The System of You

A major reason why most people don’t ultimately change their behavior, no matter the number of self-help books they might buy, is that they lack a systematic understanding of what I like to call “The System of You.” 

“The System of You” is based upon the fact that you are a complex system that is reliant on a wide variety of things to function. You need food, air, and water to sustain your body, you need a routine, a task and a team to work, you need a spouse and a shared project to create a family, etc. Everything in your life is connected; everything needs something else, often a complex array of other things, to survive.  

We are all complex beings. We are multidimensional. And we need an approach to self-management that takes into account and leverages that complexity. 

After several years of refining my self-management system and mentoring entrepreneurs with my framework, I’ve come to realize that four categories encapsulate the essential aspects of human performance. You can’t achieve peak performance, the ultimate level of self-betterment if you don’t master the four pillars of the System of You: health, business, relationships, and self-development. 

All my offline work, and especially the Selfmastered Roadmap program, is based upon a system-oriented way of thinking that addresses the multidimensionality of the System of You. 

Systems Thinking

Systems thinking is a way of thinking that is not linear – it happens in cycles and loops because it takes place in the middle of a complex, interconnected entity. As a result, a change in one part of a system, any system, generates waves of changes that reach all other components, which in turn affect the initial premise. 

Within a system, everything is in constant evolution and change. Nature, in itself, is the ultimate system.

The good thing about systems is that they can be audited and optimized for better performance, in a never-ending trajectory towards continuous, sustainable, betterment. This, and no other, is the key to becoming proficient at what you do: understanding yourself in all your complexity and using it to your advantage.

Using chaos as a ladder, instead of a pit.

The self-help industry has recently caught up with this, as one of the latest buzzes in it is the difference between goals and systems. I believe this understanding of the superiority of systems for managing your life comes from Scott Adams’ book “How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big” (2014). 

Whatever the cause of the surge in popularity of these goals vs system thinking, it remains nevertheless true: the best approach towards mastering anything (especially, yourself) is creating a system that can be audited and optimized. 

But, alas, this is not enough. 

Having a systematic approach towards self-development and understanding the ultimate complexity of the System of You isn’t enough to ensure constant improvement.

Taxonomy of Achievement

I believe (maybe because I am an investor, something that requires me to look at the macro and the micro at the same time), that every person must have three things to succeed in life. 

• A world paradigm (MACRO)
• A toolkit of relevant strategies that help him navigate the world according to that world paradigm (MESO)
• A system that interconnects those relevant strategies (MICRO).

A world paradigm gives you a “new pair of lenses” to look at the world.

A toolkit of relevant strategies helps you navigate the world according to that world paradigm.

And, finally, a system connects all those relevant strategies and serves as a navigational tool and safety net when going through the world (MICRO)

If someone has these three things in order, he will always be guided by unfazed clarity, limitless motivation, and a sense of destiny that shall make him unstoppable.

This is why I approach self-management (or personal development, whatever you wish to call it) with a scientific and systematic perspective.

The Selfmastered Roadmap training is based upon this system-oriented way of thinking, which sits at the core of the Selfmastered Roadmap Tool. 

A final element of the Selfmastered approach of our systematic approach to peak performance is feedback loops and the type of practice that stems from them. – purposeful practice. 

Whatever it is that you are seeking and whatever the area that you want to improve, mastering the art of feedback loops and understanding the mental model of purposeful practice will bring a huge difference to your life. Do this right, across all domains of your life, and you will inevitably transform your life.

Feedback loops are essential to our development and ultimate success. They are the primary mechanism for how we learn and grow as human beings. As we progress through our everyday lives, we use feedback loops to guide us, both consciously and subconsciously.

Evolution itself is the utmost feedback loop – only the species that have been most adaptable (best suited for a change), survive. Feedback loops have become, therefore, part of our biological makeup…they is in our DNA. The prehistoric cavemen that were best suited to their environment and best learned how to learn and adapt to it… survived. The rest died. 

Peak performance as sublimated Evolution

Change and adaptation through feedback is, therefore, a key element to understand in our quest for peak performance, especially because achieving an ultimate advantage tends to be based in small gains, compounded over time, instead of big leaps in performance. 

This may not seem intuitive, so here’s an example: think back to when you were at school, where you would have a kid that had a slight advantage of playing basketball over everyone else. That slight advantage at first would have been just small, probably due to being born early in the year or having developed a bit earlier than his peers. Over time, though, that slight advantage will translate into better plays, which would get the attention of the coach, which would give this kid more of his attention during training. 

He would later get preferred positions in the team, which would, in turn, lead to better performances that would gather better feedback from the crowd, etc. The compounding effect of all these positive feedback loops would cascade over time and turn the kid a peak performer of youth athletics, far better than anyone else. 

What the kid needed to become the peak performer in his team wasn’t a special training regime in an elite facility, or an exclusive diet, or anything other than being better than anyone else at the beginning, and compounding it over time. 

This also happens in the business world, of course. Have you ever heard of overnight success? It probably was ten years in the making.

Such is the power of feedback loops, especially when paired with a sound understanding of how does the System of You works. 

If you want to radically transform your life systematically, forever, access the Selfmastered Roadmap we’ve created for people just like you. 

Dozens have already tried it. 

It just works. 

Start your journey here.

Thanks for reading,

Leon