Hi this is AJ and welcome to Step Number 4, the fourth essential step for change and leadership. And, of course, the fourth free webinar for you.
Alright, so you've learned Steps 1 through 3, right? What was Number 1? Number 1 was to develop your own personal health and energy. It's really the foundation, without that, hard to do anything else.
Step Number 2 was to develop your own purpose, your own personal purpose. And this might grow and change over time but it's something that gives you passion, or several things that give you passion. And that's going to give you a lot of drive and motivation in your life to do anything. Those are the two very, very general ones that are the foundation, the core, for everything else.
Alright, and then, of course, in Number 3 we learned how to understand deeply, right? That it's not enough just to quickly think about something, you've really got to understand yourself and the situation and others very, very deeply before you start trying to start making a lot of changes and doing a lot of actions. Of course, once you do that, now you're ready to really get into it.
So what is Step Number 4 if you really want to make a big change in your life? It's a change you've had difficulty making in the past that you just can't seem to get that success that you want. And you're frustrated. You don't know why. Why can't I do this? What's the problem? Well you have three things now that you can do, those first three steps, and now on to Step Number 4. There'll all important.
The fourth step is to get emotional leverage, get emotional leverage. If this is a change you're making for yourself, using the common example of wanting to jump your English level higher and improve your English a lot, or anything else, then you've got to get emotional leverage on yourself. Leverage, this is sort of a little symbol that we'll use for leverage. And if you're trying to change other people for the better, something that they want and you're trying to help them, then you also have to help them get emotional leverage.
What is leverage? Leverage is, it's kind of a physics term. It just means, it's something that multiplies force. It multiplies force. So, for example, if I'm trying to lift something heavy, I can just try to lift it straight up, right? That's no leverage. I'm just trying to lift it myself. Or I can get a stick, right? And I can put like a piece of wood and then I can try to use the wood to help me lift it up. Or I could get ropes and they would go up to pulleys, y'know, and go up and up, and then I would pull the rope up. Those things give me leverage, right? They multiply my effort. With the same amount of effort I can lift more. I can do more. So do you understand the analogy? It's a metaphor. We're comparing it to something physical like that.
So emotional leverage means, it means some kind of motivation or emotion or belief or idea that helps you develop more emotional power to change. See, emotion is what is important, not logic, right? We all tend to focus on the logic, what's very reasonable and rational and logical. And we think that that's going to give us the motivation and the power to do something. So, for example, with your English speaking you can think of all the logical reasons for improving it. It will help you get a better job. And it will, y'know, help you go study abroad. Or you'll get a higher TOEFL score, whatever, right?
These are logical, rational reasons. But they're not emotional, right? They don't make you get like super excited and waaahhh, crazy, right? That's what you need though if you're really going to make a big change. Because when you try to make a change, guess what happens? You encounter problems. You encounter difficulties. It's not always just simple and easy and everything's wonderful every day. Well, if you're going to get through those challenges, you've got to have tremendous emotional power. So it's not enough just to have a rational, logical reason.
To make a change you need emotional leverage. It means strong, powerful, emotional reasons to change. Let's get another common example, let's say getting healthy or losing weight. Well there are millions and millions of people who want to lose weight and get healthier. My mom's a great example. My mom has been telling me that she is going to lose weight and get healthier for decades. Since I was a teenager right up until now, and hopefully she'll never watch this video, she has been telling me, “Oh I want to get healthier. Oh I'm going to lose weight. Oh I'm going to lose weight. ” She has been telling me this, she's told me a thousand logical, rational reasons why she needs to do this. Yet she has not done it. Why not? Because she did not get powerful emotional reasons that made her want to change so much that nothing could stop her; that would really just force her to change. That's what emotional leverage is. You've got to focus on the emotion, not on the logic.
So how do you do this specifically? Well, the number one thing, and it's not pleasant and it kind of goes against the whole idea of positive thinking, is that you have to connect massive, a huge amount of pain, emotional pain to not changing. And as part of this you have to, step number two, stop minimizing.
Let me give you an example and I'll explain what minimizing is. Let's say my own health, so about two and a half, three months ago I weighed 170 pounds, and I don't know what that is in kilos, but it was basically 20 extra pounds of fat on my body. And I had had it for, I don't know, three, four, five, six years. And I was constantly minimizing about it. Like I would tell myself all these logical things, “Oh I want to get rid of this fat. Oh look at this fat I've gained, oh man, I'm heavier, 20 pounds too much. ”
But, then at the same time though, I would minimize, meaning I would make the problem seem emotionally smaller, right? I didn't want to admit to myself that I had kind of become a little, I wouldn't say fat, but chunky, right, a little big kind of heavy. So I didn't want to admit that. I didn't want to really, because that didn't fit my image of myself, so I would say, “Well, it's not that bad. I mean compared to most Americans I'm still quite thin. ” So I would compare myself to people who were quite fat and then I would feel good about myself because, oh, for me it's only 20 pounds. They're 100 pounds overweight. That's what minimizing is. It's making the problem feel smaller.
You might do this with your own English level, for example. You might say, “Well, yes, I want to speak, y'know, super great, fluently, wonderfully…but my speaking's not so bad right now. ” And then you can compare yourself to people who speak worse than you. And you can kind of feel better about it and you don't feel so bad, right? This is normal. We don't want to feel uncomfortable.
We don't want to feel pain emotionally about these issues in our life. And yet that process of making ourselves feel more comfortable, that's what prevents us from changing. See, as long as I felt comfortable with the extra 20 pounds, never would I lose it. I could tell myself all these great reasons why I should but I never would.
So how did I do it? And I've lost about 15 of them now, so 5 more to go. But how did I start that process? I did the exact opposite. I connected massive, massive, massive pain and discomfort to not changing, right? So what I started doing is I'd get in the mirror and I'd look and I'd have like shirt off and I would grab the fat and I'd just look down. And I would kind of make it look even bigger, y'know, like put my stomach out. And then I would look at it and I would just make myself feel disgusted. I would like, look at this. This isn't me. This is disgusting. And I would imagine that fat just like all in my body, really slimy and smelly and disgusting, right? And it wasn't a fun process but this is what I would do.
And then I would start imagining like, okay, if I continue living the way I live, what will I be like in five years from now. And then I would imagine myself like with 20 more pounds, even heavier. And then I would think what about ten years from now? And I would imagine 40 or 60 or 80 more pounds. And then I would start imagining all the terrible consequences of that, y'know, less energy. And my students wouldn't respect me. Maybe you would but I was trying to make more pain in my mind connected to that fat. You see how this works? What you actually want to do is make it worse than it actually is. Attach a massive amount of emotional pain, discomfort, fear, anger, all of things to not changing, to the current situation.
And I know it doesn't sound like very much fun. And it's not. But by doing this you'll suddenly get a lot of energy to make that change. When I went through this process and I kept doing this, in my mind, I reached a point finally where I'm like, ”Damn it! Fuck it! I'm going to change. ” Right? There's no way. I'm not going to end up like a big super fat huge guy in ten years and there's no way. That's not me. And I got kind of angry at myself. And I got angry at the situation. And I got a lot of emotion about it, a lot of painful, negative emotion about the fat and about not changing.
And then the second part of this is, of course, I created a lot of positive emotions about making the change. I started to imagine what I would look like after I made the change. I started imagining having all this tremendous energy, even more energy. And I imagined myself 10 years from now, 20 years from now, 30 years from now, still looking great, feeling great, feeling fantastic. I imagined myself living a much longer life because I had done this. Like being 80, 90 years old, and still full of energy, still teaching English.
And by doing that, by creating lots and lots of emotion, positive emotion attached to the change I wanted, and lots and lots of pain and negative emotion attached to not changing, something happened. It just, there was a switch. It's like I just put a switch in my mind, just boom, very quickly. Within just like a week I started walking every day. And I started walking two hours, three hours, four hours a day. I decided to do this big hike in the mountain of Japan for 30 days.
Then I decided I'm going to do 12 marathons in 12 months, a marathon every single month. And I just started making all these goals and I actually was following my plans and doing what I wanted to do. As a result, burned off the fat.
See how this works? Just the logic, I had all the logical reasons, but it didn't make me change. I had to have a strong emotion. One more example, and then I hope you can know how to apply this to your life then, starting my own business, starting Effortless English and Learn Real English. For years and years and years I wanted to start my own business. For years and years and years I was frustrated working for other people. I don't really like taking orders. And I really don't like working for other people. And I complained about it and I bitched about it. Bitching means to complain. So I bitched and bitched and bitched and I complained constantly. Oh I don't like my job. Oh they won't let me teach the way I want to. Complaining, complaining, complaining, complaining, for years and years and years.
Until finally I started to do this, I got emotional leverage on myself. I finally decided this is enough. And I really started to focus on the pain of working those jobs. And I multiplied it. I exaggerated it. I focused on it. About how miserable I was having bosses who would not let me teach. And I started thinking about how I was hurting my students because I couldn't teach them the way I knew was best, because I had to follow the rules of my job. So I would, every day, I would imagine myself, I'm harming these students. And I'm not living my own life. And I got myself really, really, really, really, really upset, every day. And I was not fun to be around at that time. But guess what? It finally gave me the emotion I needed to make the change and to start recording my own lessons and starting my own company.
So those are two strong examples. I hope they kind of show you how the process is. You need to do the same thing. Whatever change it is that you want in your life, you have to attach a lot of negative painful emotion to not changing. Make it terrible and really think about it constantly all the time, every day. Oh, if I don't change, oh, it's going to get worse and worse and be terrible. And, uh, and I'll be a horrible person and it'll suck and oh my god, right? And just make that emotion stronger and stronger and stronger. And at the same time, dream a little bit about your goal. And think about how wonderful and amazing it'll be when you do make the change. And this emotional leverage is…it'll change everything. In fact, just this step probably could help you make most of the changes you need to make. I'm going to give you more good stuff that'll help you, y'know, develop this even better. But this one is super, super, super powerful, so do it. Don't minimize. Don't make the problem seem like it's okay. Make it painful. Alright, you must feel it.
And that is Step Number 4, Webinar Number 4. I hope you enjoyed it. Listen to it several times. Listen to the other ones. As you're listening to these you're also secretly and unconsciously improving your English. So that's our little secret agenda and our little secret mission. But don't think about that. Don't think about the English too much. If you find a new word, learn it but focus on the ideas and use these ideas. Use these steps in your own life.