Envisioning Your Quantum Leap | Price Pritchett EP 556

0:00Hi, my name is Lewis Howes and welcome to the Daily Motivation Show.

0:09You said there was two different scales. One is about optimism and pessimism, essentially, right? And you're saying that if we want to increase our confidence, if we want to increase our belief in self, one of the things that we can do is start removing pessimism, negative thoughts, negative thinking from our life. But a lot of people might say, well, Price, that's great and all, but that just sounds a little too woo-woo-y. That sounds a little too fluffy for me. Just be more positive. Think more positively. Is that really going to help me create more quantum leaps? And shouldn't I have some, you know, critical thinking and really, you know, question and doubt things?

0:46Or is that just being, you know, am I being too negative if I do that? When someone decides they want to make a quantum leap, they're talking about major change. Let's talk about what happens when change hits. In this case, self-imposed change. I've seen this for decades in organizations where it's major change. You're being acquired. You're being merged. You're being downsized. You're being restructured. Okay? So it's self-imposed when we're making quantum leap. But the same dynamics come into play as when the world, our world, the company we work for, whatever, the organization that we're stuck in, all of a sudden takes a hard right turn.

1:28So here's what happens when change hits. The first scan is for danger. That's how we're wired. Danger. Whenever there's change, it feels like there's danger. Yeah. What could go wrong here? How could I get hurt in this deal? of what's going to happen to me, and all of these me issues come into mind. And so our defense mechanisms come into play. When change hits, whether it's imposed on us or self-imposed, the first thing that happens is, okay, things are changing, and the future gets a little blurry. So we've got a new dose of ambiguity and uncertainty, and people vary greatly in their tolerance for ambiguity.

2:08The second thing that happens is the trust level drops in an organization. You're going to change yourself, make a quantum leap. The trust level in yourself drops too. The villain voice goes crazy with that. So we've got the ambiguity and uncertainty, the drop in self-trust, and then self-preservation takes over as a driver of behavior. It does in an organization, and it does in you as an individual, when you start to make a quantum leap. And so we're in the negative zone now. It's all negative energy. It's concern. It's that concern, concern, concern. And we may be griping. We may be criticizing, complaining, all of this kind of commiserating with the people around us.

2:51It's hard to create a quantum leap in that space. It is. But what is so important is for people to know what's coming. I think this is one of the things that is a little bit of a problem with a lot of the self-improvement books. Go do this. Do magnificent things. But by the way, en route, let's not talk about that. But you should because if you will tell people what's coming, it does so much to equip them to deal with it. They know what's happening. I always knew if I was doing a keynote, it might be just the top deck of officers in a company or it might be 100 middle managers that you're talking to, but I want to tell you what's coming.

3:28Day one can be very exciting, but there's always day two. It goes back to that old saying about the messy middle. It's messy. Yeah. And it's kind of like if I want to redo my house, my kitchen. I've got this glorious idea of what the kitchen is going to look like once we redo it and everything. In the middle of it, you're like, this is chaos. Yeah. It's chaos. You've got dirt everywhere. You've got holes in the wall. You've got wires hanging. Is this ever going to look nice? Yeah. It's a passage. And people need to understand it's a journey. But if you don't tell them that, they get lost in the desert.

4:00You see a lot of big companies right now in the news talking about the changes they're making. You know, the Amazons of the world, the Googles, the Teslas, the Facebooks, all these bigger companies talking about the transitions, the changes, trying to regroup and re-envision a brighter future for the company. So how do companies stay confident in their decision of we are making this quantum leap? How do they stay confident when the mess is like this is chaos? and people are unhappy and people are complaining and quitting and, you know, talking to the public and the news. And how do they stay committed to the vision?

4:39And this could be for big companies or for an individual. Absolutely. You can play this out on an individual level as well. What you're talking about is resistance. Daniel Kahneman is a world-renowned psychologist, one of the most respected psychologists in the world today. He won the Nobel Prize in economics, not psychology. One of these killer insights or things that the research that he conducted found was that as humans, we weigh losses twice as heavily as we do gains. We weigh potential losses, imagined losses, twice as heavily as we do gains. Okay, so let's go back and talk about you changing you in some big major way or an organization changing, seeking to change in some big major away.

5:26They're focusing on the negative, remember. We've got self-defense working overtime, self-preservation going like crazy, and people are sizing up all the ways they can lose in this proposition. You need to help in neon lights a picture of the promised land.

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6:44Again, have an amazing day, and I'll see you tomorrow with another episode of the Daily Motivation Show.