Ok, so what’s this upleveling business all about, really?

Let’s dismantle the common sense notion first. Practically speaking, upleveling seems to imply that you can move up a notch in your ability to succeed by acquiring additional skills or knowledge. In fact, we’re sort of conditioned to believe that another expensive training, more credentials or even an additional degree will propel our lofty goals into the stratosphere. Seems to make sense. But, sadly, it misses the mark, big time.

And why does common sense fall short? Well, here’s the issue: All you really do when acquiring more skills or knowledge is to add stuff to the level you’re already at. So, although what you know has increased, your way of knowing remains the same. It’s as if you’ve just added another app to your existing operating system and haven’t done a darn thing to re-engineer the system. That’s hardly unleveling.

And just as more apps won’t affect the design of your operating system, new skills won’t change your worldview or the lens from which you operate… or your ability to solve complex problems more effectively.

Upleveling is a Developmental Process.

So here’s the skinny: Upleveling is a developmental process that changes the WAY you know and HOW you operate on your world. It’s a shift into a new perspective that sees, feels and acts through a different, wider, more powerful lens… one that is flexible, agile and adaptable in ways the old lens was not.

You might be thinking all this is sounding pretty complicated. But here’s the thing, you’ve been upleveling your inner game from the time you were born. You’re actually coded and wired to do this. Imagine now, if you will, the shift in worldview that went along with all the developmental milestones of your life. From crawling to walking. From preverbal to verbal. From egocentric toddlerhood to being able to see the world from another’s perspective. At one time, you thought things didn’t exist if you couldn’t see them (that’s why peek-a-boo blows babies’ minds). There was even a time, when you had no concept of time. See what I mean?

As you look back now, it seems as if all these changes happened automatically, but you actually engaged in a very active process of learning, experimentation, trial and error, repeated setbacks and ultimate success.

The idea of emergent properties:

Here’s the crazy part: As you reached each successively higher level, it became almost impossible to remember how you once operated with your previously limited worldview. I mean, can you actually remember what your world was like from a toddler’s perspective or before you understood language or time?

And why is that? Well, because when you took those quantum leaps in development, something new emerged. This is technically known as an “emergent property”. And what emerged was a whole new, improved and transcended way of knowing.

Things that once seemed complicated and insurmountable became pretty darn simple. It’s as if all the small imperceptible advancements you were making along the way suddenly got together and took a bold leap into the unknown. As a result, your world appeared wildly transformed, but what really happened is you were transformed and began to see the world from a new wider-angled lens.

And, here’s the spooky thing about emergence; there’s no way you could have predicted how your perspective would change before you took the leap. Of course, others could tell you, but you wouldn’t really get it. Try to tell a toddler to wait 15 minutes. He understands the words but has no idea how to gauge time.

Just to bring it back to an level that make senses from where most of us are now…think enlightenment. We’ve all heard about it, but can we actually fathom the mind as pristine, boundless, non-dual and mutually arising with all that is? Umm, not too likely.

What does science say about all this?

OK… on to the science part. Most of your astounding physical and cognitive milestones happened within the first 15 years or so of your life. In fact, up until a few short decades ago, researchers believed development peaked in adolescence, and then stopped. Like height. But, lucky for us, they got that one wrong.

In fact, improvements in imaging technology, along with recent discoveries in brain science, have catapulted the possibilities inherent in adult development into the limelight. Not only have the experts discovered the brain is plastic, malleable and actively responds to the changes in your inner and outer environment, they also found that development evolves throughout your entire life span. Woohoo!

Your brain can actually grow new cells, strengthen existing connections and form new pathways. Until recently, no one believed that was possible. And, here’s the big news: You can play an active role in training your mind, rewiring your brain and upleveling yourself to the next stage… at any point.

There are MAPS!

And wait for it… there’s even better news. There are now well-constructed maps allowing you to locate yourself on a developmental scale. Perhaps the most comprehensive is Ken Wilber’s “Integral Map” where he literally lays out everything we know about development from every culture, tradition, scientific discovery and leading theorists. And he has nicely distilled the essential components into a few key factors that you can use to facilitate your own evolution. Of course these maps have wider use in cross-disciplinary areas, but that’s beyond the scope of this article. Suffice it to say, there are clear, well-defined, scientifically validated, workable methods to accelerate personal development. So yeah, that’s what I’m talkin’ about.

And, there are methods.

By now, you’re probably wondering what these evolutionary methods are all about and where you can get your hands on a few? Frankly, they’re all over the place and most have been around for millennia. We’re just hearing about them now because science has been active in validating their effectiveness and efficacy. Think meditation, mindfulness, yoga, tail chi and all the esoteric practices from the world’s wisdom traditions that have found their way into our modern world

At their core, all these practices are designed to fundamentally transform your consciousness, your inner landscape and well, life as you know it. Which methods will do it for you is a matter of trial and error, practice, learning and perseverance. Sound familiar? That’s because these are exactly the same strategies you used to gain access to each higher stage of development throughout your life.

But, the game itself is different.

Now, however the game is little different. You’re playing with a far fuller, more complex deck then your younger self. You’ve already reached a point of independence, self-sufficiency and basic skill acquisition. You also have a lot less tolerance for set backs and failures. And you’ve also had time to accumulate a lot of assumptions and beliefs about how things are supposed to be.

In a nutshell, you’ve amassed a lot of unconscious patterns that function under the radar, creating blocks and obstacles to your success. In fact, it’s hard to see where you’re stuck and where your growth potential lies because you’re looking through a lens that has a lot of blind spots. We’ve all had that unnerving experience of finding ourselves immersed in some form of procrastination instead of working toward the goal we promised we’d complete… today.

How do you get on track?

How does that happen and what can you do to get back on track? First of all, one of the reasons you get stuck is because you have unconscious commitments (to safety, acceptance, security, needs… etc) that compete with your conscious goals. These essentially act to keep your foot on the brake while you’re trying to accelerate.

Kegan and Lahley from Harvard University wrote a book about just this thing: “Immunity to Change” (it’s geared toward business and leadership; but worth a read). After 25 years of research, they came up with a behavioral protocol that helps expose the competing commitments that define your personal brand of stuckness. I often use parts of this system with my coaching clients, who are always amazed at the speed and accuracy this method has for uncovering their shadowy stuff.

Obviously, getting under the radar to expose the commitments and patterns that block your success is a big part of any method that promises to uplevel your game. But, that’s just part of the whole shebang. The rest of the work is a slower, highly focused process of training the mind with practices designed to resonate with your authentic self.

What will work for you?

Which practices will prove effective depend on your learning style, personality type, developmental level, motivational and decision making strategies and your current situation and stressors. There is not a one size fits all method, so don’t let anyone tell you differently.

After working at this for years, I can tell you with a lot of confidence, that the practices with the power to transform your mindset AND simplify other complex issues are the ones that focus on how you organize the basic details of your life. This is the emergent property at it’s best.

At the risk of sounding airy/fairy, it’s as if these basic practices act as a seed crystal or strange attractor, bringing choices and actions that you hadn’t noticed before, into focus. Interestingly, many of my clients discover that investigating these fundamental patterns pretty much sets the tone and direction for moving forward with focus, clarity and passion… at break-neck speed.

I’ve laid out a representative sample of these practices in my free offering of “108 Upleveling Practices”. You can sign up for this on my homepage. www.sandrapaolini.com. It’s free!

Why bother with all this?

But why bother with all this inner work? For one thing, doing this work has the potential to open the space for a far bigger life and a much-expanded version of yourself. But the fact is, most people, maybe even you, have been functioning quite well at their current developmental stage and have never felt the need or the drive to go beyond this. It’s been working quite well, thank-you…or at least it was, when times were simpler.

But times ain’t so simple anymore. The world is changing at exponential rates. Advances in technology are coming at you so fast and furiously, it’s mind-boggling. We can hardly imagine living without our computers, smart phones and social media interactions… and distractions. Really… stop right now and imagine. Weird, right? And just think, a few decades ago, none of this existed. Now consider how much your life has changed as a result. Could you have predicted any of this?

What’s coming down the pike next is pretty much anyone’s guess. Although technology is designed to make your life simpler, things are actually becoming more complex, chaotic, complicated and overwhelming. The old rules of increasing your skillset so you can be more competitive no longer work. Updating skills is simply not enough to be flexible enough to play the bigger, far more uncertain and unpredictable game. Your old operating system is just not designed for this.

There’s a paradigm shift afoot, Sherlock.

Here’ the thing: we’re right in the middle of a major paradigm shift (yeah, I said it) and the only way through is by upleveling your internal operating system so you can meet the emerging opportunities and challenges in the outer game with a whole new swag… so to speak.

So in a nutshell, there’s no time to lose. Especially in light of the fact that researchers have also concluded that it takes longer to jump to higher levels. The first 15 years came easy, but how long have you been operating from the same mindset? Time to get crackin’ or what?

So find yourself a coach, therapist, guru, spiritual director or anyone who has done their own inner work and knows the ropes. The right kind of support, straight talk and collaboration makes all the difference. And stop wasting money on expensive trainings until you have a better handle on how things fit together from that higher vantage point.

You got this… and I got your back.   In fact you can get a feel for what these practices are like by signing up for the free “108 Upleveling Practices” on my website homepage: sandra paolini.com