1: As human beings, we have a strong aversion to loss.
“We fear and avoid loss far more than we seek gain,” Dan Sullivan and Benjamin Hardy write in 10x Is Easier Than 2x: How World-Class Entrepreneurs Achieve More by Doing Less.
When it comes to personal growth, releasing our previous identity “can feel like an enormous loss,” Dan and Ben note.
“Letting go of who we’ve been, how people have seen us, and how others have related to us can feel like we’re losing a big part of ourselves,” the authors write. “Thus, it’s hard to let go of your current or former identify.”
Our aversion to loss shows up in our lives in three distinct ways:
First, sunk cost bias, which Dan and Ben define as “continuing to invest in something unprofitable simply because we’ve already invested in it.”
Second, the endowment effect: “Overvaluing something we own, believe, or have created simply because it’s ours,” they write.
Third is the consistency principle: “Continuing to do something we’ve previously done to be viewed by ourselves and others as consistent.
Together, these three factors can make it difficult for us to elevate our standards.
2: “Elevating our identity and standards is primarily emotional and thus qualitative, which is why psychological flexibility is so crucial,” Dan and Ben write.
Becoming psychologically flexible means getting outside our comfort zone. It involves welcoming situations and challenges that are initially uncomfortable.
“It takes enormous commitment and courage to raise our minimum standards,” Dan and Ben observe. “Yet it’s how we evolve ourselves as people.”
Because when we do so, we “evolve ourselves, our knowledge, and your capabilities,” they note.
3: This is the path to 10x growth.
We “commit to the standards we want, even when it’s uncomfortable for a brief time,” Dan and Ben write. “By embracing our emotions rather than suppressing them, our identity quickly adapts to our new standards, and we reach a place of acceptance.
“We’ve emotionally evolved and expanded as a person, wherein you feel comfortable and natural at the new standard.”
As scientist Dr. David Hawkins states: “The unconscious will allow us to have only what we believe we deserve. If we have a small view of ourselves, then what we deserve is poverty. And our unconscious will see to it that we have that actuality.”
Imagine a professional speaker raising her speaking fee from $25,000 to $50,000.
“Over the next few months, she may get a dozen speaking inquiries, and all of them but one reject her new fee of $50,000,” Dan and Ben write. “Getting this one yes at $50,000 is 10x more valuable to her identity and confidence than getting 12/12 yeses at the $25,000 level, even though in the short-run she is leaving a nice chunk of money on the table.”
Because the professional speaker has now set a new standard—”first emotionally within, but then externally as her reputation, positioning, and level of mastery,” the authors note. As she does this, she “re-trains the outside world to see her in a new light.”
We “choose the standards we want because that’s what we intrinsically want, and we’re not worried about other people’s opinions,” they write. We “flexibly evolve our identities, letting go of things that once made up a core component of who we were.”
More tomorrow.
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Reflection: What are the minimum standards I’m focused on and committed to? Did I choose my standards? What would happen if I were to elevate my standards dramatically? What would I have to let go of?
Action: Journal my answers to the questions above.
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