“Life is dirty. It’s not going to happen the way that you expect, but you know what? It’s also beautiful, and you find out that once you get started in your journey, that you may find a path that you didn’t even know existed. [And] that path is way more exciting and is way more fulfilling than the initial path that you thought that you were going to take.” -Nate Lind
Welcome back to our series on the 7 Rules that LEGENDS live by:
Learn Yourself, Exercise Aggressively, Grow Tribes, Express Passion, Navigate Confidently, Destroy Limitations, Share Treasure.
We’ve all heard the saying “Fake it ’til you make it.” There’s a good reason that it has stood the test of time — It’s really accurate. If you have the opportunity to be definitive and to be decisive and be confident, that gives you a tremendous opportunity over your peers. Most people aren’t confident about what they’re doing. Most people don’t have an idea about being decisive. Most people don’t stand out in that way, and there’s so much to benefit from by navigating confidently. You don’t necessarily have to have it all figured out, you just need to train your brain to navigate confidently and make your default setting “Self-assured.” And it all comes down to consistently training yourself to be confident, and letting go of some of the pushback we tend to give to life.
The Science of Self-Training
If you want to become a great archer, you need to practice drawing back the arrow and hitting a target, over and over. If you want to learn to play football, you need to practice, run drills, review the playbook and repeat that over and over and over again while working with great coaches to learn. And if you want to change your mindset and become more confident in your actions and behaviors, you need to practice the feeling of being self-assured and confident, over and over.
And this entire concept is backed up by science. Take for example Mental Floss’ “8 ‘Fake It ’Til You Make It’ Strategies Backed by Science.” Research has actually shown that you can make shifts in your emotional states — ranging from mood to confidence levels — by making adjustments to your approach and mental state while performing certain tasks and activities. Take mood elevation for example;
“A 2012 study published in the journal Psychological Science trained 169 university students to hold chopsticks in their mouths in order to force particular facial expressions (one neutral, one a standard smile, and one a genuine smile, which engages the eye muscles as well as the mouth muscles). Once the participants learned the correct expression, they were given stressful multitasking activities to complete, such as tracing a star with their non-dominant hand while looking at a reflection of said star in a mirror. The researchers found that the subjects with both the genuine and the standard smiles had lower heart rates after performing the task than those with the neutral expression, indicating they were less stressed.”
And the Association for Psychological Science reports that when it comes to confidence, the art of “acting as if” seems to be quite powerful;
“[It was] found that feeling powerful or happy when you entered a group not only led to immediate increases in status, but that this effect endured over subsequent group meetings… Why? The person entering into the group, having just been primed with power, acted more assertively in the first few minutes, according to video tape coding. This set up patterns of communication that persist in the future. That early assertiveness becomes self-reinforcing within the group. Think about happiness, ideals, or power when you enter into a new group, and you will still have status days later due to the precedent setting assertiveness.”
Flow
What exactly is this idea of “flow” and why should we be so eager to roll with it? Shouldn’t we be battling to forge our own path and make our own future? Yes and no.
Going against the grain and finding our bliss is one part of the equation. The second is quieting ourselves enough to feel where the universe is gently nudging us and learning how to capitalize on that to make the most of our lives. Hungarian psychologist Mihály Csíkszentmihályi has famously researched and investigated the concept of flow, and explained in a piece from Positive Psychology Program that flow is “a state in which people are so involved in an activity that nothing else seems to matter; the experience is so enjoyable that people will continue to do it even at great cost, for the sheer sake of doing it.”
How exactly though do we unlock our own state of flow and find the current we should be sailing on? Your Brain Health points out that author Steve Kotler has identified seven triggers for flow:
“-Focus. Fear or immediate threats focus the brain, so a high-stakes or high consequence environment can trigger flow.
-Risk. ‘Danger’ can feel good but only if the risk can be moved from one of threat to one of challenge.
-Challenge vs Skill. Find the sweet spot between boredom and fear. Kotler estimates the challenge should be ~4% greater than your skill level.
-Novelty. Change, unpredictability and complexity catch and hold your attention.
-Embodiment. Involves being ‘in’ your body and fostering full body awareness. Adventure sports often requires a kind of total physical awareness and immersion in all five senses.
-Clear goals. What is your purpose? Clear goal setting allows the setting of micro goals which close the feedback loop sooner giving access to immediate feedback.
-Feedback. This term refers to a direct, in-the-moment coupling between cause and effect. Immediate feedback is an extension of clear goals. Clear goals tell us what we’re doing; immediate feedback tells us how to do it better.”
If you look at these triggers, they line up quite perfectly with the principles of our Legends Mastermind pillars, and the steps and approach to life that we advocate. The key is to begin to take these pieces and create a cohesive and clear roadmap to unlocking your ultimate potential and growing into a balanced individual. So embrace some of the uncertainty and discomfort that may come with change; you’ll find that the momentary discomfort will ultimately lead to a more centered existence. And clarity of purpose and direction is the key to entrepreneurial success.
Rule II — Exercise Aggresively
To learn more about Nate, visit www.natelind.com
