The Cascading Elements of Change – Indirect versus Direct Effects

I posted something interesting on my Facebook wall yesterday. It’s something I noticed… and kind of wondered if it would happen if I made a very special change in my life. It goes like this:

Sometimes, the best results you get from a change you make are very indirect… almost correlational. For instance, you’d think me quitting drinking would affect my body and shape (which it has), yet it’s hard to dismiss the fact that revenues have more than doubled since then.

MORAL: Your indirect benefits of change are likely MUCH more valuable to you than the direct ones. Give that some thought…

Most times, the indirect benefits of change outweigh the direct ones...

This is an example of an “indirect” effect of a change. Obviously, the “direct” effect was on my personal productivity coupled with an increase in self respect.

Listen, it’s no secret that I really enjoy reading, studying, and observing how people interact with each other.

I love the fact that you can “engineer” situations to get certain responses (as an aside, this goes into “controlling the environment that controls you”, which we’ll discuss at another time. Basically, if you can control another persons environment, you can basically “control” them).

And, it’s also no secret that I always gravitate back into diet and fitness related material when people ask me what they can do to make the most profound changes in their lives. The reason?

NOTHING ELSE contributes more direct and indirect changes to your life.

• increases in core confidence
• more attention  (both good and bad, I’ll explain next week)
• better “health”

These often are direct elements.

However, what most people forget are the indirect elements, and how these elements actually can CASCADE.

Let me give you an example from my story above.

• I stop drinking.
• I become more productive.
• Everyone else becomes more productive because I’m generally the bottleneck.
• We create and test different offers
• One low offer on the Adonis side does really well
• Daily transactions increase by a factor of at least 5
• Which means we’re now helping out at LEAST 5 times as many people on a daily basis
• Revenues double
• We invest revenues into more infrastructure
• This increases client experience
• Clients now actively refer new people

… I’ll just stop here. It can go on for days.

Ultimately, the cascade looks like this.

I quit drinking ==> we help more people

(okay, let me explain something really quickly. I wasn’t an everyday, get hammered drinker. It was every so often, but maybe 1 out of 10-20 times it would get out of control… which cascades DOWN. I’m sure you can see the pattern, in reverse of what I’ve explained above).

When we discuss the “Attention U” in detail next Wednesday, one of the things we’ll discuss is how once you go beyond average, your mindset has to change. In essence, you’re doing it for yourself, yet it is the most UNSELFISH thing you can do.

Why?  Because as you get in better shape, the cascading “indirect” effects begin to add up.

You begin to make a dent in the world. Sure you’ll have “haters”, but even “haters” are inspired to do SOMETHING about themselves, even if they buckle down and try to do the opposite of what you’re doing.

By pushing yourself to a level that hardly anyone goes to, or anyone is WILLING to do, you become a catalyst for change.

Again, it is actually VERY UNSELFISH to get in great shape.

If you’re a client of ours, I want you to read through the blogs of some of the women who’ve got in killer shape. If you’ll notice, most of the writing has to do with how others are inspired, or how they are helping others… and it’s not necessarily a one-on-one thing.

It’s COMPOUNDED.

Looking at it through this lens, you can see how I can make the argument that being in great shape is UNSELFISH, while being in horrible shape is actually SELFISH. Again, we’ll discuss this in detail next week.  Just think about how much more VALUE you can bring to the world when you’re at your best until then.

I hope you can see how this all works. If you have questions about this, just let me know 🙂

Brad