One Thing That Prevents Most From Getting To The Top Of Their Industry

Written by a human, for humans, always.

Many people say that they want to get to the top of their industry.

They are not lying about that.

They really do.

But the reality is that very few people actually make it anywhere near the top.

Now, there are a variety of reasons that play out.

Some are not willing to put in the effort.

Others struggle with change.

But today we are going to focus in on one particular factor...

Which subconsciously holds most people back...

Often without them realizing it.

It has to do with...

Their identities.

Now, if you have followed my work for any period of time...

You will recall that we all hold a multitude of identities...

Ten categories, each with multiple identities within.

(Most of which people are completely unaware they carry.)

Now, when it comes to getting to the top of any industry...

You have to realize that there "is" an industry of some sort...

With an established set of people/businesses at the top currently.

(Sometimes industries shift and change over time, so for the purposes of this article, we are assuming even within shifting industries there are "befores" and "afters", such as Blockbuster and Netflix. Even if an industry is changing, we are currently looking at the "before", so Blockbuster was established at the top before Netflix shifted the industry.)

Now, when it comes to identities...

We have one set which I call "Environmental Expectations".

These identities may be literally expected of us within a certain context...

Such as when a culture has certain expectations of how people dress or what is or is not appropriate...

And sometimes they are just our own "perceptions" of what is expected within our environment...

And it is this second group that we are going to look more closely at.

See...

Within an industry that has people/businesses established...

We have certain "expectations" of how good they are.

After all...

There are reasons that they made it to the top...

(Though, usually those reasons are not the real reasons they made it there, but that is a different article for a different day.)

So it is to be expected that we have certain expectations of what the "top" means within an industry.

But here is where it becomes problematic for most people...

Who we perceive ourselves to be has a direct interaction with our Environmental Expectation Identities...

Which creates a different set of identities...

Our Reactive Shadow Identities.

Often...

There is some disconnect between who we believe ourselves to be and what we perceive to be the expectations within our environments.

When it comes to this...

The Reactive Shadow Identity for most people...

Is that the established people/businesses within the industry are greater than them.

Now, this may technically be true at any given moment...

But where most people get tripped up is that they hold this identity of being "less than" the established people/businesses...

And they struggle to get themselves subconsciously to believe that they "could" ever be equal to or greater than the top.

Now this is an important distinction here...

Many people tell themselves consciously that they can become the best...

But subconsciously they do not actually believe it...

So subconsciously they end up self-sabotaging themselves from reaching the top.

See...

Our brains are really good at detecting things that are not believable.

You can tell yourself consciously anything...

You can say that tomorrow you will be a quadrillionaire...

And your brain will say something to the effect of...

"Yeah, right..."

"That will never be you..."

"What makes you think you deserve anything like that?..."

"What are you actually doing now that would lead anywhere near that result?"

That is the subconscious calling out and rejecting the conscious idea.

You can "repeat" it over and over again...

But the brain is just going to continue to reject it under most circumstances.

(Contrary to the "self-development" practice of repetition leading to "manifestation", it does not really work. The "success" stories you hear about, if they are not flat-out lying, are the minority from among an overwhelming number of failures. However, that tiny fraction of a single percent are so loud and repeat the mantra so often that the myth becomes perpetuated, and you simply begin to believe it works because you fall into the "Illusory Truth Effect". The reality is that the repetition did not change the mind; something else did. More on that shortly.)

For the brain to accept the idea that you can actually get to the top...

There are two things that have to change within your identities.

The first...

Is that you need to actually be doing work that "can" get you to the top.

If you believe that you can become an exceptional writer...

And you are not writing anything...

The brain is going to reject the idea that you are going to be an exceptional writer.

So you actually have to be "doing" the thing that gets you to the top.

If you are not writing, then you are not really a writer.

When you start writing, you can start to call yourself a writer.

It does not necessarily make you a "good" one...

But by doing the work, there is now a path for the brain to believe that "maybe" you can get to the top.

But...

You still need the second area of identity to change...

You need to begin to lower the pedestal of those who are at the top of the established industry.

Now, if you do not like the individuals currently at the top, that may be simple...

But far more often, people look up to the people at the top of an industry.

Frequently, the people at the top are part of the reason they joined that industry in the first place.

I know that was true for me.

When I first became a leadership coach, it was because I looked up to John Maxwell.

He truly defined the industry, and he is to this day a giant of the industry.

I would not have started this path had it not been for his work.

However...

I have come to realize that, even with his great achievements and wonderful character...

He is just a human being...

Just like me...

Just like every other human at the top of any industry.

Simultaneously...

Every industry has problems.

For the leadership development industry...

One of the biggest problems is that it was built directly on the earlier foundation of the management development industry...

So it shares many of the same traits as that industry...

As well as all of the flaws.

This is how you need to start looking at what has been established in the industry...

Not to take away from what has been done within it...

Not to deny good work and good people that exist within them...

But to understand that no person or industry is so perfect as to be subconsciously worshipped for how great it is.

Appreciated, sure, but with the realization that more can be done to improve the industry...

And that those at the top may not be able to address those improvements...

Or they might not be aware of the challenges...

Or are aware and not willing to change.

Kodak is a great example of this final category.

The first digital camera was created by Kodak...

But today Canon has the highest market share of digital cameras.

A part of the reason this is...

Is because Kodak was a film company first...

And they were unwilling to change until other companies pushed the industry forward into digital cameras.

No matter who is at the top of any industry...

There is always room for industries to grow, change, or shift.

Yet...

If you subconsciously "believe" that the top of the industry is essentially perfect...

Your Environmental Expectation Identities become too high for you to attain...

And your Reactive Shadow Identities subconsciously prevent you from reaching the top.

For most people...

They are consciously unaware that they hold these identities...

So subconsciously, they are always held back from reaching the top of their industry.

But...

When you become consciously aware of this problem...

You can begin to identify what identities are holding you back...

And you can begin to challenge those identities with new evidence to shift those identities.

This is another important factor...

You need to get evidence so that these subconscious identities can be questioned...

And when our subconscious begins to question them...

We gain the ability to change those identities.

What most people fail to realize...

Is that the vast majority of identities they hold...

Even the ones that are (rightly) important to them...

Are transitory in nature.

They can, and even should, change over time.

But...

Some of these identities only change when we bring conscious awareness as to why they "should" change...

And this tends to be the case when it comes to getting to the top of an industry.

If you are going to reach the top of your industry...

You need to understand the Identity Psychology interplay that is at work that is currently holding you back.

Once you understand how these identities are working, either in your favor or against you...

You can begin to shift and navigate to better identities that begin to allow you to make real process to getting to the top of your industry.

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