These 3 Factors are Holding You Back From Achieving Greatness

A couple of years ago I read the book “Winning Through Intimidation” which provided a number of theories for getting ahead in life, one of which was known as the Leapfrog Theory.

Leapfrog Theory – One can simply leapfrog their way into a better state by bypassing the standard model for advancement…

Sit with that thought for a minute, I’ll come back to it.

But first I want to talk about an observation that I’ve made recently. I’ve conducted dozens of market research calls over the past two weeks as I launch my Average to Savage Fitness and Lifestyle Elevation Bootcamp, and I’ve noticed common themes across all of the stories that everyone has shared with me regarding what is holding them back from their ideal state.

What I’ve learned is that there are three main hurdles that keep us from reaching our full potential:

1. Disparate information – Too much information, conflicting information, and disorganized information makes it too difficult to develop a clear understanding of problems and their solutions.

2. No Structured Process – The lack of structure and a clear path forward adds undue stress and creates debilitating inefficiencies in the betterment process; efforts oftentimes do not produce results and kills confidence in a person’s ability to effect change.

3. Lack of Accountability – With no one besides oneself to answer to, there is little incentive to see a process through rough patches and periods of uncertainty. With no accountability, self-limiting beliefs and excuses creep in and derail any progress that was initially made at the beginning when motivation was highest.

Achieving your goals and making meaningful life improvements are exponentially compounded when these three elements are covered. However, when navigating through a self-improvement journey, a person must not only take the initiative to do the improvement work, but also must become a researcher, a strategist, and a self-motivator.

Unfortunately this adds complexity, doubt, and uncertainty to the journey and causes many, if not most, people to stall and eventually give up.

For example...

To give a concrete example, if you are trying to get in shape, the truth is that you already know the general process. You know that you need to eat a healthier diet and exercise to see results.

However what constitutes a healthy diet? Is it vegan, or is it carnivore? Are eggs a superfood or is the cholesterol in them bad for you? Are you supposed to run more or do heavy resistance training?

All of these questions can be answered for sure. But the problem is that to answer them, you must devote an ungodly amount of time and energy to diving into the information and not only finding answers, but also finding the right answers that apply to your specific situation.

Once you do have all of the information that you need, your next challenge is creating an action plan that you are certain will produce results. The shear overwhelm that one can experience when trying to come up with actionable steps that they can follow with a high level of confidence can ironically lead to inaction instead.

Lastly, once an action plan has been created, you must actually do the work, and do it consistently, even when you REALLY don’t want to. The fact is that it is much easier to break promises we’ve made with ourselves than it is to break a promise we made with someone else. So this represents another common point of failure that many people experience.

Leveraging Leapfrog Theory

I’ve learned that embarking on any sort of self-elevation journey, whether it is professional, health and fitness, relationships, or anything else requires so much more work than what is visible on the surface. However, having access to synthesized information, a structured framework or process, and a mechanism for maintaining accountability all exponentially increase your odds of seeing real and meaningful change. Rather than doing it yourself, a better course of action could be to outsource the information, planning, and accountability portions of your journey to create space for focusing 100% of your time and energy on the actual self-improvement process.

This minimizes the chances that you become overwhelmed and discouraged.

Rather than spending days, months, or even years trying to acquire all of the necessary information, proven frameworks, and self-motivation, one can simply shortcut the process by leveraging the collective wisdom of the many people who have successfully navigated a similar journey you are trying to embark on.

All of these elements already exist in some sort of pre-packaged format. All you need to do is find which is best suited for your needs.

By doing this, you are bypassing the normal process of trial and error, experimentation, iteration, synthesizing, frameworking, and self-coaching, and you are leapfrogging your way into a better place simply by acquiring all of these supporting elements and quickly leveraging them to your advantage.

This is the leapfrog theory at work.

My Personal Experience

I learned this firsthand. When I tried to apply to competitive MBA programs on my own, I became lost in the process and lacked organization, structure, guidance, motivation, etc.

By joining an MBA prep bootcamp of sorts, I gained all of those things that I previously lacked, and saved myself a lot of time and effort by streamlining my pathway into a highly selective business school program.

Most recently, I hired a business coach to help me take my own health and wellness business to the next level which has fast tracked my way into operating a profitable business rather than spending years trying to formulate the right business model.

I can think of countless examples when I tried to navigate a journey on my own and failed miserably, or when I sought help to acquire the information, process, and motivation that I needed and achieved success greater than I could have possibly imagined.

Perhaps you can too…

Self-Investment

If you are currently feeling an urge or burning desire to elevate some aspect of your life and find yourself constantly putting it off, or dipping your toes into the waters but never fully committing, then you may simply be lacking the prerequisite information, process, or accountability that is the foundation of any effort to make meaningful and lasting life change.

Fortunately for virtually any problem we are facing, someone out there has come up with a solution.

This brings me to my last point. I always hear the quote, “an investment in yourself is the best investment you can make.” On the surface I understood it, but I never really thought deeply about what this quote really meant. I typically viewed an investment in self as an investment in formal education such as college.

What I never considered is the idea that an investment in self also includes resources outside of the traditional education structure; resources like therapists, courses, coaches, and mentors. These are the investments that people shy away from because the benefits may be a bit less concrete than more traditional mediums such as formal education.

However the people who invest in themselves by leveraging mentors, coaches, consultants, and the like are the ones who are primed leapfrog over the masses because they have outsourced handling of the three common points of failure mentioned at the beginning of this article, and thus are afforded more time and energy focus on actually doing the improvement work with confidence and clarity that the results will come.