Future Guardian,
How do you get what you want?
In The Guardian Academy, that's the ultimate question we’re trying to figure out.
All the philosophies and principles. All the Raise the Floor1, the Process is the Shortcut, the Open Loops2, the Restraint, the Contact with Reality, the Adaptive Dilemma3, the Solvable Problem4...
It's all about getting what you want in life.
“Get everything you want in life” - that’s a big claim. That’s a big ask …
… that there might be a clear path you can walk which will get you exactly what you want in life, even though the path is uniquely tailored to YOU.
How do you walk a unique path no one has tread before (the path of YOU), yet see the steps clearly in front of you as though it were well worn?
This is an article from Guardian Joseph Robertson. Joseph is a deep thinker, an excellent copywriter and a student of the Guardian Academy. Joseph has made a living writing for himself, writing for others and teaching people how to create an income online. He will be a massive contributor to everyone in here looking to learn how to write copy that converts.
There IS one path we all walk.
No matter who you are, how successful you've been, where you live, what you've done ...
We all walk this same path.
Time.
Time is the inexorable undefeated player on the field in the infinite game of life.
No one knows how long their path is. Everyone walks the same one. And the destination, at least insofar as this biological life, is known and inevitable.
The steps you take along that path, how you mold that path to your own feet and your own presence ...
THAT is where your uniqueness, your choice, your action or inaction has the impact.
How to get what you want in life is not about finding a path and walking it, it's about understanding how to walk the path you're already and always on in the way that works most uniquely and most effectively for YOU.
7 years ago, I was constantly treading broke.
I was single. I was alone.
I was having fun, yes. I was "building a business," traveling and living in interesting places ... But there was something distinctly important missing from the picture.
You might think, based on what I'm about to share, that this "something" was another person (or persons), because that's where my path is going to lead me in this story ...
But you would be mistaken.
Most people make this mistake. Because they seek to define what makes their life "whole" by that which can be externally identified.
Relationships.
Possessions.
Achievements.
Experiences.
These are all steps you can take on your path, and forces which can shape your path, but they do not DEFINE the uniqueness of you and your path.
They are PART of the picture.
A part of the equation.
But they are not the whole.
7 years ago I was alone and enjoying myself and saw something was missing. I didn't know what it was, but I saw it. And in that experience I realized that everything I had then was temporary.
For a time I felt like I was "living the life" - no obligation to anyone but myself. I'd wake up when I wanted, work on things only I cared about, and could do whatever with no consequences to anyone but myself.
In the moment of seeing the missing "something" I could tell in time everything would change.
I didn't realize it was because in that life I was living, I was not living my full and true self. I was not playing my own game.
But in pondering what it all meant I came to one distinct understanding, that I knew was true in my gut.
If it could be, with the right person, I definitely wanted a family.
Understand, in this moment, I'd spent years in terrible unfulfilling relationships, and had all but assumed I'd live the rest of my life by myself ... and I recognized I'd blocked that possibility in order to avoid getting hurt again.
But I also recognized that the way to get what I wanted, was not actually to go try to get what I wanted.
I couldn't date myself into a family. I couldn't just "make that happen", AND have it be what I needed for myself.
Perhaps because I didn't fully know myself at the time...
But I recognized I could not control that outcome.
And in the moment, I made my first solvable problem for life.
If I wanted to live a life where I had a wife and kids, my own family, I couldn't just make that happen, and have it be good. It had to be the right person, in the right circumstances.
(One might consider my perspective a "fairy tale" - but perhaps fairy tales are told for a reason we don't acknowledge.)
Instead of trying to make it happen, instead of trying to take The Shortcut, instead of trying to close an open loop, instead of trying to have the tallest tree ...
I asked myself, "what would the ME look like who could find himself with that person?"
And instead of trying to find a family ...
I started trying to shape myself into the person who would be worthy of one.
In The Solvable Problem Classic Edition …
When you set a goal of $10 million in 10 years (as a basic example), you don't do everything you can to have $10 million in 10 years.
That's not the point.
The point is, knowing exactly where you want to go, plus exactly where you are now, tells you what the next best step is for you TODAY to get closer.
And then you constantly reevaluate.
It's a filter for good decision making.
Knowing your goal of $10 million in 10 years can tell you whether you may take risk off the table now, or that you may want to add more. It informs your actions, your behavior, your DECISIONS, such that you always move closer.
Understanding WHY you want the $10 million unlocks layers of better decision making for your entire life.
2 years after I asked myself the question …
… "what would the ME look like who could find himself with that person?"
I met the woman who would become my wife.
I was feeling a point of change coming, several forks in the path to move forward.
And she showed up, right at the intersection of them all.
I had the certainty of understanding ultimately what I wanted and why, and I had a rare moment of pure instinct on my decision. A bone deep knowing that the path I was looking at was absolutely worth following, to whatever end.
It was a couple years into our time together that I joined The Guardian Academy and started deeply applying the Philosophies and Principles to every aspect of our life.
And since we were working together to create a meaningful life ...
In came The Solvable Problem.
The first step of accepting a Solvable Problem is great and empowering. You've established a dollar value to your goals, and you've set a path to solving that problem mathematically.
But ...
How much have you asked why?
When my wife and I were engaged, we talked extensively about our dream home. We wanted land. We wanted a beautiful place with room to grow lots of food, to have goats and sheep. To have natural forest and wildlife around us. To build a custom dream home out of unusual and resilient materials. To raise a family as deeply connected to the natural world as one can be in modern life.
My discovery of the Solvable Problem started to create a very real picture of that being possible. We established a dollar value. And we even projected short, medium, and long term possible windows of making it happen.
Shortly after we married, we took a good hard look at our situation. We did not own a home. We really wanted this dream and could see it possibly happening ... but we needed more time.
Yet,
Instead of sticking stubbornly to the grand vision we ultimately desired, we asked ourselves one simple question.
Why?
Why did we really want this?
What was it ultimately and deeply about this vision which represented the truth of the life we were making together?
We asked ourselves this because we couldn't have what we ultimately wanted in the moment. Our numbers weren't working out. We had to wait. We had to build more savings. We had to increase our income.
We were looking at all the different possibilities for buying land and building a house and trying to make that squeeze into our current life ...
Yet when we asked WHY...
Our answers were simple.
We wanted our kids to have a home that was theirs. We wanted that for ourselves too. We wanted to be able to grow food. We wanted to be able to have chickens and goats. We wanted a place where our kids could be grounded, where they could establish real relationships and grow.
In the truth of this, the truth of our WHY ...
We realized we didn't need the whole big picture to have what we wanted.
Yes there are things about our dream which we still wish to have.
But in digging deep to understand what was most important to us, we realized, perhaps having the things that mattered, the things which drove our dream ...
Perhaps that was actually in reach.
In the span of 3 weeks following this work together and our realization ...
We got approved for a mortgage (which we didn't think would be possible given our circumstances). We found a house that perfectly fit everything we wanted and needed for our lives NOW. And we had our offer accepted.
We went from long term planning and waiting to make our dream come true, to discovering through asking WHY of our Solvable Problem that what we really wanted and needed now might actually be possible, to actually having everything at our fingertips.
This all happened because of my participation in The Guardian Academy. Because of how Guard and our Base Case clarified our long term plans.
And because of our willingness to go deep on our Solvable Problem and shed everything that didn't really matter in the present.
I say we bought our first house because of Guard, without ever selling an asset, because when you understand yourself and what the solvable problem can do for your life, it unlocks greater possibility than you likely ever realized ... and it was the visceral experience of participating in Guard and TGA that helped me understand.
But this was yet just another piece of the puzzle of The Solvable Problem for (My) Life.
It's only now, writing this, looking back, that I see a common missing piece which pulls everything together.
From before all of this, from long back to the beginning of my memory.
I used to hate writing.
You may be surprised to hear that at this point.
I actually used to hate reading. As I write this, I still can't trace back where that comes from. I can't fully see the origin of my discontent with writing either.
But I can surmise where that came from.
I didn't start enjoying writing at all until about a year before I started my last business, a magazine all about coffee (started in 2012).
That may be why my first business (before that) was in photography, because I could be creative and I could tell people's intimate stories without writing a word.
Because I thought I couldn't write.
I thought I couldn't create, beyond the visual.
I'd had the entire idea beaten out of me.
Not by any one person. But rather by a system that values fitting to an expected norm above all else. One that values technical correctness. One that values a very limited number of ways to do things ‘well’ and ‘proper.’
There's nothing 'correct' or 'normal' about taking the swirling eddies of color, shape, emotion, and experience which I see between the steps of time, and turning them into a series of words that brings someone else into that same space.
I have to accept that most of the time I'll fail.
And it's only NOW, that I have grown to love the process, that I see this. The need to be correct, combined with my vision of ‘what can be’ drove a baseline of perfectionism which kept me away from writing.
Why?
Because it's so damn difficult to perfectly communicate with words that which I experience inside. That which I imagine.
Most of the time I'll fail, IF ...
My goal is to perfectly communicate that experience.
But if my goal is instead to embrace the process of writing which seems to create the magical emergence of that experience, through something I still can't fully comprehend or communicate ...
Then I succeed every time I put words onto the page.
I succeed every time I "finish" a written piece and put it in front of other people to experience.
The Solvable Problem for Life
The Solvable Problem for Life is not actually about 'GETTING' what you think you want.
It's about understanding what you believe you want, so that you can have as clear a perspective as possible on the path to get there.
It's about knowing the next best step.
It's about knowing the process that perfectly matches the ultimate outcome you desire.
As I sit here I can feel, perhaps my oldest desire and pull, that I wish I could just live a life where every day I wake up and create.
Where I just put words on a page. Where can I let that magic flow. Where I create wonderful magical worlds and experiences to share ideas and wondrous things with others. Where I can do that, and enjoy time with my family, and be connected with the natural world.
It feels like a Fairy Tale.
But it's also a Solvable Problem for Life.
Because, while I can't MAKE that happen.
I can now see The Process to follow which will get me closer.
And in loving the process, I arrive immediately at the life I really want, which is happening now.
As I embrace loving the process, I can see all the clear instinctual decisions I've made through the years have led me closer to this every time.
When I stopped going to school for computer science and instead went to school for art.
When I stopped trying to pursue a "career" and instead pursued creation.
When I stopped trying to MAKE the life happen that I thought I wanted, and instead started to BE the person I really am.
When we stopped trying to have the big ultimate dream, and instead started having the life we needed and wanted NOW.
As I have embraced loving the process of getting better, each day I both experience more than ever the life I've always wanted, and step closer to the bigger dreams of life that we are creating together.
Don't try to get what you want. Don't try to make it happen.
Just see the direction you wish to go.
And if you really understand what you truly want, if you really understand that in the context of yourself, who you are, what you desire, why you desire it ...
When you look towards that direction you want to go, the process and the path to embrace will be illuminated before your feet.
The Solvable Problem for Life is not a mathematical equation.
It's a guiding light to see with clarity the unique path in front of you, to the process that is uniquely YOU.