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hey this is Leo for actualised org and in this episode I'm gonna be talking about strategic thinking how to be a strategic [ __ ] this is a very important very foundational episode because what I'm gonna tell you here is gonna make or break the rest of your life most people's lives suck due to lack of strategic thinking and on the other hand successful people are highly strategic thinkers I listen to a course by the Teaching Company which I highly recommend by the way it's like a thirty hour course on strategic theory it talks about military strategy business strategy sports strategy and it was taught by Stan Lee originally PhD he's a professor who's been studying military theory and so on for four years and he did this long and amazing course and as I was sitting there and listening to this course this was a couple of years ago I was also thinking about self-actualization and what I'm doing with actualized org and I was putting the pieces together and I would just blew my mind how much strategic thinking goes into self-actualization and that everything that this professor was talking about from military theory and business theory which has been studied for now hundreds of years how all of these same principles apply to our personal lives as well into self-actualization especially you see in the fields of military and business and professional sports there's a long history of studying strategy because in these fields these fields are highly competitive and very demanding they demand tangible concrete results those people that win military victories and win in business and win in sports these are like the best of the best the stakes are very high and we've also got a pretty long history now we've got a multi thousand year history of military campaigns that humanity has waged on itself that can be studied and picked apart and we can find the lessons of all those things and we can we can find and distill the principles that work right we've also got now a couple hundred years of real serious hardcore business that has been happening and we can study those principles and break them apart and also we've got maybe a hundred years of professional sports now then we can break down and break that apart and find the juiciest principles and what's amazing is that all of these apply to your personal life I want you to think of yourself as a general standing on a battlefield and your task is not just to win the battlefield that's right in front of you but to win the larger campaign the war that you've been tasked to win now the question is what kind of a general are you a successful general is a highly strategic general he's the one that will win the battle and go on to win the war the general that will fail and that will lose is the general who slacks off and doesn't understand the principles of proper strategy hasn't even studied what strategy is you understand that this is this is a field of study a whole field you can devote your whole career or and get an entire PhD just studying this stuff I took a lot of notes while listening to this course and I'm gonna cite quotes all throughout this episode from my notes here's the first example of that quote most people do not engage in a methodical process of questioning evaluation of assumptions investigation information gathering analysis planning and finally action most people function in routines that they do not question living life day to day facing the same problems every day and quote most people are always struggling with something and their struggles haunt them till the day they die people are always struggling with their money or these people are always quarreling with their co-workers or they're always dealing with inefficiencies that work the same exact inefficiencies the same red tape the same limitations the same handicaps the same relationship problems the same and abilities to communicate the same inefficient techniques that they've always used they just keep using those techniques over and over again they're always putting out some kind of fires or emergencies and it's always the same kind of fires the same kind of emergencies this is what the average person's life looks like this is a person who's not strategic most people do not sit down and actually strategize they don't strategize deeply enough and they don't strategize often enough and in the end they make a lot of strategic blunders in their lives and they wonder what's wrong with my life how come I hate my life well this is why but let's back up a step and talk about what strategic thinking actually is I'm going to give you some various quotes that I took here in my notes firstly quote strategic thinking is setting goals and developing flexible long-range plans to reach those goals based on careful analysis of internal and external environments and quote secondly quote thinking logically and deeply about the future it means that where you want to be five years from now and five months from now and five days from now should inform what you do today and quote thirdly quote it's a way of looking at the world with a purpose in mind and quote and fourthly quote it's a way of dealing with a constantly changing environment both responding to that environment to achieve your goals and also attempting where possible to change the environment to your benefit end quote and also quote is a method or a plan that we craft to bring about a desired future such as an achievement of a goal or a solution to a problem that quote in sports strategic thinking is as following quote studying the competition learning as much as you can about his tendencies his habits and his weaknesses and quote and when I heard that in my mind immediately I just replaced the the part about in sports with in self actualization work in self actualization work what we should be doing is studying the competition learning as much as we can about his tendencies his habits and his weaknesses are you doing that who is the competition why do we even need to be strategic with self-actualization well there is a competitor and the competitor is you you are in battle with yourself have you realized that yet have you realized yet that you are your own greatest enemy have you realized yet that there's a a a battle inside of you going on every day between your lower self and your higher self between your ego and those spiritual drives and those higher self-actualization drives within you that are pushing you towards becoming something much greater in your life and that your lower self and your ego is extremely devious and extremely crafty and tricky and deceptive it's the most deceptive thing that there is Maya in the Indian traditions they call it Maya very important concept so if we apply strategic thinking to this then we have to say that what we want to do is we want to study ourselves learn as much as we can about our own tendencies their own habits our own weaknesses our own self-deception mechanisms the mechanisms by which we go unconscious the way we sabotage ourselves the way we shoot ourselves in the foot the way we go to war with ourselves that's where we have to be extremely strategic for most people this is like a totally new concept it is not doesn't even occur to them that this is something that they should be doing let alone I would say not only should you be doing this this should be the prime focus of your life the majority of your time in life needs to be going towards doing this towards strategizing about your self actualization that's what the majority of your life should be that's what all your spare time should be spent thinking about is this very far for most people to get to this place it'll take a lot of a lot of changing of your habits and your thought patterns to get to this point or I'm telling you get to see most people what they do is they commit major strategic blunders in their lives the kind of blunders that would get you killed on a battlefield if you were this stupid and this short-sighted and this myopic and this slovenly let me give you an list of examples of the most common strategic blunders getting married in your 20s pissing away the prime years of your life your teens and your twenties playing video games drinking and partying in college not developing mastery and anything in life eating junk food not going to doctors chasing money rather than passion chasing achievement and status rather than inner growth having kids too soon in life sticking it out with a bad boyfriend or a bad girlfriend that you know isn't right for you not continuing your education after college or not even going to college or not even getting an education in the first place very big strategic blunder staying loyal to a dysfunctional family member investing money in the wrong places thinking that you can get something for nothing in life going into debt using credit cards working for a boss or in some sort of giant company this is a bad strategic mistake working 80 hours a week chasing success climbing the corporate ladder because you think it'll really get you somewhere that's a huge strategic blunder being too cheap to hire a therapist or life coach or being too cheap to buy books or being too cheap to invest money in a online course or an information product that could actually help you out being too cheap to go to a seminar or to a retreat that could help you out living in the wrong place hanging out with the wrong people chasing sex or love and devoting lots of your time and energy into death neglecting meditation and neglecting enlightenment work taking your religion too seriously these are huge strategic blunders right here this is just the tip of the iceberg is just like some of the most common ones that come to mind let me talk about some of the strategic mistakes that people make not these specific blunders but I want to talk about in general what are the failures of strategy that happened for people basically it's not doing the right things at the right time it all boils down to that but I want to break that down into more specifics for you so firstly it's not being able to think micro or macro what does this mean to be a good strategist in life you need to be able to think macro which is the big picture and then you need to be able to also think micro which is the little logistical planning the detail-oriented stuff right and you need to jump be able to jump back and forth between micro and macro and micro and macro and macro and micro over and over and over again every single day you need to be able to do this most people cannot do this they don't know how to make the jump up or down they get stuck either in the airy fairy dreamer land and they neglect the the actual practical execution and the my new should that's necessary or they get lost in the minutiae of life and they forget the ultimate goal of what they're trying to accomplish most people are terrible at this and this is a skill that has to be developed without this you cannot be strategic another one is that people are not able to delay gratification if you can't delay gratification that you're always just chasing for pleasure for the most immediate gain and then what strategy can you have there cannot be a strategy if your strategy is immediate gain have you noticed that all marketing efforts everything that everyone ever sells you always plays on your weakness of delayed gratification everything promised to you is instant it's fast its flashy it's all the results that you'll get and then you get used to that and then what happens is that you just chase that stuff and you forget that all the really important stuff in life comes through delayed gratification comes through strategy no one just hands you valuable [ __ ] on a silver platter in life you have to earn it through strategy and delayed gratification could you imagine a general on the battlefield and he's trying to win this big war like think of world war two and you're the general who's been tasked with winning world war two for the Allies and your concern always in every meeting that you have with your staff and your and your your military advisors and all your generals that are working under you you always just go for the stuff that gives you immediate results that would be a disastrous military campaign your forces would get defeated almost instantly also people are generally bad strategists because they're unaware of the cul-de-sacs in life the dead ends the things you shouldn't do the things that are traps that are dangerous that are costly that are risky they don't take these cul-de-sacs very seriously also in general people lack Intel could you imagine if I was a general on the battlefield and I had to win this battle but I had no intelligence whatsoever about the enemy and I invested no time preparing the Intel I didn't send out my spies and I didn't bother to meet with them and get their reports to hear about what's actually going on on the battlefield I would just assume that I knew everything or just neglect the Intel altogether that would be disastrous disastrous and that's generally what people's lives are there's zero Intel zero Intel about self actualization zero Intel about meditation zero Intel about enlightenment zero Intel about life purpose and how to build a great career and how to start a business zero intel on how to start a relationship zero intel on what love is and how love really works zero intel on the mastery process zero intel on the psychological development that happens throughout an adult's life what do you expect what kind of results can you expect with zero Intel how much energy are you devoting to building up your reserves of intelligence for me this is one of the most important things that I do in my life my whole life is committed to developing my own intelligence getting the information I need from multiple sources not just one source because one source can be unreliable many many sources hundreds and thousands of hours devoted to gathering Intel because I need to be able to make important long-range strategic decisions and I can't do that without Intel most people lack self-knowledge as well how can you be strategic if you lack knowledge about yourself if you don't know how you work if you don't really study the machine that is the human mind and the he being most people also neurotically overcompensate for the problems that they have in their lives and this leads to a whole slew of strategic problems could you imagine a general who's always reacting to problems on the battlefield he's not proactive he's not planning his own strategy but he's just always reactive neurotically react if he gets pissed off and angry and he gets jealous and he gets sad and he's just always reacted overcompensating that would be a terrible general yeah this is how most people live their lives and then they're surprised at the results they see another huge strategic mistake people make is chasing the small prize rather than the large prize they don't know how to evaluate outcomes and they don't know how to prioritize into to really judge okay this is a this is nice but then that's a bigger prize so that thing is worth more than this thing and then there's a third thing that's even a bigger prize than this thing and maybe there's this other factor that renders both of these things or this third thing not even as valuable as I thought it was so sometimes we have a deception we think something's a big prize but then we realize it's not a big prize it's actually a small prize what's the biggest prize what should I be going after should I be fighting this battle here or that battle there or maybe I shouldn't engage in any of these battles for now and I'll pick a new battle in six months to fight the one that's really gonna matter see most people don't go through this process they just kind of do the thing that lands on their lap without really questioning from up from a ground zero position they don't really question is this even necessary why am I doing this in the big picture what's it gonna mean so people can be very hard workers they can spend 80 hours of a week working on something for 20 years but the thing they're working on is a small prize terrible strategy could have save yourself 20 years another thing that people do is that there are generally oblivious to social and business traps do you know and have you studied the traps that culture society and business has laid for you these traps are like minefields these traps exist in religion in education in the culture at large in politics in your social circle in the media advertising all these traps designed to trick you and to catch you to take your money to get you involved with the wrong thing that doesn't serve you but serve somebody else you understand that generally speaking businesses and social organizations their aims are not to really help you the level of consciousness Society is currently at is that the aims of most of these organizations is to serve themselves at your expense it's to feed off of you to leech off of you but most people don't understand this most people just play into it and they think they're actually getting benefited by this leeching we're in fact these businesses and these social organizations are parasitic they they suck your life energy away from you and rob you of any ability that you have of really self actualizing and growing to your full potential and contributing meaningfully to life and improving society they suck you down to their level most people aren't even aware of this because they haven't spent the time thinking about this stuff see a really good general he goes out onto the battlefield of the morning before and he analyzes the landscape and he looks and he sees era could the enemy have lain a trap for me you know that hill over there that's a suspicious-looking hill there's some trees there and there's a little ol patch of grass there could be some enemies lurking there hidden lying in wait for me tomorrow when we start this campaign or what about that River down there maybe there's a some kind of dangerous trap in that river that I need to think about be careful of so that when I'm crossing that River my troops don't get slaughtered most people don't do this with their personal lives also another trap people fall into is that they don't invest time strategizing zero the average time that a person invests per week strategizing about life is zero could you imagine a general who spent zero time strategizing about his military campaigns he just rushed head-on into every campaign and just kind of flew by the seat of his pants that general would be dead very soon see in terms of military the reason I like military strategy is because the stakes are so high you're talking about people's lives you're talking about your own life in modern times when a general loses a battle he doesn't even lose his head but a thousand years ago or 2,000 years ago if you study Roman military strategy for example or ancient Chinese military strategy stuff like Sun Tzu right the general was the first one to lose his head it was always his head that was on the line so he took his strategy extremely seriously in a way that even modern generals can't really appreciate because their lives are not on the line the president's life is not on the line when he chooses to invade a country that was not the case 2,000 years ago his life was on the line so he was much much much smarter about this it's nice to have that because it it really makes you sober very very sober and very you know very very invested in making the right choices and the right strategies nowadays is so easy to be complacent in life you know we live in a pretty comfortable society you can scrape by pretty easily without being very strategic these days so people get lazy the stakes aren't high in their minds and so because this they don't strategize and they piss their life away by default zero time spent strategizing another huge strategic mistake people make is not fixing problems at their root most people only care about fixing problems on the surface not at the root the commitment to fix a problem at the root is a very rare thing I see it so rarely to me is a character trait you either have this character trait or you don't and most people don't they just don't care about fixing problems at their root they just want to fix something enough that they can just kind of go on with their life keep coasting that's not how I think that's terribly unstruck teaching because what this means is that in the future that problem will come back to bite you in the ass and I don't know about you but if I face a problem I want to solve it permanently so it never ever comes back to bite me in the ass and lastly most people they don't spend any time developing their strategic resources I'll talk more about this as we go on because this is one of the pillars that I'm going to share with you is a strategic preparation but you got to prepare your resources what are the resources that you will need in life to live the kind of life that you want to live I don't know about you but me personally my life as early on as I can remember it's always been about strategizing about what resources should I build for myself whether it's more money that I need or I need a certain amount of time I need to be in a certain place I need to live in a certain city I need to live in a different part of the country I need to have a certain kind of education or a certain piece of knowledge or a certain skill set I need to go and build and develop those resources can you imagine a general on a battlefield who rushes into battle with no strategic resources he hasn't prepared food for the troops he hasn't arranged logistical support air support none of these things have been thought of or taken care of so he has zero resources besides what he's going in there with that's all he's got he's got no reserves he's got no backup plans nothing he's going to get slaughtered and that's what happens to most people in life so let me tell you now in a nutshell the seven pillars of strategic thinking what strategic lean he actually is here the pillars and then I'll cover each one in some depth and tell you about it so the first pillar is strategic intent you need to have strategic intent for there to be a strategy at all I'll talk about that in a minute the second pillar is strategic analysis and gathering of intelligence pretty self-explanatory but I'll cover it as well to go on also the third one is strategic preparation that's what I was just talking about strategic preparation preparing your resources for battle the fourth principle is concentration of force concentration of force fifth pillar is disciplined execution and detailed tactical follow-through the sixth pillar is adaptability and the seventh pillar is the study of general principles so let's talk about each one of these pillars and some details so firstly is strategic intent this is highly important highly highly important here's a quote that I took from the course quote a compelling vision of the future that motivates action this is what elevates a technique into a strategy essential for any effective strategy and quote this is what strategic intent is strategic intent is the ultimate thing that you're going for what's the ultimate outcome you want the ultimate outcome needs to inform all the steps that lead up to it all the actions you take when you're highly strategic you're highly efficient about this you don't just take random actions you don't just go and fight random battles just for the sake of fighting battles think about this if a nation is fighting a war against another nation this is an extremely costly endeavor it has to be motivated by some sort of ultimate strategic intent what's the point what do you want usually you want something and you better be specific about it you can't be vague and wishy-washy you're not just there to fight you're there to accomplish a name what is that do you want to annex the enemy's territory do you want to fight to ensure peace do you want to change laws do you want to conquer the people there do you want to enslave them what do you want you have to be very clear about that until you're clear about that you can't have any strategy whatsoever this is called strategic intent once you have your strategic heading you're very very clear about it now what you can do is you can backwards engineer every step necessary to get you there it's kind of like if you're gonna do a very long road trip that's a thousand miles long you better know where you want to end up because if you just start driving in any random direction you're basically never gonna be satisfied with the way your trip goes because you're not gonna know which way to turn every turn in any way will be sufficiently good you can't make decisions based on that most people have zero strategic content in their lives in their personal lives they have no big picture they have no overarching vision nothing that compels them towards action or towards planning of any kind which is why no planning or action really happens and they complain about lack of motivation and lack of results of course or what people do is people just they just apply techniques and take random steps thinking that this is strategy when in fact it's not just taking a technique that I share with you just applying in your life a little bit here a little bit there that's not enough to get to the kind of life that we're talking about the self actualized life you need to be a a much of a big-picture thinker than that you got to see 10 20 30 years down the road of what you're shooting for and then everything that you do today and tomorrow and the next week in the next month and next year has to all be methodically aligned with that every single you have to wake up and ask yourself is this action that I'm taking aligning me and moving me closer to my ultimate strategic intent or is it not or is it irrelevant could easily be irrelevant most of the actions you're taking in your life in fact right now are irrelevant and tangential or even worse they're slowing you down and distracting you from achieving your strategic intent it's very easy for the mind to trick itself into thinking that oh just because I'm taking this action here or I'm doing this process here that this is getting me to where I want to go that's rarely the case very rarely the case it's very rare to meet a human being who has a very clear and strong strategic intent and if you do meet such a person you'll see that this person accomplishes amazing things in their life that seem impossible to the outer human being this is why the general needs to know whether the battle he's gonna fight here tomorrow is actually going to advance him towards his ultimate purpose of winning the war just because you in a battle does not mean that it gets you closer to winning the war this is something that has to be always checked and asked and verified over and over again will winning this battle actually get me closer to winning the war No then let's not fight this battle let's save our reserves and use them where it really is gonna count that's how you have to think the second pillar is strategic analysis this is analysis of the strengths and weaknesses and opportunities and threats that present themselves on the battlefield are you assessing and acquiring and allocating the necessary resources in the most effective and efficient uses possible how do you allocate your time and your energy and your physical vitality and your charisma and your attention span how are you allocating all these things what are you putting these things towards in your life are you using these things efficiently and effectively to move you towards your ultimate strategic intent also as part of strategic analysis you have to anticipate and incorporate competitor responses because the battlefield is not a static thing it's a very flexible and fluid situation it's always changing your competitors are smart they're also scheming and strategizing against you so you have to strategize and anticipate that and incorporate their potential responses in your strategy now what am I talking about who's the competitor again the competitor is not your business competitors the competitors is not your family members or your friends the competition is yourself when we're talking about self-actualization are you anticipating the responses of your ego and your lower self when you're trying to grow when you're trying to make a change in your life are you anticipating how your subconscious mind is going to react how it's going to resist how it's going to rebel how it's going to trick you the excuses it will tell you how it will trap you how it will convince you that you shouldn't change most people have no awareness of this whatsoever and so of course the competition always wins the lower self always wins the next pillar is strategic preparation I've already touched on this but let me go into some more depth what this means is the building up of strategic reserves through preparation your maneuvers will be limited if you have no reserves therefore you must prepare so again a general on a battlefield you know he wants to make sure that his troops have flexibility he needs to provide them with weapons with armor with vehicles with support with food with water with clothing with shelter with the back-up plan with a retreat location they can go back to with some kind of support structure so that they don't get bombarded from the air or by arrows right he's to think about all this stuff he didn't then used to prepare and lay the groundwork it's not just about rushing in there and coming up with the best you know tactical move on the battlefield that wins the war no a lot of times wars are won or lost based on how well you prepare for the war do you have enough food for the winter do you have enough water if you neglect these very basics then you will get slaughtered on the battlefield and most people in life neglect these basics what does it really mean to do strategic preparation it means thorough training it means hard work it means discipline it means sound planning and then it also means the preparation of your unique capabilities every soldier on the battlefield or every unit of soldiers on the battlefield has unique capabilities it has unique strengths and also unique weaknesses and limitations cavalry has certain strengths that infantry doesn't have and vice versa and then your spearmen have different capabilities than your archers and your archers have different capabilities than your aerial units or whatever you need to recognize what these unique abilities are the need to develop ease in yourself what are your unique abilities in your personal life are you developing those how much time are you spending preparing and bolstering your unique capabilities in life how many hours a week are you spending doing that for most people it's zero and of course we wonder why we get crap results here's a quote that's relevant to strategic preparation quote since you can't predict what fortune will hand you you must develop yourself internally to handle the external circumstances and quote you must develop yourself internally to handle the external circumstances what else is this describing but self-actualization this is what self-actualization is about developing yourself internally to handle the external circumstances of life this is what actually eyes that org is about this is what I'm here to do all my work is about how to develop you internally to be able to handle the external circumstances of life most people spend no attention on this at all in their life pay no mind to it whatsoever and then they fail miserably fail miserably me personally in my own life I spend the majority of my life in strategic preparation mode I'm highly strategic when it comes to preparation because I know that this is one of the variables that I can control the best I can't always predict what's gonna happen on the battlefield and I'm not always the quickest on the battlefield but I can really sit down and prepare my resources in extremely strategic way that gives me so much leverage and so much maneuverability on the battlefield that then it's very hard for me to lose the battle the next pillar is concentration of force this is a super important concept which is studied and taught in all military schools and in any classes where you're studying military battles and tactics because to win a military battle it's fundamentally what has to happen is you have to concentrate force at a point at a decisive point that breaks through into victory here's a quote from my notes quote concentration of force at the decisive point is the key to all strategy it's all about directing as much force to one point as possible given your limited resources this applies to war as much as it applies to career development and to business ed quote are you even aware that this is what strategy is all about it's all about finding the weak point on the battlefield and and then pushing all your troops at that weak point to get a breakthrough and that's a battlefield analogy how would we apply that to your personal life well how are you concentrating your forces in your personal life because you've only got so much time and so much energy and so much money and so much attention in your day how are you concentrating those where are you putting all your eggs into which basket are you putting it into the right basket or the wrong basket are you hitting problems where the enemy is strongest instead of where the enemy is weakest are you finding the weak spots are you finding the spots where your force can really have the most leverage most people don't even think about this stuff they don't their energy and their focus is dispersed all over the place they're doing 10 20 different things in their career in their relationship and this and that and this and what's happening nothing is really moving forward because they're not properly concentrating a force see everyone has limited resources that's what makes it so important to concentrate those resources properly not to waste them not to piss them away the next pillar is detailed execution after you come up with a plan and you've gathered up your strategic resources and now you know where to concentrate your force now what you have to do is you have to execute on the plan a great plan poorly executed leads to disaster great execution with a poor plan also really leads nowhere it's highly inefficient highly non strategic you need both you need both and most people are very poor executors I have a whole episode it's a pretty popular one it's called how to get [ __ ] done which talks about many important points about what it takes to get results to be a results maker in life to really be good at execution this is something that you need to make a study of it's really a study at one point in my life I had I just went all-out on execution just focus so much on execution because I knew that I need to get good at execution and I became a good executor and now so that's something that takes years it takes years to really become a good executor it's not something you can do in a week especially if you spend the last ten or twenty years being a poor executor you've developed all sorts of bad habits that now need to be unwired so check out that episode if you want to learn more about how to do proper detailed execution I'm gonna move on to the next pillar which is adaptability strategy is not about selecting the ultimate one best strategy and then going with it forever that's actually a mockery of strategy proper strategy is all about being flexible and adaptable it's about understanding that the environment is constantly changing every day what the battlefield looks like today tomorrow might be totally different it might rain tomorrow that will totally change the battlefield the troops might lose their morale tomorrow totally changes the situation that we're dealing with they might be out of food tomorrow or out of water or half of them might be dead totally changes the situation so whatever plans I have tonight tomorrow morning I'll have to be able to adapt in case things change and I have to plan in such a way where I don't have this rigid plan that tells me well X happens then Y happens then Z happens and they'll all just go swimmingly according to plan no you have to plan for all the contingencies and you have to plan for all the disasters all the misfortunes that might happen see a common naive mistake that people make when they do personal developments they just think well okay let me just sit down and you know come up with a plan so I come up with my three-year plan for my life and then what happens and then a month later all of a sudden you're not following that plan at all because your plan is over here and then real life is over here and they're just a golf apart no that doesn't work high quality strategy requires that your plan be flexible take into account all sorts of different scenarios and contingencies and you have to be able to sit down and rewrite the plan every week every day if necessary be flexible don't get too rigid don't get dogmatic about your plan don't get attached and cling to your plan as though it's your baby and it's the only thing if this is the only way it's got to be is through this plan no that's very poor strategy your you'll get slaughtered if you do that you got to be adaptable a lot of times people start business you know they start a new business they come up with a business plan and they think that this is how it's gonna go this is how my business gonna generate money and then in reality it doesn't work this is the naive business plan this is the person who starts business for the first time and of course they fail pathetically miserably fail because to get a successful business model going you have to try a lot of different stuff you have to experiment you have to see what actually works in the marketplace what actually works on the battlefield a lot of times this stuff is unknown you're dealing with a lot of unknown variables you're not gonna have all the Intel you're never going to have perfect Intel which means that you have to be very adaptable you have to be willing to change your business plan completely throw it out and get a new business plan some of the most successful businesses started out with with one idea of how they're going to earn money and that didn't work and they went in a totally different direction and then they made billions PayPal and an example this PayPal as a business started out as a mobile payment processing for Palm Pilots and that of course didn't work and then they they got the bad idea hey why don't we just email each other payments let's create a system that allows people to email each other money and then they came up with PayPal generated billions of dollars but see they were flexible enough to change because if they just stuck with their original idea they would have gotten nowhere would have went bankrupt that's very important that's why I always talk about open-mindedness how important open-mindedness is most people are so stuck in Dogma and their beliefs about how life is and how spirituality is and religion has to be this way and education has to be this way and personal develop a personally in my life I can't afford rigidity I can only afford flexibility because to be the most strategic I can be I have to be extremely adaptable I have to be willing to throw away everything everything I believe has to be on the table on the chopping block and in a sense everything I believed and do believe will get eventually replaced and thrown away because there's always better beliefs there's always better models there's always better something better to come and replace whatever you currently hold is true and the last principle or the last pillar is the study of principles the study of principles quote regardless of how chaotic situation may be there are principles that can give shape to your thinking about the situation emerge and in such principles allows for genius flashes of insight and quote you need to study the principles the proper principles of battle if you're in general and you need to study the proper principles of life and self-actualization if you're a human being trying to live your ordinary life and this actually this is something I make easy for you because this is what actualize networking is about this is all that actual eyes that we get it's the study of the principles that make life amazing it's all the principles that control your psychology and how life works and how relationships work and how interaction with people works how your mind works some of these principles have been known for thousands of years but most people they don't make a study of it see and you might say well only I'm already listening to you well that's good but you're just listening to me there's a big difference between listening to me and making a study of these principles someone who makes a study of self-actualization principles is like someone who sits down watches the video from start to finish take notes on everything re reads his notes study his notes in the morning and then at night again and then washes the video again drills it into his subconscious mind and then he thinks that he contemplates it deeply he doesn't just accept what I say he thinks about it he integrates it into his own worldview he combines multiple sources cross-references everything checks everything against his own intuition make sure everything is fitting in with his own life he thinks about ways how to apply these principles that's what it means to make a real study of the principles it's someone who he's not just looking for a fix he's looking for a deep understanding and a mastery of the principles of life that's that's a whole nother level of commitment and dedication and of course it Italy yields to a whole nother level of results whole nother level of results which is why I want to convince you and sort of psych you up to to get excited about learning these principles right I want you to just to make this a lifelong process I want you to get us excited about self actualization as I am in my own life to really make a study of it so those are the seven principles and seven pillars rather I should say of strategic thinking this is what it takes your life will only become satisfying once you start to make wise strategic decisions that's the only way it's gonna happen you know in the movie Pulp Fiction I like that movie towards the end there's a scene there with samuel l.jackson and he's getting he's getting robbed and he has to give his wallet up to the thieves and then later he asked for the wallet back and they give him the wallet back and on the wall and it says bad [ __ ] in big letters bad [ __ ] on it's kind of embroidered on the wallet I really like that and I was thinking about that scene today and I thought you know what would be even better if it said strategic [ __ ] on that wallet strategic [ __ ] cuz that's how I think about myself in my own life and that's how I want you to think about your life from now on is that you are going to be a strategic [ __ ] using these principles and pillars that I talk to you about hey your whole attitude towards life needs to change from the complacent lazy one you've been having to this one where you're a strategic [ __ ] where every move you make every step you take has a purpose in mind where you're almost Machiavellian about every action that you take not a neurotic negative way I'm not mean I'm not saying that you should go and cheat people rip them off I'm not saying that you need to be all manipulative like that I'm just saying you've got to be very clear about every single step you're taking where its leading you why you're doing it what the priority is and then how it fits into the bigger picture of everything for you and then what kind of resources you need to develop in order to allow you to do that I've been a strategic [ __ ] since I was like seven years old I don't know it just probably came naturally to me I don't know why other people aren't this way but like since seven years old I've been thinking about what my career is gonna be and exactly how I'm gonna do it and where I'm gonna go with school am I gonna go to what am I gonna learn what degrees am I gonna get I'm always thinking like 20 years ahead how much money am I gonna have what that money's gonna allow me to do where am I gonna live what if I do this what about that my mind just doesn't stop with this just keeps going just the other day I was thinking about what the end of my life is gonna look like what do I want actually I don't to look like when I'm 70 years old on my deathbed what do I want to achieve what do I want my legacy to be I'm thinking about that stuff now when I'm 30 I'm already planning for that what I did yesterday what was already setting me up for that for what I want when I'm 70 years old I don't just think about it I actually then take action on it you know lately been thinking about how to position myself strategically so that I can just be a yogi that's my thing now that's kind of like my strategic intent right now in my personal life is I just I just have this picture of me being a yogi that's where my life is lean what else am I gonna do with my life honestly like there's no point in in success for me there's no pleasure in success for me there's no like there's just there's no real reason for me to go and do more business and to become more successful or um more popularly there's just so little that's really worthwhile for me because I've studied so much of these principles that is just you know you say you know these principles the only option really for you if you're wise is to become a [ __ ] yogi that's like the only thing that there is to do with your life that's it that's pretty much all that there is I spent eight hours the other day sitting doing absolutely nothing for eight hours I wasn't particularly meditating I just sat there and did nothing for about eight hours it's hard to do I wasn't perfect at you know I check my email once or twice and I got up and you know ate and drove around a little bit but generally I spent eight eight hours just like not doing any business not doing any work not reading any books just sitting there because I was testing out what it's like to be a yogi right cuz like in my mind when I say I want to be a yogi it's like I'm gonna sit for 12 hours and do absolutely [ __ ] nothing and that's my perfect life that's my strategic intent I'm moving towards that now what do I need to do that there's a lot of preparation that goes into it it might sound like well you can just go do that right now not quite there's a lot of like little tactical stuff that I have to figure out how to do to make that work and there's still issues I haven't resolved there I have to resolve that what's gonna happen with my business what's gonna happen with my relationship what's gonna happen with my diet what's gonna happen to all these things these things all need to change drastically in order to support this kind of lifestyle but already I'm planning it for it right so this is what I mean by being strategic also what comes to mind for me I've been watching it's kind of bad but I've been watching house of cards watched that show with Kevin Spacey a really interesting show but when I think about that show and I think about Kevin Spacey yeah Kevin Spacey's character there he is a perfect example of what I would call a strategic [ __ ] now he takes it to the extreme in a kind of a negative narcissistic egotistical way so I would encourage you doing that but he is a highly strategic [ __ ] you can't argue with that that's how you need to be in your life every step has to be leading to the next step to the next step to the next step to the next step even if what you ultimately want is you just want to be sitting there doing nothing blissing out under a tree like the Buddha if you want that be a strategic [ __ ] to get that because even that is something you will not get without lots of strategy strategy is not just about blind success you can apply strategy to anything you want a loving relationship apply strategy to that you're gonna have to if you want one you want to raise great kids apply strategy to that so this is this isn't just related to work or to earning money in fact you know earning money and just going to work and running a business in those situations it's actually kind of natural to be strategic most people tend to be strategic there where they're not strategic is in their personal lives and their spiritual lives in their love lives in their whole attitude towards life I'm extremely strategic in what I ultimately want out of my life my ultimate ultimate ultimate ultimate strategic intent in life is to die knowing that I lived well knowing that my life not that it mattered in some global sense to people that's kind of silly I don't really care about that these days what matters to me is that I can look back over my life before I die and I can say yeah that will um that was the way I wanted to live my life that was it I don't have any regrets I didn't piss my life away I had this one life I knew from an early age I knew that this was the only one I'm gonna have and then I'm gonna make something of it that I'm proud of and that that's what I worked for and that's what I got that's my ultimate strategic intent and so um I realize just the other day that you know to do that to fulfill that I have to work less that's why is that for eight hours did nothing that actually moved me might seem like well sitting and doing nothing is doing nothing what did that accomplish no actually that moved me towards my strategic intent that's exactly what was necessary because life is counter-intuitive sometimes when you're working you're actually shooting yourself in the foot which was what I wasn't was now seeing for myself I know but that's just me you don't have to do that you'd have to live the yogi lifestyle that's my personal preference that's kind of like what I'm going for you can do whatever you want with your life I don't really care but just be strategic about that's the point all right that's it I'm signing off go ahead please click the like button for me post your comments down below share this episode with a friend and lastly come to actualize that word right here check out my website I've got cool resources there I have a life purpose course helps you find your life purpose I've got a book list I've got a forum free forum you can go to and sign up on and then you can chat with people about how to self actualize and share tips and strategies and resources and also just you can sign up to the newsletter which will keep you up to date with new strategies that will be coming out every single week new principles that you need to study right these strategic principles that you need to study to make a strategic life to piece it together this is not a quick fix solution what I'm after here is very deep and something very rare that you don't hear very many people talking about even in self-help circles I want to help you to develop a really profoundly deep and accurate map of life something that's both theoretically in hiring and profound but also something that's very practical that you can use to transform your life so that not only are you getting the theory but you're also then seeing it materialize in your life and come true for you and that's something that's very possible but you need to have commitment for it what I want from you is a commitment to learn to master this up because this is your life what else is more valuable to you than your own life if you like that idea then stick around every single week keep watching the episodes over time over the months and years your perspectives on life will transform and incredible ways so go check it out sign up stay tuned I'll see you with more you