46. How to Maximize a Learning Experience

Foreign. Hey, my friend Kenny Chapman here. Welcome back to Leadership in a Nutshell where we're cracking the code of the driven mind. And you're joining me today for episode number 46, how to maximize a Learning Experience. Now, if you know anything about me, you know that I am all about the life education, the school of life, the, the academy that the experiences in life possesses. And if you're new to the podcast, then you're going to find out today how I feel about this. And it's not just about learning, it's really about applying that learning. For many, many years I used to say that knowledge is power. And then I really evolved in my own leadership, involved in my own understanding, involved in my own results, and really began to understand that the application of knowledge is really where it comes from. That's where winning happens, that's where mastery happens. And so that's the true power that you have over creating the life mastery that you desire and deserve. But you've got to apply that knowledge. And I just watch too many clients, I work with clients all the time or at Blue Collar. We work with hundreds of companies all across the us, Canada, Australia. And it's hard when we watch an experience take place in somebody's life and they don't get the gold. It's about mining the gold. And I think about that in my own life when I don't learn the lesson. Maybe you can relate to me with this. Like sometimes have you ever realized that you have to go back through it? I mean, you know, I was never held back. Check this out. I was never held back in quote, unquote school, regular school, but I was held back in a coaching program one time, I call it that, I joke about it, but I, I literally took a one year coaching program that evolved. It was a three year thing and I, I took a year and then I quit and I, I got away from it. I was quote, put that in air quotes, too busy for it. I wasn't the right time, this and that or whatever. And, and the, the founder and, and CEO of the organization came to me and were like, why don't you just go back through year one because we really think this is going to help you and be a good fit. And it's hilarious because it really has changed my life. And so I say that because we viewed getting held back in school as a terrible thing. Oh my God, I'm going to be a year older than my classmates and perhaps some of you listening were held back. And now you look back at it and it's either laughable, it was a joke, or it was one of the best things that ever happened to you. But what I know is life will continue to provide you the lessons until you learn the education from the lesson necessary, and therefore you graduate. Right? So I want you to just think about your life academy, if you will, as an opportunity to go to the next level. I believe that when I had my diaper service, I owned a diaper cloth diaper cleaning and delivery service, and I bought that business. I lost $55,000 in 18 months that I did not have at the time. I paid massive dumb tax. I was in a ton of pain, a ton of struggle, a ton of confusion. And I'll never forget when I reached out to one of my biggest mentors in my life at the time, one of my uncles. The day that I sold the business, I bought it for 70,000. I sold it for 15,000 18 months later. And I called him, I said, okay, the deal's done. And he said, man, this is one of the best things that has ever happened in your life and career. And I was like, what are you talking about? Screw you, it wasn't your 55 grand. And I kind of had a chip on my shoulder and took it personal and got kind of pissy. And I was like, easy for you to say, Whatever. And yet, at the time, I knew in my gut and I knew in my heart he was right. It was just super painful because I had to literally finance the debt from a business that I no longer own to carry forward and move on. And what I know is that I needed that education and I could have avoided that situation had I learned from previous experiences. Maybe a little less financially draining, maybe a little less emotional draining, but I wasn't learning. So God in the universe needed to get my attention. And it took a lot of pain and a lot of financial despair for a moment. And I put air quotes on a moment too, because it took several years for me to get out of that. But here's what I want you to really focus on today. And I really appreciate your listening to the podcast and enjoying our time together. Please go ahead and give me a review. I get a lot of emails from people. Love this episode. Can I learn more about this? Or what do you think about this? But please give me a review. Google and Apple and all the powers that rank our podcast don't care about the emails you send me. I do. But they care about the review. So if you give me a quick review, I would really appreciate that. And of Course like, and subscribe now as we jump in, really, and think about the categories of a learning experience. They really fall into three kind of categories. And we could call them good, bad, and then reinforcement, right? And that I would say, let's call them good, bad, and the I told you so category of a learning experience. And many people that go through multiple challenging relationships. For me, the third time was a charm with the lovely Christy. I was married a couple times prior to my incredible marriage and incredible experience with her. And it doesn't mean that we don't have learning experiences in our relationship, in our marriage, in our union, in our. In our entire time together. But the reality is, is that I didn't learn what I needed to in my first marriage. Therefore, I had a second marriage. I feel as though I've learned what I needed to in my first and second marriage in order to continue to learn what I need to in my third and, wait for it, final marriage, which is to the lovely Christy. And so I want you to think about, you know, how you view a learning experience and stick with me. I'm going to give you a little bit of. Of writing to do because I recently got back from Costa Rica and I want to share an experience that I did personally upon returning from almost a month in Costa Rica that has really positively impacted my life. So when you look at a learning experience, oftentimes you go, huh, well, that was interesting. Or you go, huh, that was awesome. Or possibly you go, huh, that was awful, horrible, terrible. Oh, my God, I never want to experience that again. And so rather than just that, what I'd like you to look at is just have an interesting perspective about things. Huh? That was interesting. It could be amazing, it could be challenging, it could be terrible as far as labels go. But overall, it's just really an interesting experience in your life. And then I want you to write this down. What can I apply from this education? So going back to knowledge is not power. Application of knowledge is power. And I'm not talking about political power or leadership power or stock ownership power or voting power in a corporation. I'm talking about power over yourself. We'll call it empowering opportunity to create the life that you desire and deserve as a leader in a free country. So as you think about, you know, what can I apply from this education? If you don't apply from the education, then you're going to pay the dumb tax I talked about, which I learned from my buddy, Keith Cunningham. Keith wrote a great. He's wrote multiple books. My favorite book he Wrote is the road less stupid? I'm not a big fan of as much as he calls things stupid people, stupid situations stupid. I'm just, I like transformational vocabulary. So I would say the road less painful perhaps, but that's all semantics. Amazing, amazing guy, amazing leader and amazing influencer. And, and I was grateful to get to know Keith at an event I was at. And you avoid paying dumb tax by applying the education that you learn. And so I want to share with you this exercise I did. And I also want to remind you that you know our president at Blue Collar, my president that I hand picked to run the day to day operations at Blue Collar Success Group, Chris Crew. I love something he says a lot to our clients and, and to peers. And you know, he'll say, don't complain about the results you did not get from the work you were not willing to put in. So let that land for a moment, my friend. Don't complain about the results you don't get from the work that you're not willing to put in. And so yes, I'm asking you to do some work today. You have learning experiences everywhere, every day, virtually every hour, I would argue, but what work are you doing to garner the gold and to really mine the opportunity from those opportunities and situations? So recently I spent almost a month in Costa Rica, 26 days to be exact. And the lovely Christy and I, we spent about a week with client friends of ours and did some work. And then I continue to work and coach my clients and do my CEO responsibilities at, at Blue Collar. But I did disconnect quite a lot. And the main thing that we did was we interrupted our normal routine and we live in Scottsdale, we love our life, we love our peers, we love our clients, we love our team, we love everything that we do. But I realized that routines become routines and I'm not trying to have a play on words there, but as I was brainstorming how I was going to come to you today and thinking about that just came to my mind. It was like, man, I completely changed my routine quite some time ago when I decided to change my life and quit drinking and got completely sober and really changed my life. I changed all of my routine and I up leveled my self care and some different things. But then what happens is routines become routines. And so this time in Costa Rica gave us an opportunity to completely disconnect from that routine. We stayed in five different locations over the course of 26 days. We were on the beach, we were in the rainforest, we were back on the beach, we were up by the, the volcanoes. We were back to the beach. We were in the city to fly in and out all these different things. And I got back and I told Christy, I'm like, man, I want to bring forward some of the amazing things that we learned, the amazing feeling that we had, the interactions we had with people. So I want, I want to share this with you because I recently shared this with a couple of clients and, and it really gave them some value. So I want to do the same for you here today as, as we have some time together. So I wrote the, I got out a flip chart and I wrote this down. I wrote what specifically? And so you might take notes here, what specifically do I want to make sure I keep, enhance, maximize, and bring forward with me from this experience? So basically, in a nutshell, what do I want to make sure that I bring forward, that I apply from this knowledge that I've been gifted by creating this life experience? So that was the first thing. And then Christy and I brainstormed and we talked about different things from our previous routine and what we wanted to eliminate. We were eliminating more technology, we're eliminating different distractions. You know that. Well, actually, that's the second question. I guess I'm jumping ahead. I'm so fired up. So in this category is what do I want to make sure I keep? I want to keep more of a relaxed mindset and a way of operating. I practice a lot of emotional regulation. I'm becoming very, very good at it. I want to make sure that I continue that. I want to make sure that I remain less rushed and in less of a hurry. I want to make sure I continue to seek out the good in people. Costa Rica is labeled as one of the places with the happiest people on the planet, and they're just amazing to be around. But guess what? There's amazing people to be around everywhere. You just have to look for it and seek it and just be easy with the people that aren't that way and just bring that positivity in peers and friends and clients that you have and team members that you have as you really think things through. And so as you really focus on that, the second question that I wrote down was, what specifically do I want to make sure that I eliminate? That's where I started was eliminate, let go of, minimize, moving forward. And as I'm just sharing this, I haven't made this into a formal exercise. I'm just sharing off the top of my head here. I might flip flop these actually, as I'm just on the fly right now. I'm a thinker. I build thinking tools and I'm always evolving my work. And I might start with what do I want to eliminate first? And then what do I want to add? It's up to you. Whatever feels best to you. So for us, where I was saying, we eliminated technology, we eliminated non productive tv, I don't watch the news and different things like that, but there's just some kind of BSTV that snuck into our lives. It's just kind of. It might be in the form of a sitcom or comedy, but there's just stuff that isn't serving us and eliminating unnecessary negativity, judgment of people. I try not to judge people, but I realize I got sucked back in to some of that without your guard up as much. And when you disconnect and realize that, make sure you know those two things. And so what specifically do I want to make sure that I keep, enhance, maximize, bringing forward? Secondly, what do I want to make sure I eliminate, let go of or minimize moving forward? And then answer the question of what makes this important? Why is it important to keep certain things and eliminate certain things? And then give yourself a little bit of success criteria around this. How will you know if you're winning? How will you know if you're going in the right direction? And then create some simple success strategies. What are steps 1, 2, 3, 4, 5? What are you going to do? And I would encourage you to have some clarity about what are some specific things you're going to do. So, you know, it was, I don't know, what, about three weeks ago that I got back from this incredible trip to Costa Rica and the lovely Christy and I got out a flip chart. We went through this exercise. And then part of our success criteria is checking in weekly to make sure that we are honoring what our truth was in that emotional time when you first have the experience and you learn it's emotional, as your life moves forward, you lose that emotion. So make sure you capture that. I'm a big fan of writing. The longer you're with me on this podcast, the more exercises you're going to get, the more writing that will do. Because the writing turns the subconscious and mind into tangible, conscious reality, which is really something that we can do. I think about an artist with clay. It's like you have the thought of the pot that you're going to form and fire, but until you get the clay out and start working with it in your hands, you can't actually bring it to life. Same is true with the subconscious mind. Do the work like Chris said. Don't complain about the results you didn't get from the work you're not willing to do. Make sure you review us like us, subscribe us. My friend and I just want to thank you for being a fan here and sticking with us. Make sure that you that you do maximize your learning experiences as we've talked about here on episode 46 of Leadership in a Nutshell. I'm your host, Kenny Chapman. Until we talk, make it a better than fantastic day, my friend, and I'll see you real soon. Thanks, Sa.