The Guardian Academy Structure
Level 1 - ...And That's Okay
Welcome Future Guardian! Have you ever tried looking for something that you know exists… but you can’t seem to find it anywhere? We’re not talking about things like boats, watch and cars - but things like “unknown” or “untapped” potential or “true love” or whatever else people might be chasing.
The Guardian Academy structure is built to help you 1) achieve the things you’re looking to achieve 2) become the person you’re looking to become and 3) introduce new possibilities for both. To do so, we have four important frameworks that have unique definition within our ecosystem.
Emergent Properties
Frequency, Intensity, Purpose
The Three Potentials
Learning and Intelligence
You do not have to agree with our definitions, just understand that this is what we mean when we use these concepts, words, or frameworks.
Emergent Properties
“In philosophy, systems theory, science, and art, emergence occurs when a complex entity has properties or behaviors that its parts do not have on their own, and emerge only when they interact in a wider whole”
An emergent property is exactly what it sounds like: a property that emerges from something else. Its emergence is typical byproduct of synergy or harmony within a complex system. We tend to struggle with emergent properties because their characteristics work against much of what we learn in the “classroom”. Emergent properties are…
Non-Summative. Emergent properties cannot be derived by summing up the properties of individual components. Colloquially, we’ll often say something like “the whole is greater than the parts” to explain emergent systems.
Context-Dependent. They depend on the interactions and relationships within a system. Harmonizing the relationships between pars of the system are often more important than improving individual parts of the system.
Novel. Emergent properties often exhibit new and unexpected qualities not present in the system’s parts. This is one of the most important things to understand if you want to reach your full potential. There are qualities dormant inside each of us that, if awakened, will help us reach new heights.
System Complexity Dependent. Complex systems with many interconnected elements are more likely to exhibit emergent properties.
Rarely Found In Isolation. They say “where there is smoke, there is fire” because smoke is an emergent property - it emerges from something burning. It’s rare to find smoke without something burning. This is important because many people are looking for something that cannot be found, by itself. If you can’t find smoke, make it.
Exponential outcomes - like explosive personal, financial or relational growth - are emergent properties. They don't come from doing individual things more frequently, harder, or better. Instead, they emerge from doing them in a way that improves the entire system they are a part of by removing friction and creating harmony between the components of the system.
That system, when harmonized, creates an entirely new thing - or return on effort - that did could not exist before. A thing that you cannot find, no matter hard you look, because it does not exist somewhere to be found. It must emerge from the harmony of a system; what we often call "synergy."
If you know that smoke must emerge from something burning, you can redirect your efforts accordingly. Instead of looking for smoke, you can think about where something might be burning - or if you need smoke now, you can start a fire.
The Guardian Academy structure is designed to create the highest probability of teasing out emergent properties.
Purpose is an emergent property.
Full potential is an emergent property.
Exponential is an emergent property.
Practical Application - believe it or not - is an emergent property.
Purpose
Years ago, Randy Massengale first introduce his process of finding purpose in the CCA certification program. Randy has been studying extraordinary leaders for decades and what he found was that their purpose emerged from what he calls “intensity” which emerged from frequency. Purpose emerges from intensity. Intensity emerges from frequency.
Frequency → Intensity →Purpose or…
Purpose ←Intensity ←Frequency
Let’s break this down.
Intensity, in this framework or context, is the unique stamp that you put on your work. It’s breaking the rules in only the ways you can break the rules because of your unique disposition and skillset - it’s entirely unique to you. Have you ever seen a movie and immediately known who the director was without seeing the credits? Or read a passage from a book and could immediately discern the author because of the language, style, grammar, etc? That’s intensity.
Again, Intensity is the distinction created by breaking the rules in ways that only you can break them because you are you.
In order to break the rules, you first have to master them.
The Process.
Frequency. Do the work. It’s the whole “wax on, wax off” thing. Write thousands of pages by hand, build hundreds of funnels or spreadsheets. Whatever the work in front of you is - do it at a frequency that alarms other people.
Intensity. As you do the work, you’ll find shortcuts, loopholes and styles that work for you and only you. Lean into that intensity.
Purpose. If you’re able to maintain the frequency - but with your unique style - purpose emerges. It’s not a flash of inspiration - which is fleeting - it’s an earned purpose.
Here’s a video from an event about the process. This was presented to about 60 business owners looking to get better at video.
Mapping To The Guardian Academy.
The free content is designed to give you the tools and resources to do the work. The frequency phase can be done on your own time with relatively little cost. Just… start doing the work. Intensity is developed by doing the work in the real world, or “engaging the field.”
The comment section of this publication is designed to help readers of TGA+ to engage the field and discuss the things they need help with.
The higher tiers of the Guardian Academy like The Arena and the Guardian Tier are designed to awake another emergent property - unknown potential.
The Three Potentials
This is a little bit of “inside-baseball” - which means you are one of the first people to hear it. It also means that’s it’s not entirely ironed out for the public yet. We spend a few hours a week with Dr. Jeff Spencer1. We’re going on four or five years of weekly deep dives.
Sometimes we help him. Sometimes he helps us. We just show up and do the work - whatever needs to be done.
At the time of writing this, Dr Jeff is preparing for his Ted Talk - which will be a brain melter. He has coached over 41 Olympic Medalists and world champions. He is an Olympic medalist himself. He’s a master of helping people reach their full potential.
He’s a a boots-on-the-ground kinda guy. Until faced with this Ted Talk, he never had to explain how full potential is found and harnessed. After peeling back layer after layer, this is what he found.
There are three potentials.
Known Potential: This is what can be observed, tested and measured. Height, weight, speed, IQ, etc. Reaching your known potential can be done with hard work and a little bit of focus.
Unknown Potential: Unknown potential is an emergent property. You won’t be able to tap into it with more work or longer hours. It is something that is already inside of you, dormant. Unknown potential is awakened through exposure, proximity and receptivity:
Exposure to people, places and things that tease it out of you
Proximity to those people, places and things.
Receptivity, because it’s not going to be something taught directly to you. Sometimes it’s overhearing a conversation between two people that awakens your unknown potential - and they don’t even know you heard it. Sometimes it’s just seeing how a group of people interacts.
When you do the work to reach your known potential and get the exposure and proximity to awaken your unknown potential the result is:
Full Potential: Exponential growth, impact and progress.
Full potential is an emergent property.
This is why as the world gets more digital and disconnected, we believe that in-person connection will become an even bigger advantage. It’s a big reason why we are moving to more in-person events and building the online portion to be as high touch as possible - to tap into the unknown potential so that full potential can emerge.
Mapping Full Potential To The Guardian Academy Structure:
Known potential is found through frequency - doing the work consistently. All of the free posts, videos, podcasts etc are designed to help you tap into your known potential.
It takes time and it takes work. There is no reason to rush to upgrade - work at your own pace and take your time.
Unknown potential is awakened through intensity, exposure, and proximity - those make it out to events or experiences will be able to begin to tap into their unknown potential simply by attending.
To be clear…You do not have to climb any tiers or come to our events to tap into your full potential - you just have to get exposure and proximity to the right people, places and things - however you want to do that. Our structure is one option, there are plenty others available.
Learning and Intelligence
Intelligence is an emergent property - if you use our definition of intelligence.
For starters, know that we’re not throwing stones at all academics or intellectuals. Only those that remain ignorant of the fact that the classroom and reality are different.
Theory and application are different things.
They can coexist if they are prioritized.
Imagine a professional athlete that couldn't tell the difference between practice and a game. They wouldn't be in the pros for very long. Of course, a professional knows the difference.
What if they operated as if performing in practice is more important than performing in a game? They won't be getting any playing time.
Prioritization informs both practical definition and direction.
We don't practice to get better at practice.
We practice so that we're better in the game, not the other way around. We learn in a classroom so that we can function better in real life, not the other way around
A series of questions to ponder:
Who is more intelligent...
The student that can recite the Good Samaritan to a captivated audience but treats others like garbage or…
The student that keeps forgetting the sermon, but always treats others with kindness?
How about...
The college student who understands the various theorems of thermodynamics inside and out. He is even asked to help teach it. But can't ride a bike or...
The college student that is barely passing but rides his bike everywhere?
One more...
The group experts in germ theory that forget to boil their water when they travel to a third-world village or…
The villagers who boil their water, clueless about microbes?
Who do you consider more rational or intelligent?
It depends on what they want.
If the priority is to be a kind human, the student that is kind is more intelligent. If the priority is to sound like a good human, the student with the golden-tongued kid steamrolling strangers is more intelligent.
If the priority is to be able to ride a bike, the student that can ride the bike is more intelligent. Even if he doesn't know why it works. If the priority is to sound smart or test well, the student that has mastered the theorems of aerodynamics is more intelligent.
If the priority is survival, the uneducated villagers are more intelligent and rational than the experts.
Most would agree that scientists are more intelligent than illiterate villagers.
Reality disagrees.
This has been and always will be the issue we have with academics and intellectuals. They stay ignorant to two important things:
- theory and practice are different things
- practical application must come first to be considered rational or intelligent.
[Finally] A Practical Theory of Intelligence
If what is good for survival is rational, what is intelligence?
At the Certainty Summit, Dr. Todd Snyder gave his graduate presentation called:
"How To Upgrade Your Intelligence"
It started exactly how we would expect an academic to start a presentation. A lot of words, definitions, facts, and theories. Here is the third slide:
Typical classroom stuff.
But Todd quickly diverges from the expected path and goes on to tell two stories:
Story 1: Working with a kid that was low intelligence by nearly all testing types. Todd noticed that even though the kid didn't know the answers to the questions, he could answer them correctly. He would listen closely to Todd's voice as he asked the questions. This kid could guess the answer based on how the question was asked. So a few things happened here:
First, the kid realized that if he answered correctly he could get what he wanted. Then, he figured out a way to answer the questions correctly.
Story 2: Working with a kid that was high intelligence by nearly all testing methods and types. He also noticed that the kid was extremely OCD. He wanted everything perfect, and he wanted to pass his tests so badly that he couldn't finish any of the tests he was taking. His perfectionism caused him to keep circling back to each answer multiple times and run out of time.
This kid recognized that by testing well, he would get what he wanted. But was unable to do it.
Todd asked himself a better question, a version of:
"Who is more intelligent...The kid that has figured out how to get what he wants or the kid that can't?**
**This is a question that one would ask only after contact with reality. A pure intellectual wouldn't consider something that threatens their position of intellectual superiority.
And then Todd proposed the most practical unifying theory of intelligence I've heard:
"Intelligence is the ability to get what you want."
This is practical.
It's saying:
"You can find a million and one ways to convince yourself and others that you are intellectually superior to someone else. But if you can't get what you want, who cares?"
We are here to increase your intelligence. Dr. Todd went on to say:
"If intelligence is the ability to get what I want, CCA has increased my intelligence"
- Dr. Todd Snyder
Does higher education make you more intelligent?
It depends on what you want.
Does a lack of higher education make you less intelligent?
It depends on what you want.
Do things that make you more intelligent, and increase the probability that you get what you want.
If increasing your ability to get what you want is increasing your intelligence, what is learning?
Simple…
Increasing the ability to get what you want means you have changed your behavior in certain circumstances. In other words, learning is:
Same Circumstance, Different Behavior.
It doesn’t matter what you think you know if your behavior doesn’t change.
Intelligence emergences from learning. Learning emerges from behavior modification.
The Guardian Academy is designed to help you change your behavior in a favorable way. The tools and resources available will only benefit you if you do the work. The structure is designed to give you an infrastructure to practice the work.
Practical Application
Practical Application of principles is also an emergent property. We’re principle based. Which means we want to share things that can be applied to all domains - it’s developing a skill to figure stuff out.
For example, “raise the floor”2 is a fundamental Guardian Academy principle. What does that mean for you if you’re trying to improve your relationship with your wife or kids? The best answer for you will emerge from discussion, trial and error.
As a living, breathing example, here are some publications that are creating solutions from Guardian Academy principles.
Commandment One. Application of principles in regards to Health, Wellness and looking good naked.
Guardian Marketing. Application of principles in regards to marketing, sales and business growth.
Bonus: Engaging The Field
The only way you are going to get benefits from anything you read here or anywhere else is if you are consistently engaging the field:
Recap:
Emergent Properties: Awakened or created through synergy and sequencing. The sum is greater than its parts.
Frequency, Intensity, Purpose: Purpose emerges from intensity, intensity from frequency. Do the work —> put your stamp on it —> purpose emerges
The Three Potentials: Known potential x Unknown potential = Full potential. Unknown potential is awakened by exposure and proximity.
Learning and Intelligence: If it increase your ability to get what you want, it has made you more intelligent. The only way to increase your intelligence is to change your behavior. Learning = same circumstance, different behavior.
Engage The Field. It’s the only way to tap into the bullets above.
How To Piggy Back Off Our Structure
We are always looking for competent people to highlight, collaborate with and invest in. Our partners and contributors represent some of the top experts in the world - it’s a high bar.
If you believe you are highly competent in specific areas, you can piggy back off our structure by:
Creating a Substack or similar and Twitter
Retweet or reinvent the content we post here. Put your own twist on it and apply it directly the the domain you know best. For example, if you live and breathe fitness you can share how TGA concepts apply to fitness. Since fitness is part of our first commandment, we are likely to share it.
If you are in real estate investing, you can take all of our models and apply them directly to real estate. If we see it, we will share it and do our best to participate in the conversation.
If you are just getting started, great! You can use the same framework above.
We will try and watch for everything - of course, we will not be able to see everything that you put out there. But if it’s useful, thoughtful or entertaining we will do our best to share it with others.
Many of our partners and collaborators have priced themselves out of the mass market and/or do not have interest in newsletters, Twitter or daily contributions.
That means that even if we have a mindset coach like Dr. Jeff Spencer, there is room for another to highlight or invest in that is more engaged, accessible and active to the community at large.
Live to Learn. Give to Earn.
Guardian Academy.
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