This past week on Wednesday, we had our monthly "Arena Prep Call."

On this call, our Arena1 members come with their problems, questions, challenges, and we work together to identify what their most immediate constraint is AND to help them form the best effective question for the main Arena call the following week (where we then help them figure out the next best step to solving that problem or answering that question).

If you've not been through our process, that might sound strange.

A call that's all about figuring out what to say on the next call?

You might think that the barrier to getting what you want and solving your problems is taking the action. While the action is important - obviously Engage the Field2 is a core tenant here - knowing what you are trying to solve, and then getting the right help to solve it is usually where the biggest challenge lies.

Think about it like this,

Let's say you think you know the goal you want, and you start heading towards that goal as fast as possible.

You do this for months, weeks ... maybe years, only to discover you're right back where you started.

An experience many are familiar with, which is akin to hopping in a car, in the dark, with no lights, and slamming your foot on the gas. Will you get where you want to go? Will you drive off the road? Will you run into the wall right in front of you which you can't see?

When it comes to getting HELP trying to achieve what you want, the barrier is often asking the right effective question.

It’s something we discuss pretty much every Arena call, because there's no use in anyone answering a question which isn't the right question. In fact answering the wrong question can send you down the wrong road for a long time.

This is why we put so much effort into helping our members form effective questions.

The result is when they get on The Arena call, they are much MUCH closer to knocking down their immediate constraint through guided insight and clarity from our experts.

And on our Arena call people regularly knock out huge barriers to their goals (business and personal) and move themselves forward faster than they ever thought possible.

But The Arena call isn't nearly as good, without the prep call. (Little behind the curtain - when we first built The Arena we didn’t have a prep call and we were spending so much time on the main call working through these problems, we built the prep call and that vastly improved the experience and results for everyone)

So

I thought I'd share a selection of thoughts and lessons from this weeks call, to give you a little insight into what we often uncover.

Is The Problem THE Problem?

So, the point of The Arena is to both help identify what your problems are, as well as get you moving in the next step towards knocking down those problems through taking action in a structured and strategic way.

You come to the call and you essentially say "this is what i did, this is what happened, now what do i do?"

Of course,

Getting the right answer to help you actually solve your problem kind of depends on you really understanding what your problem actually is.

(I'm going to lean into Entrepreneurial and Business references here since many of us are in that space trying to solve these kinds of problems, but this is not limited to a particular area of interest, this is life)

Let's say I'm an entrepreneur and I want to get more business - more clients. I've got social media, I've got a little email list going, etc. I decide I'm going to run a Silver Bullet Campaign3 to see if I can get some conversations going around the problems I'm trying to solve for people

That sounds like it could be a reasonable test. After all if you want more clients, more conversations will get you there.

So you run the Silver Bullet Campaign, you don't get the results you are looking for, and now you are looking at where in the Silver Bullet Campaign you messed up or could do better.

If you came to The Arena with this question --

Resource - The Silver Bullet Campaign

Action - I ran the campaign

Discovery - I didn't get any conversations

Ask - How do I know what to ask so people respond better in my campaign?

Now,

If you went down that rabbit hole of trying to resolve the problem identified with this Silver Bullet Campaign, you could end up spending quite a lot of time and energy trying to ask better questions in your Silver Bullet Campaign.

However, what if that isn't really your problem?

(PS. apparently I revisit this idea frequently)

Or rather, what if you have a different problem, with a closer solution, which can reveal new information which might actually make what you're trying to do in The Silver Bullet work better?

In our example here, you don't have clients, and you're not having conversations.

Not having conversations is your problem.

And while in our example you've identified The Silver Bullet Campaign as the solution, once you went down that road you started to identify the problems with the campaign as your problem.

Easy to get tangled.

I find it useful to step backward as far as possible, use the data that actively presents itself as well as data from my past (Rear View Mirror4) to figure out what my problem really is and if I can get closer to it.

(If that's all a little ... unspecific ... Principle usually is, until it's applied to unique individual situations)

Another separate example from my own experience working with clients on their email marketing.

More than a handful of occasions I've been brought into a business to help resolve an email marketing problem they think they have ...

Not enough opens, not enough clicks, not enough sales.

They think their email is not profitable.

And on the surface it looks like they could do a lot better because the engagement does appear lower than it could be.

Yet after digging deeper I discover that despite the problems they think they have, they actually have a positive short term ROI on new leads. They spend money on new leads and within 3 months they've gained that spend back and then some.

They think their email is not profitable except the data says it is.

Now,

That doesn't mean there isn't a problem.

It just means the problem they are having is different than the one they are trying to communicate or solve. In my experience (with email, in situations like this) often times it's a combination of a FEELINGS problem and an OPTIMIZATION problem.

IE, nothing in the system is really broken. They just desire a different overall outcome than is happening.

I give those examples because the real danger is blindly trying to solve the problem you think you have.

It's easy to get focused on A problem, just because you can see it.

Not Knowing the Problem

Sometimes ... perhaps often times ... we're not really clear on what exactly the problem is.

In The Arena we focus on trying to figure out your Most Immediate Constraint5.

That is the thing along the path towards solving your problem which is closest to you and your resources. The thing you can do with the least amount of effort which can have the most impact on moving you forward toward your desired outcome.

We focus on resources with The Most Immediate Constraint because the biggest risk toward not getting what you want ultimately is running out of those resources along the way.

We use the "kinked hose" analogy. If you imagine a garden hose turned on snaked through the garden with a dozen kinks in it. No water coming out the other end.

Watering the garden is your goal.

Now you can go anywhere along that hose and undo a kink. You might start at the end, or with the most obvious kink in the hose that you can see. That's how most people operate. But if you undo that last kink ... that's going to have no impact on the water flow into the garden. So you spend your resources resolving a problem which doesn't have any noticeable impact on the system.

On the other hand if you get as close to the nozzle as possible - where the water is originating from - and start undoing THAT kink, your effort will immediately increase the flow of water in the hose.

That's what we're going for.

We want to solve problems that return resources or create new ones so that we can keep going solving problems.

And THAT is actually often easier to solve than making sure you are solving the right problem overall. Not only can "the right problem" change as you take action and move through your process, but as mentioned you have limited resources to manage.

As best as possible, understand what your problem really is, so you can identify the simplest thing that might make the greatest impact on your situation ...

And then go do it.

Get the data. The outcome of your action Engaging the Field will let you know if that really was your most immediate constraint and will give you more information to understand whether that really is your problem.

Sometimes you make your own problem

Sometimes, the problem you are focusing on may not be your actual problem,

But believing its the problem becomes the problem.

In other words,

Sometimes you've got to just tackle the wall that's in front of you before you can move on figuring out what the actual problem is.

And that's ok.

We're all human and none of us are perfect.

We've get the uncertain vicissitudes of The Human Mindset, and no matter how "good" we get at recognizing and managing those facets of ourselves, no matter how "good" we get at choosing The Champion's Mind6, we are never perfect.

We never "arrive."

And we can always only ever do what's in front of us.

So sometimes even if it's not THE problem, the problem you need to take down is the one that's right in front of you.

If you think about it, no matter what it is, if it's stopping you from solving any other problems, then any step you can take which can topple that block is the simplest thing you can do which has the greatest impact.

Sometimes we make our own constraints ... through belief, through action.

Don't worry about what you could be doing,

Do what's in front of you.

Take action, get data, move forward.

Sometimes we make the problem much much bigger than it is

Sometimes we make problems out to be much bigger than they really are, or than they could be handled.

We can identify a "problem" as "I need more money in my business." Or "I need to lose lot more fat."

But the "I need more money in my business" problem is perhaps a dozen smaller problems that are more specific and manageable to work through. Finding a route to more consistent conversations that can lead to business. Identifying better offers. Clarifying language. Using what's in front of you more efficiently, etc.

But when it's a BIG problem, our human mindset tends to want to tackle it with a BIG solution.

I need to lose a lot of fat becomes a huge undertaking of modified diet, translating to a dozen different challenges related to managing food in the house and in the kitchen, impacts on other people if you're a part of a family, adding on workout routines and schedules, getting equipment and memberships, moving other schedules around to accommodate it all, etc.

And it's all a ton of smaller problems compiled together.

Like Oogie Boogie in Nightmare Before Christmas.

A whole sack of bugs masquerading as something you need to deal with at once.

But we can't do that.

We can't solve ALL the problems at once. No matter how elegant we think our solution is, we are just incapable of consistently solving it all without breaking something else.

This is why we Microstep7.

This is why we look to our most immediate constraint ... the smallest move we can make which has the greatest impact.

Because we can solve one tiny thing.

Instead of trying to fix all the diet and exercise and schedules ... I could start by sitting less and see what changes.

Instead of trying to build an entire system to generate clients automatically ... I could just call the person I think most likely could connect me with someone.

One step at a time.

Sometimes all you need is to be like Jack and pull on the single thread holding Oogie Boogie together.

And the whole monster problem falls apart and is much more easily squashed.

Are you avoiding that simple step?

Lastly, as you're trying to identify your most immediate constraint and figuring out what it is you want ...

Ask yourself if you really do know what your next best step is.

I've certainly found myself in this position in the past, where I know the next best thing I can be doing, and yet I've given myself a ton of other things to do instead.

And why is that?

I can point to my own fear of failure and rejection in my own situations.

You'll have to figure it out for yourself.

If you HAVE identified an immediate constraint and the simplest steps towards resolving that immediate constraint and you aren't DOING those steps, but rather perhaps giving yourself a bunch of other work to feel like you are moving forward ....

Maybe take a pause and think it through.

Are you avoiding something.

Is it really an immediate constraint.

If it IS the smallest step that could have the biggest impact and you're not doing it then you may be spending resources elsewhere inefficiently and potentially even harming yourself in the long run by increasing the likelihood you run out of resources before getting where you want to go.

It can all change

Your immediate constraint can change.

The problem you're solving can change.

It can change from one month to the next, one week to the next, and even one day to the next, as more information unfolds and new realities reveal themselves around you.

Don't try to do it all.

Take a step. Observe what happens. Rinse and repeat.

Want Live guidance through this process?

That's what we do in The Arena.

If you're ready to step in, we currently have 4 scheduled Arena Calls every month.

2 of these calls are specialized, one focusing on Laurel Portié's ads system8, and one with Dr. Jeff Spencer9. Our Arena members are welcome to join those calls and ask context specific questions from our best people. Got an ads question running a business? Working through Champions Perfect Day or trying to master your Champion's Mind?

Our other 2 calls are The Arena Prep Call, and The Arena Call. Check out a past Arena Call here:

The prep call, as I reflected on above, is about becoming better at asking better questions. Our members come on the prep call to prepare their question for The Arena, so that the following week on The Arena call, they can present their very best precise question to get the most useful help directly from Nic Peterson and others on our team in tackling their most immediate constraint.

The Arena is designed to force you into action to knock down immediate constraint after immediate constraint.

The outcome?

The inevitability of getting what you want … if you Engage the Field.

Join the waitlist here if you think you're ready.

Be Useful. Be Present. Love the Journey.

Joseph Robertson, CMO The Guardian Academy

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• Ready to apply your ideas to reality? You may find our Engage the Field Handbook a useful and effective resource.

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I need to revisit an idea.

Something we've talked about before.

Something which I've "fixed" about myself and my life before.

But as we know, you never really "fix" yourself. You never "arrive." You don't just install "The Champion's Mind1" and then that's it, you win.

Life is not about “getting there.” It’s about the path. And along the path you’re never always completely perfect.

Rather,

You’re always getting off center.

Always coming back to center.

(And if you think about it, does The Champions Mind exist without The Human Mindset? ... you can't be centered if there's no off center)

For me, what I'm about to explore is one those concepts which changes as I change. (Really, that's everything, and if the meaning of something changes for you, what THAT means is you've grown and are applying that idea into your life, observing what happens, and changing your behavior because of it)

Karpman's Drama Triangle.

We've published about this before multiple times, and it's a component within our core principles, so as you dig through understanding yourself and your life, you'll eventually run into it.

I'll briefly go over Karpman's in a moment.

The reason for revisiting this today is twofold.

One, I've had some recent experiences that have me seeing and understanding Karpman's in a new light (different river different person). Conveniently I have two situations going on, one where I've aggressively put myself (not really consciously) into the triangle in a specific role, and a different one where I was aggressively pulled into that role (again, not really consciously).

In reflection, realizing that it's all well and good to say "don't play the victim," "don't be the savior," (obviously don't be the persecutor) ... but what's compelling to me this time around is the observations of the downline effects of participating in this triangle, AND perhaps some useful tools in both avoiding getting into it as well as getting out of it.

So I think. As usual, I don't really know what I think until I see what I say, so we'll see what I think (for now) by the end of all this.

Karpman's Drama Triangle

Let's just start off by quoting from The Adaptive Dilemma2:

"Karpman’s Drama Triangle suggests that there are three roles that need to be filled for drama to start, continue, and compound.

The Victim - Says “I’m helpless”. Oftentimes, they are completely unaware they are playing the role of the victim, which is why thinking deeply about your language is so important.

More on that shortly.

The Rescuer – Says “Let me save you.” The rescuer is the “savior”. They are generally the most dangerous of the three.

In an attempt to avoid their own problems - but still feel productive - they seek other people to rescue.

The rescuer will carry people that are capable of learning how to walk on their own. This effectively cripples those people for life - and the rescuer will pat themselves on the back for it.

In order for the rescuer to maintain their position, they need someone to rescue -a victim. In order for there to be a victim, there needs to be a villain.

The Persecutor.

Don’t get us wrong, there are absolutely nefarious people - real villains. But the reality is that most “villains” are made up. Strangely, not by the victim but by the rescuer.

The rescuer needs the victim to remain a victim, or else they have to face their own problems.

One person can (and will) often rotate through all three roles, depending on which one allows them to avoid their own issues or best serves them at the time."

In The Adaptive Dilemma, that article continues to suggest that you can avoid being stuck in the perpetual drama triangle by the following

1. Refuse to rescue people that are capable of helping themselves.

2. Stop victimizing yourself.

Which is good advice.

But it also lacks the nuance of personal context and experience. Not to say that it is not helpful. It's that very lesson which set me down this path, and so now I'm going to attempt to bring it full circle.

The Victim.

The Savior.

The Persecutor.

Among other things one of the greatest dangers, in my personal observation, of The Drama Triangle, is being pulled into it without conscious awareness - whether that's by my own action and drive (as I have mentioned in the past, an inclination towards "Saviorism"), or as I have recently discovered, by someone else's drive to pull me in.

As much as you can try to consciously continuously check myself and see if I’ve put myself (or just ended up) in these situations in life, I think sometimes getting there can be subtle, and sometimes I can find myself so unconsciously desperate for something that I ignore the cold external light of rational perspective to see what's happening.

(See “The Danger of Needing to Feel”3)

Unfortunately, the impact of participating in or being stuck in the triangle can be far reaching, and potentially tremendously damaging, especially within personal relationships where the impacts of the dynamic can lead to loss of the relationship, but where your drive to not lose the relationship causes you to push in further and actually thus continue increasing the problematic dynamic.

That probably sounds confusing.

I'm going to start with the business example - because I have a recent client project which really threw all this into light for me. The thing about the client relationship dynamic which differs from the personal, is that I don't have a deep emotion and identity tie to such relationships - if they go bad either the client leaves or I do, and that's fine in those situations.

So I think this will be easier to explore first.

Business Drama Triangle

I talked about this a little bit in “What Is Your Role?”4. There I admitted to one of my flaws being a tendency towards "saviorism."

While I recognized A problem with this, I didn't really fully comprehend the reality or the impact of putting myself in "The Savior" role - at least not as I see it now.

My original view and treatment of this was simply, "be aware and don't try to be the savior."

That's all well and good,

But it's also not that easy nor is it that clear-cut.

The Savior, it turns out, is such a tempting role in business. And I don't mean overtly. I'm not sitting here salivating at the opportunity to "become a savior" or to sell myself as one. Rather as soon as I realize that's what I'm leaning towards, it sends of alarm bells and I can typically back out or reframe.

The temptation is a subtle one which, if I don't actively realize the role I'm falling into, can pull me in all the way, quite aggressively, and to great long term detriment.

I have a client.

This client came to me, and I realized they saw me as a solution to their problems. I did what I have (for the past couple years) consistently done to mitigate problems like this, which is I tried to convince them not to hire me. It's all to easy to take money from people who already want to hire me when I don't have the full context to understand what it is we're even going to do - but since I'm oriented towards actually solving problems and coming up with valuable long term solutions, I'd rather convince people NOT to hire me, than to hire me (and that way if they still want to work together, it's far more likely a better situation).

(Context: this is an email project, their former email strategy was not so much a strategy as it was a haphazard effort of disparate broadcasts all attempting to get the entire list to buy everything available all the time - this had caused most of the list to quickly ignore them, which resulted in some spam problems)

I told them the solution to their problem was unclear and couldn't be predicted, because we lacked a lot of behavioral data due to the way things had ended up (very few people reading/clicking). I explained what I'd do, but also that given their current situation, there was an extreme degree of uncertainty and a lack of data which could tell us what would most likely happen in the short term.

They convinced me they were in it for the long term - that they believed in and wanted the plan I'd outlined (which was basically R3MAIL5).

We began the work. The inevitable uncertainty hit ... and everything started to fall apart.

Details are not important,

What I realized is this.

When I came into this situation I was - unconsciously - stepping into a dynamic where one person was effectively being the victim to a problem and seeking a savior. There were problems they didn't understand, that they couldn't really see fully, and perhaps even because they couldn't see or understand the problems, instead of trying to take ownership of those they took the victim role instead.

And more important perhaps than my belief in the role I was taking (whether or not I willingly chose to step in as a savior), THAT is how they saw me.

I can look back on many client projects and see that this is a repeated and common pattern - Even when I actively try to eschew the "savior" role ...

And why wouldn't it be?

If you are a freelancer, service provider, someone going in and "solving problems," then almost by definition you are stepping into a scenario where the person you are solving problems for is playing the victim of that problem.

This isn't always the case, as I'll try to unfold shortly, but I want to finish my newfound perspective and thought here.

(Also, I can see that my best clients haven't had this dynamic)

First, on why this is so tempting.

Here's a little dark manipulation for you.

When someone sees you as, and believes you to be, the savior of their problems ... not only is it much easier to sell to them, but they may go to the extensive length of convincing you to let them hire you.

That's why one of the most common direct response marketing tactics is to pick a villain to pit yourself against with your audience.

Because it makes them the Victim and you The Savior.

The problem with the roles in the drama triangle is that each one is effectively offloading responsibility of different aspects of the drama to another point of the triangle.

The Savior is letting go of responsibility to determine whether the course of action is right or wrong for anyone else by justifying that they are saving the victim from The Persecutor (and to follow the marketing example, 'if the Victim would just do the work as The Savior says, they'd be saved!') - also, as we've discussed in the past, The Savior is often trying to save others because they can't figure out how to save themselves.

The Victim is letting go of responsibility of understanding their problem at all, and in determining the best course of action (and understanding that action) for solving their problem because the savior is there to save them.

So in embracing The Savior, The Victim gets to accept a false sense of security (and gets to shed responsibility) that all their problems are now solved!

When they likely don't even really understand what their problem is.

Furthermore,

Someone who is entrenched in a role in the triangle is highly internally incentivized to prove and justify the role that they have taken.

The Victim, if they really are fully embedded in that role, is going to have a driving need to justify that their position in that role is valid. And is there an easier way to validate your Victimhood than to find A Savior to validate your Persecutor?

The Savior, for that matter, needs the victim to remain the victim. (Which is kind of twisted if you think about it)

That's all just the beginning!

Because the drama triangle doesn't go away.

Here's the missing piece I didn't ever realize when it came to the dangers of being The Savior (or really either of these roles).

When you are entering into a scenario where the people involved are accepting roles in The Drama Triangle, THAT dynamic won't change. They are going to always be seeking to validate the role they see themselves in, whether consciously or unconsciously.

So,

If you enter into a client relationship taking on The Savior role (whether you consciously or willingly accept that, or it's thrust upon you by the other person who is entrenched in The Victim role and is driven to claim you as The Savior), as soon as shit doesn't go as expected ... The Victim could so very easily now see YOU as The Persecutor.

After all, if you are suddenly NOT The Savior, but you are existing in this triad, who else could you become, to them?

And if you are trying to be The Savior to your Victim client ... you're inclination is going to be to keep them a victim.

This all really has nothing to do with business. Everything I've said so far matches dynamic for dynamic with personal drama triangles.

If in a personal relationship you take on The Savior role for your Victim, and you aren't able to save them, they stop seeing you as The Savior, how are they most likely to naturally treat you?

What is that going to do to your relationship?

This is getting a little close to dogmatism. I've done no scientific studies. This is all just my personal lived experience and observation of both myself and other people being in and also not being in situations involving The Drama Triangle.

Going back to my client situation, the dynamic I outlined above, perfectly matches with the way events unfolded.

I became The Persecutor, to them.

Unfortunately ... the only way I've been able to resolve the problem, in the short term, is to redefine who The Persecutor is. I didn't even do this consciously. It was a snap response "no that's not the problem, this is the problem you're fighting against." I may very well be back in "The Savior" role. It may be that with this particular person there's no way to NOT be in that role and do this work.

It may be that my better solution, which I’ll outline in a moment below, will end the project altogether.

After all, I can't control whether other people have chosen to make themselves a Victim and abdicate responsibilities.

But, in considering how this has all unfolded, I do see how I can better recognize when that is happening, to actively reject The Savior role, and to build bumpers that keep me from being impacted when The Victim inevitably decides I'm no longer The Savior.

You might argue, don't go into business with Victims.

And honestly, I think when possible that's the best choice. But sometimes that's not always a reasonable choice to make, depending on the circumstances.

And sometimes you get into the situation without realizing it.

Sometimes you can get into an arrangement with A Victim, not realizing you are The Savior and everything is going great! Then, down the road, even in the face of everything going objectively well, they might start treating you like The Persecutor anyway out of nowhere.

Why?

Well.

Just as much as The Victim needs The Savior to justify their existence against The Persecutor ... they also need The Persecutor to justify their existence.

So

What happens, as The Savior, if you completely vanquish The Persecutor?

I'll let that sit with you.

And if YOU need to be The Savior to the person who needs to be The Victim ... god help you. Because you're real goal is going to end up maintaining their Victimhood as long as you need to be their Savior. And that's kinda F@#$ed up

Personal Drama Triangle

Maybe after all that I don't need to explore the dynamic from The Personal Drama Triangle perspective.

But we can talk more about those downline impacts.

Ever get into a situation in a relationship where it feels like your always at odds and fighting about something and you're thought is "I'm only trying to help you!"?

Nuances of the potential dynamics at play there aside ...

If you are inserting yourself into the role of The Savior, then you intentionally create the Drama Triangle Trap in your relationship. Now, as long as you don't consciously acknowledge what's happening and de-tangle yourself from the dynamic you will be trapped in it with this person.

You will fight to maintain them as The Victim, and something else as The Persecutor.

They may eventually see you as The Persecutor.

And all of that may happen without any of you realizing what's going on ... it just may show up as bad tumultuous conflicting relationship dynamics - where it feels like both of you have suddenly become the enemy of each other.

I'll leave it all to your imagination and personal experience to figure out what THAT looks like.

So perhaps we can move on and figure out how to better avoid and even maybe detangle from the dynamic.

To escape the trap.

A Point on Problems

First, I want to acknowledge a dynamic which I keep seeing throughout all this.

I think often times the Drama Triangle snaps into play because there is an actual authentic problem. There's a problem, and you end up trapped in The Triangle because someone is actually giving up responsibility and power.

But just because there ARE problems, does not mean you have to be in the drama triangle.

You me be an actual Victim to an actual Persecutor.

You can't control when something negative is happening to you, but that doesn't mean you need to accept the Victim role in the triangle. You can still identify what the problems are, what you have available in front of you, what your immediate constraints are, and move forward without relying on there always being a savior or always being a persecutor.

Its not always the Victim who creates the triangle.

Just as much as someone might try really hard to be and justify being The Victim, creating A Savior and locking in the triangle, someone else can try really hard to be and justify being The Savior, locking someone into being Victim.

Avoiding the Drama Triangle - Business Edition

Let me start this with the business example and my personal observations.

If I can be cognizant of being put into "The Savior" role by someone else ... whether that's recognizing they are playing The Victim or identifying me as a Savior ... I can actively work against this.

First, how can I recognize it?

I think the answer is - Adoption of "The Persecutor" in language.

If the prospect or client is speaking of someone else who's done a bad job or screwed them over, or something else which is causing all of their problems, that could be a sign of externalizing responsibility - a habit of the victim. It's not my fault it's this way, it's the bad man over there, and can you save me from the bad man?

It's that old adage of, if your prospect/client is always complaining about how their last contractor sucked ... how's that really gonna go for you?

This might be easier to see with the self awareness of actively looking for it, but I think polarization is so prevalent in marketing that it's just normal that people have problems and broken shit which needs fixing, and it's because of someone or something else that the problem exists or the thing is broken (that sort of manipulative marketing will do a really good job of making you believe YOU'RE not the problem, because, as is pointed out, that makes it so much easier to make money off you).

Turns out, you can have problems, and take full responsibility for those problems, even if you don't know what they are (taking responsibility for lacking the understanding as well).

Signs that someone is identifying something or someone else as their Persecutor is a sign that they may be playing The Victim role, and if both of those are true and they are trying to get you involved ... they might just be pulling you into The Savior.

Now, if I'm in the situation and didn't realize I got into it, perhaps one of the surefire ways to tell is if you quickly shift from "you're solving my problems everything is great" to "you're the problem!"

In other words, if the person is so entrenched in the Victim role, they HAVE to always have a Persecutor and a Savior ... and if you aren't The Savior, what do you become?

Another perspective, just thinking about this now ...

If you've hired someone to fix your problems and they see themselves as a Savior, they will fight to maintain you as Victim, perhaps constantly trying to convince you that there is or are other Persecutors out there trying to get them. A little food for thought if you're on the receiving end from a Savior.

Now, what do you do about it?

Before hand. You can always walk away.

This is probably the most healthy option. But sometimes, you really need to take that trip to the river, and this is what the river is giving you in the moment (ref - trips to the river6).

If I can identify that the other person sees an external force as "The Persecutor" (the thing causing them problems), and they see me as the solution to those problems, perhaps it's enough to call it out directly and make it clear. Take away the legs of "The Persecutor."

An example: Let's say I've got a prospect who wants to bring me in to help with their email strategy, and their big issue is the last person built something that really screwed things up for them. They might be playing the victim to that Persecutor looking for me as their savior.

I can call that out. "I can't tell that what they did is wrong. Clearly something isn't working for you, but it might not be anything they did. I have nothing to do with them and their work. Here's how I do things. If you want to go in this direction, that's a separate issue, but I can't come in and save you."

Even if, it could be true that the previous person's setup made things worse ... there's a reason that person came in and did that work, and "The Victim" in this case must hold responsibility for that happening. (In other words, there's a ton of context you can never see)

Of course, this is speculative. I'm just coming up with this right now.

But at the very least it seems reasonable that if I cut the legs off the perceived Persecutor ... then it should be much harder to make me The Savior (especially if I'm actively trying to not take that role). And if I actively reject their perception of The Persecutor and they fight back insisting that they are The Victim and only I can save them ... well ... I'll at the very least have a crystal clear understanding of the dynamic.

And if that makes it harder to sell ... if I drive someone away because I reject their Persecutor and tell them I'm not their Savior --- I can't see that as anything other than a better outcome.

Now ...

What about The Personal Drama Triangle?

Just like in the business situation, it really actually comes down to language, shared language, and clarity of understanding what's going on.

I can't think of any better solution to discovering you are in a personal drama triangle situation than saying "hey, looks like were in this drama triangle, and I've created that by trying to be The Savior - but you don't need that from me."

I find often times in life that there's little that is more powerful than complete personal awareness in the present moment. Being in the here and now and saying "this is how it really is." You've got to be willing to admit your failures, your vulnerabilities, and step forward into some unknown to resolve the dynamics.

If you've taken on - whether consciously or unconsciously - The Savior role, you've got to be willing to let go and let be what is, and perhaps even look inward to attend to your own shit which may be driving that dynamic in you.

Again, this is all speculative.

But if you stay Trapped in The Triangle in a personal relationship, it's only inevitably going to go bad for everyone.

Remember, even if you vanquish The Persecutor ... because you're trapped in The Triangle, they need to remain the Victim, you need to remain The Savior, and one way or another you're going to justify your existence until you can acknowledge that fault and de-tangle yourself from it.

Be Useful. Be Present. Love the Journey.

Joseph Robertson, CMO The Guardian Academy

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Blank Slate, Open Mind.

I'd actually started that article with this idea, and it quickly morphed into something else. Something I hadn't seen until I started writing.

But the reason the "Blank Slate, Open Mind" idea came to me is because of this one particular ... problem.

The problem is,

That you often don't know what the problem is, but you think you know the problem, and that creates a new problem.

So most people (who think they know their problem) go into things trying to solve a specific problem ...

Like an event.

Or a course or any other bit of information.

But going in thinking you're trying to solve a specific problem means you are highly susceptible to coming in with preconceived notions and ideas both about what that problem is, and how it should be solved.

So,

We have a problem.

The problem is that focusing on a problem which may not necessarily be THE problem thus creating an entirely new problem.

And then we have to ask ourselves,

IS THIS ALSO REALLY THE PROBLEM?

HELP

ALL PROBLEM AND NO PROBLEM MAKE HOMER PROBLEM PROBLEM

Let's rewind a bit.

What in the hell are we really actually trying TO DO here?

Like,

Why even bother solving problems, man?

I mean … It’s not that I’m lazy, it’s that I don’t care.

Oh.

Right, we’re not living in a movie.

And, you want to achieve something in life, I suspect? You want to accomplish things? You want to reach your goals?

Fine fine.

So here we are, trying to achieve our goals, get the life that we desire, heading towards what we want (or what we think we want) and following all the paths to get there.

That's what "goal achievement" is, after all, right? Setting the endpoint that you are headed towards, figuring out the path to get there, and then moving along that path toward your goal until you reach it. That's what society presses upon us.

Keep moving towards your goals. Find the problems/challenges along the way, solve those problems, step by step, and you'll get there. You'll achieve your goals if you just set your mind to it and work hard!

(By the way, if you want a practical resource for real Goal Achievement, start with Dr. Jeff Spencer’s Champion’s Perfect Day2)

Along this path ...

We're dealing with the constant pressure of limiting resources.

We only have so much time, influence, money, energy, reputation, etc. Feel free to put in any resource acronym you like there (that one, T.I.M.E.R). So naturally as we're trying to achieve our goals, we end up developing intermediate goals surrounding resources.

Usually that's acquisition. And most commonly that's money.

It's the easiest one to see.

"If I only had 10 Million Dollars I would be able to live the life of my dreams!"

"If I could only just consistently make $10k/mo with my business, I would be living the life of my dreams!"

"If I could just get one more client, I'd be able to live the stress free life I desire!"

No doubt the Guardians reading this are quietly snorting and/or having a little breath-chuckle knowing the absurd truth of those perspectives.

The folly of chasing more. Of not realizing what you really want in life and that it may be actually achievable right in front of you.

But, let's put that aside for the moment.

No matter what your perspective, understanding, and proclivity toward achieving your goals, all of us have to face the challenge presented by limited resources. Along the path we must face this acquisition and management, and inevitably that issue becomes goals we seek and/or problems we think we need to solve.

So no matter what we do, we face "problems."

From where we are now to where we want to go can be a path, but almost always there are going to be obstacles along the way.

And that brings us back ....

To the problem of preconceiving the problem we think we have (because we can't seem to reach be at our goal and thus there must be a problem in front of us to solve) thus creating a new problem that's not at all the problem we want to be dealing with.

INSTEAD OF ...

Running at this from the front trying to solve the problem,

Let's go from a different direction.

And figure out what the outcome is ultimately that we need or want.

NOT THE GOAL

The goal I find is often something which we conceive of because it creates or means outcomes we think we want.

"I want to own a business" is a goal.

But WHY

Maybe the freedom. Maybe the control. Maybe the uncapped potential income.

You can see how there's layers and layers of that onion to peel all the way down to your fundamental desires and needs and how you see serving those.

There's a way of living which underscores the goal.

Then you might also see how focusing on *the goal* might have you overlook easier or possibly better solutions to providing the actual end desired outcome.

(This is all Function over Form3 stuff)

Ok how about a practical example of thinking through this.

You might think you need to make an extra $2k month (because you have a limiting resource issue and now you've either made a new revenue goal, or identified the missing revenue as a problem to solve).

If you think your problem is you're making $2k less a month than you want right now, you're gonna start looking for ways to increase your monthly revenue by $2k.

(1+1=2 - I'm here for all the obvious observations today)

BUT,

This can lead you down some problematic routes ... like taking on a long term retainer (obligation - a topic for another time), that inhibits your abilities to do things.

If you go into that problem without a focus on what you think the problem is - especially if you have a mirror to bounce the problem off (like anyone at a TGA event, or in The Arena), you might then discover that you don't actually need $2k/mo ... you need an additional $12k in the next 6 months.

Or maybe an addition $24k this year.

NOW ... the problem we're solving is different. There are more possibilities for solving THAT problem.

You might also dig deeper and figure out that there are resources other than money which actually solve the deeper problem - you just assigned money as the resource to figure out other problems you have.

(One day I'll tell you the story where I barter traded 6 months of dinner with a chef)

You might ask yourself ... why do I need another $24k this year?

This might lead you down some different paths. Maybe you think you need $24k a year, but actually you "need" all that to pay for a bunch of stuff which, if you scrutinize ... you might actually not need.

(And THAT is basic Resource Engineer4)

OR,

You might discover those needs can be resolved with different resources.

That above may be a "made up" scenario ... but the problem isn't - I pulled it right from one of our Arena members (thanks buddy, you know who you are).

I just stepped backward from what it looked like the problem was (not having enough resources each month) to explore what "the real problem" in that scenario could look like. What it looks like to step into a situation letting go of what you think the real problem is.

And perhaps you can see how going into a situation trying to solve the problem you think you have, can easily shoehorn your potential for solving the real problem (or keep you from solving it altogether).

Of course,

If you're doing this all on your own, it's much more challenging. Easier to go into a situation like one of TGA's Events or The Arena, or even The Comments of our articles here, where we have structures specifically for figuring this out and experienced people who can help you unpack the truth of what you're really trying to figure out.

And if you DO have the opportunity to put yourself in that kind of situation ...

Letting go of any preconceived notions you have, and entering with A Blank Slate and An Open Mind can lead to much more effective and useful answers to you.

And that's why I went down that whole other rabbit hole in "Master the Function of Learning," getting clear on what behavior you want to modify when assimilating new information, because if you can master behavior modification and get clear on a behavioral level what to develop, I think it makes everything else fall into place.

If you're on your own ...

This is one of the reasons we cultivate a practice of focusing on The Most Immediate Constraint.

In short, The Most Immediate Constraint is the problem you can solve which has the greatest likelihood of returning resources or revealing more resources.

One of the nice things about The Most Immediate Constraint is if you get the problem WRONG, as long as you get your resources back (or find new resources), you can still keep going. And in the doing you can discover whether that is the problem you want to be solving or not.

And that brings me to my favorite framing around all this.

• Set your goal.

• Figure out the best path from where you are right now to where you want to be.

• Figure out your most immediate constraint.

• LET GO OF THE GOAL

• Solve the constraint.

From the data of Engaging the Field to solve the constraint, figure out if that was the right problem, if that really is moving you toward your goal, and if your goal really is still your goal.

Nothing outside of what you can do in front of yourself right now really matters when it comes to figuring out what to do. It might help inform direction ... but that can all change. And if you're dead focused on solving the problem you think you have, you might miss the better path that reveals itself once you start moving forward.

Is the problem you have really the problem?

Be Useful. Be Present. Love the Journey.

Joseph Robertson, CMO The Guardian Academy

• Engage in discussion with the author and TGA+ Community in the comments below - give us your 6WU and/or thoughts after reading. Together we make a rising tide that lifts all ships.

• Ready to apply your ideas to reality? You may find our Engage the Field Handbook a useful and effective resource.

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Amongst the greatest wisdom shared with us by Dr. Jeff Spencer1 is his perspective and understanding of potential.

Without going deep into Dr. Jeff Spencer's story (which you can dip into here), he well tell you that he has spent his entire life what limits and builds potential.

At last year's Gray Wolf Summit, Dr. Jeff Spencer shared with us his latest perspective on understanding and accessing our potentials, and how to live the greatest life that we possibly can, to give the best of what we've got which no one else in creation can give but us.

Today I'd like to gift this understanding from Dr. Jeff, to you.

What do you think about when you think about "potential?"

We talk about it quite a bit here. You could say that one of the core goals of The Guardian Academy is to help you find your greatest potential and live a life around that.

But what does potential mean?

We can look at strict definitions - "capable of being but not yet in existence" - and from a scientific perspective on potential energy "energy stored in a system."

So from a personal point of view, perhaps that means potential is the greatest unrevealed energy of our full and complete unique selves impacting the world and those around us.

(Ps. that means it's there, yet un-accessed)

Maybe you have a different idea of what potential means.

But when we seek potential,

What are we usually seeking?

Some potential?

A smattering?

Just a sprinkle of my potential into the day?

Naw,

Usually we're talking about this like access your "full potential."

In fact, that's how we have historically talked about it, how I've written about it, etc.

Here’s a few: Keeping You From Your Full Potential2, The Learning Lens: Identifying Your Potential3, The Phases Of Engaging The Field & "Full Potential"4, Opening The Door For Your Full Potential5 (and more, just search “potential” on TGA substack)

In short, we’ve talked about using your Known Potential, revealing your Unknown Potential, and from this emerges your Full Potential.

That dynamic can still be seen, but there is much more nuance to be discovered, and critically a missing dynamic of life.

What we're going to find is that "potential" is not a clear, defined, dogmatic state of being. "Full potential" suggests that you fill up all your potential and then you are there, you have it.

Turns out,

Not only is there not a strict endpoint, but envisioning your potential as a bucket to fill is actually limiting to your real potential.

We'll get into that in a moment.

First, I have a task for you to do before you continue reading. I know some of you reading this are going to get to this point and be like "what, EFFORT? naw" and split, and some of you are gonna skim right over this and keep reading.

Fine. But consider that DOING is a necessary component of learning. (As we have so endlessly emphasized here)6

So here's what I want you to do.

Imagine Dr. Jeff Spencer standing before you right now, and he is saying these words, deliberately, with emphasis on the importance OF them.

Hear his voice - these are his words:

"Go now. Take 1 minute, and write down exactly what life would be like if you played at your full potential. You're not going to apply any *practicality* to what it is you are doing to declare. You're going to declare what it *really is* that you want to declare. Do we have an agreement? Sometimes we come up short, thinking we can't say what we want to say because we don't know if we can get there. That does not apply here. Unrestricted - what it is that you believe you would be able to do if you were a full potential player?"

What does Dr Jeff Spencer expect you to go do right now?

He's watching.

Go do the work, then come back and read.

At the end of this article I share with you what *my* answer was to this question - because Dr. Jeff had us do this exercise at Gray Wolf Summit. We got together in groups of 3 strangers and talked about what we imagined what our life would be like played at our full potential.

Now we get into "The Potentials."

This is 100% Dr. Jeff Spencer, I am merely a conduit of perception. That being said ... once you have an understanding of this, there will be an obvious question. To that, I will provide *my answer.*

The 4 Potentials

There are 4 types of potentials which create a puzzle. They interact continuously with each other.

How they interact with each other will determine our capacity to manifest our potential.

Potential not manifest is (my words), a life not fully lived.

1 - Partial Potential

This is the first type of potential because this is what most people have. They are not "full potential" players they are partial potential players.

Here's how Dr. Jeff presents this visually:

This is the "potential puzzle." Each of the filled blocks represent a known part of you. There's a missing piece, and therefore it is partially filled.

Most people who seek to meet their full potential actually only hit this spot, and they limp along in life at 80-90% of their fullest potential. They also get stuck here, but more on that in a moment.

2 - Exponential Potential

This is what most people call "full potential." And we've still been using that language of "full potential" because this is how most people think about it. This is almost certainly how YOU have been thinking about your potential.

But Dr. Jeff Spencer calls this Exponential Potential.

Here's how Dr. Jeff presents Exponential Potential.

You can see that not only is the puzzle filled, but it's also much larger.

Because it turns out there are many octaves ABOVE "full."

It's not just that you completed your potential when you hit this point, it's that everything expands to be greater than it previously appeared to be. Filling the potential puzzle reveals this exponential state.

It's an expansive possibility once you arrive.

Here you are "playing at 100%," but what that means in reality is multiples of your own capability which are much much higher than you can ever conceive of.

"I understand why astronauts come back from the moon looking at the earth and they can't look at life ever the same again ... it opens up an expansive possibility based on an experience which you can't unsee." - Dr. Jeff Spencer

One of the interesting things about this dynamic is that it's really impossible to preconceive what your exponential potential will be like. You have to step into it, experience the expansiveness, see what can't be unseen and THEN you're reality will be forever shifted.

As Dr. Jeff says ...

"This puts pressure on describing in advance what we can perceive as possible and true."

Which is how most people approach trying to figure out their full potential. They imagine a life where they are living their full potential and then start to head towards that life.

BUT

You can't know what your potential capability is going to expand into until you find that last missing piece which reveals your exponential potential. Your reality and how you chose to live in it may very well change completely once you hit this point.

So, How do we go from partial to exponential?

This is the real puzzle to figure out. If we understand in ourselves how to move from partial potential to Exponential Potential, that gives us the possibility of creating an Exponential Life - for a lifetime.

You'll see toward the end why this particular skill is so important.

Here's a thing about our potentials.

There is no blood test to reveal what they are. You can't go into a doctors office, get some blood drawn, or answer a particular set of questions to figure this out. There's no personality identity test which is going to tell you what they are.

Potentials are only revealed over time, showing up as you do things.

Does that sound familiar?

You must Engage the Field for your potentials to emerge.

BUT

There's a trap in "doing" which many people fall into.

The Full Potential Illusion

Dr. Jeff Spencer calls this "The Hustler's Hoax."

Those who seek their full potential will often fall into the belief that if they try harder, if they increase the details, if they push on all the different components they are going to be able to take what they have and grow it up to full potential.

The problem really is that when we press harder and go deeper and we try more and more, what happens is you cannot take something which is already maxed out and get any more out of it.

See that diagram?

We're in partial potential here. And what most people do is they keep pushing on all the pieces of that puzzle trying to do more.

But each of those other filled pieces are complete. They CANNOT be filled more than they are. The only way to get from this point to The Exponential isn't to push harder on what's already at capacity, it's to find the missing piece.

There's a missing potential which hasn't been found yet, you're pushing hard on things which can't go anymore.

When we're pushing forward in life, but unable to move forward, its most likely because of this dynamic. We have the sense that there is more we can do, more potential in us, but we're pushing on the things which are already maxed out.

What then happens is, when you push hard on those potentials to make up for the sense that you aren't moving forward, you inevitably come to the conclusion that your partial potential IS your full potential. You aren't able to put more into what you're doing - it's not possible.

This is the illusion. This is how you get trapped for years and lifetimes within partial potential. Pushing forever on what is already maxed out and believing "this is it, this is all I have to offer."

The sad reality then is we end up backing off living a lesser life. AND we live it in despair because we know deep down we're capable of more. We've just tricked ourselves into thinking there is no more or that we can't get there.

"We all have the capacity to give the best of what we've got which no one can give in all of creation except YOU." - Dr. Jeff Spencer

So,

The only way to move from Partial to Exponential, is to find the missing piece.

3 - Invisible Potential

This is the 3rd kind of potential. The invisible. The one we can't see which we need to discover in order to bring ourselves into Exponential Potential.

Every one of us has potential in us which we cannot see.

So we need a mechanism to make the invisible visible.

We have to FIND the missing potential.

When we insert the missing piece into the partial potential puzzle, it instantly blows up into the exponential, performing greater than the sum of the parts.

Discovering this invisible potential is an emergent property of doing. And doing in a way which reveals new potential that brings us to something much greater and exponential. It's not about doing more with what we have, it's about doing in a way that we allow ourselves conscious awareness of that search for The Exponential.

It's also key to understand that this isn't just finding more parts to your partial potential puzzle. It's finding the right missing part, so that there is harmony in the system. It does no good to find another potential that has no harmony with the rest of the parts.

"You want the fewest number of right parts together, which creates Harmony." - Dr. Jeff Spencer

When you have harmony among the parts you automatically go from Partial to Exponential.

Therefore the invisible potential is a piece of the puzzle which is harmonious with all the other pieces and instantaneously shifts you into the exponential.

4 - Change Potential

There are 2 things we experience in this dimension of life which is how all of this is put together.

Change is part of our existence. You can't stop it. These are the two we're looking at:

There's personal change. This is what happens with you over time. Time marches on, we grow, we change - in all the ways possible (physical, mental, spiritual).

There's societal and cultural change. This is life happening around us. We have no control over what happens with culture and society. We can contribute to it, but ultimately we don't get to choose what happens with it.

So what happens with this Potential Puzzle is, because of change, all the different potentials that work together in harmony to complete the partial potential puzzle which goes exponential, starts to become irrelevant, because the change makes some of the parts no longer relevant.

When we lose a potential which creates the exponential output we revert back to partial.

That means we need to repeat the process.

Dr. Jeff calls this "The Exponential Potential Puzzle Cycle."

All the good stuff doesn't perpetuate ... it requires energy to maintain otherwise it reverts.

So The Exponential Puzzle does not self perpetuate.

A beautiful living tree will only keep living and providing to the environment around it if it continues to get the nutrients it needs from it's environment - if it continues to remain healthy and unaffected by disease and outside influence (like a fire). When that system of maintaining the tree falls ... it falls, and decomposes, and reverts.

That's where everything wants to go eventually - and if the cycle continues new life and potential grows from that.

Life itself is a cycle of harmonious exponential potentials.

This ultimately brings us back to your capability to create an exponential life. Because it's not about finding your full potential, or even your exponential potential, and keeping it.

It's about living through this harmonious cycle of life.

Always looking for the missing piece, to create the exponential and expansive life that you are always capable of creating.

To hold this together, I find it helpful to have mechanisms we can rely on. Especially when it comes to finding the missing piece. If you become adept at finding the missing piece and really knowing how to move from Partial to Exponential potential, then you'll always be equipped to life an exponential life even when change happens.

The above is almost entirely taken from Dr. Jeff Spencer's presentation on Exponential Potential at The Gray Wolf Summit (with some of my perspective and understanding added).

Now I'd like to share with you my personal takeaway,

And the mechanism I have discovered for identifying the invisible potential, and intentionally moving from Partial to Exponential Potential.

When I saw that diagram, and listened to Dr. Jeff talk, I thought through all the things I do and have done, all the places I have pushed and moved forward with, and I could feel that sense of a wall.

Those places where I pushed hard and nothing happened.

Because those potentials were full and complete. Not exponential. Not expansive.

But,

There was ONE place,

Which felt completely different.

One thing I do, have done, and constantly return to, which feels like unending expansiveness when I step into it. A place where I *never* feel like I've found completion, where I always discover something new, which feels as satisfying as the deep breath of life.

Seek The Expansive

Here's the note I made to myself at Gray Wolf Summit:

"I'm not maxed out on my ability to write and communicated, but I AM restricting my ability to let that grow by believing I need to do other things."

I came to this after answering my question for what "full potential" life looked like. I went through a couple variations but in embracing Dr. Jeff's call to unrestricted vision, I came to the conclusion that I just want to be like the wizard on the mountain who few people know about but who go to for things no one else can manage to do, and there I'll have a quiet life with my family, tending to the world around me, and writing.

The imagery of it tipped me off and lead to understanding what currently is the piece leading me to my Exponential Potential.

It's in the writing.

For me.

My expansive exponential potential lies in the writing. Every time I've come back to focus more and more on that practice, everything new and great in my life has grown and expanded.

Every time things seem to slow and hit a wall ...

It's because I've restricted my ability to let that expand and fill all the possible space and energy it can, in the face of feeling like I need to do other things.

This is my perspective on how to find your exponential potential.

Seek what is EXPANSIVE.

I'm not sure I can do it justice in words to express how it feels.

But I do believe if you find the present moment within yourself, you can search through all the things you do and all the things you've done, and find the one thing which pops out as ever expanding, ever expressive, ever illuminating.

Like the universe exploding outward in unending creation.

Every other thing feels like a dead end. Like a wall. Like a limitation. Like walking through quickly drying cement.

But not The Expansive.

The Expansive wants to carry me away and never look back. The Expansive lifts me above where I am now and feeds everything else I'm doing in a way that is almost inexplicable but undeniable.

When I put more time and energy into writing, even when it seems like I should be spending my time doing other things, no matter what, something happens which wouldn't have happened otherwise. It's like time and possibility expand around me when I go into this space and do this thing.

Seek what is in you which feels expansive.

Like every time you step into doing the thing it grows and you feel an unending sense of ability and discovery in the path.

But Remember the Change

For myself personally it's difficult to imagine that I will find anything else in life as exponential potential. But I know that there will be change.

I will change.

The world will change.

How I interact and contribute and feed the life around me will change.

So I don't focus on the thing.

I focus on The Expansiveness.

For me right now that is something I can see, something I can feel, something I can always be aware of and seek because I know that returning to Partial Potential is an inevitable path on life.

Just as the mastery of The Champion's Mind is not always being there, not having arrived, but rather in recognizing when we're in The Human Mindset and making the conscious choice to move our present selves into the space we really desire.

The way I see it, it's the same with Exponential Potential.

It's not a bucket to be filled,

But rather a state of being which we can return to with present awareness of our expansive gifts.

If you haven’t had the pleasure of being in the room with Dr. Jeff Spencer and learning from him, I have two recommendations for you.

The first is Dr. Jeff Spencer’s Champion’s Perfect Day7 - an invaluable resource in navigating your daily energy. If you want to seek your Exponential Potential, you’re going to want every day to matter as much as possible.

The other is in The Arena8. Every 2nd Thursday of the month we host a special Dr. Jeff Spencer Arena call, where Dr. Jeff sits as our cornerman. Every Arena member can show up and get actionable and valuable direct guidance from Dr. Jeff himself.

Come join us, and together we’ll find our Exponential Potential.

Be Useful. Be Present. Love the Journey.

Joseph Robertson, CMO The Guardian Academy

• Engage in discussion with the author and TGA+ Community in the comments below - give us your 6WU and/or thoughts after reading. Together we make a rising tide that lifts all ships.

• Ready to apply your ideas to reality? You may find our Engage the Field Handbook a useful and effective resource.

• Get your hands on awesome unique swag and opportunities by sharing this article. We treat our ambassadors like royalty :)

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Let's talk about events.

More specifically, getting something valuable out of an event you attend.

More specifically, always getting exactly what you need right now from any piece of informative content or experience.

Gray Wolf Summit is one of those unique events which attracts people who go simply to be in the room. That environment creates a dynamic where you're much more open to and accepting of any possibility that might present itself.

But you can go a level higher than just being open to anything, even at our events.

Certainly at any other event, and for any informative device or experience such as a course or even a book.

Most people approach an event or a course or a book (something they are looking to learn from) thinking about "the thing." I'm going to go to this event and get something. I'm going to go to this event and figure out how to do something. I'm going to got to this event to get new connections. I'm going to go to this event and get new business.

It's all an approach of seeking "things" (from the event, the course, the book) and adding them to your collection of other things (more frameworks for efficiency, more tactics for your marketing, etc).

This is quite form focused, if you think about it.

Very quickly on function v form1.

Function is essentially the reason the thing exists or the reason you are doing the thing. The function of a screw might be to hold a picture frame together.

Form is the thing itself. The form in the above scenario is the screw.

Most people focus on the form, because they see that as the thing providing the outcome. So when the screw falls out of your picture frame ... what do you do to fix the problem?

Most people go look for a screwdriver. They might search high and low for the screwdriver, realize they don't have one, and then think they gotta go get one.

Function is realizing that you may not need a screwdriver to hold the picture frame together (in fact, you may not even need the screw) - and instead you find some glue and fix the problem that way.

And to bring it back to these events, or a course you might take, or a book you might read - things you are trying to learn from - most people are *form* focused.

Function vs Form in Learning

So in the case of an event, a form focused point of view is going into it looking for the thing you think is going to help you, AND/OR going into it with the preconceived notion that you already know about the thing.

Your assumptions about the thing.

Looking for certain aspects of the thing.

It's going to a TGA Event thinking "I'm gonna finally master bumpers!"

(And if you know our events, especially, that's kinda silly)

For a non TGA example ...

Let's say I'm going to an event about AI to get more tools and techniques for applying to my business with AI. Makes sense right? I'm sure this is how most people would approach and think about this. But I'm going there specifically for the tools and the techniques - those are forms.

Same with books that have information we want. I may take a book about organization because I'm interested in taking the organizational strategy the book talks about and applying it to my life. So I'm going to read that whole book and try to apply that whole strategy.

Courses are no different. Form focused is getting a course because you want to apply all the shiny new tools and techniques in that course to your business/life.

What the function of the course/event/book is for you, will depend on the outcome you are seeking. So I can't tell you what the function of any of this is ... specifically.

I CAN give you a broad definition of the function of information like this, but it's going to look different than you think.

This is a different way of thinking about yourself, your business, your situation and how you can enter any event, buy any course, read any book, and get exactly what you need from it right now.

(Since some of you are probably thinking it, spoiler alert, knowing your most immediate constraint will make this a lot easier - but this is not about most immediate constraints, it's just that what we're gonna focus on is highly likely to be related to your most immediate constraint ... but more in this another time)

The Function of Learning

We're talking about learning here.

Whether it's an event where you go to connect with others, get some ideas, some new perspective ... you're going there to learn.

It's a course, that's easier to see. You buy a course for information to learn, or to be demonstrated so you can learn, etc.

Informational book is obvious ... it's full of information so you got it to learn.

What is the function of learning?

To make ourselves smarter?

Let's revisit the TGA perspectives on learning and intelligence2.

Intelligence is the ability to get what you want.

Learning is demonstrated by having a different behavior in the same situation.

We increase our intelligence by changing our behavior in the same situation.

(See hot stove, touch stove, ouch, see hot stove again, don't touch stove cuz ouch, hey you learned - did touch stove again? didn't learn)

This is why The Arena3 is structured like it is - we enact on people's learning loops, ...

• Consume (that's the book/event/course/etc)

• Reflect (think about what it means to you)

• Engage (put into action the idea you reflected upon)

• Reflect (observe what happens and think about what it means to you)

• Repeat (return to the source and reconsider the original idea/experience, to repeat the loop)

That Engage is your opportunity to find out what happens when you do the thing, so that you can change your behavior in the same situation when you go back to it again.

Learning is behavior modification.

So ..

The ultimate function of ANY Event, Book, Course, information that you might consume or experience you might have to learn ...

IS

Behavior Modification.

THEREFORE

The ultimate way to get exactly what you need from any of these things ...

is NOT to go into them looking for shit to apply to your life,

It's to approach these learning opportunities with full conscious awareness of the behavior you want to modify.

And then,

When you are taking in information, you can ask yourself does this help me modify the behavior I want, in the way that helps me get what I want in life?

FUNCTION focused.

That means,

Blank Slate, Open Mind

One of the most powerful positions - for yourself and your interests and outcomes - which you can adopt when you go to an Event, when you buy a course, when you pick up a book to read ...

Is to enter learning situations with A Blank Slate and An Open Mind.

No preconceived notions. No expectations. No thoughts that you already know what's going on, whats gonna happen, whats gonna be shown to you. No ideas about things your going to apply or stuff you're going to get from the event/book/course.

Because,

The ONLY thing you need to get value out of any bit of information is the already determined understanding of what behavior you are wanting to modify.

This becomes the most powerful position because then you have no walls preventing you from seeing how something you never expected might be exactly what you want to change your behavior.

It opens you to the greatest swath of immediately beneficial possibility within all that you are doing.

A personal example.

As I have been re-integrating AI into some of my workflows (and offering the same to clients), I have been keeping my finger more on the pulse of what is possible in AI. I recently had the opportunity to grab a seat in an otherwise unavailable course, so I took it, even though I was pretty sure I knew all the "things" they were going to show me.

Most of what I discovered was in many ways what I expected.

Information that I already knew about creating the kinds of outputs I want with AI.

I think many people going into that kind of situation would be disappointed to find what they purchased didn't teach them any new things.

However,

Before going into it I identified clearly a behavior in my business which I wanted to change to help me move closer to my goals. And since going through the materials, I have found a shift, which I've already put into play and have already seen results from.

But it wasn't "the things" in the course. I didn't take some "how to do XYZ" thing on AI to make this immediate change - rather it was a perspective I discovered having gone through everything, which has shifted my approach. It's a subtle shift, but so far it's been a powerful one.

I'm deliberately avoiding the details because I just wanted to highlight this:

It's entirely possible to get MORE THAN the value out of an event, a course, a book ... really anything where you might expect to learn, without "learning" the specific "things" being taught, but rather because you identified a behavior to change, and in the experience of going through that event/course/book you discovered something you could immediately apply to change that behavior.

THAT's why it's so good.

When you approach a situation that offers a chance to learn, and you do so knowing the behavior - rather than focusing on getting more stuff - your perception opens up to a much wider frequency of receptivity, and allows the kind of positive and valuable change you actually need right now.

I could very well return to that course later, with a different behavior - or potentially a technical problem - and solve something new. Every time I go through it I could find new and interesting ideas and perspectives to alter my behavior for the better in the direction I want to go.

Just don't fall into THIS trap

Once you become aware of behavior modification as the goal for learning, it becomes really easy to convince yourself that you are acquiring information in order to modify your behavior.

But this is the same Form trap as before.

I'm going to get this book on project organization and enact the framework they talk about so I can change my behavior on organizing projects.

FORM FOCUSED. You're looking at a screwdriver and saying 'how can i use this?'

Start with the behavior ... and if you want to really excel at this, start with the behavior that aligns with your most immediate constraint (or consider it your "most immediate constraint behavior"). The kind of behavior, however small, that when changed can reveal new resources quickly.

And then read that book, NOT with the goal of taking the thing to change your behavior (because then you're mind/thoughts/perspective will be form focused), do so with the goal of having a blank slate and open mind, simply with the awareness that you want to alter that one behavior.

You'll probably be surprised at what you discover.

What behaviors are YOU wanting to change?

Want to discuss the possibilities and hone in on a good one to keep in mind? Comment below ... you show me yours and I'll show you mine.

Be Useful. Be Present. Love the Journey.

Joseph Robertson, CMO The Guardian Academy

• Engage in discussion with the author and TGA+ Community in the comments below - give us your 6WU and/or thoughts after reading. Together we make a rising tide that lifts all ships.

• Ready to apply your ideas to reality? You may find our Engage the Field Handbook a useful and effective resource.

• Get your hands on awesome unique swag and opportunities by sharing this article. We treat our ambassadors like royalty :)

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He has eyes for nothing but the sand around him. Slowly filling buckets, one little shovel at a time. Adding sand to the little toy dump truck. Rolling it over a couple feet. Tipping it out.

Scoop. Tip. Scoop. Tip.

The sun moves across the sky.

He puts down the shovel. Looks at his hands for a moment. And then looks around.

Squinting in the light.

He looks left.

He looks right.

He looks behind him.

Where is daddy?

He squints and stands up. He turns around in a full circle.

Where is daddy?

He starts walking in a direction.

"DADDYYYYY"

Nothing. He keeps walking.

"DAAADDDYYYYYY"

He turns around and walks the other way. Faster now. Where is he? What's happening? He calls out louder. More frantic. His eyebrows creased. A frown on his face.

"DAAAAAADDDDYYYYYY"

"Hey little guy! right here"

He stops.

Turns and sees daddy's face.

A huge grin cracks across his. He laughs out loud and runs to him.

.

A young man is hanging out after school.

He's making friends.

It's a fun group.

They are welcoming. It feels good to hang out with them.

They play games sometimes.

Card games. Board Games.

Sometimes they just hang out and talk.

His new friends sometimes say things he isn't sure about. Suggest things he isn't sure about.

He listens.

He nods.

He goes along with it.

What will they think if he says no? Where will they go if he doesn't agree?

He listens.

He nods.

He starts to make his own suggestions. The things he's suggesting aren't what he'd usually do, but he believes his new friends will like it.

They laugh and all agree it's a great idea.

He moves forward.

Not quite happy with the choice, but happy to belong.

.

A grown man is working on his own business.

He set out on his own so that he didn't have to give his time to anyone else but himself. To see his own visions come to light.

For many years he's worked to make it happen.

He's had successes.

He's had failures.

He has vision.

He constantly tries to move toward it.

Relentless.

Without hesitation.

He refuses to give up. He refuses to stop and slow down.

He knows that if he just keeps going, if he puts it all on the table, if he puts everything he has into it he can get everything that he dreams of.

He keeps doing this.

Day after day.

Month after month.

Year after year.

He's older now.

He's been married. He's had kids. He's still never gone back to a regular job ...

But he's still pushing.

Relentlessly. Without hesitation.

He's still reaching,

Reaching for a place he hasn't achieved.

Yet.

There's a strand in the thread of our life which follows us, and sometimes fully carries us, throughout the years of our lived experience.

A strand of our base natural humanity.

It drives us to survive.

When we are children it keeps us finding those we belong with.

When we are growing it pushes us to make new belonging and stay there.

When we are fully grown, it stays with us, sometimes haunts us, to keep going, to keep searching, to keep trying to get what we think we need to get, to make happen what we think needs to happen ...

Because we fear being left behind.

The lights are dim in the cramped, sterile space of the ship. Cooper, his face shadowed and tense, sits in front of the small monitor. He croaks out his name. The computer utters ..

"MESSAGES SPAN: 23 YEARS"

Cooper pauses. "... Play it from the beginning."

He sees messages from his son, Tom. He's a hopeful teenager, excitedly updating his father on life back home. Tom grows into a young man, finds the love of his life. He has a child of his own. And finally, years gone, distant, weary, and resigned, the dead around him buried, he says goodbye to his father.

Trapped 23 years in the past, he watches as his son's face ages in fast motion.

An entire life unfolding in front of him while he remains unchanged. He clenches his jaw. He listens as his son says goodbye, and just as he grabs the monitor, it's off.

His son is gone.

After 23 years of silence, the face of his daughter Murphy appears - having said nothing this whole time. But she is no longer the little girl Cooper left behind. Her voice is calm but full of quiet pain. And anger. Anger that he left her.

"Today is my birthday. And it's a special one because ... you once told me, that when you came back you might be the same age. And today I'm the age you were when you left."

Cooper’s face contorts, his breath shallow. He silently sobs, his entire body trembling. Tears stream down his face uncontrollably as understands the truth — he has lost everything. Every milestone, every birthday, every moment he dreamt and hoped to be with her for ... he has missed them all.

Whatever you think of the movie Interstellar (if you've seen it), it's always been one of the most disturbing movies to me personally.

Fear of being left behind is not a simple fear. Not a fear of missing out. Not a fear of just loss. It's far, far deeper. A fear of being abandoned perhaps by time itself, unable to be there for the ones who need you. They live on in slow growing despair, while you sit on the sidelines.

We fear so deeply being left behind.

Our darkest thoughts, our scariest stories, our deepest fear.

That we're left alone with the monster under our bed.

That we wake up and everyone is gone, the world around us changed.

That we fall, can't keep up, and find ourselves in the dust surrounded by completely unknown.

And that fear is responsible for driving so much that does not serve us well.

You have a phone.

It gives you access to everything you could ever possibly need or want. Every word, every image, every voice ever published on the internet, right there at your fingertips.

Now you spend all your free time scrolling on that phone looking for the next hit, looking for the next bit of information of news of insight of ideas. You spend all your time looking at charts, looking at data, looking for the next thing.

Because you don't want to miss it.

You don't know what it is exactly, but you do know you don't want to be the one who doesn't see it.

Something is going to come up ... and what if you aren't there?

What if you get left behind while everyone else who paid attention is in the know?

When we succumb to this fear we spend our time, our attention, our money ultimately isolating ourselves from our own conscious presence.

Away from receivership.

Unable to hear the call, unable to take the actions and accept the open doors which really will take you where you want to be.

You have a business.

Now you have responsibility for every choice, every outcome, every result.

It's empowering.

It's liberating.

It's overwhelming.

Every choice to do something, every choice not to do something, ends up having an outcome and you are responsible for all of it no matter what.

There is no boss above you.

There is no management structure making decisions upon which you can fall back.

There is no paycheck just for showing up at 9 am every day.

And while you have all the freedom in the world to set your own schedule do your own thing make your own vision come to light ...

You also open up all the possibility of failure in your choices not panning out like you want.

We look for answers from people who have been successful. We look for others to take the burden of choice off our shoulders.

We fear what will happen if we don't take certain actions.

We fear being left behind.

"I'm never going to get there unless I do XYZ."

This thought dominates our actions. Our choices.

The problem is,

We have no way of knowing if that is true.

You can't know what it takes to get where you're going until you get there.

What we DO know, is that if you push beyond your reasonable limits, you will implode. You will burn out. You will end up knocking yourself out of the game ... maybe for days, weeks. Maybe months. Maybe even years.

How important is your goal if you're willing to risk blowing it all because you fear being left behind?

You might be wondering where this is all coming from ...

This is just a little window into an experience of sitting with Dr. Jeff Spencer. What you see here is my lens of perspective on his words. My experience of listening to them. My understanding from them. The images, thoughts, and interpretations which came to my mind as I listened to Dr. Jeff speak and considered the ideas afterwards. The deep rooted importance of understanding this one idea - we are afraid of being left behind.

BUT

I am not a Cornerman1.

So I cannot give you the full and complete understanding ... I can only be a conduit, through which the words and ideas are inevitably colored by my perspective.

If you want the real thing,

Join The Arena.2

This whole conversation came about just yesterday, as Dr. Jeff Spencer, our Cornerman3, joined us live on our special Cornerman Arena (every 2nd Thursday), to and help us see the truth in front of us which we often lack the full perspective to realize.

(Every Arena member has the opportunity to show up on these Cornerman Arena calls and ask questions of Dr. Jeff Spencer)

What do you do with this?

How do you handle that strand of fear woven throughout your life?

The answer again, words from Dr. Jeff Spencer -

"We can only ever do what is in front of us."

and

"Ask yourself, what is my greatest need right now?"

In other words ... just always take The Next Best Step. Microstep. Look to your most immediate constraint4. Solve that. Use the goal to figure out your next step toward that goal, and then let go.

There's a reason we use these models and perspectives in TGA.

Because we are all,

Deep down,

So very afraid of being left behind.

It's up to us to embrace The Champion's Mind5 and recognize that we don't need to let that fear run the show.

Be Useful. Be Present. Love the Journey.

Joseph Robertson, CMO The Guardian Academy

• Engage in discussion with the author and TGA+ Community in the comments below - give us your 6WU and/or thoughts after reading. Together we make a rising tide that lifts all ships.

• Ready to apply your ideas to reality? You may find our Engage the Field Handbook a useful and effective resource.

• Get your hands on awesome unique swag and opportunities by sharing this article. We treat our ambassadors like royalty :)

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If you've been reading along lately you may have picked up on an underlying theme for me ...

I've become quite interested in the small, seemingly subtle perspective shifts we can adopt which have the ability to radically impact how we behave.

For example

In "The Impulse for Relief," what I ultimately proposed was not a solution to a problem, or changing how you feel or handle your emotions ...

But really rather cultivating a sense of awareness about a natural thing happening inside of you.

Because I know awareness is one of the most powerful tools we have.

Once you become aware that the Impulse for Relief is a natural force enacting up on your decision making, you become much more likely, when making decisions, to slow down and says "hang on, am I just seeking relief?"

That's all.

Little perspective shifts.

New lenses.

Tipping the dominoes in your favor.

And when it comes to getting the life that we want, of intentionally achieving the outcomes we set out to, we can use as many of those dominoes in our favor as possible.

Everything about goal achievement seems to always come back to certainty and uncertainty in one way or another - since our base human mindset is built with a drive to seek certainty.

This is why in the context of achieving the goals that we want, we use prompts1 like "The Rear View Mirror2" when we need a certain outcome. If we can look back on what we have already done, we can have - at the very least - a degree of certainty that we can do again what's been done before.

It's why we use bimodal risk mitigation strategies and thinking like "Explore-Exploit3," to recognize when we need a certain outcome, we look to exploit, and when we're able to leverage the benefits of uncertainty, we can explore.

Through all this,

It's when we strive for something new that we tend to mess ourselves up.

When we think "I'm going to get that thing" or "I'm going to make that happen."

Going for something new, and seeking certainty in that. (But, if you haven't done it before, it can't be certain)

One of the ways I like to handle this is to change my perspective on uncertainty itself4 ... rather than try to avoid it, welcome it as the good thing it is. Simmer in it. Allow the unknown to just be. And through that actually learn to seek out uncertainty willingly when I'm trying to make a change or find something new.

BUT

What if we could change our perspective not just to seek uncertainty when appropriate, but to change our approach within uncertainty ... to find the certainty that helps us move forward in the uncertain.

Ok,

Even I know that up there is probably a confusing jumble.

But the subtle shift is one which gives you an anchor of certainty while exploring something new.

I'll explain.

But first ...

Finite and Infinite Games

I'm obviously on a roll with these concepts lately because I keep circling back to this one as well.

After all,

If you can recognize the game you're playing is infinite (life), you can happily change your entire perspective from trying to win, to just trying NOT to lose.

Another aspect of mastering control and perspective on finite and infinite games is understanding that finite games can fit within infinite games but not the other way around ...

The game of life is in an infinite game, and in that game of life you can play a game of basketball.

BUT

Within a game of basketball, you cannot stop the game in order to live out an entire life - an infinite game.

Sounds silly.

Is silly.

Knowing this ... you can can actually better leverage your finite games if you understand the infinite game it's a part of.

A professional basketball player may be playing finite games every time they step on the court, but those finite games exist within the infinite game of their career. So how they treat themselves and perform within the finite games is strategically managed within the context of the infinite game of their career and life.

Here's where I'm going with this ...

Seeking success in life, trying to go for a particular outcome, is finite game behavior in an infinite game. (Because you are seeking a specific outcome - defined ending = finite)

When you are going for something new it is uncertain.

Uncertainty is an infinite game dynamic.

So if we are approaching an infinite game dynamic (uncertainty) with a finite game perspective (achieving a specific outcome), we're likely to run into problems.

Or to put it another way,

When you step into the uncertain expecting, or looking for a certain outcome, you gonna be disappointed. (Or confused, or lost, or frustrated, etc)

What if instead, we welcome the infinite game dynamic (uncertainty), and then look for finite games (certainty) within, which only add to the infinite game we're playing?

They'd have to be separate from the infinite game, in a way where losing the finite game had no negative impact on the infinite, and where winning contributed to our long term goal.

I don't know if I can make it make more sense without getting right into it ...

Evidence vs Success

Yea, let's try to make this concrete.

Instead of searching for, thinking about, and measuring what you are doing by the success you seek ... (treating an infinite game like a finite one)

Search for, think about, and measure everything you do based on evidence of whether or not you will get there. (playing finite games within the infinite)

You don't need to get there right now, you just need data which says whether the step you just took is taking you in the right direction, and you want to be more and more informed with each step that you are heading there.

That's really all it is.

You might look at this as another way to think about microstepping5, or taking the next best step6, or letting go7 of the goal and focusing on the process8 ...

You aren't seeking success,

You are seeking evidence that you can get there.

You are seeking evidence to support your ability to make choices better.

The outcome is ultimately out of your hands,

But the choices you make to take yourself TO the outcome are NOT out of your hands, and the more data you have to add to your decision making, the better you are going to be making those decisions.

Not only does this lift the burden of creating the outcome, but actually mitigates downside by providing data which can keep you from harm, AND provides you upside by providing data which better guides you toward what you want.

It's not creating outcomes, it's data gathering.

On an Arena call a couple months ago, we touched on this subject.

The context of the conversation was around doubt and overwhelm, human mentalities, and how to handle yourself knowing that the human mindset will always question whether you’re going to achieve what you want or believe you can achieve.

Among other things, this got into the perspective of looking for evidence, rather than pay attention to the outcome.

Even though the conversation stems from one surrounding business goals, we can also stand back across the board and change our entire perspective of what we are doing, to NOT be about achieving anything, but rather seeking evidence:

• I'm going to start this email marketing strategy - not to get more sales, but because I'm looking for evidence of how to make it happen the way I want to.

• I'm going to do this video ad campaign - not to get results, but to find the evidence that video ads might ultimately get me where I want to go.

• I'm going to start this new workout routine - not to get fit, but to find the evidence that this workout routine is going to feel good, and be something I can consistently do.

• I'm going to start dating this person - not to get married, but to find the evidence that this person is the right person for me.

You see.

It fits into everything.

It takes all the burden of needing to create an outcome out of our hands.

It makes us all scientists of ourselves.

It also forces us to think consciously about what we really want. Because the evidence we look for is only evidence and only relevant in the context of what it is we are seeking.

It allow us to leverage the strengths of finite games (end point, goal is to score and finish), in a way that helps us grow and develop our infinite game (life, ongoing, ever evolving).

We don't need to make anything happen,

We just need to take action and observe what happens from that action (rinse and repeat).

(If you want a structure for that, check out The Arena)

Be Useful. Be Present. Love the Journey.

Joseph Robertson, CMO The Guardian Academy

• Engage in discussion with the author and TGA+ Community in the comments below - give us your 6WU and/or thoughts after reading. Together we make a rising tide that lifts all ships.

• Ready to apply your ideas to reality? You may find our Engage the Field Handbook a useful and effective resource.

• Get your hands on awesome unique swag and opportunities by sharing this article. We treat our ambassadors like royalty :)

Share

It can be said that TGA is all about learning how to get what you want in life the way you want to be getting it.

We like to say it's about become better people, better adults. About unhealing the damage in ourselves so that we can raise undamaged children into the world. About discovering, revealing, and using our greatest potentials to live our fullest and best selves.

Those things are all true.

But I'd say they are the path you walk to get what you want.

You can't get what you want if you are a broken person. If you haven't unraveled those demons. If you can't see or access your exponential potential.

And so,

Here we explore all of those ideas. Finding happiness in the now. Letting go of what is not ourselves and what doesn't really matter. Understanding what we really want so we can head in the right direction, etc.

All components of learning how to get exactly what we want.

In my observation,

There's a dynamic which runs through it all, which when leveraged right and well for yourself and your needs and interests, contributes more towards the likelihood of getting what you want than anything else.

(And it has the nice side effect of necessarily contributing to the betterment of YOU, of The Champions Mind1)

Before I get into all this,

There's a fascinating bit of a psychology which has really stuck with me for several years. Since long before I discovered The Guardian Academy and started practicing within myself conscious delayed gratification.

(My perspective on this may have influenced my resonance with TGA and how willingly I've jumped into the work here)

The Marshmallow Experiment

I'll spare you the details since you can google this if you're interested. The summary is pretty straightforward:

Researchers took young children into a room with a simple table and chair. They were asked to sit at the table. In front of them was placed 1 marshmallow.

Then,

They were told that if they waited to eat the marshmallow, someone would return and place a second one on the table for them to have.

Some of the kids straight ate the 1 in front of them, they couldn't, wouldn't, or didn't want to wait.

Some did wait.

But the real lesson came years and years later where, now grown, it was discovered that the children who had the capacity to delay their gratification were able to become *much more successful and happy in life later.*

(I'm sure I've butchered some aspects of the experiment, but that's the important part in my eyes)

Delayed Gratification

This idea has resonated with me for years and I've only ever been able to explain why on the periphery of the concept. Quite simply, I find more happiness and satisfaction when I delay getting the things that I want.

I could make arguments about it being a dopamine thing. That would be reasonable. About it being a "presence in the now" thing. That would also be reasonable.

But now I'm thinking that everything I've observed about that practice, and the reason this lesson has stuck in my mind so long ... have all be shadows being revealed by the true force.

It's not about delaying the satisfaction (I think the benefits of that are more a positive side effect).

It's about extending the time to the outcome.

There's an inexplicable magic in life that starts to appear the longer you are able to wait for an outcome to occur.

We can, and have, talked about this strategically.

Consider Time and Randomness.

These are the two forces in life which are both certain and completely outside of our control (curiously, I’d say at opposite ends of a spectrum).

They also play very well with each other.

The more you can put time on your side, the more you get randomness on your side.

Getting what you want in life becomes a process of becoming the kind of person who can naturally put time on their side and take advantage of randomness.

And what better way to do that than changing the question from "how can I make this happen?" ...

To how can I increase the time horizon for this to happen?

In other words, establishing and building on a base that lets you keep going as long as possible, because the longer you increase your time horizon, the greater likelihood that what you want to have happen, will happen.

Many of the stories and allegories we share here fit this.

There are two neighbors,

One neighbor says "I'm going to have the tallest trees around!"

The other neighbor says "cool man, I like tall trees too."

The first neighbor tries every day of his life to have the tallest trees.

The other neighbor doesn't care when it happens, and falls in love with the practice of growing and nurturing his trees.

That story originally is told as a lesson on loving the process vs the outcome and finding happiness in the now rather than anchoring it on some uncontrollable future.

But it just the same could be a story about time.

How long are you willing and able to give for the outcome to happen?

The second neighbor, who doesn't care about having the tallest tree right now, is probably going to end up with the tallest healthiest trees in the entire forrest ... because he loves the process and is most likely nurturing the best environment for that to happen.

Might happen long after he's left life. The trees can easily outlive him. But it's as inevitable as you can make something.

Extend the timeline ... increases the chance of the result.

Tripping over when we want the thing.

Is your goal to make it happen? Or is it to make it happen now? These are two very different things.

Sometimes we really DO need something now.

But if you really want to get good at getting what you want, nurturing the ability in yourself to honestly say whether you actually need it NOW, vs being able to wait, is going to give you this ability to leverage your time horizon to increase the likelihood of it all happening.

Back to the marshmallows.

Do you really need to eat 1 marshmallow now?

Or can you wait and double your return?

This dynamic becomes all the more complicated when we start tricking ourselves into thinking that we need it sooner.

Or perhaps more insidiously,

That when we delay the having of it, that means we won't get it.

Perhaps thats why many of the children choose to eat the marshmallow right away. Fear that they won't get it at all, rather than recognizing that waiting gets them even more of what they really want.

I think people are often AFRAID to intentionally extend their time horizon because it feels like they are willingly giving up something they "should" have now. Because more time also can mean more uncertainty. And securing a thing now feeds the part of our mind that wants certainty of getting it.

Regardless of whether we're able to actually get the thing we want.

We trick ourselves so much out of fear, doubt, and uncertainty that it's very easy to be in a state where your feelings betray you and keep you from recognizing the increased time horizon is actually beneficial and probably exactly what you need and want right now.

Funnily enough ... and not surprising at all in retrospect ... this applies very well to my writing.

Really ... it applies to everything.

But on something tangible ...

The more time I can give a piece to come to fruition, the better that piece will be ultimately. Time for ideas to get on and off the page. For me to use the writing as a mirror to see around corners I can't right away. Time for something new I haven't seen to show up. Time for perspective to shift and find better more succinct routes.

When I'm stuck on a piece, I know that if I just give it a bit more time, something will show up.

Even when I've completed a piece, I know that if I give it a bit more time, something better will show up.

Time gives the learning process2 an opportunity to happen, and to happen more. Writing for me is the learning process. Every time I write it's a hypothesis I'm putting into action and the words coming out are the result of that action. I finish an article and I look back and reflect.

Now I am different. And so is the river.

There's hardly anything I've written and "finished" which I don't want to immediately write differently, or better, or to add to, etc.

Because I walked the path of putting the words together it's changed me. Because I gave the time to do so, it changed me.

Probably obvious to look back on.

It might also be arguable that the longer you take to make something happen, the longer it lasts or the greater the impact of the ultimate outcome.

Weight loss for example. It's been argued that the longer you take to lose weight, the longer it will stay lost. That isn't a rule so much as it is a pattern and observation of behavior. Time adds an imperceptible yet powerful element to the equation of getting what you want.

The more time you give yourself to change a system, the more likely you get the result you want.

It's all there.

But, we can do more than just recognize that extending our time horizon is beneficial.

We can intentionally engineer our lives and make decisions in order to extend the time horizon as much as possible.

Many of the frameworks we use in The Guardian Academy are actually made to support extension of that time horizon - I can't decide if it's a side effect of those systems, or if it's the purpose.

Either way, I'm going to show you a few in the context of extending your time horizon, so that when you are making decisions, planning, taking action, you can do so with the conscious effort to bias toward extending that time horizon ... if you wish.

I'll start with this conceptual idea which will help you determine if extending your time horizon is the right thing to do for a particular decision.

(As previously mentioned ... sometimes there ARE situations where you need to move now)

Finite and Infinite Games

Ah yes. Those of you who've been reading TGA for a long time will have run across this concept.

If you're interested in the resource, it's Finite and Infinite Games by James Carse.

Again, without diving too deep into the details ...

A finite game is one which has an end and has winners, and an infinite game is one which does not. A basketball game is a finite game. There's a timer. There's a score. There are winners and losers.

Life is an infinite game. There's no score. There's no timer. Your only limitation is how long you get to play in that game of life.

So the goal of the finite game is to score and win, within the defined bounds of that game. The goal of the infinite game, is to not die. That's the only way to "win" the infinite game - keep playing.

And thus you can apply this to any aspect of your life.

There are those (myself included) who see business as an infinite game. The goal is to not lose. To keep the systems and the machine going so that we can stay in business as long as possible.

Within infinite games there can be finite games (but not the other way around).

So in the infinite game of business, I can have a project with a client, that has goals for outcomes, set deliverables, payments, and a time table. My goal is to win that finite game, because it is defined. And to do so in a way that keeps the infinite game going.

That is my quick summary of finite/infinite games.

Now,

In the context of extending your time horizon ...

Recognize the game you are playing.

An infinite game benefits from extending the time horizon.

However, a finite game may actually be hurt by extending the time horizon. Since the finite game and thus victory is defined by the end point, the more you string out the end point the more you limit your ability to declare victory (and ultimately support the infinite game).

I feel like I'm in danger of opening up a whole new conversation, so I'll wrap up the finite/infinite point there by saying that in the event I start thinking that extending the time horizon might help a finite game, my perspective on it is to break apart the finite game into separate structures, and allow the infinite game in between to leverage the time horizon.

(In the business project scenario, in other words, tighten the project scope and create multiple projects rather than stringing along one singular project ... but there's too much nuance to speak succinctly and completely on THAT matter)

So,

Identify the game you are playing in order to best apply intentional extension of time horizon.

And then ...

You can use the following to extend your time horizon:

What is Enough?3

Figuring out your "enough" may be the greatest contribution to time horizon. IF you lean into just getting enough to keep going, then you can keep going far longer than if you over extend yourself. It's got time horizon extension built into it

Raise the Floor4

Raise the floor is a similar impact as figuring out enough, but more directly impacts extension of the time horizon. As you raise your floor your average increases, getting you closer to what you want, providing more resources, and naturally making it all the more possible to have a longer time horizon to the ultimate impact

The Microstep5 and Immediate Constraint6

Both of these, with respect to time horizon, come in around the concept of resource management. The fastest way to reduce the amount of time you're able to take to get to a result *is to run out of resources*. Both the microstep and identifying your immediate constraint are moves which focus on using minimal resources to unlock further resources available to you on the path towards what you want.

Explore/Exploit7

This is another in the concept of resource management ... in this case, if you can master the explore/exploit barbell, using that which you can exploit to achieve enough and raise the floor, will make it much easier to give yourself a much longer time horizon to explore.

Becoming adept at properly assigning aspects of your life to either side of this barbell gives you the greatest opportunity to leverage longer time horizon where it matters most.

You may already have been thinking about your life and your goals in this way without realizing it. But I think you'll find that consciously*applying extension of time horizon to your goals and processes not only doesn't delay the outcome, but also dramatically increases the chance you get it.

Be Useful. Be Present. Love the Journey.

Joseph Robertson, CMO The Guardian Academy

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"Advertising is based on one thing ... happiness. And you know what happiness is? It's the smell of a new car. It's freedom ... from fear. It's a billboard on the side of the road that screams with reassurance that whatever you are doing ... is ok. You are ok."

- Don Draper, Mad Men

Future Guardian,

Complexities of the character who spoke that aside ...

There's a basic human instinct here we are all susceptible to.

We've spent a great many months walking through fundamentals of making decisions better, getting closer to what you want in life, getting closer to yourself, unveiling your exponential potential, finding happiness no matter what ...

And beneath it all, perhaps, lies this basic human mindset.

We all just want to be ok.

As I write this ...

I reach over to the mug next to me. It's filled with dark liquid ... an "anaerobic honey" processed coffee from El Salvador, roasted in a small(ish) coffee roaster under the watchful eye of a skilled artisan and carefully prepared to be enjoyed in just this moment ...

A luxury. I could be writing this from home. (I have good coffee at home too)

But today our house is under construction, my regular office not available, and I just really needed to come here. To get this.

To be ok.

I look at the shelf of tantalizing baked goods, eyeballing the overly giant chocolate croissant, the delightfully glazed donuts, the muffins topped in crunchy goodness and powdered sugar.

That would be nice,

For a brief moment.

None of these things I need.

A man is traveling on the path of life …

He has been traveling long.

The days are not known. Night, morning, sun, clouds, rain, snow, heat, wind. Through fields, through forests, over mountains, into valleys.

He keeps walking.

One day,

He is walking past an offshoot on the path.

It's a smaller path.

It heads down a hill into a valley. It's not where he wants to go. But as he turns away, to keep walking down his main path, he notices another man casually sitting beside the road.

"You seem tired" the new man says.

The traveler nods, putting his weight on his walking stick.

"Follow me. We have good food, a warm fire, and a bed."

The traveler looks at the path he's on.

Weary.

He turns to the man, nods, and follows him to that comfort.

That anecdote and that allegory suggest (to me anyway) an interesting dynamic.

Relief may often appear reasonable. You're tired. Rest. You're hungry. Eat. You're stressed. Have a little something fun and enjoyable.

But relief is deceitful.

Because relief does not care whether that which you are drawn to is good or bad for you, right or wrong for you.

All it cares about is release from that tension.

And how dangerous is it to go through life with this wild force which draws you to take action, make choices, spend resources, all on things which may have no good outcome for you - which may detract from your ability to get what you want?

You might think … "Excellent! Show me how to see my impulse for relief so I can avoid it and never have this problem!"

That would be an interesting reaction.

It would make sense.

Identify, avoid, and you don't have to succumb to relief.

But there's a problem in this as well.

Energetically there is no difference between all and nothing

The energy in you when you completely go all out and overindulge in something is the same energy in you that it takes to have absolutely none of it.

Eating a whole box of oreos is the same energy as never getting the oreos and avoiding them altogether.

Which is the reason for this advice: if you can't have just a couple of something (if you're inclination is to overindulgence), then not having any at all is the better choice.

Same energy, different outcome.

And so it is with the impulse for relief ... a natural dynamic we all experience as part of this life.

Seeking a dynamic where you completely utterly avoid all impulse for relief is the same energy as completely indulging in that impulse every chance you get.

Personally,

I think it's not about controlling impulse, it's about awareness of the force.

When we're on the path, heading towards that which we desire, often living in uncertainty, taking one small step at a time, showing up every day, showing restraint, doing everything we can to walk the best line that we can ...

We will be weary.

We will doubt.

No matter how much we know that uncertainty is one of the most powerful states to be in because it unlocks all the new, the change, and the discovery that you seek ...

It is still uncertain.

And we will be drawn towards relief from that.

The impulse for relief pulls me away from writing.

In a different way I've written about this in “Resistance and The Joy of Uncertainty”1. When the writing is challenging, when I'm far less certain about what it is I want to do, I have to confront that wall.

It's a terrible irony because, as I've written, it is in that state of uncertainty where the good stuff comes about, but it's also in that state of uncertainty where the impulse for relief screams the loudest. Or maybe it's more of a vivid quiet scream.

I don't usually feel a repulsion to writing, rather, resistance rears it's head like a fog.

Clouding my eyes to what can or should be appearing in front of me. It says "go listen to this recording so you can have better ideas to write" when the reality is I have all I need right now in me. It says "go for a walk instead." It says "go refill your coffee." All ideas that sound reasonable. I can turn back, out of the fog, and settle into a nice cozy chair by the fire.

I can walk down the street and gaze out at over the bay.

But then I would not be writing.

I would be willfully avoiding flow state where all of this comes with an unnatural ease, all because I seek the relief.

As I explore this thought I look back on the last year and wonder ... for all these microsteps and soft offense I've taken, have I given into the impulse for relief and NOT used good decision making by cutting aspects of work I've done?

I feel like I've cultivated a reasonable awareness about this impulse in myself, because given the opportunity to do less, my natural inclination is to take that (aka, I'm lazy ... I'll find the most efficient path towards doing things typically because my inclination is to do less).

Moving myself into a specific space of focus and awareness helps me lose perception of that voice. In that space I can write for hours it seems, and have no desire for relief because I'm doing exactly what I want - there is nothing to relieve. If I can get there. If I can stay there. If I can recognize the whispers of the impulse and let them slide by.

But what is this all really about?

Getting what we want in life and NOT being pulled off track or distracted by basic human impulses.

I’d say, anyway.

How do we live day to day in those dynamics?

We can't shut off our biology.

But we CAN be aware of it ...

Exploitation of the Impulse

I started off this writing with that little bit from Mad Men about advertising, because that world (of marketing and advertising) is a fascinating enclosed system that heavily leverages the natural human impulse for relief.

We can learn about ourselves and our inclinations by seeing how they are exploited, and hopefully in that way cultivate an awareness.

You may not be able to stop the impulse (I don't believe that's possible). But you can be aware of when that impulse strikes you and use it as a moment to pause.

"Is my desire for relief driving this decision?"

Even if that's true, you gain power in the awareness.

In a broad sense, all marketing and copy swirls around the context of 'what you want to have happen' and 'what you don't want to have happen.'

Desires and Fears.

More often playing on fears ...

Because we'll work much harder to avoid losing something than we will to gain something.

It says, "if you keep going down that path you might DIE ... but here, it's comfy and safe ... with this cupcake and this beer and this cozy chair ... just have a seat ... don't worry about all that ... you're fine, you deserve this, you can stop doing that."

Metaphorically of course.

Anytime you are being sold something, chances are there's some angle of relief built into it.

"Finally, I'm going to have the answers I need to get what I want."

"Finally, someone is going to solve my problem."

"Finally, I don't have to worry about that thing anymore."

How many times have you spent money like this because ultimately you sought relief? From the unknown, from failure, etc.

Before we get into ways to think through and protect ourselves from the impact of this impulse, let me give you a noodle bender:

How many times have you stopped doing something that was hard, or seemed like it wasn't working, because you were driven by the need for relief?

THEN

How many times have you pushed through something that would have been more appropriate to end because you were afraid of giving into the need for relief? Because you didn't want to "give up." Because every time you see someone talk about success it involves pushing and never giving up?

Those familiar with slowing down, restraint, taking the next best step, raising the floor, will all recognize that sometimes stopping is the right decision.

Just because we need relief doesn't mean we are giving into the impulse.

Which is why I think the power here is in awareness and not avoidance.

We could look at this all from a resource allocation perspective.

If you are ending one thing in order to make space for other things you are doing, then you aren't necessarily giving into relief so much as reallocating your limited resources ... unless, perhaps, the thing you are giving up on is objectively the best next step towards where you want to be going ... a constraint you need to resolve.

It's all too situational, personal, and unique to "solve" the dynamic.

I can't tell you how to relate to your own impulse for relief.

But I believe I can tie in some frameworks you're familiar with, to help you establish a foundation which will likely lesson the strength and frequency of that impulse.

Explore and Exploit.

Almost all of the decisions we are talking about, the dynamics of figuring out what we want and taking actions in life to get there, revolve around doing things to affect an outcome.

Conceptually there are two ways to do things to affect an outcome.

You can do things to affect an outcome in a way which you know from historical data you can do and will happen in a certain way (Exploit).

You can do things to affect an outcome in a way you haven't done before, it is new, and so there is an element of experimentation and uncertainty (Explore).2

Personally I find, in my decision making through all things, that my susceptibility towards the impulse for relief and my challenge in decision making to chose the right path through microstepping and soft offense are all made more difficult when I have a fundamental need for a specific outcome and I have yet been able to achieve that specific outcome.

Easy example,

Let's say I need to make another $15k in the next 6 months. Until I solve how to do that, I am going to be under the pressures of not having done that and perhaps even not knowing how to do that. The more pressure I am under, the greater the impulse for relief.

If I'm in that state and I'm exploring, trying something new, the addition of uncertainty for me appears to enhance that voice of the impulse. Makes it louder, makes it more frequent.

As soon as I solve that problem and my base needs are met, when I'm exploring and there is uncertainty in that, the lack of threat to the need seems to reduce the likelihood of the impulse for relief.

Perhaps it all centers around that tension.

Around need.

Around perceive likelihood of meeting that need.

Back to fear and desire.

If I'm thirsty and there's no water nearby or available to me in the moment, the first water that comes along is going to drive a very strong impulse to have that relief. Now I'm not thirsty. Notably this may drive me into detriment if that water is not safe to drink.

Our lives are not so black and white.

Every decision we make is shades of grey and with varying opacity and all of those dynamics are shaped and colored by our preferences, interests, and needs.

AND

This brings us to your most immediate constraint.

What are you trying to get or do right now?

Knowing that requires knowing where you want to be going so you can identify reasonable steps along the way and find the next step you can take.

And then all we need to focus on is what is keeping us from taking that step.

So if you are focused on your most immediate constraint, or figuring out your most immediate constraint I believe you give yourself further innoculation against that basic human impulse - or perhaps it even becomes a reframing. **The relief you end up seeking is behind that constraint and so all of your being gets focused on taking down that most immediate constraint.**

What do I need right now?

Is it a lump sum of money? A higher level of ongoing income? Is it a client? Is it less time spent on what I'm doing? More time or ability to spend time with my kids?

What is keeping me from getting that right now?

and then of course ...

We end up back at the beginning, considering who we really are and what we really want.

If we can serve our base needs - figure out ENOUGH3 to reliably keep going - and then focus on our most immediate constraints and moving through those step by step ...

I believe the impulse for relief becomes less intense, less frequent, and easier to discern. There's less noise clouding that voice. And when we have that feeling we can more easily say "am I just tired of doing this? Is this still the right thing? Is this still going to help solve my most immediate constraint?"

How are YOU being driven by the impulse for relief?

When you are making your decisions, are you doing so because of this impulse?

And have you put yourself in a position (exploring when you ought to be exploiting) to perhaps be more vulnerable toward that impulse?

Have those questions in your mind when you make decisions, and I reckon you'll make decisions better, and find you are less moved and impacted by the impulse for relief overall.

Be Useful. Be Present. Love the Journey.

Joseph Robertson, CMO The Guardian Academy

• Engage in discussion with the author and TGA+ Community in the comments below - give us your 6WU and/or thoughts after reading. Together we make a rising tide that lifts all ships.

• Ready to apply your ideas to reality? You may find our Engage the Field Handbook a useful and effective resource.

• Get your hands on awesome unique swag and opportunities by sharing this article. We treat our ambassadors like royalty :)

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There's nothing like a new year to really pressure encourage you to be a new you.

It's a time for change!

A time to start a new workout!

Start a new diet!

Make new habits!

Live cleaner!

Live healthier!

Walk more!

Spend more time with your kids!

Do more crafts!

Read more books!

more

more

more

more

more

Let me propose something RADICAL to you.

(Astute readers, TGA+ members, and Guardians 'ought to know where I'm going with this)

Instead of adding more ....

Cut.

Don't make it a New Years Resolution ...

Make it a New Years Cut.

Don't promise to add something new. Instead remove something completely.

Now.

I actually meant to write this article last week. But I had a hard time getting past the simplicity of the above. After all ... that can be the entire article.

I can just ...

Wait for it ...

cut the rest.

(cue laugh track)

BUT,

There was something missing. And Dr. Jeff's words stood out to me in the midst of this instead.

I ended up writing last weeks article pondering the feeling I get when I listen to those words - "don't try to tell the story in advance1."

In that article, commented his experience of going through the very same thoughts. We ended up having an interesting and useful conversation about it on The Guardian call this past Monday.

He had some perspectives I hadn't considered (relating my thoughts to the explore/exploit barbell).

And it also helped me realize the real impetus for how I got to that article. As I said, that wasn't the one I'd intended to write, but in the midst of pondering this idea on cutting, Dr. Jeff's words popped out at me.

Several days later, I realize, my state of "open loop" on the idea of cutting made it possible for Dr. Jeffs words to stand out above others,

And they did so for a reason.

"What can I cut" is something I've asked myself nearly daily for the previous couple months, allowing that to float in the ether of life and come back to me ...

It did, and I didn't even realize it.

The fictitious discussion in last week's article was indeed stemming from Dr. Jeff Spencers words "don't try to fill the story in advance," but those words stuck to me for a particular reason ...

Because if there's anything really useful for me personally to cut it's my expectations of what could happen.

Which is a bit of a different take on how I wrote about it.

But I think that's the power of cutting.

In the context of "don't try to fill the story in advance," we can explore how to move forward without allowing ourselves to prevision what is going to happen -- but we also butt up against the fair and (for me) unresolved argument about the nature of plans, structure, and executing on exploitive actions (I'm not going to go deep on explore/exploit here - but comment below if you'd like me to revisit all this from that barbell perspective).

And with the power of cutting ...

I think no matter what your plan, execution, or idea is, you only gain from cutting the expectation you have of the outcome - even if that outcome is certain.

But this might be my personal preference.

There's a lot more to cut, in this new year which can allow for you to - instead of 'making a new you' - discover the real you lurking within that may just need something cut away to see clearly.

I'll give you a solid reason to cut expectation here in a moment, because it's one of my favorites - but then I'll get into the classic "Via Negativa2" and walk you through a few prompts which can help you practically find things to cut to your immediate advantage.

Expectation and Happiness

Expectation is, in my personal observation and belief, one of the greatest friction points to happiness.

Think about even minor experiences.

The other day, my daughter and I drove through Sonic for a fun after-event treat. She got an experimental slushy, and we also grabbed a burger and cheesy fries.

When we got home, the cheesy fries were in fact ...

Cheesy tots.

She was ...

Sad.

Bemoaned.

Disappointed.

She didn't want tots she wanted fries!

And all I could think about was ... girl, if I had just handed you a basket of cheesy tots out of the blue you'd have been super pleased.

She did end up turning her perspective around and quite enjoyed the cheesy tots.

But, naturally I was struck by the negative experience with the fries/tots, but simultaneously by the lack of negative reaction she had to the experimental flavors slushy she got (where she had no expectation of it’s outcome).

And haven't we all experienced that. And seemingly justifiably been upset! I ordered the fries dammit! This is bullshit!

It reminds me of the 'ole poo flinging monkeys example.

Give a monkey a banana and he's super happy.

Give the monkey two bananas, and take one away ... and he'll start hurling poo at you in anger. Even though he ends up with the same number of bananas.

There's more in there than just expectation of course, but it strikes me that if it's our broken expectations driving negative emotions ... not having expectation means you can't have broken expectations.

Easier said than done.

We can make the examples all the more complex by looking at relationships.

I'm no relationship expert, and maybe this is just me and my own personal experience and my personal faults, but looking back in my experience of relationships and life all of the most negative experiences and problems come down to broken or mismatched expectations.

I thought you wanted children!

I thought you didn't eat meat!

You said you wanted to do this!

You said we could have a dog!

Blah blah blah. I don't need to expound in depth all manner of different ways in which expectation is broken - and you can surely argue the nuance of shared goals/interests fitting in there. But, just think through your own broken expectations and those of your current and past relationships.

Would you be happier if you cut those expectations?

Make no mistake, I'm not saying to remove any of the goals. I'm saying to allow yourself to cut the expectation that the end goal happens the way you think it will.

Cut the expectation of the story you've told yourself in advance.

And then repeat this idea ad nauseam through the rest of your life experience.

Got a goal in business? Cut the expectation that you'll reach that goal the way you think you'll reach that goal, even if you have definitive proof that you're going to reach that goal a certain way.

After all, cutting the expectation won't actually change how that goal comes about - but it WILL change how you feel and move forward through the path toward that goal, and how well you respond to and are receptive to adjustments along the way.

And in my opinion,

It will lead to greater happiness.

Via Negativa

This is ... call it a "tactic" ... we loop back on frequently, because it is so powerful, effective, useful, and I'd argue wise. Via Negativa.

Most of the time when we seek change we are looking to add more.

More money. More workouts. More dieting. More projects. More programs. More habits.

It's quite remarkable to think about "New Years Resolutions" through the lens of marketing and business's sophisticated interest in convincing you that you really need to get more, and they have the answer.

That might be pessimistic ... celebrations of "the new year" have been around longer than written history (and what marks that new year is different for different people - no need to get into that).

BUT

It is awfully convenient that we can say "it's a new year, time for a new you, and boy do I have a great deal on how you can buy that new you, only 50% off today!"

Why not,

"It's a new year, time to look back on the past year and cut everything you're still carrying which isn't doing a damn thing to help you get what you want."?

No money in that ;)

So I'm going to say it.

It's the new year. Instead of looking for new things to do, new things to add, new changes to make ... look at everything you already have and figure out what you could cut out.

(And then when you get used to this practice, consider making it a frequent one)

In order to help you navigate this process, we have some convenient prompts.

Those in TGA+, Guardians, frequent readers, you will recognize these prompts as ones we use for decision making moving forward.

Now we're going to consider these prompts with an eye to cut.

DALA

Don't Act Like an A-Hole or Directions of Acting Like an Adult3 (whichever you prefer)

The essence of this boils down to one question. Does what you say you're going to do align with the actions you take?

If you don't have alignment between your espoused values and your actions, we argue that you are not acting like an adult (to yourself).

Now,

In the context of cutting.

Put on your DALA Glasses and review.

What are your espoused values?

What do you say you're going to do?

What are your actions?

What are you actually doing?

And in the context of all that, WHAT CAN YOU CUT? which will bring your words and your actions into alignment?

The Rearview Mirror

The Rearview has two applications of cutting, in my perspective.

Taking the classic Rearview Mirror prompt exercise4, the idea is that if we're trying to solve a problem or do something, most of the time our perspective is to look out in front of us and try something new or to add something in order to solve that problem, do that thing, get the result, etc.

The Rearview prompt beckons us to look behind, see what we've done, and see if what we have already done which we know works can help us solve the problem. Instead of trying something new, we just exploit something we already know.

This prompt in itself is almost akin to an act of cutting, since it replaces "doing more" with "repeating what's been done."

But we can take it a step further and ask ourselves, "what can I cut in order to pave the way for repeating what's been done?"

But we can also use this look into the rearview mirror to ask ourselves "what can be cut that I can I cut that I have done which is no longer serving me?"

No matter how you approach this, looking back is a helpful exercise to avoid adding more in the first place, and from there you can remove all that which doesn't serve your next step and longer term goal.

Raise the Floor

Here's an interesting one.

Those of you familiar with Raise the Floor, I would wager haven't thought about it in these terms.

If you aren't familiar, check it out here:

In short, the basic concept of Raise the Floor is that instead of reaching for higher highs, you focus on improving your lows. Trying to increase your income? Don't beat your best month, just improve on your worst. You can read the above for why that's so powerful.

Now,

In the context of cutting ...

When you consider how you might Raise the Floor, most people are likely looking to add in order to do this.

But I want to challenge you,

To consider where you might Raise the Floor and then ask yourself, what can you remove which will result in or make it easier to raise that floor?

It's quite possible that your worst month is your worst month, because you have something else taking away from the goal that you are trying to achieve. And your easiest, most effective solution to raise that floor may just be removing that thing.

The Three Lists

Lastly,

I'll leave you with a different perspective on The Three Lists5.

You can find this idea written about here:

In short, The Three Lists are a way of managing your day to day, and keeping yourself moving forward with what matters by asking yourself each day "what did I actually do", and "what did I NOT do, but know how to do", and "what did I NOT do, and don't know how to do."

I find it's really easy to get into a patter with The Three Lists where stuff keeps getting added.

You know,

Cuz we're like human and stuff.

But what if each day you ask yourself ... what can I remove from this list?

Maybe there's a reason you haven't done a thing on that list. And maybe that thing is worth cutting.

Quitters Day

The subject of cutting is one we circle back on frequently here. In my view it's one of the most efficient and effective ways to get what you want now. Removing something in your way, or weighing you down, can produce a very high return for very little expenditure (and often that 'expenditure' is straight returning resources to you).

This is the essence of Resource Engineering6 - as many of you know it 'recapture and reallocate', where we remove expenses that are not serving us in order to recapture those resources and put them somewhere useful.

The idea of cutting is also connected with Letting Go7 - one of my personal favorite concepts (though I would argue they aren't the same thing, but I'm not getting into that now).

I wanted to leave this on one more idea,

Circling back to the new year.

As I am wrapping up and publishing this article, I have discovered that today (Friday Jan 10th) is apparently considered "Quitters Day." Our friend actually emailed his list about this today and I find the coincidence to the day and this article amusing.

Apparently most people quit their new years resolutions within the first 2 weeks, and thus the second Friday of the month has been given this name.

I have two things to say to that.

One is -- if you have made a promise to add more to your life and that action is not serving you or your goals, then you only stand to benefit by Cutting.

Secondly,

If instead of a New Years Resolution to do more, you choose a New Years Cut ...

Well,

You can't quit on what you've already given up.

So,

Clearly the best way to win the new year is by removing that which doesn't serve you 😁

There, I believe I have played the trump card on Quitters Day.

What are you gonna cut?

Be Useful. Be Present. Love the Journey.

Joseph Robertson, CMO The Guardian Academy

• Engage in discussion with the author and TGA+ Community in the comments below - give us your 6WU and/or thoughts after reading. Together we make a rising tide that lifts all ships.

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With a new year upon us, it is natural to be drawn in toward future planning. Thinking through our goals, our paths, our next steps.

But, following this fall's Gray Wolf Summit, it came to me that there's a particular dynamic to planning and goal setting and really to our whole relationship with working towards what we want in the future which, in the way this is approached by most people, actually hinders our ability to achieve what we want to achieve.

It's a topic I've danced around a few times in the past, including “Set the Goal, Burn the Plan1,” and “Let Go2.”

At Gray Wolf, it was a talk by Dr. Jeff Spencer which gave me another piece to the puzzle. I felt like this particular message was an appropriate way to start the year.

"Don't try fill the story in advance." - Dr Jeff Spencer

The significance of the idea is one I've been trying to capture in a useful way, and to help with this, today I've brought back my good 'ole' ancient philosopher friends, Max Prudence and Jack Gamble.

(This time, they seem to be quite cordial with one another)

I'll let them take it from here ....

Jack Gamble: The other day I was overhearing a conversation and it struck me as curious. With the new year I thought it prescient to discuss.

Max Prudence: Though I am overstuffed on holiday cookies and whisky, it does seem the time to contemplate. Do tell the story.

Jack Gamble: A man is talking about the new year, resolutions, what he's looking forward to, what he thinks is going to happen, what he hopes happens.

Max Prudence: Naturally, the changing of the calendar forces such contemplation

Jack Gamble: Indeed. What struck me wasn't what he was talking about, it wasn't the planning, it wasn't the dreaming, it wasn't the resolutions ..

Max Prudence: Oh, I had figured given the context you were going to say something about how resolutions are silly, nothing is really changing except a number on a calendar

Jack Gamble: No this is something else ... although perhaps we should put a pin in that. I am curious at your dismissal of the date change when, indeed I agree that presently nothing is seemingly different this week compared to last, yet we live in a society and amongst other humans who behave differently because of that number. But this is a sidebar ...

Max Prudence: My apologies, I did not mean to distract

Jack Gamble: Back to this man who was telling his story. I listened to him talk about the path which led him to where he is now. The things that went well over the past year, the choices he made, the decisions he in retrospect figured out were not the best made decisions.

Max Prudence: Sounds like he has a good level of awareness of his own decision making process

Jack Gamble: I did gather that as well. But it wasn't that which stuck out.

Max Prudence: Do tell, I am eager to hear.

Jack Gamble: I listened to this man talk through all of his ideas and his plans. He talked about what was going well now, and he talked about how he thought it would all go. He talked about what could happen. And he talked about what he thought would most likely happen.

And this took him down a decidedly negative path ...

Max Prudence: The whisky can do that

Jack Gamble: Indeed. But he also sounded dispassionately practical about it. He laid out all the facts of his current position, what's happening right now, where that would take him, and the outcome he was most likely going to face - which was not sounding very good. All stated like cold fact.

It caught in my mind and I started thinking. How does he know how it's all going to turn out? Is he doing himself any favors by playing it all out in his mind? It was almost like he predetermined his year without regard to what could happen next ...

Max Prudence: Interesting questions. I have a few to follow up with if I may.

Jack Gamble: Of course, that is why we have these conversations.

Max Prudence: As counterpoints, I would ask, is it not important to think through all that is possible and what the path is that you may walk? How can you be sure you're heading in the right direction if you don't do that?

And with those questions asked, I'd counter my own questions by asking, does he not know what the next things are that he needs to do and is that not all that is important?

And then I'd finally ask of you ... because you mentioned this man's story turned rather negative, I am assuming that means he believes the year will not go well for him, or what he's currently doing won't work out the way he wants. I want to ask ... would any of these questions change if the man believed it was going to be his best year ever and he was going to get everything he wanted?

Jack Gamble: Well, now that you pose those questions, I am filled with curiosity and rather overwhelmed at the prospect of unraveling this little stuck thought. I am inclined to begin with answering your first question, since I believe that is how most people think about it.

Max Prudence: You mean - "Shouldn't we think through all of our possible actions and the path we're going to walk?"

Jack Gamble: Yes that one

Max Prudence: I'd also like to suggest that whether we should or should not, I believe it to be human nature that we are inclined to do this anyway - to live in the future in our minds rather than in the present.

Jack Gamble: I agree with that. But, there's something different happening here. Or maybe it's a version of being in the future rather than the present - or a side effect or an outcome. There's something else besides not being HERE and NOW which is going on when we play out the path and imagine the future.

In your question you propose it is natural and perhaps even important we think through the path we're going to be on. To imagine how things will come about.

But.

What if that's not true?

What if it's actually detrimental to think through all the permutations and play out the story in our minds before we have even lived it?

What if it's detrimental NOT in the sense of lacking presence in the now, but in the sense that it could hurt the real outcome we're after?

Max Prudence: I am intrigued by the possibility. If that is true, then the way most people think through their challenges and work through their life would actually be hindering their ability to live to the fullest and get what they want.

Is that what you are suggesting?

Jack Gamble: That is what I am thinking. And that is what struck me as I listened to this man talk through the expectations he had for the year. He played it all out like he knew what was going to happen, but even if he consciously admits that he doesn't have a crystal ball, does the perspective prevent him from finding the best path?

Max Prudence: Perhaps answers and clarity lie in the other questions

Jack Gamble: Yes I am interested to take on your next question - how can you be sure you're heading in the right direction?

I think the way most people consider their goals and aspirations is they imagine the path getting to there from where they are now ...

Max Prudence: I'll interject and say that more often than not that path is too straight of a line ... humans are inclined toward linear thinking and once they head in a direction toward their goal, imagining into the future, they think it will be a straight line to get there, but this is not life.

Jack Gamble: I agree, and that brings us back to your question which begs us to wonder, is it important to think through the possible permutations of our path to make sure we are heading in the right direction?

On the one hand I start to think, if we are inclined toward linear thought then imagining the path means we're likely to simplify too much in the direction we are headed.

On the other hand, if we don't think through it, then would it not be incredibly easy to get lost off track, given that the real path is anything but linear?

Max Prudence: What about the 3rd option.

Jack Gamble: What's the 3rd option?

Max Prudence: You know this one. We just take the next step. And then recalibrate.

Jack Gamble: Ahh yes. In the words of our dear friend Dr. Jeff Spencer - "all we can ever do is what is in front of us." It doesn't matter if we think that in 100 feet the path is going to curve, because we can only ever deal with the steps in front of us. And then if we ARE just dealing with the steps in front of us, we'll be able to manage the change in the path with each step.

But, in order to figure out the next step, you must have some imagination as to where you are headed. There then must be some thinking through of the possibilities and mapping it out so that you can know what that next step is, and that it's in the right direction.

Max Prudence: I agree. There-in lies that trick. Figuring out where you want to go, the next step to get there, and then letting go of the rest.

Jack Gamble: This still doesn't answer the question I brought up in how playing the whole story out may be detrimental, nor have we answered the question about whether this is all the same if the outcome is positive.

I believe, after all, that you raised that question because it's easy to see someone imagining a bad outcome and then coming to the conclusion that this doesn't serve them well because they can easily become depressed and therefore negatively effect their walk on the path - or some variation on that experience of self imposed limitation.

But if it's a good outcome, you'd think their positive momentum would carry them toward success. And yet, I have a feeling that this is also not true.

Max Prudence: Let's finish unraveling the original scenario, and figure out why it is detrimental for this man to play out the story of the upcoming year - then we can ask ourselves if this is all still relevant for the person who imagines a positive outcome.

Jack Gamble: Ok let's recap. Ultimately it seems like there is a balance between heading toward your goal, knowing what that is, and what your next step toward that goal can be, while also letting go of the imagined future which hasn't happened and focusing on what's just in front of you and your next steps.

Given that. I think it becomes pretty clear that if you play out the story of your future in your mind, if you decide how things are going to come about, then this could negatively impact your ability to just take care of what's in front of you and be receptive to the outcome of those individual steps.

Max Prudence: Yes given our conversation I would say that humans not only are susceptible to living in the imagined future, but are also relatively blind to how reality actually unfolds where each step you take reveals a new reality. You can't know your path until you've walked it, but so often we decide what that path is going to be before we do.

Jack Gamble: I believe it was Dr. Jeff Spencer who said "don't try to fill the story in advance." It's easy to take facts that we can currently see and decide what the outcome is going to be but in doing so we stop paying attention to what's in front of us. We may even go to the extent of not allowing reality to unfold and show us the best path beneath our own feet.

I think there's something else in this as well.

If we're clear on what we want and why - accepting that these things may change as we go along - this allows us to figure out the next best step towards that given where we are now and what we have now.

BUT, where we are and what we have, and even what we want and why we want it can all change as we take steps towards what we desire.

When we sit with what we have now and imagine how everything is going to happen, when we prefill the story, we can only do so with what we are starting with.

Max Prudence: What you are getting at is another idea from our friend Dr. Jeff Spencer - "what you start with is not what you end with."

Jack Gamble: Yes. that is it exactly.

I believe that we are incapable of imagining the future for ourselves as it will actually be, because we can only imagine what will be given what we know, experience, and have now. As good as our imaginations may be, the way we imagine will even change as we move along the path in front of us.

It does us no good to figure everything out ahead of time and then try to fit the pieces together based on our prediction.

Max Prudence: This leads well into the final question ... does it matter if the outcome imagined is bad or good?

Jack Gamble: I think the obvious answer is no.

By predetermining the outcome based on what we know now, we actually rob ourselves of the ability to see the best path which could be discovered along the way the whole time.

Our conversations are a good example aren't they.

We start with a question, and then we simply explore. Questions beget more questions. The answers reveal possible new understanding and ideas which we can put into action.

We don't go into the conversation thinking "this is what we're going to get out of this discussion."

Max Prudence: I suppose if we did, that would be rather performative. As if we were putting on a predetermined act.

Jack Gamble: Right, and each time that act would be the same. The conversation the same. The outcome the same. It wouldn't reveal anything new, interesting, or valuable.

Max Prudence: It might be entertaining.

Jack Gamble: It might.

But it certainly wouldn't be living.

What do you think about Max and Jack’s conversation?

Do you feel like this idea fits into your lived experience?

Let me know in the comments below.

And if you’re interested in other discussions between these two, they have appeared before in “When it’s Too Much and Not Enough3” and “Is That Content Useful to You?4”

Be Useful. Be Present. Love the Journey.

Joseph Robertson, CMO The Guardian Academy

• Engage in discussion with the author and TGA+ Community in the comments below - give us your 6WU and/or thoughts after reading. Together we make a rising tide that lifts all ships.

• Ready to apply your ideas to reality? You may find our Engage the Field Handbook a useful and effective resource.

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I started writing something to finish out the year, and in doing so took a look at last year's end of the year article.

I realized something which shouldn't have been a shock.

It's all the same. Nothing changes. This isn't surprising since we're basically synthesizing 4000+ year old life philosophy into modern day.

Yet,

We've managed to take all that which doesn't change, and change ourselves with it to come so so far in the past year.

What we publish here is therefore not anything new - but rather new perspectives on old ideas, filtered through unique individual experiences.

As long as we are taking action, learning and growing, we'll be able to learn and grow from the same lessons over and over.

"No man ever steps in the same river twice. For it is not the same river and he is not the same man." - Heraclitus

To end this year, I want to reflect on the themes I can see that emerged looking back through all that I've written over the past 12 months.

I CAN tell you, none of this was planned.

I go into each week (or set of weeks if I'm really organized) nurturing the garden and seeing what grows in the moment.

What I end up writing and publishing is that which sprouts and shows up for me at the time.

I recommend actually starting with the article which finished last year (written by Nic):

What's in there is as true today as it was then.

Now let's see what we can discover by looking through the themes over the past year (as I see them now unfolded).

There are many overlaps, but these are the themes I can see repeating (and will probably continue to do so), and which come to my mind when I think about everything I've written.

One thing that is new about this year is the birth of The Arena and our clearer focus on taking action through the learning process.

Know Thyself

If you've read any of my articles, this shouldn't be a surprise. Every lesson road through TGA always seems to arrive to this same point. When you know yourself ... who you are, what you really want, and why ... everything becomes clearer and easier. Happiness becomes more obvious. Building a life of exponential potential becomes possible.

We often come back to this focus - intentionally crafting the life you desire. It all starts from this point ... knowing yourself. Here are several articles from this past year which focus on this idea in various ways:

Embrace Uncertainty

I was actually surprised to discover that I could only identify 3 articles which focused on this point. It's an idea which I think actually gets woven through a ton of everything else I'm writing, because uncertainty is fundamentally is necessary in order to change yourself and get something new.

So, instead of fighting it or dreading it or sweating it ... why not embrace it?

Figure out what you want and why

This is a core concept which repeats through everything and bears exploring as much as I can. It is not possible to achieve the life you desire with certainty ... if you don't know what you want. It's very hard to know what you want, if you don't understand why you want it.

If you're going through anything that we're doing in The Guardian Academy, you MUST face this at some point.

Take Action - birth of The Arena

At our Guardian Academy Event in March, Nic said 3 words which would change the course of everything.

Engage the Field.

Looking back, it all seems obvious now. Of course. In order to learn, you have to put new ideas into action, to get data from engaging the field, and then to return into the process over and over with what you discover.

Learning is "same situation, different behavior." It requires action to demonstrate this.

That action is the learning process we talk about, and the structure which is the core of The Arena. No one needs more information. What we need is a place to put that information into action in a way which increases our ability to get what we want.

Presence

This is another core idea which has been incredibly important to me personally, and which has therefore woven it's way through everything I write - and naturally I've written on this idea specifically a few times. What you don't see in all this is the behind the scenes.

Being in The Guardian Academy makes you connected with some really incredible people. If you ever come to our live events, or even watch the live streams, you'll have seen and heard from Jason Campbell. He is one of the founders of Zen Wellness and is intricately involved in the ... shall we call it ... higher levels of TGA - The Gray Wolf (something I'm sure you'll hear more about in 2025).

Jason runs a live qigong breath workshop via zoom, mon-thurs mornings. The point of it all can be boiled down to one word (in my current opinion) - presence. Since our March TGA event, I've been personally participating in this workshop. The impact of that can be seen in everything I write ... if you know what to look for ;)

Fundamental Frameworks

Lastly, there are a few key super powerful ideas which include all of the above but which I felt fit into this category of "fundamental frameworks." These are stand alone evergreen concepts which we routinely refer back to and which certainly influence everything I write and do.

The End

Rather than try to end the year by giving you something even more, I figured the most useful thing I could do right now is look back, reflect, see how far we've come, and give you a little bit more of a framework to navigate what you currently need.

Feel like you want to work on knowing yourself? Embracing uncertainty? Figuring out what you really want? Taking action? Being more present?

Well, you've got plenty to work on above there :)

But do yourself a favor ...

Start by identifying a behavior you want to change first ...

Then take ONE thing and apply it - engage the field.

Gather that data.

Reflect on it.

And repeat.

Do this, and I promise by this time next year you'll be shocked at how far you've come.

Be Useful. Be Present. Love the Journey.

Joseph Robertson, CMO The Guardian Academy

• Engage in discussion with the author and TGA+ Community in the comments below - give us your 6WU and/or thoughts after reading. Together we make a rising tide that lifts all ships.

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We're so keyed into the reward from overcoming obstacles that we don't realize how good it is to not put the obstacle in front of ourselves to begin with.

In yesterday's 'Rockin' Xmas Arena, Mindset Mary gave us a little insight on what tomorrow's Bumpers Workshop2 is going to be all about ...

Identifying what you DON'T want to happen

(Your Gutters)

and then putting into place things to STOP those bad things from happening to begin with.

(Your Bumpers)

Everyone who shows up tomorrow at 9:30 AM PST for the 90 minute workshop, who Engage the Field, will leave with their Gutters Defined (what you DON'T want to happen), and their Bumpers in place (what you'll do to keep the bad things from happening).

If that sounds like something useful to start your new year ....

Go read Bumpers real quick if you haven't -- freebumpersbook.com -- (it's like a 30 minute read).

And then show up here tomorrow ...

We'll update this post and the other one with the zoom link for the workshop. If you're subscribed to this Substack (The Guardian Academy), I'll also be emailing you the link.

At 9:30 AM - Join The Zoom Here

Be Useful. Be Present. Love the Journey.

Joseph Robertson, CMO The Guardian Academy

• Engage in discussion with the author and TGA+ Community in the comments below - give us your 6WU and/or thoughts after reading. Together we make a rising tide that lifts all ships.

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And all through The Guardian Academy

Not an entrepreneur was stirring

Not even uh ...

Wait.

Who am I kidding,

Of course we're stirring.

That's what we do.

And let me tell you...

We're stirrin up somethin super tasty for this holiday.

It's ...

A VERY MERRY BUMPERS WORKSHOP EXTSTRAVAGANZAAAAAA

Come join our merry elves, Randy (AKA RR) and Mindset Mary, as they guide us through a FREE live Bumpers Implementation Workshop THIS FRIDAY - December 27th at 9:30 AM PST.

At 9:30 AM - Join The Zoom Here

BYOCandyCanesAndCocoa

And bring yourself prepared to take ACTION. We want everyone to leave this workshop with Bumpers in Hand, ready to move forward and take on the new year.

Think you’ve got your Bumpers set?

When’s the last time you worked on them?

If you’re doing anything in your life to grow, learn, and change, then you will be different and so will the river.

You can find the link to the zoom for the workshop here (9:30 AM PST, Friday Dec 27th)

Be Useful. Be Present. Love the Journey.

Joseph Robertson, CMO The Guardian Academy

• Engage in discussion with the author and TGA+ Community in the comments below - give us your 6WU and/or thoughts after reading. Together we make a rising tide that lifts all ships.

• Ready to apply your ideas to reality? You may find our Engage the Field Handbook a useful and effective resource.

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He comes across another person by the side of the road who is selling fancy looking walking sticks.

"This is made from the wood of this forest, it is special, it will help you get where you want to go faster and more consistently"

The Traveler thinks "I want to get where I'm going faster and more consistently." So he gets a stick.

He keeps walking.

Awkwardly at first with the new stick,

But he focuses on applying it.

Each step,

Placing the new special wood stick in the right tempo with his alternating steps.

He starts to get a good rhythm.

He is learning.

Soon it feels like he's flying down the path. Now he's really getting somewhere. Out of the forest through meadows up hills.

Dusk comes.

He is getting tired.

He has traveled far today. Further than any day before. Into bare dry rocky foothills of the coming mountains.

He sits down.

Placing the stick next to him with reverence.

Pulls out his canteen for a drink of water, and discovers it is bone dry.

In his exhaustion he looks around,

And now starts to wonder ...

Will I find water before the end?

Dear Future Guardian,

We are very effective creatures when it comes to figuring out how to use things. But that does not mean that using the thing always serves us well.

This can be easier to see when it’s a physical item or tool.

Harder to see when it is stuff we are actively learning to try to increase the likelihood of getting what we want.

When we have invested resources into acquiring new information and new understanding, it is easy to feel compelled to apply that information and understanding.

It may even sound like that's exactly what you should be doing.

After all if you are trying to increase your intelligence and learn you have to apply ...

Quick refresher on intelligence and learning.1

Our definition of intelligence: The ability to get what you want.

Our definition of learning: Exhibiting a different behavior in the same situation.

So if you are studying something ... reading a book, watching a youtube video, taking a course, going to an event, and you wish to learn, increase your intelligence, increase your ability to get what you want ...

Then it would make sense to apply what you have discovered, right?

If learning requires different behavior in situations, then that means you have to apply new understanding in those situations in order to learn and demonstrate that changed behavior. And ideally this is done in the context of getting what you want (so you increase that ability with new behavior).

Remember the learning cycle:

1 - Consume

2 - Reflect

3 - ENGAGE

4 - Reflect

5 - Repeat

But there's a problem.

It's actually just a feature of The Human Mindset2.

We're very good at figuring out tools and applying them. Here's a tool, how do I use this? What can I do with it? Our biology has essentially evolved around this dynamic.

Often we talk about this in the context of Form vs Function3. If you pull it apart this way, it looks a lot more obvious:

Ever get a brand new hammer and then walk around everywhere with the hammer thinking "golly gee gosh, what can I hammer with this today?"

No.

Except ... probably yes - only not in such an obvious dynamic.

When you focus on the thing you are doing, you are focusing on the form and not the reason you are using the form in the first place, which is the function you are trying to achieve.

Back to learning and ENGAGING to apply new ideas.

When we pick up a new idea and start applying it and trying to make it work for us ... it is not unlike picking up a tool such as a hammer and walking around trying to hammer things.

The deeper problem is,

The situations in which we are learning and seeking to apply new understanding and knowledge are not simple black and white situations where the tool has an obvious use. You get a hammer to hammer nails. If you aren't building something with nails and wood, it's likely clear you don't need a hammer.

Life is not as simple.

We go forward in our everyday lives amidst the context of our ongoing challenges, goals, and focus, to hopefully achieve the outcome we are headed towards.

It's really easy to come across a new idea, and think "oh this is the thing I'm missing." Or even just "hey this thing can definitely get me closer to my goal."

But consider our Traveler.

He has this goal of moving along this path towards his destination. He may even be doing a really great job of being present in the moment and seeing the path around him and taking each step ...

Which is perhaps why he even came across this "walking stick vendor" to begin with.

The promise seemed to align with his goals. He decided to take this new thing and apply it to learn and change his behavior and increase the likelihood of getting what he wanted.

EXCEPT

He didn't fully realize the entire context of behavior around the actions he was taking. He was focused on what he thought the problem and solution were.

(Side point, It's probably an entirely separate article on it's own, our inclination toward predetermining our understanding of the problem and making us blind to what the real problem is)

In the end, he ran out of water.

You might look back and think that if he was just a little more aware, or slowed down, or changed his path, he could have been fine.

And you might be right in hindsight.

But there's another perspective our Traveler could have taken which would create a more beneficial outcome altogether.

Instead of trying to apply a new idea to change your behavior, identify the behavior that you want to change and then see if there are useful tools to help with that.

If you know Form v Function, that will sound very familiar.

In the context of our Traveler, what behavior was he affecting and what behavior might he have wanted to think about instead?

By identifying this faster traveling tool, he affected his walking speed, his consistency, his endurance perhaps.

But do those things even really matter in terms of getting him closer to what he wants?

He might die without water now.

Maybe he would have been better served to consider his behavior around managing his resources along the path?

I could obviously dig into that however I want ...

I certainly completely made the entire thing up to illustrate a point.

We're also in danger of me spinning off into tangents (like, the complexity of the above scenario includes that the tool he identified could still be useful but the behavior being focused on changes the outcome).

So let's come back to reality.

This whole idea came up at last month's Gray Wolf Summit.

As we began the first day and settled in to prepare for opening ourselves to new ideas, not closing loops, and figuring out how to get the most out of the weekend ... we were encouraged to think about it this way.

Instead of taking new ideas and looking for places to apply them to change our behavior, start by identify the behavior we really want to change first, and then we can more clearly, effectively, and valuably apply anything which comes to us.

So that's my suggestion to you

We're at the end of this year 2024, still yet one more Friday to go.

For many it is a time of reflection and preparation. New years resolutions and all that. For us this is just another day and another week. We're always here, it's always us, it's always now.

But, the ticking of the calendar marks a social occasion.

It is an opportunity to consider. How far have I come? Am I going in the right direction? What can I do to increase the likelihood of getting what I want given all that I know and where I am?

(Btw, you can take any day of the week as opportunity to ask yourself those questions)

If you want a perspective to take in the new year, if you feel inclined towards making a new years resolution ...

May I recommend you take the above.

You may be more and more mastering the art of learning and applying new knowledge and information through taking action,

But whenever you have the opportunity to take in new information, before you do, first slow down and identify what behavior it is you are trying to change.

Then proceed, knowing you have the ideal lens for identifying what is useful and not useful to you.

If you want some help thinking through your behaviors and what you might consider your focus, I'd like to invite you to comment below. Let's have a chat :)

Be Useful. Be Present. Love the Journey.

Joseph Robertson, CMO The Guardian Academy

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This one is embarrassing for me.

I feel like I should have known better. This is the kind of thing I write about, talk about, help other people with.

And yet,

It took being in the room with everyone else at Gray Wolf Summit, running through the practical exercise of uncovering our constraints1, to realize I'd gotten it all wrong for myself.

Well ... all wrong might be a little harsh.

But let me provide some context, and then explain my error. I think it might be useful for you in revealing your own constraints and your next best step.

Even when you know this stuff, it can still be as clear as gravy when looking at your own situation.

And so,

I entered Gray Wolf Summit thinking I was trying to solve a particular problem, all the while not even realizing I'd completely misread the problem to begin with.

I figure ...

My experience might be enlightening for you. Or maybe at least, if you experience the same thing, you can know you aren't alone.

Like many of you, I have a long term goal I am shooting for ...

It combines a particular set of numbers with a particular way of living life. Since the day I began following TGA principles2, I started slowly making adjustments and moves to get me closer to that life.

When I began this process, what I was doing did not appear to be compatible with the goals that I had set.

At the time, my work was fully focused around freelance copywriting. I'd spend my days doing outreach, pitching, and fulfilling on client work.

And while that work allowed me to continue my relative independence ...

Working for myself,

I was essentially still working a job. I still needed to trade my time for money, and in that particular role the amount of money and time ratio were not favorable for my end goals.

I share all that because THAT understanding is what ultimately led me down the path to being CMO of TGA.

It was a winding path,

With interesting twists and turns.

Now I am doing work which not only is exactly the kind of work I want to be doing ... but I'm in a position where the outcome/situation I've been working toward the past 3 years is finally possible.

I'm not there yet.

Which is fine.

(There's always an element of 'will never arrive', as my end goals and vision will constantly evolve as I step more along the path, but that's a conversation for another time)

One of the things I've become quite adept at is getting really comfortable with enough3.

I figure out exactly what is enough in order to move forward in my current situation and then I only take steps toward "more" (or what appears to be 'more' from the outside), when those steps align with making what I want more likely.

My big picture involves not just TGA. That's a piece of the puzzle.

But as I stepped into this role and this work I progressively unravelled remaining pieces from the past which did not serve moving forward to the future ... (in short, I ended client projects that no longer fit what I was doing).

And that has left me with some unknowns.

I have taken much of this year to slow down and cut out a number of things which haven't been working for me. At the same time I have taken microsteps toward testing what could be new pieces which I want to put into place.

We're talking about a situation where part of the long term picture has really become clear, but there are other pieces needing to come into place, and I couldn't clearly see what they were, or how they should come about.

As I said, I'm adept at getting to "enough" and then going forward from there, while slowing down and having restraint, but in the time that I have been stepping through this, I worked myself into a position where change started to become necessary ... a raising of the floor needed.

In discussing what I'm working through with Nic, he presented to me an interesting analogy - a story which was told to him.

A man spends many of his days carrying water from the river to his family.

One day someone comes along and says 'hey man, if you build a well, you won't need to spend all that time carrying water from the river.'

So, the man starts building a well.

He focuses so much on the well, that he forgets how much water his family needs.

And they end up dying of thirst.

Bleak story. But the obvious lesson is ... while you're building the well, don't forget to take trips to the river.

TGA is one of the wells I'm helping to build.

And in my slowing down and cutting, I ended up removing my trips to the river, and had not figured out how to replace them.

Some of you following along with what I'm doing in various places have seen me take some of those microsteps to test out various paths to the well. Different sorts of publishing, not just on The Guardian Academy and Man Bites Dog (R3 for Email4 over on MBD is a piece of the puzzle), but also my personal substack Growing Trees (and earlier in the year my private email list which I have closed off for the time being).

Each of these test have revealed new information,

And the way I've done them has limited my exposure toward taking too much of a trip down the wrong path.

So that's great.

One of the things I like about seeking "enough" is that it gives me a lot of leeway to make sure my steps are always going in the right direction.

I could, for example, head in a completely different direction and seek a lot (as a copywriter, I've flirted with financial publications before, and while that sort of work could be lucrative it would absolutely destroy my soul).

So to me, trips to the river must also support the walk on the path (unless I really AM dying of thirst, in which case all bets are off and I need to reset the baseline - but that's not what's happening here).

If all of that sounded somewhat ... confusing …

GOOD.

WELCOME TO MY HEAD.

That's exactly how I felt going into Gray Wolf Summit.

A feeling of 'what in the hell am I going to do' and 'how in the hell am I going to figure this out.'

A side note, you might think ... as the current primary author of this publication, and the CMO, that when I attend Gray Wolf Summit I'm doing so like an employee, where I'd just be observing from the sidelines.

You'd be wrong.

(And even further, if you thought that I of all people must know exactly what I'm doing, you're also wrong)

There's no end or limit to the benefit that anyone coming to GWS can attain if they come in with a blank slate and an open mind.

I engage fully,

And thus far have been able to experience astonishing realizations and new perspectives and understanding - yes even though I write about all this stuff day in and day out.

(That's just really a side note to you - observer - who probably does not ingest/digest and create around these very principles day in and day out - if I can get astonishing value from being in the room, there's no doubt you can too)

So when, on Day 1, it came time to take a few minutes and write out all of our immediate constraints we could think of ...

I stumped myself by writing this very note:

In case you can't read my chicken scratch (no doubt born out of writing mostly on a computer for 35 years), it says "Clarity/Certainty of path."

I was like,

Yea my constraint is that I just need to be sure about my next step.

That's my problem.

And within about 47 seconds I realized just how wrong that was. Then also I was astonished to realize I'd held onto that perspective for months. Not really consciously.

Part of the reason I was able to come to that conclusion so swiftly in THAT moment was ...

1. Proximity. Just being in THAT room and in those discussions for whatever reason makes it much easier to come to realization and understanding about myself. Maybe it's magic. Maybe it's the way our energy all comes together in the physical space to make the mirror5 more obvious. I don't know. But it works.

2. It conflicted with the relationship I believed I have cultivated with uncertainty.

The first part opened the door for me to realize the second and that caused it to all come tumbling down.

On Uncertainty

Uncertainty is naturally a difficult force to confront. Need I repeat the oft quoted quote? In the event you're new and haven't run into this yet ...

"People prefer the certainty of misery to the misery of uncertainty" - Virginia Satir

As we know, all the new stuff inevitably must be accompanied by uncertainty. So if you are going into something new, trying to figure out a problem, moving forward on your path, whatever it is ...

If it's a place you haven't been, then you can't avoid stepping into uncertainty.

(One of the reasons we use the rear-view mirror and repeat what is known if it solves the problem, because there’s little to no uncertainty in what is known)

So I have been doing the internal work to try to reframe my perspective and relationship with uncertainty. I want to have the reaction to uncertainty that this is where I want to be. Because I know that if I can embrace uncertainty and move forward in it, great new shit will happen.

I've written about this plenty ... here's an example:

So ....

There I was coming to this "conclusion" that my constraint was "solving" uncertainty. In other words I was avoiding uncertainty, seeking certainty, all the while having this other perspective that I really ought to be stepping into it.

And THEN I realized my other major mistake.

On Constraints

Uncertainty is not a constraint.

I mean,

That may be obvious to you, especially after what I just said on uncertainty, but not knowing what to do or what's going to happen is not a constraint towards doing a thing.

I told you this was embarrassing.

I feel like Nic is going to come around the corner and smack me with a ruler - "you thought uncertainty was a constraint? haven't you been listening?"

Of course, that would never happen.

We are never perfect as people. We never "arrive" to figuring it all out. We're always in evolution moving along the path and discovering and rediscovering.

The trick is raising the floor6 on improving and realizing these things, so we can move forward sooner.

What is a constraint then?

Another useful perspective, which I'm sure I had heard before, but which never fully clicked until we were in the room ...

A constraint is something you can do along the way to an outcome.

Not having enough conversations that lead to new business. That can be a constraint. Eating too many calories preventing you from losing weight. Not getting enough sleep preventing you from being well rested.

I can't just go "be rested," but I can go to bed earlier. I can't just "lose weight," but I can reduce the amount of calories I consume each day. I can't just "have more revenue," but I can go talk to people who are likely to provide that.

But then we dig deeper. Why is that happening? Why are conversations not happening? Why are too many calories being consumed? Why is there not enough sleep?

And we dig down until we find an action we can take as close to where we are right now, as possible.

Back to my story,

My "trip to the river" most likely revolves around some kind of email copywriting/strategy project, because when I rear-view-mirror, that's the kind of work I can do, I can do swiftly, I can do well, and for which I can get paid well.

(That work when done right can also serve building the well, incidentally - as opposed to say ... build someone's paid ads strategy, which I CAN do, but isn't the right main focus - yet again, a whole ‘nother conversation)

What I'd started to do, also based on a rear-view-mirror (but actually erroneously so ... again a sidebar for another conversation), was restart my cold prospecting strategy which I'd used in the past to max out my freelancing business.

However

I was ignoring a much shorter path to solve the problem.

Or possibly I was filling my time with that prospecting work because I felt like I needed to do something.

In the room it became easy.

Because I've got all of YOU

and you and you and you.

All around me here, and all around the room I was in ... but aside from taking on this work writing for TGA and becoming CMO ... I had not really tried to work with the people around me.

Sound dumb in retrospect?

Well,

I was uncertain. And I was blind to the fact that I was allowing that uncertainty to stop me.

See?

Embarrassing.

What did I do?

I turned around me, and talked. Before the end of the weekend, I'd solved my problem.

Not just because I recognized my blunder with uncertainty, but also because I really got clear on what my actual constraint was - just talking to the right people.

What can you make of this?

1 - Don't let yourself think that 'not knowing what to do' is a constraint. That uncertainty is a constraint.

You know what to do.

You may be uncertain that what to do is going to solve the problem you're trying to solve. But that's a different problem. Most of the time you are going to be uncertain. That's why we take microsteps forward and gather data. Because the more data we have, the more certain we can be that we are at least headed in the right direction.

And that's all you can ever really do.

2 - Your constraint is going to be around something you can take action with NOW.

You can't take action with not knowing. You can't be like "ok now I'm going to be not uncertain." And even if you could be, that would change nothing about your current situation, would give you no data, would give you back no resources.

You CAN take action with having conversations. You CAN take action by changing what you eat. You CAN take action by going to bed earlier.

And as a related note, don't mistake the end result as the constraint. The constraint is something along the path towards achieving that thing.

Hopefully my failure can be to your benefit.

And if you too would like to have such useful personal revelations ... well ... come to a future TGA event :)

Be Useful. Be Present. Love the Journey.

Joseph Robertson, CMO The Guardian Academy

• Engage in discussion with the author and TGA+ Community in the comments below - give us your 6WU and/or thoughts after reading. Together we make a rising tide that lifts all ships.

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I've been writing for The Guardian Academy now for a couple of years, and working even longer to integrate the foundational principles and philosophies which make up all of our work here (into my own life).

One of the repeated lessons that I've observed in myself and in others ...

Is that we've all experienced these lessons before. Possibly many times in our lives.

And yet,

We've all failed to fully understand these lessons, fully integrate and follow these lessons and ideas our entire life until this point.

It's not our fault ... that goes back to the whole dynamic where our culture, society, and upbringing pile a ton of stuff on top of us and then our work now as adults is to chip away at all that we are not, etc ...

Which inevitably starts to reveal the truth of these fundamentals.

There's a little story that gets passed around the events and the calls (usually by Nic).

At one event earlier this year (not a TGA event), Lance Armstrong showed up. He was being interviewed by Joe Polish. Joe asked him if he could teach his younger self one thing, what would it be ... and Lance answered that his younger self would not have listened.

I've observed this in myself as well.

I can look back many years and see that the principles and philosophies I acknowledge and follow now are things I heard many times in many forms over the years.

I just didn't listen.

Or I couldn't hear. Maybe I had too much that was not me covering it all up.

Now as I look at my children growing up, I'm noticing ...

These lessons are old.

They are fundamental. (They are principles after all)

They are often taught to us in different forms at a very young age.

But for whatever reason ...

As we grow older, we disregard them. We think less of them. They are just lessons for kids. It's not that simple. It's not that easy.

I realized the other day,

The Guardian Academy is actually just Sesame Street for grown ups.

So,

I'm going to show you why and how that is ...

Maybe you too can see that everything we talk about in TGA, is something you've known for a very long time.

TGA is Sesame Street

Some quick context. Sesame Street is put together as like a series of little sketches and stories. Each character tends to get their own style of sketch and lessons are taught through each of them.

Our youngest is just about 2, so he loves it. We also tend to watch the show in pieces, not always entire episodes, as the individual segments watch just fine on their own.

So I'm going to travel through some of these segments and connect the dots on the lessons taught to kids which are principally the same as lessons taught in The Guardian Academy.

It should be noted that MOST OF the lessons are often B messages. But you don't need to hear "Raise the Floor" to integrate the principled essence of what that means to you (as adults, having the logical construction helps clear away the chaff and assign that specific understanding to our lives).

Stop and Think.

I've actually talked about this one before (which gave me the realization that there were a lot more lessons woven throughout Sesame Street which are in The Guardian Academy).

This one is all about Cookie Monster. Typically he's some kind of "super hero" with a team of Cookies backing him up. They are often trying to stop an evil mastermind, but sometimes they are just trying to save someone else.

Cookie Monster himself represents a sort of reckless or sometimes mindless consumption and self interest. He just wants cookies. He wants all the cookies, and sometimes he will - at least initially - value cookies over his relationships (though in those cases, he learns the lesson and changes by the end).

In these Stop and Think segments, we learn about the evil guy who needs to be stopped or the person who needs to be saved, and then Cookie Monster immediately starts to rush in and do stuff ...

Only, his Cookie squad stops him.

"Wait Cookie Monster! You have to STOP ... and think... before you do something."

How many times in The Guardian Academy have we talked about restraint, slowing down, and making decisions better. It's fundamental to our human nature to rush and seek the most immediate thing which our monkey mind desires ... but to master The Champions Mind1, we must STOP and THINK.

One of the things we do with the space created by slowing down and thinking is to use prompts to help us figuring things out and make better decisions (see Get Better at Applying TGA principles2).

Feelings Come and Feelings Go

This lesson repeats itself through different segments, but shows up most frequently for stories with Elmo.

There's one episode in particular which starts off with Elmo just feeling really down on himself. He starts talking to one of the adults, who sees that he's having an off day, and Elmo says he just feels really down ...

Oscar the grouch naturally shows up and says Elmo is turning into a grouch.

Cue an amusing little segment where Elmo goes through a series of tests with Oscar, who in turn is trying to convince Elmo that he is now also a grouch.

All the while the adult is trying to tell Elmo that this is not him, he's just having a bad day (and that's alright).

Eventually it comes to a head with Elmo taking up residence in Oscar's can, and then realizing how silly it all seems.

He learns that "feelings come and feelings go", and making decisions while you are in a height of feeling does not reflect who you truly are or who you really want.

We talk about this in terms of making choices in a valley3. Whether the feeling is good or bad, when you are peaking on an emotion, there's going to be an inevitable return as you go back to the mean. Sure we can get into nuances of "good" and "bad" emotion and how that affects things ...

But the point here is Elmo was feeling bad and started making all these changes to his life suddenly because of it. Which is not at all different from feeling really good and making a bunch of changes because of that.

Make your decisions in the cold calm light of the valley, where everything is settled.

There's another lesson in here ...

You aren't your feelings. They just exist in you.

(Oscar The Grouch embodies the character who decides they ARE their emotions)

That's straight from The Gray Wolf4.

You cant do it all alone

This is a repeat lesson that belongs to no specific segment or character. As far as I've been able to tell there's no specific segment which overtly talks about this either, it just shows up repeatedly throughout the entire show.

No one can win alone. No one can do it all themselves. And in fact in order to reveal the best of who you are as an individual, you need others.

In TGA we talk about this as "full5" or "exponential potential." And I've definitely written about the idea "nobody wins alone6."

In Sesame Street this is presented overtly as lessons on friends coming together to do greater things. Learning how to play together. Ask for help. Learn from one another, etc.

We see characters, like Elmo, discover things about themselves because they end up working together.

But is this any different?

I think when we grow up we look back on this and think that these sorts of lessons are just for kids. Learn how to be a friend. Learn how to play together, etc.

But we forget,

We forget that when we as kids are learning how to play together part of what is happening is that our best selves and uniqueness are coming out in that environment.

As an adult you can, by yourself, focus on your known potential. Focus on doing things that you know or believe you are good at or can do ...

But to reveal your full true self, your unknown and exponential potentials,

You need others.

You can't do it alone.

All those lessons about friends and working together?

They weren't about getting along,

They were about bringing the best out of you that could only come from those around you.

The Thing isn’t as important as The Outcome

This is another repeat lesson that belongs to no specific segment or character, but does show up sometimes as a theme.

In one story, many of the characters had come together to play at being superheros. They all had their own costumes and own made up powers, etc.

At one point while they were playing they decided they needed to go somewhere else.

Unfortunately ...

They couldn't decide how to get there. One wanted to fly, one wanted to ride a bike, the other wanted to walk, etc.

They were arguing about how they should travel when along comes one of the adults.

The adult naturally points out that they don't all need to travel the same way. They can each use their own method of getting where they are all going. What matters isn't how they get there, what matters is that they all just get there, and be in that place together.

It's a very basic version of Function over Form7.

What matters isn't how you do the thing, what matters is that you achieve the outcome you're looking to achieve.

It's our natural human mindset to get focused on the form of the thing, because we end up thinking that "the thing" is the important part. It's THAT thing which is going to solve my problem! And we so narrowly focus on "the thing" that we lose sight of the outcome we're actually trying to achieve and can't see the easy solution to achieving that outcome right in front of us.

Next Best Step and Raise the Floor

"Next Best Step8" is another one of those lessons that subtly works its way through much of the segments and stories in Sesame Street.

For a child it obviously makes sense. Break down what you're doing into small steps and do the next one first.

How funny that we disregard this as we grow older.

I guess as adults we think we are smarter and more capable so we don’t need to take small steps anymore.

(el oh el)

Raise the Floor9 is very similar. Raise the Floor can feel like an advanced superpower when you finally figure it out in your life as an adult. But the fundamentals of it have, again, always been there.

There's a segment where Grover (blue guy), dresses up and acts like a superhero - he actually does this a lot, but in this segment he has come upon a cow that is stuck at the top of some stairs. This cow as just got her hair done at a beauty parlor and is standing at the exit at the top of a few steps down to the sidewalk. In her words (the cows) "Cows can't walk down stairs."

So, Grover to the rescue.

Grover looks at the situation,

And funnily enough, says "ok so you're up there ... and you need to get down there ... and these steps are in the way."

(And I immediately start counting the principles ... we have a destination and a starting point, and we know the path between the two needs to be figured out, so we have a constraint, and possibly a next best step to identify)

Through the skit, Grover tries over and over to just get the cow off the steps in one fell swoop.

First, he tries to just straight up get rid of the stairs using his superpowers. Unfortunately he is not able to do that with his super power hand chop (hurts his hand in the process).

Next, Grover suggests the cow jumps over the stairs, and to make it 'safe' he brings in a trampoline for her to land on. Naturally she jumps onto the trampoline and ends up right back on the stairs where she started.

Finally, through a ... series of ridiculous circumstances, Grover accidentally makes a ramp with a board (after almost getting flattened by the cow), and all is well. The cow is able to walk down the ramp.

Does that sound silly?

How many times have you looked at a goal you wanted to achieve, maybe considered where you are now, and then just lept for it?

Did you bounce back to where you started?

Sounds awfully familiar doesn't it.

You don’t need to do it all and have it all now, you just gotta do a little bit better. The cow didn’t need to leap off the steps, she just needed tinier steps to take.

Morning Routine

There's an episode which involves Elmo and Abby (Elmo's magical fairy friend) and their talking basketball friend, where it's all about morning routines.

The song is one of those that'll stick in your head for days.

"Wake up, potty time, eat and brush" (insert catchy beat, over and over)

The premise of this little story is that Elmo and Abby are trying to play ball, but their ball is their friend (a talking ball) who is late showing up. They ultimately find out that she isn't even ready to come out and play. She (the ball) admits that some days she can't ever seem to get herself going.

Elmo points out that what she really needs is a good morning routine, so she can prepare herself and then be more consistently ready to have fun!

To me it sounds an awful lot like preparation and readiness.

Which is a key component of the first couple hours after you wake up in The Champions Perfect Day10.

Now, Sesame Street obviously doesn't integrate or intimate the biological details of why Champions Perfect Day is so powerful to understand, or exactly why that early part of preparation is so important ...

But damn I look back on this and think that I must have learned about morning routines to prepare myself for the day when I was this young and then just disregarded it as boring adult crap all the way until I found Champions Perfect Day ...

And now I have a morning routine (it's a bit more ... evolved ... than 'wake up, potty time, eat and brush').

But it's all there.

ITS ALL THERE PEOPLE.

Presence

This is one that appears throughout episodes, but is perhaps the most hidden or B-messagy lesson.

A good example is an episode where Elmo needs to take a bath.

It starts off with one of the adults who is baby sitting Elmo pokes her head out the window at Elmo playing outside and says "it's your bath time."

Of course, Elmo does not want to take a bath, he wants to keep playing.

And thus ensues a wild chase through various silly scenarios where he avoids taking a bath, until finally in conversation with Ernie, Elmo says he doesn't want a bath he wants to have fun, and Ernie points out you can have fun in a bath, and all is well.

What's happening - subtextually - is that when Elmo finds out he needs to take a bath, he immediately starts living in the past and the future. He's both imagining the future in the bath where he isn't having fun anymore AND he's imagining the past where he was just having fun.

He wants to hold onto that past and avoid the future imagined.

Yet, if he just realized that the present moment is always now and whatever you make it out to be ... you can have fun in it regardless of what you are doing.

As long as you are present.

In TGA, presence is also pretty much always a b-message. Though I certainly write about it directly when possible. The reason being is I find a lot of our human resistance to change and uncertainty happens when we end up living in the future and the past instead of the now.

We narrow our vision by imagining a future we don't want to experience, and we blind ourselves by focusing on the past. Mix the two you can you can't even see what's happening right here and now in front of you.

All the while, the real answer to having the life you want IS focusing on the next little step that you can take in the now.

It's always you, it's always here, it's always now.

TGA, Sesame Street, What's the Difference?

I suppose I could make a whole thorough dissertation outlining every lesson of Sesame Street, and I'm certain that they'd all map back to these principles ...

Heck, there's an entire Elmo specific segment where they demonstrate that learning is DOING, wherein Elmo learns by looking up some new thing, and then taking action to apply the information and thus learning.11

TGA really is just fundamental principles for living a good life and figuring out how to get what you want out of it.

Obviously, Sesame Street is a show for children and overtly talks about things like counting numbers, the colors of the rainbow, learning about dinosaurs, how plants grow, being friends, etc. And The Guardian Academy is not teaching you about rainbows. We talk about identifying constraints towards your goals in order to give you the tools to make the life you desire as certain as possible, to remove suffering from yourself and others, and in general be a better adult.

But underneath all of the lessons in either instance are things deeply fundamental which are as true when we learned them as kids as they are now.

Lessons that we all start learning at a young age ... but which then at some point along the way, get buried by expectations, other people's regrets, and external ideas about who you should be and what you should do.

We stop being able to hear ourselves.

We forget who we really are.

And then we get lost in the fog trying to stumble our way forward.

So this all begs the question ...

IF THIS is Sesame Street ...

What character are you?

Be Useful. Be Present. Love the Journey.

Joseph Robertson, CMO The Guardian Academy

• Engage in discussion with the author and TGA+ Community in the comments below - give us your 6WU and/or thoughts after reading. Together we make a rising tide that lifts all ships.

• Ready to apply your ideas to reality? You may find our Engage the Field Handbook a useful and effective resource.

• Get your hands on awesome unique swag and opportunities by sharing this article. We treat our ambassadors like royalty :)

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It was late.

I'd been awake almost 16 hours already and I still had at least 5 to go.

I found my seat on the aisle, stowed my bags, and sat down, waiting for someone to come take the one next to me.

I closed my eyes,

Remembering the desert. The calm shush of the wind over red rock and through the cactus. Warm crisp air.

I let myself wander the hills there in my thoughts.

"Oh excuse me, that's me."

A shorter older woman with shimmering silver curls, and a suitcase to match, calmly smiles, pointing to the middle seat.

I stand up,

And offer to help her get her suitcase into the overhead bin.

"Oh thank you. But I've got it just fine."

She stowed the bag with ease.

"I'm a nurse," she pauses as she shimmies over into her seat, "so... I'm quite used to lifting heavy things."

"Oh! My wife is a nurse." I toss the thought out without hesitation and immediately mentally smack myself.

You're going for common ground ...

Remember what we talked about.

Try again.

I take a breath, slow down and collect my thoughts.

I think about letting it go.

We're just strangers on a plane. We're probably gonna just stare ahead at the seat in front of us, deal with the discomfort of the trip, get to our destination and then be on our way.

But.

It's worth reaching out.

No matter how much I just want to let my introverted tendencies to take over ... that would be me hiding.

Instead I turn to her,

"What do you love about being a nurse?"

She glances at me sideways, with a short polite smile, "helping people."

I nod.

She continues to look at me, as if wondering what I'm after.

"I get to help people, and I do it in a correctional facility."

My eyebrows raise out of honest surprised curiosity.

“A correctional facility” I say

"Yea ... most nurses don't want to do this work. But I really enjoy it. The people there are really respectful. They may have done some bad things, but they are not bad people."

I nod "Interesting lesson in life there."

She nods.

We turn back towards ourselves. Settling into our seats. Fiddling with the belts. Adjusting our items in the seats in front of us.

People coming onto the plane continue to brush by me.

There's a low hum of conversations here and there in the background.

I was kicking myself about the common ground bit. She didn't really seem to want to talk about being a nurse, so I didn't press. Probably she felt like I was just going to tell her everything I thought about her profession because I know someone else who does something similar.

I didn't pry further.

After a few minutes,

She suddenly leans towards me …

"You know it's funny

I'm a nurse, my sister is a doctor, and our youngest brother just died in a motorcycle accident. He was only 34."

We sit with that for a moment.

"He lived in Arizona. Neither of us could be there .... neither of us could be there ..."

The sudden realization that this person next to me is awash in deep loss and regret and pain feeling like she failed her brother and there's nothing to be done for that now.

I waited for a few moments before expressing my sympathies and we sat in silence, the low bustle of people boarding the plane filling the gap.

What do you say to that?

This person just tore open a huge wound to a stranger (me).

Maybe she was hoping to just have an ear. Maybe hoping for absolution. Maybe just a little bit of connection in the sea of loss she was experiencing.

I don't know.

But as we sat, I couldn't leave the feeling that she opened up like that to ME because she needed something more ...

She trusted me with this vulnerability.

I took a breath, and stepped into that responsibility.

"If you don't mind me asking ... and please feel free to tell me if this is too much ... what did your brother love to do?"

She turned to me as I spoke,

and a HUGE grin cracked across her face

"To RIDE"

For the next ... I don't know how long ... we had a deep conversation about her brother, parenting, children (she has grandchildren close to the ages of my younger kids), and living a good life.

Something that wouldn't have happened if I hadn't opened the door ...

And demonstrated I was someone she could trust to care.

I didn't do it for that reason.

(That whole "what do you love about ---", instead of stating something "valid" and related in order to find common ground, is something we learned this last weekend at Gray Wolf Summit.)

I said it because I too wanted the connection.

To at least see who this person was.

Despite my introversion I value meaningful connection deeply.

And because we had that moment in time, that opportunity to connect and learn ... even if just a few words, just a few moments, we'd be able to share something that makes us uniquely human.

And what better way to live?

Some of the greatest things we get out of The Guardian Academy are not really about making more money, being "successful," "winning," etc.

They are the little things that allow us to connect.

To be more human.

To help heal the suffering of others.

I am thankful for TGA and all the people who make up our unique little community.

We occasionally get the opportunity to connect in person and that is immeasurably valuable and special. Events like Gray Wolf Summit can be transformative if you go into them free of expectation and a willingness to step forward into being.

On the last day,

Some of us went up to The Mountain. A place out in the Arizona desert hills, mostly disconnected from modern life, amongst the red rock, the cactus, the warm but crisp air, and the silence between the breaths of wind.

We took the opportunity to settle our thoughts from the weekend. We stood around a fire. We talked about the most important things in life and just were present with each other.

I had a particular conversation that was powerful for me (a few honestly, but one I'll mention here).

In the dim light of dusk with the fire crackling I received a clarity of understanding about myself I had not fully accepted (thank you Ellen).

I am not driven to find "exponential growth" in the sense of entrepreneurialism and business. I know how to do this. I've helped other people do this. I actually enjoy helping other people do this (if they are the right people and it's the right work - because I enjoy helping the people I care about succeed in their goals).

But that idea is not what drives me.

I don't get out of bed to chase after millions and millions of dollars. To chase after fame or fortune. To chase after building a big growing business of my own.

What drives me is a desire to live a beautiful life.

And,

In all my life I've not found a better place and group of people to do that with.

There are plenty of people in The Guardian Academy who are there for the success and the money and the growth and certain path towards it all.

And that is also great.

If you are driven by a desire for exponential growth, great success in business and your endeavors - you're in the best place. We have all the most remarkable people, talent, intellect, insight, wisdom, connection, and experience for that in the world here in this group.

No one does things quite like us - where we work to become it over knowing it.

Where our foundational pillars are about ending suffering, being better humans, knowing ourselves, and through that finding all the success/money/wealth/fame/etc that we desire.

At the same time,

If you are driven to simply live a beautiful life - you are also in the best place. Because it is those fundamentals underneath all of it which are important no matter what. Whether you want to make a billion dollars or you just want to be happy, The Guardian Academy represents a path to a way of living and being that is the best foundation for a beautiful life.

In my humble opinion.

Perhaps dear reader if you feel drawn towards this group, you'll join us in person one of these days. We would be most delighted to see you there.

Be Useful. Be Present. Love the Journey.

Joseph Robertson, CMO The Guardian Academy

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I’m publishing this week’s article a day early because this weekend is Gray Wolf Summit (Nov 22-24) - our biggest event of the year. Many of us will be in attendance and I felt it prudent to get this out there before it all begins.

If you’re there, find me and say hi :)

Otherwise, maybe I’ll see you at the next one …

Always check out https://guardiandates.com/ for upcoming event information.

Now, back to our regularly scheduled programming ..

Dear Future Guardian,

I'd like to rewind the clock.

Let's head alllll the way back,

To 2021.

Err...

Maybe we don't want to exactly revisit that time.

But I do want to go back to the early days of this project ...

In the days of yore, when The Guardian Academy was young, and we had a program focused around giving to earn which involved creating a Capstone project for TGA (this was part of becoming a Guardian - a path no longer available).

When it came time for me to write my Capstone, I thought deeply about what had impacted me most in my time with The Guardian Academy.

Then,

I came up with two answers.

Two deep fundamental ideas which had foundationally impacted me so greatly as to change the course of my life.

I wrote about one of them.

The other,

I decided needed more time. I knew it was powerful. I knew it was important.

But I also knew it needed more time.

That idea has sat as a few notes, in my web of ideas, for the past 2 years.

Now it's time,

For what might perhaps be a second capstone ... but whatever you call it, I just hope that you find it useful.

From the very beginning there has been one underlying perspective which has completely altered how I create, how I work, how I interact with people, and how I treat my relationships. It has directly contributed to the very reason I'm here before you right now ... as the CMO and primary author of The Guardian Academy and Man Bites Dog.

This concept has murmured in the background of everything we do in TGA, but in the early days of our wild-west style times with cryptocurrency, was oft spoken of.

This Idea which I've integrated into my everyday life and my approach to all of my work ...

"Being valid vs Being useful"

OR

As I'll just think about it now:

"Be Useful."

It sounds simple ... and it kind of is, which may be why it's so powerful.

Let me start with the relevant context:

Everyone is mostly interested in themselves

This may sound negative. But understand this is not a judgment or a critique but rather a practical analysis of our humanity.

Other people don't care about you.

They care about what you mean to them, how you make them feel, what you can do for them.

Of course this means, we don't care about other people. Not by default anyway. We care about what they mean to us, how they make us feel, what they can do for us.

This dynamic is built into the foundation of every single human interaction you will have in life.

Let's go deeper.

Everything about our humanity means we are internally centralized and our relationships with other people are based in ourselves, not in them.

Again, this might come off as selfish and you might object and fight against this, but if you really want to care about and for other people, start by understanding where that's all coming from in yourself.

If you look at this objectively it makes sense. Our reality is based on how we internally experience that external reality. Our experience of other people is therefore based in how they relate and interact relative to our own internal basis in reality.

We can go deeper with this and look at energy. Without writing an entire dissertation, I'll ask you to accept that you are ultimately a collection of energetic vibrations. You are energy. Come together in the form of a being existing in relation to everything else in our reality.

If you think about the nature of time and space ... consider that the light and warmth we experience from the sun no longer exists in the sun. It originated in the sun over 8 minutes ago, but now the sun is different than the sun we are experiencing, yet what matters to us is the sun we are presently experiencing ...

You can take this perspective into human relationships too, because everything you see about someone, everything they say and do, exists in your experience some very tiny fractions of fractions of seconds after it originates in the other person. The energy they put out is no longer in them when it reaches you. We can't consciously perceive this because our entire biology has evolved to exist within this paradigm, and so we experience interaction and relationship with other people as immediate and now, but if you stand back to the structure of reality around us, you can see that your experience of someone else is based in your own internal reality - it has to be.

If you, reading this, have a lot more experience, knowledge, and understanding of physics and biology feel free to comment below and disabuse me of these ideas. I'm just running off what makes sense to me.

Back to practicality.

The above is important to me in all this because it grounds the perspective that we are all experiencing reality from within ourselves. Everything is by default about us, how we experiencing, what it means to us, etc.

Aka - we are by default interested in ourselves because our existence is defined through that paradigm.

Not only does it make it easier to accept the seemingly selfish nature of where our interest in others comes from, but it also illuminates the undeniable power in being able to evolve beyond this paradigm by putting yourself in the present energy space of other people.

(Which is what we are going to do by being useful)

K?

K.

I find it easy as a marketer to accept this perspective, because when you are marketing your business, its very easy to see that no one gives a shit about who you are or what you are doing, they care about how you can solve their problems or fulfill their desires. This is just how we are built by default.

This dynamic naturally changes when we do build a relationship and caring for other people, and when we have and use empathy in our lives. But ultimately, the less you relate to someone else the less you naturally project your own experience with them (empathy).

Regular communication and relationships are the same. That's just how we approach reality and those around us. It takes intentionally stepping beyond the default paradigm to change your relationship with it - empathy, sympathy, understanding other people's perspectives and then joining the relationship from their experience (inasmuch as you are able to do so ... physics not withstanding).

Going back to the marketing and the business (well, and really any relationship), understanding this dynamic ... rather than try to convince people to like me and work with me - bringing them to me - I endeavor to bring myself to them.

And one of those ways, is by Being Useful.

Let me illustrate just how impactful embracing "Being Useful" has been to my life:

Let's back up to 2022.

The Wolf Den and The Guardian Academy were merely sprouts coming from the soil of crypto and an exploration/experiment which exploded into reality.

During the height of that initial growth of The Guardian Academy, when we were all focused on the crypto itself, the prices, the massive wealth being generated, the amazing benefit we were all going to have ... I slowed down and took that long term view - this was a 10 year+ path at least.

And I started to think, how could I benefit this, how could I be more a part of this? I couldn't afford to go to the events, I couldn't afford to join Guardian (not outright - I ended up farming my way there over the course of a year, a path no longer available).

But I saw what was happening,

I knew that it was much bigger than the money. There was an underlying thread of personal improvement, learning, and growth which was pushing the thing. And as The Guardian Academy started to emerge from the chaos,

I really wanted to be a part of it.

During that period I was spending all of my time as an email copywriter, taking on clients, figuring out my way, having some outstanding successes, and some catastrophic failures, discovering what I really wanted to do with the work and more importantly who I really wanted to work with.

And I dreamed.

As I watched the TGA team start putting together assets and information, and start testing marketing, I thought "wow it would be so amazing if I could handle their email."

I dreamed. Dreamed of the day I could spend my days writing, benefitting the people and ecosystem of TGA through my work, helping to build the project and being a part of something that was more emphatically living than anything I'd done in a long time.

But, I also couldn't really see it how what I wanted would be useful then.

If you were around back then, you might recall, but the project grew in such a way that typical marketing approaches were not necessarily appropriate. It didn't make sense to just slap an email list on top of TGA.

(The reasons for this are complex, but principally are rooted in Diffusion of Innovation)

I didn't see a way in or a way to make it happen. I took the practical choice of letting that dream go. I needed to focus on the here and now, not get caught up in what I wish could be.

I instead asked myself how I could be useful given the situation at hand.

That's when I wrote The Real Cost of Dopamine1.

At the time all that was written for TGA was coming from Nic, so there was little in the way of other perspectives. I didn't know what was going to come of writing that article, but I knew a few things:

• It was going to be good work for me to do.

• I felt like members of TGA would find it useful.

• Even if that was the only thing I ever wrote, I was pretty sure I would benefit just by giving to the TGA community in the way I could best contribute. (Give to earn)

I got excellent feedback for the writing. It seemed like there was a place for it. That flared up my dream again, but again I didn't see a way to make it work, so I let that go and went back to my task of building a stronger freelancing base - this time focusing on raising the floor, getting more consistent and secure.

A few months later, I had finally staked for Golden Guard, starting the final path toward becoming a Guardian. This meant it was time for my Capstone.

Again, I turned to writing.

Again, I asked myself ... how can I be useful?

I did my best to give as much as I could to TGA in that Capstone2. My best perspective and insight from my experience applying TGA principles to my life in a way that would hopefully be useful to others.

And again, it was well received. Again ... I dreamed. I dreamed of being a rockstar writer, being the one that everyone tuned into, of being the one that TGA turned to in order to grow and make it all happen.

(My most indulgent dreams are often like a Marvel movie unsurprisingly, Captain America over here)

And yet again ...

I didn't see a way to make it happen. The time wasn't right. The opportunity wasn't there.

I actually felt like it would NOT be useful for them to have a ton of focus on email marketing at the time (from me or anyone really).

At the same time, I kept consciously applying the framework of Being Useful in other areas - not just my current clients but people I wished to work with as well.

An opportunity appeared and I wrote Lukas Resheske's new subscriber intro series (he was having a "cobbler's son has no shoes" challenge).

He found that quite useful.

A few months later in that year (2023), having shown my usefulness to Lukas, he asked me to join him in a test project relaunching New Email Masters and running a live cohort for his students.

That went very well. Lukas found my support and work very useful. Towards the end of the year he invited me launch "AI Email Masters" in partnership with him, giving me a springboard for productizing work I had already been doing.

And in the interim I had continued to provide useful insight and writing about his work and his ideas (both for him and TGA).

Lukas recently told me that one of the things he appreciates about working with me is he doesn't have to worry about his business or his ideas in my hands - he knows I have a deep understanding, ability to communicate that understanding, along with the knowledge and experience to handle his situation and business the way he wants it handled without him needing to babysit.

Very Useful. Uniquely valuable.

In the midst of all this,

Nic had been quietly observing and reached out (August 2023).

He said simply that he enjoyed my writing and they needed writing for the new TGA Substack. Would I be interested in doing something for that?

I took the opportunity.

I believed that no matter what happened, it would benefit everyone for me to walk that path.

Now it is 15 months later.

I am CMO of The Guardian Academy. The very position I dreamed of having. The very position where, 3 years ago, I'd distract myself from mundane work to daydream like I was Captain America coming in to save the day (or ... maybe more like Rocket, much more scraggly and messily coming in to kind of save the day but really just blowing shit up).

It's difficult to look at this and NOT say "well, duh, hindsight makes the path clear."

But I think the most clear thing about this path I followed (to me anyway) is that it was anything but clear.

I don’t think I could replicate it.

The only unifying truth is that at every step of the way I asked myself ...

"How can I be useful?"

Being Useful is why I'm before you right now

The entire reason I'm here doing what I do now working with the people I work with, seemingly getting all the greatest opportunities and doing exactly what I want to be doing ...

Is because I focused on making myself useful.

When you can prove yourself to be useful in the context of your unique gifts, how you show up in the world, other people start to find you invaluable and irreplaceable.

I don't try to convince people of anything (that's actually one of my Bumpers).

I just ask myself "how can I be useful?"

Sometimes the answer is "I can't."

In the face of this dynamic, when not considering one's usefulness, I think most people lean into the gap and try to convince themselves or other people of what they want, or, how they are valid.

This shows up in regular conversation frequently.

I find more often than not when it comes to contributing to a conversation, if I ask myself "can I be useful," the answer is either no, or not clear. I think that may be true for most people in most situations.

If you stand back and observe how people interact in conversations it's often a ping-pong match of "here's something valid." People bouncing observations and details off each other without the process of really listening and trying to understand what's happening for the other person.

Which is what you are forced into doing if you ask yourself "is this useful?" (Is it useful to them)

This all really requires a level of Empathy and thinking deeply about where other people are on their journey and what it is they may be looking for right now and how you might support them in their path right now.

Beyond just "showing" them how you think you might be useful, but by actually BEING useful.

That can mean giving up what you want - because what you want has no relevance to them. They don't care. And if they do actually care, then approaching the relationship from a “be useful” perspective will cause a resonant feedback loop of positivity - and that's how really cool shit happens. It's just rare because most people don't ask themselves how they can be useful to others in any given relationship interaction.

Let's do some practical ideation here ...

Give you something,

Useful ...

Before I do though,

I want to reiterate one EXTREMELY IMPORTANT DYNAMIC OF BEING USEFUL:::

Its important that it's useful for the other person

Whether you're writing an article, pitching a client, talking to someone in conversation, going on a date, selling a bag of coffee, selling a house, trying to make the deal of a lifetime etc ...

You must anchor your perspective in their understanding of what's useful to them.

Remember that entire bit towards the beginning of this article where I talked about how people are only interested in themselves?

Or, to put it more gently, people's reality is anchored in self interest. That is the human mindset3.

Understanding this,

Not only is it ... useful ... to make yourself and your work useful to others (because that's the natural state of people, where they are coming from, and what they are looking for)

You MUST anchor the idea of what useful is in the other person's perspective, needs, interests, and desires.

If all else fails you CAN start with "I think this is useful," but understand that if your goal is to connect with, build relationships with, and impact other people, what you think is useful ultimately only matters to you (it just happens to be a decent place to start because similar people may find the same things useful to them), and what really matters is what they actually find useful themselves.

(So if you start with I think this is useful, do so with full present awareness and intent to adjust based on data and feedback so you can change to what they find useful)

This is not easy.

Especially if you are steeped in very strong beliefs about what you do and the way things ought to be, it can be difficult to look at other people and understand that they don't care. The only way to positively impact them is to be useful to them, from the point of view of THEIR needs, interests, and beliefs.

It's about them, not you.

Understanding THAT...

Here's

How to make this all useful for yourself

Being useful as a way to make yourself and your work valuable.

I have a few ways of looking at this.

Let's zoom in on the practical action.

I'll use writing an article as an example. Every time I write an article (for TGA, MBD, myself, etc), I ask myself the question "how is this useful?" I want anyone reading the article to not only find reading the article itself a useful practice (which is often making sure, or at least hoping, that they encounter a useful perspective shift), but also to get something they can then usefully also apply to their life (some understanding you can reflect on and then engage the field with - something actionable).

I don't start my articles that way, overtly. The ideas that come to mind usually are anchored in usefulness, but that's only because I've been thinking this way actively, intently, for a couple years now. Typically ideas come to me in a flash and a sense that whatever it ends up being could be useful and valuable to others ...

Yet I start them off anchored in my own reality. Because, after all, I am also human (as far as you know).

How do I perceive this?

What's important to me?

What am I trying to explain?

And then finally ... how is this useful to anyone else?

I apply this in every bit of work I do. As a marketer there are obvious places where this matters. An ad (or an email, or a letter) must be found useful by the person viewing it (even if that "usefulness" is having a good laugh) in order for the person to give their attention and time to it.

But I've also found it to be a valuable component of my cold outreach strategies as a freelancer. When I started off as a freelance copywriter, I used cold outreach to get clients and it didn't take me long to max out my time. I've gone through the process 3 times, and each time I applied this "be useful" lens and always have quickly found valuable and useful conversations to myself (that were also useful to those people).

I care more about being useful in the process than I do in getting the gig, because I know that if I am found useful to the right person, them wanting to hire me becomes almost inevitable.

So, I make my work useful.

We can look at this from many different angles.

Since we're talking work, if your end goal is to make a certain amount of money, then it behooves you to consider all the possible people along the path that might lead you there and figure out how to be useful to them ... because as you walk on that path your usefulness will make them far more likely to reach out and ultimately make your path easier.

Really want to work with a specific person?

Just be useful to them (and ideally in a way that demonstrates if they pay you money that usefulness will compound).

Be useful in your communication and relationships

Let's back out from work.

All the way back to useful vs correct.

Ever know anyone who seems to habitually, or reactively, butt into a conversation with "well, actually ..."

Or "well, technically ..."

Or even just jumping into something you're saying to correct a statement or factual point which they think or hear as wrong.

Ever do that yourself?

Ever respond in a conversation with a point you think is important to make because it's correct?

Ever think that your correct point is itself useful?

"But, correctness is important, how can we have a conversation if we aren't correct? It's useful for me to point out the wrong information and provide the right information!"

If you're in that frame of mind, what I have to say to you is that a conversation is not about the technical correctness of the information, it's about the outcome the communication is there to achieve.

Most of the time, being completely technically correct is not necessary in order to achieve the outcome of the communication. Sometimes, having the wrong information alters the outcome, but you know who doesn't care about that if you are just pointing out technically correct details?

The other person.

Because they don't see it as useful.

You must pull back and anchor yourself in the perception of usefulness to the other person. Would it be more useful for them to be corrected, or for them to have someone present and listening to them? Context is important, and any given conversation between two people is completely unique, so there's no way for me to blanket statement this - but stand back. Put yourself in their shoes of usefulness, really listen to what they are saying.

As a sort of side note ...

If you are struggling with a need to technically correct people in conversation, try to replace that behavior with a little "Tactical Empathy" from Chris Voss4 - instead of correcting them, mirror back to them what they are saying.

"The other day, I was walking down the street and the 6 legged elephant nearly ran right into a car!"

Instead of responding with "Elephants don't have 6 legs" try "The elephant had 6 legs."

Sound Ridiculous? Obvious? Weird? Useless? Try it out.

Take the above example, if you respond with "Elephants don't have 6 legs" the other person is probably going to respond back "I know elephants don't have 6 legs dumbass, thats not the point."

If you respond with "the elephant had 6 legs" you might get "yea crazy right? Turns out what I was actually seeing was 3 dudes in an elephant suit. Wild morning."

(Because in this scenario the other person was trying to share an experience and a story, and you got caught up in technically correct details - what was useful to them was someone just listening to what they had to say)

And correct is NOT useful.

If your goal in a conversation is connection and understanding. You do not need to be "correct" in order to communicate your ideas well. You just need to meet the other person where they need you to be - you need to be useful to them in the moment.

There are too many layers to this to expand on all the possible details. But I will say that to consider usefulness in a relationship and a conversation like this you've really got to think deeply about what the other person is trying to get out of the relationship and conversation as well.

I'll give a loose example of a situation I see far to often online, where someone asks for advice of what to do given a certain situation, and I see response after response after response of people telling this person what they should do - everyone having a different answer, everyone inserting their own correct opinion ... no one asking why.

You might argue back that the person is looking to be told what to do, but I'd counter argue that most of the time in my experience and observation people aren't so much looking to be told what to do as they are looking to have their assumptions, beliefs, and ideas confirmed as correct .... but this whole dynamic is much more difficult in an online space where you don't have the in person interaction to guide how you behave and show up and really understand what's most useful to them.

But in any case,

The answer is the same.

Respond, don't react, and before you respond, ask yourself, is what I'm about to say useful? Or, how can I most usefully contribute to this conversation? Is it even useful for me to contribute given the context and everything else that's going on?

And when all else fails, just listen.

Everyone out there is really just hoping to be heard by other people.

It's ALWAYS useful to someone for you to demonstrate that they are heard.

Being useful as a frame for figuring out what to do

Here's a short one.

Pull out all the way. Away from the conversations, away from the projects and the work, all the way up to your philosophies and principles ...

If you are struggling with what to do with your life and related questions,

Maybe start by asking yourself, "how can I be most useful?"

And maybe also ask yourself "to whom can I be most useful?"

Follow those threads, because I reckon you'll chase down lines related to your gifts, those areas where you can tap into your known potential and give yourself the opportunities to reveal your unknown potential by being useful to the right people.

My personal example:

How can I be useful?

Well, I can write. A lot. I can go deep on subjects. I can bring principled and strategic perspectives related to marketing and copywriting to the table to solve problems.

To whom can I be most useful?

(This one is obvious) The TGA team and community. People who are looking to deeply communicate their philosophies and principles to others in a way which creates gravity and understanding, who may also be looking to build out long term marketing systems through email. (There's much more detail, and very specific people I could list, but that's not the point here)

Going back in my story to the early days of The Guardian Academy, this is what I did. I asked how I could be useful and to whom. Writing was the answer. The TGA community was the answer.

That was the start of a path.

What happens when you "Be Useful"

I can't easily prove it with data.

I can't point you to charts and graphs. I can't point you to percentages and measured results.

But I firmly believe based in my own experience that "being useful" has been, by far and away, the most profitable single perspective and behavior that I have adopted in life (and possibly has contributed the most foundationally to my consistent contentment and happiness indirectly due to positive impacts on my relationships).

When it's obvious to people that you are useful in attaining the outcomes they desire in life, then it becomes so much easier to find and put together opportunities where you can financially benefit with those people.

When you're frame coming into any relationship is usefulness, then how you show up for others just aligns naturally with their self interest and removes any natural barrier they may put up which might prevent them from reaching back out to you in a similar way.

(That last part is a whole thing in itself I haven't even touched on ... how the "correctness" frame creates a dynamic of opposition which prevents positive connection and relationship)

If you really want to figure out the value to others aspect on a deep level ...

Consider "the pie" analogy.

Most highly successful people out there are walking around with a pretty full pie. They've figured a lot of things out. They've gone likely further than they had ever imagined.

But it's most likely not complete.

You might argue many reasons why, but I'd say the most relevant one is that nobody wins alone5.

No one is completely capable of completing the entire pie on their own.

And so every successful person out there doing really cool stuff also needs other people to help them do it.

If you can, knowing yourself really well, understand how your full potential can complete the pie, you can become an invaluably useful person to those people. Someone they can't ignore. Someone they can't walk away from. Someone they can't continue on without at least seriously considering how you might work together.

(And if you don't know your full potential, start with your known potential, because the people for whom your known potential is useful may just be the people to reveal your unknown potential)

If you do this, you will represent something uniquely useful compared to anyone else out there.

Personally,

I think the best way to approach this is from within.

Know yourself. Focus on your known/unknown/full potential. And always ask yourself ...

"How can I be useful?"

Those situations and those people will emerge if you just start being useful to others. If you start making your work and your path useful. Let go of the need to be correct and become the person others want and need because your usefulness is abundant and clear.

THAT I think is probably the most reliable and powerful way to an abundant life, where you can forever walk the path forward with full meaning and intent.

Be Useful.

Be Useful. Be Present. Love the Journey.

Joseph Robertson, CMO The Guardian Academy

• Engage in discussion with the author and TGA+ Community in the comments below - give us your 6WU and/or thoughts after reading. Together we make a rising tide that lifts all ships.

• Ready to apply your ideas to reality? You may find our Engage the Field Handbook a useful and effective resource.

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What the heck am even I doing?

Ever have that sense?

Perhaps you're in the midst of a big project, a long trek on the road to some goal in the future, a different life situation than where you are now and thus far you've taken pretty reliable steps along the way but suddenly it hits you ...

What if ...?

What if this is all a farce? A sham? What if this isn't going to work the way I want it to? What if I really have no idea what I'm doing? What if I'm on the wrong track? What if I don't get what I need to get out of all this? What if I'm left in a worse position?

Paralysis.

Retreat.

Inaction.

Indecision.

They all come next.

Steeped deep in the sea of uncertainty you imagine all the best and the worst things that can happen and no matter what you do the worst things win out and you start to detach from the reality that's right in front of you ...

And search for something that feels better.

A sense of certainty.

A knowing that what you're doing is right.

That you're going to be ok.

And that might all sound good ...

But what if I told you the real answer, the real truth that you seek, is not something you can fully understand or see right now, and that the only answer is to go through that thick black mud of uncertainty.

That what you really want actually lies on this path.

So,

If that's where we want to go, why do we seek certainty so much?

There's an interesting dynamic of action at play here.

Especially I think when we are trying to achieve something. We seek action which is going to get us what we want. We might have a good idea of where we think we want to be, and we may have backwards engineered a really good estimation of what that path can look like ...

And then we want to take action on that path to feel like we are going to get there. Certainty makes that all the easier. Certainty lends itself well to action, because when we are certain resistance is taken away and all that stands in between us and the thing we think we want is to move forward.

Uncertainty is anything but a force that makes action easier. It's like fog of war in a video game. You can see the landscape in your closest vicinity as well as where you've travelled. You might even be able to see the spot that you think you want to get to ...

But everything between you and it is covered in fog.

Which way do you go? Even if you are pretty sure the direction you want to head, what if the next place on the map you reveal is a trap?

When faced with uncertainty our natural inclination is to snap back towards some sense of certainty, to either react through inaction, or react through blind action toward the goal we think we want.

We want to know we are going to be ok.

As a creative, I wrestle with this all the time.

It often shows up best described as "resistance1." Resistance feeds on uncertainty, because it will take that meager thread and weave an entire tapestry in my path keeping me from moving forward.

It will feed my imagination of all the possible and every negative outcome will weigh on me 10 times worse - never mind that none of it is real.

This article itself is a fine example. I do not know how this is going to turn out. I can't clearly see all the connections, how I'm going to lead into it, how I'm going to make this idea good and useful the way I see it in my mind ... the only thing left to me is to just get started (or not).

That sense in the face of the unknown is rarely overt. The "I'm not going to get started" manifests as an overwhelm which encourages me heavily to distract myself with youtube, or walk around the house, or work on something different so I can feel productive, etc.

When in reality all I need to do is allow myself to be uncertain about what this is going to be while putting words on the page.

I have titled this "Uncertainty is a Dangerous State of Mind for The Uninitiated", but even the initiated are susceptible to the sometimes overwhelming blackness of the unknown that we balk. Even knowing exactly what is going on. In that case, we remind ourselves, we are never perfect, but always working slowly on growing better.

We can learn to recognize this sooner and move forward into the ultimate power of uncertainty.

And here's why this is so important:

Now the kicker.

The best stuff happens for you when you take action in uncertainty.

This is easy for me to say as your author on TGA here, because nearly every piece I've ever written in the past year has started by stepping into the uncertainty of what that piece would even ultimately say, and certainly whether that piece would even be received as good/useful/interesting ...etc.

Uncertainty is inevitable when you move forward into something new.

When you're doing things you haven't done before. Or even when you are taking actions you've taken before, but in a new direction, or further along a path than you have traveled.

I've certainly written plenty. But I've never written this.

Apply that to anything.

"I've certainly had a job, but I've never had that one."

"I've certainly been in long term relationships, but I've never been married."

"I've certainly had 1 kid, but I've never had another."

(The above being random examples)

You get it right? Uncertainty is where the good stuff can emerge, while certainty has no emergence. It's just an already walked path, or a fabricated path you think is already defined and real. If the actual outcome you seek IS the certain thing, then by all means, but I'd suggest that …

Most people don't actually ultimately “want” what they think they want.

Part of that is because it's really really hard to know what you want.

It's easy to know what you DON'T want.

What you don't want is absolute.

When I go to a fancy restaurant I know I do not want steak tartare, so I'm gonna order something cooked ... but what will that be? Filet Mignon? Some pepper crusted New York? Heck maybe I'll be looking at the menu and change my mind to fish ...

But I know damn well sure I'm NOT getting that steak tartare.

Easy to see in the minutiae if you think about it.

Let's do another.

I'm going on a vacation. Lots of options of activities. I can tell you with supreme certainty that I will NEVER parachute out of an airplane.

But what other activity will I chose? Wine tasting? Hot air balloon ride? Lounging by the pool? Fancy dinner? I dunno, I'll probably figure it out as I go - but for damn sure I won't be jumping out of a plane.

(This fictitious vacation is apparently in an area like Napa Valley for whatever reason)

It's easy to know what you don't want,

And far more challenging to know what you DO want.

Uncertainty is about dealing with what you don't know - and embracing that uncertainty is important because of one key dynamic:

And that's the emergent nature of paths of choice:

You may have seen me show this sort of thing before - in fact I'm gonna rip this expertly made graphic from “5 Steps to Success2”:

Every time you make a choice and take an action, it opens up new possible paths of choice.

It's as simple as that.

The more steps you take the more unique paths open up.

Grasping certainty is like trying to know what all those paths are going to be and forcing your way to the end point.

Embracing Uncertainty is recognizing that you don't know what those paths are going to be, and each step you take can give you new information that might change your steps or your direction.

Being in Uncertainty without understanding this ...

HAS to be a highly anxiety provoking situation. To believe that there is one true specific path and yet to be constantly presented with innumerable choices which require you to gain clarity to move forward ... how could you not wreck yourself without the presence of mind to know this is actually the way it should be?

You either freeze in fear, not taking any further paths forward, or you attempt to force the path you believe is certain, without regard to clearer knowledge/understanding/truth which might be presenting itself at each junction point.

Fear or destruction. Unless you recognize and embrace the uncertainty.

And then there's living a meaningful life of Full Potential ...

If you're at all interested in living a life of Full Potential then this is yet another reason to figure out how to get familiar and comfortable with uncertainty.

For your quick reference:

Full Potential is an emergent combination of Unknown Potential and Known Potential. You can read above for the in depth discussion.

Known Potential is something you are capable of pulling out in yourself. It's recognizing what you're good and and enjoy doing and doing that over and over and over and over.

But that only goes so far.

Because you need your Unknown Potential, which happens when you're tapping into your Known Potential and you have exposure, proximity, and access to the people who can bring the Unknown Potential out of you.

It's not something you can do alone.

And then Full Potential emerges from tapping into your Known Potential in a place where your Unknown Potential is also being brought out. Those second two, the unknown and the full potential, are things you can't know until you do the right things in the right places with the right people.

Pure uncertainty.

You quite plainly cannot live a life of Full Potential without stepping into the unknown.

Into the uncertain.

And when you do step into the uncertain if you aren't familiar with the dynamics, if you start fighting yourself and reality in order to wrest certainty into place ... you will drown out the potential for the unknown and block yourself from Full Potential emergence altogether.

All the above is the reason we talk about taking Microsteps3, finding your Next Best Step4, Raising the Floor5, and especially Engaging the Field6.

Because they are all ways that you can step into uncertainty willingly, with full knowledge and understanding that your path is indeed uncertain, and that when you are feeling that uncertainty it is actually exactly what you are supposed to be feeling.

Accepting that and stepping forward into uncertainty with present intent forces you into receptivity for the powerful potential you'd otherwise overlook being blinded by a need for certainty.

SO -- Why is Uncertainty Dangerous for The Uninitiated?

If you aren't aware of the nature of uncertainty and how it shows up for you … you run a high risk of taking the wrong path. Your natural reaction to the uncertain is going to be to grasp onto certainty. To change course because it feels wrong, bad, scary, unknown.

But it's that action of turning to certainty which actually increases your risk of ruin more than anything. You don't need certainty of anything beyond the next step that you take.

Aside from the potential of taking the wrong path, is actually not taking a path at all. The most certain thing for you is the reality you know.

"People prefer the certainty of misery to the misery of uncertainty"

- Virginia Satir

(We should probably get shirts made)

And when presented with uncertainty the easiest thing to do is stay put. In the situation which you know. In the situation and outcome which is certain. Even if you can objectively determine that it's not the one you want.

That all means you'll refrain from Engaging the Field.

Engaging the Field of course is taking action, into the unknown, with some kind of idea, some kind of data, some kind of hypothesis to find out what happens when you do X.

That's scary. Even when you know what's going on with the dynamic of uncertainty as you step forward in Engaging the Field, all the potential outcomes become present in your mind before doing the action - which (ironically?) makes it all the more important to just DO the action so that you can find out what is real and what is something you are just imagining.

But broadly, people's reaction to uncertainty is to turn away from it because they think it's bad.

That's yet another layer of this challenge for the uninitiated. By default we think uncertainty is BAD because uncertainty means risk and unknown. And if you are moving forward into the unknown without certainty how can you possibly get where you want to go?

Succumbing to the nature of Uncertainty and turning away from it means you cannot fully discover what you really want in life, let alone actually attain whatever that is.

What can we do about it?

I'd like to leave you with some practical things you can apply in life. I've already mentioned the principled tools of Microsteps / Next Best Step, Raising the Floor, and Engaging the Field.

Here are a couple more tools and perspectives which I've found useful to help step into uncertainty.

Lower Risk

If we step back and look at what causes people so much trouble with uncertainty you might argue that it's a level of perceived risk.

When we are in an uncertain state about our future, about the choices that we're trying to make, it can be very easy to get in our head imaginging all the possible different outcomes. The BAD outcomes will drown out the good outcomes and we'll just have this bad feeling.

What if the worst thing comes to pass from this step I take?

So for you it might largely come down to risk.

We want to find the right balance of upside and downside potential in the moves we're making. If we can mitigate, or even completely remove, the downside (or the perceived downside anyway), then that might remove any sort of fear barrier in "the uncertain."

We can't eliminate all possible negative outcomes - that's just the nature of the uncertain path. We can't know what's going to happen until we do it, we can only imagine, and then hopefully overcome our resistance in order to discover reality.

Limiting the worst case scenario, or even better, accepting the worst case scenario as an ok outcome can give you a veil of certainty as you move forward.

Curiosity

Which actually brings us to the power of curiosity. Consider the above scenario where you're trying to mitigate the negative risk of what you're about to do.

One way to do this is instead of trying to balance unpredictable outcomes, you shift your perspective to allow one certain outcome to be the thing you're seeking ...

That in many ways can completely eliminate uncertainty in any step you're taking.

What's a certain outcome from action?

DATA.

So instead of worrying about what might happen, if you approach your project/choice with a "I'm gonna just find out what happens, collect the data, and then move forward," that curiosity will override any fear you might have associated with uncertainty.

One way to make this work really well is ...

Trust yourself

This is ... probably the hardest thing to do of all the above.

But if you can learn how to trust yourself to figure things out, then you can start swimming in the sea of uncertainty with much greater ease.

I'd argue that this is the best way to deal with uncertainty at every level. IF you can know that no matter what happens, you'll figure things out, then who cares about what's certain?

It's always just you, here, and now.

It's always the data you have in front of you, and the choices you have moving forward. And you can know that in the future that will also be the case.

The best way to deal with uncertainty is to trust that no matter what happens you'll be able to figure it out. This allows you to capture the upside of uncertainty (change, movement), while protecting against the downside (potential loss).

So,

How do you figure THAT out?

I suspect I could write an entire thing on trusting yourself ...

But let's start with something that's already available:

Use the Science of Hindsight

You are here now.

Which means you've figured out how to get where you are now.

You have evidence right in front of you that you are capable of figuring things out. You might not believe it. You might not trust it ...

But if you take a clear look at the path you've walked and the actions you've taken, I suspect you'll find the evidence that you DO have the ability to figure things out no matter what happens.7

You are human after all.

And we have that ability in us to chose the actions we take. To make decisions better instead of making better decisions. To embrace The Champions Mind over The Human Mindset8 …

To embrace Uncertainty and welcome it as a powerful miasma from within which we can discover all that most matters, is useful, and powerful to us each uniquely.

Be Useful. Be Present. Love the Journey.

Joseph Robertson, CMO The Guardian Academy

• Engage in discussion with the author and TGA+ Community in the comments below - give us your 6WU and/or thoughts after reading. Together we make a rising tide that lifts all ships.

• Ready to apply your ideas to reality? You may find our Engage the Field Handbook a useful and effective resource.

• Get your hands on awesome unique swag and opportunities by sharing this article. We treat our ambassadors like royalty :)

Share