What is Your Harajuku Moment?

Have you ever heard of or do you know what a Harajuku moment is? For most of us, we have no earthly idea what that is. I have been a long time disciple of a guy named Tim Ferriss. He wrote this book, The Four Hour Body. I had no idea what the Harajuku moment was until I read this book. 

I’ve also been a disciple of Tony Robbins for a really long time. One of the things that he says is that all change happens in a moment, and I’ve never really understood that until I read this book. So I want to read this to you. 

This is on page 36 and 37 for those of you overachievers who might get the book; 

“For most of us the How-To books on our shelves represent a growing to-do list, not advice we follow. Several of the better known tech CEOs in San Francisco have asked me at different times for identical favors. They wanted an index card with bullet point instructions for losing abdominal fat. Each of them made it clear,  “Just tell me exactly what to do and I’ll do it.” I gave them all the necessary technical advice on one 3×5 card knowing in advance what the outcome would be. The success rate was an impressive 0%. 

People suck at following advice. Even the most effective people in the world are terrible at it. There are two reasons. One, most people have an insufficient reason for action. The pain isn’t painful enough. It’s a “nice to have” not a “must have”. There has been no Harajuku moment. Number two, there are no reminders. Inconsistent tracking equals no awareness which equals no behavioral change. Consistent tracking, even if you have no knowledge of Fat-loss or exercise, will often be advice from world class trainers. But what is this all important Harajuku moment? It’s an epiphany that turns a “nice to have” into a “must have”.”

As a coach, I used to fall into a trap all the time. Now I call it the “how trap”. 

Let’s just say we had a goal. And the goal was to hit 10 listings in one month, right? And they would say, “Okay, I gotta know exactly what to do”. I would fall right into that trap and share all these tactics and strategies, and just like what Tim found out with those tech CEOs in San Francisco is I would write out all this information and then they wouldn’t follow it.

So I got smarter and started asking a different question because I didn’t want to get stuck in that trap anymore. I would say “Okay. 10 listings is the goal. Let me ask you a question, who’s the person you love most in the world?” And they say my kid, great. God forbid, your kid gets sick. You take them to the doctor, the doctor says I have good news and bad news. The good news is that we can save them. The bad news is it’s going to require a life saving surgery. 

You have 30 days, just 30 days to get this surgery done. I’m the only doctor in the world by the way that does the surgery and I don’t take cash, I don’t take credit. I take signed listing agreements and you’ve got to get 10 of them now. What you would not do as a parent is say “Hey, you know it was nice knowing you… let’s go to Disneyland and enjoy these last 30 days.”

No. See, what would happen is that something inside of you would activate. I call these latent forces of potential. We all have these forces inside of us that lay dormant or hidden and we’ve got to find something that will activate them. That’s what a Harajuku moment is, it’s when you take your should and you turn it into a must. If you think about your kid’s life being on the line if you don’t get 10 listings, well everything’s gonna shift. 

Tony talks about how all great achievement happens in a three part sequence: state, story and strategy.  If you think about walking out of that doctor’s office, you’re gonna go into a state, and that state is a pure state of activation, a pure state of possibility. And the story will be “I’ll do whatever it takes”. When you’re at that place, strategies are everywhere yet we fall into this trap of shelf help where we lie to ourselves. We think that if we had a perfect plan then all of a sudden the stars would align and we would take all this action.We would convert what we call knowledge, which is what we know, into wisdom, which is what we do. Yet time and time again, we find that that just isn’t the case. 

If you look at the second piece to what he said, no consistent tracking equals no awareness, which creates no behavioral change. There’s this idea that’s called self quantification. Self quantification is all about the metric we could measure that would tell us that the change is occurring. If you’re looking inside of a person or a business, one of the best sequences of change that I’ve ever seen is track, trend, interpret. So if we’re looking to change something within you or part of your business, the question is, “what’s the singular measure that we could ultimately find to self quantify what we did and track that over time?” This would tell us through a trend if we’re getting closer or further away from what it is that you ultimately want. 

So what is the thing that you could quantify that would drive the change that you so desperately seek? I think if you get these things right, meaning you convert your shoulds into musts, you engineer your Harajuku moment, you find a metric to measure to self quantify, then over time, you can absolutely win. 

Do this and you can get out of the trap of shelf help and become the hero version of yourself that you are meant and deserve to be. I hope that you’ll take this advice. It could change your life forever.