How To Engineer Luck

All right, everyone, welcome to How to Engineer Luck, how to get clear and closer to what you want in life and business. What I'm going to do here is I am going to provide you with 9 ideas categorized under 3 headings. Those 3 headings are determine what you really want in life. Second one is design your system, and the third is close the gap. So 3 ideas under each of those core ideas. And the idea here is that you can become the kind of person that, uh, is better able to understand and get what they want in life, to stack the odds in your favor, um, by, by putting into, uh, use these 9 fundamentals. And so obviously nothing is guaranteed in life, um, and so I— there, there is no prescriptive formula here. I can't guarantee that these things will absolutely work for you. But what I have found is that for me and for the clients that I've worked with that have employed these principles, what they have done is they have increased clarity about what they really want and how to, how to get it. They have been able to create greater certainty or confidence about their ability to get what they want, and they have been able to collapse time. They've been able to get what they want and more efficiently and more effectively. And so that is what's on offer. I'm going to— I've already warned the group that's here, but I will warn you for watching, listening, or watching in replay. These 9 things are going to be delivered very fast. They're all unpacked in much more detail and other content that I've created. If you would like— if there's an idea that you would like more information about, simply email me at Scott@creativeonpurpose.com. Uh, tell me what it is that you want to know more about. I'll be happy to send you a link so that you can, uh, get that information, uh, right away. So let's begin with determining what you really want. So the, the three subcategories here are: don't fall in the time and money trap, don't fall in the woulda, coulda, shoulda trap, and Don't fall in the identity trap, the time and money trap. When I ask any client what they really want, it always— the first response is always time or money. And maybe every once in a while, attention, right? They want some version of fame and fortune. Time, getting more time for something else or getting more money to get something those are not ends in and of themselves. They are means. Money is a means to get some, to purchase something, to invest in something. Time is a means that you invest in the things that you care about. So when you are thinking about what you really want and you catch yourself doing some variation of, I want more time, I want more money, I want you to go deeper. Okay, what would you do with more money? What would you do with more time? What would you do if people paid more attention to you? And then I want you to go a layer deeper. I want you to define what that is.

Why?

Why do you want that thing? And then ask why again. You can ask why up to 5 times, and it will give you much greater clarity about what you really want. So, um, I'll try to give some examples along the way here. You know, when, uh, the example I often use is in August of 2020 when my son and daughter-in-law announced that they were pregnant. My wife and I wanted to provide daycare, and so what we wanted to do was to be able to be available 8 hours a day, 5 days a week to provide daycare for our grandson. Um, that required a way to, um, do what— make a living, make a better living, make more money. It's time, those and those. But that was not the main priority. The priority was how do we craft a life that allows us to care for our grandson? That was the force multiplier. That was the thing that made us take a harder look at the way we were already spending time and money. And helped us also figure out how we could increase revenue while reducing the amount of time invested in earning it. So time and money trap, don't fall for that. What's the force multiplier? What's the thing that you would really want? What's the thing that's going to make you really happy? The woulda, coulda, shoulda trap. Penny and I talk about this quite often in our sessions, right? I wish I could have shown up the way I'm showing up now 20 years ago. Well, The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The next best time is right now, right? The woulda, coulda, shouldas are not going to do you any good. Shame and regret are invitations that you do not need to accept. They are— obviously, they are natural responses, human responses, emotional responses to, you know, things that are revealed to us. But We don't have, like, there's nothing we can do about the past. So any narrative that you're spinning around shame and regret about things that happened to you, um, bad breaks that you've had, circumstances, whatever, it's not going to do you any good to spin cycles on that. What you have is right now, what's going on right now. What do you want next? And how are you going to engineer luck to get you there? The second thing under this woulda, coulda, shoulda trap is this idea of scrutiny and expectations. How much time, attention, and energy do you have invested in other people's scrutiny and expectations about who you are and who you want to become? Right? Our institutionalized educational and occupational systems bake into us this idea that we are going to, we're going to define goals and define ourselves based on external ideas, and not look inside at our internal gifts and our internal passions and purpose and all that sort of thing. So what are you going to do to avoid the woulda, coulda, shouldas that come from other people? The scrutiny and expectations of others. And the third is— this comes from my friend, um, uh, now I'm gonna forget my friend's name, uh, Robertson. Mrs. Robertson. Hello, Mrs. Robertson. It will come to me. Casey. Casey Robertson. Um, Casey said this thing to me at the end of a conversation that has really stuck with me. You know, the thing about getting what you really want in life is that it's actually possible because if you're on this call, you actually possess everything you need in terms of resources, intelligence, skill to actually design the life that you actually want to live. And the thing is, because you have so, so many choices are available, so much possibility in front of you. That this thing that Casey says that really resonates with me is, remember that you are, you are so free that you can choose bondage. Remember that you are so free that you can choose bondage. You know, this technology provides you with all the tools that you need to build the community that you want to build, to build the program that you want to build, to build the connections that you want to build. And it's also filled with all sorts of extractions and shiny objects that you will waste your time on. So don't be, don't, don't be so free that you choose bondage. You have to be, you have to be focused, bold, and disciplined about how you invest your precious assets of time attention, effort, and money. And the third under this, um, whole idea of determine what you really want in life is to, to the identity trap. Don't fall into the identity trap. You must know yourself. What I find most of the time is that people generally can pretty quickly, if they don't already have a good idea of what they want, what they actually don't know is where they're starting and what they're starting with, because they don't really know who they are. Because we are very attached to our— the roles and goals maybe that have been determined for us by parents, schooling, occupation, relationships, uh, you know, our intimate relationships in our lives. And, you know, I work with a lot of people that are in midlife and navigating that transition between the first and the second half of life. And the first half of life is very much about the roles and goals associated with education and occupation and family raising, right? Making a living, raising a family. And in midlife, those things are starting to go away, right? Our career will end. And so, you know, our intimate relationships may, may, may be changing. Our role as parent will be evolving, you know, when— and be a less, uh, important part of our lives. So don't over— don't be attached to the things that used to really define you. Don't be too attached to the the goals that have defined you in the past or that presently define you. Actually, what you want to do is look into your becoming. What is required of the person that you want to be? So my favorite thing to say at this point is that you're becoming the person that you want to become lies in being more of what you've already always been. Right? You were born sufficient and whole, possessing everything you needed to, to thrive, and, uh, with all the gifts necessary. With, you know, as an infant, you turned yourself into a walker and a talker with very little external instruction or, or, um, or help. And there are these things that you used to love to do as a child that probably will actually inform the things that you actually want to get as you move into this next chapter of your life. So recognize that roles and goals evolve and change. Be thoughtful about what you need to let— what identity and again, roles and goals you need to let go of so that you can step into the roles and goals that you actually want for yourself. And the final piece here is around narrative. We are creatures that make sense of ourselves, our, uh, our situation, and each other through storytelling. I'm telling myself a story about myself. I'm telling myself a story about the story that I think you're telling yourself about me. And I'm telling myself a story about, uh, the situation that I'm in, the circumstances that I'm experiencing. Um, and that's all storytelling. You get to choose your narrative. And so if there is a narrative that is not, uh, feeding your, your health and happiness, then it's time to let go of that narrative and choose a narrative that allows you to become a little bit more empowered, to see, uh, and step into and stay in your power to frame your thoughts or reframe your thoughts and to decide and do what is necessary to do next. All right, that moves us into part 2. And this is, uh, part 2 is about designing your system. So the 3 things under this piece here are, um, recapture and reallocate. What, uh, think of the 3 things that are necessary that must be done to get what you want. And third, develop a habit of taking the next micro step, step every day. Okay, so designing your system begins with where are you at? And some of you have gone through this process with me. You know, it's something I go through with all my clients. Like, you know, the first thing we think of when we're thinking about getting working with someone is I can't afford this. It's too expensive. Right? And that might be— and that's never the case. It's never actually the case. It's more the case that I don't believe you, that you can actually help me, or I don't believe that— I'm sorry, I don't believe you, or I don't believe that you can help me. And so what I will often do with clients is say, listen, let's take a look at the assets that you have and see if we can't find the resources that are necessary for you to do this thing that you've already expressed that you want to do, because we're on this call. And so we go through an audit of where, where are you spending your money? Where are you spending your time? Where are you putting your energy? And what's the return on those investments? You know, what happens if we delete all those apps that you never use but are on a recurring monthly payment? What happens if we dial back on the number of subscription streaming services that you're, you're using to just escape your life at the end of the day so that you can actually have some resource to invest in the life that you actually want to make for yourself? Where are you spending your time? Where are you spending your energy? How can we recapture some of that so that we can reallocate it toward the life that we say that we want to live? The 3 things. So this is a little riff-rant about system reliability. Those of you that have been with me for a while have heard me talk about this many times in many different domains. But the bottom line is we are creatures that, that crave more. Our bias is for more, and it's not for closer. But the thing about more is more never gets you closer. More always gets you further away. Because a system, your program, your process, your strategy for getting what you want is made up of the things that you're doing. Nothing that you're— and the thing about systems is we think if we keep adding components, that sudden somehow we'll find the silver bullet, that one missing component, that one missing thing, and that will get us where we want to be. But actually, systems— system efficiency is not an additive process, it's a multiplicative process. The efficiency of any system is a product of the efficiency of each of its component parts. If I have something that I do that is 90% effective, which is very, very hard to do, and I, I add another 90% effective component to that system, I've just reduced my efficiency from 90% to 81%. If I add another component, even if it's 90% effective, I just reduce it to 73%. If I add another component, even if it's at 90%, I just reduce it to 64%. So one of the things that we're doing with this Recapture and Reallocate as part of this is we're removing the cruft. What's your system for getting what you want? And if we just get rid of all the things that actually you don't need, we automatically raise the efficiency of your system. I believe that it rarely takes more than 3 essential components of a system to get what you want. So some of you, here have been through the Coaching Business Prescription. We define the 3 core components of that system to be you need an irresistible offer, an eager audience, and a 30-minute-a-day sales success strategy. Now, all of those things we need to get just irresistible enough offer, eager enough audience and successful enough 30-minute-a-day sales success strategy, and we can start to build in some certainty that you're going to get the results that you want, that you're going to get that monthly revenue number, that, uh, you fill those, uh, programs. What do most coaches do? Well, they don't focus just on the offer, the audience, and the sales strategy. They start listening to the gurus that tell them they need a webinar, so they put in all that time, money, and effort into a webinar. They you know, someone tells them they need to have a logo, they need to have a website, they need to have an opt-in lead magnet, they need to have an email sequence, they need to have a YouTube channel, they need to have an Instagram strategy, and on and on and on. Every time you add one of those things, you are driving down the efficiency of your system. And what you've actually done is turned managing all those components into a full-time job, none of which has anything to do with the thing that you love to do, which is changing lives by being a coach. So system reliability is all about clearing the cruft. And then the third piece is raise the floor on the weakest component. If you have, um, 3 things that are working at 90, 60, and 80%, you take that thing at 60% and you increase its efficiency, because the pay— the return on investment of raising the floor is astronomically higher than trying to push the ceiling of the thing that's at 90%. You can't— if the time, attention, money, and effort it takes to go from 90% to 100% is enormous, you have diminished returns when you're pressing on the ceiling. But it's not— doesn't require that much time, money, and effort to raise something from 50% to 60% or 60% to 70%. So you're always raising the floor, not pushing the ceiling. Okay, number 3 under design your system is this idea of developing a daily habit of microstepping. What's the next smallest step that I need to take that's going to get me closer to what I want in life? This is how your engineering luck— so we've actually kind of covered the first thing, which is the stop doing list. Like, what are those things that you do that are on your to-do list that actually are not helping you at all close the gap between where you are and really where you want to be. You need to stop doing those things. One-minute habits. What got you here won't get you there. What got you where you are now is not going to get you where you want to be. And yet we are creatures that 95% of what I I thought and did today is what I thought and did yesterday, and it will be what I think and do tomorrow. The only way to, um, and that's, you can Google that, that's science. If you're going to get a different result, you're going to have to see and be and do things differently. So how do you change behavior? Well, it's not by saying I'm go, I'm 30 pounds overweight, I don't exercise, so I'm going to jog 3 miles every single day. Because you won't do that and you won't do that for a number of days and then you'll just quit. You don't need to go from zero exercise to 3 miles, 7 days a week. You need to go from zero exercise to walking to the top of the driveway. See if you can do that 7 days a week. And if you can do that for 7 days, you just created a microhabit that you can build on. What happens if you go from, uh, instead of just going to the driveway, you go to the end of the street? Do that for 7 days. What about going around the block? Do that for 7 days. It's micro stepping into the habits and into the possibility that you want to have. And the last thing under this piece is, um, and I blogged about this very recently, and it's, um, what I call the progress multiplier. At the end of every day, I go through a checklist, right? I have, you know, this— here's where I am, here's where I want to be, and what did I— the first thing is, what did I need to get done that I got done today? Give yourself some credit and a pat on the back for getting something done that needed to get done. Second question: what's something that needs to get done but I'm not sure how. Write that down because there you've identified a skill you need to develop, a task you need to outsource, or the third thing, I'm not sure if I should do this or do it now. So sometimes we think that we need to do things that actually don't need to be done or don't need to be done now. And so we want to write those things down and put them aside. Because what we want to do is, again, develop this daily discipline of taking one micro step into the possibility that we imagine for ourselves. All right. We're in the homestretch here. Third step is close the gap. How are you going to increase clarity, increase certainty, and collapse time? Clarity, certainty, collapse time. Closing the gap. Once you've established— so you've just defined in step 1 or what you really want. Step 2, you've defined where you really are. So where I want to be, where I really am. And you've established the 3 steps that need— that the 3 things that need to get done to get that result. How are you going to close that gap? How are you going to do it in less time, with less effort, and with reduced risk? So the first thing is along the lines of raising the floor that we just talked about, but the thing to remember is that whether we're talking about a business endeavor or a life endeavor, we're talking about a movie, not a snapshot. And too often what we do is we look at what's hap— what just happened, and we think that that's somehow tells the whole story about where we are. But what we want to do is not look at this single moment, but what's the rolling average? So an example I always use here is, you know, if I tell you that I'm 20 pounds overweight and you start giving me advice about exercise and nutrition and drinking water or, and what have you, You're giving me information without any context. If I tell you that I'm 20 pounds overweight and I'm trying to lose weight, but I weighed 30, I was 30 pounds overweight a month ago. The only advice to give me is keep doing what you're doing because it's working, right? So don't miss, don't get blown off track and don't blow yourself up just because of a snapshot. What's the rolling average? Look in the rearview mirror every once in a while. We love to look ahead. We're aiming aspirational creatures and we're always looking out that windshield, even though the windshield's really dirty because we don't wash it regularly. And, and we don't take enough time to look in the rearview mirror to see how much ground we've already covered. We pay way more attention to the gap than we do to the game. To— that's a Dan Sullivan line. Along those same lines, um, so we talked about raising the floor already, and, and, and, you know, the— I guess another thing under this, you know, um, trying to get things done more effectively and efficiency, in addition to paying attention to the rolling average, raising the floor, Um, how are you, how are you holding yourself accountable? How are you making sure that you're showing up every day and doing the work? You know, are you part of an accountability group? Do you have an accountability buddy? Do you, are you part of a mastermind? Um, you know, are you working with a coach? Are you working in some sort of program? You want to have some, somebody that's checking on you because given leaving yourself to your own devices, you'll just figure out really clever narrative ways of, uh, rationalizing and justifying the fact that you're not getting where Uh, you not doing what you know you're supposed to do. Second part under this idea of, um, of, uh, closing the gap is looking in the mirror and not out the window. Uh, there's three things here. We've talked about Karpman's triangle before in the stepping into possibility section. Karpman's triangle is where in any situation where there's drama, there's three roles, and we can be playing any of these roles at any given time in any given situation. We all play these roles depending on the circumstances, but the roles are the victim, the, um, the, the savior, and the perpetrator. The victim is, uh, blaming their, their situation on some sort of, uh, villain, whether that's circumstances or a person, and they're waiting for the savior to swoop in and save them. The Savior is avoiding dealing with their own shit because they spend all their time saving other people because it makes them feel, um, valid and, um, worthy. But they are getting nowhere in their own lives because they're not looking in the mirror. They're always looking outside to see who they can save. And of course, the villain, uh, most of the time is, uh, just doing what they think they need to do, doing what they think is right, And, uh, you know, it's, it's, it's all relative, right? One person's villain is another person's victor. And so, you know, what if you catch yourself in a narrative around victimhood? You need to have an honest conversation about yourself because the only— you are the only person that can do anything about yourself and your situation. You get to decide the boundaries and guardrails that keep the, the well-meaning saviors and, and the, the ignorant villains out of your life. So pay attention to Karpman's Triangle. Pay attention to the Dunning-Kruger effect. The Dunning-Kruger effect is where we, um, look at someone's— we're looking at success and ability skill. And, you know, if you're a high— everyone in here is a highly skilled person, and we would think that skill gets rewarded, uh, with success. And, you know, all of us in here, I'm sure, have experienced that, you know, I'm really good at what I do, why am I not able to make a living doing what I want to do? And then you look, you know, at social media, and there's some bozo that, you know, doesn't seem to have brain in their head that is, you know, raking in money and building, you know, posing in front of Lamborghinis and, uh, their mansion and so forth. And so that creates this narrative in our head where we fall into this, you know, doom loop of, uh, depression. Like, or we actually buy that person's program because clearly they're successful, they must know something. Um, Don't measure your success or ability against anyone else's. Dunning-Kruger is very dangerous because you will spend a lot of time trying to emulate or learn the, the guru's way of doing things, and you're playing someone else's game and not playing your own game. You have to be able to have the fortitude and the confidence in your own ability and worthiness to figure out how do you forge your own path? How do you leverage your gifts and your assets and get what you want to get and play the long game instead of trying to play that short game by comparing yourself or purchasing from people that appear to be doing really well? Most gurus' programs will not work for you because they worked for the guru and you are not the guru, and they worked in the past and it's not the past, it's the present. The rocky road, uh, between intention or, uh, the intention-intervention gap. We've talked about this many, many times. We overestimate our ability to articulate our ideas, uh, and We do that even when we have witnessed what happens when we articulate our ideas. So this comes from that 1990 Stanford dissertation in psychology where, uh, the researcher had people divided into two groups: the guessers and, um, the performers. The performers chose a song from a list of 20 popular tunes and tapped it out and the person on the other end had to guess what it was. And so I'm here tapping out happy birthday, and I think that I am so good and so skilled that Sandra has at least a 60% chance of guessing what I just tapped, and Sandra actually has a 2% chance of guessing what I— and I— so I guess that I'm gonna be 80% effective and Sandra doesn't get it. So then we do it again and I tap out the song and I guess that I can— that she'll get it right 60% of the time. And even though I just proved that I'm not that good at, at tapping songs, Sandra still has a 2% chance. So we grossly overestimate our ability to communicate our ideas or to, um, overestimate the other person's ability to understand our motivation, our intention, and our articulation. And the last thing here is values versus virtue. Again, intention intervention. We all have these things that we believe in deeply—faithfulness, honesty, um, truth, what, justice, what have you, right? These values that are near and dear to our hearts. But if someone was able to walk alongside us invisibly all day long, would they be able to pick out that our virtue is expressed? Are we as honest as we think we are? Do we ever violate our own values, our principles and philosophies? We tend to not be very good custodians of the things that we espouse to, value and, and believe in. And so how do you close that gap? How do you become a person that actually lives, uh, their, the, their espoused values, which then expresses itself as virtue, as the content of your character. And last but not least, the biggest force multiplier for closing the gap is relationships. It's your biggest asset. The first relationship is your relationship with yourself, leading from the inside out. Talked about some of these things already. You know, the values and virtue is one of them, um, and the microstepping is, is one of them, and the stop paying attention to the scrutiny and expectations of others is another one of them. How, how do you, how do you stop seeking external instruction and validation, and how do you, um, seek that from within yourself? How do you explore and exploit your values, your core guiding principles and beliefs, your, your innate talents and skills? And how do you place yourself amongst people that share your values and need your talents to enhance their lives? Who do you associate with? The Jim Rohn quote, you are the average of the 5 people you spend the most time with, is, is, sounds great, but it isn't true. Because now the science is saying that you are not the average of the people that you spend the most time with. You are the cumulative average of everyone that you spend time with, everyone they spend time with, and everyone they spend time with, and everyone they spend time with. If you are a person that hangs out with smokers, they hang out with smokers, those people hang out with smokers, and those people hang out with most smokers, the chances that you're going to be a smoker, very, very high. And it, it, it trends with anything that you want to measure, weight, longevity, and success. So how do you, how do you raise your cumulative average? How do you surround yourself? So Again, I say this every time, I'm not encouraging any of you to ditch your loser friends and family that are dragging down your average. But you get to decide how much of your time, attention, and energy the people in your life get. And if there are people in your life that are not supporting the journey that you want to be on and are not, are not enhancing your health and happiness As you pursue the things that are meaningful to you, spend less time with them, invest less energy in them, pay less attention to them, and find the people that will be the mentors and the fellow travelers and, um, the students that you teach that will help you solidify your knowledge and, and find the holes in what you don't know. Uh, and that's actually the last part is, um, It's, uh, something I learned from a martial artist who has this plus-minus-equals idea. You want to surround yourself with people— you want to surround yourself with people in 3 categories. Who are the people above you that you could learn from? The mentors, the guides, the coaches, what have you. Who are the people that are your equals? The people that you can train with, practice with, travel with. And who are the people that are behind you that you can teach? Because the teaching of the things that you're learning is one of the best ways to not just solidify that knowledge, but you're putting it into act— you're putting knowledge into action, which is always how change happens. And you're also going to reveal the holes in your understanding that will help you, help you level up in whatever skill it is that you're trying to develop. All right. So as promised, that was a fire hose to the face. Again, we might do all of— we might break each of these things down and do 3 separate workshops in the future. That kind of depends on the response I get from all of you about this. With that, for those of you that came in late, This part of the, uh, presentation has been available to everyone that's a subscriber to the Substack or a member of the Creative on Purpose community in Success Finder. We're now going to invite those of you that are not paid subscribers or not, um, Catalyst community members to go ahead and, and seek the exits while, uh, the paid subscribers in the Catalyst Club members, uh, do a little Q&A and, uh, maybe a little, uh, case study. Thank you, guys. Excellent. Uh, Ed, not sure which Ed that is. That might be Ed Wiest, and if it's Ed Wiest, I think he recently became a paid subscriber, so we're gonna let him hang out. And, uh, if you're not a paid subscriber, Ed, karma, it's a bitch. Watch out. All right, so fire hose to the face. Did I do— did I, did I deliver on my promise?

Yeah, there was a lot. Yeah. Um, and some of it I've heard in other things. So it's like, so it's in this form today, but it's, it's, or expanding on or put together in this other way that is, is there, but there was a, there was stuff to write down. Well, here's my sandwich.

That's a great observation, Cato. And it gives me a chance to, um, You know, one of the things that I think is important when you're, um, building a brand and building a community and is, you know, the things that are your identifiers are going to be around that shared language, right? So the slang and the, um, signals and the shibboleths, all those things, you know, you— they be just become part of the language that we use and And it's a way of, you know, building insider status versus outsider, right? And it makes— sometimes it makes the outsiders want to have that FOMO where they want to learn more and come in. Um, but it, it's a way of elevating the status of the people that are kind of in the know. But here's another really— something else that you said that reflects an idea by my friend Lucas, which is you know, yes, you've heard some of these things in other applications and other workshops and other conversations, because everything that I just shared is tied to fundamental principles, and principles don't change, and principles have multiple applications, right? So, um, you know, Stoic philosophy is loaded with all kinds of foundational principles that apply broadly to all different kinds of people and in all different kind of situations. Um, and, uh, you know, they're true because they're, they're true. They're based on kind of, um, you know, so Lucas has philosophy, which are your core beliefs that don't change, your principles, which are, um, the core, uh, way of doing things that also don't change. And then you have strategy, which is the way that you do what you do, and then tactics, the, the, the, the, the, the, um, things that you try and test to execute the strategy to, uh, get the things that you want. And then the tools— he separates tools and tactics. I tend to bundle those two together, but yeah.

Oh, and I hope that didn't sound like an insult or anything because it wasn't.

No, no, no, no, no, just, uh, um, as far as feelings You can't insult me.

I have no heart. And I wasn't trying to. It's just as far as like seeing how the material moves through or the core philosophies as they are expanded on or used or come in. And also thinking about that idea too of— and this touches on that. I think a lot of— as I've talked to you about your work and you talk about your work and how you come to this. But helping the people understand where they are, that seems to be the— that's come up. You brought that up, that that's what they— they know where they want to go, but they don't know this, the part about the wiggle, right where they are. And I think that yesterday I was just running around in that idea of that you bring up, have brought up, about, um, is it start with— start with who, like who you are, who you are, not with why, about who are you. Is this understanding that ethical person, or what is driving you, what is your personal philosophy at this moment, in order to discover that where and what. The where, what, and why is all tied to the who are you and how have you become this. And then part of it too, like, because I was— I listened to your book that was a gift on Thanksgiving. Nice. Yesterday while I was cleaning my— doing some deep cleaning work in my kitchen, I was like, perfect time to listen to Scott's book. So it, uh, um, so I could listen to it like unbroken too, like all at once. Uh, but yeah, so I was hearing like what those things— so the same kind of principles that were starting to be formed in there that you are now expressing as that start with who. I was— I would— that was just something I was, I was noticing in this one. What really struck me was this idea of when it was in your wrap-up with the fellow travelers, or the, you know, looking around with your fellow travelers. And then I added this other little note. Well, the fellow travelers are really like, there's an entailment about, or the people who show up, like, because you're not traveling with the people aren't here, you know, most people don't show up. And so I was just thinking, like, I just need to, in my thing about like, and you do this too, because I see you doing this, like, you invited us to invite other people. And then Like, yeah, buddy, you invite other people, but are they really ready to show up? And if they're not going to show up, then they're not actually the fellow travelers. They're people that I want to be kind to and I will help when I can, but they're not actually the people that I'm moving forward with. You know what I mean? So that idea of traveler, because of that circumstance today, I was viewing it through this lens of—

So I Recently I had a conversation with a, a peer, a friend that, that, that is also, um, you know, is a really successful coach. And we were talking about this kind of a similar topic, and they said, you know, you can't save someone that doesn't want to be saved, right? I mean, if if, if they, if they can't show up, or if they can't raise their hand, or if they can't click a link and keep an open mind and sit in on something that might help them. Like, I've given up on, um, trying to figure out clever ways to get people to actually come to these conversations, because, like, why should I invest all that time, attention, and effort into trying to get people that aren't in, that, that aren't showing up when I have, uh, 6, 12, depending on the, uh, the thing, uh, that, that want to be here and that are here every single time? And why should I not just be present and work my magic for them to the best of my ability?

Anyway, it got me on that whole thing about, and these travelers and the people you invite, which was in your, which was in that wrap-up, and it just got me really thinking about that. And how do you find, how do you move with the people that are going to help be with you moving forward? Some of you help them, they help you. How does that happen?

And how, and, and are you paying attention for when it's time to no longer be fellow travelers, right? There's— I see it happen in a lot of— I— it happened to me in Alt MBA. Coming out of Alt MBA, I started a mastermind that was really helpful to me at the very beginning, and we stayed together for 3 years. But like that whole third year, I— we were not a mastermind anymore. It was like a tea and sympathy session. And I kept saying, hey, I thought like Can we do some hot seats? Can we do some hot— like, can we talk about our work? And everybody just wanted to whine and complain. And like, I tried for a year to get everybody back on track, and finally it was my mastermind I started. I said, I gotta go, you guys can— and they're like, oh, how could you? You know, it's like, we're not doing what we said we were here to do, and we haven't done it for a year. And I— at some point you got to give up and just move on. I'm, you know, Anybody that had hurt feelings eventually got over them, and we're still communicating and friends and all that. But, you know, the people— what got you where you are will not get you where you want to be. And so, you know, those— these things are always evolving and changing. Penny, as we're wrapping up, I want to give you a chance to, to weigh in.

No, I think, I think this is excellent. And I think I like— I think the reason you can go fast and put a lot is you've got a very clear structure with which you share that information. So once I can see that structure, it's easier for me to follow it and take it in. And I think I agree with Cato, the whole idea of sharing and finding the right people has been the issue for me a lot of the time because I haven't been with the people And when I got in a space that I could have had those people, I more or less let it go. And I think the biggest thing that I'm committed to now that I haven't been is really taking care of myself. That kind of, hey, stupid, you know, you really, you have to take care of yourself every moment. It doesn't matter. And once we get comfortable with that, of course, you know, and I just think that's the getting comfortable with that's okay. We don't have to sit and wait for somebody else to tell us or give us approval or whatever it is we're looking for. Yeah. I think it's huge. And I think this— I love this work. I, I love it. Um, yeah. And it's funny because I think I wasn't as ready for it as I am now.

Yeah.

I don't know if you would agree with that.

I know, I absolutely— you know, it's— everything happens right on time. Everything happens right on time. You know, I, I would not be— I could— there's no way that I could be the person that I am now 10 years ago. It's just, it would— it wasn't in my— yeah, me either. No. And so, um, that, you know, that's, that's why, in part why I have that riffraff around the shame and the guilt thing. Like, those are invitations. But yes, you're going to feel that because you're a human being, but it's not helping you, and it's not actually— and you can't do anything about it. And it probably isn't even actually true. Like, you were doing the best you could. Yeah. When you were that person in the past.

So, and now I can do just what you're saying. I can catch myself going in the wrong direction and saying, wait a minute, is this what I want to waste my time doing, or do I want to do something else? And what is that? And I can feel I have moments that I really feel this whole leveling up that I'm not the part, which I think is what you were saying about as you, as we get more whatever, we can, we can do more and, and construct our lives better.

Yeah, well, there's— I, I wasn't gonna— this, this is actually technically the December presentation for this group, um, but I'm going to— I've decided I am going to do another one in December that, um, something I've been kind of talking through with Nick and borrowing some of his ideas about Like, how do we stair-step our way into the things that we want? You know, so like, you know, I'm not a resolution person, but people are going to be making resolutions, and 99% of them will fail because that's the— because we don't stair-step. We say, I'm overweight, and I'm going to jog 3 miles a day, 7 days a week, and you jog for 3 days and then you miss a day, uh, and self-loathing seeps in. So you jog the next day, but then you skip 2 days, and then, uh, you know, you, you force yourself to jog that next day, but then you get sick and you don't run for the next 4 days, and then suddenly you just are like, fuck it. The world is against me. I can't do it. And, and then you quit. But you know, the point is you can't go from, I, I'm, I have never exercised to I can exercise 7 days a week. It's, I've never exercised. Can I exercise 1 day a week? Because if you can do that for 7 days or 12 day or 14 days or 21 days, then you can add the second day and then you can add the third day and, and then you can pay attention to like what's doable. We're always pushing on the ceiling, and the ceiling is your ultimate achievement. And the idea that you can beat your personal best is ridiculous because there's no evidence that that's possible. But if you're trying to do that every single day, you will blow yourself up, you will burn yourself out, and you will be complicit in your own failure. And all you're going to do is backslide right back to where you were. I've gone a few minutes over time, and, um, Jasper is trying to get in here to get his diaper changed. I mean, my grandma, not— not— he's smart, but he's not yet that smart. All right, gang, great to spend this time with you. See you, Scott. Yeah, see you all next time.

Thank you very much. Thank you.

You're very welcome. Thank you.