Hi everybody, I am Saqib Rasool and today I will show you how to untrap yourself from the past, create a breakthrough in your work, career, and business, and in doing so, design a new future.

Especially if you are someone who has had some level of success before but now find yourself: 

• Working only to maintain the status quo

• Feeling trapped by your current obligations 

• Yearning for more but hesitant to rock the boat

• Losing a sense of purpose and drive

• Uncertain about what next steps and direction to take

• And wondering, “what is my calling and what else is there to do with my life?" 

This is not a motivational speech nor is it an attempt at therapy or giving you shortcuts for success. No. This conversation is about confronting the roadblocks that now keep you from seeing clearly, what really matters, what is worth investing the next few years of your life in, and what next actions to take. This conversation is about your potential, responding to your calling, and building your legacy.

You already know this — we are currently living through the greatest era of unpredictability and change, that any of us have seen in our lifetime. The rules of engagement in all domains of life are changing, making old career and work formulas obsolete. You know that change is full of opportunity, and you may even be trying your best to take advantage of it. You may be doing everything you know to do, to make progress, like getting another degree, getting a motivational coach, starting a side project, trying to network with important people, or browsing tons of YouTube or LinkedIn for answers, but all these things will fall short of helping you. They won’t deliver the new clarity, new ambition, and deep joy that you are looking for. You are doing what you have known to work before, but ‘what got you here won’t get you there’. In trying everything you know, you might be getting resigned, that nothing new is going to happen, and you might think the best option, is to hold on to what you got while being afraid that it might slip away from your hands.

Again, I am Saqib Rasool, a human potential researcher, and the Founder and CEO of Conceivian. Today, my ambition is to help leaders like you avoid the same mistakes I made, and help maximize your potential and power.

Now everything I have learned and taught, that have gone into changing the lives of hundreds of entrepreneurs and executives, I have put into a 1-year course. The Power Course is a one-of-a-kind process, for transforming yourself, your work, and your world. Today in this conversation, I am going to bring you, four foundational moves, from The Power Course, and if you listen carefully, and take these on, they will transform your capacity for action, and who you are as an offer. New opportunities will open up in your work, that you have never imagined before. These four foundational moves are:

1. Transformation of self, which is about Becoming a new beginner

2. Transformation of work, which is about Taking a stand

3. Transformation of career, which is about Declaring your belonging

4. Transformation of language, which is about Mobilizing action

First Move

The first move is the transformation of self which is about becoming a new beginner and designing a kind of self that is not stuck but learning and expanding like crazy as you once did.

As I said earlier, the key roadblock that keeps you stuck, is that once upon a time, you learned something and based on that learning today you might have become a know-it-all. I don't mean to insult you. And I’m sure that you know a lot. But there is a difference between knowing a lot and knowing it all. In being a know-it-all you apply your old knowledge and perception to new challenges, so instead of dynamically learning and expanding, you are just matching what comes to you with what you already know. So you are trapped in the castle of your past knowledge. You are failing to be a new beginner. And this mood is blocking you from learning what you must learn to deal with the situation. Well, so, I have good news and bad news. The bad news is that in this know-it-all condition, you can ride on the wave of your past successes, but you are unlikely to do anything significant going forward. The good news is that this is not a permanent condition.

To produce a remarkable shift, your first move is to take responsibility for some dissatisfaction you have in some area, and own it. By owning it, you begin to produce a possibility for something new to happen. So pick an area of your life or a situation where you would like to create a new future for yourself.

Now if you want to go beyond where you are in this situation, and you want more power and instant clarity, set aside what you know about the situation to be absolutely true, and declare yourself a new beginner in this issue. Say to yourself, “In this matter, I am ready to be a new beginner, and I am ready to learn something, that I may have never learned before.”

By doing that, a certain ease can begin to show up, inviting curiosity, intrigue, and even some joy. In the mood of a new beginner, you are no longer burdened with having to have the right answer right up front. Your identity is no longer at stake for knowing exactly what to do. Your new identity of a self-declared beginner gives you a place to stand and space to move.

If you fail to be a new beginner and continue to act like, “I know, I know”, you’ll keep making the same mistakes and the same messes that you are already making, and your action oriented nature is bound to take you in the wrong direction. When you declare for yourself that you don't need to have a perfect plan to have it all figured out, you can begin a new journey.

Second Move

Ok, so in the mood of a new beginner, let us now go to the second move that is the transformation of work, which is about taking a stand and redefining what we consider to be our work. As modern human beings, we have come to think of work as a form of slave labor, an indentured servitude. We work because the boss-man or the boss-lady pays us so we do whatever he or she tells us. We have come to accept work as a necessary evil of a kind, something we should do to make money which then provides for necessities, wishes, desires, status, and whatever else we think is dignified. Work pays for all that. But we pay the price with our dignity by sacrificing our potential and committing ourselves to a mode where we have no real stake or interest in the game. We do whatever is asked of us, and often in a bad moods. It's interesting that we trade one kind of dignity for another kind of dignity. With moods of frustration, powerlessness, and overwhelm, we stop thinking and just execute like workers on the assembly line. In this interpretation, we get trapped in executing processes and procedures. Here you believe that your work is about checking off task lists or operating a certain tool. We become cogs in a wheel. That way of working, can produce some results, as I am sure it already has to a certain extent, but that interpretation of work is limiting and it’s likely keeping you stuck and frustrated.

To break from this pattern and to have a transformation about what is work, the question you have to ask is, for the sake of WHAT are you working. And although this question may seem unproductive at first, it can begin to transform immediately the direction of your work. This is a million dollar question; “what am I doing when I say I am working?”. Let this question, put you in touch with your care and your engagement with your environment.

The nature of human beings is that when we work on something that we deeply care about, our best selves show up. Maybe what you do is exactly the same, but how you do it completely changes. When you are working to take care of something, you can see opportunities that could never be seen by someone who dreads work. No matter what you are doing and where, the question you must ask yourself is, “what am I taking care of with my work?”

This is not a matter of changing semantics but shifting the space from which you operate, no matter your role.

When you encounter work in the mood of care, your real potential shines through you. Let me tell you, the secret to getting unexpected promotions in enterprises, as well as designing brilliant offers in startups, is to take a stand for something that matters. When you take a stand you begin to move out of your own volition instead of just following orders and normal procedures.

One important thing to note is that I am not asking you to immediately change jobs or do different work than what you are doing right now. No. What I am asking you is to consider what it is that you have the opportunity to really take care of with your work.

Third Move

Alright, this leads us to the third move that is the transformation of career which is about declaring belonging. Let me say this right up front; no serious career could ever be built without commitment and belonging to some domain of concerns shared by some community of human beings. If you feel stuck or lack clarity about what your career is, and how to expand your career, then it may be that you have made one of the three mistakes. First you may have taken your career to be defined by the series of job titles you have held, or by the degrees and certifications you got. Second, to avoid indignity, you may have chosen the specialist route which might work for a while, but when the underlying grounds start shifting, old specializations quickly become obsolete. Third, in your career you might be keeping all your options open and seeing where the winds or the highest bidders take you. If so, you are at the risk of being everywhere and nowhere at the same time. These three mistakes can trap you into operating in a style of a title chaser, a mercenary, or a dilettante in your career. You would have no belonging and may not even be aware of this tragedy.

To recover from these mistakes, consider that your career is actually not about job titles, degrees, specializations, keeping all options open, and getting the best pay you can, no matter where. Instead, consider, that your career is about making a broader commitment, to belong to some domain of concerns of some human beings, over a long arc of time. But we moderns avoid making commitments. We think commitment is a trap, and not smart.

So, we can begin to recover from this, by first and foremost, belonging to those that we currently work with. But most of us in our careers, live in a hidden mood, that I will do my best work some other time, some place else, with another group of people. Are the people you work with not worthy of your care and attention? Now, as I say this, a little voice might whisper in your ear, “But I don’t want to commit to these people because nothing new is gonna happen here”.

This is a resignation of a kind and your resignation is a signal that you actually care, but just haven’t been able to do something about it. I invite you to confront your resignation and consider adopting your people. And that commitment will reveal new opportunities to you, that you never thought possible before. From there you can begin to expand your belonging, by making a commitment to a broader set of concerns, faced by some larger groups of people.

As an entrepreneur, you could belong to either a local or global community of people, fighting a particular monstrosity of your era. It can deliver you some belonging and a place to stand for work, career, and innovation. In the chasm of your career, it is your belonging that will come to rescue you. Thus belonging is a secret of power.

If you want a career beyond what you're having right now, you must reimagine it as a commitment to taking care of some concern in a particular domain confronted by some people. To have a profound experience and breakthrough in your career, marry those people and marry their breakdowns.

Fourth Move

Having brought you these three moves we are now ready to dive into the transformation of language, which is about the mobilization of action. To paraphrase Rumi, it is time to unmuffle the drumheads and move into the field of action.

But you might ask, what is action? In our normal everyday common sense it looks like action is about the movement of physical objects like our bodies and other things. But what gets hidden from common sense is that action happens first in language. Action happens when we speak and take our speaking seriously. But most of the time, we take language for granted, and believe that we are using language to describe things as they exist. We speak in such a way that makes no difference, because our speaking is all about reporting on facts, and letting people know how we feel about stuff. This way of using language leaves us powerless. We ignore the role of language in which futures are built. This limited use of language doesn't let us go beyond the obvious circumstances, and clearly see the power of language in the invention of our futures.

To continue to live unaware of the power of language is to continue to live in oblivion to power, wealth, satisfaction, and all the abundance life has to offer. The descriptive use of language traps us into circumstances, whereas the generative view of language moves us into the field of action.

Now to help you mobilize action, I am going to introduce you to two generative action verbs that can begin to produce power and results in your world immediately.

The two action verbs are; requests and offers.

What is a request? Request is when you ask someone to do something for you, to take care of something that concerns you. For example, “Can we set up a meeting next week to discuss our project timelines?” is a request where the speaker is concerned about the future of their project.

And by making this request the speaker takes responsibility for their satisfaction, and what they want to happen in their future. But many people get very scared, shy, and awkward about making direct requests, and tend to manage action by giving hints, or making complaints about the state of affairs. When you don’t make direct requests, and just share information like “The project is behind” or “I am short on resources”, you leave the responsibility for taking the right action to the listener. This approach is not reliable as there is a good chance that you will end up with some resentment, for not having the satisfaction you wanted. Consider that by making requests we give others the opportunity to serve us. When we don't make direct requests to others, we make others small. We say to them “you can’t do anything for me, you are not capable.” And by doing that we take no responsibility for our satisfaction. “Would you consider me for a promotion” or “would you fund my project” are examples of requests where you take full responsibility for what you want to happen in your future. Now take a quick inventory of where in your work and life you have some dissatisfaction. Consider taking full responsibility for your satisfaction in the matter, and make a direct request without the attachment, that it must be accepted.

Now let us go to the second action verb, which is an offer. An offer is when you ask someone to take care of something for them that they are concerned about. For example, “Would you like me to mentor the new team member” is an offer where you take care of your boss’s concern about the readiness and performance of the new team member. When you offer to help anyone with their concern, you instantly gain some social power. The act of making an offer changes the nature of your relationship with the other person. If you take away something from this example, it is this: The straight up secret to gaining allies, getting promotions, and developing deeply meaningful relationships, is to listen to what is missing in people’s worlds, and make offers.

And that is how you use language to transform dissatisfaction into powerful action. If you navigate your world well by making requests and offers, take your commitments seriously, and deal with breakdowns powerfully, you will have the life of your dreams, and you will manifest a destiny that you would have designed for yourself.

What’s next?

Alright, now that I have shown you exactly what you need to do to break the barriers that are holding you back, and what you might do to redesign your future, you have one of the three choices.

First, you can take what you heard here, and say, “interesting” and keep scrolling through YouTube, and LinkedIn and all of that. You may get a lot of information but without serious commitment and action, none of it will make any difference. You may even get demotivated and give up in trying to go beyond where you are.

Your second choice is to take what you have learned here seriously, and begin to experiment with different moves I showed you. You will definitely see some results, but going at it alone without the guidance of an expert mentor may prove difficult, your progress may be slow, and you might get stuck.

Your third choice is that you can come study with us in a unique 1-year adventure that we call The Power Course. After years of helping people expand their potential, everything that I learned, I have organized into twelves superpowers, that you would learn over 12 months, in live conversations with me online. We start with a three month trial where we assess mutual suitability. It is like an alternative to an MBA or fancy shmancy executive education, except that it actually works. So, if any of this speaks to you, if you're feeling that spark of connection, I suggest you seriously consider taking The Power Course and schedule an hour of a free strategy call with one of us. At the call we will get to know you a bit, who you are, and what your concerns are. Bring your most important questions and challenges to the table, and I promise you that you will have an important insight about your next steps and what is possibly blocking you. Okay that is all. It has been a pleasure and I look forward to speaking with you. Thank you.

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