Benjamin R. Lueck
Contrary to what your favorite guru has told you, the system is NOT broken. It is doing exactly what it was designed to do.
Here’s the truth…
The public education system was created to produce a docile, compliant supply of workers that had been trained to a baseline standard of competency dictated by the state and the industrialist employers.
It was designed to produce people who had been conditioned to show up, shut up, and perform to a standardized level to avoid the negative side effects of a powerful shame culture.
It was never intended to incentivize visionaries, innovators, or free thinkers… people like you…
AND ON TOP OF THAT…
The modern workplace was created to facilitate an environment that ensured maximum profit for the industrialists, maximum predictability for their managers, and complete control of their assets — which included the people employed in their companies.
The system was never designed to help you achieve your goals. It was always intended to take as much advantage of you as it could get away with, and help the corporate machines get bigger, more powerful, and more profitable.
So why do leaders like Tony Robbins, Barack Obama, and Donald Trump all talk about broken systems, then?!
It’s a classical copywriting and storytelling framework to draw people in and produce buy-in for whatever message they’re promoting — and it works.
The idea of the Broken System resonates with you because every hero needs a villain. Our imaginations create an ever-evolving narrative where we are the hero in our own story.
Some people see themselves as the hero who never loses — others as the hero who never wins but just has to keep fighting bigger and bigger opponents. Regardless or how you see yourself, it’s always presented as a fight against the villain “out there”.
Psychologists refer to this as an external locus of control, and it involves this idea that external forces are aligned against you, victimizing you against your will.
Nobody actually wants that.
So it’s easy to rally people to “stick it to the man” and stand up against a “broken system”.
In reality, though: What’s actually broken is your relationship with the “system”.
Whether it came from an epiphany, a singular experience that was the “straw that broke the camel’s back”, or a progressive realization that something was off — you looked around one day and thought:
“Something’s not working the way it’s supposed to.”
“I thought I’d be further ahead in life by now.”
“It seems like no matter what I do, I can’t get ahead.”
And then a dynamic leader comes along and tells you the reason you haven’t been able to get ahead is because the system is broken and they need your support to change it — to fix it so you get the life you’ve always wanted.
It’s easier to sell rebellion than personal responsibility.
It’s easier to arm people with pitchforks and torches to storm the castle.
It’s not easier to convince you that your paradigm needs to shift. That your personal system of interacting with the world around you is what’s actually broken, and that your limiting beliefs are the actual villain in the story.
Here’s the thing though — If you change your relationship with the world around you, you change your future. You change the narrative, and you change from things happening TO you… into things happening FOR you.
YOU change.
This is the driving force behind the concepts of “People First” and “Be Better Every Day” that I’ve talked about for years. It’s what has led to consistent, sustainable success for well over two decades.
I am able to fix broken business systems not by shaking my fist at the establishment, but by showing leaders where they’re pushing as hard as they can against doors marked “Pull”.
So where do you start?
Step 1: Stop blaming the system, “the man”, the devil, God, or anything else.
Everything in your life and business is the sum total of the choices you’ve made. There is no shame in that. It’s neither good nor bad — it just is.
Like Dr. Maxwell Maltz talks about in his book “Psycho-Cybernetics”, your mindset and your imagination magnetize you at a certain energetic resonance. Everything in alignment and harmony with who you’ve chosen to be right now, in this moment, will flow to you and create you current reality.
The great thing is that if you don’t like your current reality, you can change and forge a different path on your Hero’s Journey.
Step 2: List the top 3 stressors or frustrations in your life or business right now.
This should be easy, right? What are the top 3 things monopolizing your mental bandwidth? These are the biggest fires you’re trying to put out right now.
Write them down and be specific about what the problem actually is. Take a moment to look at what you wrote down and (as objectively as possible) ask yourself, “Is this really the problem? Or is this actually a symptom of something else?”
Once you’ve gotten clear on what your top 3 problems are right now…
Step 3: Write down the solution to each stressor.
There is light for every darkness, an up for every down, and a forward for every backward.
What would make the issues on your list go away?
Don’t write down things beyond your locus of control like winning the lottery, or requiring other people to change. (Think “genie rules” for this: no killing people, no making people fall in love with you, etc…)
Write down options that you can legitimately control and make happen. Once you have your list of possible solutions, here’s the final piece of the puzzle:
Ask yourself, “How do I need to change to become the leader that can make these solutions a reality?”
Then (as Ghandi said), be the change you want to see in your world. Stop blaming a system that is working exactly as designed and change your relationship to it.
Take the first step into becoming a better version of yourself, and creating the future you really want — unbroken, unchained, and unlimited.
You can do this. I believe in you, Hero.
Benjamin R. Lueck
Nashville, Tennessee, USA