I would like to talk about how to become successful. Becoming successful requires changing your identity. There are four steps to success. That is what I am going to talk about today. The four steps to changing your identity are Inception, Deception, Transformation and Identity.
A lot of people at the beginning of the year, want to lose weight. People want to get fit. Approximately 25% of the people that commit to the gym, stop going after day 6! After month one, 70% of those people have failed their resolutions. Why does this always happen? Why is it that we get so excited about something and then, just like that, we can totally go in the crapper! WHY? It is these four steps I am going to talk about. Whether you want to lose 25 pounds, go back to school, whether you want to shift your careers. Whatever you want to do. These four steps apply to everything in life. You have to change your identity.
How do you change your identity? Step one, you have to change your inception. Any time you change anything, any time you start anything in life, you go through a step called Inception. And you know what inception is? Inception is, OH MY GOD, I JUST GOT INTO PT SCHOOL! You are so excited like nothing can stop you. You just feel like you are on top of the world! You just feel like you are going to cure everybody, you’re going to heal everybody! Everything is going to be great and perfect! That’s called Inception. It is actually a great phase! This is what I call unconsciously incompetent. You’re so blinded by how hard this is going to be. You’re just excited that you’re going to start. I’m going to have a six pack! I am going to have these massive guns! Like everything is going to be fantastic! That is called inception. Most people are addicted to inception. There is excitement, there is hope, there is opportunity. I remember when I opened up my practice. Just thinking about opening up a practice, there was so much excitement. I am going to be a business owner at the age of 27! I am going to be this cool entrepreneur, young guy driving these luxurious, exotic cars. I work on this professional tennis tour. All these people are going to flock to me! That’s what I thought. This is inception. It is no different than someone going and signing up for the gym. You feel amazing because at least you’ve signed up. You can envision the six pack that is going to come, the nice butt and all this other stuff. That’s inception. That lasts for 2-3 days. That is phase one.
Now we go to the next phase, Deception. Deception is when you become consciously incompetent. That means you realize, holy crap, this is going to be hard. That’s when you are on that diet and you are two days in, three days in and you’re like, you can’t have your Red bull or your Skittles or your cake or your pizza and you realize this is hard! When I opened my business and I am about three months into it and I am marketing the doctors. I thought they were going to send me patients, then they don’t send me patients. I thought this is going to be hard! When I started my fitness journey about two years ago after I had been sick for a while and I put my p90x3 in and got my ass handed to me. I was trying to do 4 burpees in a row. I realized this is going to be really hard. That is where most people fall. They fall into deception and they say screw this, I am not doing this. I would rather go back to what is comfortable for me. Comfortable is me being twenty pounds’ overweight, working for someone else, even if I freaking hate my job. I would rather be comfortable because this right now is making me really uncomfortable. That is called being consciously incompetent. Most people fall into deception and they can never get out of it.
They can never hang in there long enough to get out of it, which is really the transformation. That is where something good happens. That was for me when I did p903x for four weeks and didn’t lose a pound. Then in the fifth week with cleaning up my eating, I lost 3 pounds. I had just a little bit of results and I thought I just hit phase 3! I hit transformation. People started saying Hey Dude, man you look a little thinner around the waist! And by the way, I am like about 168 pounds. Back then I was like close to 200 pounds. I got down to about 155 pounds doing all this, but I have gained back a lot of muscle. That is transformation. For me, as a business example, when I was finally able to break even with the business. I thought, this is actually working. I went through the deception phase and no one was sending me patients. I remember the deception phase being awful. I was in tears. What did I get myself into? How am I going to pay this back? I am broke! Then I thought, wait a minute, I started to see things working. I thought that’s transformation. That makes you want to continue, makes you want to keep going. You keep on grinding and you keep on going until you get to the last phase.
Then there is phase four. That is Identity. You have a whole new identity, that is what got you from inception to deception to transformation. You are now what I would call consciously competent. Meaning that the things you did to get to that transformation, you don’t even know how not to do anymore. People ask me all the time, how do you get up at 4:30 in the morning? I don’t even know how not to get up at 4:30 in the morning any more. This morning I woke up at 5am. I told myself I don’t have to get up early. I don’t have to go to the office today. I just can’t, my body is just not wired like that. When I go to a restaurant, I already know what I want. I am not just going to pound drinks and eat like a pig. I don’t even know how to do it anymore because I am a consciously competent. I had massive speech problems throughout all of my life but because I have understood all of these phases, I have taken my speech impediment and now can talk about anything. It sounds like I am talking from some type of stream, I have become so comfortable. I have practiced so many times that you can’t stump me with things that I have become comfortable talking about. People will come into my office to see me for an evaluation with the understanding that they will only see me one time. That is because I am competent with the things I talk about in Physical Therapy. They know they won’t see me again, but it was worth so they will stay on at my clinic for months. This is what happens when you grind, you practice your craft and you become skillful. Do not be confused on understanding that it’s not about talent. It is about skill, it is becoming skillful. If you want to become a great Physical Therapist, you better work your ass off. Become skillful. I know I am the best. That is why I can work two days a week, have 18 employees. People will still come just to see me one time because I’ve become that skillful at my craft. People think Lebron James and Kobe Bryant are talented. That is not the truth. They have a gift. They are so skillful because they have practiced their craft. All of you have a gift, but unless you practice, you will never become skillful and competent.
These are the four phases of how you truly change your identity. You go through inception then the hardest part is you go through deception. You’ve got to find a way to get through that. That is why community is so important. Why friendship is so important and having positive people around you is so important. It is so important to feed your mind with certain things. It is so important for you to understand the grind! You cannot be around a bunch of losers. They just know how to lose. They are really good at quitting. Right? But when you are around a bunch of winners you realize how they don’t quit. They keep on going, just long enough to realize that they see the transformation. It could be that they are getting that first “A”. It might be paying those first bills and not have to take out a loan for your business. It might be something with one of your relationships. It could be any of those things. But that is when you realize this is working, I just need to keep doing it. If you do it long enough, you will gain unconscious competence. That is why dudes can be in bands and be as drunk as they can be playing and just kill it because they are so good that even wasted they are better than 85% of the population because they are consciously competent. Do you understand what I am saying? Those are the four phases of how you transform yourself and create a new identity. For those who know me and follow me know that I am a successful businessman. A successful Physical Therapist, fitness coach, and a guy that loves his family. That’s my identity. That is what I have done for years. Day in and day out, that is what it takes. Don’t let anyone tell you different. That is how to become successful.
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