Presentism; Understanding History

Foreign.

Welcome to Capability Amplifier. This is Mike Koenigs. I'm here today with Dan Sullivan. We're talking about presentism, and it's how right now we've got all kinds of cancellations going on where people are looking at someone's history going back 5, 10, 20 years and deciding, oh, well, that person was bad then. So, Dan, you've got this idea of presentism and how you can take situations from history and judge people as being deficient, but reframing that entire conversation. So why don't you talk a little bit about it?

Yeah. First of all, just a little personal history. I was born in the 1940s, and, you know, when you went to school in the 1950s, you had things like history, you had things like geography, you had things like civics, you had things like religion. And so, you know, part of your learning was things that happened centuries ago and, you know, in, in the country itself and then around the world. And my sense is from talking to parents who are entrepreneurs, their children really, really don't get history. They don't get geography, they don't get any of those things. And that's one facet of their lives. The other thing is that most of their images of past time history comes through television series, movies, and actually video games. Video games, they. They get it. And so what I would say is their understanding of history is that things that happened before today are deficient versions of what they have today. And therefore they can stand on judgment of how things were 100 years ago, 500 years ago. And on the other hand, when Hollywood does history, they give people who are actually depicted as living 500 years ago, but they have modern emotions and they have modern attitudes and they have modern thoughts. And so my sense of this, because I read a book about 15, 20 years ago and the title really intrigued me, and he said, the past is a foreign country. Okay. And he just walks through that.

You wouldn't be comfortable there. Anybody going back a hundred years, you would not be comfortable. And besides that, you would bring back diseases that would wipe them all out in about 30 days because your immune system is actually better. You've been immunized to everything they died of back there, but they haven't been in, you might, to the new diseases that you're going to bring back with them. So you'd wipe them out really fast. So, yeah, you wouldn't be a welcome guest. But what, what I was noticing was that there's a pasteurization of culture that we don't want people to have feelings that make them uncomfortable or, you know, and my sense is, you know, and Mike, we can compare notes here. Virtually all my growth in life has been encountering things that made me comfortable and then, you know, kind of getting used to it and building new insights and building new capabilities. But what I was noticing, you were very kind this week, along with Lee Richter and with Dean Jackson to invite me on Clubhouse. And somebody today said, well, what was that like? And I said, you grew up in the country and then one day they plopped you down in Times Square on Friday night and they said, so what was it like? And I said, I'm sorry, there wasn't anything in particular because there were a million things to pay attention to. Right, right. But within about four days. So from Monday till Thursday, I'd gotten some feet under my ground. And.

So I was in the experience again yesterday and you know, I was starting to get a feel of it. But I brought up this topic of presentism and I got about four or five comments. People said, presentism, what is that? So my sense is, why? Why do you think? I mean, I'm, I'm, I'm into history in some way almost every day. You know, I'm reading about things that happened quite a long time ago and, you know, very intrigued, very, very intrigued by it. And.

It'S kind of a comfortable place for me to go.

Yes, well, so you gave me a lot of fertile ground here for comments, but I really want to zoom in on one thing in particular, which is.

The fact that.

There'S a general lack of understanding of history and geography. And so I've got an 18 year old Zach, and we really have lived through the Generation Z that has been 100% raised with their phones in their hands from is, you know, some of them toddlers and preschoolers, you know, you had to, as a parent, you had to be really careful that it did not become a permanent pacifier because it's a full on drug. And Zach, for example, is one of the last kids in his class to be given a phone, but he had to have one in order to actually do class. They literally did real classwork through their phones so they could do real time answers and tests.

And history for a lot of these kids, unless it's forced onto them by the school. Their vision and understanding of what the world is happens with what comes up first in YouTube, Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat. And they learn through accidental browsing. And the outrage algorithm drives the content that is present in front of them. And whatever they see is what they believe. And I think the notion of a long term understanding of history is blinded by whoever is popular and whoever they trust. So I think when I think about presentism, this has to do with collapsing the trust barrier. In other words, a lot of what you're talking about is history being rewritten by present day outrage filters or a lack of an ability to deal with discomfort. Look at what universities have become. It's like, oh, that makes us mad or uncomfortable. I have to go to my timeout room and we will ban people from coming here and speaking. And now folks are being silenced on the best and most efficient delivery mechanisms we have, which is social media.

When you say your growth has come from things that make me uncomfortable, building new insights and capabilities.

My question for you is.

How do you encourage curiosity? Loving the discomfort and becoming uncomfortable and making that a habit and a discipline.

And what you have, you are a historian, you're fascinated by it. It's a huge part of your curriculum, draws from the 1940s culture and you create relationships between that. So that's both a fascination, it's a curiosity, it's a genuine love. And I have to answer your question with another question for me to take this further. But first of all, any comments on that stream?

Yeah, well.

I think the best approach I've come as where people get familiar and comfortable with their own history.

I ask questions a lot about their childhood. I ask a lot of questions, you know, about, you know, things that, where, you know, they, you know, they were, they really focused on a goal that was beyond their present capabilities and how did they go about achieving that. And my sense is it's that overcoming of difficulty, it's transforming yourself, which is really the key to all history. In other words, it's the key to your history, Mike. And that's why I remember, you know, one day on, I just went through the six different companies that you've created. And the reason is I was really interested. But my experience is that I was asking you questions that probably no one else had asked you before. And the other thing is that you were thinking about those experiences in an entirely new way because you had an audience where before you may have reflected on them, but you had never explained them. And you necessarily didn't necessarily see the connections between my first business and my six business. And we pulled out some common features, you know of, you know of what you're looking for when you start a new one, what you learn from that one, that passes on to the next one. So instead of giving people, you know, trying to interest them in history like a history book or, you know, I say let's just, let's just get them comfortable with their own history and what it will do. It'll probably make them comfortable talking to other people about their history and then maybe at some point. And it's my feeling is that if they're comfortable, you know, they're comfortable dealing with all their. Their history, that's good enough. That's good. That's good enough. They, I mean, they don't have to know the history of the country. They don't have to know that, but they have to have a feeling that there's part of them in the past that's extraordinarily valuable and that it should be respected. They. You know.

I remember there's a guy who's involved in the longevity movement, you know, who is quite famous worldwide, and he has a statement. He said, if you're not embarrassed to. You were a year ago, you're not growing. And I said, what? What? I said, I'm proud of who I was when I was six. I'm proud of who I was when I was 20. I like, I like the Dan back then because he was, he was doing the best he could with what he had available. So that's, that's my feeling. So I wouldn't try to get people interested in history or anything like that, but I would like to get them really interested in their own history. Hmm.

Okay.

I need to help you deconstruct your thinking process here because I think this is the most fascinating thing I want to know is.

You know, how to narrate the best questions to ask someone in order to get them interested in their history. And so, and when you were just talking about deconstructing, you know, my interest in why I did the six businesses and what they all had in common, for example. So part of what you do is you spot the patterns.

And also know how to get everyone interested. And I see that whenever you're leading a strategic coach experience of getting a lot of feedback and asking great questions. So if you are going to help someone, first of all to understand their history, but also trigger their fascination with history, driven from self interest first, and then expand their mind to say, oh, wow, if I explore even more history, it's going to benefit me. So what's your thinking process and what kind of questions do you ask that allow you to gather lots of information in the shortest period of time?

Well, first of all, I've gotten extremely choosy about who I ask questions of you know, in my 70s, I'm incredibly more choosy. And generally speaking, I'm not really interested in people's history if they're not entrepreneurs.

And the reason being that it's my experience that entrepreneurs, whatever age they are, okay, you know, 40, 50, 60, of all human beings walking on the planet, they're more like they're 6 year olds than any other type of human being.

That, that makes sense. My little add to that is I.

Can say I can see you as a six year old, you know. You know, and I have a feeling that what has changed is knowledge. What has changed is skill. What has changed is your sense of comfort with new situations that you haven't gotten to the bottom of yet. Like that. But my sense is that there's a direct line, there's a direct connection between the Mike at your age right now and Mike at 6 years old. And I can picture you on the farm because I grew up on a similar type of farm. And you know, I would say that you probably, and probably there were a number of years when you were getting away from who you were with six. And my feeling is maybe within the last 10 or 15 years you've crossed over where you're going back and you're reconnecting with who you were with six. So what I find is that most entrepreneurs, when you get them to talk about their life, it's a single lifetime theme that just keeps adding dimensions.

And it's good for, and it's good for them to know that. What I find is I don't know the answer to my questions, but I can see them putting their answers together into a coherent pattern. And I said, you know, I just think this gives people a sense of confidence. I think it gives them a sense of continuity and I think it makes them like themselves.

Okay, so I have described you a number of times as the.

Happy kid in a neighborhood block. So you imagine a young Dan shows up, knocks on your door and says, will you come out and play in the sandbox? You don't have to bring anything and we're going to make a castle together that's a hundred times better than you could make on your own. That's the way I see you. You bring that spirit and that energy and all of these things are congruent with that. Which are, if you think about 6 year old Dan.

And 76 year old Dan, freedom and happiness and a constant positive focus is.

Is my definition of Dan. And anytime someone around you and I, to the best of my knowledge, I think I'VE only pushed your buttons a couple of times and it's because I was talking about a deficiency and you're like, no, no, no, no, look at this, look at where we are. And.

And it was that your, your rails are a one way street to positive focus all the time and freedom equals happiness. So when I think about what you just described is, first of all, you said I'm really choosy. And.

So entrepreneurs have the qualities that you find happy, but again, inside of that.

You'Re able to tap into someone's big why with very few questions. And I just want to re ask you that question again, which is what do you consistently find activates that entrepreneurial mind so they can rediscover themselves and find that confidence, that continuity and that joy that you're attracted to?

Well, one of the, you know, I mean, and it's kind of a trick is that I know, I know that entrepreneurs are a sucker for this, okay? And what I mean by that is they don't like doing it themselves, that most entrepreneurs don't like looking back, okay? And to a certain extent, they want to get on to the next thing, okay? Because they have a discomfort, you know, they still feel the discomfort from earlier stages of their life when they, you know, they, you know, they were, they were talking a better game than they were playing and it made them very uncomfortable. And, and I said, yeah, but, yeah, I mean, I said, so, so big deal, you know, you know, I mean, you're, you were doing new things. Who's, who's, who's totally capable and confident about a new thing before you've done it, you know, I said, you know, you're, you're asking for the impossible. You're, you're asking for the person that you were at a much earlier stage to have done the impossible. And I said, you can't do the impossible now. So why, why you are riding out on your previous self because that person couldn't do the impossible. You know, it was, it was uncomfortable. But on the other hand, you haven't changed at all. So there must have been something about it that you liked.

Right?

Huh?

I don't know the answers when I ask the question, but I do know that they have the information that they probably haven't put together. And when they put it together, they get a, wow, I haven't seen that, you know, and everything like that, you know, so, and they feel better afterwards. They, they get perspective, they get a sense of continuity and everything and all that's good for their present and future. Self. I mean, it's not their past self I'm really passionate about. It's how they're seeing their present and future self that I'm passionate about. But. But the best thing they have going for them is what they've already done. And if they don't know it, then my feeling is we should get to know it first. And then they have a sounder foundation for going further.

Okay. And in doing so, you know, one of your great tools is the Experience Transformer. How do you see that fitting into the understanding where you are, where you want to go, and appreciating where you are and kind of like consolidating that experience.

Yeah. And just to give you the explanation, you know, and, you know, I had some negative experiences that were blindsides. And I began to say, you know.

If you don't learn from that experience, it's going to repeat itself, you know, and, you know, I don't mind doing anything stupid or a failure the first time, but I really mind doing it a second time.

Yeah.

You know, I give everybody a mulligan, including myself. And.

So the. The thing that I noticed with individuals and I. When I first started experimenting, this is around 98, I think 1998 was the first time I did the Experience Transformer. And I said, I just want to do a little exercise and want you to take back to your teenage years, because the teenage years is just an emotional, you know, it's an emotional minefield, you know, for a lot of different reasons, you know, and hormonal, a lot of it is, you know, hormonal. And I said, I want you to think of a really negative experience that you had when you were a teenager. And I just, you know, let's write down, let's brainstorm a few things. And I. But it has to be during your teens, you know, your high school. And, and. And you don't have to share this. You don't have to share this at all. I just want you to think through it, because I'm going to use it as simply an example of what you can do with a negative experience. So anyway.

They go back, and I said, okay, now write down what the experience. And a lot of them just really had a hard time actually writing. They said, oh, do we have to do this? And I said, look, it's not going to last long, and you're going to feel better afterwards. And you're going to feel better afterwards. And they write it down. And I said, okay. Okay. Before we go deep into this, what was good about that? Experience. They said, well, I said, no, no, no, no. What was.

You know, what was, you know, and I make a joke. And I said, I mean, 30 years later, aren't you glad you didn't marry her? You know, yeah.

You know, you know, and that gets a laugh. And it sort of breaks the tension and everything else. And I said, we're just going to see, you know, I mean.

How are you better today? Because you had that experience back then. You know, just write down some things of how you're better back then. And once they get one or two down, then it's easy, you know, they'll get four or five down. I said, okay. And I said, now the reason we did this is that that experience took your confidence away. And we can't learn anything from the experience until we get your confidence back. And the way we got our common, we just did a positive focus on the experience. So it was actually a good experience. And then I said, okay, now write down everything that was bad about it, which is a lot easier for them to do once they've neutralized. It was a, you know, it's a little bit like a painkiller. The first column is like a painkiller, you know. And, you know, actually, you know, it follows, you know, it very follows the modern up to the moment of using psychedelic drugs where people go back and deal with ptsd.

Because what was absent from the traumatic experience is that they were just terrified. They were just completely traumatized. Well, I said, you can't go back if, you know, you don't have a way of neutralizing that. So they use.

You're more up to date on it than I am. But one of them was lsd. And LSD is just one of the most unfortunate drugs in the history because it got politicized in the 1960s, and it's an incredibly valuable drug. But it got politicized and it became illegal and everything like that. And we missed 50 years of psychological and emotional progress because of the polarization. Shows you how weird things can happen to good things. And anyway, so they go through. Now they've got two columns, they've got five good things, five bad things. And I said, okay, now, based on looking at both columns, you can't go back and relive that experience. But if you have an experience in the future that feels similar, how would you approach it this time, knowing what you now realize about the past when they go through and they go through? And I said, now we don't have to share that. And I said, no, no, we Want to share it. We want to share it. They didn't even want to think about it.

20 minutes previously, and now they want to share it. And that. Which is really helpful too, because people ask them questions and they see connections. So I said, now we've spent a half hour total, maybe 40 minutes. And I said, when you think of that experience, how many of you has had a painful experience? No pain. And I said, can I tell you what the pain was? You had a powerful experience and you didn't learn anything from it. And that's the greatest pain in life, is to have a powerful experience and learn absolutely nothing from it. Now you've learned from the painful experience. Now you don't need the pain anymore.

So that's, that's my, that, that's my, you know, an entrepreneur. I mean, think about the early years of being a, you know, an entrepreneur. I mean, I mean, yeah.

Yeah, you know, you're just, you're in no man's land with a lot of stuff, you know, and, yeah. And, you know, and, you know, there's so many skills that only being out there business year after business, year after business year, and you start to get a pattern, you start to get a structure, and you start to get a process. You know, I mean, a lot of my team members were asking me because, you know, I flipped in about 12 hours on the COVID thing. You know, I, I was kind of thrown by the decision on Friday night at 6 o' clock that we were going to cancel the next quarters of workshops. Yes. And by, you know, 8 o' clock the next morning to our time, I said, okay, Zoom. I said, this is where Zoom is going to be. And I already was focused. I said, okay, good, we've got something to, We've got a capability. We can really maximize. Now. I was 10 hours was all. And I, and people said, how'd you do that? And I said, I've just transformed hundreds of really bad experiences in my life into lessons, and this one isn't going to be any different.

Powerful psychology. Well, I'll tell you what. I know you and I could go down. Go ahead.

Well, this is why I'm interested in entrepreneurism, because people who aren't entrepreneurs can go through that type of process, but they don't actually do anything with it. They just feel better, you know, they just feel better. Entrepreneurs will immediately take that and said, I'm going to use this in the future. Now I can take on bigger and better things. So.

A lot of my stuff would be wasted on people that Aren't entrepreneurs because they wouldn't do anything.

Yeah.

Oh, that was great hour. That was a great two hours. And I said, yeah, but you're not going to do anything with it.

Yes.

That is the distinction. That truly is. And I have the good fortune of having worked with even before I was in strategic coach and now much more with. I work with a lot of coach members and the level of. First of all, the most important lesson that I observe is the common shared vocabulary. It's an emotional vocabulary, but it's also a functional blueprint for getting stuff done very quickly. And the amount of information that can be communicated in an extremely short period of time is unbelievable. So that I oftentimes call it Dan speak or coach speak, but boom, that's the speed and then the implementation which comes through the thinking tools, which is anytime you have a problem, you pick a tool, you fill it out, and you know that the end of every tool is a positive focus. And getting back to the theme of this episode of being a presentism.

It'S staying in love with who you are, continuing to fall in love with who you're about to become with a constant, positive, moving future. And what I think, and I took a lot of notes in this episode, there's an enormous amount of thinking that can be gathered through this. I'm just looking at the path, and what I'd suggest to everyone who's listening or watching this right now is re listen to this episode and pay attention to how Dan thinks, because there's some real, real gold here. And.

There was one last thing that you said a moment ago.

And I want to see if I can find that.

Give me a moment here. Good fortune.

Okay. Yeah, here's what it is. A lot of my stuff would be wasted on people that aren't entrepreneurs because they wouldn't do anything. And that really is the other key distinction is the number one goal that you talk about is.

Happiness comes from freedom. And what coach and entrepreneurialism is all about is freedom. First and foremost, it's the four freedoms. As you say, freedom of time, money, purpose, and relationship. Maybe not in that order. It's different for everyone, but I know for myself.

The freedom that I like the most is peace. Freedom. It's like when I don't have to think about what there are no bothers or worries. That's probably what drives me most, to be able to spend all my time in a helpful place of innovation and creativity that elevates other people. Because collaboration, to me, is probably my highest value. Freedom. It's like doing this podcast with you thinking differently and learning something that can have a tremendous amount of rewiring impact on the brain.

Yeah, one thing on Monday, when.

You and Lee and Dean introduced me into clubhouse, I also had a free zone. I actually had a free zone connector that day. And I had, I had nine people and I had a prepared. I created a new, a new tool and. But we just started off, you know, it was in the morning Eastern time and, and 10 to, I think it was 10 to 12. And I just started in and I, I, you know, I, I talked to one person. Charlie Epstein was there. I said, well, Charlie, how's it going? And he started and within about a minute he had said something that I knew someone else in the room had, something very useful to contribute to what he was talking about. So I, I said, you know, Dave, Dave, can you just tell Charlie what you did with that? And he started it on. And that started a two hour process where I just was, I was like a switchboard operator.

And we caped the whole thing and that we got to about 10 minutes from the end. And I said, okay, let's just wrap up there were there. We started with nine and I think we still had eight, you know, two hours later. And it was just pop, pop, pop, people writing down notes and everything else. And it was Paul Abel from, you know, from, you know, sand it right around the corner from you. And Paul is really funny. I mean, he's just got a really great sense, you know, he's got a wonderful sense of humor. And he said, he said, where in the world can you ever have a conversation like this today? You know, he said, you know, it was just handoff, handoff, handoff, handoff, handoff. And I said, well, I said.

It'S only possible in a group where everybody has freedom of time, freedom of money, freedom of relationship and freedom of purpose. If you don't have those freedoms, you can't even be present with what's going on, what other people are saying. Your mind is out there. You know, this is getting laid. I mean, is there going to be any, do we get any conclusion here? You know, is there, you know, is there any deal on the table? You know, when we, I said, no, no, no, no, that's handled. That's handled. You've handled yourself before. You came into this conversation. And I said, this is the type of conversation you can have. And I said, and how many of you came up with a thought? It wasn't necessarily something that anyone mentioned, but you just had the thought while the conversation was going on that, you know, it's going to be.

A breakthrough in the next 12 months. And they all raised their hand. I said, that's the reward you get from freedom.

Yes. And what I would say, I observe it inside here, and it's the basic premise behind what Free Zone is about. But it's collaborative innovation. That's my description of what you are talking about right now. And it results in great insight, a personal insight, and something that's adaptable towards more freedom at the same time. And I think that tickles. I've experimented with something recently and that is I'm not talking about doing business with someone anymore. I say, are you interested in a collaboration? It can still be a collaboration where there's money exchanging hands, but to an entrepreneur, that sounds like on elevated opportunity and experience, where it's clear that by collaborating, they in their mind reach the point faster of realizing their own value and your value and the combination of it. So it creates a faster, easier. Yes. So just by changing that one mindset, that one language pattern, I've reached faster yeses in terms of the.

The business opportunities I'm involved with right now. And they're larger also.

So I think that is really a universally loved thought process that.

When it's intentionally presented in front of an entrepreneur, they're like, yeah, I want more of that. And I'm going to explore more of that when I talk to Paul Hamilton next.

About. And Shannon about the webinars and the language patterns during the enrollment process for Coach. Because I think that that mindset and that language pattern is definitely more attractive to the buyer.

Yeah. Yeah.

So anyway, what do you say we go ahead. Let's wrap up this episode.

First of all, you know.

One is, I hadn't seen.

You know, the concept of presentism. I mean, I see it in terms of people are ignorant of history with a capital H. You know, they. They. But to me, the real shift for me and the breakthrough, I said, well, you know, they're interested or they're not interested, but the biggest problem is they don't even know their own history. They can't even draw value and lessons from their own history.

Mm. Mm.

So true.

That's a thinker.

Well done. Well, what do you say we. We wrap up this episode and I've got a. I've got something for every listener and viewer to check out. And that is. It's a little thing you can do. For one thing, if you'd like to send your feedback with this episode or any other why don't you pull up your mobile phone right now and text the letter CA 2858-434-5316. And I'm going to send you something as well, which is a little. It's a mini documentary. It's a little walkthrough of a day in the life of Strategic Coach that I put together about Strategic Coach. If you are not a member, you will love this video because it really describes how you can get from where you are into that freedom mindset and that zone in just six minutes. And one more time that just text CA2858434, 5316. And you can also. And if you're a member and you haven't seen this video, you definitely want to check it out. So there's that. You can also always go to capabilityamplifier.com and leave comments, too, but texting is definitely the easiest. So is there anything else that you want to wrap up here with tonight?

I'm delighted with the ground that we covered. You know, you never know. You never know where things are going. So it was great.

All right. Fabulous. So in the meantime, make sure you like you share you comment. Love seeing the feedback on itunes and anywhere else you have downloaded this episode. So thank you. See you in the next one.

RA.