Levelling Up

You give yourself permission to the level of your success.

You can achieve anything you want to in life, the problem is for most they don’t believe it to be true. It’s so easy to do when you are young and ambitious, but as the years filter on this level of excitement that ‘anything is possible’ starts to dwindle away.

Why is that?

Humans are social beings and find safety in numbers inside of their chosen groups, friendship groups, colleagues, community, and sports teams.

We want to fit in because we understand (even at a subconscious level), that we not only find safety to survive in a group, but we need to be in a group of sorts to excel and achieve at a higher level.

Because of our need for this group dynamic, we behave in such a way that we are accepted inside of the group. Knowing what the standards are of the chosen group, one tends to try to stay inside of the structures so to speak and to remain accepted and apart of the group.

I want you to think of how you would act inside of your peer group at school? What did you do to fit in? What clothes would you wear? What type of language would you use? What sports did you find interesting?

As time goes on, we might not find ourselves in the playground at school any more, but we tend to experience the same challenges at work as well as outside of our teams and communities.

Because we wish to find comfort inside of the chosen group, the level of success of an individual is very closely related to the level of success of the group. Yes, inside of any group you will have a top, a middle and a bottom, but these levels will all remain within the structure of the group.

Given the fact we have been programmed to stay inside of the group for safety, most people will turn over their level of success to the group and thus will live up to the expectations of their peer group, with the fear that if they don’t, they will be exiled from the group. Not performing to the level of the group? Time to up the effort and make sure you don’t fall behind. Performing too well? The group will be sure to let you know to hold you back a bit. This is very often not a conscious decision from anyone inside of the group, it is just a dynamic that exists from many years of survival-understanding that we need the group to survive.

Given the fact we have been programmed to stay inside of the group for safety, most people will turn over their level of success to the group and thus will live up to the expectations of their peer group, with the fear that if they don’t, they will be exiled from the group. Not performing to the level of the group? Time to up the effort and make sure you don’t fall behind. Performing too well? The group will be sure to let you know to hold you back a bit. This is very often not a conscious decision from anyone inside of the group, it is just a dynamic that exists from many years of survival-understanding that we need the group to survive. distancing and the new norm of doing business.
Yes, there is a case to be made for allowing people to work from home, but you lose out on the face-to-face human bond that you experience in an environment where people work together, where one plus one is not equal to two but rather three or even more.

If this is the case, and our level of success is so strongly connected to the group one is in, the quickest way to improve one’s level of success is to change the group one finds themselves in.

Start hanging out with people that believe that they can win, and their attitude and beliefs will start to rub off on to you. The same is true for the converse; start spending time with people who think the organization you work for is terrible, the country you live in is going down the drain, and there are no opportunities, and you have no choice but to start believing the same thoughts.

We have to be very careful about who we spend our time with because those attitudes, beliefs and outlooks on life start to sculpt our lives.

Because we have no control over it, we want to remain inside of the group and we will act accordingly to ensure we are accepted and thus survive.

If our level of success is then dependent on the people that we bump shoulders with, how do we change this?

We need to expand our group and look for a group of people whose success you are after.

Spend time with those achievers that now accept you, and you will subconsciously tell yourself that you are also an achiever and deserve the same level of success that they have.

Your habits will start to change.

Your beliefs will start to change.

Your attitude and outlook will start to change.

Hopefully for the better. Hopefully for what it is that you want to achieve.

Remember that whether you like it or not, you will live in accordance with the group that you spend the most time in, so be careful who you allow your time to be spent with.

Many men that have spent time in the military achieved more during that time of enrollment than the rest of their lives. The reason being, is that once they were out of the military they were no longer held to that same level of discipline and achievement.

They were now able to take the easier road because their group had changed.

For some, the values, habits and disciplines they learnt will last a lifetime. But for most, once they change to their next group, they inherit a new set of beliefs and their lives change accordingly.

Spend time with those you wish to become, because you have no choice but to inherit from them whether you like it or not.