The best evidence of this concept comes from a Nobel Prize that was won in 1977 from a fellow by the name of llya Prigogine. Born in Russia, Prigogine was taken to Belgium as a child. He received a doctorate in 1941 at the Free University in Brussels, where he accepted the position of professor in 1947. Prigogine’s work dealt with the application of the second law of thermodynamics to complex systems, including living organisms. In his book Order out of Chaos, he brings to light the fact that what happens after chaos is in fact much more stronger and have a broader impact than any time prior. Sounds scary! Don’t worry, if you do not know what that is allow me to explain. All it says is that for example if a tree falls in the forest and lies on the ground, over time it will rot and decay. It will ultimately fall apart, and its structure will go to more and more disorder, or in layman’s terms, to more and more chaos.  In other words, the 2nd law says that left alone, things in our universe seem to go to more and more chaos or disorder. Things fall apart. The universe is degenerating, things ultimately crumble and fall. A body in motion, grows; a body that does not grow, does not stay stable, it starts to decay into further disorder. In a sense we say it dies. Make sense? See now that makes you an expert on the 2^nd law of thermodynamics.

Have you ever met a person like that? They do nothing with their lives and become couch potatoes in front of the TV or starring at the computer screen on mundane stuff all day every day. Their lives and their health seem to fall apart. Same happens in business. Many organizations are like that. They get fat, happy and complacent and do not respond to competitive threats and ultimately fall apart or face the ultimate consequence, they collapse. Bloat happens. This is evident in business with the same location for decades, same employees doing the same things as if it was still 20 years ago. And eventually they go bankrupt. The same can be said for the global monetary system as it seems to accelerate to greater and greater degrees of chaos and disorder. From first-hand experience, certainly in our own relationships with our families and friends, if left unattended for just long enough, seem to decay and fall apart. This is the 2nd law at work. True in nature and true in life. Scientists, physicists, chemists, sociologists all have known this fact for years. People over the years have resigned themselves to the belief that sooner or later things will “wind down” both in relationships and in our lives. Life cycles of companies can be predicated on this law.

Now that I have convinced you with evidence, allow me to throw a ranch in your thinking.  However, what Prigogine got the Nobel Prize for was a whole different observation? He discovered contrary to this tried and true law that said that things fall apart. In fact, it is the opposite of disorder. It is how nature TRULY creates order out of chaos. His observation was: If you take a normal organism, a cell, a molecule, a chemical compound, or such and pass energy into it… it will take it in and pass it out. Much like us humans, we can take a normal daily allotment of work, food, conversation, challenge and input. We take it in and then we manipulate it and pass it out in the form of energy, output, results, waste and the like. Simply, garbage-in, garbage-out (not in a literal sense). Makes sense! Now, let go one step further, something interesting happens when we take that neat little system and start adding more energy to it. We start overloading it a bit and putting it under more ‘pressure.’ In physics this is called “perturbation”. Perturbation is simply upsetting the status quo of any system. Have you ever had a little too much on your plate? Yes, both food and stress. Have you a little too much to drink?  Have you ever been given one problem too many to deal with? Has your husband or wife ever unloaded their problems on you one too many times? Were you a bit perturbed!!! Catch the drift… Yes, you can laugh, it won’t be funny for too long.

Prigogine observed that as you start overloading the system, increase the amount of energy that any organism or system has to take, you begin to exceed its holding capacity and it begins to shake. It starts to quiver and vibrate. The best example I can think of is…Take 1978 Chevy Citation and drive it on a F22 runway at 270 miles an hour. What will it do? Ever felt like that? (YES…I did own a 1978 Chevy Citation and I did try to race with a mustang cobra. Yes, I was young and stupid once). As the pressure or perturbation increases, it vibrates even more until it reaches a point where it seems that it cannot handle any more. Have you ever had a day when you were under such stress, that if someone gave you one more problem you just want to “strangle” them? You are lying to yourself you if think you have not.  We have all been there. Whether it is you or that tiny little organism, a family, a small company with few people or a large organization or a global economy … you have been perturbed to the max and have reached that threshold …. an imaginary line so to speak. You are truly in the “heat.” It feels like you are going to explode. It looks like it is going to collapse. And then something happens that we humans call it “a miracle”. But in the ‘right’ conditions, something else happens to a living organism, be it an individual or a team, a town or country or even a continent. What actually happens here is what Prigogine got the Nobel Prize for.

You see, it appears that things are going to blow-up, you feel like you are about to explode, or the entire country is going to hell…wait…but something else happens. The system seems to reach this imaginary line or threshold and it pauses there for a moment, as if to ponder its next move and then …. NO BANG! It does not fall apart; it does not blow up … it actually REORDERS and EVOLVES into a more complex structure that is able to handle the pressure. The pressure actually takes a chaotic condition and advances the system into a more ordered and complex structure. It itself evolves into a new system. Take our tree for example. If it falls in the forest, or trees cutdown and buried under cites, or into a marshland and sinks into the earth … under the pressure of the earth above, over time, it turns into … coal. Under even more pressure and heat this same set of compounds ultimately can turn to… can you guess… – a beautiful diamond.  A substance that is substantially more complex yet stronger by far and able to handle incredible amounts of pressure.

So, the question you ask is – What am I saying??? What I am saying is under pressure is the way nature ensures its own continuum, its transformation and growth. It is by UPSETTING the status quo and overloading existing systems. This is also how we grow! Think about it. Say, you decide the gym is your path to your glory.  Do you pump 250 lbs. the first day at the gym? Obviously not! You progressively grow. You add 5 lbs. every couple of days. You put more and more weights on the bar every day. As you pump your muscles to one more rep, they felt like they are going to explode, but instead they grow and develop. They literally transform. You become more fit, and able to handle more weight, run to the next light pole and back, do more push-ups. When you add more pressure, is only when transformation happens. It only happens when the “heat” is turned up. This is the way nature works. It is only we as humans that tend to defy and run from the process.

I have broached this subject with hundreds of people. They all agree that as normal growing and aspiring human beings, they all would like to grow. We all want to “Evolve”, become more fit, more able, more alive. So, the question I ask is, why when you approach this imaginary line in your life… the line that maybe looks like facing up to uncomfortable realities about your relationships, finances, career and health … why do we not cross it and re-order and transform? Truly this is what great athletes do. They push harder and harder until they cross the barriers that put them into world class status. Roger Banister was the first to break the four-minute mile. Do you know what happened in the next six months once Banister did it? 38 more people were able to run a four-minute mile. Why didn’t any one do it till Roger did it? In a relationship when one partner is growing, the other staying still, what happens? You got chaos. And within this chaos ultimately a breakup. Then why do we not do it? Why do over 50% of the marriages in America never survive the test of endurance and instead turn into a divorce? Why when the heat gets high, do we run for cover?

Here is why: It is because in this chemical, physical or sociological reaction that occurs, there is another interesting thing to observe. Just as the system or compound begins to transform, it releases energy. In a chemical reaction this is usually in the form of heat energy. As the system re-orders to a new state, some of the bonding mechanisms release as the system evolves to a more efficient state. Now when humans release energy it is usually in the form of…you guessed it… EMOTION.

Emotions can be in any form: Happy or Sad. Ecstatic or Dejected.  Emotions in the form of anger, fear, sadness, confusion, frustration, etc. And the reason that most people do not choose to cross that line and avoid the heat, is simply they are terrified of the ensuing emotion. We as a society are not taught how to deal with it, work with it and use it. Instead we are conditioned to run from it, stuff it, hide it, deny it, and scorn it. We grow up with things like “big boys don’t cry!” “man-Up BOY…we are told. “Women should not make waves, should be polite, etc.” I am sure you have for sure heard all that garbage. The problem is, if you do not allow the emotion to release, it is like capping the reaction. If you do not allow the energy to release in nature … the process gets detained in that spot. When it comes to emotion, the typical reaction is for a guy is “that guy is a wimp, be a MAN”. For a woman is “oh she is being a girl, must be the hormones”. 

The challenge is that we ARE under pressure all the time. Our society is getting more and more complex, always on, with more to deal with than ever before. We are tethered to tech. Devices control every moment of our lives. Our devices tell us what, when and where. We have lost control of us.

If the emotion is not released, we get frozen right in our tracks, above the max line, all filled up and truly go eccentric! I am sure you see it all around you. There are people walking around out there like volcanoes ready to go off at any moment. The pressure cooker can only handle so much. People are blowing up other people. Have you ever said something to someone, and they nearly took your head off for no reason? Have you ever done it to someone else? If you said no, you are sacred shit less about your emotion. There are kids out there right now that are crying for help in their families and in their schools and we are abandoning them there because we cannot deal with the emotion. Teachers, managers and parents go into shock; they can’t handle it because, it’s cultural – it’s part of the way we are as normal. And enough of that going on and we end up with a bunch of people frozen, stuck right at the threshold line.  They’re like Coke bottles all shook up. What happens is, if you shake it up long enough…. Do you know what happens? Does it really blow?

A very interesting thing happens; you see it in people and organizations too. Organizations are under tremendous amounts of pressure. What happens is that it gets all shook up inside and there’s no way to release the emotion. Yet because this is a natural process, the energy MUST release. If there is no way to reasonably release it in an organization, just like if you shake up a Coke bottle hard enough, what happens right under the cap? What does it start to do? It begins to fizz out. That’s called turnover. That’s when people start leaving the organization. That’s when the brightest minds in the organization start leaving because there’s no way to express themselves anymore and they’re going to greener pastures. That’s when families fall apart. They fizz out.

Nature doesn’t have to think about this. It just does. Naturally. All those times anybody ever told you that you were stupid, anybody ever told you that you were crazy, anybody ever told you to shut up, anybody ever told you that it was not okay to show emotion were absolutely arresting the very process that Mother Nature gave you to grow and learn. The good news is that under the right circumstances, if the emotion is allowed to release, then the growth process can proceed, and a person can evolve.

You must simply learn to STAND IN THE HEAT!!! Because the good news is that that is how you will grow. Have you ever noticed that once you have successfully dealt with a big problem that when others like it appears, it does not seem so bad anymore?? If you do not, the irony is that you will keep storing up the pressure until one day you CANNOT hold back any longer and you do blow up. Young kids are settling their frustrations with deadly weapons, lying in wait for other children so they can gun them down, a man walks into a fast food restaurant and blows away over a dozen people, relationships get discarded with a gun or a knife or other weapons of choice, just because we don’t allow ourselves to STAND IN THE HEAT.

Look, STANDING IN THE HEAT is the way nature works. It is the “Human Element”. It always goes from the simple to the complex … never from the complex to the simple. Our job is to learn to STAND IN THE HEAT and become more fit and able to deal with the complexity of an ever-changing world … not to run for cover at the first sign of threat. If you have friends telling you to slow down and make your life simpler… that is counter-evolutionary at some point!!!! You must smell the roses but be able to do it all the time while you are growing.

The truth is that you do not have to STAND IN THE HEAT. You can choose not to deal with the pressure. However, if you make that choice, understand that the 2^nd law will take over. STANDING IN THE HEAT is your only assurance of things not falling apart. STANDING IN THE HEAT is the only assurance of things not going into disorder. 

Now, even more important about STANDING IN THE HEAT has to do with another observation that was part of the Nobel laureate. That had to do with what lies on the other side of the heat. First of all, Prigogine disproved once and for all that the world we live in is in equilibrium or that everything ultimately goes to a state of balance. The so-called pendulum will always steer toward the 6. He found that in this constant turbulence of nature, there was no such thing as equilibrium. Everything is continually out of balance, swinging one way and then the other and only experiencing a balance state for the briefest of milliseconds. There are times that you must focus hard on a skill, a challenge, a problem, a child, a relationship if you are going to “breakthrough” to a new order of existence, a true transformation. Other things may have to be put aside. There may NOT be balance in your life EVER!!! That is actually perfectly fine, if you know and understand that that is how nature works.

Prigogine’s second observation was that once something crosses that ‘line’ it never goes back. The process is irreversible. A seed grows into a tree. It never retreats back to being a seed again. The process is also unpredictable. In other words, you cannot always tell in advance what life will be like if we truly confront our boss and tell him or her the truth about our work or us. We will never know unless we tell our significant other what needs to be told.  We do not actually know what will happen if we start changing our friends and surrounding ourselves with people who ask us to be stronger. People who believe in us to be more than what we show. Take the example of a marathon runner. When do you think they hit the so-called “wall”? How may marathoners never get beyond once they “hit-the-wall”!!! (the average is 14 miles). Now what happens once they pass the “hit-the-wall” stage. They complete and keep on running more marathons. What happens on the other side of that ‘line’? Whatever lies on the other side of the STANDING IN THE HEAT may be unrecognizable. A grain of sand under pressure turns to glass and with even more pressure and heat can be transformed into a silicon chip, a much more highly complex structure than the sand and completely unrecognizable from where it began.

This is why there is so much fear of STANDING IN THE HEAT. It is because at some level, being creatures of nature, we are afraid of the unknown. Therefore, right when the heat gets hot and the pressure rises, rather than taking the leap, we falter and retreat because of that pre-conditioned voice in our brain that tells us “this is stupid, you are about to get slaughtered, this will never work, play it safe, and numerous more that you can come-up with without my help.

The ensuing emotion does not always have to be negative. Imagine being in love with someone. Finally, the day comes when you truly make love. You cross the line… and what happens? Have you ever been working extremely hard on a project with a team and under terrific pressure, when suddenly somebody says something, and everyone starts laughing uncontrollably and you really have no idea what you are laughing about? This is the same thing. Ever notice that right after that, the pressure seems to ease a bit, relationships grow stronger and things start flowing?? A “breakthrough.” With every breakthrough comes an occasional breakdown. Breakdowns are an integral and critical part of any breakthrough. When we welcome and embrace breakdowns, what they reveal actually affords us a larger opportunity—steppingstones shall we say, upon which we can expand and extend the breakthroughs. Breakdowns occur only against a background commitment—they are a juncture for extraordinary action, for making something happen that would not have happened otherwise.

What STANDING IN THE HEAT is all about is that it is the only place that breakthroughs happen. I have never ever seen a great team become an extra-ordinary team, unless it was under pressure. I have never seen a great accomplishment, great leader, revolutionary action, or the like occur unless there was pressure. It just does not happen.

Great families, companies, championship teams are not ” A HAPPY CAMP.”

The question always arises…Is there a danger in this? You bet. I am not advocating going back to work and screaming at your staff, persecuting your kids or inflicting undeserved pressure on your relationships. There is a very critical element to STANDING IN THE HEAT, that if abused can create tragedy, and if nurtured can create miracles.

As I stated, we do not know what lies on the other side of the line. What we do know that whatever the new system, structure or personality that lies on the other side of the heat is, it will somehow take on some of the characteristics of the pressure that was applied to it. For example, if a tree grows on a very windy plain … over time the tree will grow bent over with very twisty and knurly wood. This is because of the environment that it grows up in.

Take the example of Hitler, Mussolini and the like, of applied pressure gone askew. Certainly, no role models, but nonetheless they applied tremendous pressure to get the results that countries became industrial power houses. The problem is where the pressure was coming from. What was Hitler’s motives and mindset. He used terror, genocide, hatred, fear and the like to apply the pressure. It worked. However, look at the cost!!! Millions of people were slaughtered, and humanity would experience atrocities like never before. As a matter of fact, it is still engrained in the culture of eastern Europe and Africa today. Ethnic cleansing is still found in parts of the culture and region today.

The key that I am driving at is that the mindset and environment that is created is critical to determining the outcome. If you want your kids to get good grades you can get angry, yell and threaten. It may work, but you will end up with kids with angry personalities or completely intimidated. If you want your staff to work harder, you can bury them under heavy loads and threaten, but you will pass that mindset on to them. If you are going to STAND IN THE HEAT or coach others to do so you must come from the point of view of support, love, acknowledgment and celebration. If you do, then those mindsets will engrain within the new system. How many times have you ever thought that you were cracking up? Thought you were going to lose your marbles? You were probably right on the edge. This is the place where mother nature does her most brilliant work. This is being in the heat. Do not worry if you think that you are nuts. All great leaders have found themselves in the same place many times. One of my mentors defined “sane people as those who think that they are insane” part of the time. It is only those who feel that they are completely sane that are the truly insane ones. If you can trust that nature knows her job, that the universe makes no mistakes and that what other people think is none of your business, you will thrive in the heat. Most great success stories are of those who continue to LOOK for the heat because they know that is where their breakthroughs will come.

Most people avoid the problems. If you understand what I am saying, you will understand that the biggest opportunity for success and growth is in a problem. It forces us into the heat. Most of us do not like problems … For example, let us say that you are here, and over there is a problem, typically which way do people go when they see the problem? The other way … Phooom! ‘I’m out of here, yeah, another day another dollar, I’ll do that some other time. That is ridiculous, you can’t do that … ‘ That kind of thinking assumes that we live on flat plain, on a flat planet. And there is no such thing as a flat plain, anywhere in nature, anywhere in the universe. What we live on, is a sphere. Most events, relationships, causes and effects are circular.

So the big joke is, the harder you back away from the pressure, whack! bam! you back right into it. Crazy how that happens. How many of you have a direct experience of this? I am sure that you could write at least ten things on a sheet of paper right now where you’ve done this? You see, that’s the joke. The joke is the more you try to run away from this process, the more you back into it. Interestingly enough, the fact that the reward for solving a problem is usually another problem. A bigger one. It turns out that the better you are at STANDING IN THE HEAT and solving problems, yours and others, the more the universe or the business community or whatever rewards you. It is as if person’s sole purpose in life is simply to seek out problems and solve them. It also turns out that the more problems you solve, the greater the number of people win. It is as if what we hate dealing with the most is what we as human beings are best at.

STANDING IN THE HEAT is the only way we can Live, Endure & Survive…