203 Jason and Steve - Solving for 2024

Are you frustrated and curious about why your New Year's resolutions quickly fall by the wayside? You’re not alone! Many of us set intentions and goals, only to abandon them shortly after. Despite our best efforts, we find ourselves unable to sustain the change we hoped for. It's time to uncover the real reasons behind this cycle and discover a more purpose-driven approach to lasting success.

In this episode, Jason and Steve discuss:

• The Mindset of Mistakes
• Emotional Intelligence and Resolution
• Embracing the Possibility of Failure & Resistance
• Rethinking Accountability
• Cultivating Intrinsic Motivation

Key Takeaways:

• Master the psychology of goal-setting to unlock your full potential
• Cultivate a purpose-driven mindset and emotional resilience for lasting success
• Embrace the importance of failures as stepping stones to growth and achievement
• Take charge of your growth journey with accountability and sustained motivation
• Develop a positive mindset to conquer challenges and thrive in any situation

“May you have amazing intentions, and may you have amazing resolutions, and may you yearn. May you have amazing failures.”

 - Jason Abell & Steve Scanlon

Connect with Jason and Steve:

• LinkedIn: Jason or Steve
• Website Rewire, Inc.: Transformed Thinking
• Email: grow@rewireinc.com
  
  

Listen to the podcast here:

Jason and Steve- Solving for 2024

Hello and welcome, everybody, to this episode of LinkedIn Live and the Insight interviews. I'm your host, and I get to serve as president of Rewire Incorporated, and Steve Scanlon is your cohost and gets to serve as founder and CEO. Steve, welcome, my friend.

Thanks, man. Always looking forward this. Always, always.

This particular topic we've already seen as something that is just incredibly important to our clients. And so, without kind of doing our bantering or talking about the weather or anything else, dude, let's dive right in. You've got a story for it.

Well, yeah, you say a story. We get to live stories. That's what we do as coaches, is we, in part, get to live other people's stories, and we get to hear their narratives and hear what they're talking about. And here we are on January 24, and lo and behold, like many other years, just have quite a few clients coming in, one that I can think of, and we always protect the innocent, so, I change names and change a little bit of the scenarios. But it's interesting that even this week I had a client come in a little bit exacerbated, exasperated. Not exacerbated, exasperated, because they were so intentional about beginning the year in a certain way. And it was really fascinating. And I think that's what's kind of cool about coaching is because they were frustrated, but also curious. And I think they were asked, basically, they didn't say it exactly like this, but we all know about this New Year's resolution thing, I have this intention and whatever, and then, lo and behold, it's not a very long time afterwards, I abandon it. And in this particular case, there was a really cool dialogue around, at least for them, why that happened? Why does that happen? And it was just such a poignant question. And I will say at the onset, that's one of the interesting things about coaching, is it's not a one size fits all. Certainly, we're going to talk about some things today, but what was really unique about this particular individual is that, if nothing else, they moved from a frustration to a curiosity, and we got to have a really cool dialogue about, for them personally, what was it about this idea of setting an intention, a resolution, a goal, only to some period of time later abandon that goal? And so that's what we got to talk about. And that's what we get to talk about today, because at this period of every single year, there's probably a ton of people on the call and a lot of people going to listen to this go, yeah, that happens all the time. And so, you and I thought, I don't know how smart we are to think of this, but it probably happens to you and me, too, like, could we do a LinkedIn Live call about that very topic?        

It's funny when you and I picked out this topic, and really the topic picked out us, right? Because in January, this is just hot, not only with us personally, but with our clients, but after we picked out the topic, I went to a gym with a friend of mine, Charlie, and first of all, it's the first time I've been in a gym in a long time. Most of my workouts are either outside or in front of a video or something like that, but we decided to meet and go to this gym, and it was the first week in January, and it was packed, of course. Like, I had a hard time finding parking space. And today that we're doing this, it's Wednesday. On Monday, I got a text from that friend, and he was like, yeah, there's about a half as many people in here today. That's just two weeks later.

In my experience, if there were only half, that's pretty good.

But isn't it quite interesting?

Yeah. And hopefully, again, if people are listening, I suspect that you and I, as soon as we can, even in this LinkedIn Live, go, why? How do we move to something? And frankly, I mean, that's what coaching should endeavor to do, is, yes, we can uncover the why and we should, right?

Yeah.

If we don't know the why and we move right to, like, just do this without having a bigger dialogue about the why, that's what we do every single year. And the “just do it” strategy, I tell people it might work for Nike as a slogan and Nancy Reagan as, “just say, no”, the whole just thing, it might undervalue a process that might need to take place here, where we reset an intention there.

Yeah. Well, you know, there's a few things that I'll say about that. Even this morning, I was on a coaching call, and a client was talking about, yeah, my intention was to do this for January in particular, and, man, I've already messed that up. As he talked about, it was interesting because he didn't really mess it up as much as he thought. So, I guess what I'm thinking is the mindset around whatever your intention is or whatever your goal is, boy, that's really what matters.

Well, and you and I didn't even really talk about this, but you just gave me the, I don't know, the o- ramp.

Yeah.

Maybe we could rename this whole thing, the mindset of messing up, because that's exactly what it is that we have to talk about.

That's exactly right. That's exactly right. In fact, you and I have a little graphic that we use often, which is this guy here. There are iceberg models for all kinds of different illustrations that you want to make, but at Rewire, this is what our iceberg model looks like, and I'll explain it, and then, Steve, maybe you can go deeper into it. You know, the very tippy top is the results. That's what everybody sees, right?

I want to lose weight. I want to do more business. I want to have better relationships, results.

That's what people see. And then there's the activity, the actions that lead to the results. And most people see that as well. You're at the gym, you're reading the book. You're at a training, you're taking some sort of activity to achieve that result. And then everything else is below the waterline, right? And you did it just a minute ago. You pointed to your brain, right? There's the thoughts and the feelings that really make up the actions that we take to get the results that we're ultimately looking for.

Well, I don't think certainly you and I would ever claim to have pioneered the whole field of emotional intelligence, but anybody listening to this call probably knows quite a bit about emotional intelligence, because it's now been out there for a decade or two or three, which in the great scheme of things, isn't very long, because one of the things that they figured out, and we continue to learn, and I say this when I'm doing live work with people, you will take more actions in your life based on how you think and feel. And not necessarily always just how you reason and just for the sake of taking actions. And that's exactly why emotional intelligence even probably has exploded as a topic, is because even deeper on that thing, I will say feeling, right? And so, I can even hear myself, we begin to talk about that, and people, even on this call might be going, oh, my God, are we going to be humming and sitting on the ground and just getting all touchy feely? No. But I also don't want to undervalue the fact that if you said, hey, I'm going to go to the gym, or I'm going to do this thing, or I'm going to have this business plan, and you're not, you are not NOT doing that because of logic.        

That's right.

We're likely not doing that because of something else and how it makes us feel.

And that is the bigger part of the iceberg, right?

But the cool thing that you brought, and I want to come back to, and like, with all these things, we're already 40% done or whatever.

Yeah, you're good.        

The cool thing that you brought up is, what did we call it? The mindset of mistakes, right?

Well, yeah, whatever you want to say. Again, we're going back to the graphic. It's all in the thoughts and feelings. It's the mindset behind the actions and how you're thinking about your actions.

But specifically, and where we were going to go today, I wanted to talk about resolutions, because some of the people maybe on the call know I'm a total amateur at this, but I love etymology. Etymology is the study of the roots of words. I love studying things in different languages, and I'm probably not that much fun to have at a party because I do that and people are annoyed by it, but I do study words, and I got into studying the word resolution for me, and so much so that even Stephanie and I, one of the people who works with us, got into this because we both did this etymological search on it. However, I don't want to get into all that. Look, when you make a resolution, you are re-solving, right? Resolution, resolving. So, I'm going to try to dovetail on what you said, Jason. It is the mistake. Like, I'm already not doing that. Something else came up. I failed at that. Okay? So anytime you make a resolution, and by the way, I know there's a lot of people going, oh, January 1 is so arbitrary. It doesn't matter. You're right. Make a freaking January 24th resolution. Make a 4^th of July resolution. It doesn't matter.

 

That's right.

And by the way, it's just a word. How different is a goal and a resolution, right? People in my life, like, I don't do resolutions, but I'm going to make a goal and I'm like, okay, whatever you want to call it. So, let's think of those things synonymously. But you are resolving. So, the implication, I did this whole thing in Latin about re-solv-e that I found this thing, and in Latin, it literally means to resolve a problem, right? So, if you're doing it, again, I'm trying to do this sequentially, if you're doing it again, like re-solving it again, the implication is you have likely failed before. So, in the work that we do, and you and I, and we get into the neuroscience, and I've run this by a couple of other people that are a heck of a lot smarter than me because I get the luxury of being around a bunch of cool neuroscientists, I was like, I reached out to one of them, I was like, you know, talk to me about failure and what the brain does with failure, right? Thoughts and feelings.

Sure.

Well, I will tell anybody listening to this., whenever you're listening, all our brains need is one good juicy failure. And the feeling, hello, iceberg model of that failure for most of us to go, ooh, don't feel that again. That sucked. I didn't like that feeling at all. And so, what's really interesting is a resolution, you basically have to confront that feeling because we are re-solving. It was something you tried to solve. You wouldn't have to re-solve it if you didn't try to solve it before, and so, the feeling of failure comes into play. So, a lot of people that we work with, a lot of people when, again, we're doing live events because we do that around the country, I've asked people, why don't you make resolutions? Because you ask people. It's an interesting experiment, right? Ask groups of people how many people made a resolution? And these days, fewer and fewer people are already even doing it. And so, I ask, and then I ask groups, like, why not? Just being honest. I'm just curious, why not? And the most common response I get is, ready? They don't work.

Yeah, they don't work.

Wow. They don't. Interesting. Maybe it's because, and this is just a proposal. Maybe everybody's different, and like I said, I'm open for different things, when you make a resolution and you are re-solving, you have to bring in that failure, and we had made a commitment. I didn't like that. And the easiest possible strategy for me not to feel the feeling of failure-

Just not make the resolution.

Exactly. You and I both know we do help people set intentions. Coaching wouldn't even exist as a topic without a goal. The first thing we learn, there's a goal, right? And by the way, if there's a goal, there's a gap. 
       

Yeah, we're going somewhere, and we don't know how to get there.

And we're not there. Now, nobody brings to coaching, hey, I'm already here, and this is working perfectly, coach. Great. I mean, our coaching would be like, well, dude, you win, right? But there's a goal. We want to have a certain amount of sales in a year. We want to have a certain amount of relational equity. We want to grow in our leadership, whatever it might be. We have goals, and therefore, we have some sort of resolutions. And therefore, would we be willing to confront the fact that there absolutely is the possibility of failure? And that's what gets, I think, a little bit different about the way that maybe we share it. I totally love this idea that failure is not an option. And I tell people, okay, if you're trying to land Apollo 13 back with people on, and I could totally get that guy in Houston saying, failure is not an option, and that's a great rally call. Here's a whole other thought for you.

                                                                                                       
"In real life, failure is an option and, in fact, a foregone conclusion. If not, resolutions, would make no sense. We wouldn't resolve to anything."

Now, I'm not saying let's go out and fail, but, by the way, don't we see all kinds of books about that? Did John Maxwell not write a book called Failing Forward? Does Richard Rohr not have a book called Falling Upward? Like, there's something about, there's wisdom in knowing that we're going to fail, and failure is part of what teaches us. So, the resolution isn't, I'm going to do this one thing once, and I'm going to be in perpetuity with my action. Really? How about this? I set an intention, I get at it, I'm at it for a week, and then the inevitable excuses and whatever demons you face come up and excuses you make, because we all make them, you fail, and rather than maybe going, I hated that feeling, we recognized, and I think it would be a really cool dialogue with you, Jason, to talk about what it means to perpetually get back on the horse.

Sure. Oh, you and I have had a ton of conversations. In fact, we did a podcast episode of that. There are a couple things that are coming to mind. One is the failure piece. Another word for that could be resistance, right? You and I talked about that just the other day. This word resistance, where there will be something that comes against your and it won't feel good.

Won't feel good.

That's why resistance, that's bad. That's not a good thing. You're out in the flow. You're in resistance. Part of what I want to say is, without the resistance, achieving the goal wouldn't be as good as it can be, and if there wasn't resistance, you'd have a clear path. You wouldn't be even creating that goal because you would either already be there, or it would be that easy. The resistance is a gift. It's a gift.



If only we could see it like that. So here's something that, again, because you and I are coaches and we get to do this work one of the ways, and I'd love to hear from your side what you see here, but one of the things that when people want to stay on their horse or even get on the horse and they've fallen before, I want to start a new exercise plan that's the easiest one to pick on, there probably isn't a soul on the planet that didn't at least start and stop an exercise plan once, maybe, but we want to get on it. When people fall off the horse, one of the things that I see, Jason, is they come to us and go, you know what I really need? I need accountability. Hey, coach, I need you to like, if I do that, I want you to hammer me and whatever. And so, this might make you and I a little bit of different human beings and again, run a LinkedIn Live thing, and I am about to say something live and it's going to go off.

Are you about to get controversial here?


Yeah. And I don't know where it'll stand. You ready?

                                                                                                         
"When someone needs high accountability for something, maybe I don't always say this because I want to listen and make sure that I'm honoring their request, but in my mind, I'm going, you know that doesn't work, right? You know, me hammering you about your action over time doesn't work in the long run? And that might be the trick. There are a lot of people who are looking for accountability to something. My experience, and by the way, the neuroscience, in case you really want to know, suggests do this or do this and listen to me and I'm going to somehow threaten you or punish you if you don't do something, it doesn't work."


However, it might work in the short run. That's what the science suggests. Like, hey, if you're about to run off on the street and get killed, I'm going to threaten you. Like scream and yell and whatever. If your kids are doing something and there's a safety issue, scream and yell.


That's right.

Screaming and yelling and forcing people to do stuff does. The suggestion in neuroscience and really sociology is that that behavior can work in the short run. But what you and I are talking about, like, I know, but did anyone set a resolution or have a goal so they could do something by January 15th, or was the hope that our health looks like this over time?    
    

Yeah, well, that's the big deal right there. That's the difference between, hey, I want to lose 15 pounds versus, hey, I want to be a healthy person, right? Extremely different. What you're talking about right now with the accountability stick that people sometimes think that they're looking for, to me, it's almost analogous to an Advil pill, right? If I have an ache in my knee, I can pop an Advil pill, and that ache might go away temporarily. And if you are having trouble reaching your goal and somebody beats you over the head with an accountability stick, you may actually take some action that day, but it doesn't necessarily mean that you're becoming that particular person that lives a healthy lifestyle or is a better leader or whatever it is that you're looking for. The reason that I'm making an analogous to an Advil pill is if my knee hurt because I was running too much. Well, yes, an Advil might make it not hurt for today, but what's a different thing that I could do with my lifestyle so that my knee isn't inflamed as much? And it might be running a little less, running a little differently, walking instead of running.

Picking up swimming.        

Yeah, right? In other words, hey, maybe I'm not a runner anymore. Maybe I'm a swimmer now, right? But my knee doesn't hurt. As opposed to me popping Advil or for you in particular, that's watching us or listening to us right now, it's not, man, I just need somebody to kick my butt harder. No, it's probably something deeper than that.

Well, and we do have at least one solution in the way of, yeah, throw it up there. If you want to build a ship, don't drum up the men and together would divide the work and give orders. In other words, don't make accountability and scream and yell at people and blah, blah, blah. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea. See me, and this is Antoine, by the way, I spent some time trying to figure out exactly in French how to say that guy's name and I heard some guy on the Internet, Saint Exutri, and I was like, well, whatever. I'm not going to say it like that. But anyway, he wrote the Little Prince, many of you know, French aviator guy, but that quote points to a mindset. The quote points to, if you want to get a ship going and have people participate in a ship, teach them to have a different mindset.

That’s right.

Like, if the group of men and women were going, man, we need a ship, that pointed to the idea that you'll actually build a better ship, probably faster, probably, and sustain it and actually get it done when the group of people long for the vast and endless sea. Because to your point, Jason, there's a bigger thing. So, when someone comes to me and says, I need accountability to sell more or to do more social media or whatever, that's fine, I listen. Okay, cool. Because somewhere embedded in there is an intention, a resolution, but rather than accountability, what does it mean for you to vast to yearn, excuse me, for the vast and endless sea?

That's right.        

In that activity? And that comes back to purpose, right, we can quote all kinds of people on that. Simon Sinek, knowing your why all these people, like, if you need super high accountability, is your why you clear? Dude, I know some of your whys personally, because you and I have been partners for a long time. I know some of your whys and some of your deep whys about your own health and stuff. You don't need accountability on that.       
 

Right.

I know your wife and your commitment to your marriage and stuff, like not holding you accountable to your marriage. That would be like the dumbest because you, in that respect, yearn for the bastion.

Now, there's a couple of points that I'll make there. One is, if you're watching this or listening to us right now and you're thinking, well, yeah, but I'm in sales and I need to want to do 25% more sales than I did in 2023, and I hear that you want to yearn for the sea, guys, but I got to do some activities. I got to do some things. What I would say is this. Here's a real-life example. Hey, Coach, I want to increase my sales by 20%. Great. That sounds amazing. And that starts to be like the blueprints of a ship or the right wood for the ship. Great. 20% more sales sounds great. I would, and you would do the same- any of our coaches would do the same thing. Okay, what's important about 20% more sales to you? And you're going to get some sort of an answer. Oh, well, that means I make more money. Okay, great. What's important about making more money to you? And deeper and deeper and deeper. And now we can start to get, and I'll bring that quote back up, we can start to get to what is the yearning of the sea example for your 20%?

Yeah, but it's our ability to ask those questions. It's so funny that I have a coach. I know this, and I rely on him sometimes to ask me those questions because I'm not immune to “I want to sell more”. I got to do these things, and I'm certainly not immune to going, I want to have a health thing and I'm going to do this and have those intentions and think that I'm getting into that down and dirty thing and having someone ask me those questions and when I can come to, to your point, I heard one of our coaches the other day ask just a really good question. Let's say you got to your 20% and you were there and it’s the end of the year, whatever, I'd just love to hear, like, how will you live in that day? What will that feel like to you?

That's right.

What will you be thinking in that day? That was such a great question. It wasn't just, let's go get it done. It was a projection of a future feeling to help go, oh, I yearn for that.

Right. Another distinction that I want to make is we're kind of saying, like, well, if you find that yearning of the sea or whatever it is for your goal, you don't need accountability, and I would agree with that, but I'm going to nuance that a little bit because on the other side of our mouth, Steve, we're saying, yeah, but if you had somebody asking you good questions around that or if you had a cheerleader or something like that, oh, that's super important, right? So, they augment one another. You getting to your authentic why or your authentic yearning for the sea example over whatever it is your resolution is or your goal is super important, that’s necessary, that needs to happen, so is the community of people around you that are cheering you on, that are asking you questions. Not to see you fail and not to shove it in your face that you're not doing as good as you should be doing, which sometimes accountability can look like. But rather than, man, I care about you, and I want to know how it's going. And if it's not going that well, you can be vulnerable with me and tell me what's not going well.

I like not to see you fail. How about to be with you in your failure?     
   

Thank you.

When you fail. Because that's the whole point. Hey, if you're going to set a goal, 20%, whatever it is, and if it were so simple that you never failed, I would even question the goal.

Well, sure.        

Most of us, when we resolve to do things, that's going to take something, and it's going to take looking at that resistance and being with people in that, when you fail, what would it be like for you? And so even on this day and 24th, maybe our question should be, what horse do you need to get back?

Yeah, Steve, that's so good. I wish we could go another hour, but we're done. So, I'm going to do this. I'm going to put up this QR code. If your resolution, if whatever it is, or your goals or your intentions, the things that you're putting out, if something resonated with you that we said today and you'd like to discuss it further or get any of the free tools on our website, grab this QR code. You can also email us at grow@rewireinc.com. This is what we do, and you can get a bunch of free tools on our website, or you could talk to a coach. But, like, literally, this is exactly what we do at Rewire.

And one who's probably not going to start with high accountability.

Probably not. Not with Rewire's brand of mindset coaching, but we will help you bridge that gap in a very pure and authentic way.

You know, we can go on and on about that, but we know because we're right here at the top of the hour. So, thank you, dude.

Great. And there, there's another episode of LinkedIn Live in the books, and you'll be hearing us on all of our podcast platforms with this very episode in the future. So, Steve, peace, brother. Everybody out in LinkedIn land and in podcast land, may you have amazing intentions, and may you have amazing resolutions, and may you yearn.        

May you have amazing failures.

Oh, what a great way to end.

And yearn. I like you were going to say that. And yearn.        

See you later, everybody.        

                                                                                                               ---

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