Attract Bigger Opportunities Without Working Harder

Most people think that bigger opportunities come with working harder, with getting positive feedback, or associating with people with authority. But the truth is, bigger opportunities come in your life when your mind stops operating from an economic subsciacity, and starts operating from the psychology of expansion. Because the fact is, until you're thinking changes, your external opportunities cannot. So in this video, I want to talk about the psychology, the psychological architecture of that transformation, and I want to let you know it's not about habits or routines, I'm not going to talk to you about that. But we're going to be diving deep into what does that transformation look like, so that you can become someone who naturally attracts bigger opportunities. Let's dive in. You're listening to Career Revisionist, the podcast where ambitious professionals pursue mastery, break through invisible ceilings, and accelerate into leadership, and now to guide you on the journey. Dr. Grace Lee, neuroscientist, executive mentor, and your trusted voice and career leadership. An important principle to understand is that you cannot receive an opportunity that your mind is not structured to metabolize. So let's talk about this. What does it mean to metabolize? The essence of metabolization is to be able to convert inputs into energy that is required for vital functions. So in your body, every cell has metabolization. It's a cable of metabolization. And a metabolization, in this case, in terms of biological functions, is that it's a careful balance between two processes. On the one hand, you have the process of catabolism, which is breaking down things to create energy, and that is catabolism. And then the opposite of that is using the energy from catabolism to build up and create new things, and that is anabolism. The metabolism is made up of these two opposites that are simultaneously occurring. So how does this apply here? That principle of metabolism. Now, I'm going to call it mental catabolism, which means that, remember, it's a two-process, anabolism catabolism. So what are you breaking down? Anabolism. What are you breaking down in catabolism? It means that you're breaking down your old beliefs. You're breaking down your old emotional patterns. You're breaking down your old worldviews. You're breaking down limited assumptions that you've had about situations, other people, circumstances. All of these old concepts, an idea that you've once hold that aren't serving you anymore, or that are holding you back that may not even realize it, you break them down to a process of mental catabolism. As a result of that, it releases energy that you can use to build up something larger. The end of its energy release because it takes a tremendous amount of energy to hold those old beliefs in the first place. It takes a lot of energy to hold those philosophies and those thoughts and those emotional patterns. It's energetically abundant to hold it, requires a huge amount of energy to hold them in the first place. So when you release the energy through mental catabolism, you use the energy that was released to hold those old patterns to create something larger. So what does that mean? Now it's a process of anabolism, mental anabolism. Now you're creating a larger identity. You're creating bigger world beliefs. You are able to build a mental and psychological structure that's able to hold bigger opportunities that you may not have been able to hold in the first place. So it's an expansive capacity of your psychology and of your infrastructures, your mental infrastructures to be able to hold things that maybe once used to overwhelm you, or they used to bother you, but now you can hold that space because you have released the energy that you were holding on to old beliefs before. When it comes to breaking down in the process of catabolizing, remember it's about a few things. Number one is breaking down your outdated beliefs. Number two, it's breaking down narrow world views you might have had. It's also breaking down survival based patterns of operating and some inherited rules that you kind of just accepted without questioning. And when it comes to the process of catabolizing, there are five key steps. The first step is to calibrate your brain towards possibility and not fear. I mentioned it before. One of the things to break down is survival based ways of operating. And you see a lot of individuals are calibrated through survival. They're trying to survive, make it through the day, make it through their perception of how challenges appear in their life. And as a result of that, when your brain is calibrated towards survival, everything will appear contracted. And in that mindset of survival, what we fear the most is the things that we don't want to lose. We focus on loss, losses. And as a result of focusing on losses, it's nearly impossible. It's overwhelming to think about investments. We think we are fearful of investing time into things. We become fearful investing finances into ourselves because we're so scared of losing, we're so scared of loss, and that's the survival based operating mind. So then instead of this way of operating, which is limiting, which is a worthy, which is wise to catabolize through a process. By the way, catabolization is not through forcefully doing it, but is through awareness. So the first step is being aware of that pattern and how it's affecting you and the people around you, and then calibrate your brain through possibility. Now, people who are calibrated towards possibility, they don't focus on what they might lose. What they focus on more is what value is being created as a result of decision. So if I'm investing my time into something that I was once afraid of doing, or I was once too overwhelmed to do, now it's calibrating my brain for possibility. And now I ask a different question, if I were to invest here, what value might it create? What will it create? What benefits and vanishes might it create? Same thing if I were to invest my finances into my own personal development, my own personal growth, right? A survival based mindset would be a very risk adverse towards that because I'm so afraid of losing money. So now a possibility mindset looks at that investment and says, okay, what might that investment create for me? What value might it create? And it's like looking at creation and all areas of your life. If I were to invest this currency in here, what would it, what value would it create for my career? What value might it create in terms of external opportunities? What value might it create in terms of my relationships, both at home and at work? What value might it create in terms of my self confidence? And it's important to assess that because if you don't, then every decision you make will come at it as a cost way too high that's acceptable. And you'll end up not making the decision, sitting on the fence and not making a move and years turn into decades and things can say the same. So this is the first step is to calibrate your mind towards possibility and away from fear. Step number two is to train your brain towards value based thinking instead of cost based thinking. Most professionals who are in the survival based way of operating, they have this mindset where time is money. Have you ever heard that before time equals to money? Now if time is money, what that means is that there's an equality between the value of time is the same as the value of money. Now if you believe that, then it's going to cause you to make all sorts of decisions. You're going to value your time equal to money, which means that if you need to invest your time in something where the result is a longer term result, it's going to be very difficult and sometimes overwhelmed to do so because that investment will feel expensive because time is money. Now leaders leadership savvy individuals understand that time is not money. What they understand is time is infinitely more valuable than money if you think about it. Money is a renewable resource. You can always make another dollar. If you spend it, it comes back to you if you learn the economics of value creation. The time is a non-renewable resource. It's way more rare than money and life itself is made up of time. It's the most valuable of all resources. So think about it this way. If you understand the time value of time, then your decisions and your actions are going to be very different. Instead of focusing on, well, how much is this going to cost me in terms of finances, how much is going to cost me in terms of my focus, my time, you're going to be thinking instead, what value is this going to create for me? And how could I not afford to utilize some of my finances to buy back some of my time so that I could have more time in abundance and in doing so, that investment in finances is going to be well worth it. If I could invest some of my finances to be able to learn quicker how to lead a team, how to learn quicker, how to grow a business, how to grow my career. If I could learn this quicker through an investment of finances, guess what? It saves me months or years, sometimes decades. And as a result of the time that I have bought back that I have saved through that investment, I can use the time that I bought back to create more value for somebody and in return, I can have a greater compensation and bigger opportunities. You see, this is the brain training that is required to be able to have bigger opportunities come to you because it's not about cost-based thinking. It's about value-be. thinking. When you are trained to value base thinking, things don't appear expensive anymore. In fact, what is expensive now is not deciding to make that investment. If I don't invest in myself and in my skills and in my career direction, if I don't invest in that, and as a result of that, through trial and error, through the danger of the things I don't know, now that's even more costly. Not being able to try those bigger opportunities is even more costly. Can you see the difference? Right, so this is the difference between leaders who maybe you know some people like this, who have had career trajectories, grown really fast or really far, who've had opportunities come to them in light speed, that's what's happening is that they're training their aim to understand the economics of money, value, and time. Step number three, require your brain for value creation and not self-protection. Again, this comes back to the survival based mindset of operations and that survival based mindset is very fruitful of being protected from negative outcomes, you know, like failure. Protect yourself from failure. They think about this, they think about, I've got to protect myself from criticism, I've got to protect myself from people breaking their promises, I 've got to protect myself from negative outcomes and this fear, it's a fear-based response in terms of self-protection. The problem with that is if you're over the concern of protecting yourself, oftentimes we justify that, that it's a prudent thing to do, I gotta protect myself, it's prudent because if I don't, no one else will. Right, we, the belief and the psychology behind that is it's prudent. But what you're not seeing is that so long as I'm concerned about self-protection, I'm not going to be creating value. And this is the shift, the mindset shift in transformation. Instead of thinking how can I protect myself from failure? Sivy leaders are thinking how can I create values, how can I create greater value for others? And it's a possibility mindset as well. What's possible as a result of me? What possibly, what new possibilities can I create because of my involvement? And you see, it's a very vulnerable position because yeah, you can be vulnerable to criticism, you can be vulnerable to people disagreeing with you, you can be vulnerable to failure, things not quite turning out the way that you expected them to be. It's very vulnerable position, but and it's challenging with the role of that. So that's why it involves courage, a commitment, it involves congruency on your part and involves understanding the economics of that. Because if you can create value for others, there is a law of sustainable fair exchange where the greater the value you create for greater numbers of people creates a fair exchange for you as well. And if you are overly concerned about self-protection, then your primary concern is about you and your safety and you. And as a result of that, you're missing out on the greater opportunities to create that high level of value or that depth of value for other people. And in the economy you live in and make no mistake about it, the business you work for is a business. It's a company, it's a business. There are economics at play. And if you're not in line with the economics of business, then it's going to be very difficult to attract bigger opportunities, operating for the mindset of self-protection. If you're listening to this right now and you feel that there is some vulnerability there, but you're ready for a higher level of accountability and definitely a higher level of guidance and mentorship for your specific situation and what you may be going through that you may not fully understand. Then I invite you to book a call with one of my career advisors. The link is in the video, in the link below this video, just to have a conversation to explore where you are right now and where you would like to be. What would that look like if you were fulfilled in your career trajectory? If you were attracting the right opportunities, what would that look like? Just to explore the more possibility mindset. And if it's a right fit for you and a right fit for us as well, then you'll receive an invitation to come into my mentorship program. And in this mentorship program, I'll hold you accountable, but in a coach mentorship kind of relationship, where from that accountability, you'll receive the guidance on, "Well, how can you think differently?" And as a result of that different way of thinking, how can you build architecture around you and a support of environment around you to be able to prepare yourself for those better opportunities? Because a prepared person is way more important than waiting for someone to prepare the career path for you. And if you are serious about this, to be able to operate from that next level, then click the link below and I look forward to working with you on the inside. Step number four, recalibrate your brain to perceive risk through discernment and not avoidance. Now we all have our own risk management patterns. And if you are aware of your risk management patterns, then you can take the next steps to be able to produce the outcomes you desire in your life and in your career. Now, one such risk management pattern are individuals who avoid risk, and sometimes they avoid risk at all cost. But here's the thing about risk. If you believe through, again, your world views, remember we talked about catabolizing and abilizing, it through your world views, your perception is that risk is negative, risk is bad, and risk is something that should be avoided. If that's your real view, then guess what? Your risk management philosophy is going to be one of avoidance. But here's the thing, you work in a business for a business and in a business context, everything is uncertain. Investments need to be made all the time. And when you're creating fair exchange and the economics of that, risk will inevitably be involved. Now, if you're a risk avoidance, anytime you take an opportunity or move towards an opportunity that's different from the one you have right now, what's inherent in that is a risk. So can you see how the desire you have to set goals towards this particular opportunity? That desire may be offset by your risk avoidance operations. So this is where it's important, instead of avoiding risk and especially instead of avoiding risk at all cost, what if you can rewire your brain and recalibrate it towards a discerning instead? Can you develop the skills to discern risk, not to avoid them, but to discern them? Because while in a business environment, risk is inherent in decisions, especially the higher up you go in an organization, the greater the uncertainty, the less and less information you have, therefore the more inherent risk. So to prepare yourself for those opportunities, how might you be able to discern risk instead of avoiding it? So what does discern mean? Descertain discernment means to be able to evaluate with objectivity and with prudent and conguency. So that is discernment. And that is a skill that is learnable, that is you able to develop that. But if you're unable, you're unable to develop it from who you are now, which is why the first step is that recalibration. And once you have the recalibration of the mindset, the mental architecture, and you have catabolized all of your old world views, then that opens the mental architecture for you to develop the skill of discernment. Step number five, retrain your brain's relational elevation. Now this may be sound a little bit confusing, but when you are in a business environment in a leadership context, no doubt there are relationships all around you. You have relationships not just in your immediate team, but relationships that are meaningful that you have not yet developed, but they are going to be important to develop for your career growth in your personal development as well. And in a business environment, especially when you are working in your career and you have your roles and you have your teams, it's a competitive environment. You know, sometimes an opportunity exists where they're going to select one person for it, and all the other candidates won't be able to get it, but just one candidate gets that opportunity. And so it can feel like a zero-sum game, and as a result of that competition, it's easy to see people as competitors. It's easy to see people as enemies. It's easy to see people in that light. And as long as you see people as your competitors, as your opposite, as your opposition, as long as you see people that way, it's going to be one of relational extraction. The way you operate is necessarily going to be one of extraction where you will form relationships and you will be motivated to continue nurturing those relationships if they were to benefit you. But if they weren't benefiting you, it would not motivate you. You wouldn't feel incentivized. It creates that mental architecture. If that's how you view relationships, as candidates, as people who are your opposition, as people you need to win over, and so on and so forth. And you see, this type of relational management, the extraction one, I need to extract value from this person. If this person is not going to be useful to me, then there's no need to redevelop relationship with them. If that's the attitude, if that's the mindset, and it's really an unconscious mindset, really, no one, I don't think, I don't believe that people choose to behave that way, but it's a default mode. It's a default. And if that's your default, if that's how you've not operating, whether you're aware of it or not, it's really difficult to build relationship equity, like equity in your relationships. And equitable relationships are the ones that are meaningful. They're the ones that have sustainable fair exchange. And absent that, then yeah, you're looking at zero sum games and oppositions and competitors and so on. So this is where it's important to change your relationship with relationships, see them as elevation and not as extractions. Because people are there and they're going to be different from you. They're going to have different perspectives from you. And yeah, and as a result of that, that can create and cause fact friction and conflict. But as long as you are looking to create a fair value, a change of value, then you elevate relationships and you build equity instead of looking to extract value from it and feeling discouraged and overwhelmed if they don't. Right. So these are the five steps to train your brain, rewire your brain, to attract bigger opportunities. Bigger opportunities don't come into your life just simply because you want them. They come into your life because of the person you've become, because of the capability of your mind to be able to metabolize the things that don't no longer serve you and to be able to build and expand into greater opportunities and greater identities and graded operating modalities that do serve you. And the greater your mind that is able to do so, the bigger the opportunity that you will be able to attract. The size of the opportunity depends on the size of the mind that is capable of that type of metabolism. [Music]