This is a follow up article to the 3 Concepts of The Rebel Framework. You should read that article first if you have not. You can find it by clicking here.

This article is a step by step guide to use in order to apply the 3 main concepts of The Rebel Framework. It contains 5 specific steps (which spells out ‘REBEL’) on how you can address every situation, problem, task.

Before diving into the steps, it is first important to understand the value of being a rebel in your thinking and actions.

Why it is Important to be Different / Unique (a Rebel)

Attention is the currency of today’s society.

In today’s society where everything is vying for your limited attention, we gravitate towards things that can keep and hold our attention.

Think about the things in our daily lives that has grabbed our attention:

• A Tiktok video that has multiple millions of views.

• An advertisement which made you remember about the product being sold.

• A quote that left an impression on you.

What made you hooked onto them? We are more likely to remember and resonate with something that has stood out rather than something that is common.

By being unique, you become one in one and you stand out. As you differentiated yourself from others, you can hold attention.

If you can capture attention with the way you think, write, or act, you are able to create value out of it.

Differentiation and Uniqueness Creates Value.

A product differentiates itself by its features or its quality. Sometimes it can also differentiate itself by its design or brand. Think about a product that you use on a daily basis.

• The iPhone may not be stacked with features or the best tech in it. However, lots of people buy the iPhone because of perceived value.

• They find the iPhone easy to use. They can integrate it easily with their Macbooks and iPads. Some people buy it just because it is an Apple product.

A blog differentiates itself due to the value that its articles brings to the reader. Think about blogs that you have read that you kept going back to.

• An example is a blog called Marketing Examples (website linked here). The writer Harry Dry shares his lessons and ideas on marketing.

• The articles provide a perspective that is unique and gives you solutions which creates value for its readers. It makes you want to go back for more.

A YouTube channel differentiates itself through the creativity of their videos. Think about the content of a YouTuber that you follow.

• The Youtuber with the highest number of subscribers, Jimmy, also known as MrBeast. He comes up with original and out-of-the-box video ideas and executes on those ideas.

• There are many copycats of MrBeast’s videos, but how many of them do we know and remember?

There are many other ways that brands choose to differentiate themselves. All these ways of differentiation creates value.

Applying it to yourself - Be Different to Capture Attention

If we want to achieve success that is different from the general public, then we have to think, act and do things differently from the general public.

For us as individuals, we should take the principle of differentiation and apply it to our lives.

Be it in your work ethics, your skillsets, your thought process, your rapport building, your kind personality - choose to differentiate yourself.

At the same time, you should aim to bring value. If you can add value on top of doing it in a unique manner, it will result in positive outcomes.

Let’s walk through the 5 steps of the “REBEL” acronym.

R - Reframe your Mind

Our beliefs and experiences shape our actions and behaviours that we exhibit outwards. It also affects our perception of our own abilities and our own capability to complete or achieve a certain goal.

We must learn to reset our expectations and reframe our mindset to one that is positive of achieving something that is difficult. When you do, you become clear-minded and focused on seeking out solutions to achieve your goals.

Guiding Principles:

1) Identify Limiting Beliefs:

Limiting beliefs are assumptions that you hold that cause you to doubt your own abilities to achieve something. These could be negative self-talk, societal expectations, ingrained beliefs.

• What are the assumptions you hold about yourself or the situation that might be holding you back? Why do you believe in those beliefs? What are my biggest fears or doubts related to the goal?

2) Challenge Your Assumptions:

Have a Rebel Mindset and question the validity of your limiting beliefs. Seek out evidence that either confirms or contradicts these beliefs.

• Are they based on facts or fear? If you find evidence that confirms your limiting beliefs about yourself, are there things you can do to overcome them?

3) Redefine Your Narrative:

Craft an entirely new perspective that empowers you to achieve your goals. Have faith in your own abilities and strengths. Have hope that you can achieve much more than you think you can.

• What empowering belief can you adopt instead?

E - Examine the Current State

Always remind yourself that we live in the present. When we live in the past, we do not easily let go. When we live in the future, we become worried and fearful. Thus, move on from the past and worry less about the future. Be in control of the present.

Learn to take stock of the current situation to find out the gaps that you need to bridge between the current state and the desired state. By being honest and humble about the current situation, we can be hopeful that we can achieve positive outcomes by bridging those gaps.

Guiding Principles:

1) Define Your End Goal:

Identify and spell out the most desirable outcome or goal that you want to achieve.

• What do you ultimately want to achieve? What is the overall positive outcome of the collective?

2) Assess the Present Reality:

Conduct an honest assessment of the current situation. Analyse both the positive and negative sides, understand both the left and the right point of views. Seek to understand and establish facts.

• What are the existing solutions, approaches, or beliefs surrounding your goal? What are the limitations or challenges you face?

• What is happening currently and how is everyone reacting? Why do I feel stuck with this situation?

3) Identify the Gaps between Current and Desired State:

• Think about the situation - What rocks and what sucks? What is good and bad? What do I need to do to increase the good and decrease the bad?

• Think about who you are - What are your strengths and weaknesses? What skills do I need to acquire to become useful and help the situation?

• Think about the task at hand - What needs to be done and what are the blockers? What do I need to do to reduce the blockers and complete the task?

B - Brainstorm New Ideas

Coming up with simple ideas may be easy. However, coming up with entirely new and original ideas is much more daunting and can be challenging to many. You may not believe that you have the creativity and the originality to come up with completely new ideas.

To create fresh ideas from scratch, it calls for novel and disruptive thinking. Creativity in us needs to be continuously fed and nurtured. We can build our creative and novel thinking skills through continuous practice of brainstorming. Over time, new ideas starts to flow naturally in our minds.

Guiding Principles:

1) Remove Limitations that you put on yourself:

Many times, we stop exploring an idea due to lack of resources, such as money, time, or skill. Remove any such limitations that you may have and just come up with the idea first. As long as it is within the realms of physics, be free to to be creative.

• If I have all the money in the world, what creative solutions could I come up with for this goal? If there are no limitations, what ideas can I come up with?

2) Think the Opposite:

Question whether the exact opposite of the current way of doing things is possible. Be free to confront what is seemingly obvious and flip it on its edge.

• Is it necessary to follow this current method of doing things? What if we forget the most obvious way to do things, will there be another way?

3) Seek Inspiration from Unrelated Fields:

Inspiration can be found in the most unlikely places. Understand principles and approaches that are used in different fields or situations and see if it can be applied to your field.

• Are there any unconventional approaches from other fields that could be adapted to my situation? How can existing ideas be adapted to the challenge you are trying to solve?

• An example is SpaceX with its reusable rockets. If we use a car once and throw it away after, it is a useless car. So why should one-time use rockets be acceptable? This idea sparked them to make reusable rockets.

E - Experiment through Action

The hardest step to take is always the first step. What prevents us from taking that first step is usually the need to be perfect because you have too many considerations. It is natural to feel this way, but without action, nothing gets done.

This is why you conduct mini experiments. The objective of experimentation is to minimise these barriers for yourself to begin taking action.

It is not an “let’s go all-in” approach, but a carefully thought out and methodical approach to taking action.

Remind yourself - you miss all the opportunities that you don’t take.

Guiding Principles:

1) Help Yourself Begin by Starting Small:

Make the first step one that is easy to overcome. As humans, it becomes very difficult to start on a task if it seems impossible to complete. When you break down your ideas into smaller experiments, it becomes easy to kickstart your internal engine for taking action.

• What is the first small step I can take to test the feasibility of this unconventional idea? What action is small enough that will get me started on this idea/project?

2) Overcome the Need for Perfection through Experimentation:

The idea of experimentation is quickly test if your ideas work or not. You prevent yourself from feeling like you are going “all-in” and needing to be perfect. As your actions result in actual output, it allows you to quickly get feedback and adjust your approach based on what you learnt.

• How can I design the experiments to learn as much as possible, regardless of the outcome? Can this be done in a quicker way for me to get feedback?

3) Build Momentum to Do More:

With each mini experiment that you take action on, you build momentum. You will become addicted to the momentum especially once you start establishing small wins with each action. Over time, each experiment become easier and faster to complete. Be ready for this momentum to take over and remember to remain consistent.

• How do I ensure that I can keep my consistency in my actions? Can I set some habits in place to ensure that I keep taking action?

L - Learn from your Mistakes

When you experiment on your ideas and take action, you are bound to meet into failures and mistakes. Yet when we were younger, we were never taught how to deal with failures and mistakes in schools.

Growth comes from the adversity of not getting anything easy in life. There will be times when you feel like everything is not going your way. We must learn to accept that goals are meant to be difficult to attain, and you have to persevere through the tough times. Once you overcome failures and get out on the other side, you will be thankful that you pushed through.

Guiding Principles:

1) Embrace Failure in Your Mind:

Understand why and how you feel when you meet into failures. Reframe your mindset on treating failures as opportunities for learning. Accept that they are necessary in order for you to grow.

• Why do you feel this way when you make mistakes? Am I prepared and willing to accept that failure and mistakes are taking action?

2) Give Yourself Time when Making Mistakes:

We all need time to slowly improve and stop making mistakes. Sometimes, we get too hurried and nervous to prevent more mistakes that it stops us from enjoying what we are doing. We end up taking the safe route and sacrifice growth. Give it time.

• Is this a mistake that I can benefit from once I overcome it? Do I have any blindspots that is causing more mistakes? Who can help advise me on my blindspots?

3) Identify, Refine, and Improve:

Identify key learnings from your mistakes. Think and apply those learnings to refine your approach. Iterate to improve your approach and try again.

• What did you learn from conducting experiments? What worked well? What could be improved? Based on what I learned, what would I do differently next time?

Conclusion

The above 5 steps are meant to be repeated in a continuous cycle. This is because in the last step, as you are learning from your mistakes:

• You get to understand yourself better (Reframe your Mind);

• You get new ideas (Brainstorm New Ideas);

• You get motivated to take more action (Experiment Through Action);

Thus, this is a cycle of continuous improvement. At the end of it all, once you have done this repeatedly, hopefully you attain a life of freedom.

I wrote another article around understanding our motivations and needs. Once we are able to understand our needs and be able to resolve them, we become more in control of our own lives. If you are interested, you can read about it by clicking here.