00:00:00 Welcome to tonight's Saturday night, special episode 60. Hey, I'm Matt ham, author of redefined rich, and I challenge you to live richly by listening to the inspired stewardship podcast with my friend, Scott Mader. It's being able to look at each other and recognize the common humanity within both of us. It's it's being able to look at another human being and see that they are divine creation and they are loved,
00:00:33 and that you are called to love them. It's being able to look at another person and think of ways that you can walk with them beside them and help them welcome. And thank you for joining us on the inspired stewardship podcast. If you truly desire to become the person who God wants you to be, then you must learn to use your time, your talent and your treasures for your true color.
00:01:00 In the inspired stewardship podcast. We'll learn to invest in yourself, invest in others and develop your influence so that you can impact The word In. Tonight's Saturday night special. I talk with you about whether virtual is here to stay. I also talk about the opportunities and challenges that can arrive with the virtual world. And I share with you some tips that no matter what you can do to make things better.
00:01:35 Now, one area that a lot of folks need some help with is around the area of productivity. Getting not just more things done, but actually getting the right things done can be really, really tough. I've got a course called productivity for your passion. That's designed to help you do this, and then to hold you accountable and walk with you so that you can tailor productivity,
00:02:04 not just to be getting more done, but actually getting the right things done. What's more, we take the approach of looking at your personality and how you actually look at things in the world and tailor the productivity system to your personality. Because the truth is a lot of the systems that are out there are written really well for somebody with a particular personality type.
00:02:27 But if you have a different approach to things, they just don't work, but there's tools and techniques and approaches that you can take that will work for anyone. And we help you do that and productivity for your passion. Check it out over@inspiredstewardship.com slash launch is virtual here to stay is telecommuting and zoom calls going to be the new normal that we're all living with from now until the end of time.
00:02:58 Of course, the answer to that question is probably not, no. I mean, at some points, things will begin to resettle and return and we'll see things change again, because things always change. Even if we do keep telecommuting and people don't return to the office, I guarantee you a year from an hour or two years from now, or 10 years from now,
00:03:21 the tools and the techniques that we use to do it are going to change. You know, the truth is that that's probably the surest thing that we can bet on is that no matter what things will change virtual has definitely affected a lot of us during this pandemic where suddenly there were jobs that we'd previously believed would never be able to be done remotely. I've talked to some salespeople that have always done their sales in person,
00:03:50 where they've walked up to someone and had a conversation with them and sat in the same room and talk to them. We're talking about expensive items that really require a lot of conversation around them. And now they found ways to do that remotely. There's other people that have jobs or perhaps like restaurants that I've seen pivot and begin to do things like teaching online classes about how you could cook the meals that they were famous for,
00:04:17 but at home. And they're actually teaching people how to do that as well as doing delivery and take out instead of dying in, you know, there's all sorts of ways that you'll see companies and individuals pivot and develop new skills and new abilities. Even just look at the tools that we're using for telecommuting. Now, like a zoom call. One of the reasons that we get so exhausted during a zoom call is because in a normal conversation,
00:04:43 if there's a group of people sitting in a room, all having a conversation, we don't stare at the speaker said, we'll glance at them. We'll look away. We'll begin to move our eyes around the room. We'll look at other speakers and so on, but in zoom, we've got this feeling and it's correct that we need to look at the camera all the time to show our attention,
00:05:03 but that feels very unnatural, both to us as the watcher and to the receiver, to the speaker at the other end, it feels almost intimidating to have all of those eyes upon you. And so that drains our energy. We tend to see ourselves on the screen and be drawn to that instead of looking at others. And so we can't begin to sync up our communication and recognize all those subtle cues that come to us about what the other person is thinking.
00:05:30 And so it's exhausting. And there's example, after example, after example, like we've talked about this week, there's great things about the virtual environment, but there's also tremendous challenges that arrive. You know, I've been looking back and reading a bunch of stories about the Spanish flu pandemic that took place in 1918 to 1920. It was different. Of course it was a different time.
00:05:56 It was a different world. And there were certainly differences in that virus of that treatment. You know, this was around the time of a war. And so one of the reasons we call this, the Spanish flu is because the Spanish were kind of the only place because they were neutral. They were reporting what was really going on with the virus. When many other parts of the country and of the world were not because they were facing war footing and they didn't want to admit that there was all of the sickness going on.
00:06:25 And so they hid the news. And in fact, that's one of the lessons you can take from it. One of the problems with the Spanish flu that probably made it as bad as it was, is that lack of information about what was going on. But there's the interesting thing. Notice I said it ended and around 1920 and in the 1920s was known as the roaring twenties in America,
00:06:51 there was a time worldwide where there was this bounce back in the economy, Oh, don't get me wrong. The Spanish flu had tremendous personal and social and economic impact. Thousands upon thousands upon thousands upon thousands of people died. There was loss of jobs. There was loss of life. There was even impacts on unborn children that cause them to have problems when they grew to adulthood,
00:07:17 that could be traced back to the flu of their parents when they were at a young age before they were even born. And these sorts of things, these sorts of impacts shook out over decades. But what was interesting is there was also this Renaissance of new and creative ways of doing things. It affected how we did healthcare, but it also created new jobs and new opportunities and new businesses that had never existed before.
00:07:46 The truth is whenever any time the world goes through a tremendous change, like we're going through right now, as surely as it creates challenges and impacts us and creates huge problems. That also means it opens up the possibility of new solutions and opens up the possibility of learning that there were things that we were doing that weren't working. You know, I used to work in a corporate environment and one of the things they would do is they would do this annual process of kind of the all hands on deck meetings,
00:08:19 where you would have a four or five hour meeting. And they would cycle through over different days or different components of the company would attend the meeting. And there was a big Huron and the company heads would talk and the vice presidents would talk. And we would look at earnings and how everything was going. And it was to build our company culture. And in fact,
00:08:40 I've heard from people in corporate that that's one of their big worries about working from home is that it will damage the company. Culture. People will no longer feel like they belong to part of an organization, but here's, what's interesting. I never had that meaning in me a sense of company culture and felt instead, it felt like an obligation. And I've heard that there are some companies doing their company wide meetings differently this year.
00:09:05 They're, they're doing it via remote video and via video clips. They're keeping it short and targeted and to the point, and they're even allowing and showing some examples of how we're operating in this new world. One VP I heard while they're giving their talk, their two kids came into the frame. One of them climbed into their lap and the other one was dancing behind them showing this idea to the company that,
00:09:31 yeah, it's possible. Your kids are going to walk into the middle of a video call, but just keep going. It's okay. It's not the end of the world. It's not going to be a disaster after all. And the VP finished their talk that got rave reviews from the company. It created a company culture. See the truth is it's not that being remote or being together creates connection in human beings.
00:09:54 What creates connections in human beings is empathy and understanding. It's being able to look at each other and recognize the common humanity within both of us. It's, it's being able to look at another human being and see that they are divine creation and they are loved and that you are called to love them. It's being able to look at another person and think of ways that you can walk with them beside them and help them.
00:10:24 And that's what makes up all of the great things that can come in the virtual world. You know, the truth is what you can do to make this better. If you're struggling right now, by the way, one example right now is there are a lot of people who truly can't do their job virtual. If you go into the grocery store and there's people there working,
00:10:47 stocking the shelves, if you go to a restaurant and there's a worker passing you your food, we even if it's taken to go, if you see these people that are in healthcare and law enforcement and firefighters and other essential workers that are not allowed to work from home and couldn't do it even if they wanted to, or the military, any of these sorts of jobs recognize that those folks truly are heroes from the quote low paid worker,
00:11:19 all the way through to the highest paid doctor or nurse. It's about the fact that they're out there doing what they can do to make things as good as they can for you. And so what we can do to make this better, as we can all recognize that in each other, we can recognize the struggle that we're all going through. And we can look at each other and say,
00:11:43 thank you, say, I love you. Say, what can I do to help you today? How can I make your life a little better? And instead of complaining and being angry and being upset and focusing on the negative and the stress and the strain, we can find those moments in each other's lives where we can laugh. We can smile together.
00:12:08 We can cry together. We can give each other a virtual high five, and we can say, I see you. I hear you. And I understand you. Thanks for listening. Thanks so much for listening to the inspired stewardship podcast. As a subscriber and listener, we challenge you to not just sit back and passively, listen, but act on what you've heard and find a way to live your calling.
00:12:42 If you enjoyed this episode, please, please do us a favor. Go over to inspired stewardship.com/itunes rate. All one word iTunes rate. It'll take you through how to leave a rating and review and how to make sure you're subscribed to the podcast so that you can get every episode as it comes out in your feed until next time, invest your time, your talent and your treasures,
00:13:14 develop your influence and impact the world.

00:00:00 Thanks for joining me on tonight's Saturday night, special episode 59. Hello, my friend, this is dr. Brad Miller from the pathway to promise podcast. If you'd like to stay inspired, to stay on your pathway, to promise you can't do better than listening to the inspired stewardship podcast with my friend, Scott Mader, or admitting that perhaps it's not really a change they want to make and giving it up and moving onto something else because the truth is,
00:00:44 you know, it is true that we often give up too early. And it's also true that we often will invest tons of time in something that is better to give up and say no to. Those are both very human reactions to things. Welcome. And thank you for joining us on the inspired stewardship podcast. If you truly desire to become the person who God wants you to be,
00:01:06 then you must learn to use your time, your talent and your treasures for your true column. In the inspired stewardship podcast. We'll learn to invest in yourself, invest in others and develop your influence so that you can impact the world in tonight's Saturday night special. I talk with you about the open Gates model and how this has played out in my own life.
00:01:37 I also talk with you about what this looks like and how I use it in my coaching business. Now, one area that a lot of folks need some help with is around the area of productivity. Getting not just more things done, but actually getting the right things done can be really, really tough. I've got a course called productivity for your passion.
00:02:02 That's designed to help you do this, and then to hold you accountable and walk with you so that you can tailor productivity, not just to be getting more done, but actually getting the right things done. What's more, we take the approach of looking at your personality and how you actually look at things in the world and tailor the productivity system to your personality,
00:02:28 because the truth is a lot of the systems that are out there are written really well for somebody with a particular personality type. But if you have a different approach to things, they just don't work, but there's tools and techniques and approaches that you can take that will work for anyone. And we help you do that and productivity for your passion. Check it out over@inspiredstewardship.com
00:02:51 slash launch. If you've heard already the explanation for the open Gates model on Wednesday, Thursday, or Friday's episode, you can skip forward about eight and a half minutes and get to the end of that. And then I'll talk some more about what that is and how I use it after that. If you've never heard the open Gates model before, just keep listening.
00:03:15 So one of the models that I like for framing and thinking about coaching and building habits and self-development or change when it comes to looking at ourselves and thinking about how we grow and how we change is an idea that I first learned about from a coach mentor of mine named coach Tony. And he talked about this idea of open Gates. See that the idea that a lot of coaches have is they focus on changing one kind of behavior.
00:03:47 Maybe they, they focus as a habit on helping people build a new habit through building up tiny habits. In fact, Tony first started looking at coaching and building habits when he invented a, uh, a habit tracking app that has since gone on to become coach.me. And this idea was that we could start with tiny Keystone habits and begin over time to build up on those and you would see change and growth,
00:04:18 but then he began to look at this over a large number of people using this app. And he began to look at how many people were consistent and successful in changing their habits. And what he found is, as he began to study this, it was somewhere in that, you know, eight, five to 15% range, somewhere between five and 15% of the people seem to be successful in building a new habit.
00:04:43 And that often even when he brought on coaches, the coaches would try Way to attack that habit Through sort of a single piece of advice. And the epiphany that Kony had is the truth is that the coaching that we do, the change that we make has to be more complex than any one single piece of advice for any of us. It's the reason why perhaps you've seen somebody else successfully begin to go to the gym or change their health or change their money or something else.
00:05:15 And we think to ourselves, I want to do that too. And so we asked them, what did you do? What was successful for you? And they share the one or two or three things that they did, then you try them and you fail miserably. And so the framing that, that Tony came up with and it, and it comes from other research that comes out of NLP and some other things like that was that really,
00:05:38 and truly we are made up of a series of things and they're not, hierarchial, it's not like one thing comes before or after another, but instead they're all necessary. They're interconnected. And this includes our mission, our identity, our belief, our capacity, our habit, and our, and that to successfully have change happen. All of these have to be open.
00:06:04 All of these have to successfully be addressed and, and different times, different ones of us have different ones of these that are open or closed or available for change successfully and different ways. So if you begin to figure out that you want to build a new habit, then you're attacking that habit gate. But if your capacity or your belief or your environment or your mission,
00:06:31 or your identity are not ready, then that habits not going to stick. And oftentimes for many of us, one or two of these Gates, sometimes even three or four, all of them are closed. And we have to begin to address opening all of them before we can make successful change. And for many people, coaches and therapists tend to focus on mission,
00:06:56 identity and belief while trainers and weight loss coaches or athletic coaches. These kinds of people spend their time on capability, habit, and environment. I mean, think about it a lot of times, when you think about like a life coach or career coach, they spend a lot of time helping you figure out why what's important to you. What matters to you.
00:07:20 That's around these ideas of mission, identity, and belief. Those are really all kinds of beliefs about ourselves and others. Why, if you get into the more tactical, the more practical the application, the actual execution of things, then you tend to be working around capability, habit, and environment. But the interesting thing is it's not one or the other.
00:07:43 It's all of these that are important. So real quick definitions, you probably kind of came up with definitions in your head for each of these. But to give you a little bit of framing environment is literally the external things around you. It could be as simple as setting an alarm on your phone, how much time you have availability. It also could be certain physical activities or physical access to a computer is needed.
00:08:08 If you're building something around computers, habit is the idea of incremental change over time. It's the consistency piece. It's not just one and done, but continue to work at it over time. Capacity is about the skills and strategies that we use. It's both the tactical, the little day to day stuff and the strategic, the bigger picture strategies that we use to actually improve or change in an area.
00:08:37 And then when we transitioned to belief, belief is about those internal beliefs that we have about ourselves and about the world, including the ones that we don't even know are there, the ones we haven't ever articulated to anyone. And then identity is a type of belief, but specifically it's the beliefs you have about yourself. Leaf is more about how the world works and identity is about how you,
00:09:03 you work. And then mission is about what's important to you. What you really value, not what you say, you value, but what you really value. This is why sometimes when people begin to change habit, they stopped doing it because they figured out that there's something that's more important to them, something better for them to do. And all of these are part of this open Gates model.
00:09:28 I've taught quite a bit this week about the open Gates model. And I gave a few examples of coaching with it and in terms of time and talent, but, uh, and, and treasures. But I wanted to talk a little bit more today about how this has actually affected my own life by my personal life. And firstly, it's given, that'd be a lot of insight into an,
00:09:52 an understanding into myself and to how I work and how I do things. It's given me the ability to recognize whenever I'm getting stuck somewhere. And it gives me a framework to begin to dissect and examine what is it that's getting me stuck. So instead of continuing to be frustrated and kind of beat my head against the wall and one area where I keep trying the same thing over and over again,
00:10:18 and it's just not happening. And yet other people say that they've had great success doing that one thing. Well, then I get stuck with that. I get stuck trying to do the same thing that others have done that works, and it doesn't work for me. And then I'm frustrated and feel like a failure. So I've used this framework to take the ability to step back and look at things a little differently.
00:10:47 And when I do, when I opened my eyes to that, I begin to think through these areas, is it an identity problem? Is it that I see myself in a way that isn't accurate? Is it a mission problem? Do I not have a big enough connection to a why or to a purpose behind it? Is there something else in my beliefs or in the beliefs of people around me,
00:11:10 that's holding me back. Is it a habit question? Is it, I just haven't done the reps. I haven't done the work to get to that position. Is it a capacity question? Do I maybe need to build in some sort of framework or skills or other things around me that let me have more ability to achieve that? Or is it an environment question?
00:11:32 Is there something in the environment around me that causes me to stumble? What I've discovered for myself is more often than not my areas that I struggle with are around identity and environment. You know, I sometimes don't see myself as capable. I have limiting beliefs myself, and I think most of us do. And then the other areas of I have not set up my environment around me to allow me to do things in an effective way.
00:12:03 Well then I'm just not going to do them. I have to make sure that I streamline things and make it easy for me to do them because I will get bogged down in the details. I'll spend all my time getting ready and not any time actually doing. And then what this has done for me as a coach is it allows me to look at my clients and think of them as whole human beings.
00:12:29 You know, whether somebody is dealing with financial issues, whether someone is dealing with issues around communication, whether someone is dealing with issues around leadership or around their productivity. The truth is I am able to see them as whole people. And I begin to able to ask them questions to help them tease out, where are they struggling? Which of these frames is holding them back from being able to change themselves,
00:13:00 which of these frames is able to hold them back from making the change that they want to make or admitting that perhaps it's not really a change they want to make and giving it up and moving onto something else because the truth is, you know, it is true that we often give up too early. And it's also true that we often will invest tons of time in something that is better to give up and say no to.
00:13:26 Those are both very human reactions to things, but knowing which is, which is the real value. And I think that's oftentimes the value that a coach can bring to a situation. Not because we have the answer to the question, but because that having that external person ask you questions and guide you through thinking it often brings the answer out and makes it obvious to yourself.
00:13:50 So I'd ask you if you're struggling in areas of your life, look at these Gates, look at identity, mission, belief, habit, capacity, and environment, and examine for yourself, which ones of these are closed right now, where are you struggling? And then attack that one gate until it opens. And often you'll find that there's even more Gates that are still closed,
00:14:14 but in the meantime, you'll have made more progress than you were before. Thanks for listening. Thanks so much for listening to the inspired stewardship podcast, as a subscriber and listener, we challenge you to not just sit back and passively listen, but act on what you've heard and find a way to live your calling. If you enjoyed this episode, please,
00:14:44 please do us a favor. Go over to inspired stewardship.com/itunes rate. All one word iTunes rate. It'll take you through how to leave a rating and review and how to make sure you're subscribed to the podcast so that you can get every episode as it comes out in your feed until next time, invest your time, your talent and your treasures, develop your influence and impact the world.