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,
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