your resourcefulness to improve what you are already doing, transcending, and including what came before. Best practices at one level of success can become the worst practices of a higher level.
Start a Revolution
A revolution is a violent break from the past. It’s a full-scale replacement of one thing for something very different. When what you believe what you are doing no longer serves you or the actions you are taking no longer suffice, a revolution eliminates and replaces them with something new. A revolution is necessary when you need a clear break from the past.
Revolutions are much more difficult. You have to change what you believe and the actions you are taking. You have to be sick and tired of being sick and tired, or something that sounds and feels like that idea. Good enough has to be no longer good enough.
We're reaching levels of awareness where the reason most people don’t make a revolutionary change is that they are not willing to give up what they believe. It’s a form of comfort to retain your long-held beliefs. Many of the views that would benefit you in finding the next level of success are ideas that make you uncomfortable—and sometimes ideas you find revolting. This is true even though it is often the messenger, not the message, that creates the resistance.
Believing that you need to do things differently and not acting on that belief is the same as not believing it. Believing you need a wholesale change and not making that change is how you prevent yourself from reaching the next level of success.
The reason you keep doing the same thing is that it is comfortable because your habits are deeply burned in. Doing something new is to accept being uncomfortable for a more extended period than most people are willing to endure. Most people give up before they experience the breakthrough that would level them up.
Transformation and Identity
Transformation sometimes means evolutionary change, sometimes means revolutionary change, and sometimes requires both.
Evolutionary changes are like incremental software upgrades. They improve things a little, and they tend to be frequent. Revolutionary changes are not as prevalent, and they are more like installing brand new software; you know what it’s supposed to do, but you aren’t sure how to get around and get things done.
The next level of success requires that you leave the person you are now to become the person capable of the greater success you want. There may not be anything more potent than identity. You are what you believe yourself to be, and giving up one identity can be a disruptive change. Transformation means becoming the person that comes after the person you are now. When you consider the implications of transformation, you know why you struggle to reach the next level level of success.
