Do you want to conquer challenges and uncover new possibilities in your life? Hosts Steve and Jason will reveal the key to embracing change and discovering fresh opportunities. You can achieve the outcome of overcoming adversity and finding new paths to success.
In this episode, Steve and Jason discuss:
- The Away State vs. Toward State
- The Four C's Approach
- The Importance of Awareness
- Connecting Past Experiences & The Impact of Stress
- The Power of Choice
Key Takeaways:
- Embracing change leads to new opportunities
- Developing awareness and consciousness enhances personal growth
- Connecting past experiences fosters resilience and adaptability
- Contextualizing challenges promotes strength and perseverance
- Choosing a creative mindset nurtures success and innovation
“Being creative and generative is what we need to overcome adversity and open doors in 2024.”
-Steve Scanlon
Connect with Steve and Jason:
- LinkedIn: Jason or Steve
- Website Rewire, Inc.: Transformed Thinking
- Email: grow@rewireinc.com
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Listen to the podcast here:
Steve and Jason- Open Doors in 2024
Hello and welcome, everybody, to this episode of the Insight interviews via LinkedIn Live. We are live. Steve Scanlon is one of your hosts, I'm your other host, Jason Abel. Hey, Steve, how it's going? How is it going?
I'm still marveling at the fact that you told me to go ahead and don't say anything right before we got on. That was the best thing you've ever said to me. It’s going really well.
You were in, mid-sentence, and I needed to stop you. But it's good.
That was great.
Well, dude, let's dive right in. We don't take the fact that LinkedIn does this thing called LinkedIn Live, and we don't take it for granted, and we don't want to just come on and laugh, although that might be fun. But anybody who has tuned into us or may tune in later on as all of this sits on LinkedIn forever and ever, you came here because you wanted to dive into a particular topic. And if you're here, something about open doors in 24, going from adversity to advantage, something caught your attention with that title, and so we do want to dive right into it. And I'll probably just set us up by saying, this is a topic like many if you've watched any of our LinkedIn Live or listened to any of our podcast episodes, you know that oftentimes what we do is we'll bring things that we hear over and over from our clients into the discussion of our podcast or into LinkedIn. And that is what we're doing right now. This is probably, well, I guess it is the last LinkedIn live that we'll be doing for 2023. And we were just not blind to the fact that we've seen this with our clients, and we observe it out in the world. There's some adversity right now. It's okay to say that. There just is, and that may take the form of economic adversity. That economic adversity may impact your particular business. A lot of the industries that we serve are impacted right now, and some very heavily. And yeah, we're just going to call it out. That's adversity. There may be political adversity. There may be things in the world, climate, whatever it is, I think we can all agree that there's adversity right now, and some of us are just succumbing to some of that. And so, what we wanted to do was we wanted to give you a toolbox in which you can say, okay, yes, there's that adversity. But how is it that we can, I don't know, maybe even turn it into an advantage? But how we can go from adversity to advantage? There's one industry that we serve, and maybe I won't call it out by name, but one of the themes I saw recently was stay alive until ‘25. I don't know. Okay, fine, great. And I'm sure there's some really good marketing around that or some really good ideas around that, but we look at it and go, no, let's go in ‘24. Let's open some doors in ’24, and so that's what we're here for. So, Steve, there's the topic. I know you've been in front of some groups lately, and we've had some clients lately where you've come up with some material that's been super helpful around this. Around this idea.
Yeah, and it's great to be here with you, Jason, and the whole stay alive till ‘25. Even as you were saying that, the thing that struck me about that, and that's not just that one industry. You and I both went online when we saw that, and I actually saw a huge conference in healthcare, and that was a theme, and I've just seen it in a lot of places, and I've just got to say this, it's a horrible theme. I'm sorry.
Wait, what do you mean?
Should I not mince words? It's horrible. But what's really interesting about it is it's not entirely untrue. Can something be both horrible and untrue? It's not that I don't get it. Conceptually, I get it. But if- think about waking up every day and go, okay, I'm going to follow my theme. What is it? Stay alive. Stay alive. Literally, you'd be putting yourself in what we in coaching call an away state, because that language directly points to survival. So, dude, we'll do a whole call on Maslow's lowest rung of his hierarchy of needs and being in survival. But just know this. If every day you wake up and go, stay alive, stay alive. If that's the theme, if that's the language you're using, even if you point to that, if that's the theme. On the one hand, bless you and may you stay alive, I get it, but you will find yourself on Maslow's lowest hierarchy of needs. Now, what that means is you're going to dedicate a ton of energy towards that. That's the problem. As if you were lost in the woods or were in some other situation where you actually had to stay alive, you go into survival mode, right? And very focused, very whatever, high stress situation. That's what survival mode is all about, and so, the brain dedicates a lot of energy. And the biggest problem with that, whether you're in real estate, mortgage, healthcare, legal, all the industries maybe that we serve, the biggest problem with this is you probably wouldn't be dedicating as much energy to the things that actually serve you in your world.
Right on. And to your point, there are times where survival and you concentrating on that is really important. And there have even been sometimes during this year where that may be some of our coaching to our people, but in very short periods of time.
Right. That's why stay alive till ‘25. We have a whole other year. I mean, if I'm getting sick and I've got to like, whatever, okay, stay alive till like 09:00 tonight. Like you said, short term, not as a whole year, because you'd be discounting the idea that there is so much, I don't care what industry year. And there's so much that we could do in 2024. And that's why we came up with open doors in ‘24, a much better theme.
Yeah.
A toward state. Everybody that's ever studied positive psychology or gets into positive inquiry as a concept, if they heard stay alive till 2025, they'd be like, no, let's flip that around. And so that our theme for the year can be, what doors can we open in ‘24? How do we open doors in ‘24?
Right on. Before you get to your deal, you've already mentioned a couple of things I want to just scratch a pinch deeper than you have. You've talked about an away state and a toward state, and I know that inside of Rewire and inside of the coaching industry, that's pretty common vernacular, but would you just define that for a minute or two for us?
Yeah, we oftentimes ask other people questions. And by the way, sometimes the person in the mirror, here's a question that we sometimes, like I might say, Steve, why did you do that? Why'd you do that? It's a pretty common question. Why did I say that? Why did I do that? I always tell people when I hear myself talk like that to me, or I'm saying that to one of my kids or my wife or, why'd you do that? It might as well be followed with comma, you idiot, because that's kind of how that is. The away state is when we ask someone, why'd you do that? Or why did that go wrong? Or what went wrong there? Or think about what went wrong. We put our brains in what's called an away state contrasted with a toward state. Now, to some people, it might just be like, oh, positive thinking. Actually, there's some really cool, deep scientific research that says when we get in an away state, we raise our threat response, and therefore, it's much more difficult to be creative and generative.
Right.
And so, putting people in a toward state is asking questions like, hey, when that goes well, how do you think you're going to feel, right? Hey, what have you done in the past that's worked? When you've been in a situation like that, have you seen someone else do that? And you were like, oh, my God, that works really well. What did that look like toward? Toward. Toward. We do that in coaching primarily because it puts their brains in a way where they can create and be generative, which, by the way, it's kind of swiping from some of the material today. That is, in part what helps us open doors at ‘24, which is precisely why you and I, when we hear stay alive till ’25-
We kind of chuckle.
We’re in away state process. And so, please, if you're going to host an event in the near future, don't pay attention to stay alive till ‘25 or anything else that puts people in a way or a threat state.
Yeah, thanks for going through that. From an illustration, one of the things that helps me is this idea from operating from your heels versus operating from the balls of your feet. It's your brain doing the same thing. When you're in a way state, you're operating on your heels. You're not really in control of things. Other things are controlling you versus when your brain is in a toward state, you're on the balls of your feet and you're ready to take control yourself and do things, and it puts your brain in that state.-3.png?width=340&height=260&name=Untitled%20design%20(1)-3.png)
See, this is why you and I have a hard time with these things and staying to 30 minutes, dude, because I want to go do a whole lesson. Like what you just said, the whole heels, balls of your feet. The first thing that went through my brain was almost any athletic stance in almost every- I'm trying to think of a sport. Well, where you're on your heels, like baseball, basketball, think of offensive linemen in football. They're not back, both of them- that's what we're trying to do anyway.
Yeah, exactly.
Let me think of sports analogies.
But you've got a system that you've put together called the four C's that can take somebody who might be in an away state right now who might be feeling that, man, the adversity is overwhelming, Jason and Steve. Like, I hear you and yeah, I want to go to the advantage, but dude, I'm just covered up right now and I really like the simplicity of it. The four C’s. You mind taking us through that?
No. And I'll do know, true to form, because we know these things are limited, I'll try to do it fairly quickly. Interestingly, I don't want to do it so quick that we just rattle off four C's because both you and I know that, and we've said this a long time about our own business and our own lives, that prescriptions, they're not really our thing. And so even though these are four C's, I would think of them more like a systematic approach to something rather than a prescription for something.
Right on.
Because you might land on one of these C's, you might hear the first one and go, hey, I'm actually doing really well. The second 1 may be like, oh, but if you think of it as like a prescription, then people have a tendency to want to go this, then this, then this, then this, and my hope is that when you hear these four C's, anybody listening can primarily think of it in terms of what they might take away from. Jason, because you had mentioned at the beginning, so many of our clients are going through this. This has come up over and over and over and over, and I created these four C's. I did assemble it together, but I noticed that each of these C's kept coming up in coaching, specifically around adversity. And like you said, how do we take adversity and learn how to spin it or turn it or maybe even have agency with it differently, right? And so, from a marketing perspective, of course we're going to name something adversity to advantage, but if you just speak in terms of, oh, hey, folks, you ought to turn this into an advantage and it sort of stays esoteric, then people listen and they might agree, but there's nothing you can do with it.
Yeah, that's right. We're all about, let's actually get something done.
So, ready? I'm going to give you something to actually hopefully put your hands around with the four C's.
And I will say this before you start, I know you and I were just kind of talking off the cuff earlier today. You were like, hey, it's kind of funny that we're doing the four C's today. I just had a client this morning that you kind of worked through, and so it is so appropriate, and it is so timely. I'm excited that we're doing it today.
Well, here we go. The first C, if people are prone to either taking notes, like you said, this is going to live on LinkedIn and God knows where else for a long period of time. So, rewind.
Forever. Forever. It better be good, Steve.
Eternity is a long, long time. Jason, make it good. There's a lot of pressure all of a sudden, forever. Wait a minute, I better. All right, so the first C we're going to list off is consciousness. Consciousness. Now, when people hear that, they're like, dude, we're all conscious. We're awake. We're listening to you. Like, what are you talking about? So maybe an equally as good word, although I guess I was searching for a C word, but an equally good word is awareness. How do we stay conscious to it? Sometimes when we're in adversity, adversity can consume us so much that we almost operate in life. Like, this is all there is, and we're not even aware. Sometimes my wife will say to me, like, a friend will say, why are you so upset? Have you ever had someone say, why are you upset? And then you're looking around going, am I upset? Like, is that how I'm coming off? Right? That's a lack of awareness. So, if we're not aware and going, whoa, look at what's really going on here, and by the way, without awareness, all of the seas fall apart. And that's something that you and I work through in coaching a lot. Let us first start by going, yes, and you're going to hear this, and again, if you're prone to writing this down, there's a great neuroscientific saying that says, if you can name it, you can tame it. Let us become aware. Let us become aware. Let us be conscious. Let us be fully conscious of what's going on.
And just on your step one, just on a very ground where the rubber meets the road type of thing, it is you doing things like, just like Steve said, looking up and looking around going, okay, this stinks, and it's affecting me. I'm aware of that. I'm conscious of it. Like, it's literally you doing that.
And you said, I had a client this morning, right? Came in and said, this stinks. And he started to tell me about the stink, and it was this and that and this and that, and what I had noticed Jason, was it stunk. He was so entrenched in the stench that I wasn't exactly sure if it had consumed him so much that we could get sort of out of it and observe it. Does that make sense?
Yeah, exactly.
So, we began to do that, and it was interesting, even in step one, as he became more conscious of it, already, he began to sort of, his mindset, it didn't completely shift, but you could already feel like, okay, got it. Which is, by the way, sometimes our role in life is to be sometimes the tool that people call up and go, this stinks. That's what's so powerful about what we do as coaches, because we don't have to be in the stink with them to be able to go, okay, and let me reflect that back. Let's create awareness around it. So, number one, conscious. Number two, connect. How now can we connect how that is to how we're feeling?
"Sometimes for me and I know for a lot of other people, I learned this from my coach, Lyndon Crowe, I'm sometimes making a connection to how I feel, to how I felt in the past, to like, yep, this thing has impacted me before. The reason that's important is because, guess what, Jason? I'm still here."
Right. You’re alive.
And when I can connect that, I can begin to, again, it's a process of, I can be conscious of it, and I can begin to connect it. I can connect it to what's going on. I can connect it to some past experiences, which, by the way, these two steps are already feeding on each other. I can become even that much more conscious around it. Really quickly, for the consciousness and connection, here's why they're hard. Most people, when they get into this level of adversity, it is so human to just want to get away from it, because sometimes these emotions that we have in and around adversity is like having your hand on a fire. So, I don't want to talk about it. I don't want to connect to things. I just want to get the heck away from it. I know, but if we get away from it, we could lack awareness around it and consciousness around it.
Yeah.
And if we don't name it, we can't tame it, and then often we'll blame it.
Big time. Big time, Yeah, connecting with it, having the consciousness, being aware of it, and actually connecting it, very oftentimes, whatever it is, and we talked at the top of this, the economy, your business, financials, political, whatever, oftentimes, it's not as scary once you start to get close to it and connect with it. It's not as scary as you thought from afar.
Dude, you're bringing me right into step three.
Do it.
The third C, contextualize. When you come, you were right on the money. It's not as bad. I mean, mountains and mole hills, folks.
Right.
Now, some of the things that we mentioned, we're not trying to downplay it. We're not trying to go, oh, that doesn't exist. But when you're able to contextualize it as a result of the connections you're making and you stay aware, what's really interesting is you can begin to go, you know, I got this. Yes, it's going to be challenging. Yes, it might be difficult. Yes, it might be even painful. Okay, but I'm still here. We've done things like this before. I see it in context, I get it, and it begins to not consume you so much, which, by the way, then frees your mind. And by the way, if we don't do these things, our mind isn't that free. By the way, neurobiologically, this is the net effect of the stress hormone cortisol, is it blocks our prefrontal cortex. We don't have consciousness around it because we need that part of our brain to have consciousness.
That's right.
Right? We don't make connections, we can't contextualize, and next thing you know, we're just trying to survive till ‘25.
Right.
We can do that.
Yeah. More often than not, whatever you have in your head about how bad it is, whatever it is for you, it's typically, at the end of the day, once the dust settles, it wasn't as bad as you thought it was going to be.
And I've got a really funny example. Are you ready for this? And I think it's funny because we all deal with this, right? Well, humor is only humor because it's partly true somewhere. I won't say who, but someone really close to me, and this happens to me all the time, I should, might as well pick on myself, right? Have any of you listening to this ever got up at 02:00 in the morning or 03:00 in the morning or kind of came to consciousness and just started to panic.
For sure.
Oh, my God, I got to do this. I got to pay that bill. I got to do. And in that moment, it just seemed so dire, and you're sitting there going, what in the world? John Eldridge used to call it the witching hour, like, witches show up at three, and then, like, 2 hours later or 3 hours later, you wake up, and it's almost embarrassing, even to yourself, how you weren't able to contextualize and connect that and have awareness. So that little thing was like, oh, my gosh, what am I ever going to do?
Yep.
And then literally by 07:00 you do whatever you need to do, and you're like-
You're all good.
But that's a direct example. Sleep is specifically demarked by a lack of prefrontal cortexual activity. We don't have that part of our brain. That's why really, all we have are our emotions and limbic system active. And next thing you know, we're, like panicking over. So, okay, so what we're trying to do here is go, how do we stay conscious, connect, contextualize, and that brings me to the fourth one, Jason, and it's choose. You see, here's the best thing about doing all this, and this is why I think we can open so many doors in ‘24. We get a choice. You get to choose. Meaning, and I think the way to show that is, let's say we're not really aware of it. It's overtaking us, it's consuming us. We haven't connected. It's like, one of the things you'll feel is very rigid and confined and like, my only way out is this. And it almost, when we get like that, we don't have a choice. And when we go through these three other C’s, it's really remarkable to go like, you know, what else I could do? Or, you know, what I could do? All of a sudden you have choices. And this is what happened to me and my client this morning is as they came in and they were speaking about this and telling me about their mountains and mole hills, and I was able to ask some questions, and they themselves began to connect and contextualize. I'm not kidding. It was 30, 40 minutes later. And I even said, don't look now, you're creating some solutions.
Yeah.
That weren't actually available to them when they were in that other state, which is super cool, because I guess I could have just said, why not do this? And why not do this? And why not do this? But if I do that as a coach, here's what's funny. I might have some really good ideas, but they don't ever get out of that state.
Correct. Yeah.
"And so, all my good ideas, if they leave the call with a lack of consciousness, inability to connect, not contextualizing, it doesn't matter. I could have handed them straight gold. They can't do anything with it anyway, because their brain is too busy dedicating to these other things."
So, it was so wonderful, and that's why I'm saying whatever industry you're in, and if it's being a challenge to you right now, one of the number one- here's the fifth C. Dude, I made this up on the fly, live. Ready?
A bonus C.
Are you ready?
Five C's.
Create.
Yeah.
Because that being creative and being generative is actually what we need to actually help us open doors in 24. So, I guess I should have thought of that one earlier. Five C's. Now, the choice. Listen, we all, as human beings, prefer choice. And if you go through the first three C's and you start to create choices for yourself, now, to your point, you can be creative, and it just opens up your mind where typically, like, I'm assuming with your client this morning, and I've seen this with clients, heck, I've personally been in these shoes where adversity is being heaped upon me, or at least I have that feeling like it is the perception like it is, and I don't feel like I have any choices. But once you go through the consciousness and becoming aware of it, connecting with it, contextualizing it, going, okay, I've actually been through something like this before, and doing that, then you go, my head is up. I have choices. That's where you can get back on the balls of your feet.
By the way, a whole other word for choice. Ready?
Freedom. It's the opposite of confinement prison. So, when this idea of adversity for so many people feel like prison, and when we go through these, know, one thing I do want to point out, and I know we got to come to an end here, Jason. I hope the people listening to this note the fact that part of this isn't denial.
None of it is. In fact, it's the opposite.
Exactly. We're not coming and going, hey, we didn't do a LinkedIn live on, you know what? Let's just pretend this all doesn't exist and just be great and be happy and actually- funny thing is Carl Jung, right? If what you resist persists.
Yeah, that's right.
We're not trying to say, and I loved what you said up front, Jason, like, no, this is real. This is adversity. So, these steps are things that you can do within something without having to deny that thing. And in the end, freedom and maybe even creativity.
Thank you for that. I'll tell a very quick story, and then we'll wrap. As you went through those four C’s, it made me think of right when the pandemic hit, a big part of Rewire's business. I think I've told this on the podcast before, a big part of Rewire's business is live events. And in 2020, we had a year's worth of live events booked out. Well, March 20th, I remember the day, all those events went away. Just like that. We had a real big problem on our hands from a business standpoint.
It was a mountain. We were going to get crushed by this thing. We were dead.
And I remember coming together as a team, and we went through the four C's. We didn't even know we were going through the four C’s, but we were like, okay, this stinks really bad, and we started to connect with it. We started to contextualize with one another, and, man, we brainstormed and came up with great ideas. We became super good at Zoom really quick. We did a bunch of webinars, and we hit a bunch of singles and doubles that year instead of maybe some of the live events, but we ended up having a really good year that year and set us up for success in ‘21 and ‘22. And so, I just want to say to you, I give that example to say, no, this isn't just, oh, the four C’s, that sounds really good. It works. It works on a very real level.
And we did it. That's one of our core values, is practice what we preach, and I hope people can even feel the energy that you and I have towards this. It's really hard to have that energy if we're just making stuff up and we think this could work for somebody. Like, no, we feel this.
Well, to that point, if any of this sounds like it may work for you, I'm putting up a QR code and you can go to our site, you can connect, you can actually get on my calendar. I can chat with you more about the four C's, how coaching might help you. The things that we do inside of coaching are things just like what you heard right now. And so please feel free to connect with us. Steve, this is the end of our last LinkedIn live of 2023 of the year, and this is also the end of this insight interview episode. So, dude, it's been fun. Thanks for going through the four C's with us.
Happy holidays to everybody and just know that every little thing going to be all right. And next year we're going to open a lot of doors. So, thank you so much. And, dude, thanks for putting this together, as always.
Thanks, Steve.
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