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Lindon Crow is the Founder of Productive Learning where he and his team are daily helping clients close the gap between potential and actual results and find their way towards mastering themselves and their interests. Over the past 30 years, Lindon has created over 100 dynamic workshops, and while he has since passed leadership of the company to his son, he continues to serve as Executive Board Member and Senior Trainer, writing new content for workshops as the opportunity arises. Each morning, he pursues the goal of being present in each moment of the day ahead and strives to model a life of purpose and love for his children, grandchildren, and every client he’s had the honor of working alongside.

 

In this episode, Steve and Lindon discuss:

  • The New Normal and Permanence
  • Metaphor of Seasons
  • Embracing Change and Reality
  • Future Projections and Anxiety
  • Openness to Different Thinking

Key Takeaways:

  • Embrace change and adaptability to thrive in any situation
  • Unleash the power of storytelling to captivate and inspire others
  • Navigate challenging times with resilience and grace
  • Cultivate a mindset and beliefs that empower and uplift you
  • Break free from restrictive narratives and unlock personal growth

 

“Every season has its purpose. Embracing the current conditions and adapting to them is essential for productivity and personal well-being.”

 - Lindon Crow

Connect with Lindon Crow:

 

Connect with Steve and Jason:

 

Listen to the podcast here:

 

 

Lindon Crow- Adapting to the Seasons

 


            

Hello, everybody, and welcome to this episode of the The Insight Interviews- Powered by REWIRE. I don't really know what today is, because the truth is, I don't exactly know when our episodes drop, but I have a guest. This is a guest I got to bring back from, actually, a couple of years ago. and it's not often. I know I'm pretty famous for saying that about my guest. I have this awesome person today. It's not very often that I get to bring on a mentor coach to me, a friend, someone that every time I talk to, I don't know what the heck he gets out of it, but I always learn a great deal. So, Insight interview world, say hi and hello again to Mr. Lindon Crow. Lindon, say hi to the world here.

 

Thank you, Steve. That was very kind of you. I didn't know I was a mentor.


Which is part of what makes you the mentor. You don't ever know that you are one.

 

I have to add it to my resume, although I'm not going out looking for anything, so I don't know what I would do with the resume.


Well, I have said this several times to many of my friends and even people that listen to this show, that, Lindon, you and I speak somewhat regularly, and I'll call you and you'll call me and we'll have these meaningful dialogues. I have to say it drives my wife a little crazy because you and I don't really play much in the shallow end of the pool, so to speak. You and I don't do a lot of small talk, which I think is really cool.        
            

Well, you'll have to explain how that drives her nuts.

 

Because when someone's like, I suppose when we dive into the deep end of the pool and I try to go tell her what that was like, I must not do a very good job. And she's like, hey, can't we just eat dinner?

Oh Okay.        
            

Well, it's on me because I don't know how to tell other people. That's why I invite you on the show. Let's go dive into the deep end of the pool together.

Well, I would say that you said, I don't know what he gets out of it. One is I enjoy it, and at this point in my life, I rate very highly on importance joy and happiness. So, I enjoy it, so I do it. But what I find enjoyable about it is most of our conversations or most of the content of our conversations are very exploratory in their nature. So, we rarely, I think, finish sharing an observation or an experience or an opinion without sort of moving it into a next question, wondering or kind of maybe soliciting from each other what we might see. I might say something and I might ask you, well, what have you done with that? So, I love the exploratory nature of the conversations. They're not intended to end at a destination so much as to leave me thinking when the conversation is over. And I enjoy that.

Yeah. Yeah, in fact, I'll point out that usually you and I don't structure a lot of calls, right? And so when we talk each other, you're in California, I'm in Oregon. When we talk to each other, I always find it interesting how our calls end because it's usually like this, okay, later. The point of you and I having meaningful dialogue wasn't to come to some conclusion, but to your point, to explore together. And the exploration doesn't usually end with, okay, that's the truth. and now I'm going to go off and do that. It ends with more thought and question. It always ends with Lindon, I got to go. I got an 08:00, but some people would be so dissatisfied with, like, we had this conversation, but we didn't conclude anything. And actually, I'm at complete peace with that. I start to look forward to not concluding stuff. Is that wrong?        
            

Well, obviously you don't really mean that question as a right or wrong. Again, it's interesting. Isn’t t? I think it's great. I think leaving things open ended is contrary to the way in which we grow up learning, which is we drive towards conclusions, finality, definitive answers, right, wrong. Things like that, which is useful in a lot of areas of our life, a lot of things. It's good to know exactly what's what and how it works and what the answer is, but there's a lot of other areas of our life that are more dynamic, more fluid. And so, leaving things open ended, I think, creates a greater opportunity for growth, evolution, changing of directions, things like that. So, I like it.

Well, that's, in some ways, what I was hoping to talk to you about today. But I am going to say up front that I think we should call this episode, you know we have to title all of these. Usually, the team listens to these and tries to pull out again some pithy and clever thing that you said or whatever, and go, oh, let's call it that. So what I'd like to call it is finality, conclusions, and the answers to everything.

Yeah. Okay, good. I've been working on that for 40 years, and if we can get there by the end of this 20 minutes call, that would be really great.        
            

Well, okay, but you start.

Yeah, right. No, this is your podcast. You start.

I'm going to dare Stephanie to call it that, but she probably won't. Well, here's what I was hoping that we could have a meaningful dialogue around. Don't know that we will come to any finality or conclusions, and hopefully that's not too distasteful for the listeners. You and I have been thinking and actually spending a little bit of time with thinking lately in terms of the concept of seasons. And when I think of seasons, I'm talking about seasons of life. I might be talking about seasons of our business lives, right? Different cycles. And quite honestly, Lindon, when I think about seasons, and you and I didn't talk about this, but I really follow Dr. Daniel Siegel's work, and he has a concept that he calls temporal integration, and temporal integration is really all about how do we integrate our minds. And in this case, this temporal integration is the idea that we can accept the fact that things are temporal, right? That if you're going through a difficult time, if this is a winter, so to speak, time, I think he points out in his psychology that we have this capacity, if not proclivity, towards. Unfortunately, when we go through a dark season or a tough season, we can have this idea of making it permanent, and it magnifies the difficulty. And so, in some ways, if we could keep in mind the temporal nature of things that can help us navigate a little bit more effectively the actual season that we're in. And so since you've been- yeah, go ahead.

Yeah. Can you elaborate on what you mean? Because it's an interesting thought. We tend to make it permanent. What is meant by we make it permanent in his work or in?

No, I would be doing my best to point to his work, and I have experienced, I can tell you I experienced that this week, his experience as a clinical psychiatrist. And by the way, this guy's got both a PhD and an MD, so he's kind of an interesting cat anyway, but in his work as a clinical psychiatrist, I think he points to the idea that when people come and see him and they're going through a difficult time, one of the markers of the difficulty is both the language and the thoughts and the ideas that when the people speak about their own season, it sounds very permanent to them. Okay, here's something that I've been hearing lately from some clients. When I hear language like, this is the new normal, this is people making a permanence to something., and for some reason we lose, we let go of this temporal. If I knew things were temporal- I'll give you an example. I was talking this morning to one of my friends who's a Navy Seal, and a lot of these Navy seals are being more public and whatever, and the Navy Seals have a saying. I'm sure you've heard it. Maybe you taught it to me. I don't know. But the saying is: the suck ends. Right? The two sayings, and it's not a very pleasant word or whatever, but they use the word suck, right? Embrace the suck. They do this when they're training because they put these men and women through this incredible, horrifically difficult 36 hours in the ocean or whatever, 51 degree water, whatever training, right?

Uh huh.

You will tap out, or in their case, go ring the bell, so to speak, if you let your brain start to go, well, this is it. Like, this is it forever. And that's what they're ultimately trying to do, is bring you to that point where you have to make a choice of whether or not you can believe that eventually you can endure a great hardship if provided that you can see that it's going to end. And sometimes they can bring those people to a point where they don't see it's going to end, and that's when they tap out.

So, moving it from something as dramatic as a Navy seal or training at that level of the military or whatever, could this be as simple as a simple kid growing up at some age, 8, 10 twelve. They've lost at some game or some competition, or they've fallen off first chair flute, and it's permanent. Now I am a loser, or I am not good enough would be sort of the more experienced translation of that? That that perception is now permanent. That level of achievement is now the top, the end, and can't be exceeded.

100%. Or something you say is simple. I don't know if that's simple, because that's also a fairly complex mindset, but it could be something like, hey, you're in business and you're a leader, and economically, it's been a difficult season for your company, or you've lost people in your organization, or you're not growing as much as you should or whatever, and you go through that season, and that's when I sometimes hear some of my clients go, this is the new normal. And if you embrace that as a long-term thing like this, I won't go through another season, interestingly, it feeds on itself, right? Because it magnifies the darkness. And then maybe day in, day out, week in, week out, you're less motivated to get up and go, I'm going to get at this thing. I got some things to do and some things to accomplish. You simply don't do that at the level that you could when you are in this state of permanence, because think about why would you.?

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Does the same principles apply to, instead of something difficult, something extraordinarily good?

Yes.        
            

So can we as easily be stuck with some sense or some perception of permanence around the euphoria of something and unwilling to see it differently?

I guess my answer to that, Lindon, is, I don't know. Is that an okay answer? I don't know. Probably. Wouldn't you suspect? But nobody wants to work on that. That's like emotional intelligence as a topic. Every book that I read about that the way that primarily we demonstrate emotional intelligence is not necessarily by showing someone with high eQ, it's primarily low eQ, because if you have really high eQ, most people would think well, why would you read a book just, and yeah, do that?        

Well, I was thinking, as you were kind of running through and explaining that idea and the permanency, and you get to a hard time, and if you think it's forever, you might as well quit. Which that actually makes logical sense to me. If what I'm doing is not working and it's going to be this way forever, why bother? That would be insanity. But the fatal error in there is thinking that that situation or condition is forever. So, I was flipping it and I'm thinking, okay, so if we are in a new relationship and everything's wonderful and they're perfect, and that's the way we start to imagine the rest of our life together. And then what's the reaction? As it turns out that it's not permanent. There's a lot more going on and a lot of changes and evolving and cycling through things, and I just got a picture of when it is something that is really good and life begins to penetrate that permanent perception and tell you it's no longer like that, how we react versus when something we've concluded is really bad and we believe it's permanent. And then information or life changes that could or does show that things have improved or better and how we react to that. And my first brush on thinking about it was when things get better and we're committed to that, they can't ever get better again, the refusal to see the opportunities that are opening up and the things that have changed for the better and just refusing to see it and staying adamant about our position, whereas when it's something good and it begins to fall apart, we don't tend to hang on as long and we get to this devastating realization that it's over, the good times are over. I suspect the reaction to whatever reality or whatever conditions are starting to change, and our willingness to embrace those changes, see them for what they are and move with them is different if we're in a bad time and it's getting better versus, we're in a good time and it's getting worse. I'm just thinking about this for the first time, so I'm not sure if I'll think the same way about this in ten minutes.

Well, good. Well, we have about whenever 10 or 15 left, so when it changes, let me know. No, I think that's really good. At the end of the day, people listening to this, Linden, let's go here. Let's say you look back at this year and there have been many people this entire year has been not a really great year for some in some businesses. In other sectors, it's been really, really good. There's been some that have had some really difficult sectors. Financial services and banking and mortgage banking and real estate, right? These are all sectors that have been impacted fairly negatively in the last year, year and a half. I can tell you in some of those sectors, some of the main predictors look out and say, gosh, 2024 isn't going to be much better. In fact, here's a saying. Ready? There's been a saying out there, you could actually google this because it's kind of funny, and the saying has been, survive till 2025, right? That's been something that people have held onto as a mantra, which I look at and I go, well, first of all, what a crazy thing to put in your mind, right? I mean, am I crazy about that? Or like, it's not that I don't understand conceptually what they might mean by that, but to actually bring that up as a mantra just, to me, shoves people to Maslow's lowest rung, and then I don't know what your productivity would look like in 2024, if that's what you embraced as a mantra. What do you think about it?

                                                                                                        
Going with the idea that the language and words that we use actually are very important. because the meanings that we have behind them begin to evoke the emotions and the drive or the lack of drive to act probably is not the best saying. In other words, I don't see that saying leading somebody to maximizing the opportunity, minimizing the downside at that time, though, from one person to the next, maybe it does, but generally speaking, that doesn't sound like the best way to put it. But if, on the other hand, someone is trying to capture the idea of, hey, listen, there's conditions that are way outside of our control, this is not in our hands to change right now, whether that's an interest rate or the real estate market. And how many homes are going up for sale? And I'm attached to how many homes are being sold at any given time for my living, and that's out of my hands, and I need to recognize while that's out of my hands, what is and how would I want to prepare for this next season?
                                                                                                       
"Well, if you want to stay with the metaphor of seasons, if I have the proper clothing and the proper shelter, then winter is no better or worse than summer. It's just different. So, am I prepared for what this season has? Because in this season, there's opportunity. If you use the metaphor of the seasons, every season has its purpose, and so as long as we're in line with what that season makes available and what that season tends to not make available, and if we prepare and put our nuts away for the wintertime, then we just do something different during that time, because that's what's going to be most productive or best for our lives."

I think if we resist it and reject it and we want it to always be good or always be easy, what we're really reacting to is, somebody moved my cheese. I don't like it when I have to do it this way. I like it better when people call me than I have to reach out and call them. Probably more resistance to having to put on long pants and a coat when I like sandals and shorts.

Yeah, that's such a great point. If all you want to wear is sandals and shorts, which again, I respect. I understand that, but it's not a season for that. What I'd love to hear you talk about, and this is something that I've been saying, and sometimes I'll speak about this, but kind of like you've taught me, I don't talk about it like I know something. It's just an observation that I'm making and questions that I have. I've been questioning the ability specifically to remain creative when there is a gap between what I feel like I'm getting in the world and what I'd like, right? So maybe an easier way to put that is I have a lot of people experience right now, stress. I think this is something you said to me years ago, but primarily stress, anxiety, fear, worry, which, by the way, those things probably have clinical differences, I'm sure, but most of those things, and I'm pretty sure you said this to me, but they're a future projection of a negative outcome, and I've spent some time thinking about that. Right? If I projected forward to June or August or the end of January or the end of the year, whenever it is- the end of this weekend, if I projected forward and thought, oh, that could be okay, and it's okay to wear this kind of clothing right now. And if I projected forward positively and or even neutrally, anxiety probably wouldn't be what I come up with. It's only when I project forward and go, well, that's going to suck, that's going to be bad. And I don't have control over things, and I suspect that that's one of the things that maybe creates in us anxiety and fear and worry. So, I love what you said about wearing different clothes. Like, I just want to wear sandals, and when I'm not wearing those again, back to the permanency thing in seasons. Sometimes people go, and I'm never going to be able to wear them again. And then it magnifies the season, and next thing you know, even when you listen to people, you're like, oh, my gosh. And you want to so help them find a different reality.

Yeah. And maybe even more subtle than I'm never going to be able to wear them again. Again, we're sort of staying down this metaphorical line would be, well, summer will come around again at some point, and I'm just going to be miserable until then. So, there is some recognition that it's not permanent, but there's an acceptance of it being miserable until the next change occurs.

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And what questions might you ask an individual who expressed that to you?

Okay, so if someone said that, I said, well, are you happy with that point of view of your future? Which is kind of rhetorical because you're expecting them to say no, but it's to establish that point of view and to see whether would you like to address that? Is there a possibility you could see it differently? Because I would know that my own look on life would want to bite in there and want to try to have them see that it's not true what they're saying. So, when we get to sort of, if you will, our coaching or our classes or the different things that you and I lead and work with people, we sometimes have to check and make sure that we don't want to take them down a road because we know it would be better for them and they haven’t made that choice yet themselves. So, I would probably ask a few of the somewhat rhetorical or obvious questions just to have them stop for a moment and agree that they want to look, and then I would listen to their answers and to the degree to which I could, I would assess the sincerity of that look. Or are they just now under pressure because I asked them that obvious question and they're going to go along with me because it would look bad if they didn't?

Well, we don't have a lot of time, you and me. Let me be one of those people, then you can ask. And I'm not going to try to fake it, I'm going to try to reflect things that I've been hearing.  And so, I'm so curious. Okay. So, the first question, if I heard you right, was, do I like my thinking around that? Right? How did you ask that?        

Well, I'll ask you. I got it. Do you like your thinking around, I'll call it their thinking. In other words, you have a large client base. You have an industry that you're very plugged into. Do you like your thinking about their thinking?

No. Well, at first blush, again, stuff you taught me, at first blush, I like all my thinking, Lindon.

That's why I like you. Okay, let me change the question then. All right. Do you think when you reflect on the way you think about their thinking. Is it helping you on your path where you're trying to get.

It's actually not.        

Okay. And how so? Be a little more specific.

Sometimes I suspect I go down the road of, well, if they can't see that differently and there's nothing really I can do to change that, because that's not the business I'm in, to tell them to do different things and enough people don't choose to see it differently, then, for example, coaching has become irrelevant.

Okay, so now you're in a situation where, because of how whoever that they are in the world that you might be working with are somewhat stuck in their thinking, you're now stuck in your thinking. They've now basically made it not possible for you to do what you ideally want for them.

Yeah, but I would like to be the person that never at least admits to saying that they made me think anything. But I suspect you're right.

Well, if you reflect on how often you have talked about the industry at large and more specifically the people that you work with and how they feel about the current economy and the interest rates and the lack of housing on the market and everything that drives their business, your story isn't changing. It's starting to stay permanent. You're stuck in this economic time, and you've brought up just an observation, very little about how you're going to adjust to make this the best opportunity you can or to enjoy the season for what it is or how you would like to adapt rather than just accept.

I didn't want this podcast to turn into some kind of intervention for me, dude. Like, come on.

You said, well, let's just I’ll be the person. And how would you address that? This is how I would address it.

I love just if I'm the listener, they might be going, wow, Scanlon's getting handed to him, which you've done to me before live with people. I tell people all the time, the guy pulled out a filet knife and just cut me open, which, by the way, was beautiful, because I needed to be cut open. I don't want to get out of it too far. Yes. The answer is, it's why I call you from time to time. I can practice metacognition enough to know that, I don't know. I'm in stage two. When I get there, I'm like, okay, I am thinking, I can see it. I don't always know the way out personally, Linden, but at least I can see it.


Well, that's certainly a great start. Out of respect for the 08:00 that you have and the time that we'll be running out real short, let's just kind of take where we started and then that little engagement where I was asking you some questions and sharing an observation for you and say that would be an example of where a situation that was moving, dynamic and fluid and then at some point became fixed and permanent and in the way in which you do it. So, if what we're talking about here a little bit is we get into these seasons and there's some that we like more than others that we find work better for the things that we do in our life than other seasons. So, again, there's some people who probably love the wintertime if they make their living at a ski resort when the snow is there, then their winter is our summer. 

                                                                                                           
"If we make our living doing something out in the sun and they make their living doing something in the snow, what we're really talking about is, are we willing to continuously adapt and move for what the world wants to offer us? And can we see, hear, feel and notice this is your metacognition when we are getting ourselves stuck in our own thinking. And if we can do that, then we open up the possibility of choices that we have basically cut off."
            

Well, I don't know if it was the intent, and we do probably got to wrap it up here. I don't know if it was the intent of this call, but just, I didn't even mean to go through that role play with you, but I'm literally sitting here going, you know, this is the power of what you do. Maybe people listening, I hope - I got the power, and here's what it is. Literally sitting here, I'm thinking of some different things about my business. Wait a minute. Because if that's true, whether we talked about sandals and whatever, it just opened me to some different thinking that isn't always this projection of, well, that's going to end like this. No. What about this? And what about this? And so maybe what we're trying to do here in talking about seasons is open to the possibility that, yes, we're not denying the fact that this is a difficult time. I didn't hear you say that, but we're going to move through it. And if we can accept that, then even sitting here in my chair, I can go, well, if I was going to accept that, you know, what else we could do? Like, I begin to think generatively.

Exactly. There you go. There you go. Instead of telling the story to restrict the possibilities and to embed yourself in a permanent feel you tell the story so that you can generate exploratory and generative ideas and creative ideas. The story is still rooted in some fact, but the purpose for telling it changes.

Well, why don't we do what we always do and just go, okay, later.

Okay, I got to go.        

Well, I'm hoping that if you're listening to this again, my hope isn't that you got into Lindon's story, or certainly my story, I think both you and I hope that people could listen to that, know, maybe do a little multitasking and hear that there are stories, but also feel it for themselves. Where do you, listener, maybe need to explore your story? Right, Lindon? Where do you need to maybe even begin to recognize that maybe some of your story is restrictive based on whatever season, but it's just a story.

Yeah, and if the story leaves somebody feeling sense of hopelessness or inability, incapable, not seeing the future, being able to evolve and be in a better place, then what you're saying becomes, I think, potentially really life changing if they can make that shift. So, we have to monitor that sense of fatal, futile, helpless, not going to change, it's not in my hands. The world's controlling my fate and say, well, not that I believe I'm going to change what's not changeable or what's not in my hands, but where's my part in this? Where is my ability to adjust, adapt and make best of. And if anybody walks out with that thought, then cool.        

Lindon, thank you. All right, we'll see you guys' next time here on the Insight Interviews. Thanks everybody.

All right, hugs to all your family, dude.    

Thanks, buddy. Take care.        

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