UQ: The Understanding Quotient
The Understanding Quotient is new science around the human experience. This concept is built off of research from hundreds of organizations, a few dozen movements, a couple empires and thousands of interviews.
There’s too many self help books, podcasts, and life hack tweeters out there. UQ is consolidated down to 7 rules.
- Stop it.
Stop overthinking decisions — move with intent. Stop making excuses — take action. Stop regretting — move forward. Stop trying to get people to like you — there always will be some who don’t. Stop caring so much about your work — it’s all fleeting. If we want a new start, the first step is to find what to stop.
2. Be grateful.
There is no more effective mental state than gratitude. For direction, creativity, likeability, and personal satisfaction. The one consistent piece of advice from leaders all throughout history is to own your mind.
Thoughts = behaviors = habits = character = circumstances = life
There’s a beautiful phrase, “whatever is lovely, think on these things.” Our minds are excellent at designing life. Being grateful puts our mind in the right place. When we practice gratitude, we notice more good and we subconsciously start to look, expect and create good things.
One easy way to practice building this spirit is to look for little joys. On my way to work, when everyone is demolishing the streets of New York with their fierce catwalks, I like to randomly skip when I cross the street. It gives me a little boost and sometimes it lifts others up too.
If skipping crosswalk stripes isn’t your thing, try the 15 seconds brain game. 15 seconds is all it takes to rewire some negative thought patterns in our brains. Take 15 seconds to meditate on something you’re thankful for. It could be a blueberry muffin or a loved one, really focus for 15 seconds and you’ll see results.
3. Evaporate fear from others’
Machiavelle said fear was more powerful than love. He’s wrong. Fear is easy. Most people are already afraid by default. If you want to be truly influential, release the fear of others. Recognize that they are afraid and set them free. This works really well with public speaking but it can also help in social situations, pitches & meetings.
Imagine this — you’re standing on a stage looking at thousands of people, you feel it in your knees or maybe your stomach. That aching fear feeling. But in reality, if you’re standing there, by default you have some level of authority. Most people fear authority. So by default, the audience will be subconsciously (or consciously) a little intimidated by you. That’s often why speakers choke, they’re staring at a bunch of afraid people and not sure what to do. You have a great responsibility as a speaker to put your audience at ease and help them not be afraid. Watch this shift your next meeting, presentation or pressure talk. You’ll notice by taking responsibility of making someone feel safe, you feel less anxious yourself.
Right before your next big meeting or presentation, as yourself, “how can I help everyone feel safe right now?”
4. Be real.
It would be so interesting (and terrifying) if we could read each other’s minds. I believe we already can and do.
There’s a fascinating study on how people read each other’s emotions done by a University in New Zealand. They took the sweaty shirts from a group of skydivers and the sweaty shirts from a group of runners and had the study participants smell both groups. While they sniffed the t-shirts (I hope they got paid generously for this task), their brains were hooked up to fancy neurowave scanners.
Unsurprisingly, when they sniffed the runners T-shirts, nothing outstanding happened. However, when they sniffed the skydivers shirts, the part in our brains responding to fear lit-up in the amygdala.
People can often tell (and smell!) what we are feeling, so we might as well just say it. That’s why salespeople lose deals so often — we feel like they’re hiding something, because often they are. Those who are surprisingly honest make us feel safe around them. This is why we respond positively when someone in a social setting says a vulnerable statement or when a presenter says AToday in the age of information, we want real more than anything. No more gimmicks — real.
5. Believe in something.
This one is touchy. Studies show leaders who align with a code of ethics are more successful. I’m not saying religion, but I am saying a guide that helps us live in the light and seek morality. There’s a few reasons why believing is so critical.
Belief makes us think bigger. We take more risks when we are confident in purpose or logos being behind all things. Marcus Arelious talks about the importance of abiding by logos — the philosophy that all things happen for a reason.
Believing in something also gives us a moral framework. The #1 characteristic companies hire for is integrity. Integrity is the alignment with a code of ethics. It’s rare to find systems, companies or schools today prioritizing the teaching of what it actually means to have integrity.
There is wisdom in the pursuit of believing in something. People who seek answers to life’s questions have a unique wisdom, creativity and often desire to innovate. Regardless of what you believe, every leader who wants to develop integrity should read Proverbs.
6. Be kind.
Be kind to all. Including [especially] yourself.
Kindness is not being nice. It’s trying to treat people as though we’re all connected. During the last 4 miles of the NY Marathon, I was dying. I kept stopping with the most terrible sideache. I saw someone stopped in front of me and I gave him a quick tap on the shoulder saying “let’s go!!!” The rest of the race, we paced each-other, literally pushed each-other and even helped push other runners who were stopped. As soon as the mission became bigger than me, it was not only more successful but extremely rewarding.
The very word kindness comes from the cognate word, kinned, that is, one of the same kin or race: Meaning, we should be treating each other as though we are of one tribe. Often times, we confuse being kind as being what WE would think is kind. The trick is to figure out (through patience and listening), what the other person thinks is kind, and speaking in their language.
7. Go BIG.
Our world is complex and magnificent. 2,000 years ago there were 200 million humans. Now there are 7.5 billion. What an incredible leap, enormous tragedy, innovation, creation, and beauty since the beginning. Sometimes I wonder what life would be like if I was one of the first humans. Cave lady. Desperate to stay alive, probably star gazing a ton (no netflix). Cave Erin would be flabbergasted at all that could be possible here in 2020.
Today we have unbelievable possibilities at our fingertips. There’s a youtube video for anything you desire to learn, copious resources if life hurts bad and plenty of problems to solve. So let’s GO BIG. Yes, we have responsibilities and it’s not always practical — here’s a fun idea.
Write down 50 things you hope happen out of your life. No pressure… just write as many as you can think of. I.E Get a dog, write a book, go to Zimbabwe. Write them quickly and don’t overthink it. Then categorize each of the items into 4 columns labeling them how many years it will take to do that thing (1, 3, 5, or 10). Now try to even it out (you may have way more in one column then another. The beautiful final step is to pick ONE item from your 1-year category and make that your greatest focus.
It will feel so good to complete that you’ll want to do the next big thing as soon as possible.
Thanks for reading — I hope you found this valuable! You can see more articles like this HERE.
Blessings,
Erin
