Reinventing Yourself: 3 Ways to Create a Better Future | The Big Leap #60

Hi, this is Gay Hendricks. Welcome to our Big Leap podcast. On this show today, you're going to be hearing some things that I promise you, you have not heard before. We're going to be talking with Jim Selman, a living legend in the coaching industry. And actually the person who first invented the idea of corporate coaching and executive coaching was first to use the term in print with that. So we're going to get a history lesson, but we're going to get a lot in the here and now about how he sees the world and how he approaches transformation. And this is from a guy who's through literally thousands and thousands of hours of corporate and personal transformation working with people. So it's very exciting.

And I'll tell you, one of the things I love about this episode is the idea of how do we reinvent ourselves? Jim has a very, very valuable way make that happen. And it's done in three words. And we talk about how to stay relevant and valuable, which is something that is to anyone, no matter where you are in your professional or personal career. Jim, what do you think the number one reason is that people should stick around and listen to or watch this episode?

I think it's probably because we have actually begun to articulate a way of understanding how human beings can kind of create the future, and that in these times, I think we all need to learn new ways to navigate and participate in creating the future.

It's all happening on the Big Leap podcast.

Stay tuned.

Hi, this is Gay Hendricks and welcome to this edition of the Big Leap podcast. We're really excited today because Mike and I have a very special guest, an old friend of mine who has made a huge contribution to all sorts of aspects of our self help and transformational industries. And we're eager to talk to our guest, Mike. How are you doing today?

Awesome. I'm super excited because it wasn't long ago that I was with Jim at tlc and for one thing, he is a. He is definitely a legend. Made so many contributions. Interesting guy. And I love the fact that we get to have.

A mentor and someone who's really paved the way for an industry that's grown like crazy and gone through many evolutions. So I'm really interested in the history lesson part of this and also his predictions.

Good. Well, let us get right into it then. Our special guest today is Jim Selman, and I'm going to let Jim tell you what he does in a minute rather than trying to encapsulate it, because it has a lot of reaches all over many areas. But first, Mike referred to the history lesson. One of the things that I know about Jim is that he was the first person that I know of that used the term coaching with regard to executive transformation. So, first of all, Jim, would you confirm or deny that rumor?

Well, I don't know if I was the first one to use the term, but I was the first one to publish a piece about coaching and business. And we did an event. It was an international video event back in the mid-80s with Red Auerbach, George Allen, Tim Galway, John Wooden, and Warner Ehrhard. And the. The event was really asking the question, what does all coaching have in common, regardless of the subject, being coached? And that was, as far as I know, there were about 6,000 people on that call that that was really what started the buzz. And I just wish I'd known where it was going. I'd have probably bought stock of myself.

And what year was that roughly, Jim?

86.

All right, good.

Well, the first article was called Coaching and the Art of Management.

So one of the things we're very interested in on this podcast is always.

What were some of your big leaps? What were some of the things where you went from one state of being to another state of being that made a difference in how you delivered the content that. That you delivered in your career?

That's a good question. I would say that in one sense, I've had a lot of big leaps over the years. In fact, transformation, the way I think about it is almost every transformation I've experienced has been a big leap. The biggest one, personally Gay, I think I may have mentioned to you at some point, was when I got sober in 1993. So it's been a long time. But I was one of those people that kept it secret and didn't let people know and was pretty still functional. But when I had to look myself in the eye and look at my young son, I had to confront the fact that I did not have control over what I thought I controlled. And when you think you control something, you don't really control. It controls you. And so then I made. Made the pilgrimage to the AA rooms and began the process of sobering up. So that was probably the single biggest leap in my life, frankly, in terms of business. Ironically, when we started the conversation about coaching, I had originally thought of it as a strategy for changing organizational culture.

I was one of the first three projects that was formally trying to change organizational culture. Before that, before people forget that there was actually a time when the word organizational culture did not exist in the Lexicon. When things didn't work, it was because people had a natural resistance to change. It was really only in the mid-70s when the concept of organizational culture began to emerge as an explanation for why it was difficult to implement things. And that's been my whole career is really pressing into that question of why is it so difficult to implement change? Even when people agree that needs to be done, even when people agree on the solutions, even when there's adequate resources, somehow the change still defies implementation. You can make a pilot project work, but when trying to make it work at scale, it's extraordinarily difficult.

So a lot of our listeners and viewers, the folks that watch this on YouTube or the people that downloaded this podcast, many of them are entrepreneurs in various stages of development of their entrepreneurial lives. And, you know, we have people who are just setting up their businesses all the way to people who are growing a $50 million business to be a hundred million dollar business. So given that we cover a big range like that, what are a couple of your biggest learnings that you think have widespread applicability no matter where you are in the entrepreneurial journey?

Well, I love the conversation about entrepreneuring because to me, it's at its core about human beings creating reality, human beings creating something that does not exist. So the first thing I would suggest to people is that they acknowledge themselves as beginning a creative journey and that all the things that are not going to work and that all the difficulties are going to be the raw material that they can use to really make their dream and make their vision come true. The second thing I would do would be tell them, don't think that your product or your service has value. That's a mistake. For example, a lot of people thought that they were offering coaching. I said, no, coaching is not an offer. That if you really want to be a successful entrepreneur, pay attention at what your service or what your product produces for the consumer or for the client, because the value is in the receiver, it's not in the means of delivery. Coaching is a way of delivering value, but itself is not valuable. And the same, I think, is true of almost any product or service. So the more that an entrepreneur can pay attention to the concerns and the utility of what they offer in terms of the consumer, I think the more successful they're likely to be. And the other thing I would say is begin to appreciate that virtually everything, and this is the foundation of almost all my work, is happening in conversations between human beings. So invest the time to become competent in conversations. You know, there's lots of conversations about change. There's lots of conversations about what people think has value, but there are. That's very different than conversations that actually change something or conversations that enroll people and connect with where they live. I think that's the skill set that too many people take for granted. And as a consequence, they think that their pitch is what's useful rather than the relationship with who they're pitching to and the capacity to begin to engage those people on their ground rather than continuing to believe that you've got the solution that they think they need.

That's really a key distinction. I remember in the early stages of my career, on one magic day, I realized that the way I had defined communication was. Had only to do with how it left my mouth. And that was where I put my attention, rather than on whether the other person received it, understood it, acted on it. And, you know, to realize that communication is in the interaction, the results to the other person, not just on how it's crafted as it leaves my mouth.

Absolutely. In fact, Gay. I think that one of the statements I often hear in organizations that I don't like is, what's the message? What's the message that we're sending? You know, did they get the message? And it begins to reveal that the whole structure of thinking around communication is sort of built on a computer. You know, like you've got a. You've got a hardware in your brain, and I've got hardware in my brain. And communications about sending and receiving information rather than communication is much, much more profound than that. And, you know, you can, if you. If you're really connected and if you really trust people, if you really love people, if you're really engaged in a common cause. Communication is a whole different phenomenon than sending and receiving information. And so I say that quit trying to send messages and start listening. The more you listen, I think the more you're going to be in a natural dance with whoever you're interacting with, rather than they thinking that they should appreciate our brilliance. I also think that people don't listen to you until you listen to them first.

I agree with that. I think also it's very difficult to listen to another human being until you have learned to listen to yourself. That I think we have about as many listening blocks to our own inner information as we have listening blocks to information coming in from the outside.

Yes.

Well, tell us a little bit about your book.

I had an idea. Oh, go ahead, Jim.

Does this feel like a good time to tell us a little bit about your New book.

Well, sure, anytime is a good time for that. Gay. The book is called Living in a Real Time. Six Capabilities to Prepare for an Unimaginable Future. And I wrote it before the pandemic, but the pandemic has certainly made my point. The book, the book is predicated on the premise that we are living in a very unique, perhaps unprecedented time in human history. I think probably a function of technology. But one way or the other, as I think most of us agree, the rate of change is getting faster and faster.

And when I started my career in computers, there was a. Computers were just information machines, but as the gap between inputs and outputs got smaller and smaller, eventually computers transformed from informing to performing. And that's what's called real time computing. So what I happen to think is going on in the world today is that the gap between the future and the past is getting shorter and smaller. That we're living in a time where our predictions no longer are reliable and we can't trust them. That we don't have anywhere close to control if we ever did. But certainly now, I think most people would agree we don't control much of what's going on. And between that and the fact that this gap between the future and the past is getting smaller, it requires us to begin to rethink not only who we are, but how the world works and what's possible and what's not possible. I'm using the metaphor of Star Trek. I think we're kind of going where no one has gone before and we don't have any maps for getting there. And as a consequence, we need to really appreciate the power of our relationships. One of the capabilities I talk about is caring. You know, that learning to care and living in a context of care is becoming an essential ingredient, perhaps of even survival. You know, learning, learning to listen, learning to learn, actually relearning how we learn, beginning to confront the fact that if you don't control something or if you want to play a new game, you have to accept the way things are, that most of the difficulties I observe and the source of much of the suffering is when people are resisting reality. They're resisting what is. They're. They're trying to fix reality. And it all revolves around this kind of human egocentric orientation where we're going to make the world what we want rather than learn to live within a world and learn and live in harmony with our circumstances and each other and not simply get trapped in some kind of model or mental picture of the way we think life should Be and then suffer the consequences when reality doesn't agree with us.

You can get that book on Amazon.

Okay, thank you. And it's called Living in the Real Time World. Good.

Mike, what's up with six capabilities to prepare for an unimaginable future?

I see you bobbing your head over there, Mike. What's. What are you hearing?

Well, all right. Well, I've got a couple things. First of all, we'll put the link to the book in the show notes, and it'll be in the outbound messaging. But.

First, a reflection. Just listening to you, Jim.

When you talked about messaging, storytelling, really, all the work you've done, the way I've framed it for a long time, is sell the transformation, not the transaction. And ultimately, what happens inside organizations and individuals, I think, is by giving someone an operating system upgrade or. Or a new identity, that's where the transformation takes place. Sometimes we outgrow our old identities or we're stuck in old traumas, in states that simply don't exist anymore, but we've been practicing them so long that we don't realize that we've outgrown it. And it's time to shed that and take something else on. So with that.

First of all, I'd love any commentary you have about just that reflection. And then I've got three little questions for you.

Well, I certainly am aligned with generally what you're saying, although the way I think about it, a couple of things. One is there's a lot of people needing to confront the fact that we need to be able to reinvent ourselves. We need to be able to generate a different way of being in most circumstances. And to do that, I'm considering that the key, and this sort of relates to the entrepreneur question is the way you reinvent yourself is by making new offers. You don't you. That your identity and my identity belongs to the community. It's not something that belongs in our head about who we think we are, who we'd like to be. So as a consequence, it's in the. It's in the assessments and the point of view and experience of others of who you are. And a big part of those assessments is do you keep your promises? Do you walk the talk? Do you live your word? And that has to do with what. What are you contributing and what are you offering in the world. So I think that's the key, in my experience, to getting, to reinventing and expanding and shifting your identity in terms of the transformation. In addition to what you said, I would say for me, Transformation has always been about possibility. It's always been about relationship. And that when you have an authentic shift in how you relate to the world or an authentic shift in how you observe your world, you're effectively in a different world. So transformation is not change. Transformation is changing your relationship in a way that there are possibilities and choices that you didn't have before. And that's the way I begin to think about how it happens. And I also think, by the way, and this is also true in my book, that all of these capabilities are innate in human beings. As teachers, I know sometimes we think we have something to give the student rather than. I'm much more of the Socratic frame of mind that our job is open, open possibilities. So students can. Can express innate capabilities that are already there. Sort of like the ability to read. Everybody has an ability to read, but not everyone is literate.

Yeah, those are. Wow.

It take. We could unpack everything you just said that could take us hours or days. So that was really thoughtful. Thanks for that.

So here's my next little question. And I promised a little history lesson, but you were around and did some stuff with Werner Erhart who folks who aren't familiar with that goes back to the est landmark days.

Early transformation, at least what got commercialized. But I just curious about your perspective looking back at that.

Historically where coaching transformation change was, where it is now. Could you give us a contrast history lesson and maybe just reflect on that era and working with a big personality like Werner?

Well, it's interesting because I think I do have a pretty good handle on the history at least up until mid-80s. But. But the, the transformation was a dream. It was a. It was a. An old word that was. Suddenly Werner's experience was able to breathe a certain life into it. There were a couple of million people that had done the training by the time I, I moved on.

The. The.

Vision of transformation really was more experiential in those days. It was more about being able to put the past in the past. It was really about telling the truth. It was, it was very connected to a lot of other, I would say New age offers and stories and interpretations. He was a kind of smorgasbord of a lot of different things. But Werner's genius, I think was in being able to appreciate transformation as a distinction, not as a process. And that when he was able to do that, he, he could then use his experience. And he had reportedly. And he did, I think, have this sort of eureka moment when he was driving across the bridge in San Francisco that was all written up in his biography. But when he had that eureka moment, what he got was that this is it. There's nothing else going on but reality. And if you can get that, reality doesn't care what you think. And if you can really be present to reality and sort of disconnect from needing to either fix it or process it or understand it or do something like that, you, you have this extraordinary experience of freedom. And more importantly, you begin to realize that, that you have thoughts, but you're not your thinking. You know, you, you, you have feelings, but you're not your feelings. And many of these, these ideas were not original to Werner, but he was able to package them in a way in the form of the training that allowed a lot of people to get consistently that sort of quote, enlightened experience. And when they got that, that became the big it. And as a consequence, a lot of people still report that that was one of the major experiences in their lives. I don't know much about what they're doing now.

I don't either. But at the time I didn't take the original S, but I got some of the trainings later and met WERNER in the mid-70s, I guess.

But it seemed like to me that the genius that he brought to the thing was.

Of, of a, a real life example of the kind of education that we're talking about that comes from within when the space is created. You know, he's not putting in a lot of data. That was what impressed me. I remember there was one exercise where we were doing this seemingly ridiculous thing of standing up and sitting down and standing up and sitting down. But there was a certain moment when suddenly, oh, I see what's going on. But, you know, nobody told me what was going on. And it was like I could see there was maybe 120 people in the room and one after the other, I could almost see the person. Oh, you know, and it took us all night to get there, you know, but it was worth it because it came from inside. It wasn't any input. Somebody was putting. They were literally creating a space for a particular type of transformation and then letting it happen. That was incredibly impressive because that's a different type of pedagogy. Then.

I'd read about that when the Greeks were around back to 2,500 years ago. But I'd never seen it in real life. It had never been in my high school or elementary school or college or even Stanford. PhD.

You know, I agree, Gay. There's a common belief that.

Change is about modifying what's, what's there. And a lot, Mike, you asked me where, where I think it's stripped. I think one of the problems with the general transformation movement is that the word transformation, like many of these terms, has sort of become overused and has become kind of jargon. Now if we talk about transformational leadership and every other person is talking about transformation, and I think they're mostly talking about big change. Transformation at its heart, in its, in its core, I don't believe is about change. It's about a different relationship with life. It's about a different space in which to be. It's about your way of being in the world. And I think that's, that's really the, the shift that's, that's going on in the world right now is that, is that we're sort of somewhere trying to deal with this historical way of understanding life as a kind of mechanical thing and everything's objective and people are objects and you know, all those different things that have sort of come with our history, most of those ideas are breaking down. And so now people are, are struggling to try to reconnect with something authentic and something that has authentic value to them. And so I, I, you know, it's, it's, it's a process. I have no idea where it's going.

Other than what I've already told you about the Star Trek metaphor. But I have great compassion anyway.

I have a lot of compassion for all of us. Because if you think about it like I was born in 1945, you think of the number of changes, big changes since 1945. You know, we came in with the atom bomb. That's a huge change. That's a shift that like none other. And then we get Vietnam and the Korean War, and then we get the Iraq war, and then we get Afghanistan, and then we get pandemic. And in the middle of all of this is all sorts of worldwide conflagrations and the whole structure of things has changed. I was just having a memory of my grandmother who loved fresh oysters. And there's a story in our family where she got in the buggy and drove all the way to town, which was about 10 miles or a two hour buggy ride to get some fresh oysters. And I was thinking about that because.

I could pick up the phone and get fresh oysters brought to my door here within 30 minutes. And that's a big change because everything is moving so much faster. You know, it took continuing my grandparents, it took them three weeks to get in A buggy on their honeymoon from Alabama down to Florida where they were going.

And.

That'S a real difference from where we are today.

And, well, and when, when you're our age, gay, I think it's also easy to appreciate or begin to reflect. You know, we, we've been living history. I mean, it's one thing to look at the chapters in the book and talk about the 60s and the 50s and all these different, you know, periods in, in our last 60, 70 years, but, but it's another thing to appreciate you were there. You know, I often wonder, you know, how, how many people actually appreciate that every day they're living history, they're not just watching it. You know, and the more we, the more we can appreciate that. I think it begins to reconnect us. At least it reconnects me with the, the most appropriate way I can relate to everything is, is kind of with a sense of wonder. You know, I mean, it's amazing. I mean, you know, the artifacts and the stuff and all that stuff's interesting, but that is all happening and that it's all happening, you know, simultaneously at the same time. We're dealing with 8 billion people on the planet. We're dealing with climate change, we're dealing with breakdowns in our political models. We're dealing with an entirely reconfiguration of the world, of civilization and I think what it means to be a human being.

Yeah, there's that old Chinese malediction that says, may you live in interesting times. It's a curse.

Well, I've got another question and I'm going to address this really to both of you, because you have the benefit of having spent a lot of time in the world of. I'm going to just call it transformation, for lack of a better term. I don't know if you prefer a different word. And it has to do with being and staying relevant and being useful. And I talk to a lot of business owners about this and for many, for example, that go through an evolution and attain and reach their goals, they hit their brass ring, they have plenty of money in the bank. And then.

It really start dealing with a different set of demons. So, for example, or old traumas. So one of them is.

Let'S say they have a big financial exit. They're like, maybe it was luck. Did I really deserve this? Did I really earn it? Or they exit and they realize that when they leave their business, when they leave whatever they were doing.

Their ability to gain momentum again is reduced. It gets harder and harder to start and Restart. And what they really end up facing is.

Do I add value, do I create value? Or they realize how difficult it is to be and stay relevant and to be heard. So I'm curious, through your perspective, two things. One is, what are you doing right now to be and stay relevant yourself after being in the industry as long as you have been? And then what's your perspective on this after working with tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of people over the course of your career?

Well, I'll give.

I'll give an answer and I'm interested what gay's going to say as well. One of the principles that I live with is, is. Is one called come from where you want to go.

I think that when, when we are. When we're beginning or when we're starting to create career or whatever we're doing, we have a vision of sorts of some sort, and we tend to give ourselves to that vision. And that vision uses us.

In a very specific. Specifically, it's using us by giving myself to that. And then when we succeed, we start to think it had to do with us and we start to take credit or we start to believe that it's something that what we know is actually why it was successful. When I talk to people, I'd say nine out of 10 times, they have no idea what their power is. You know, they think they're powerful because they're smart or because they're rich or because they're beautiful. You know, the fact is, if you just look at your network of friends, most of them, I suspect, are very powerful to you. But the reason they're powerful to you is not the reason that they think they're powerful. And so it begins to reflect. There's a kind of human blindness that's always present. And I think when people are successful, they become trapped in that kind of blindness where they believe that it's about them rather than about their relationships and about the kindnesses and the support and the whole network of people that allowed them to be successful. In other words, they get trapped in some form of a egocentric story. And I think that that kills their creative juices. And I think that destroys the possibilities that they would imagine that they could have. And so what they do is they try to think about what's relevant rather than just be relevant. So I. The way I handle this in my own life is I declare that I am relevant no matter what I'm doing. I don't spend any time trying to figure it out. I don't try to, you know, I'll leave that up to history or the community or my clients to decide whether I'm relevant or not. I just want to be authentic in terms of what I'm offering and what I see is missing. So most of my value is what I see when I'm a coach. Seeing what's missing is why coaching is so integral to human performance. It's why great performers and champions always have coaches, because no one can observe themselves in action. So people pay me not for what I know, they pay me for what I see. And I see things because I'm committed to be open and observe. And I don't try to figure it out or analyze it or. Or apply some model to figure out the stuff. I'm just reporting. That's what looks missing to me. And more times than not, I'm. I'm seeing something that other people are missing because they're trapped in their own blindness.

I think that has a lot to do with good therapy or good transformation in general, is the idea that.

People get stuck, especially as they get more successful. They often close their circle of people that they listen to and talk to, and often close out voices that they don't want to hear. Which is the exact opposite of how you want to keep yourself relevant, I think, is you want to stay open to listening from all sorts of different directions and also.

To. I think it actually takes a heartfelt living, sincere commitment to daily learning and daily growth. I think if you don't have that, if you haven't really put your heart and head on the line there, saying, this is what I'm after here on this planet. I want to learn. I want to open up as much of my potential as I possibly can. If you've made those kind of commitments, you're in a very different space than a great deal of humanity. And I think that ultimately, you know, I don't know if everybody's going to start thinking like an entrepreneur, but I noticed more people today thinking like entrepreneurs than. There wasn't even a book on entrepreneuring when I was first trying to learn entrepreneuring. And now you have a gigantic stack of them in the library.

Well, I'm even fond of the term solo. You know, I think. I think is. I think as more and more people are appreciating that the, the corporate relationship, where you're looking for some entity to give you a job is. Is pretty thin at best. And more times than not, that contract is being broken. And as a consequence, people are saying, if I'm going to make a living, if I'm going to have a life. It's going to be up to me, which is kind of step one toward being an entrepreneur. And then whether you're a freelancer, you know, offering something, or whether you're, again, the gig economy doing projects, you're effectively entrepreneurial. And the more successful you come, then you start to. To engage with other entrepreneurs who are making offers that you need. And you're starting to reinvent the whole enterprise from being rather a monolithic entity that's trying to get you to fill predefined job slots to being being spaces or openings in which there's lots of stuff that's needed and wanted if you've got the willingness and the commitment. And I agree with you about commitment, Gay. If you've got the willingness and commitment to take care of what needs being taken care of.

Early in my career, I made a choice when I was coming out of graduate school. I made a lot of noise and created a lot of controversy by kind of questioning what we were doing there. Because the way I looked at it, psychology had moved so far away into all sorts of niches and departments and everything that we were forgetting two basic things. It needed to be about people feeling better inside themselves, and it needed to be about people optimizing their relationships so they experienced more joy and got more productivity out of their relationships. And all the other peripheral stuff that people thought about. And everything to me, was just wasting our time if we weren't focusing more in on those two things. And so I remember some of my professors, you know, kicking me around the block because I wouldn't make a choice between was I going to be a university professor or was I going to be a clinical psychologist? And I said, well, I want to do both. But then there's this other thing that I really think we ought to be doing, and that's kind of where I put my attention, was what do we need to do in order to feel a flow of clarity and loving, good energy in our bodies? And what do we need to do to have that flow in our relationships with other people? Because that looked like the two big problems to me. And so. But I'm glad I held out for that because I've studied that carefully now for the last 50 years, and I know a lot about it now. And those happen to be two really important things in life. So I feel like, as far as.

I haven't felt any irrelevancy and I never have. I'm 76 now, and actually I probably sell more books now than I did when I was 50. You know, even though I did quite well back then, I think it's what you do every day that counts, not what you did yesterday. And, you know, my mantra in life is that I'm here to expand every day in abundance, love, and success, and also contribute those things to other people. So if I'm in the sweet spot of that, I don't even think about relevancy at all.

Thank you. Yeah, that's some deep stuff. I want to share something that I had. It's a play with words, but I had a huge aha today, Jim. And so I come very much from the perspective of growth, sales, marketing, selling. One of my favorite clients has a great saying. He says, every day is a great day to sell. And I love that phrase. And I've turned it into an act of love. It's an act of providing value. And you said something which is.

The way we reinvent ourselves is we make new offers. And in the world I've been in for a long time, you know, anytime you wanted anything, anytime you needed anything. And there's a great copywriter who used to say, talk about writing a swimming pool. And it came from, supposedly, John Lennon one day woke up and said, I want a new swimming pool. I'm going to write a song. And it was actually Paul McCartney. It's essentially, he knew that he could write down a couple of some lyrics and send it in and he'd get money. And the same is true with making offers, which is providing value, presenting a sales page. Gary Halbert, by the way, is that famous copywriter for anyone who will end up writing and saying, who was that?

But you flipped it around. Which is it? This internal mechanism to become something new, to become. Become more valuable is by making a new offer. And I gotta tell you that one tiny little nuance is. It's like an idea virus swimming around in my head right now. It was super, super big takeaway.

You know, I think. I think you. Going back to that question you asked about the early days of est, in that era, I think I was a. I was a pretty good salesman as a young man. I broke the. Broke the Xerox sales record a couple of times my second or third month of working for the company. And. And of course, Xerox machines in those days were hot. You could. Couldn't get them off the truck fast enough. So I don't. I can't claim much credit, but I. I did. I did develop an identity as a salesman. And one of the things that. And this goes Also to your other earlier question, one of the big leaps I did was when I began to shift the idea of selling to the idea of enrollment. And I developed a lot of the theory and practices around at least the transformational network between enrolling people in something and trying to sell them something. And I think the best salesman, because I'm not talking about the title, the best salesmen are enrollers. They're people who are connected and listening to the concerns of the customer. They're not focused, they're not fixed on the product that they're selling, and they're not trying to get. They're not trying to force the consumer to believe them. They're able to stand in the shoes of the consumer and then show them that what they're offering is going to be something that they would choose. So it's a difference between enrolling in school versus being sold, sold a class, you know, and it's all about who is, about where do you locate the responsibility for the choice? Did the salesman make you buy it or did the salesman open up a possibility for you that allowed you to step into something that you hadn't seen as available before?

So thank you for that. And the truth is, I actually use the word enroll. I don't say pitch and sell normally, except to blanket the idea for people who are not familiar with the concept of enrolling. So I'm 100% bought into that from a philosophical point of view. And I think it also opens up an additional possibility, which is flipping the script and having someone apply in order to enroll, because that reverses the psychology of I'm. Instead of me pushing something on you or trying to manipulate or convince you of something, it's for you to come in and want that future possibility, want to experience that transformation or the reinvention or what the result, outcome, benefit will be. It's enrolling in the possibility to use.

Some of your time. I also think one of my maxims is coaches do not go into a game to see who's going to win.

It feeds this notion of coming from where you want to go, or what Gandhi used to say about if you want the future to happen, be the vision.

And the idea is when you're in service to people or you're connected with loving people, then almost anything you have is going to be authentically valuable and it's going to at least be acknowledged in terms of where it's coming from. And so I think it's really useful to have people kind of just keep letting go of trying to make the world what you want and start really being of service in the world that you have.

That's how to live in a real time world.

That's a.

Well, Jim, it's been really great without people reading books. Dave, it's been really great hearing some of your ideas before we close up shop here. You've got any last minute things you'd like to put into the conversation?

Well, we can talk about it some other time, but you asked me earlier, before the call about what am I working on now. And I'm mostly working on the idea of moods. I'm beginning to appreciate that everything is happening in some mood or another. And that while we can talk about being and we can talk about space and we can talk about transformation, a lot of those terms are fairly abstract.

What I'm now beginning to appreciate is that because moods are so universal and because people do, if they stop and think, recognize moods, it can provide a kind of pathway for transformation or at least a more, perhaps more efficient pathway for transformation than some of the other models and approaches and.

Ways of getting at things have been. So that's sort of my current. What I'm mulling on.

Cool. And working on your golf game.

Yeah, I'm gonna into that.

I wish all this worked in golf. It's funny, I was talking to my golf coach up in Carmel. He said he. He coaches all these enlightened people. He was coaching some. Some of Dalai Lama's first team and he said they get upset and throw clubs just like everybody else.

I know.

If I were a little bolder, I'd say the name of a famous guru that lasted about 10 minutes on the golf course before he blew his stack.

All right, well, great.

One of the things I really appreciate and have appreciated about knowing Jim over the years is that you come from this history of being around for a long time. So it really makes a lot of the things you say have extra value. And the other thing that I really appreciate about you is how articulate you can be about inner experiences and about processes. And that's something that, you know, that's a gift and a talent that you have to develop over the years. So I really honor you for developing that ability to see in the bigger picture while you're focusing on the very specific.

Thank you. Thank you both. Yeah, yeah.

No, this has been really great though. What I love about the way your brain works, Jim, is the level of nuance and subtlety. And just this idea of operating inside of moods is. I can just tell this is like a 12 layer dip.

Thought process and conversation. And I, I do believe that profound learnings happen inside of the nuance. It's something the current culture, American culture, doesn't understand, the distinction between.

What is a threat and what is a nuance. And we love to live in this black and white world of guy, bad guy and how things have gotten politicized. And I think freedom and peace and opportunity and true growth occurs inside all these subtle shades of gray and nuance and human communication and relationship lives in that as well. And that's really a big part of what I got out of listening to you today.

I certainly appreciate both of you for the opportunity to have this conversation.

Thank you very much for joining us.

Well, yeah, well, I'll wrap this up and say first of all, we've got a short link for Jim's book And it's@bigleappodcast.com JS or Jim Selman. That's real easy and that'll bring you to living in a real time world. Six capabilities to prepare us for an unimaginable future as relevant now as ever. And the second thing is one of the best things that you can do for Gay and I of course is leave a comment Share like if you're watching this on YouTube, subscribe to the channel and give us an upvote. And if you and leave a comment as well. And if you're listening to the podcast, make sure you leave a comment and a review. That means a lot to both of us. So Gay, anything else to wrap us up?

Tell them a little bit more about the Big Leap Experience. The Big Leap event.

Oh yeah, yeah. Well, one of the things that Gay and I have been working on for a while and we're about to do is the Big Leap Experience. It's an opportunity to spend time with us, get coach consulted advised and help you break through whatever kind of challenges or barriers or upper limits challenges that you have in your life. And this is for you. If you've listened to or read any of Gay's books and you're looking for that opportunity to reinvent, rethink yourself and apply some of the things that you hear inside this podcast and you can learn more@bigleappodcast.com apply or check this out. Gay you can text BL 285-5955-3958 so we'll get back to you as soon as you apply and send you an invitation link as well. So that's what I got for you.

It's going to be big fun. All right everybody. Thank you so much for joining us on the Big Leap podcast today. And thanks again to our guest, Jim Selman.

All right. Bye, everyone.