Does that really exist? Universal Formula about Transformative Actions among entrepreneurs.
What is transformative action? And how does that happen?
Before I was asked to reflect the “Transformative Actions” that happened in your life, I never thought about this idea about there are a few points that in everyone’s life might have a huge impact of where people’s life will be leading to.
Transformative Action, means those actions that are transformative in our life.
When we thinking about Transformative Actions, what are those words that appear in our mind: Shift, Loss, Motivated, Ownership, Resolve, Calling, Confidence, Empower, Commitment, Reality Check….
Break Down
There are more words we can think when we thinking about Transformative actions, some of the words are huge, some might stand small. Sometimes we might need to break it down and slice those actions into pieces to see in a micro level.
Also, intentionally break things down is great because it can help us to see what are those specific points that actually lead to the happening of transformative actions. And we can further develop those skills and try to make more transformative actions happen.
Like-minded people
One of our cohorts mentioned that she feels the communication with Watson Scholars are relatively easier since we are like-minded people.
This leads me to think that when you meet someone even in the first time, based on people’s background and communication channels, it is so easy to tell whether you want to talk with this people next time.
When you at Watson or talk with people that have like-minded thoughts, we tend to discuss solutions rather than only focuses on problems themselves and argue on each other’s point of views.
Have high-quality conversation is critical to entrepreneur.
Both Positive+Negative effect
Transformative actions are not always good. Of course not always bad. I guess we all agree that there must be something happened so that you been through a shift either with your life focus or business plan. But the common point that there is something happened.
There are two concepts that I would like to point out.
- Pain motivator
- Pleasure motivator
We can easily identify these two terms from how they been written.
So if someone is a Pleasure motivator, the transformative action is a pain-related one, too much pain might bring negative impact to him or her. Same with the opposite.
Not a single event
The happening of transformative actions is never made by a single event. There must be a series of events that happened in your life that made who you are today either you know or you may don’t know. That is also tied to self-awareness.
There is a sentence from Steve Jobs: You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backward. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever.
Some people might think that those actions just happened, but actually, that is not the story. Nothing can happen without reasons, there must be reasons behind those facts. Actually, the even a long time before the transformative actions happened, those traces already begin to appear if you look back to find out those connections.
Whether there are any commons among different transformative actions?
There is an organization called TAI: Transformative action institute. They collect all those stories related to transformative actions and try to figure out whether there are any common things happened among those actions. Then they come out a formula:
We can not say this is a universal formula but I do believe that we can tell some traces from it.
Different Formulas from Scholars
We were divided into several groups and try to identify our common traces as entrepreneurs. And based on those common traces, summarize a common formula that we think can lead to transformative action.
What amazed me is that people use different ways to present their thinking and understanding towards the different format of “formulas”.
Here I try my best to digitize those formulae to be well recognized.
Try to use the framework and find your transformative actions. And let’s entrepreneur.
My name is Meiling, a marketing master student at NYU. I am during my Gap Year and write reflections and business related inspiration.
