We all have those individuals in our life who naturally jump at the next challenge and seem to have created habitual success. What I find truly amazing is those friends and clients who have strung together a long succession of triumphs, merely one of which would make the average person cower in the corner of fear.
One of our casual acquaintances began entrepreneurship in his teens, salvaging parts discarded by his employer, refurbishing, and selling them back to the same company through a business he created. Each of these sales was at over 100% margin to himself. Of course, his employer didn’t know their employee owned the business from which they were buying. When they learned of this, they bought him out. By that time, he was already making more in a year than his father did over his entire life. Fast forward to today, and you will see a long trail of businesses, the majority having thrown off several million dollars of profit per month:
- Mass distributor of wigs
- The largest manufacturer of fashion watches in the world in the 1980s
- Harvesting silver from discarded batteries during the silver boom of the 1990s
- Reseller of print ad space
- Mass distributor of high-end specialty paints
And in his 70s today, everything is a challenge and potential success. Even just sitting at a coffee shop, everyone in the place becomes his friend and prospect.
I have other examples of these people in our life, and what do they have in common? Well, it’s a tale as old as time. Our acquaintance above grew up in a household with very little food on the table. His parents had little to provide him emotionally, and one of them died at a very young age. He was on his own his entire childhood. That is, he was born into grit, as were all the people in our lives who fit a similar profile.
Allow me to shift gears a bit to bring home the relevance of these stories to who you may already be, whether you know it or not. Many of you know that Jordan B. Peterson has exploded onto the scene as the world’s most popular clinical psychologist/philosopher. Because he mixes politics into the invaluable information he provides, he is often a lightning rod.
One of his common evidence-based themes is that, while we may be limited by the universe of genes with which we are born we can materially manipulate which of those genes are expressed and muted. Tibetans thrive with 40 percent less oxygen than people living at sea level. Birds migrate with the seasons. The tan we get in the summer is an adaptation to thwart the harmful effects of ultraviolet rays. The way we see our body adapt to changes in conditions is similar to the techniques that can be employed to express genes that will work in our favor.
Our body is an adaptation machine, and one of those adaptations is to amplify those genes that serve us and tamp those that do not. According to the U.S. National Library of Medicine, “Each cell expresses, or turns on, only a fraction of its genes.” But we do not come with a user’s manual or a genome map. Even if we did, humans have 20,000 to 25,000 genes the majority of them dedicated to building physiology. No human would be able to precisely conceptualize how to program their genetic map in their favor even if they had it in full.
So then what? Proven science and Dr. Peterson’s lectures cite hard evidence that, with thousands of genes at your disposal, you have quite a bit of leeway to mold the person you want to become. Across many religions, you hear, “God gave you everything you need to face whatever is in your path.” Science shows that’s right. We recommend five steps to bring this to pass.
1. Do it – Go out and do that thing that belies your big dream but breeds those butterflies in your stomach. Just like that tan makes your skin resilient in the face of the sun, those gradually activating genes can make you a more able person than you were yesterday or last week as you harden your instincts and abilities to cope and navigate.
2. Just do that thing – Narrow. Start by focusing on just one material challenge. The alternative is to put the body into excess stress, invoking biological responses that can categorically sabotage success.
3. Validate success – This is why SMART goals are so important. Remember, “Each cell expresses, or turns on, only a fraction of its genes.” That means you have a lot of—albeit exciting—work to awaken these dormant little guys to ignite the superstar within you. Like counting reps in the gym, you to know when you are done to bring yourself to a level of challenge that brings about these positive changes and outcomes.
4. Repeat – Once you have achieved your goal, set another one. The tricky part is do you want to be a jack of some trades or a master of one? This will determine your next challenge. If you want to be a successful entrepreneur and you just established your first successful business, you may want to start another one or found a charity. On the other hand, if you want to do many things you enjoy, you could take up the guitar. Enter the concept of the renaissance man (person).
5. Don’t stop – If you don’t keep going, your genetic betterment project will reverse. Don’t let that happen. Like Jeff Olson says in one of our favorite books, The Slight Edge, “You are [always] either improving or diminishing in personal … value.”
So many are afraid of artificial intelligence and have so much untapped natural intelligence. We can’t help but think that this same dynamic came to bear during our Radical Sabbatical. We went from downtown Chicago corporatists ready to conquer the jungle. We arrived in a tropical jungle ruthlessly conquering us with no sense of identity or where to turn next. That must have been an absolute gene activation fest. To that end, we came back to the States craving a less rigid existence, which spawned our entrepreneurial careers and a long-time dream to write a bestselling book.
Life is tricky. We are born barely sighted, urinating on ourselves by the hour, and without the ability to access food on our own. Some are launched into a challenge with gritty circumstances, and fast-forward a quarter-century—a select few are doing spacewalks. Some of us have everything provided, and end up at the bottom of a bottle. The tools are within you—tens of thousands of them. The question is are you going to create a setting that awakens the assets or the liabilities? The choice is certainly yours.
This article originally appeared on Psychology Today Sep 27, 2019.
