EFR 747: 5 Power Principles You Need to Create the Life of Your Dreams in Just One Year and Why Most People Fail in Pursuit of Their Biggest Goals with Wendy Leshgold

What does it mean to live a life ever forward? So, before we kind of navigate these five core principles and how you say we can do that in a very unique way in a year, when you hear ever forward, what does that mean to you and how would you describe it? How would you kind of use what you do, your expertise, to help someone move forward, to live a life ever for?

0:00:26 - Speaker 2 Yeah, I would say that you want to start with really defining what Does what would you love the future to look like? Right, because when you think about moving forward, you're thinking about your life in the future, and if you're not clear what the future looks like, then it's that's really hard. Then it becomes sort of just you're living the day-to-day, it's all a swirl and you're not moving forward. You might be on a hamster wheel. So the first step is to think about, a year from today, what would I love my life to look like? What does success look like in terms of my professional life, my personal life? What do I want to be known for as a human being? And when you can really think about that in with clarity and also not constrained by what's already happened in the past, that's the path to moving forward. That's the first step.

0:01:18 - Speaker 1 Why a year, when we're thinking about this Dream life, this life that we want to build? Why a year? Why is that the sweet spot? Why is that? Is that the clinical, the minimum effective dose here for sustainable change?

0:01:31 - Speaker 2 Yeah, that's a great question and one that I've been asked a lot of times. And we, when you think about defining your goals, if I was to say to you, oh, tell me about your life in ten years, dream and color for ten years, you, you might have some ideas of what you'd want it to look like, but they'd be a little bit vague, because there's only so much specificity you can have it's kind of like too far off, yeah, yeah. It's like you're ten years out.

0:01:58 - Speaker 1 I really know that much about that exactly.

0:02:01 - Speaker 2 So so ten years might feel too far, even five years. You might not be a hundred percent sure I'm. I still gonna be living in the city. I don't know if I want to be, I don't know if I want to work for this company in five years, but a year feels like you have a long enough time to be able to accomplish stuff, but it's not too long. That it's vague, you can be very specific and yet you can still dream and color. So it seems to be a sweet spot. And just one quick thing on that when we've worked for companies that are, you know, really busy, people are zooming around. Particularly tech companies tend to be this way, where it's just, you know, it's a blur, and and they'll bring us in to do workshops with people and they'll say to us they keep it, we can't zoom out a year, we, we, we have to go out a week.

Yeah and and we'll you know? Say to them no, like this is your opportunity to step off the track and just imagine what things could look like in a year, so that you could play for it, so you could set the stage now for what you'd love it to be like in a year. So a year tends to be the sweet spot.

0:03:01 - Speaker 1 Walk us through what I'm assuming here that visualization process needs to look like. So now, okay, we got it's a year out. What do I need to be thinking about? Is it a visualization practice? Is it a sensation? Is it a manifestation? Is it generally? What are the actual Processes here to get our minds and bodies in that place a year from now?

0:03:23 - Speaker 2 Yeah, so our, our bold vision exercise and, by the way, this, this notion of visioning, this is Our system has other things to do besides what we're talking about right now, this visioning process. But this is always the first step and it's an exercise that has seven questions. So it's I would say that it's not really manifestation or dreaming, it's. It's a little bit more Intellectual, like thought-driven, if you will. But there's seven questions and what's necessary is two things. One is imagining what something could look like in the future, but not constrained by needing to know all the steps to get there. And, okay, that's really an unusual way of thinking about goals. Right, oftentimes, when People are asked to set a goal, they will determine what the goal is based on, how certain they are that they can accomplish or I don't want to be Reaching for the moon if I know I can barely get out of my own airspace exactly so.

So there are times. So if I you know somebody, there might be somebody who feels so passionate about Running a marathon but they've never even run a 10k, where they're just, they're not a runner, they don't even really know exactly if I was gonna run a marathon, all the steps that would be involved in running the marathon. But we wouldn't want that person to say, oh, I can't, that, all bets are off. I can't run a marathon because I've never done that before and I don't know the path to get there. One of the first steps is imagining what would I really love to accomplish, not a fantasy, so not completely out of the realm of possibility, but kind of in between. What's predictable in a fantasy, which you know that right in that middle space, we call it bold, uncomfortable, but possible, right. So that's, that's one of the key things about this exercise predictable fantasy.

I love that yeah yeah, so we think about it as a continuum, right? So the predictable kind of all the way over here, fantasy all the way on the other side, and then if you sort of go right into the center, that's the place that we call bold and uncomfortable, but possible right. So it's a.

0:05:25 - Speaker 1 It's really is a sweet spot almost it's like it's a stretch out of your comfort zone or out of your Known world of what you've been accomplished or what you think you can accomplish. Yes just a stretch. We're not yes. Literally stepping into the unknown exactly so it's.

0:05:39 - Speaker 2 So it's a little bit of a stretch. It tends to be uncomfortable. We, as humans, do not like to be uncomfortable, right? We tend to be risk-averse that's just part of being a human being. And yet we also know that there's huge value in putting out bold goals. So this is kind of, you know, forcing ourselves to stretch out of being risk-averse and write something down, even if you don't have the clear path to get there, but you'd love to be able to make it happen.

And we found that for most people, even though they're afraid of failing number one, they might fail. Right, they might. You know, you might try for something and it doesn't happen. We said we were gonna write a book for five years and it took. You know, there were four years of failure before success. But oftentimes, when you write it down and you start playing for it and you start going for it, you'll actually do more than you would have if you hadn't written it at all. Right, and the research shows You're 42% more likely to achieve a goal just by writing it down 42% more 42%, which is huge.

0:06:39 - Speaker 1 Wow, that's almost half.

0:06:40 - Speaker 2 It's almost half, and then, and then to kind of accelerate that even more, if you tell somebody that you're gonna do it and you say to that person okay, I'm gonna run that marathon or I'm gonna get promoted or I'm gonna accountability you're adding you're adding this accountability, and also something about the articulation of it out loud, makes you twice as likely to accomplish it, which so increases your odds even further.

So you know, those are. Those are two big pieces of motivation to do this, even if it feels uncomfortable and even if you're sort of saying to yourself I have no idea how I'm gonna make this happen, but it would be really. I'd feel so proud and it would be so great if I did.

0:07:17 - Speaker 1 Kind of sounding like my thoughts almost every day. Yeah, I'm always over here in fantasy.

0:07:22 - Speaker 2 Yeah yeah, and actually one of the things we always tell people and and I you know, we found that this, this sort of mantra, is helpful for people is to get comfortable being uncomfortable and and the way that you do that is by repetition. So if you say to yourself, okay, every year, you know, maybe once a year, a lot of people say they like to do this in January, but I say, there's never a bad time to write your, to write your vision, is you? You do what we call throwing your hat over the wall, and you do it every single year. I've heard you talk about this. Yes, you do it every year and and as the years go by, you get more comfortable with that discomfort of doing what's less predictable.

0:07:59 - Speaker 1 Why do you think most people are afraid to fail?

0:08:03 - Speaker 2 Okay, so, um, this is not my opinion. I'm gonna give you the some of the research, because we've done a lot of we've done a lot of Even better research is really good science here so there is a, an economist, and he's a Economist and a psychologist named Daniel Kahneman super famous guy. Probably a lot of people listening or like oh yeah, I've heard of that guy, he's written a lot of books, so he won a Nobel Prize, the Freakinomics guy he's he's not Freakinomics, but he's written a lot, he's written a lot, a lot of books on on risk aversion, and he won a Nobel Prize on this topic, and what he found is that people will do more to avoid failure than to achieve an equal gain.

Come on, so that that's a really. It's almost like you say to yourself how could we be wired that way as humans? But we are, and you know that. That and that don't hold me to exactly to these numbers, but what that means is You'll do more to avoid losing a hundred dollars than you will to gain a hundred dollars. Right, that's like you'll do more to achieve to avoid failure. So so that's something that we have to kind of raise our consciousness about and say, okay, that might be the way that we're wired, but I'm gonna, you know, I'm going a different way. You know, just just because this is the research, we can, you know, we can alter our behavior based on attention.

0:09:20 - Speaker 1 You immediately make me kind of go back to the past several years and my entrepreneur journey and come this this December will be, I think, seven for me being on my own and when I think back to the moments in, you know, granted, a lot of things have changed and you know, I've shut down some things and expanded other things. You know, as I have grown, evolved, so have you know my businesses, I Think. For the first several years I Was playing this game. I was in business to be as Less fail-prone as possible than more success prone. It was how do I just make sure things don't go as bad as they did before?

Yeah and that definitely was a limiting factor. And I can tell you right now, it's almost like when I hear this science and research or a more eloquent way to put a Feeling or a shift that I've had in my mindset in business the last year. It's like oh yeah, there it is. I had that switch. I was not focusing on not failing, I was focusing on overly succeeding.

0:10:21 - Speaker 2 Yeah, you know, and there's a lot of a lot of athletes will talk about this too. They talk about, like, visualizing success. Oh yeah right, that's a big thing yeah and so it's kind of like the word vision. It's like it's an important word here.

0:10:36 - Speaker 1 You say it, you immediately like oh, I know what, I know what that is.

0:10:39 - Speaker 2 You know what that is, and also the the term has to do with your eyesight, right, like seeing something, and I think that when, when you can see something in the future, you can Confidently head in that direction. Right, if you can't see it, you're sort of lost in the woods, without a compass. Right, when you have a vision, you have a north star, and then you can start taking steps to get there. And and one of the expressions and I and I shared this with you when we talked the other day is People's actions are correlated to the future they see as possible, and so that's kind of. Sometimes I say that and people scratch their heads. They're a little confused by that sentence, but I'm going to share what we mean by that.

So, when you think about, um, imagine a young child, right, like so I have a, I have an 18 year old son. When he was a little guy, my son is really into sports, like really good baseball player really at the time was really really love flag football also, and he used to say to me mom, I am not sure if I'm going to be in the MLB or the NFL, because I am so good at baseball and so good at football, and you know. When you were seven or eight you probably said your version of that too, because when you're a little kid and somebody says to you, well, what do you want to be? When you grow up, like you're not constrained, you know, you're just, you can say whatever your heart's content, everything is a possibility.

Every nothing's off the table yet. Exactly Right, yeah, because you haven't taken it off the table yet. But then you get older and for most of us it happens around middle school.

0:12:12 - Speaker 1 Middle school for some of us when we realized, like, oh, how much of the real world is out there.

0:12:16 - Speaker 2 Yeah, and like you know, things happen. You might have a negative experience at school, or you know something happens with your, your friends, or you know you you do crummy on a test and then you decide I'm not good at that subject. Or you don't get invited to something and you make it like it's something about your, your own personality that.

0:12:33 - Speaker 1 there's my popularity.

0:12:34 - Speaker 2 There goes my yeah, or I'm just people don't really like me that much or I'm not that interesting, or what would you say. You have these beliefs about yourself that can be extremely limiting and you make these decisions based on these beliefs that will impact what you see possible for yourself in your own future, and it really can take a lot of things off the table and keep us playing small. And so one of the you know things about our vision exercise is that and this is why we say to people write things down, even if you don't know how, even if you've tried them before and failed, or you've never tried them before because you don't want to psych, you know, take, take things off the table for yourself just because of a belief from the past. Right Cause the future hasn't happened yet.

0:13:21 - Speaker 1 Think about this. I think this is where a lot of people get stuck as well, and their fear of failure is we catastrophize things and for some reason, the reality of a failure, the reality of something, a bismal, worst case scenario, seems more real, and we legitimize that unreal situation. It hasn't happened yet, way more when, in theory, it's the same thing If we think about oh, what if I succeed? What if I, you know, succeed beyond my wildest dreams? What if I go fantasy the other direction in a positive light? But yet, for some reason, going fantasy in the negative light just anchors us and prevents us from taking action, from moving forward so much more.

0:13:59 - Speaker 2 Yeah, it's so true and there's there's a great way to remember this in your mind. There's a we were. I'm stealing this from a guy named Rick Hansen.

He's a neuropsychologist said a lot of things in a way that makes it really easy to understand. And he says, as humans, he says we're like. We're like Teflon for the good stuff, it just bounces right off, and we're Velcro for the bad stuff it sticks. And and I think you know, for anybody who's ever worked for a company and gotten a performance evaluation, this really rings true, because the first thing you say when you're you know, your manager says okay, like here's your performance evaluation and you go rifling through it to look for the bad stuff.

0:14:37 - Speaker 1 Right, like what do I have to?

0:14:38 - Speaker 2 do different. What's what? What have they said about me?

0:14:40 - Speaker 1 negatively.

0:14:41 - Speaker 2 And and then when the you know when your boss was like let me tell you all the great things about your performance. You're, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're just almost like checking out.

0:14:48 - Speaker 1 It's almost like receiving a compliment too. So many of us deflect, deflect and feel awkward or wrong even to accept positive words and energy our way. But yet we're so concerned about, um you know, rumors or what maybe somebody's sitting behind our back.

0:15:03 - Speaker 2 Yes, and yet some of these automatic behaviors you know we talked, we've talked about a few of them that you'll be at risk aversion, you know this notion of you know Teflon and Velcro and um, catastrophizing, like you said, a lot of this behavior you know. For people listening to this, I think it's important to note that the first step to changing it is just raising your consciousness right. So that's like the very first thing. So even just by listening to this conversation, you might be questioning or saying to yourself you know, I don't, it doesn't have to be this way.

0:15:32 - Speaker 1 You listening. Right now she's talking to you this is you the work that? Needs to be done to change this mindset?

0:15:38 - Speaker 2 Yes, Because we've, you know, having worked with so many people over the last 11 years, I've seen this happen over and over and over again with people from all over the world, from you know, different organizations, different, you know, coming from different cultures and mindsets and everything. I think that's the biggest thing that has been a driver to change is people sort of raising their consciousness and and and then being intentional, and and doing something really deliberately and thoughtfully versus reactively.

0:16:07 - Speaker 1 I'm going to butcher the phrase, but I think it's. You know, if you want to change your mindset, you have to literally change the state of your mind.

It's some kind of plan words that I'm butchering right now but it's we think there's so much more work involved or the possibility of changing the way that we view the world, our world, our belief system is so impossible. Sometimes Like I, this is how I am, this is who I am. Yeah, I can never change or evolve, but sometimes literally just getting to a change state physiologically shows you mentally. I love that. What can happen? Yeah, and I mean it's a lot of people you know laugh at. You know a lot of these experiences where you go to maybe a like a Tony Robbins seminar and it's just jumping up and down and like let's change your vibration. But it's there's, there's scientific evidence showing that when we get into a positive, higher vibrational vibrational state it does something you know mentally. It's even this one study I read years ago. You know we all have.

Usually we go on walks and we get great ideas right, or you're in the shower kind of thing, but usually on walks people just like I don't know where I sit with this great idea. I read this study years ago that kind of explained why and how that happened and it's the sweet spot we know, which is true. Going back to my health coaching days of about 40 minutes Walking at a pace where you're not out of breath, you can still hold conversation. Maybe it's a little struggle, but it's that time that is the sweet spot where it is enough. You're getting enough of this energetic reverb. Basically on walk.

And it's doesn't matter age, height, weight, it's the gravitational force on a human being. At that amount of time you have enough kind of reverb. You know from your heel striking the ground, going back up, that it stimulates your brain to literally change the brainwave state that is dominant from where you were before the start and you get more into kind of this thought producing theta state where your consciousness is just able to just open up more. This is where all these ideas come from.

So there's there's science into the body change state to get a state of mind change.

0:18:12 - Speaker 2 Yeah, yeah, and I think also like even even changing your physical location, even if you don't do all of the things you just said it can change your perspective. You know we can look at things in a different way. So that's, if you're stuck, get that good place to start. Yeah.

0:18:27 - Speaker 1 I've. I've talked to so many people about. You know we want to get to this right. We want to get to thinking of this wonderful life we can build, but I just I can't even imagine how my day to day is going to change right now. I've advised and coached people to just like okay, instead of going left on your way home, go right. Instead of working out of the coffee shop, you always go to go to the one across town, go, get lost. You need to literally get your consciousness in your brain to not be in autopilot. Yeah, you need to have to focus on what you're doing and navigate your way out of that situation. You're going to get to the same destination, you're going to get the same amount of work done, but you need to have different environmental stimuli. It's a game changer.

0:19:04 - Speaker 2 Yeah, I think also this week we cover this in the book as well, and I think it's speaking of like reactive behaviors and intentional behaviors. One of the biggest things that can get in the way of people accomplishing their vision and their goals is reactivity, because it's the stuff that it almost is happening. It's almost unconscious behavior. We don't even oftentimes know that we're doing it.

You're just an autopilot, and I think the first step to shifting from being reactive to intentional is figuring out where you're reactive. Right, sometimes you just need to really look inward and say where am I reactive? I'm going to share a little anecdote about this that I think I mean I'm sure you'll be able to relate to this. Almost everybody I've told this story to is like yeah, I see a little bit of myself in that. But I was in my house, it was end of the day and I was having a conversation with my husband and all of a sudden I noticed that I was on my phone. I was, he was talking, he was in the middle of a sentence and I just was on my phone.

And he started waving his hands in the air and he said I'm right here, I'm over here, and I realized that I do this all the time, that this is what I do all the time, and it was almost conditioned to just she phone.

0:20:24 - Speaker 1 Grab, pick up scroll.

0:20:25 - Speaker 2 So it was this massive addiction and I said you know what? I am going to make some changes here because this is very reactive behavior and I really don't want to be. I don't. And it has a cost and in the in the case of you know, what I saw was I. I think it's important to look at what the cost is.

0:20:41 - Speaker 1 It's not always the good news. Right, depleting dopamine. You're losing focus, you're losing interest from the people. You're talking to losing respect, yeah, yeah.

0:20:48 - Speaker 2 And it's just. You know connection right, you don't?

0:20:50 - Speaker 1 feel connected.

0:20:50 - Speaker 2 The other thing for me that I saw was a cost is when you're always dialed into your phone, you're, you're, like you never can turn off and just chill out. So that that took a cost. How many of us need more of that right now yeah. Just on your stress. So so that was a project that I said I'm going to take ground on, shifting from being reactive to my phone to being more intentional about it, and it required doing certain things. So I I created these guardrails so that it wouldn't happen.

So I put my phone in certain places in certain situations so that I don't have the temptation At a reach at a site, At a reach simple things like that and and created certain ground rules, even in our household, that everybody has to adhere to, so that it's not just me.

0:21:29 - Speaker 1 Making more of a conducive environment. Yeah that these are fundamentals for behavior change.

0:21:33 - Speaker 2 Yeah, so, so that you know that, and that's been a game changer. And if, if, one of the things that I want to be known for as a person and this is in my vision is somebody who is present and patient, somebody who is known as a good listener, who connects, this is, this is essential. If I'm, you know, sitting there staring at my screen while you're trying to have a conversation with me, I will fail at that goal. So, these reactive behaviors, it's really great practice to unearth, what are they, you know for yourself, and then figure out what the cost is, yeah, and then figure out what are you going to do about it specifically, I love those and it reminds me of kind of we're on the same page here.

0:22:12 - Speaker 1 Two practices I have created to help myself be more present and, to like to your point, I want to be known for being a present person. Sometimes it doesn't matter what I do, right, it doesn't matter what we do. The environment might still not be conducive towards that goal. Yeah, might be fighting an uphill battle.

So two things I've done to incorporate more mindfulness and presence in my day to day interactions is one whenever I see somebody on their phone grab their phone, I now have made that a trigger for me to go chase, get off your phone. If I'm on it, I put it down or I make sure a lot of people will go oh, I just grabbed mine too, why, I don't know. He was on his phone. Two, when I'm talking with someone or at a group environment like dinner or something and this happens a lot somebody will just be on their phone. I'll just wait to talk because they're not clear that they're on their phone, being distracted and being maybe a little rude. But they'll definitely pick up on the fact that, oh wait, we were all just talking. Now no one's talking, so I'll just wait.

0:23:13 - Speaker 2 That's interesting.

0:23:14 - Speaker 1 And then when they finally go, oh sorry, then I'll pick back up again. So that's me catching myself, but also trying to see if this is something that the other people I'm hanging out with wouldn't mind also doing. I think we all could agree that being mindful and present it's not a bad thing.

0:23:30 - Speaker 2 Yeah, yeah, and I think this phone addiction is probably the low hanging fruit here on reactive behaviors. But I would also point out there's many very common and almost with everybody in these days. But also there's a lot of other reactive behaviors.

0:23:46 - Speaker 1 Like what.

0:23:48 - Speaker 2 So it could be. You always react a certain way to certain people. Reactive people have it with their children. I find parents tend to have these automatic, unconscious reactions to kids says X, I do Y. So that's another example of people find themselves in. Or it could be alarm goes off, I do. There's something I always do when the alarm goes off or boss calls me into their office, I always have a certain response, stimulus response.

So I think you know, not that they're all horrible, right, but sometimes we just don't even know we're doing them and sometimes, usually there's a cost to those reactivities. Sometimes it's you know well, something will happen and we automatically start beating ourselves up over something right, just not even realizing that we're doing that.

0:24:39 - Speaker 1 It's pretty uncommon. Would you agree that these triggers cause a positive response?

0:24:44 - Speaker 2 Very uncommon.

0:24:45 - Speaker 1 It's like, oh wow, alarm went off. Oh, let me just text everybody how much I love them. Let me just gratitude journal To your point. That's not happening.

0:24:53 - Speaker 2 Yeah, I mean you could create new habits and things you get used to, but they're usually not the automatic ones.

0:25:01 - Speaker 1 It reminds me of another great book I'll have to link down for everybody, one of the original self-help books I read years ago the Power of Habit, charles Duhigg. I love that book, that one just I mean. I think a lot of people are on the atomic habits train now.

James Clear another great book, a very similar concept back then Just to understand why do I do the things that I do? Where do they start? Because it's very rare for us to just have something that we do and it didn't stem from somewhere else. There was a stimulus. This is our response and if we can understand the stimulus, we can break that conditioning. We can recreate that conditioning.

0:25:36 - Speaker 2 Yeah, yeah, no, that book is great. He really unpacks it. You really understand where are these different behaviors coming from in my brain. It's helpful.

0:25:44 - Speaker 1 But speaking of out of your work, there are five power principles that I would love to kind of dive into here, please. One in particular, we're gonna get to. Number four the use language of action. Communicate with intention. That one, that was my jam. That was my jam and I wanna kind of dive deeper there. But number one is Declare a Bold Vision, which we kind of already talked about. So maybe, moving on to number two, choose a new perspective. Now, at the surface that sounds just oh well, if I would have known that, I would just have done that a long time ago. Oh, just think differently. But I have this quote in here from that section choosing a new perspective is one of the most empowering steps you can take to improve your life in the present and in the future. What's going on with this time travel, present, future thing about our perspective?

0:26:30 - Speaker 2 Well, I mean, and, by the way, the reason that that power principle comes as number two is and all of the power principles following the vision at one are in service of your vision, right? Because your vision's the blueprint. It's the blueprint for your life. So we, your perspective, is the lens through which you see the world. It is really how you view other people, how you view yourself and how you view your circumstances, and oftentimes we relate to our circumstances or ourself or other people. In a certain way. We say something's true. Oh, my manager is an egotistical jerk. He just doesn't support my goals and isn't going to. I'm never going to get what I need from this manager. And I might challenge you and say well, really, oh yeah, that's just true about him. And I would then, if I was your coach or if I was working with you, I would say but is it a fact? Is there anything in that statement that is a fact? And the answer is no, right, because a fact would be that the grass is green, that you're a human being.

0:27:39 - Speaker 1 My manager is 45 and divorced Exactly, those are the facts.

0:27:42 - Speaker 2 Yeah, has a smoking habit Exactly, but that he's an egotistical jerk is a perspective, and the problem there is that if you relate to your perspective like it's the truth, then it becomes the only truth and then there's no other possibility in your relationship with your manager. You will always, only ever, be relating to your manager as an egotistical jerk, which, as you could imagine, is very limiting in terms of what you and your manager are going to accomplish together. So and I use that example because in all the people I work with, this one comes up a lot is that people have some sort of negative perspective about a manager. But you could apply this example that I'm sharing to anything. It could be any relationship or it could be a perspective about anything. So we give people an exercise in the book to help them to understand the distinction between a fact and a perspective.

Number one to understand what that perspective, because people feel very right. They feel very right about their perspective. They oftentimes aren't even willing to consider that there are other ones. But if you can think about what the cost of the perspective is, how am I suffering as a result of this perspective? That might be motivating to choosing another one. So that's where we go next, Once you've sort of ascertained. Ok, maybe this isn't an absolute. The next place to go is well, what's it costing me? Because usually we're the one suffering from the perspective, not the manager.

0:29:11 - Speaker 1 You're usually right, exactly, the manager is fine, they're fine.

0:29:15 - Speaker 2 He or she is just doing their thing. So then we kind of do this brainstorming exercise to help people to choose other perspectives, which is really powerful, because oftentimes and that one sometimes it's nice to do with a friend, because sometimes friends can see things or another person can see things that you just can't when you're really stuck.

0:29:35 - Speaker 1 Getting that kind of trusted input.

0:29:36 - Speaker 2 Yeah, yeah. So that power principle is really we used to call it the money principle because people just their whole lives transform out of a change of perspective, because they see new things to do, they see new actions to take that they just didn't even consider before. Because if you're operating inside a reality where you think that your manager is an egotistical jerk, you're going to see only certain actions to take. But if you sort of had a different perspective like, for example, let's say, you said to yourself OK, I'm choosing the perspective that my manager and I have the same goals, we're aligned behind the same goals Not necessarily a 180 of a perspective change, but definitely a shift, and not that outlandish?

0:30:21 - Speaker 1 No, no. Why would a manager be kind of on your case? If you make the assumption here that I want what's best for my career and the company also, so do they? They do too. Yeah, they do. They don't want to lose their job and they don't want the company to wonder we have the same page.

0:30:36 - Speaker 2 We have the same goals. You're going to see other conversations to have, you're going to see other actions to take and you're going to feel differently about your manager If you just take it on and people say, well, how do I take it on, what do I do? And the coaching I often give is pretend like you're wearing a new pair of glasses. If you had one pair of glasses represented manager, egotistical, jerk you're going to wear a different pair of glasses. That is, manager and I have the same goals and really think about, ok, with this new pair of glasses, what is different, what could be different, and that therein lies a whole new future.

0:31:12 - Speaker 1 That's one of the most important things I really want to drive home that I have gone through the last several years is just learning quite literally how to change my mind, and it starts with making these assumptions. It's getting very real and honest. With what perspective do I have of example A or even the world? What do I believe to be true about it? Now, it's very hard for me to go anywhere away from that, because that's what I've known, that's what I've built my life around, those are my beliefs, my values. So it's almost like a role play. I have to entertain the idea and go OK, what if I'm wrong, or even not even right and wrong? What if there's just another possibility?

0:31:52 - Speaker 2 Yes.

0:31:53 - Speaker 1 And what if that possibility is just drastically different from mine? What would that day to day look like? What would I think? What would I do?

0:31:59 - Speaker 2 And I think, another way to frame what you just said and I've said this to people and it tends to be helpful is it possible? Is there somebody else out there who might have a different opinion? Because if the answer to that question is yes, then it's not a truth, Then it's just one possible perspective. And people talk a lot about oh, control what you can control.

You can't control the controlables. Well, you may not be able to control many things you cannot control the economy and you can't control other people but you always have 100% control over your perspective, and the only way to really grab onto that is by considering that your perspective, the one that you have, is not truth.

0:32:45 - Speaker 1 So it's a powerful concept. I love that yeah. All right. So moving on to number three Plan the work and work the plan. And this other little section I pulled out that I loved is about how quote your reactive behaviors can and will derail you from achieving your vision and creating the life you want. That is some bitter truth, a bitter poliswala right there. What does that mean? Plan the work and work the plan.

0:33:11 - Speaker 2 Yeah, so, first of all, when people write out their goals, oftentimes they're constrained by what they think is possible. We've covered that. Once they've written them, oftentimes they are actioning them, kind of like oh well, what are all the things I need to do? What are all the things?

0:33:32 - Speaker 1 I need to do here.

0:33:33 - Speaker 2 So what we recommend that people do? We have a different approach to planning, which is starting with the outcome, starting with the finish, if you will. So if one of the things that you have in your vision let me try to think of one that's really common is OK something we used earlier and this one's a little intangible, so I'm going to use it because it's an example people maybe wouldn't have thought of is, a year from today, I'm known as present, patient and connected. That's the outcome.

0:34:05 - Speaker 1 I want to pause real quick and just remind the listener you mentioned this a couple of times I'm known for. I love how you're integrating this into goal setting because, well, so many things come to mind, but really it is just. I think for the biggest part for me is it immediately makes me think about how much of this is not about me. It is going to be dependent on my actions to have other people have this perception of me. But it kind of makes it seem so much more realistic because it's just if I can make the right connections and be around the right people.

0:34:37 - Speaker 2 Going back to a concept that I can talk about on the show with meaningful relationships.

0:34:41 - Speaker 1 It's just, I think, that I immediately felt lighter.

0:34:45 - Speaker 2 So many of us do not think about what we want to be known for, and the watch out is that if you're not putting intention around what you want to be known for, then you might end the year or your life known for things that you don't want to be known for. So think about how many times people have said, hey, how are you doing? And this may not be you, chase, but other people. People may say, hey, how are you doing? And your answer is oh gosh, I am so busy, I'm swamped or I'm just exhausted.

0:35:17 - Speaker 1 Trust me, Chrissy.

0:35:18 - Speaker 2 Or I'm so stressed, right, busy, tired, stressed, if that's your answer to that question.

and then, of course, I'm sure, provide the color commentary afterwards then people will walk away from the conversation and then that's what they'll say about you Is that you're busy or you're tired, or you're stressed. So it's like you have to sort of say to yourself, well, what would I love to be known for? If it's not going to be that well, what is it? And then what's that going to take? Coming back to your original question about the plan, it's one thing to set the intention, but then you've got to pay attention right and you've got to do things to achieve the outcome. So we say, ok, zoom out to the outcome. Ok, present, connected patient. That's for me. One of my other ones is like being deliberate, being thoughtful, being known as being deliberate and thoughtful.

Intentional right versus rushing, which is something that is one of my reactive behaviors.

0:36:15 - Speaker 1 How many of us can pick up on that a mile away from?

0:36:17 - Speaker 2 rushing, yeah. So then you have to kind of reverse engineer it right. Then you're saying okay, so if my goal is to be known as deliberate and patient and calm, what could I be doing to make that happen? What are some things that I could be doing?

0:36:33 - Speaker 1 In conjunction with the work necessary to accomplish my goals.

0:36:36 - Speaker 2 Exactly so. We give people in our work. We give people a 90 day action plan that gives them an opportunity to take a bite out of it at a time, right, because it could be. If you sat there and thought of 20 things that you'd do, you would become overwhelmed and maybe do nothing, you would never take action and it'd be really hard to get those initial wins.

0:36:54 - Speaker 1 you need to get that traction. You would do nothing.

0:36:55 - Speaker 2 But if you had three things that you were gonna do in the next month, then maybe you would do them right. So one of them for me is putting my phone away at dinner, because when my phone is away at dinner and this is one small specific step if my phone is away at dinner, I'm gonna be present and patient at dinner. So that's a small win that will ultimately help me get to my goal. So it's working backwards versus just writing down things to do, and it's a different way of planning. So that's a big, essential ingredient in the plan to work and work. The plan is just reverse engineering being really thoughtful about three actions at a time and then continuing to maintain a dashboard of things to do, and it's amazing how much you accomplish doing it that way.

0:37:46 - Speaker 1 It makes me think of your previous example of the manager. We had this experience with this manager that, like I get off my case, or they're just grumpy or I avoid them at all costs. What if they were in pursuit of their biggest work in the year and I need to work my ass off. I need to grow the team, I need to grow the numbers so that I can get promoted in a year for the next position that might come off, because they're so busy and so fixated on this goal that they're maybe not going about in the best way possible. Or to their subordinates or team, they just look like you're so busy, so stressed. I don't want any part of that.

But what if that manager went the other route and go. I wanna be known as the leader of my department that raises everybody's commissions, that gets everybody promoted in a year. You would undoubtedly act differently and show up differently for your team 100% For them and still most likely accomplish your own goal.

0:38:38 - Speaker 2 Yes, and it would be also easy for you to think about. Okay, if I'm planning the work and working the plan, what am I gonna start doing in order to be known?

0:38:47 - Speaker 1 that way as a leader.

0:38:48 - Speaker 2 Okay, I think what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna start meeting with each person on my team to understand their goals every week. I'm gonna I'm not gonna cancel those one-on-one meetings every week I'm gonna do them and I'm gonna come prepared and I'm going to ask for feedback. That's so. Maybe number one is meeting with my people. Number two.

0:39:07 - Speaker 1 That's how to make sure your perspective doesn't stay fixated. Yeah, yeah, because you can think one thing, but the feedback is gonna maybe tell you another.

0:39:13 - Speaker 2 Yeah, ask people for feedback, tell people, I'm gonna tell my team that this is what I wanna be known for and I'm gonna ask them to hold me accountable when I don't show up that way. I mean that when you, that's that is an A plus play for a manager. When you, when you have managers who are telling people what their vision is for their own leadership and asking them to hold them accountable, giving them permission to tell them like hey, you said you wanted to show up calm and you are not showing up that way right now, if people feel permission to do that, I mean that is inspired leadership.

0:39:46 - Speaker 1 Yeah, truly I like that. Yeah, Kind of makes me briefly miss the workplace, but but not that much, but not that much I did really enjoy some of my last regular employment. I was a clinical health coach, but I also was a manager.

I was the wellness director for the department and I had, at most, up to you know, nine other people on my team and I do think you know now I have a great team of my own but I don't. There's less in-person interaction. Most of my stuff is remote, but there's something about that in the day-to-day seeing people being involved, like to your point, having those one-on-one calls, seeing people and just making sure that you are aiming more for their goals. Always come back and fed mine.

0:40:32 - Speaker 2 Yeah, yeah, because they're usually aligned. They're usually aligned, I think, also a lot of managers that we've worked with who want to help their people feel empowered, help their people grow, have people feel good about their jobs. The other thing a lot of them are doing as a result of that introspection I'm putting in their plan is taking the time every week to acknowledge things that people are doing, that are working, because that is so dropped out in our workplace today. People are so just transactional, especially in the remote area of the workplace they're just kind of like what do I have to get done?

Boom boom, boom boom off the to-do list versus stopping and saying you were excellent in that meeting yesterday I know you spent three hours preparing. It really showed and it made an impact with the client. That kind of acknowledgement it's priceless.

0:41:22 - Speaker 1 Oh my God, it's so transformational.

0:41:24 - Speaker 2 And it doesn't cost us that much to give it, and when it's warranted. It just makes such a big difference. So true, so true, so a lot of this is like just being intentional versus being reactive, Instead of running through a to-do list which is never usually gonna have that on it unless we're really thoughtful, being really intentional about what's gonna make the biggest difference.

0:41:43 - Speaker 1 And we were just talking about taking action as well. I know this is part of power principle number four here.

0:41:48 - Speaker 2 I'm glad you asked me about this power principle. A lot of. I've done a lot of interviews and I rarely get asked about it. But it's really it's really really good.

0:41:56 - Speaker 1 Oh, the second. I was going through the section I was like, oh wow, this is such a.

0:41:59 - Speaker 2 It's really good stuff in there.

0:42:00 - Speaker 1 Again, it's one of those kind of like oh yeah, of course, but just a little nuance of the communication of action language up there.

0:42:05 - Speaker 2 There's a lot of like rigor around the terms. Okay, so when you're in the football, when you're a fan in the stands, the types of language that people tend to use in the stands are things like cheering, criticizing, booing, maybe analyzing right or predicting, kind of predicting what's gonna happen in the game, and all of that language has value, there's nothing wrong with any of that, but that language doesn't move the action forward. It's definitely with the exception of home field advantage. It does not move the ball down the field. So it's good to and it's the same in language and life right, that type of language educating, criticizing, booing, complaining, cheering, praising all of that has value, but it's not language of action. It's language that maybe adds color but it doesn't make anything happen. It's like fluff.

But fluff sounds negative, so it's not bad. I'm just distinguishing different types of speaking and it's not bad.

0:43:12 - Speaker 1 It just doesn't move the needle.

0:43:13 - Speaker 2 It doesn't move things forward. It doesn't move things forward. So if you kind of imagine like you're at a football game, you know, if you kind of in language, what moves the ball forward is making recommendations, because when you make a recommendation, what happens? You change course. Yeah, somebody might do something different. When you make a request, somebody's gonna they're either gonna say yes or say no, right, so if something's gonna happen right from making a request, and then I think also the other type of language that we think is really powerful for action is setting desired outcomes for conversations, because it helps you plan for them better, and oftentimes we don't do that. So we'll kind of enter into a conversation, and particularly in business. This is particularly potent in business. One of the biggest pain points people have in business is that they go to too many meetings and that their meetings.

0:44:02 - Speaker 1 What was the point of that meeting? That was another meeting that should have been in email.

0:44:05 - Speaker 2 Yeah, and it's frustrating for people and part of why that pain exists is because people are not intentional around what is the desired outcome of this meeting? And we define that as I'm gonna define what we mean by desired outcome, because sometimes I say that and people think they know what I mean and what we mean is something a little different.

0:44:25 - Speaker 1 Well, about putting language to things in this section. So here we go, Exactly. So here's the language.

0:44:28 - Speaker 2 So setting a desired outcome means this At the end of the conversation, what do you want the other person to leave believing, and what's different about that? And then, by consequence, what would they be doing right? So people will not change their behavior unless you change their mindset.

0:44:48 - Speaker 1 So it's not Say that again, say that again.

0:44:50 - Speaker 2 Yes, people will not change their behavior unless they change their mindset. So setting a desired outcome is really what do I want them to believe at the end of this conversation? And then, by consequence, what will they do?

0:45:03 - Speaker 1 It's almost like the fundamentals of negotiation.

0:45:05 - Speaker 2 Yeah, and what people usually do is, when you go to a meeting, somebody gets up there and says I'm gonna tell you here's the agenda, right, and then they give you this bulleted list of everything we're gonna talk about. But what they don't do is say here's my desired outcome or here's my intention. We have an hour today and at the end of this hour, here's what I would love you to walk away believing. And sometimes people have said, oh, can you say that at the beginning of a conversation? And I say absolutely, you can Show your hand and then do the work of making them believe that right. Well then you can sort of frame the whole agenda around that versus all the different things you wanna say and all the different things you wanna do have.

Everything stem from what's gonna serve the desired outcome, and it might involve making recommendations, it might involve making some requests, it could involve asking some questions or potentially managing some objections, if you know that people are gonna have an issue with what you're saying. But everything will be intentional, so all roads will lead you towards achievement of having something happen. So if you could imagine that if every meeting had a desired outcome, you'd need fewer meetings not everybody would have to go to all the meetings that they go to, because right now sometimes people are sitting there like why was I invited?

0:46:29 - Speaker 1 Why?

0:46:29 - Speaker 2 am I here? What's my role here?

0:46:31 - Speaker 1 And what I love about that also kinda to the point earlier of what do I wanna be known for is you get others involved. How much better would everybody feel if you don't go into another meeting and it's just okay? Here's the person leading it. Here's what they want. It's transactional. Here's what they want. Here's what they're gonna say. Here are things that I'm gonna have to take note of or do.

But when you do that, you are immediately inviting everybody else in to the desired outcome that you want. Again, I think it's real fundamentals and negotiation here as well, but I'm just putting myself into the shoes of a meeting of a person like that and going, wow, they actually care that I'm here, yes, and they're giving me a reason to care, right, because oftentimes we're sitting there like, yeah, okay, chase, I understand, you want me to approve this, you want me to do this, you need this, you need this, but you're not telling me why should I care.

0:47:26 - Speaker 2 And so I think if you think about that, you'll find that there is a reason for everybody to care and a common ground of a shared commitment.

And then, once you find that, you're much more likely to accomplish what you want to accomplish, in the conversation so it makes a difference and it just accelerates momentum and goals, and the reason I mentioned all these power principles are in service of your vision. You're not gonna accomplish your vision and without other people right, you're gonna have to have a lot of conversations to achieve things that are important to you. You can't go it alone. So this is a key, key play.

0:47:59 - Speaker 1 Okay, so we wanna adopt this truth that we can't accomplish our vision on our own. How, beyond what we've already kind of talked about, how would you advise us to best translate our vision to others beyond the fundamentals of, hey, accountability? I want you to hold me accountable to this. I said I was gonna do a kind of thing. How can we really build this conducive environment while, one, not feeling selfish in doing so and, two, contributing to, like, mutual success?

0:48:30 - Speaker 2 Yeah, I actually think the best way to answer that question is by sharing like a real story of something that somebody who did this.

0:48:37 - Speaker 1 Okay, so it does exist. Yes, okay.

0:48:40 - Speaker 2 So we've got about a big track record here. So we've done. People have written visions. We've worked in a lot of organizations and we'll go in and work with a lot of people from an organization and they'll all write a vision. And what we tell the leaders is when you write, well, we tell everybody that when you write it, that you should share it with your manager and you should share it with your team, and if there's parts in there that you don't feel comfortable sharing because it's just two-inch- yeah, these that make them change their vision.

We say don't read that part, but share as much as you're comfortable sharing and write it all right. So one of the companies when we first started our business, facebook was our first client and this was back in 20, not a bad first client to get and back in early 2013,.

They were really. It was the rocket that everybody wanted to be part of, and we worked with a woman who was the leader of a huge sales organization there and she wrote her vision and she wrote it every year for many years. She still writes her vision every year. She's an endorser on the back of our book and she would, as a practice, share her vision. At the beginning, her team was a little bit smaller and she was able to read it in person In big meetings, but then, as time went by and the company got bigger and bigger and bigger, she started publishing it in places where everybody would see it and she would record herself reading it, just so that has greater impact, and what the impact of a leader or somebody at the top reading their vision has on other people is it's, it's so huge because what happens is Everybody now Understands what's important to that person Professionally, like what should okay, so my goals should ladder up to those big goals that that person has.

Right, if this person is the leader and this is what they're playing for, this is the game that they're playing. It's really helpful to me I'm on the team when I write my own to understand how I fit into that.

0:50:49 - Speaker 1 I can kind of lasso myself to that dream as well.

0:50:52 - Speaker 2 Yeah, the other thing about it is, as a leader, you're also sharing about yourself as a person. Right, you're sharing about what you want to be known for, you're sharing some of your personal aspirations and you know how you want to improve as a person in the coming year. Some of these questions are not just Just professional, they're very multi-dimensional. So you know it, it creates a certain connection and vulnerability between the leader and everybody else.

0:51:19 - Speaker 1 Yes, yes, absolutely and so in.

0:51:21 - Speaker 2 So, in addition to accountability, it creates this massive amount of transparency, empathy and shared and shared Responsibility for things become humanized they become humanized. So so that's. That's an example of you know from the top down. And Then, for people who are writing their vision, who are not at the top of the food chain, sharing it up with your manager is hugely valuable too, because not only can they hold you accountable, but they can support you.

They can help you to accomplish it and potentially clear away obstacles that might get in your path and then sometimes gain deeper insight into you as a human being, which will help them be a better manager. You know, I had a guy once who Really really wanted to Manager mid-level manager wanted to had a son who was like elementary school age son Sunplayed baseball. Dad really wanted to volunteer to coach the team but the practices were always like 430 on a weekday and you know it was just impossible for him to get there. So he just never raised his hand for the job and he put it in his vision that he was going to coach his name, deepening connection with his son. He was gonna coach a son's baseball team. He talked in his vision about why that mattered to him, what difference that would make, why it was important to him.

And when his manager heard that because he read his vision to his manager the manager was like I want to help you do this. Like how am I, how can we do this? And he goes well, we always have the team meeting on Wednesday afternoons at 4 and so I'm never able to get home and he's like well, I'm moving it. No way I'm moving it, you're gonna, you're going. That's amazing. So I mean just some of these things and it seems so obvious, like why wouldn't he have just asked his manager to begin with, but he just didn't think to do it. So it opened up that channel that that wasn't there.

0:53:12 - Speaker 1 What a great example of showing so easily to some degree takes a courage, of course, but how easily we can go from this can't happen to no. Yes, it actually really can. Yeah, and here's how. Yeah, yeah, wow.

0:53:27 - Speaker 2 Yeah, so that one is just like an immediate the. The other thing is that oftentimes we're playing for these goals that seem really big, they seem really unpredictable and you can't. You have to keep yourself on track over time and we tell people to read their vision to themselves once a month, like don't stick it in a drawer to collect dust.

Just because you wrote it down once, wrote it down once, I mean it's put a recurring calendar invite on your calendar once a month You're gonna read your vision so that you could course correct, stay on track. When, when COVID happened in in March of 2020 fast forward my company was a live training company, so we were, you know, physically in a room with all these people leading programs and obviously we couldn't do that. Everyone was canceling them. It was like March and it was. We looked at each other and we were like, okay, like we're gonna have to go back and rewrite our vision. And you know, one of the things we wrote was that we we wrote we have developed a virtual workshop series that is transformational, that gets the job done, holding revenue flat year over year.

That was highly uncomfortable. I was waking up With a pit in my stomach as the president of the company every single day. But we shared that vision my co-founder and I with our team and we came back to it every month how are we doing? Where do we need to press harder? Where do we need to pivot? Where do we need to course correct? And that that kept us on track, that kept the rigor, that kept, you know, the foot on the pedal versus being distracted by something that was really not a priority, but that might have seemed urgent in the moment and at the end of the year.

0:55:06 - Speaker 1 We accomplished that goal amazing yeah before we get to the fifth principle here, yeah, a question comes to mind, because I've been there and I think a lot of people can relate to this you set a goal for yourself and you're doing all the things to work towards it, but for whatever reason, you know, you're kind of hoping to be a right in life, or Circumstances, or the environment, or your job or whatever just seems to kind of be pulling you left. Yeah, and it's not necessarily a bad thing. Yeah, I'm never gonna get this accomplished, it's just Okay. I guess maybe this is where I'm supposed to go or how I'm supposed to do it, and maybe this wasn't the right goal. But you know I'm, I still have my job or things are going well. What do we do?

Yeah when life or circumstances are pulling us from our vision. Yeah, what happens when we sacrifice vision for what is just naturally occurring?

0:55:53 - Speaker 2 Yeah, I think that it sacrifices the wrong word, because sometimes things change, and Sometimes things change multiple times throughout the course of a year. Okay, you might write something in your vision and at the time that you write it, it feels like the most important thing in the world to you every initial goal ever.

Yeah, absolutely yeah and two or three months later, you go back and read your vision and you say you know what? In fact, it's not the most important thing to me, and I'm pivoting because I I see something different for myself now. Obviously, you don't want to flip-flop every week, right, but things change in people's lives and Sometimes we are drawn down a different path because you have a new perspective.

0:56:35 - Speaker 1 So therefore, of course you're gonna be.

0:56:37 - Speaker 2 If you have a different view of the world, yeah, you're gonna be acting differently and sometimes things do change and priorities do change and we often will, sometimes we get, but we get together with a group a year after we've initially gotten together with them and we'll do what we call it a vision Like reboot right.

And often we'll say one of the questions we say to people is like, go back and give yourself, go, go, give yourself a scorecard, like let's do a grade. How did you do against all your different objectives? And one of the questions we ask people to consider is is this still important to me? Because if you say to yourself, oh, I said I was gonna, you know, rebuild my relationship with my cousin and I'm gonna, and then you put in your thing, I was gonna visit him and I was gonna have these conversations with him and I was gonna have a dinner with him, and then you know you're kind of looking at that like I didn't do that, but I just don't care.

0:57:27 - Speaker 1 Yeah, I thought that was a goal that I was supposed to do.

0:57:30 - Speaker 2 Yeah, and it's just no longer important to me and we've also had professional goals in our you know, I've had professional goals in my vision that seemed like the most important thing and then I, you know, kind of a few months later, re-evaluated them and something else there was a some circumstance change. Your vision is not etched in a tablet. It needs to be looked at every month and re-evaluated and and I think I'm glad you asked that question because I think other people might have had the same question and and for sure, pivoting is is okay.

0:58:01 - Speaker 1 Beautiful answer. I loved it. So, as we kind of get into the last one here we're gonna be talking about, stop talking and get curious. Curiosity, I think, is one of the most overlooked Assets in anybody's toolbox when it comes to goal setting, crushing, accomplishing those goals or, to your point earlier, you know, of kind of pivoting when necessary. Become a conscious, curious listener who is free from solving other people's problems. Yeah what's going on there?

0:58:29 - Speaker 2 Well, there's, there's two different things in that statement. Number one on curiosity a lot of times people Think, well, I'm not curious about that, mmm. Um, that person is boring, that topic is boring, I'm not interested in that. It's hard for me to get curious about that. And and to that I would say it's an underdeveloped muscle that if you work it and you practice trying to generate curiosity and getting curious, you could get better at being curious. And For anyone you know anyone listening to this conversation, they might be thinking well, how do you do that? And the answer is Sit down with somebody when they're, when you're having a conversation and they start talking and you notice yourself starting to check out and not really asking any questions or just trying to pivot the conversation and you're on your phone.

I stopped talking and you notice no one's talking Exactly but that's where you want to press harder and try harder to listen deeper and ask more open-ended questions like Tell me more about that, why does this matter to you? Or you know, just sometimes you don't even have to ask a question. You can just pause or just say hmm, and people will share more. And you will notice that if you put intention behind being curious, you will get more curious. Your brain will start to Ask more, like it will have more questions to ask Once you start doing it. It's almost like building of momentum.

So, that so so, so getting, and the the beauty of that is it creates connection, it creates trust between people, huge, it will build your relationship with people and if you're looking to try to, you know Gain allies and supporters. This is really important. It's just getting interested in what people are doing and what they have to say.

1:00:18 - Speaker 1 Think about it. If we dissect the people that we trust, why probably do we trust them? Is I'd be willing to bet, in their presence we feel seen and we feel heard. And okay, if that's the secret sauce to developing trust and keeping trust, just do that with these people. There you go.

1:00:40 - Speaker 2 And it's key. And I think the second part of the sentence you asked you read was about freeing yourself from feeling that you need to solve people's problems, and this one has big application in personal relationships, but also in professional relationships. So I think on the personal front, we oftentimes feel like somebody tells you something about their life and we immediately move to how can we help them make it better. And on the professional front, we do the same thing, and, especially if you're a people manager, you feel like somebody comes to you and they have a problem. You feel like that's your job is to tell them what to do and help them to solve their problem. But we also intrinsically know that when we don't do that and we give them the opportunity to solve it for themselves, they will automatically learn something. They'll learn more, they'll grow more and they may come up with a solution that is better than the one we might have proposed for them.

1:01:36 - Speaker 1 And that's the one I think most people have the most transformed perspective on. Because at first you have that tough coach or tough love parent or tough manager whatever, and so they didn't help me, they didn't tell me what to do. What do they do? They put you in a container where you can feel seen and heard and then you go on and develop and problem solve on your own. That person was coaching you the whole time. That person was putting you on the path to problem solve yourself and you have a totally different perspective and level of appreciation for them after the fact.

1:02:03 - Speaker 2 Totally, and I've seen this a lot over the years that I've been working with people, particularly in managers. It's a game changer, like when you step into leadership, you are trying less hard.

You can just sort of take a deep breath and say to people what do you think you should do, and really just be with them as they navigate through a challenge, and ask a few questions, but not even that many, and just really give them an opportunity to think and I think it changes how people feel about themselves, the person that you're. They feel more confident, they feel more capable, they feel less reliant on you More valuable, more valuable.

More valuable, more creative ability to use, flex that creativity muscle more. So it's just a huge gift and a way to have more kind of competent people around you.

1:03:00 - Speaker 1 When I think back to leading soldiers in the military and leading a team in corporate America and now leading my own team, the people with perspective, now, the people that are gonna make it, the ones that are gonna be great contributors to the mission my mission, their mission, the business, whatever are the ones that came to me with a problem, also possible solutions, Compared to the ones that only came to me with a problem, looking for a solution.

1:03:28 - Speaker 2 Yes, yes. And then the 2.0, for you're the one hearing the possible solution is because a lot of times people will come to you with a possible solution and maybe it's not quite right, but you still appreciate that they brought it.

1:03:41 - Speaker 1 It shows initiative. It shows initiative. You're not just about it. You're not just lobbing this up for me to take care of or passing it off absolutely.

1:03:46 - Speaker 2 But the 2.0 is if they didn't get it quite right, don't give it to them yet. Mm-hmm, stay with them. What else could keep going here? What else could work here? You know what else could you try? Who else could you consult? How else could you think about this? Because I think sitting in a challenge for somebody sitting in a challenge, there's value in that, there's value in sitting in a challenge and not being fed the answer just because you tried once. That's not always, you know.

1:04:16 - Speaker 1 Yeah.

1:04:17 - Speaker 2 Not long enough for some people. So yeah, and I think the other thing too about this whole thing is people feel very impatient because it takes more time. Oh yeah, that's really the number one thing that gets in the way when we ask people why aren't you already doing?

1:04:31 - Speaker 1 this no one. The Amazon Prime Now solution.

1:04:33 - Speaker 2 Exactly, and it's just, you know, telling people what to do is faster. And, by the way, if you're a parent or a people manager, sometimes you have to do that. Sometimes you gotta tell people what to do. But if you think about this as I like to think about it as like a pendulum, right? So all the way on the left side of the pendulum is telling people what to do. All the way on the other side of the pendulum is people pure questioning, pure coaching people, you know, finding their own solutions. Well, you know, you wanna kind of be able to swing to both sides of the pendulum when necessary. You don't wanna only be able to do one or the other of those skills. They're both valuable.

1:05:15 - Speaker 1 Both serve a purpose. It's just a matter of knowing how, when, where, why, how.

1:05:20 - Speaker 2 Exactly, and most parents and people managers pivot towards solving and they underdevelop the muscle of helping people solve their own problems. So we have in the book, we have a couple of conversational role plays in there, just real conversations that we've had with people just to show, well, what does this look like when it's done? Well, and that's helpful too, cause sometimes people are like, well, what does it? What does it even sound like? Do I just sit there Like what do I say?

1:05:48 - Speaker 1 But you know, on the receiving end of that cause I've been there sometimes when I just hear, well, what do you think we should do, or how would you solve this problem, you just think, just tell me Exactly. It's like, well, you're gonna do your job. So, on that end of the pendulum, what are some things we can do to properly communicate that, or just to at least voice some things to let both sides know? Hey, I'm trying to navigate this a little bit more. I don't want to have you be the only one responsible, me be the only one responsible. How can we probably communicate that up?

1:06:20 - Speaker 2 Well, I think some of it first of all, some of it is like just to avoid the trap of what you just said, of the person saying just tell me what to do. I think if you say to them listen, I could come up with a couple of ideas for you here, Okay, but I feel like you might come up with something better If you could just have an opportunity to think it through. So what I'd like to do is help you think it through, Okay, okay, so that you have an opportunity to really ideate on this, versus me just giving you what I could think of, which I can always do later. So that way people are oh, I get what we're doing here. It's not just somebody's. This is really because I might have something Okay. So I think that's an important thing to say. I don't know if that's what you were asking me, but I just wanted to make that point because I think it's important for people to provide context.

1:07:12 - Speaker 1 Very true, absolutely, yeah, yeah. Well, this has been fascinating. I want to remind everybody about the book here, fast Forward. It really it's the best way to say this. It gave me new perspective on a lot of familiar tools when it comes to goal setting and I've been in this world for many, many years of behavior change and goal setting and personal development and all the things. But when I come across something like this, that reminds me first and foremost of how important the framework is. There are foundational tools and mindsets to go to for behavior change and habits and all the things we've been talking about. But the little nuances you've been introducing us to here, I think, are so powerful and can just be that curious component. It can just be introducing enough curiosity to get us to think and to act and ultimately hold ourselves more accountable.

1:08:05 - Speaker 2 Yes, and I think sometimes you just need a framework that will be simple, that it's easy to action on, and that was our goal is give people five power principles that are deeply transformative, they can be really life-changing, but they're also super simple to action. So that is what we set out to accomplish in this book.

1:08:24 - Speaker 1 If you had to give a sixth power principle, maybe after the research and writing, and now it's out there and you've been talking about all the things, what would be or could be a sixth power principle?

1:08:34 - Speaker 2 Oh, boy, I know somebody's asked me that question. That's a hard one. I mean, we had a power principle way back whence that could potentially get resurfaced at some point.

1:08:47 - Speaker 1 But it had to do Only by the goodie here. Yeah.

1:08:50 - Speaker 2 Sometimes it's all about real estate, like how much room do you have to do something, but it had to do with the toxicity of complaining and just giving people a framework to reduce the amount of complaining by themselves and others in their life. And we, you know, because it's just, it's toxic. It's toxic to a workplace, a family.

1:09:11 - Speaker 1 You're talking about complaining, as it relates to setting a vision or accomplishing our vision.

1:09:16 - Speaker 2 Anything in your whole life. When you ask people in a room and, having done this for many, many years, we used to ask people how much of your time do you spend complaining, whether you do it silently or out loud, like literally what percentage of your time? The numbers that we would get would be mind blowing.

1:09:34 - Speaker 1 And that's probably downthrottling. Nobody wants to really maybe come out and say Because we would ask them to actually raise their hands so they would be outed.

1:09:41 - Speaker 2 But people would raise their hands. We I would say, oh, how many of you could see? And I would think that nobody would raise their hand. But a lot of people did, 70% of your time. People would raise their hands 70, and then I'd say, 60 hands are getting raised. So you know, this is it's a plague in our culture and I think if people are really honest with themselves, we're spending a lot of times complaining versus shifting complaints to requests and recommendations, which that was the power principle Shift complaints to requests and recommendations.

1:10:10 - Speaker 1 It makes me think how I've recently kind of been able to catch myself. I think I didn't fully realize it until you just described it, how I've had so many micro complaints, or I would micro complain throughout the day.

What I mean here is an annoying email comes through or I stub my toe, or just a small little thing happens where I'm like, or I'm like F this, or I get frustrated. I didn't realize how much I was doing that until actually for about three months now have it been introducing a meditation practice, and I don't know what it is. Just more presence, more awareness, more being in tune with my body and thoughts. I'm catching myself more and more and they're more easily dismissible now.

1:10:53 - Speaker 2 Because, again, raising your consciousness is the first step.

1:10:56 - Speaker 1 There we go full circle, so you're able to let them go when you do that so that I mean, some of them are just not important.

1:11:01 - Speaker 2 Things like I stub my toe, I got an email and it's annoying, but if it's something that keeps coming up and it's persistent, that's kind of the definition of insanity. You know, you're complaining about the same thing over and over and over again and doing nothing about it, and there are things like that we can all, if we really are all honest with ourselves, we can find. So that maybe is a could have been a six power principle. Well, Wendy, this has been amazing.

1:11:24 - Speaker 1 I thoroughly enjoyed the book and your work is just incredible. We'll have to get you back, maybe next year, for you know part two or you got the 10 power principles. I will have to see and you know, I'm definitely, I'm definitely gonna go home and really I'm going to be applying this whole pen to paper thing.

1:11:41 - Speaker 2 This is another thing Right your vision, right your vision.

1:11:44 - Speaker 1 Yeah, it's another thing like meditation, where I've been hearing for years that you know, oh, you, you know you can do it and it can benefit you. All this stuff. I'm like, yeah, I'm cool, Like I got it, I'm got it.

But you know, now this is another reminder for me to get out of my head even more, to put it to paper and cause I've. I've got some big goals, I got some big things and you know I'm very grateful for where life has taken me. But it's a lot of work and I want to make sure that I'm not just doing unnecessary work and I'm staying true to the vision I have.

More importantly, supporting others and making sure that I'm being known for the type of person, the type of entrepreneur, the type of podcast or husband, community leader all that that really matters to me.

1:12:21 - Speaker 2 Awesome, let's go. You're going to write it. And you know what, If you, when you buy the book you can download, there's a free digital workbook.

1:12:28 - Speaker 1 Oh great.

1:12:29 - Speaker 2 And it's really helpful for people who want to do the exercises electronically.

1:12:32 - Speaker 1 All right.

1:12:33 - Speaker 2 So that is a resource for you.

1:12:35 - Speaker 1 Amazing Well, fast forward, ever forward. Match made in heaven here.

1:12:38 - Speaker 2 Yeah, here we go, all right, thank you. Thanks for having me on Chase.

1:12:41 - Speaker 1 Let me kill the interview portion there. Really really enjoyed that conversation.

1:12:44 - Speaker 2 Yeah, it was fun.