Rigid vs. Expansive Mindsets | Journey Principles Podcast 014

Welcome to the Journey Principles where we show you how to go from stuck to unstoppable with life strategies that work. Now here's your host and creator of the Transform youm Framework, Stephen Scoggins.

Hey, guys. Welcome back to the Journey Principles. So glad you could join us. Coming to you, recorded from the live event center here at the Journey Principles Institute in Raleigh, North Carolina. As always, sitting in with me is my good friend and mentor, mentee. We kind of have this ping pong thing going back nowadays. Connor Kraft, Director of Connections, who always shares with us our today's featured conversations. Connor, what are we talking about today? Holmes?

Absolutely. Well, on Tuesday we talked about. We started to talk about mindset. We got into that and this is the follow up podcast to that where we're really going to dive deep into the two types of mindsets that we've identified, which is rigid versus expansive thinkers. We talked in the last podcast about Carol Dweck and her book Mindset and how a lot of people are talking about that, where there's a growth mindset and a. What was it? Growth and fixed.

It's fixed and growth.

Yeah, fixed and growth. So, okay, so ours is very similar, ours rigid.

And it pulls from that. So there's a lot of mentorship that comes from that. So I pulled from Carol and a few other places when I started getting into the way people think. So Karen kind of came at it from the way in which the mind is focused or way in which the thought process works. I'm talking more along the lines of how the person actually thinks. We talked about one person being kind of a linear thinker and another person being kind of a perspective thinker, meaning they're going to gain all the different perspectives and stuff like that. What I thought we'd do is maybe dig deep into the different types and not say which one's right or which one's wrong.

Oh, okay, Right.

And then I'll let you know. Maybe I'll do it this way. Maybe I'll read one from each one. You can try to tell me. Guess maybe we should do that. Sure. You want to go for it?

Yeah, whatever you want.

All right.

Make it a game show. All right, so these are going to be characteristics of rigid versus expansive thinkers or mindsets. So think grow versus fixed mindset, rigid versus expansive. Two core thinking styles. Right. One will lead you towards ultimate success and, you know, everything you've ever dreamed of, one might keep you stuck. It's going to impede you.

It's going to impede.

All right.

So. All right. So we'll go game show on it. All right.

I'm going to get this out of my face so that I can't. Yeah, yeah.

You can't cheat. That's not nice. All right, all right. Person sees the glass half full.

Half full is definitely expansive.

Nice job. All right. You're one for one so far. Looks at failure as a limitation. Rigid man. I need to get a new game. Game going here. Sees potential as born into as versus predetermined. In other words, they see their potential as predetermined. Born into rigid. Dang. He's doing good so far. All right. Highly creative problem solver.

Expansive.

Look at you. All right. Always looking for ways around, over and through obstacles.

Expansive man.

It's going good so far. Only sees one way to get a solution.

Rigid.

Maybe I should have done this a different way. Welcomes change and innovation.

Expansive.

Okay. Takes criticism as personal attacks.

Definitely rigid. By the way, guys, as you're listening to this, you can probably piece together, like, as you're listening to this and you're understanding expansive is the better one. So just keep that in mind. But you'll probably be able to listen to it.

I disagree that the better one.

What?

There's not a better, there's just a different. Now, one will help you get progress.

Quicker than the other, which is better in my mind.

I know, but we've got a lot of folks out there that obviously are currently coming from a rigid mindset. I want them to understand that it's.

It doesn't mean. No, no. The thing is, is if you're operating, I still operate like a lot of the rigid characteristics. I'm still training out of myself. This is an ongoing process. It's not something where you either have one of these completely or you don't. It's something that we believe is a process that you need to essentially just do your best. Because we found that expansive mindsets tend to open up more opportunities, possibilities for people, and rigid ones tend to close them. And so the best thing you can do is if you notice some of the rigid traits as you're listening to this, which may describe you, and you listen to expansive traits that might not describe you or that you want. Just try to think about how can you adopt those expansive mindset traits and how can you maybe get rid of some of the rigid ones.

Well, and the other thing I think I want people to realize is, as we're going through these different things, maybe we'll put them in show notes or something. You can see the list.

Well, and also, I mean, we do have a whiteboard lesson.

We do have a whiteboard.

So the purpose of the whiteboard lessons is to supplement all of our other types of content, like this, which is mainly auditory, with some visual diagrams. So we have a whiteboard lesson that would have been released yesterday, so yesterday, Wednesday, and that will be the rigid versus expansive mindsets broken down on the whiteboard.

So give me, give me one example where you think that you are operating in more of a rigid minded thinker, kind of a fixed thinker.

Oh, okay. So let's see. Let me think about that real quick.

We'll get back to the list.

One example. I like how you gave me the hard one because I could have given you a million about the expansive because I such a positive person. Okay, so like, what do I suck at? Let's see. Rigid.

We're gonna find out if he's humble right now.

Can I look at the list and then just like, just so I can.

Okay, so says the guy who said he didn't want to be influenced by.

The list out of these. Oh, okay, that's fair. I do tend to struggle with listening to everyone's point of view or anyone's point of view. I usually have in my mind, let's be honest, a set way, which is the right way to do things, which I talked about either earlier in this podcast or on the last one. That's more of a rigid mindset because.

He'S learned he's not perfect.

So here's the thing. I look at it from a standpoint of I want to arrive at the right answer, I want to do things, quote, unquote, the right way. And it's easy to fall into that trap because you look at it from a perspective of there's a solution that will work and there are solutions that will get less effective results. I want the one with the most effective results. And I look at that and label it as the right way. By doing that, you limit yourself. Exactly, I limit myself. And it's a habit. It's a habit of that rigid thinking pattern. That's why I actually, and it makes sense to me why you call them thinkers patterns, because individually, the thing is, like we just said, you might not exhibit all traits for each of these categories. You probably exhibit different thinking patterns. And so each characteristic you could almost look at as a thinking pattern.

Exactly.

And each one could be flipped in either direction.

Exactly. And one of the things that I'll share with you is one of the exercises I like to do with People, when we're talking about this is. I want to have them get on a scale of 1 to 10. I love my scales of 1 to 10.

Yeah.

Because it gives you a lot of clarity. Right. So you might lean more towards the glass half full on a scale of one to nine, but someone else might be at a three. Right, right. So those are some of the things.

On the glass half empty. You could be a 10.

Well, I mean, here's an example. So we had a. I can't remember when it was, but it was maybe earlier, latter part of last year. We were sitting in the conference room with my executive assistant at the time, and we were going over a strategy in which how we were going to bring this content to you guys and how we were going to do our best to make sure as much of it was free as possible, try to organize it, and all this kind of stuff. Well, Connor was very, very, very focused on this is the right way.

Yep.

He very focused. I mean, yes. And I kept saying, it's not the only way. And he's like, no, it is the only way. He was getting upset. And I was like, dude, been doing this a long time. It's not the only way. He's like, yes, it is. At some point in time, he grabs a marker and he draws a house on the whiteboard. And he goes, well, if the roof. If the walls aren't up, then the roof can't be on. I'm like, look, I'm not saying you're not wrong. You're not right, but you're right from a different perspective because you're leaving out one important factor. And he was like, what? What am I leaving out? I'm like, well, you're leaving out God.

And I hated that answer.

And he hated that answer.

He was.

It made him madder. Yeah. Six months later, he had done all we could do. I had done all I could do to try to begin to bring this content to everybody. Right. So we could actually start to hopefully launch something that you guys would actually find value in. And lo and behold, we were done. Nothing else. And he was like, I just don't.

I don't.

I don't know what's going to happen. I just don't see how it's going to work, man. I just. And then, literally, what I like to refer to as God showed up. Okay. Obviously, I'm a person of faith, Right. So I can do that. So my expansive way of predestination or predetermination, that's my natural. Where I Lean towards. I'm very faith driven, which means I'm like, it's all going to work out, it's going to be fine.

You know what's crazy though? I just realized this, that for a faith driven person, it doesn't matter if your faith is based in religion or, or just a general, the universe, karma, whatever. But.

If you're more faith driven, I could see an expansive mindset in some aspects being easier for you. That's why faith is stronger, because it's easier to. If you can rely on God or something like that outside of yourself and say they got it, then it's easier to be like, oh, well, there is a solution. I don't see it right now because here's the thing, I was about to say this. The source of why I struggled so much with that is because let's back it up to from here. So my outcome, I desperately wanted this to be successful. And my attitude was this will be successful or nothing else. Like, I will not allow this not to be successful. There's no option in this world where I would let this not work. Because I care so much about our mission. I know what we're trying to do.

Well, you've experienced what happens when you do that.

And I've experienced the power that these lessons that you teach people have had on people's lives. I've seen people be saved from suicide. I've seen marriages saved. I've seen relationships fostered. I've seen all of these things. So I knew, like I've studied all these influencers. I knew that you should be right up there alongside of them.

Well, I appreciate that.

So I was in the way that I am, the way that I am. I'm very driven. And when I set myself to a goal, I'm very, very black or white, it will come true. I'm going to make it come true. I'm going to figure it out and it's all on me. And that's my attitude.

Interesting.

It's I go, Jocko Willnick. He's a Navy seal.

Yep. Love Jocko.

Jocko says extreme ownership. And Tom Bilyeu has even talked about it. Tom Bilyeu said, has said that he looks at it to such an extreme to where if a meteor came flying in and killed his wife, that's his fault. He looks at it because he knew that there was an organization that in charge of tracking.

And I want to sit down with Tom and have a conversation with Tom.

Sure. But anyway, so I've heard that, that I've heard Through all the people I've studied about, how do you become successful? They say extreme ownership. So I was like, cool. So I've been implementing that. So that might have led to some of this rigid, possibly in some way, but I looked at it like this. I want to achieve this outcome. I am committed to figuring it out, and only I am responsible to figure it out. In other words, I don't want to rely on anything outside of me.

So here's one thing I want to add, and I hope this comes out correctly. I'm going to try to get this out in a correct way. One of the things that I think is vitally important to all of us specifically, is that we know that while the outcome we desire is predetermined, like, we've talked about the outcome, we've talked about having accountability. We talked about creating steps, right? One of the greatest lessons I've learned to date is that while I set all that into progress, I do all the work I can do to kind of make that a reality. At some point in time, there has to have an external force that kind of brings some of the glue together. You can call it whatever you want. Now, on top of that, almost every single outcome will look differently than what you thought it would. And almost every single outcome will not only look differently, but will also be better than you thought it would be.

If you take those steps to actually.

So the goal is.

Yes, have ownership. Okay. But if your ownership is too extreme, you fail to give yourself grace when it doesn't work out.

And this is what I was getting to, was basically, I think that that overly extreme level of ownership in terms of I didn't have any faith in anything other than myself and my plan. Yeah, that's it. That's all I had.

I was like, oh, this is the funny part. So if you guys watching on YouTube, this is going to be kind of funny. So he would walk up to me, we'd be in these meetings, and he'd say, yeah. And he'd walk up to the whiteboard, he'd grab a marker, and he would literally, this is what he would say. Yeah. And you just teach, grow and you help people and you just teach transformational versus transformational. It just helps people. I'm like, connor, you just like took cornerstone pieces of material and acted like it was like a flag I was waving in front of people. It was the most frustrating thing to me for the longest time.

Well, I mean, the world that I had come from was the world of content, world of influencers, the world of, you know, digital.

And it's important. Yeah, it's important.

Well, today, you know, the reason we. It's hard to get the noise podcasts and YouTube and a blog and all this other stuff is because people's attention is so spread. But people go to YouTube to learn. A lot of times people need to learn and to be informed and entertained.

Well. And a lot of times my mindset is. And I think this is in some cases one of the things that Connor's really helped me with and one of the things he mentors me in, believe it or not, is actually trying to make things as clear as possible so it's easily actionable on your side. What I mean by that is, historically, if I meet someone who's got a life struggle, they have a question, whatever. I'm not thinking about how structured the content is. I'm thinking about how can that particular person digest the content, which for him.

Is a blind spot when speaking to a lot of people because there is no specific. You're like, okay, great, let me give you a detailed answer. So what area of your life are they trying to change? I'm like, all of them. Everyone has different goals. Yeah. For sure. You have to come up with a framework, which is why we built transformation. Yeah. Which literally breaks down everything to accomplish.

Anything which you've been instrumental in.

Yeah.

Well, we're able to help more people at scale.

Absolutely. So I knew, I knew that. I knew that you had that in you though.

Yeah.

Like. Like, because you would. You had helped me, but you would also help people who are in 180 different situation for me get the same results.

Yeah.

So I knew, I saw.

But I would pivot the content based on that person's need.

Right. So we've just had to work on making it applicable to everybody. So.

Well, it's another reason why I think we try to inspire people to actually ask their questions. For sure. Right. Because I have a. My history says. My history says that if you have a specific question, I'm going to give you all I've got to answer that specific question specifically to you, but based on your specific current situation, where that's great for people asking us questions because it allows us to solve the greater need. But at the same time, you're also coming back to me and saying, okay, well, they asked a great question, you gave them a great solution. How do we make this applicable to the entire nation? The entire JP Nation? So this is where that thinking and expansive mindset come into play. Meaning there is truth to certain linear behaviors or system based behaviors or regulatory behaviors. But there's also what I refer to as the gray. So I'm. The reason I brought up that whiteboard piece was I'm like circling, I'm like, well, you forgot about God is because I understand that life in general is not black or white. Okay. There is gray in the middle, which is now there's things you're deeply passionate about and focused on and a perspective that you have. But you cannot connect with people unless you're able to listen to their perspective and point of view.

And that's a characteristic of an expansive mindset historically. So yeah. So anyway, all this we kind of went off on a tangent, but you asked me basically like what is something that is a rigid mindset? I was trying to answer that. But yeah, I think that.

Because I struggle with faith, faith has been a struggle point for me. I struggle to look because I'm so black and white. I will look.

When you say faith, what do you mean?

Faith in J. It's not necessarily believer in God or.

Not believing in God.

It's not that believing that's an external force. No, it's believing that if I don't get all the right answers and do things the right way that I'll still get the result. That's what it is. So I believe that I have this outcome that I want and there is a way or several ways to get there. But in order for me to get that outcome which I've committed on my life, I want to get. So I'm going after it with everything.

Yeah.

And I also tie my. This is another thing that's not healthy. I tie my self esteem to the outcome.

Still.

I'm still at that point. Yeah. I'm still at that point in my life where I care so much about my ambitions and my, my goals of where I want to go. Then I attach a lot, I attach a lot of my self worth to that person who I want to become. Which leaves the current me a little depressed.

Do you know how that. Do you know the greatest way that solved how? Unfortunately, a massive humbling, A massive.

Well, everything. I had a little done a little one of those. But. But I, I wouldn't say I lost.

God willing, you'll never have to. You'll never have the ones that I've had. Yeah, that's what I'm hoping to help you overcome.

Yeah. So when it comes to rigid mind, rigid thinking, there are, there are thinking patterns, there are ways in which a fixed mind minded person works. Right. We refer to that as a rigid thinking pattern. And the reason we refer to it that way is because it's inside a box. There is a left wall and a right wall, and the stuff just bebops between the two.

Right.

Okay. The reality is, is life itself is not black and white. You will set out to get an outcome, but by the time you actually achieve that outcome, how you actually get there and how it's actually achieved will probably look very different than the starting point.

So would you say that a cornerstone of adopting an expansive mindset is to stop looking at things so black and white?

Exactly.

Really?

Yeah.

That explains why I've struggled with it a little bit in the past, because I am naturally. We talked about tendencies. I believe that. Correct me if I'm wrong about this, but the way that my mind is naturally made up, I feel like I'm. I mean, I feel like I could be both, but I feel like in that one way of there being a right answer, I'm wired to believe there's a right answer.

Well, let's do it this way. On a scale of 1 to 10, if I said you're locked away by analysis paralysis, what score would you give yourself?

Historically? A ten. Recently, maybe more of like a. Like a six. I've come down a lot on that six.

Okay.

Maybe six or a seven. I don't know. I might be generous.

Let's go with seven.

Okay.

Same question or not? Same question, but same scale. One to ten only sees one way to a solution.

Two or three, usually.

Okay.

There's a couple of things that I get very passionate about and I'm more likely to protect my solution, but stubbornness.

Towards ideas and concepts of others.

Oh. Like in terms of how good I stuck at that. So I don't know what that is. A one.

Well, that's really. Yeah, I'd say one or two.

Or it's gonna be a ten. Because it's accurate, right?

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah.

You're right. You're right. So you're closer.

So you. The 10. You're a 9.

You're high up there.

I'm not good at taking advice. I'm not. Unless. Here's the one.

You heard him admit it first. Here.

Here's the one person who I will take advice with. And it's literally someone who is where I want to be. So this guy is an example of that. I struggle to take his advice, too. So I'm pretty some days, but I'm making.

I don't make even enough feedback.

Right. Because you're where I want to be anyone else, like my friends who try to give me. No.

Well, let me ask you this. The stuff that I've been teaching doesn't work.

Yes. I probably should take people's advice more. Yeah.

Yeah. Well, not everybody. No. I mean, there is wisdom in not taking everyone's advice. Right. I've hopefully exhibited the character traits of someone who's worthy of listening to advice.

So, obviously, if you're going to listen to Darth Vader, you're going to end up one way. And if you're going to listen to Yoda, you're going to be a different person. Right.

And certain people, some people are naturally wired as great listeners. Some people aren't good at thinking on their own, and they're way better. They're excellent listeners. That wasn't a good strength of mine.

All right. Has a problem for every solution. 10 being most like you. 1 being least like you.

I actually have a fair amount of that. I think maybe a six or a seven. At least.

Okay.

All right.

Ten being most like you. One being least likely. You see most glasses as half empty.

4.

Yeah, I was going to say you're pretty close in the middle. All right. Has a tendency to make a decision before they listen. Ooh, that rhymes.

Oh, Lord. 10.

All right.

C's ultimate potential as predetermined.

8 or. No, no, sorry, sorry. 2. Okay, I had those inversed. All right.

Tends to give up after the first try when unsuccessful.

Zero.

Yeah, you're low for sure. Prefers the status quo no matter how frustrated they are.

One. Really?

Yeah. I'd put you at like a four.

Really? Why is that? What do you define as the status quo?

Status quo is basically, there's not a lot of change. Right. So we've been setting up, obviously, this entire content program to help feed the.

So it's not like I want to be like everybody else.

It's exactly. It's just. There's one way. It's a. I'm trying to think of the best way to explain this.

No, that makes more sense. I. Yeah, I interpreted that as like, do I want to be like the status quo? Everyone else.

My experience has been around you is once you get a comfort zone built, you like to stay in that comfort zone.

That's probably accurate. Yeah.

Where I would err on the side of I'm more prone to constantly disrupt the comfort zone.

Yeah, you are.

Okay. And that. That's part of what makes me a patriarch and a trailblazer. Right. I realized that about five or six years ago that I was. I'M heavily leveled on the expansive side, the growth minded side of things. Heavily lean that way. Okay. But I also learned that that's part of my offering to the world. It's my job to see a forest, grab a machete and cut down the path for others to follow. Right. Where there are others whose core purpose is to come back behind me and kind of like trim up the branches to make sure nobody gets scraped on the way in, the way down the pathway.

Yeah.

Does that make sense?

Yeah.

So that's kind of how I view, view this. So that's, that's why I said early on that there's really, there's really not a right and a wrong right. It's more of how can you get the boast out of. How can you get the most out of both worlds?

Well, and I also think that some of the aspects of my rigid mindset characteristics that I have balance you and help. Help us.

Oh, absolutely.

Some of the only seeing one way really, really helps me be like, hey, dude, we really need to be clear with this. And if it's not, I'm not compromising on that. And that helps.

We have fights off camera about this.

Yeah. But I mean, other than that. I mean, yeah, I hear what you're saying.

So.

Okay, so just give me a four for that one, I guess.

Yeah. It looks at failure as a limitation.

I would say this future failure or experienced failure if I've already experienced the failure. I'm very resilient at getting back up, being like, okay, what's next? So I have no problem with dwelling. However, I anticipate future failures and I worry about them.

So you give yourself a five. You in the middle.

Yeah, that's probably fair. Because the problem is basically I'll anticipate. And this is partially why I'm a good strategist because I'm very good at anticipating things that won't work, very good at that, naturally, potentially. I think I could be wrong about that, but I think it's a strong suit.

I think it sometimes can blind you.

Yeah, I agree. It holds me back in a lot of ways because even though that's a strong suit, I'm gonna see more reasons why it won't work, which is gonna lend credence towards a more rigid outlook.

And when we get into personality styles and a few other podcasts, you'll see how this, all these things start to overlay each other like a big mechanic cog. For sure.

You know, there's a lot more than just your disc personality type.

Oh, there's there's so much stuff we're gonna teach undercovering who you are. Self awareness, by the way, if you would do everything that we're telling you to do and follow all the different tools we're going to give you along the way for the next dude you will have. So you'll be so clear on who you are, what you're meant to do and how to do it. It's going to be insane. Right. And I think that's what we're all looking for. That's the definition of being unstoppable.

You're going to look back and remember that time where you thought you were stuck or confused or frustrated and you're like, wow, I've never felt so free.

That's right. All right, last one. Because this game show approach is fun for me. I'm not sure if you're.

This is fun. This is fun for me too.

Takes all criticism as personal attacks including when it's construct six or seven. Yeah, that's probably about right. I was gonna put you a little bit higher than middle. Yeah. When you tell Connor he's wrong, sometimes he struggles to.

I wouldn't say admit it because a lot of the times I'm really damn sure I'm right.

Well, most Cs are. So most people, I have C in them for sure are. And I think that's one of the things that's so important to understand is sometimes the answer is not black or white. Sometimes the answer is vary shades of gray.

That's a good point because here's the thing and I didn't say 50 shades.

I get hung up on this. Okay. Maybe this is, this is actually very valuable. So you said that an expansive mind minded thinker looks at it like there's multiple ways to a solution.

Yeah.

Keep in mind that I said that I just want to be right. I just want to have the really. I just want the right result. I don't care if I'm the one who was right. I just care if I ended up at the right solution. Okay. So I just want to get to the right solution. So when I have an answer that is correct and I know it's correct, I will die by a sword to defend that. Here's where I could see. I just realized where that could hold me back though. If there's more than one solution, who's to say that your solution isn't slightly better than mine? Which is right. But because you're so focused on defending your yes, correct solution, you're missing out on what's better?

And a lot of times you can spend so much time dying on the mountain for an idea. I remember our conversation with Nathan and Daisy as we were trying to build this thing. Connor's like, no content now kind of thing. He's like. Nathan's like, dude, I'm telling you. I'm not saying you're wrong. In fact, you're right.

What's content?

It's just, it's just priorities. Like we gotta do this before that, otherwise this will fall on itself and.

Right.

Anyway. Alright, so we're do the same trick down the other side, but really quickly.

Okay.

All right. Scale of 1 to 10. Most like you is 10. One is least like you.

Got it.

Always looking for ways around, over and through obstacles.

9. Like I'd say I'm pretty high.

You're pretty resilient.

All right.

So that one balances the other one out. Okay. Knows there's lots of solutions for any potential problem. We just, we just spent the last 15 minutes talking about that one.

Yeah. So like that, that's an interesting one because before we talked about it, I would have thought of myself as very, very high on that.

Yeah.

I still think I'm relatively high, but I think it's, it's weirdly counterbalanced by the rigid mindset. I think I teeter totter between the two.

Yeah.

A lot.

Yeah, I think that. And when we get into personality styles and disc and some other things, you'll find that some of your disc traits are polar opposites.

Which means. That's why.

Which means you can vacillate back and forth and it comes down to, is this something you want to get on a mountain and die for kind of thing.

I see.

Does that make sense? So I would actually. So I think you're kind of midstream. I think they're. I think you're open minded. If someone gives you enough information to support, there's another option.

Okay. Okay. Yes. So I am not willing to just blindly trust. Exactly. I struggle with that a lot.

Okay, so what do you think now?

Five or six?

All right. I'll give you that five.

Is highly collaborative.

No.

And brings ideas to teams.

Well, I bring a lot of ideas. I'm just not that good at working with others.

I bring a lot of ideas though. So that one asks.

You bring amazing ideas.

I bring the most ideas. Come on.

The most ideas. Is it my. Isn't my DNA Mr. Idea? You're like, no, we can't do that right now. I'm like, let's do It.

No, it is. I don't know. You and I are pretty close.

I would say bring the most structured ideas.

Okay, that's fair.

All right, so. But that wasn't the question. But hey, we'll meet, we'll meet in the middle there. I think that you are a good conduit. So what you guys don't know is I actually have Connor leading a handful of small or not small, a handful of team members because I know that my gift is in strategy, tactics and putting things together like the theology, the cloud vision. Connor is a couple steps behind me in putting things together with more detailed minded things. Connor himself though is still not incredibly detailed. Like he doesn't like being lost in the weeds as much as I don't. However, we have wonderful team members like Penny and a few others, Brian, a couple other people. Triad are folks that help us do our videos and some other things that are more detail minded than not. Right. So they have a slower pace but they're able to provide clarity and details to some of our other.

Yeah. A lot of the times more detail minded thinkers actually move slower in terms of the action. So Steven moves at blazing speeds. He's just not very detailed. I'm slightly more detailed than him but I move slower.

So I'm always mission, I'm always mission.

Mode, but I still move faster than most people. Most people are still like, dude, you're.

I think to date, I think only you, Renee and Nikki have been able to keep up with me.

Wow.

Today up to the date. Where in other words, my speed, my ability to put out content and information because I'm able to put out content like nobody's business. I can write content all day long. Well.

Which is part of why it's so helpful to be going so fast and have that advantage. The downside is I go ahead.

Yeah. And you clarify, which is great. But anyway. Yeah. Alright. So moving back to. Moving back to our list.

Yeah.

All right. Again, 10 being most like you. One being least like you is a highly creative problem solver.

Oh, 10, sorry, I don't mean to be cocky. I'm just.

Do you mind if I put you at an eight?

Yeah, that's fine.

That came. Dude, that, that came before I even expected it to.

I was just spit all over me. Sorry.

I'm just so confident in that one ability that I have solved problems that I just.

So he loves to solve problems. Problems.

Yes.

But again, he's willing to think that his solution is the only solution which sometimes can get him in trouble.

You docked me A couple points for that. I get it.

Hey, but you're. You are a good problem solver, I'll give you that. All right. Seized glass is half full.5. Yeah, that one counted each other out half the time. Yeah. So that's the one that I typically have to sit down with you like, dude, it's gonna work out, right? You're like, but we don't have that. I'm like, it's gonna work out. How do you know? You don't want to know how I know.

It'S going to work out. All right, listens, before they decide.

One.

See, I can be honest about struggle points, but see, this is the first.

Step is actually being honest with yourself. So many people are hesitant to be honest with themselves because when they honest with themselves, if they have a result that they're not super happy about, they ding their self worth.

Yeah.

And what I'm trying, the. The point of illustrating is as we go through these is I'm trying to say it's not a ding on your self worth, it's just being honest. So you know where you're actually going to start, Right? Because in a perfect world, if we were to go down this list, in a perfect world, we'd be trying to get like between 5 and 7 all the way down.

Well, you know, what's it. What I'm starting to notice as we're going through this is not all of them all add up to 10. Like, there was. There was a couple that are both at sevens, and you would think that they're on the opposite ends of the spectrum, but you can exhibit both tendencies.

Depending on the situation.

I'm literally learning that right now. This is kind of a piece of.

Which is another reason why I like to do these exercises this way. I mean, we could have just read through the list and you could have just said, hey, look.

Well, we did that on the whiteboard lesson.

Yeah, we did that on the whiteboard lesson. But does this sound like you kind of thing? This is a much better way. This is the same process that we use when we sit down with folks.

And this is exactly what we want you to do as well. So what I'd actually recommend is after we finish this and after we go through our principles and everything that we teach in this podcast, I'd recommend that you guys all go watch the whiteboard lesson and do this exercise yourself.

Exactly.

Because we have all the exact same things that we're listing out here on that whiteboard.

I actually drew this from the whiteboard lesson. All right. Believes the potential is discovered and leveraged over time through experience.

My gut just tells me that's very high. For me, it is.

Yeah.

I think there's an element of you and I think a lot of folks that are either going to be influencers, that are already influencers, who already intuitively know that they're meant to serve at scale. You mentioned your buddy Tom Bilyeu that you love so much. Right. One of the things that Tom and I share in common is that we both want to help people at scale. Like, it's. I made a promise to my. I made a pretty. Yeah, that's right. I made a promise to myself and to God because obviously a person of faith.

That it didn't matter if it was one or a million, that I would give it all I got.

I love it.

Right. However, my greatest heart's desire is to change a million lives. Impact them, like, get them well on their way to becoming unstoppable. A million lives before I pass from this earth.

When. Obviously we're very early in the process. So, like at the beginning, in this early stages. Guys, if you're listening right now, and I mean right now as we're shooting this, it's 2020. It's early 2020. It's what is March? Yeah, it's actually just. It's gonna be April 1st tomorrow.

And we've been building for so long behind the scenes.

We have, but, yeah, I mean, there's just so much content. But the thing is, there's not a lot of views yet. We haven't gotten millions of views yet. Yeah, we haven't gotten. You know, it's gonna be funny.

Hundreds and hundred shows up like a year from now, and all of a sudden.

I know, I know, I know. But there's gonna be some of you, like, wait a minute, there's gonna be some of you watching these videos and you see there's like 10 views and there's like no comments. Comment. Yeah, you'll be one of the first. We will literally communicate with you all one like you. You have a huge advantage there. So I just wanted to.

Yeah, absolutely. No, I mean, it's. Again, I think it was going back to that point. You know, we've been building so much of this behind the scenes for so long. So I'll share a little. A quick personal story with everybody. We've got about 15 minutes left for the show. But quick personal story is. I don't think I've shared this part. So everybody knows about the homelessness and about coming back from that everybody knows about starting there, building a business. Everybody knows about all that stuff. What you don't know, what you may not know, is that Journey Principles itself, the Institute, Journey Principles Institute, has been around for five plus years. What you may not understand is, unfortunately, I had to pause the entire business literally overnight.

Yeah. That's why you see a lot of content from years ago and it's kind of done in a different way with a new strategy this time.

Yeah. And then. Yeah. And that. And you know why? You see there's. There's a pretty decent, still social following, even though it was. It was considerably larger.

Right. Like you might see, we have over 100,000 likes on Facebook. Yeah, we do. Yeah, we do. We had people kind of somewhat engaged and hearing about us, you know, several years back. Unfortunately, we had to suspend all that. We're starting from scratch.

Yeah. So we were smack dab in the middle of our. Of our linchpin Live event, Transform you Live, when I was notified that my previous executive team from one of my flagship companies had decided overnight to go start a competitive company and disrupt a bunch of other things. There may or may not have been some substantial embezzlement, some other things.

And unfortunately I have. Yeah, wink, wink. I have a large team. Right. I've got a lot of people working for me and I felt that I owed it to everybody to come back and make sure that I protected their livelihoods and their families because they didn't deserve what had happened. Unfortunately, part of that was I had to basically suspend Journey Principles, even though the team that we had in place did the best that they could for about five or six months in carrying on the legacy without me. And what we discovered was, is it's very hard to carry on a legacy.

Without the founder, without the content creator. Yeah, it's probably going to be pretty.

Difficult, you know, but. So that's why we made a conscious decision to.

Restructure and re. Pivot. Our team looks very different than they used to. But one of the greatest things that I learned during that process was we had it to be clear and concise because we were good at changing lives. We were good at helping people. Right. We were good at interacting and engaging with us.

Oh, absolutely. And every live event we put on was ridiculous. I'm pretty sure every single one. We saved people from suicide. Am I wrong about that? Was there one or two that.

I wouldn't say save people from suicide?

We had several that I know a couple did.

Yes. So there were people that came to Transform youm Live that were safe from suicide. There were some that.

Light of the darkness.

Light of the darkness, for sure. That live event we did with that, that was. Yeah, that was definitely one that we had a big turnout for, that anti suicide. But both. All of those events had one thing in common. Each person that came to those live events got the one question that their heart's been yearning answered for as probably months or even years. We had people that came in broken that got married within a year. Mark Green, for example, one of our live event attendees just got married three days ago.

That's fantastic.

And we came to that event. He was like, I'm never gonna find my person.

Wow.

Right. And then what he learned is part.

Of what three short years ago.

Yeah. And what he learned at that live event was position it this way. Do this thing. Consider this. Look at this, Explore this. Take action here, Take action there. Take action there.

Completely transformed.

Completely transformed.

Transform you.

Three and a half years later, my buddy Mark Green is getting the woman of his dreams. He's happy.

Oh, that's so great.

It's so. It's so just. And we're. And we're still engaged with a lot of the folks that we partnered with. Right. So here's where I'm going to land the plane and bring it back to expansive and mindset.

Do you want to finish that or no?

Well, I'm going to. I'm going to do that. I'm going to land the plane and finish expansive mindset. Okay. I had a choice to say, look, it didn't succeed because I had to pull away and I could stop.

Okay.

That was a choice. I also had the choice to re. Pivot, move things around, put together a team, and come back at it stronger. And I'll tell you, sitting here in this chair right now, I've never been as proud of the team that's helped me put this thing together and their organizational skills to make it not just a reality, but a reality for everyone at scale. Like, these people care more about you in some cases than you probably care about yourself. And I know that sounds crazy, but we genuinely, because we've seen lives changed, because we've seen people get the transformation looking for. We generally care about this.

Oh, yeah. We have a great team of people this time around. And literally, we had a great team.

Last time, but with. We're a whole lot more honed in and focused.

Every single one of the people is just super cares. I mean, they really care.

Over the top.

Yeah. I mean, I mean, really. To the point where, like, you can't fake this level of emotion, guys. I mean, it's just these people really care. I've seen some influencers who I would probably venture to guess that they're kind of in it for different reasons. Like they maybe want to look cool or buy a boater or to, you know, say, look at me. And, you know, maybe. I'm not saying that these people don't want to change lives, but that's maybe on the back burner for them.

I'm just curious. At what point did you realize that Journey Principles and Transform you and all the different frameworks for building. What was the point for you that you noticed when everything changed, when we were. When I and other people were sincere? How did you. How did you. How did you discover that? Because you've been behind the scenes.

Yeah, so it was the last time that we were doing it. So I was. I was a member of Journey Principles the four or five years ago, and there was this one moment that really made it really, really click for me that, okay, these guys really care. Like, I thought so. I used to always hear, I, of course, it's a very cliche thing for an influencer to say, I care about you. I care about it. You know, you guys have heard it a million times, right? So it's. It's kind of like, okay, bs, you know, you want money, you want to sell me this course or this event or whatever, but, you know, you don't really. So. And I thought that I was a very. I was a different person back then. I was a very. I mean, I'm still money hungry, but I was really. I was only money hungry back then. Like, I really just couldn't care less about how I was doing it as long as I was. I wasn't trying to go around hurting people or anything like that. Like, I wasn't stealing from people, but I'm just saying in terms of, like, what I wanted, I was very selfish in nature.

But I was working for you and I was doing some marketing stuff with.

Yeah, yeah, you work with. You don't work for.

Oh, did I say for.

Yeah, you said I was working with.

You and did it was doing some marketing stuff and we were all sitting around a table and we were planning Transform you the event, and you had written this script or it was basically like a story of this person who's scrolling through Facebook and it was his journey of how he discovered, learned about Transform youm bought his ticket, came to the event, walked through those doors, learned the lessons, and walked out transformed. And you literally described it from this person's point of view.

First person point of view.

Yeah.

So I tried and did my best to describe in detail the entire experience, what they felt, what they smelt. I basically used the five senses lesson that I've been teaching you guys about setting your outcome.

Yeah, you set a vision from our.

This is the impact we could make if we were to join for you.

Correct. So from your point of view, the viewer. So basically from an audience member's perspective, he wrote this. And as he was reading it, I literally heard him choke up and start to cry. Like in like near the end. It was happy tears. So it was when he was talking about they walk out transformed. He literally choked up and started to cry. I could hear it and I was like, like I just remember sitting there like being kind of shocked. I was like, bro, like, like, dude, like, guys, this is real. Like he cares so much. Like he's making me cry. Cuz it's just like, it's a contagious thing. But I have never seen anybody with this much genuine emotion for serving people at scale. And there's nobody in my mind. I've studied Gary Vee, I've studied Tom Bilyeu. I love all these people. I love all of you. But there's nobody who I believe is more deserving of having a platform to transform your life than this man sitting in front of me today. So. But that's the moment that it. That I realized was when I witnessed that. Because he can't fake that.

I appreciate that for sure. You mean a lot to me, dude. You too. I guess we should bring it back to the expansion. Yeah, we're going to do some but sorry guys. Journey down memory lane. Couldn't help ourselves. All right. Welcomes change and innovation. Scale of one to ten. One least like you. Ten most like.

Okay, so what it is.

So I was like, okay, where's he going to go?

I was going to go high. But then I kind of thought, well, there are some things where I. I'm kind of split on a lot of these. I'd maybe give myself a six or a seven for that. Just because a lot of the times I. I'm happy to be adaptable. I'm tough to convince. That's how I describe it. I'm happy to. I want the right.

It's a Self Awareness 101.

The second you come and convince me and I see that your options better. I'm not gonna have ego attached. Like, oh well, I want to do my way because it was My way. If I see your way is better, I pretty much have no problem adopting your way and changing the struggle is convincing me a lot of the time. So that's how I'd answer that.

All right, Final one Sees failure as an opportunity to learn and try again and again.

Like last time. I think that if it's in hindsight that I'm a 10. Yeah. I'd say that if it hasn't happened yet, I'm very terrified. It's more like a 2, 6, 7. So, like, what do you want to put it like? Yeah, six or seven is fine. All right.

All right. So that's. You just. You guys just got to see the exercise.

Yeah, there we go.

Right. To figure out where you're leaning towards.

Which one I'm more.

Yeah, we got to add it all up and divide by. And divide by the number, of course. But I would say, based on what I'm seeing, 7 and 7, 3 and 5, a 9 and 4. So that would be an opportunity. Stubbornness has a product for a problem for every solution. Six and eight, I think that's pretty legitimate. Decides before they listen. So what I'm learning here, again, what we're identifying is potential blind spots.

That's true. Right. I'm really seeing some things that I need to work.

Yeah, we're still listening. Right.

So you take the ones with the biggest disparity from where you want to be, and then you circle those, which is what he's doing right now. He's circling the ones that need the most improvement right now.

And again, if you're watching on the podcast or you're listening on the podcast, and you want to see this visually, feel free to go to Journey Principles with Steven Scoggins on YouTube. Search out the show that's called Are you a rigid or expansive thinker?

Yeah, that should be rigid versus expansive mindsets.

Okay. I like my title.

It's a whiteboard lesson.

But he came up the title, and of course, you know, got to be his way, so.

Because I'm a rigid thinker.

Actually.

Right now, you actually lean more expensive. Expansive than. Than rigid. Yeah. You still got. But the areas that you are rigid, you are anchored currently.

I see. So it's. So it's the maybe two, three, maybe four blind spots that I have within the rigid mindset. Yeah. That I need to work on. Once I get those over to expansive, what do you think's gonna happen?

Oh, man, you'll kick butt. All right, we got a. We got, like, five more minutes. I'm gonna go Ahead and fast forward. We took a lot of time to explain some stuff. All right, well, 10. Okay, cool. All right. So we just identified potential blind spots. So here's the next step in this process. Give yourself an attaboy for the stuff that you really like, right? And on the stuff that you want to improve, just say, all right, that's cool. That's an area I want to improve.

Right? Like, even some of these things I'm seeing, I'm like, okay, that won't kill me. That won't hinder me. There are some things that are obvious blind spots.

None of these will actually kill you.

If I see a couple of these, that's like, okay, some of these have higher priority than others. But the coolest thing that I learned today really, like, really learned today, because I've heard you teach this, and I've heard growth versus fixed mindset. In the past, I always looked at it just like we talked about black and white. I looked at it like you either have a growth mindset or a fixed. Which is why you'll notice with some of those, I kind of struggled because I looked at myself as it's one or the other, and I had to choose. And if I had to choose that, I chose to identify with the growth mindset because that's what I'd rather be. So because I had that, it was harder for me to see. See some of my blind spots unless I really sat and thought about it.

Which is the benefit of having a mentor, because a mentor that knows you a little bit better than, in some cases, you know yourself.

That's a really good point, because some of you, like, you guys noticed I was wrong about a couple of them. He's like, I'm not so sure about that. I was like, oh, okay, that's cool. So it's very, very helpful to have people who you trust in your inner circle who could basically give you this feedback. But if you don't have that right now, that's okay. Just really take the time to write down your gut reaction, but also think about, is there anything that I'm missing here based on my current perception of who I am or who I want to be that might not be actually accurate because you noticed two or three of those I was wrong about.

So what's your one takeaway from that entire process?

It's a process. It's a process because each one of those is different, and I'm at different stages in the process of becoming an expansive mindset for each of those categories. And so you don't look at it as you right now are a rigid thinker or are an expansive mindset. It is a process. The way I look at it is there's an array of traits that you should be working on, getting to the direction that you think would benefit you best. Sometimes a lot of times it's expansive. There are some. There are some benefits to rigid mind thinkers.

If it is a process based part, it's actually good to have a linear brain.

So it's better to have a rigid minded mindset if it's aimed at a.

Specific process, meaning the process has already been vetted for success, and that process works. And it works really well.

Okay. So when it comes to defining, let's say, a complex process into a step by step rigid procedure to follow. Rigid's helpful.

Exactly.

Wow.

Expansive is good for opening new doors and creating new opportunities.

I see.

Okay. And that's why it's actually really good to have an array of both. It's not one or the other.

Yeah. Because if you go all the way expansive too far, you're just gonna be like, everything will work. I'm gonna do. I'm gonna do.

And the next thing you know, you're leading a cult, so.

Well, yeah, that's not where I was going with it, but that could happen as well. You could lead a cult.

You could either be Mr. Spock or lead a cult.

You ever see that movie? Or there's a show called the Path on. On Hulu. I never ended up watching it, but it's about a cult. I saw the first season and he.

Gets on me about changing topics. I don't know. But anyway.

All right, so let's finish this up. So here's.

Here's one of the greatest takeaways I want you to consider. In order to change the way you live, you've got to change the way you think. And it doesn't matter where you start off in the process, because you are at where you are today because of where you think you are today, where that thought is leading you. Right. So in order to change the way you live, you got to change the way you think. And that's part of the process. Now, normally I would talk about anything else because we would kind of continue doing Deep Dive. This podcast has been a little bit longer than most. The other two were short, which is good. So maybe that maybe we're balancing each other out. But I would also say that Tuesdays.

Was more on the short side.

Yeah, for sure. Remember that your brain, right, is like a muscle. Okay. The Harder you work it, the stronger it grows.

Absolutely. Your brain literally changes in each of these categories individually. As I work on stubbornness. Yeah. Deciding before I listen or I'll work on listening before I decide and before being like, oh, this is the right answer. Hearing everyone's viewpoint as I work on that, that's going to develop over time. It's gonna just gradually improve.

That's right. Yeah, totally. Alright, so quick recap so we can close this thing out. Sorry it took so long. Hopefully you enjoy the content. This has been actually been one of my favorite episodes.

This is really fun. I like the game show.

Yeah.

I don't know if they'll like it, but I liked it.

I like it too. So hopefully that's not a selfish approach. But it's, it's, it's. Well, it was fun. Hopefully you can use that to actually help yourself.

Yeah. At the very least, use this as an example. Literally, if you don't know what we did here, re listen to the podcast. If you can find another 40, 50 minutes and re listen and just literally see what we did and go through that exercise yourself, it was very helpful for me. I'm not lying. It was very helpful for me. I'm actually going to take this after. I don't care if you want your notes.

Well, let's hit the four steps real fast. Step one, you just saw it. Be honest with yourself. Rank yourself. One like you least, one least like you. Ten most like you.

On both.

On both. Take the time to rank yourself. You're going to see one that balances each other out, one that might be higher or lower. And that gives you some credibility on where you need to focus. Okay. Be aware of your daily thinking. Okay. Step two is to be consciously aware of how your mind is making decisions. Because in order to expand your mind and get away from certain levels of rigid thinking, you're going to have to be aware of the thoughts that are coming in your head. Meaning if you have a natural tendency to be stubborn when someone comes at you and stubbornness is a problem, then the best thing you could do is stop and listen. I used it today myself personally. And he's laughing because he knows it's true.

I like how I gave myself a one on that. Still, that's. That's hilarious.

Like, I'm pretty stubborn. I'm three or four for sure. I'm still pretty stubborn guy. Especially if something I'm deeply passionate about. Well, I think we all are. All right. Always be open. Well, thank you.

You have, you have the.

You're still. They can't hear what you're saying.

Sorry. You still have, you have the 20 something years of experience learning how to listen to other people.

Yeah. So let me turn to what experience was developed. Beating my head into a brick wall. Right. I've learned these lessons the hard way. Not because they sounded good or someone influenced it or whatever. Most of the best content that I'll be able to share are because I did it wrong the first time.

Well, so wait, so if you said that you're a three or four now, what did you used to be?

Oh hell, I used to be a.

You were like me. Okay.

0 like I was. I'm like it's my way or the highway.

Yeah.

Kind of thing. And I've. And I've learned that that's not the case because we're all meant to carry this, this burden together and carry these opportunities together. Alright. Number three, be open to have an expansive thinker, role model or model that you can model the thought process of off of. So today we went through this whole episode with, with Connor doing some of these, this little game show technique and what we learned was the areas that he, that he wants to improve.

Right.

And as a result I was able to say maybe then maybe not so much. Have you considered this kind of scenario? That's what I'm talking about. Have a model or role model that can help you. All right. Then simply be open minded and willing to adjust. So again, be honest with yourself. Consider your thoughts daily. Be opening to having a role model. Right. And then just be open minded to adjusting it.

That's awesome.

That's it, dude. I actually really love this lesson. Hope you guys did. And we're going to call it quits for the day. Thank you so much for listening. Thank you so much for sharing. Thank you so much for commenting. Please encourage your friends and family that maybe is going through a life struggle that you know they need some direction and some help and you're not really sure how to help them or direct them.

Send them our way.

Send them our way. There's plenty of content for them to chew on. Plenty of different things. And you may just find your co star or your ping pong partner that we'll talk about in another lesson which is the person that you can kind of run alongside of you as you're on your journey of becoming unstoppable probably right beside you. Right. So all this content's here to help you. We appreciate you, we believe in you. Go make it an amazing time. See you again on the next Journey Rentals. Take care. See you.

See you guys.

I'll see you in the next video. And please, if you don't mind and you enjoyed the Life Mastery content we're building, consider hitting the subscribe button and also hitting the bell so you'll be the first to get notified anytime we release new content.