A Practical Guide to Self-disruption
A systematic approach to accelerating your personal growth
In an age where the only survivors in the market are “disruptive” startups with “disruptive” technologies, one must jump on the bandwagon and disrupt themselves. This article serves as a simple manual for self-disruption and making a radical change in yourself. The process is as follows:
- Self-discovery
- Destroying weaknesses and re-building strengths
- Iterate and maintain
Do this if you…
- want to make a radical change in your lifestyle, mindset, and behavior
- want to make a positive and radical impact
- are going through a slump, a rut or identity crises
- just feel like it
Step 1: Discover
The first and most important step is to know who you are. You must let go of every drop of ego in this step so that you can truly access your inner self. It is also important to know that there are different layers of the “self” that you will need to discover and unlock:
Your mindset
You must first discover what mindset you are cultivating. Your mindset is defined as your “mental attitude” that predetermines your responses and interpretations of situations. It is the lens through which you view reality.
Take this test before proceeding
Growth Mindset — If you are cultivating a growth mindset, that means you believe that your talent, intelligence, and abilities can 100% be developed through hard work and dedication. You believe that talent is not something you are born with and fixed but rather a trait that you can develop. Your love for learning and growing is an essential starting point to disrupt yourself.
Fixed Mindset — If you are cultivating a fixed mindset, that means you believe that your basic qualities (e.g. talent, abilities, and intelligence) are fixed traits that you are born and will not change significantly. You tend to spend time tracking your levels of intelligence and talent rather than making effort to develop them. You tend to think that if you do not have talent, then you cannot go far in a certain field.
Your personality
People tend to alternate between “mindset” and “personality” when in fact they are two different concepts. Unlike your mindset, which determines how you view your abilities, your personality determines how you behave and act in real life. In order to know why you behave a certain way in certain situations, you must first know what your personality is. We like the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) because it describes your personality in every possible situation.
Take this test before proceeding
The test in the link above provides you with a holistic self-report of your personality. Be sure to note that there is no bad personality — all personalities have their strengths and weaknesses. However, knowing your personality allows you to leverage your strengths in order to fix your weaknesses and unfavorable habits.
Try this fun test and map your personality in the inventory (below) and compare it with others. Pick a friend or a family member and try to guess what their personality is. This activity allows you to better understand yourself and how you differ from others.
Step 2: Destroy & Re-build
They say in order to create, you must first destroy. We say, in order to self-develop, you must first self-disrupt. In this step, you must remember that there is no bad personality, but there is a bad mindset. If you have a fixed mindset you must destroy it, but if you have a certain personality, you must leverage it.
Growth mindset? — If you cultivate a growth mindset, great! This will allow you to move on to the next step. You know that if you put in the effort, you can change and disrupt yourself.
Fixed mindset? — If you cultivate a fixed mindset, it’s OK! Half of the solution is being aware of it, and right now you are aware of it. Check out Carol Dweck’s approach to changing your mindset from fixed to growth.
Now that you know how you perceive your abilities to disrupt yourself, let’s move on to your MBTI report. Your MBTI report shows you your strengths that you can leverage to start destroying your weaknesses and bad behaviors.
If you wish to remove these behaviors, note the following first:
- Accept them, embrace them and don’t fight them
- Don’t attempt to change more than 1 weakness at a time
- Have someone hold you accountable to your plan of changing your weakness
Okay, let’s discuss how you can destroy your weak behaviors and replace them with stronger behaviors and actions:
- Notice the triggers — You already discovered your mindset and personality in Step 1. However, now you must notice your weak behaviors (that you want to destroy) and their triggers. Triggers come in the form of environment, people, situation, activity, time, etc.
- It’s your reaction — Keep in mind that you are not trying to eliminate or destroy your triggers, you are trying to change your behavior and reaction to them. You are only in control of your behaviors, not their triggers. So, analyze your behaviors and reactions.
- Envision your new reaction — Draft a new behavior and reaction according to what you perceive as a strength. Envision what your role model would do, envision the consequences of such behavior, ask for feedback, google it if you had to.
- Put yourself out there — Force yourself into your triggers, and act the new behavior you have envisioned. The more you practice, the more the new behavior will embed into your new self. We like a “fake it till you make it” approach.
Complicated? let’s look at an example.
Sarah walks into her house after a long day at work and starts whining about how cold the weather is, how expensive filling her tank with gas was, how she had to buy coffee for 5 of her co-workers, etc…. Sarah notices that being at home around her husband and kids triggers her complaining. She now knows that she can’t do anything about the triggers but she can change her complaining habits. She decides that when she comes back home tomorrow and her husband asks her how her day was she is going to tell him about the funny joke James (her co-worker) cracked at their weekly meeting, and how the coffee tasted really good that day. Sarah keeps note of all the good things that happened during the day, and comes back home and tells her family about them.
Step 3: Iterate & Maintain
Now that you have discovered yourself, envisioned your new self, and practiced it, you need to maintain this disruption. It is good to note that disruption does not happen in one night, it takes time and a whole lot of mental effort. At times when you feel like giving up on disrupting yourself, look into the following maintenance tools:
5 second rule — “When you feel yourself hesitate before doing something that you know you should do, count 5–4–3–2–1-GO and move towards action”. Your brain takes 5 seconds to kill an idea.
Sarah is thinking about how her boss didn’t appreciate her PPT slides and mentally started complaining in her head on her ride back home. Sarah counts 5–4–3–2–1 and switches to being grateful for Elle who gave her her scarf when she was freezing and out of focus.
Reminder app — Set reminders on your phone’s reminder app to prompt you to change your behavior, especially if your triggers occur at specific time frames.
Reminder at 6 pm: “How was your (great) day Sarah? Remember a great thing that happened to you today and tell your husband about it.”
Meditation — Meditation allows you to be mindful of your bad habits and accept them without judgment. We personally like the meditation app “Calm” which has a variety of guided meditations including those that help you break habits.
Affirmation sticky notes — Write the habits you are trying to develop (in affirmation format) as writing them makes them real and factual. Also, having your eyes exposed to them programs your subconscious mind.
Text on a sticky note: “I am working on breaking the habit of complaining at home. I am doing my best.”
Talk about it — The best way to learn something is to teach it. Every time you destroy a weakness, make a story and talk about it (it makes it more real).
Remember that self-disruption is a journey not an end goal, and that this process is iterative. There is no end to it, and therefore you can never fail doing it.
Also, always accept yourself, only then you can grow.
