Courage And Commitment In Uncertain Times

Welcome to Capability Amplifier, the show for business owners and entrepreneurs who want high performance upgrades for their brains, bodies and bank accounts.

Hi, everybody, this is Dan Sullivan and I'm here with Mike Koenigs. And this is another episode of Capability Amplifier. And Mike, you probably have hit the mother load here because amplifying anything really requires amplifying time. And one of the things that de. Amplifies time is that you get comfortable with what you're doing. And one of the things I've noticed, and I tell my entrepreneurs and strategic coach, I said the moment that you think that you don't want any more risk and fear in your life, a message just goes to the universe, to death. And they put you on the list of pickups. So funny.

Yep, I get it. So think like this. Now, I read the statistics not that long ago and it was something like this. It was in. I haven't been able to find it again. I know it's out there. It was either Harvard Business Review or one of the big, you know, documents from a well trusted organization, educational organization. They talked about men in particular that when they retire, anytime around 50 or so, if they're not back on the game within 18 months, their chances of succeeding every again go into the single digits. All right? And what I believe happens is without enough tension and hunger and fear, your courage disappears. And when you're comfortable, let's say you've got $20 million in the bank liquid and you don't have to do anything anymore unless you've got an insane lifestyle, you sit around and you do the easy stuff and you quit taking risks, and again, your courage dissolves. And I've worked with guys like this before who kind of took it easy for three. They simply couldn't get back in the game. And they didn't take anything seriously. It was like they had to have fear on their side to amplify that courage. But let's talk about courage from your perspective. What increases it and amplifies it for you? And can you think of any crazy stories from your past when you've been in your worst space and you had to get it back? Because I can definitely think of a couple in mine.

Well, I relate it to goal setting. Lots of people have goals, but they've got the process of how you achieve goals backwards. So typically, I would say 90% of people say, well, I can't achieve that goal yet because I don't have the confidence to do it. And I said, well, confidence is what you get as a reward when you do do it. You don't get the confidence beforehand. And they said, well, what I mean is, I don't have the capability of doing it. And I said, well, it's actually the process of achieving the goal that gives you the capability. And they said, so I have to start when I don't have confidence and capability. And I said, yeah, that's called fear. I said, it wakes up the whole system. I said, I have to tell you, nothing like a good dose of fear. And that means that you have to take a risk, that going for a goal, you're not guaranteed up front that you're actually going to pull it off. And I said, that's fearful. And they said, well, how do you do that? And I said, well, you just make a commitment, first of all, that whatever you have to change or whatever you have to go through, you're going to make the commitment to get to the goal. And they said, well, that's scary. I said, yeah, well, this is where courage is required. So there's going to have to be a period when you commit that because you're lacking the capability and confidence that your tool there. And courage is a skill. And I think one thing we want to establish in this podcast, Mike, is that courage is actually a skill that grows through practice. It's like muscle. You know, courage is a muscle. It's like any other muscle. You have to work it out. And there's a resistance. And the main resistance that actually creates the most courage in life that is under your control is having a vision of a bigger and better you, an amplified you in the future. That's going to scare you because you don't have the confidence and capability. So you're just going to have to commit to being amplified, even though you're not sure how that's actually going to happen, and you're willing to go through a period of courage to do it. So I see courage and as the second tool after commitment, that it's the combination of commitment and courage which actually creates the new capability. And confidence is the reward for doing that. So that's my take on it.

That was some very, very dense wisdom. I love it. So while you were talking there, I got a couple downloads. One of them is how is the enemy of courage and commitment? Because that's usually where people go, and that's where the fear gets amplified. And I know historically the way out of this is not how that you've got to focus on. It's the who. That's the shortcut to timing, and it's the shortcut to capability. And that leads me to another something I've been thinking about lately. So this is going to get a little metaphysical, but if you think for a moment that the way I view the universe, the universe loves life. And whenever it has a chance, it's going to pack and fit and squeeze life into every crevice it can find. It's like moss. And there's unintentional life and there's intentional life. Just as there are unintentional thoughts or meaningless thoughts, so think of that as like pollution or noise or vermin and vampires. So I think ideas and thoughts are objects and the more clear they are, the faster you can realize them and make them true. It's like a signal to the universe to make it. And the universe wants to make good ideas and good thoughts and it will help you find ways. It's like when you're on target on tasks and you're doing what you're meant to do. We'll call it destiny for a moment. But I kind of think of that as concentrated, high quality energy. The right people and opportunities show up to make it come true. It's sort of like there's the reward for clean thinking. Now, on the opposing side, when people are not specific about what they want, the universe is going to give you what it thinks you want, which could include pollution and noise. And I think of that as like mosquitoes and cockroaches and vermin. So specificity is really key to courage and practicing what I used to call this life as a platform, as life as a stage. So the way I always gained my courage is when I knew I had to sell something in order to survive or get to the next level. I would imagine myself performing the speech in front of the audience and visualize it. I could smell it, taste it, touch it. I could look inside the eyes and see the souls of the people in the audience.

And.

And I even did that when I made videos. So I would practice my performance in my mind. So practicing theater, the mind, just like I know sports heroes talk about, you know, running back and forth and doing their touchdown pass and doing the dunk. But tell me from your perspective, like, how detailed and visual do you get in imagining and creating and turning thoughts into objects and willing something into existence.

Well, you know, I'm very big on this because I don't think the world ever happens. Generally the world only happens specifically, you know, and most people have a general education, they work in general employment, they lead general lives. You know, they have general interests, they travel to general places, but they don't actually be specific about anything about their life. One of the things I have, which is a very simplifying concept, which, you know, people really get upset about this. And I said, you know, I don't believe in equality. I believe in inequality. I says, because I believe in the things that I actually have some evidence of. And in 75 years, I have absolutely no evidence of any two things that were equal, but I have massive evidence that things are unequal. So my feeling is that the whole world is unequal. People are unequal. You know, skills are unequal, results are unequal, opportunities are unequal. And I said, it's the ability of people who can just zero in on their specific skill, their specific opportunity, their specific result, who run the world. And it's not because they want to run over the rest of the world. It's just that they have a skill of saying, well, it may be generally true for everybody else, but specifically, I just want this and this and this. And I have to tell you, in a general world of general narratives and everything else, to be always a specific person actually requires a great deal of courage. Because it looks like you don't care. I mean, for the one thing, it looks like you're not caring. You know, don't you care about the world? And I says, I care about Mike Koenigs, I care about Dean Jackson, I care about Joe Polish. But I said, once it gets beyond people, I actually know I can have a thought that I hope things go well for the world. But truly, from an emotional sense, you know, once you get to about three dozen, I'm kind of out of carrying emotion, you know. Now, do I support things that, you know, improve things for people, generally improve things? I say, yeah, I support that. But I have to tell you, most of my time is actually used up with specific actions and specific projects with people I actually do care about. And in today's world, that requires a lot of courage to say that.

You know, it's fascinating because. Are you familiar with the book the Science of Getting Rich by Wallace Wattles?

Yes. Yes.

You were almost channeling some of the messaging from that. Because part of his philosophy of getting rich is to never allow your brain to go to poor thinking or focusing on solving poor problems. And someone who is of low consciousness and of low frequency ism might believe that that means not caring, but in fact, it simply, to me, it means focusing on what you can control, harnessing that energy. And again, when I talked before about, you know, being direct and being focused and talking to the universe and giving it direct commands and intense visuals. The distinction between the thoughts or spirit and the mystical and the physical world are simply the concentration of particles, right? And matter is heavier concentration of particle. And we know that there's infinite distance between those particles and then thoughts, which are even more loose and again, of, in my opinion, a higher frequency, you know, so, you know, what we're on the brink of. In my mind, I think the higher frequency you vibrate and oscillate at, you know, that we are permeating and oscillating between the old flesh and material world and the dematerialized universe, and we're at a threshold of a new evolutionary state. I mean, the combination of the. What do they call it? The singularity. This is what this is all about. It really is. I think science is just picking up and discovering what the mystics have always known and those who've spent their time in the world of plant medicine and in the jungles of the Amazon and before. So there.

Well, here's my belief about the singularity. It's a general thought that has been sent to destroy all the people who believe in general thoughts.

You know Perry Marshall, right?

Of course I do. I love Perry. He's a great thinker.

Perry has a $10 million prize for scientists who can establish the actual science that the cells of the body continually communicate each other and continually adapt to each other throughout existence. So the whole notion that you have fixed genes is not correct. The entire genes of the body are continually modifying individually, and they have ways of communicating that we really haven't tapped into yet. And this really gets into a lot of spiritual beliefs about how you connect with life outside of yourself. So I talked to Perry, and he said he was on another podcast, and I hadn't talked to him in about four or five years. And I said, geez, I think that's terrific, because I had read an article, and it was a very, very interesting article, that science is actually approaching a great crisis, and that what we're experiencing in the world is a scientific crisis. And the thing is that the whole notion that they are getting close to where material will take on consciousness and outthink human beings is like the messiah coming, because they're in a state of crisis and they need saving. And so they've created artificial intelligence into the messiah, the God that's going to. You know, and unfortunately, the price of having that is the obsolescence of the human human being. But most of the people who think that were guys who live in their Parents basement and really had a hard time getting dates all their life. You know, these are lonely people. So this article said that maybe it's just the opposite.

By the way, there's robot love dolls that'll solve all that pretty soon, but keep going.

Yeah, yeah. Well, you know, everybody's got their own attractive solution to things. But the thing about what the author said is that instead of the notion that if you rub enough atoms together at high enough speeds, it's going to produce consciousness, maybe it's consciousness that's rubbing together, and at a certain point, it creates atoms.

Yeah, it's called I am.

Yeah. In the beginning was the word, and.

The word is consciousness. Yeah.

Yeah. Well, and in Greek, the word actually means the thought. In the beginning was the thought. And then bang. You know, once the thought, it wanted some action and it wanted some material action. And so we're the result, and everything we create is the result. So my feeling is that. So there's a general thought, and what I see is a general dehumanizing thought on the planet right now. I did a little quote. I have a book of quotes, and I keep track of them on my computer. And I says, you know, for a computer to be smarter than a human being, you got to make sure that you're making all the human beings stupider than computers.

Yeah. All you gotta do is put a cell phone in their hands and give them a place to go so they can follow around. All you gotta do is jump into a Lyft car or an Uber driver and watch them not use common sense and then follow the dumb directions in my neighborhood, for example, or walk through an airport.

Yep. But the big thing is that I'm posing this because it takes courage to not go along with these big general memes.

Totally. Yeah. I think if we go down that path, there's a couple concepts here I want to go to an empowering one, but a disempowering one is the mass stupefication of the human race as a result of smartphone usage and social media. It's why I don't actually spend any of my own personal time there any longer. I have someone who filters it for me because I found it to be a race to the bottom, low frequency Kardashian hole. Now, that doesn't mean I don't have a presence and I use it. Right.

Yeah, me too. I'm on all the social media every day. Dan Sullivan's out there on Facebook, Twitter, all the others. LinkedIn.

Yeah, it's just a Dan Sullivan AI.

But to this day, I have not done it once myself, and I have not received it once myself, but I'm out there.

Right on. I'm with you. So here's an interesting thing, because I think right now, if, again, we're gonna get a little meta. We as humans are emulating God. In other words, we're creating creatures in our own image. It's kind of like Westworld. But if you look at robots and AI and we're moving towards being able to create Fleshbots and transfer consciousness, okay, through Elon Musk's neural link, for example. On the other hand, we're surrounded with a organic computer. And if you're familiar with Paul Stamets, he's the mycelium mushroom pioneer who's doing all this research on using mushrooms for food, for medicine. But he's also into mycelium, which he talks about it basically being the computer or the Internet of the Earth, where every plant is connected through mycelium, which connects every plant, and they actually communicate with chemicals, just like we use data and electricity. And it's just because that's what we've been able to harness and manipulate. And we're getting to the point where we can do it with chemicals. And I think all the work that's being done in psychedelics is an indicator of that. Again, it's a bridge through the subtle energies. There's some research being done. I'm going to slightly butcher this because I can't remember all the specifics, but I actually bumped into a guy who's busy right now working on observing the biome between human biome, the ocean's biome, and the Earth's biome, and the relationship between that and the fact that really what human beings are, are gigantic bacteria bags, okay? And all these little bacteria are talking to each other. And like, if you've got bad bugs and bad bacteria in your stomach, for example, your biomes messed up, you're gonna have bad chemicals in your brain telling you to do bad things. You know, obesity and depression are a byproduct of bad bacteria poop, for example. And I'm greatly oversimplifying this, but again, if you think about how everything works and then bring it all the way back up to human psychology and think about the relationship to courage. It just goes to show that how you behave energetically and how you manage your energetic, ie, physical body, because they are all the same. Your physical body is making chemicals which makes electrical pulses which zaps around in your brain. It just makes sense. I don't think It's a big leap to think that the energetics of the universe and the interconnectedness of all of this is all part of the same thing. Right? There is a grand unifying principle and science is realizing this on a rapid basis. And it's exciting, it's fascinating. So, boy, did that go off on a fascinating tangent. But what are your thoughts on all that?

I have one of the top IVF doctors, probably in the world, but certainly in the United States. So the industry average for implants that succeed on the first, you know, the IVF is in vitro fertilization. So, you know, he says, my specialty is helping other men's wives get pregnant. And he says, sometimes five times before 9 o' clock in the morning. But his whole point is, and I think Einstein said this, or it was Mark Twain or it was Woody Allen, I'm not sure. But what he says is, you know, he says, in IVF and our understanding of genes, every year from January to December, it just enlargens. And in December we know a lot more than we knew last December. But our ignorance has also expanded at the same rate. And he said, so it's a double thing. And Einstein, who is a great storyteller, and this is why I think it was him, he says, imagine a marble. He says, what's on the inside is what we know, but the outside is connected to what we don't know. He says, now take a baseball, much bigger than a marble. So what's on the inside is much greater in the baseball than the marble, but the outside is much more space connected to what we don't know. And he says, you can take it up to a beach ball, and a beach ball is much, or a soccer ball is much a thing, and that remains a constant. So the more we know immediately the same multiplier of knowledge, there's a multiplier of ignorance, and it's a constant. And it was that way 10,000 years ago, and it's that way. And for people to say that we're going to get to the point where we know everything, just aren't observing what's actually been happening through that period. So my feeling is that's just a constant. But my thing is just to be very, very specific about the experiences and the relationships that I have, very available to me, and that's the best thing that I can be doing actually as a contribution to the world, is not worrying about the world, but just really, really focusing in on the value creation that I can actually create for the people I actually know. And that kind of multiplies, and after a while, I get better at knowing who I can do that with and who I can't do it with. I'm a lot smarter at 75 of who I should hang out with than I was 25 years ago. And I suspect when I'm 100, I'm going to be smarter still. You know, that probably neither of us would have wanted to meet each other 25 years ago because we would have screwed up a future possibility.

That's great. And as you're talking, I was putting on my meta glasses and thinking, wow, what's great about this is you're really talking about being a super specialized cell in the body of the big organism in the big universe. And here's the biggest distinction. When a specialized organism is able to recreate itself based upon the environment, that is what a great entrepreneur is. A great specialized organism that provides massive value and knows inherently when the extinction cycle is about to occur and it metamorphizes. And I think being a caterpillar that converts into a butterfly, which then transforms into whatever the next thing is. And if we kind of look through the birth death cycle even, you know, it's like the. What comes next. You know, if you just think about the universe, the universe is a great recycler, a great repurposer, and we know stuff shifts between the ethers, between the frequencies all the time that, you know, becoming a student of this thought process is more important now than ever before because the rate of extinction of ideas and things and behaviors and skills is increasing at a rapid rate. And the need and benefit for transformational capabilities is greater now than ever before. So I want to ask you one last question about your perspective. And again, this is a courage amplifier. So very often our fear comes from being without running out, not having enough, not being enough. And what do you see as the great antidote, the courage amplifier, when faced with those kind of cycles?

We're going through a process with our team now where each person has to be graded. Do they really want the role they're in? Do they really get the role they're in? And do they really have the capability of being in the role they are? They have to say it for themselves and other people say it for them. And it was very scary for my team to go through this. I wasn't running it. It's the EOS process, entrepreneurial operating system. I wasn't in it because they don't want me in that kind of meeting because I'm disruptive like you are. I would never have my Koenigs in any meeting.

Yeah, no. I'm the worst student ever. I know. It's like it's fall asleep and break stuff. If I'm not teaching, I shouldn't be there.

Yeah. So I was sitting there and I said, you know, you just gave me a book title because I'm always collecting future Quarterly books. And I said, the title of the book is kind of like, when's a good time to know the Truth? You know, when's a good time to know the truth? Oh, that's good. And I said, how soon do you want to get to the other side of truth, or do you want to delay it for a while? Is it good to delay the truth? And, you know, I do a lot of testing. And both of us do a lot of testing because we both had a scare. One of my team members said, you know, you do all this testing. I work with Jeff Gladden and 30 vials of blood every six months and goes out to 25 labs. Somebody said, boy, I wouldn't want to know that stuff. I'd be scared to know that stuff. And I said, well, the neat thing about it, you are going to know it. I said, if it's good news, I can delay it, but if it's bad news, how soon do I want to know the bad news?

Here's what I tell everyone I know around me is good news is great, bad news is fine. But no news is never okay. And so no news is a fast way to die. By being dumb, not ignorant. I think there's a difference between ignorance and dumb. Dumb is when you are presented with the option to know the information and you chose to be stupid. Maybe stupid and ignorant are different. Yeah, there you go.

Yeah, you know, and we could do a podcast series about what is the truth that it's good to know as soon as possible. That might be a nice series. You know, that you're no good at anything and you never will be is a good time to know early in your life or, you know, I have a series of statements and I said, you know, a first class soup is better than a second class symphony.

A first class plumber is better than a second class poem.

Yeah.

You know, a first class anything is better than anything, you know, I mean, so when do you want to know what activity and what focus and what commitment is would represent a first class life? I said, how soon in life would you like to know that? But in order to do that, you got to stop hanging around with second class Stop doing second class. And the big thing is stop thinking second class thoughts. I mean, it all starts with your thoughts and your mindset. So anyway, I want to come back to the. You know, because the whole focus here is think how much time you waste by not telling the truth. How much of your life has been wasted because there was a truth that intuitively you had a sense about the truth, but you delayed it. I said, how much time did you waste before you actually did tell the truth? And then you came to grips with it and you transformed your life in relationship to your actually telling the truth.

Yeah. Or living in the specter of it's not dishonesty. But I can think of a little example here that's relevant and a great way to close this up, which is I've had a decision I had to make and I continued moving towards a bad decision because I said I needed to do it and I thought people expected it. And in fact, in this particular instance, it was an experience or an event I was planning on doing. A couple people are coming to it and I have my ego wrapped up in doing it. But intuitively I just know it's not the right timing, it doesn't feel right. And I know it's going to be a giant distraction from the greater good all the way around. And yet I was marching towards it because I have this attachment. And think about how many bad decisions you continue to make. And you have the right to renegotiate anything at any time for any reason for any purpose whatsoever, especially if it's a bad decision. Right. That takes courage and it's really hard to do. And I think very relevant to what you were talking about. So, any other big parting words of wisdom?

Yeah. I want to give you a little story that'll send the shivers off how the First World War started. You know, they found a lot of literature and apparently the significant members of the German high staff at the last moment really thought this was going to be a disaster. But they were overruled because the commanding general said the railroad schedules are already set. We can't disrupt Germany by disrupting the railroad system.

Oh, you got to have a rule follower. That's the fastest way to lose a war. Gotta have heaven rules. Here we go. That reminds me of. It's sort of like the British soldiers standing up and sitting down to pack their rifles while the Native Americans are picking them off guerrilla style. It's like, you idiots. Yeah, like all you got to do is line up the heads and just see how many heads you can Knock through sideways, right?

Yeah. And there's a story, you know, of two men being taken to the firing squad, and they're tied to the stakes. And the captain of the firing squad comes up and said, would you like a blindfold? And one of them said, oh, thank you very much. Yes, I would. And the other says, no. He says, I'm going to stand here and stick my tongue out at your firing. And the other one says, shh. Don't make trouble.

Yep.

I love it.

Yeah, I love it.

Dan, as usual, this is always a great pleasure. Any parting words?

Yeah, I would just say that courage is the most uniquely individual experience that everybody comes to grip with. Courage is you totally 100% on your own, but that's your most fundamental relationship with yourself throughout your entire life, from childhood to, you know, checkout time. And that is that if you always allow yourself a bigger and better goal for yourself, a amplification of yourself in the future, it will require commitment and courage before you get the capability and confidence to do that. And I will say, as long in your life as you are doing that, you are young. And the moment that you stop doing that, you get old real fast.

Well, that is a good way to end this thing because you have the chance to make it all better. So this is Capability Amplifier. On behalf of myself and Dan Sullivan, will you head over to itunes right now to rate the Capability Amplifier show? Every rating and review helps spread the message and create more empowered entrepreneurs like you. And if you've already done that, please share this episode with a friend who you know can benefit from from Capability Amplifier. And if you have any questions or suggestions, head over to capabilityamplifier.com there you can leave us an audio message, and Dan and I listen to every single one of them. Thanks again for listening. We'll see you soon.