Welcome to Cloudlandia Ep129: CoachCon and the Art of Growing Older
In this episode of Welcome to Cloudlandia, I reflect on the successful launch of our inaugural CoachCon conference, which brought together 350 members of the Strategic Coach community in Nashville.
The vibrant energy of Music City and the exceptional facilities of the Music City Center made for an experience surpassing expectations.
Our discussion centers on cultivating the mental fortitude needed to remain anchored amid future-focused hustle. We connect this to aspects like political endurance while acknowledging the enrichment that unfolding daily actions alone confer on tomorrow's potential.
SHOW HIGHLIGHTS
Links:
WelcomeToCloudlandia.com
StrategicCoach.com
DeanJackson.com
ListingAgentLifestyle.com
TRANSCRIPT
(AI transcript provided as supporting material and may contain errors)
Dean: Mr Sullivan.
Dan: I am back from Nashville.
Dean: That's what I hear. I am excited to hear all about it. It looked like a real party it was a total party. Two parties.
Dan: Yeah, so providing some context for the listening audience. We had our very first community conference and I say that because you did not get invited unless you were connected to someone in the strategic coach community and it's our first conference of this kind called CoachCon. And as a result of it. I already committed at my birthday party, which was on the second night, two-day conference, second night and I said we're going to have one in 26. So we're thinking we'll do this every two years Okay, that's amazing.
Yeah, and we had 350, which was good for, you know, our first experience.
Dean: And.
Dan: I will say that we're really committed to Nashville. Nashville is just such a great city to have a conference. It's just. The city itself has an enormous amount of energy and the Music City Center is just a marvelous venue. It is so big it staggers your imagination. It's two blocks long by almost two blocks wide, and if you look at it from the air, from above, it looks like a guitar.
Dean: Right, right right.
Dan: Yeah, which you wouldn't do in Toronto.
Dean: It would have no meaning, it would have no meaning.
Dan: It would have no meaning in Toronto. Okay, it would.
Dean: And anyway I was working with go ahead. I was just going to say not to say that Toronto has a pretty wonderful convention center facility too, downtown, yeah, but Nashville has a great.
Dan: Nashville has a great Nashville has a great convention center. That's the truth. Yes, yeah, as a matter of fact, one of the smart moves we made as a company is that we immediately hired a convention conference company called Agile.
I think they're from Kansas City and Minneapolis. They have two branches to their company and so, right from the very beginning, our team members were working with their team members to create the event, and this was a year and a half in planning, and they just are the perfect interface between yourself and then the venue itself, who have their own team. So it's really it's really a triple play of three teams working together to create the event.
Dean: And I mean it's such a, it's such an engine. I had such flashbacks, you know, seeing the footage that was coming out of there of the room and the setup and the way everything was. Or you know that we did an event roughly twice that size every month for 14 years. You imagine, like the engine that it takes to put that, to put that on the logistics of it. That was what the main event was. We'd have, you know, 600 or 800 people every month. It was something.
Dan: Yeah, are you speaking about one of your?
Dean: events. This was with Joe Stumpf when we did the buy referral for the real estate agents. That was what we did.
Dan: Oh, that was where you did it, that's where you did it that's where you did it yeah, that's right well, here I'm trying to impress you and you're just tolerating me no, I mean there's some.
Dean: There's an exciting energy around a uh, a big event like that. I mean there's, but it's a very different energy.
Dan: Yeah, wasn't it in Nashville 14 times.
Dean: No, we did. We were all over the country. We did one a month. We did one every month for 14 years. Wow. Yeah exactly so Nashville was in the rotation that's like 168.
Dan: That's like 168 conferences.
Dean: Yeah, we did over 200, actually is what it was, but that was like a circus coming to town every month, every month, yeah.
Dan: Anyway, I was talking to one of the black backstage crew. I was talking to one of the black backstage crew. You know who'd do the get you ready for going on to the front stage and I said we have 350 people.
If you had other conferences going on at the same time. Our size, how many could you have? And he says I think around two dozen dozen we could be doing in the same building at the same time. But then when you get outside of the music center it's just filled with all the sorts of clubs yes and broadway, which is their big party street, is about two block, two blocks away, and there's lots of hotels.
Dean: There's lots of hotels around, so's lots of hotels around, so you can feed into it.
Dan: I was at the Four Seasons in Nashville.
Dean: Of course you were. Yeah, did you get a hat and some boots to celebrate your 80th birthday? The Nashville way?
Dan: I did not, and I'll tell you, my approach to cowboy hats and cowboy boots is about the same as my approach to backyard barbecues, and that is, I will celebrate my 80th birthday without ever having participated, actually organized one of those, and so it's on the list that I'm going to try to get through my whole life without doing I love it.
Dean: That's the greatest thing.
Dan: Dan.
Dean: I can't tell you how many times I've used the. You know people are going through their whole life hoping to never have to meet you.
Dan: I was having.
Dean: I had lunch with an attorney friend who's a personal injury attorney and you know he works primarily with people in accidents and I said you know the challenge with his marketing is that it's acute onset and you know nobody is preparing for or anticipating the need to meet you.
Dan: And I said in fact most people are hoping to go their entire life without ever having to meet you and if they get to, good for them, you know, yeah, funny, yeah, yeah, some people's marketing challenges are more severe than others yeah that's exactly right, well, yeah you know, as you know to be being that we're right at the beginning, when I started my coaching life, which was 50 years ago, in 1970, the people which was called Top of the Table and the table is a previous organization which started, I think maybe 50 or 60 years before, which was called the Million Dollar Roundtable, and it was a certain amount of sales qualified you and you got to go to the acronym mdrt. That was the thing, and.
But in the early 70s they had gotten together and said let's take a top 500 in the world and and establish ourselves as the top of the table. Okay, and so right off the bat, in 74 and 75, I had one who was just a great friend and promoter of what I was doing at that time, because it was just being out there testing out this thing called coaching for entrepreneurs. And then very quickly I got others because they talked to each other a lot without seeing each other as competitors. And one of the things that I really remember is just getting really, really deep into how life insurance agents operate. And it's a tough marketing proposition because you have to engage people in a conversation about what's going to happen after they die. I mean, that's the premise of life insurance and the other thing is you're doing it for other people.
And really you're doing it, and I had one of the great ones. These were, in the first instance, they were all Toronto-based, that's where we were, and I remember this one he would deal with, very wealthy. One of the things that attracted to me to these top life insurance agents is that their entire clientele were entrepreneurial. Okay, they didn't have corporate people, they had people who created their own businesses. And I remember this one agent here in Toronto. He said the first thing you have to zero in on again, it's a difficult sale is what the individual, who's a wealthy individual? What do they love that they want to be remembered for having been a great person after their life? What is it that they love that they would ensure and he said so. He had this line of questioning with. That went something like this he said first of all, as we talk about this, do you love your wife? And the person would say no, not really, not really.
He says do you love your children? That would be a flat no. And he says no, I don't love my children. He said do you love your employees?
And he says no, I don't love my children. He said, do you love your employees? And he says no. Finally gets to number four is do you love your reputation such that after you die, people will say you know he really loved his wife, his children and his employees? He says yes, I do love my reputation, and he says, ok, let's ensure your reputation. He says until you find out what someone loves, you might as well not talk about your legacy, and everybody has a different one. So the big thing everybody has a something that they want to be remembered for. So he says that's the thing that we have to ensure.
Dean: And it's amazing. Amazing, isn't it, that there's always the reason behind the reason.
Dan: It's funny yeah well, well, there's ultimately. There's the reason, the others aren't a reason you know, and actually that's true, yeah, and you have to find out what makes the person tick. You know, know, I mean everybody who lives for a long time and is very active in doing it has something that's right at the center you know, and I think it's idiosyncratic.
Dean: What do you mean by that? Do you mean, that it's?
Dan: I don't think it's predictable.
Dean: Okay, right.
Dan: Yeah, there's a deeper. I don't think everybody is Well. If you have the money to be different, then you're different in the way you want to be different. I mean we're talking about people who can write a check and they can write a big check. And what do they write the check for is the big question. And they're not doing it out of need, they're doing it out of want.
Dean: Right.
Dan: My contention is don't do things out of need. Do them out of what you actually want, because that represents much more of who you actually are than doing things because you need to do them that's an interesting because that's why or is that why you spent so much time 25 years.
Dean: I remember you saying you made a commitment to every day writing what do I want. I journal for 25 years. Yeah.
Dan: And because I was coming off a divorce and bankruptcy which coincided on the same day, that was, August, August 15th 1978.
Dean: Yeah.
Dan: And you know, divorce and bankruptcy qualify as two bad report cards.
Dean: Right.
Dan: Right right right, yes, I mean any way you interpret it, it's a bad report card and so you know I was kind of in a state and one of the neat things when you go through a divorce and bankruptcy, people don't throw parties for you to have you come and explain it you know they give you a lot of peace and quiet of your own, you know, yeah.
So I had about four or five months after August to think this through and I said you know, the reason why these things are happening is I'm not telling myself what I actually want. You know I'm assuming certain things about other people. I'm expecting other people expectations, assumptions about other people and other things. And I said, you know, I think the key here is that I'm not actually telling myself what I want.
Dean: And so.
Dan: I said myself what I want and so I said so. Nobody cares if I was divorced and bankruptcy, and nobody really cares whether I amount to anything you know you know, and I was 30, 30, 34 years old at that time.
And once you hit 30, nobody cares you know, it just, we invest a lot in younger people until age 30 and then they kick you out of the nest and anything that's going to happen in the future, you're going to do it on your own. You're not going to get a government grant to do it. And so I said, well, what I'm going to do is I'm just going to have one goal here. So I said, well, what I'm going to do is I'm just going to have one goal here. For the next 25 years, every day, I'm going to keep a journal and I'm going to write in it something that I want, With one constraint I'm not going to use the word, because I'm not going to use the word.
I just want it, I just want it. And I did that, I did it for 25 years I missed want it, I just want it, and I did that. I did it for 25 years. I missed 12 days. There are 9,131 days in 25 years including the six leap year days, and so it's 9,131. And I did them on 9,119 days and my relationship with Babs came out of that. The whole strategic coach came out of that.
You know and all sorts of things, like the lifestyle I'm living and you know why today I don't have to think about money at all because the money's there and you know, and the type of people I'm spending my time with. So it feels good, but that that the other thing is I. What it proved is I have the ability to stick with something for 25 years, right on a daily basis on a daily conscious basis.
Dean: So still journal. Do you, uh, do you still journal?
Dan: well, Dean, that's a really great question. I do journal, but it's in the form of using my tools on a daily basis.
Dean: I got you Okay, so you're thinking about your thinking every day, like my fast filter, my fast filters.
Dan: Yeah, you know fast filters. I'm saying what I want. It's just mutated into different forms. I want it's just mutated into different forms, but there isn't a day that I go through where I'm not stating something that I'm planning to achieve sometime in the future.
Dean: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's really. That's something I'm coming up. Next April will be 30 years of, you know, daily journaling. Yeah, I mean of sequential, and I actually have all of the journals. It was April 1995. I would journal. I was always someone to write down my thinking, but not in an organized, archival kind of way. But April of 1995 is my journal number one the official like keeping that.
Dan: So next year is the 30 years. Yeah, and it's so funny that you know, like you said, I think more than half your life.
Dean: Yeah, that's exactly right. I just turned 58 on Friday and that was a you know, you mentioned you know at 30, I noticed that you did it at 29. Yeah, that there's a different you know different experience level at 58 than there is at you know 29.
Dan: Oh yeah.
Dean: Yeah, I remember when I first started with Strategic Coach in 1997, year one that was, I remember the three-year kind of vision thing was it was difficult for me to even like see three years into the future because everything up to that point had been constantly evolving. You know, and I just remember, as in real estate, you know, when I was young, starting in real estate, I remember there was talk of the, you know, halton hills the town where I was, had just released their 20 year plan and I thought to myself, man, that's like that's forever, that's a lot. I don't never get here. You know, 20 years, I can't imagine that they're thinking that far ahead. And I had a couple of experiences like that. One of the largest sale that I ever made was to an italian family that was land banking. They bought land on the corner of ninth line and steels in halton hills that wasn't going to be developed.
Dan: we we're talking about Toronto. Yes, right, exactly Greater, Toronto area.
Dean: Yeah, in Halton Hills that was like the outer edge of the greater Toronto area and their expectation was that this was going to be land that would be developed in 40 years and that was almost exactly true as to when it, you know, came about. It's just kind of that was their model. They would, you know, go, they were a development family and they would go out to the edge and buy the land that was inevitably going to be the development. So, you know, they owned a lot of land in Brampton and Mississauga that were, you know, at the time, rural areas that they bought, you know, 20 years previous, in the 60s, at that time, knowing that was going to be developed later on and what an interesting like long term vision, like that.
But that tell that story, because I always like to have you know kind of I look at my birthdays, I like to have like a day of reflection and looking forward and you know real and yes, uh, two days ago was your birthday, that's right, yep, and so you know, looking, I have a completely different understanding and experience of what 25 years is, yeah, than I did when I was 29, right, and so it's like, not you know, because I can still remember cracking the you know seal on journal number one, april 1995, virginia Beach. That was the you know day one journal one, and I still I can transport there, you know know, right now. It's just amazing how your mind I'm just like I'm sure you can immediately remember your lunch that you had on the day you got bankrupt and divorced. You know, you probably recall that right there, but you couldn't imagine it was actually a good lunch yeah, that right yeah because it was on the credit card you were about to turn in.
Dan: Yeah, the interesting thing about it is I've been working on a concept and I was reminded of it because for our top guest speaker at the conference we had Kathy Ireland, the very famous model.
Dean: Oh, wait, it wasn't Joe Polish.
Dan: As I said, we had our top speaker. It was Kathy Ireland. Joe was good. He was one of the three main speakers. Right yeah he should be delighted with that. Yeah, he should be delighted with that.
Dean: Anyway.
Dan: Kathy Erland talked about how her intent was not to become a model. Not that she was against becoming a model, but that was never her intention to be a model. And she was just approached when she was on the beach in Santa Barbara California when she was 17. On the beach in Santa Barbara California when she was 17. And an agent came up to her and said you know, I think there's a niche that if you wanted to become a model, you would really, you know, sort of a tomboy she's.
You know, she was very athletic, she was very muscular and she, you know, she sort of had freckles and you know, and she did wonderfully for 15 years from age 17 to 32. And she was on many covers of magazines, especially Sports Illustrated, and but then when she was 32, she just decided to stop and while she was a model, she had taken a crack at creating different kinds of businesses, so it wasn't something new, she said. I always knew I was going to be an entrepreneur and that the modeling gave me a bridge from where I was born, where I grew up, to the outside world. And then she stopped at 32. And for the last almost 30 years's created a three and a half billion dollar global company. And it was really great. We have jeff madoff interviewers, so jeff, is how I know I had.
Jeff is how I know kathy, because he had her as a guest at a marketing class that he teaches at one of the New York universities. But one of the things I found in common with her she said I like getting older because you just know so much more, and one of the things I'm really appreciating at 80 is that I can really I can think of my life in terms of at least seven decades. You know, the first one's a bit sketchy, you know, because you hadn't really become conscious.
Dean: But you've recalled being out in the woods. Oh, no, no.
Dan: I have very good memories below 10. And I think I've enhanced them some, but you have what's possible over long periods of time, you know and what you will stay with over long. I think one of the principal pieces of knowledge that you get as a benefit of getting older is you have a very clear idea of what exactly what you will stick with over a long period of time and we're just, and we're just trading reports here of something you stuck with and what I stuck with over a long period of time, and young people don't have the advantage of doing that that's exactly right.
Dean: Yeah, you can't imagine and it's very interesting to see how I spoke things into existence in that journal, leading up to them, like describing what I want, and to see how they started out as a seed in the journal and then became reality. You know, something it's interesting to see and you wonder, you know, part of it is to keep that, you know, keep that rolling, keep it now looking forward in the next five. It's as you say, it's, you know, your I love about you at 80 is that your, you know future is still bigger than your past and that's kind of an exciting thing.
Dan: Yeah, I will say. This doesn't naturally occur just by living years.
Dean: No, no you have to be.
Dan: I mean the. To make the future bigger than your past at 80 takes a lot of.
Dean: Yeah, especially when. But maybe that goes to what your print too. Right, just achievement is a thing, that's a motivator for you. For the sake of parties, for the sake of parties. That's all the bigger parties. That's all the bigger parties. That's great, yeah, yeah.
Dan: Someone was asking me that. You know, when I looked at the conference that we just had in Nashville, wednesday and Thursday, people said, well, how would you plan a conference? I said, well, I didn't plan the conference. It was my team members to plan the conference. So it was my team members to play in the conference. But I said my attitude toward the conference is what the party is going to be like on the final night. Yes, I work backwards from the party. What has to happen for it to be a great party?
Dean: Right.
Dan: Well, this is very exciting, that now it's just coincidentally, two years from now, we do it at the same time.
Dean: That be, yeah, first week of may is a good day.
Dan: It's a good time, it's good and we would do it at nashville and we would do it at the music city. I mean, we're far enough ahead on the schedule that we know it would be your 60th birthday.
Dean: Yeah, that's right. Yeah, that'll be right in time for peak Dean on my health journey here. You know that'll be Back to my.
Dan: That was the year of the peak Dean. That's exactly right, it's almost, like you know, a periodic visit of the northern lights. Yeah, yeah.
Dean: No, I think that's very exciting. Yeah, and I've already said even more.
Dan: I've already yeah, you put it in the calendar. It'll be the week of your birthday, probably okay, I mean I don't know what the week looks like, but let's find out now.
Dean: I'm yeah, but yeah, nashville, early early 2026, may 10th is a Sunday. Yeah, it won't be that, it won't be on a.
Dan: Sunday no, but it'll be the week. It'll be the week before, it'll be the week before. But the thing is now that they've done it once and we've got a date in the calendar. First of all, they can put the date in the calendar and they can get the event company plugged in. And they can get the event company plugged in, they can get the reservation at the Music City. They can get the hotel bookings I think the hotel bookings most hotels you can't get in for about six until six months before.
Dean: But as early as you can.
Dan: And yeah, we had a lot of bookings at the Four Seasons and you know, and we came in from the airport on Tuesday or on Tuesday? No, on Monday we came in, am I right?
Dean: here. You came in on the Monday, yeah, because we spoke last Sunday yeah, I think I came.
Dan: We came in on the Monday, yeah, and and we. But when we arrived, there was this whole meeting party of Four Seasons personnel. They came up to us and treated us like they liked us oh right, imagine that yeah, which I take regardless of what their motive is it doesn't matter, it still feels just as nice.
Dean: Yeah, I think that's great. Mr.
Dan: Sullivan is the general manager of the hotel.
Oh, we're so happy to have you, Thank you. Thank you very much and a very friendly guy, yeah. So anyway, I'm going to work on this. The value of age. You know, there's a lot of people and I'm noticing them, because I'm starting to notice how people who are getting up in years I won't say they're my age, but they're getting up in years are falling into the general narrative of how people act when they get older and I'm just so convinced that they feel diminished because they haven't constantly worked on having their future bigger than their past.
Yes, there's a point where they stop creating their future whenever that was there, was you know, well, and I think that you really have.
Dean: It's a discipline that I constantly have to get myself to turn and have my gaze future focused, because as you do get older, you start that there's more to look back on. You know, and you spend a lot of time revisiting the past, but all the action is in the future.
Dan: There's nothing, nothing you can do about the about the past, but yeah, but what I do is that I the past, if I remember. It can only be raw material for creating something new for the future.
Dean: Yeah.
Dan: Like when I go back and I remember a situation, I'll say now what did I learn from that situation that I can use in the future? You know, I don't accept the past's interpretation of itself.
Dean: Yeah, say more about itself, yeah.
Dan: Say more about that. Yeah, and I had a friend for a number of years who I'd gone to college with and we've, you know, we have been in touch for 20 years and he said you don't have any nostalgia, do you? You don't look back and have an emotional. And I said no, I mean, first of all, I was given a chance, you know, when I was having the experience, to appreciate what it was Okay. So it had a momentary opportunity to really imprint me with its importance. But if I'm looking back from 20 years ago, it's my interpretation of what it means to me going forward, not the interpretation. And I'm noticing, with the boomers, you know, there's nothing more disgusting than a nostalgic boomer.
Dean: Yeah, like thinking about back in the day. Is that what you mean? 60s?
Dan: well, 60s, you know, that's the usual. The 60s and 70s, you know, and they were going to turn the world on its head. And then they became civil servants, they got jobs as government employees or they became teachers and everything else. And then you get with them and they go back and they say, oh, those were the days, and everything like that.
And it's kind of, but I have this notion that up until 30, society really supports you. Society invests in you, the government invests in you, the community invests in you, your parents invest in you, the teachers, everybody invests in you. And at 30, they cut it off and they set you free. And it's like I say about people say well, e know they have very high purchase. When the chicks are born, you know they're hundreds of feet up the eagles, and then on one day the mother eagle, just there's little eagles, they have wings. You know they have feathers, they have wings. She just pushes them all out of the nest. They have wings, she just pushes them all out of the nest. And the ones that don't hit the ground know how to fly. The ones who hit the ground, you don't have to worry about them.
Wow yeah, and I think society at a certain point they just push all the 30-year-olds out of the nest and they want to see if you can make anything. Is there anything different or unique, and if there isn't, you just, more or less metaphorically, you hit the ground and you're nothing more than what things were before.
Dean: There's nothing new.
Dan: There's nothing new, but I pushed myself out of the nest when I was 18 years old, so the time until I was 30 didn't really mean anything.
Dean: Right.
Dan: But I don't comprehend nostalgia, because my emotions are in the present, they're not in the past.
Dean: Yes, yeah, and that's what you realize, even in the future. I think when we were talking in Palm Beach earlier this year about the, you know the main thing is the future is really only shaped by the behaviors and habits and happens Really.
Dan: The future is shaped by your present capabilities. Yeah, so I don't want to be looking backwards, as I'm living the present. I want to be fully alive because it's my up-to-dateness with the present that determines the quality of the future.
Dean: Yes, yeah, bringing there here.
Dan: Yeah, it's really interesting. We had a whole raft of speakers.
Dean: Yeah, tell me about some of the highlights. What were some of the highlights?
Dan: Well, I didn't get to all of them, because I went to every hour. You had a breakout session. I went to it, but there were different streams and tracks. I mean they're all going to be videoed. I mean they were all videoed so everybody's going to be able to see them. But I went to one and they had a couple of futurists there and I wasn't impressed. I wasn't impressed, and more and more over the last 10 years, since we did the collaboration with Peter Diamandis to create Abundance360, I always knew that people could be trapped in the past, in other words, that they were doing every day trying to hold on to the past. Okay, but I'm just as convinced now that people can get trapped into the future.
They can get trapped, that they can't really be aware of what's going on right now because their mind is in a realm that hasn't happened yet and one of the things I know it makes them very nervous, makes them very anxious, anxious. And the thing that I found really interesting about these two speakers, the husband and wife team, was that they were making up all sorts of crazy words to describe what's happening, and you should be aware of this. And they had a word called templosion, which you know temp is, I guess, a Latin word for time, something and implosion, which I guess adds on a notion of explosion and that we're in a period of templosion, where there's hundreds of different ways that you're going to have to choose your life.
Dean: And.
Dan: I was sitting there and I said no, well, I know, 20 years, or I know 20 years from now, exactly what my life is going to look like. I don't know the details but, I, know it's going to be a direct extension of what I'm doing today.
Dean: And.
Dan: I know 80 percent of it. It will be expanding. I'll meet all sorts of new people. There's all going to be, but what's happening in the rest of the world and what other people are doing really don't, it doesn't really matter to me that much.
Dean: I like that. I mean, that's what I realized in the journaling. I have two things. You something you said about. You know that spending time, you know, in the future is there's a lot of temptation or opportunity to just stay constantly planning and thinking about the future without actually you know, I've been using the word applying yourself. You know, I found that it's in our minds the things that motivate us to actually do something. We only do things in the present. So our own, you know our, you know our behaviors extended over time are what we define as habits, but it's really the behavior that's to be done today. You know, and I realized that writing in your journal and thinking about or planning for, or architecting or doing all these things that are future gazing is not actually applying yourself, it's not actually putting anything on the record. It's the equivalent of to the committee in our brain that actually controls what we do. It's the equivalent of quietly sitting in the corner coloring.
Because no matter what anything that you do in your journal. The great deception is that it feels like that's actually making a difference. Right, that you're actually accomplishing something, but it's not. Until you break that barrier of getting it out of your head into and on the permanent record in the form of an action or a behavior. It's not going to do anything.
Dan: Well, I think the big thing and I think it's a hard realization. I think it's maybe one of the harder realizations that nobody has ever lived in the future and nobody has ever lived in the past.
Yeah, you only live in the moment. You know, and it and a lot of people just aren't capable of being conscious of the moment because their attention is being either dragged back backwards or pushed forwards and they're thinking about next, they're not thinking about next year. They're not thinking about, they can't think about next year because everything's happening right now. They can't think about 10 years ago, because everything's happening right now, and I think being present-minded is hard.
Yes, I think it takes really an enormous amount of mental muscle to actually just be aware that things are happening right now and the way you handle things right now basically makes the future.
Dean: Yes, that's the only thing that makes the future. It's the brick by brick layer.
Dan: You know what I mean it's really the truth.
Dean: It's that in the tapestry or whatever, that we can only see the accomplishment of it. But you realize that you can.
Dan: I bet in the world of brick layers it's what a person can do in a day that really puts them at the top of their craft.
Dean: I think you're absolutely right. Yes, and it's only on the reflection. You know, great walls are only built on the you know, compilation of daily accomplishment.
Dan: Yeah.
Dean: You know the thing is you can change any of it at any time. You know the thing is you can change any of it at any time. That's what I realized is in reflection, you know, when I was thinking about those, the elements of a perfect life, and really getting down to the, you know how DNA has, you know, the five elements of it, that if you look at the DNA of a perfect life, it's, you know, the elements are me, like everything. If I were to strip me naked and drop me on a deserted island, everything I have there, that's me, the portable things. Then time is life's moving at the speed of reality.
60 minutes per hour in perpetuity and you're always doing something in there, then environments are the things that are. You know. You basically put yourself in or you've been put in to an environment. That is your version of what's happening here, where, geographically, where you are, that where you live, what you have, what you do, all of those things are environments and you could, in theory, all of those things are environments and you could, in theory, move your, so I mean, you could completely change your environment.
That's what you're thinking of the immigrant, right of you could leave everything behind and go change the environment and decide everything that you're going to do. Then the element of people meaning all the people that are around you, and money. So the combination of all of those five things are what create what we would call a life, you know, and I love like I find that infinitely entertaining too, you know in terms of yeah, the other thing is that, uh, one of the things that was predicted for me by other people is that as you get get older, time speeds up.
Dan: Okay, and since I 70, I've experienced just the opposite. Time slowed down during the 70s and the years just took their time, and I think the reason is, I think it has to do with consciousness. You know, and I think that you know when you're, you know when you're a child, you're learning everything. So you're, you know, you're, everything is kind of new and you're exploring it and everything else, and then, as you get on, a lot of your experience you already knew that. So it's not significant, okay, but I think what happens with a lot of people, they are never actually creating their experience. There he is. I got a phone call that interrupted our phone call oh man, how rude somebody named Stephanie ok and.
I immediately hit just to say you have no right. You're trespassing, that's right. Yeah, be gone. Where did I leave the thought that I was on?
Dean: Well, you were talking about consciousness. That's what you were saying.
Dan: Well, I think consciousness is the number of times during any time period that you're actually conscious of what's happening to you Okay.
And I think it's massive when you're a child, because everything's new, right, but as we, let's say, we're now 20, we've actually mastered a lot of things that were new and now they're known, actually mastered a lot of things that were new and now they're known. I think, therefore, the number of situations when you're 20, that you're suddenly struck by something new is less than when you were, you know, four or five or six years old, okay, and so you're moving quickly from one moment of consciousness to another. And when you're six, it might be 20 things a day. That's a long day, but if it's 20 times a week when you're 20, that's a faster week, and if it's 20 times in a quarter, when you're 50 that's a really fast quarter and when it's 20 times, when you're 20 times in a year, when you're 70.
I think that whether time is going fast or slow depends upon the number of consciousness things about something new that's happening in your life. And I found over the period of the last 10 years. I was back to having suddenly new conscious things that were happening. You know many times. You know many times a week or a day and time slowed back down, so it's actually being conscious.
Dean: That's really, you know, that's almost like Euclidean, that's like euclidean geometry, you know yeah, that that harmonizes with something that I heard about. Why it the perception is that it moves faster is that when we're looking back, the routine reads as one experience, right? So you're looking back at the thing, if you've been, if your life becomes waking up in the same place, driving to the same job, sitting at the same desk, interacting with the same people and you look back over time at that, that all reads as one experience and it's only the new and novel consciousness moments that you were just talking about that get registered and recorded that single experience for some people may have.
Dan: Another year just went by.
Dean: That's exactly right and that's what oh well, that was fast where that was fast.
Dan: Where's the time go? Where's the?
Dean: time go.
Dan: It's not a function of time, it's a function of consciousness. Right, that's exactly right, and we've had at least five conscious things in the last hour. I love that, Dan. We've done each other a favor over the last 60 minutes.
Dean: I'm very excited about the culmination, the 60th. I'm reframing CoachCon as a peak theme celebration. I'm just I'm taking it for me, that's what it's.
Dan: Not that you didn't have something to live for before, but we just put some kind of put a cherry at the top of your whipped cream. Yeah.
Dean: I've had something that I was already on the path of you know, and that's kind of that's kind of great. Yeah, I just celebrated nine nine weeks of the peak Dean path here, so that's all it's very exciting.
Dan: That's been a good nine weeks, hasn't it? It really has.
Dean: Yes, it shows the whole you know thing of accountability and the plan and Somebody else's executive function, that's exactly right.
Dan: Now I'm looking honestly.
Dean: That's the thing Now. I'm looking for that in my you know, in deciding in my productivity now, in all the times that I'm, because I realized what an abundance of time I have you know, and very. I have what you would call very little environmental drag on my life in terms of time, commitments or obligations or people or other things, so it's a huge palette to play on Attempts on the part of other people to use up your life. Yeah, exactly, there's no claims to it, that's exactly right.
So I've got no excuse. So now it's just like I get to architect this amazing adventure here.
Dan: You know the thing that's going to be the highlight in the election campaign. It might happen in the next week or two where Trump finally sends the judge in the current trial in New York over the edge. He says I'm sending you to jail, and then the United States is just fixated on. Trump. He won't be in a normal cell. Of course He'll have a phone.
Of course he'll have a phone and he'll be messages from Rikers Island, which is the main jail and he'll have lineups of everybody wanting to get his autograph and his picture taken in Rikers. And you know he'll be giving campaign speeches to all the prison guards and everything else. And meanwhile President Joe will have to be reminded who he is again and what his job is.
Dean: Oh, my goodness. Well, we got six months. That's the exciting thing here.
Dan: This is very exciting. This is very exciting. This is very, this is a and. And people say, isn't it a tragedy? I says what's a tragedy? And they said just the preposterousness presidential campaign. And I says, well, it depends on how you look at it. Because a lot of people say, well, this is crucial. You know the future, the world depends upon this. And I said, well, america has so much going for it, the United States has so much for it, it's got so much leadership at every level of activity that Americans are the only people on the planet in the history of humanity that can just treat domestic politics as a form of popular entertainment. Oh man, so I don't think you're approaching this correctly. You think that this is actually important, but it's entertainment. And then the question is who is the most entertaining candidate? And that I can predict yes.
Dean: It would be amazing to see it all unfold, how it plays out. I still see Las Vegas still has all the odds makers still have Donald Trump as the winner.
Dan: Yeah, I think it's in the 60s. Well, it depends on whether they're doing it with all the candidates or just the main two. But I think the betting markets I check every couple. I think the betting markets I check every couple weeks, the betting market.
Yeah, it's been generally 60, 65 and you know and you know, which is surprising, because a lot of the big, wealthy democratic donors could be gaming the market, you know, just throwing a lot of money into the market. But but these are the las ve. I mean Las Vegas puts a bet on everything, so it's probably some legitimacy to what their bets are. Yeah, yeah, and it goes deeper than a particular issue. You know, it's just like. You know, it's almost like which one of them could actually be there at the end of another four years, and I think that's part of it.
Holy cow yeah yeah, that's exactly true yeah, it's like a horse race, where you're betting to see if any of them could actually get to the finish line right oh my goodness, we know they could be at the starting gate. We just don't know which one's going to actually finish you know, yeah, that's so that's amazing, yeah all righty are we uh on next week?
yes, nope, I'm on a plane trip to london on sunday of next week. So and the week after I, yeah, the week after I can do it from a hotel room in cleveland okay, perfect, but I'll have to give you the. I'll have to give you the date of the time.
Dean: Okay, no problem.
Dan: And I might have to get you up early.
Dean: That's okay. It's my only thing on these Sundays. Yeah it's my only thing, so it's the highlight of my day Okay thank you, thanks, bye, bye.