Transcript #53 Core Competencies Leading to Victorious Action

Arise2Live Podcast

Transcript for Episode #53  ‘Core Competencies Leading to Victorious Action’

Intro:  Welcome to the Arise 2 Live podcast, where impactful perspectives bring balance to your business and family life. Your host, Scott Weaver, is the founder of Arise 2 Business Consulting. He will give life changing insights to build a strong business and even stronger family.  It’s time to arise to live

Scott R. Weaver:   

Hello and welcome to the Arise2Live podcast, the podcast for business owners, managers, and freelancers who are running a business and a family at the same time.  I am your host Scott Weaver, and today we have a wonderful interview with Peter Burke.  He has a Phd from Stanford and very senior and experienced. He has been on my show before and his previous interview has landed in the top five downloads of my podcast for the whole year. As you know, it’s good to stick with winners so I asked him back again…and to be honest, maybe I got more than I bargained for a podcast interview.

The topic is how experts know how to make good decisions. Specifically, not about making good decisions on the road to success, but the how. The how experts are able to consistently make wise choices time after time.

Peter Burke dives pretty deep into how successful people think, and I do have to admit I’m nervous. I’m nervous that he goes too deep and too quickly that I might lose some listeners. But on the other hand, I want to share real world experiences to help you grow and succeed.

So, please hear out the concepts that Peter shares and apply them in an easy place in your life situation and build from there. We actually talk a lot about how we can reach the expert level.

To help get the most out of this podcast, I’ve captured a summary in the show notes and there is a downloadable PDF on the Arise2Live.com website.  Additionally, I like to introduce two concepts that come up over and over in this episode. The first one is action, thinking, feeling or ATF.

ATF   2:15

Action, thinking, and feeling are three essential elements that need to be in balance for making the best choices and decisions. Where a person starts depends on their personality. There is no particular order or starting place, but all three elements need to be present. This holistic approach includes intuition and the insight, how experts size up situations to make decisions.

Theory U   2:41

Peter mentioned the Theory U, but only at a high level. Theory U is the process to make change and decisions. You can go online or look at books on the details, which are very extensive, deep, and has many applications in the business world.

Peter himself, however, has found that Theory U is just too extensive to his liking and has, thankfully for us, simplified it to be easier to apply to our situations and problems.  So in this simplified approach, imagine in your mind a big U, a big letter U.

On the top left-hand side of the U is the past actions that led to, let’s say a problem. Now if we go half-way down the left side of the U, there’s a place called Thinking. That is where we understand the problem and its complexities. Then we travel to the bottom and explore and identify feelings. Is there fear? Is there bias that are influencing us? Is there over optimism?

After we kind of identify the impact on the decision making, then we climb up the righthand side, going halfway to a Thinking step. What options do we have? What are the solutions available? What steps can we take? Then we go from there to the top of the right hand of the U with action.  Action to move forward that rests on the understanding of the problem, its solution, and the underlining feelings that impact clear judgements. So inside of this, you have the ATF – action, thinking, feeling and a start from a point, dive deep, and come out of it and have actions for the future.

Hopefully I didn’t scare you off…but if you are looking to level-up in your ability to make expert decisions, please listen. And don’t forget to download the PDF notes from the Arise2Live.com website.

Enjoy learning from Jedi master, Peter Burke.

Interview  4:44

Welcome to the Arise2Live podcast. I am on location in downtown Corvallis at the Business Enterprise Center, and I’m with a wonderful guest, Peter Burke. For you, longtime listeners, he did an episode almost a year ago that did quite well.  In fact, it’s in our top five of my podcast downloads. I’m really pleased to have Peter here again. He’s definitely older than average, into his eighties. Stanford Ph.D. graduate a zillion years in technology at big companies at Hewlett-Packard and Tektronix, and just amazing amount of knowledge and wisdom.

He’s one of my mentors, keep me on track or trying to keep me on track. I’m really excited he’s back. It’s also going to be a challenging podcast because when we set the interview like a month ago, he didn’t like the topic I picked, and he has yet to tell me what the topic is.

So I know podcasters supposed to prepare and do research on the topic. I haven’t done anything so if I sound like an idiot, it’s me. It’s not the guest. There’s going to be an adventure and a learning time for all of us.

So welcome.

Peter Burke:  Thank you, Scott. I like that comment. It’s an adventure, because as far as we’ll see later on as I’m speaking, that kind of attitude is a very useful attitude to have. This topic I’ve chosen today really dates back to when I first started working in the industry.

Scott: That was way back 800 years ago, 700 years.

Peter:  1968, actually.

Scott:  OK.

Peter:  In searching for a new direction outside of school and in the industrial world, I came upon the thought that part of my time is spent acting, part of it spent thinking, and part of it feelings: hands, head, heart, kind of a throwback to 4-H. And I got to thinking, well, which comes first? Is that the thinking or the feeling or the acting?

Scott:  So let’s back up a little bit. So what is the general topic?

Decision-making Process     6:49

Peter:  It’s ultimately to create a decision-making process that incorporates acting, thinking, and feeling in appropriate weights.

Scott:  So why? Why is that important in today’s internet, where I just go look up some kind of answer on the internet?

Peter:  Because this all predates the internet. It’s built into your biological system. The internet, there’s noise out there.

Scott:  So what you’re saying is that these, this acting, this thinking, and feeling is built into all humans.

Peter:  Absolutely.

Scott:  And so, we don’t recognize it and we don’t take advantage of it. There’s a good chance that we will make the wrong decision.

Peter:  I think the worst kind of decision is that you will get caught up in something that never seems, never seems to work, never seems to feel right, and you just don’t know why. And that’s because somehow in your ability to balance acting, thinking, and feeling, something went astray.

Scott:  So they all have to go in proper sequence and in proper balance?

Peter:  I don’t know. You know, Scott? Well, I first started looking at this. I thought, well, let’s say all three interact and you can start anywhere, you know, you can start by acting, or you can start by thinking, or you can start by feeling. A few years ago, I came upon a different approach to that, and it said there is a proper sequence and a useful sequence. And in fact, Otto Scharmer MIT put on an MIT online course on Theory U, which is a procedure for marching from acting through thinking to feeling back to thinking and then concludes with acting.

Scott:  So it’s like an in and out then?

Peter:  It’s an in and out.

Scott:  Or no, theory U. It’s like a U-shape.

Peter:  Yeah, the U shape. I think one of the words I like to use is deep dive. You dive down into your emotions. You dive down into the nonlinear part of your brain in your system.

Intuition       8:53

Scott:  Could that be considered your subconscious, your gut feeling?

Peter:  There’s lots of names, lots of names. The subconscious, the essence, the intuitive part of you. I like to think of it as the parallel processing part of you, the pattern recognition part of you that is nonverbal because linear thought has its place and non-linear, I’ll call it thinking, although thinking implies linear language. So intuition.

Scott:  So from a business owner or somebody who’s running the family, it’s that -that instinct that this is the right thing to do, but you can’t verbalize it. It’s hard to describe why to other people, why you’re doing this action, but you feel this is the right thing to do.

Peter:  That’s part of it. Yeah.

Scott:  And that gets into acting part. But if you only stop at acting, you don’t do the thinking and you don’t do the feeling, then you’re only doing one third of the work or one-third of the process.

Peter:  I think that’s correct. That’s basically the challenge is an appropriate balance, and the appropriate balance will differ depending on what kind of problem you’re confronting. There are different tools. Every one of these topics: acting, thinking, and feeling; there’s decades, if not millennia, of excellent thought and excellent tools have been created.  And so the challenge for somebody that does not want to get a master’s degree in every possible subject is to, in my case, I like to come up with processes that are pretty straightforward and functional. And actually, once you are attuned to them, they don’t take a whole lot of work.  The process is not cumbersome.

Scott:  So it enhances where you want to be without getting in the way.

Peter:  Yes, exactly.

Scott:  Very important for business owners.

Peter:  It is a, you know, absolute frustration to me as I look at nice sounding titles and really interesting topics, and I’m into it four pages before I figure out what they’re trying to say, at that point, that’s the end of it.  You know, I’ve really grown to be a speed reader by not reading. I read three sentences, done with this book.

Scott:  So that’s reflected in the fact that you get into three sentences or four pages. That’s pretty amazing because a lot of blogs, people scan it, in emails. They scan blogs, resumes. You say you got about ten seconds to catch somebody’s eye. Yeah. Getting to the point is pretty good and having a process that is very effective in today’s ADD world.

Peter:  Well, this Theory U is very thoroughly discussed by Otto Scharmer and his YouTubes and his lectures and his books and Otto is very, very long winded. And he likes visual presentations that are multiple, multiple pages in a book.  But he actually hires an artist to stand an 80-foot-long whiteboard to draw art as he’s going through classes.

Scott:  Did you say 80 ft?

Peter:  I said, “80 ft.” Yeah. So anyway, I learned a lot from Argo, and I have condensed it down to one page.

Scott:  Well, that helps all our listeners and me. So how would you just condense this into maybe a couple sentences or paragraphs? This 80-foot-long art to one page.

Peter:  To the 80 feet is really highly visual and trees are growing, clouds are going overhead and it’s very appealing. But it’s also, Otto and I live in different worlds. That’s all there is to it. You know, this theory U process can be used to tackle different levels of problems.  And if Peter is using it and declares an intent to start it off, I intend to make a really good dinner tonight. And then I can go through the theory U process. Otto, on the other hand, declares I intend to change world capitalism and goes off into a theory U process.

Scott:  So this process is not a specific one, but it’s actually a general approach to anything.

Peter:  It’s a procedure, a protocol.

Scott:  So you listeners out there, please listen and adapt it to your situation because this is actually a general approach that as quick, helpful, useful and to get results.

Peter:  Exactly. That’s its intent. It’s one of the things that at the end of using a process, theory U, you do not just automatically say, “Well, let’s get back together next week and we can continue our discussion.” No, you don’t say that at all. Everybody leaves knowing they have actions to do in support of the intent that got them started.  And the actions, Otto says, act in an instant. What can we get done in three days that will be the next steps on meeting our intention?

Scott: Let us back up a little bit. I’m just going to say the abbreviation ATF: acting, thinking, feeling, because you talked about the end result bringing an action that can be done in the next step in the next three days and then follow on.  But that’s where you end. So where do we begin and what’s this process?

Declare an intent  14:06

Peter:  OK, one of the interesting challenges to me is what does it mean to declare an intent? I take that as an act. I declare, “I will make this excellent dinner.”

Scott:  So just the fact that you declared it.

Peter:  That’s an act, an act of intent. One of the managers that I worked with at Hewlett-Packard spoke about this “stake in the sand”, the flag in the sand. We will reach this stake even though it’s set in the sand.  We have defined for ourselves an intent, and the intent almost always has to be regarded as flexible. We have this flag, stake in the sand until we get smart enough to know that we have to move the stake.

Scott:  So you are saying that flexibility is needed. So is that flexibility in the intent? Or is it flexibility in acting on the intent?

Peter:  Flexibility in acting on the intent. We declared the intent to get ourselves started and then we get smarter. And so at the end of this thinking, feeling and acting, (I think I’ll call it a protocol) implying that it’s stable. It can be defined. It can be followed. At the end of the protocol, you will be smarter. And so you may want to change your intent based on new information. One of the other HP managers says, “There’s no reason to slip a schedule.”  You’ve changed the schedule. In other words, if you use the tool as you can get in and out fairly quickly, and you can kind of say this is a tool for me staying in touch with what I’m actually up to, and if I learn something new, I will be able to adapt to what I’ve learned.

Scott:  So we don’t know the future and we don’t know what things were going to come. And as business owners and also as part of the family, a lot of this applies to the family situation too, is we make decisions without 100% information.  We don’t know the future. We don’t know all the facts. And so what you’re seeing, if we make a decision, we make an intent. We put our stake in the ground and we have a, say 50% of the facts. In a month or two, when we find now we’re at 70%, we go, “Oh, wait, we need to revise.” We need a revision. (Yeah) And part of this theory U- this acting, thinking, feeling enables you to make the adjustments.

Peter:  It’s dynamic.

Scott:  Dynamic. That’s a good word. And why is this dynamic important?

Peter:  I think I’ll dip into the feelings part of life. A separate author, Jaak Panksepp, who was cited in Temple Grandin’s work on animals make us human, Panksepp’s a neuroscientist, who works with animals and has discovered that there’s all mammals, have complementary or identical systems, and have hard core emotions that are really built into the fact that we’re mammals.

Scott:  So would this be like primal feelings like you have to eat?

Peter:  No, no, no. These are emotions.

Scott:  Emotions, OK?

Curiosity      17:11

Peter:  Jaak Panksepp is willing to say animals have emotions because he looks at their behavior, and one of the primary emotions, the blue-ribbon emotions, is curiosity. He calls it seeking. And so if we go into business regarding it as an adventure, we’re seeking to find something out, that’s that plays into our curiosity, instinctive desire to sniff around and see what’s going on. So that’s one blue ribbon emotion that’s very useful, if you’re trying to start something is to just say, “Hey, this is fun. It’s curious. What can we find out?”

Scott:  But that concept, this curiosity, this is my experience from the business side, is that a lot of people are very linear. We got to make X amount of dollars to pay our expenses. But you’re saying is we have to go beyond that to include curiosity. And if we ignore it, we get ourselves in trouble.

Peter:  You can, you lose your ability to play, and you go into defense mode and you, you’re hunkering down, you’re afraid and your brain works differently when you’re in that mode. And I’ll throw out a quote, and you tell me who said that?  “Stay hungry. Stay foolish.”

Scott:  It would be Steve Jobs, would it?

Peter:  It would. Yeah.

Scott:  Wow, I actually got it right. That was the 2005 Stanford commencement address.

Peter:  Yeah. Somebody, you happened to make money by remaining curious.

Scott:  So having this, this curiosity emotion is actually a business and family core competency.

Peter:  It is. It is. I went through a values clarification exercise about six months ago that consisted of approximately 1000 words describing emotions, you know, like strong, heroic, noble. And the assignment was that of these thousands of words, choose three that got the most of you.

Scott:  Out of 1000.

Peter:  Yeah, I came up with capability, curiosity, and connection. For me, that works. Capability, while I would like to become more capable at writing it, more capable at keeping my computer systems up and running as my curiosity seems to always be pretty active.  Connection to where I felt somewhat not living up to my core values. I have a lot of “how not to engage in connections.” (laughter) I’m searching to build stronger connections so that I get rewarded. I have joined a new writers group, which has proved to be a good connection.

Scott:  But there’s also different connections. You have business connections, acquaintances, but you also have family.

Peter:  Family connections are pretty good, although you know the California crew, the Nevada crew don’t communicate as often as I would like.

Scott:  No, but there’s also that time distance. It’s a 15-hour drive away. So you talked about these blue ribbon emotions and getting back to ATF, the acting, thinking, feeling process. Let’s say there’s a business owner under a lot of pressure. A customer didn’t pay, payroll is coming up.  They are scrambling to come up with the funds to do it, right? That creates an emotion that leads to action, right? But if you’re saying if we don’t follow these things, we don’t understand the underlying emotion, and which means we are reactive instead of proactive.

Peter:  That’s, I’m willing to agree with you. (Laughter)

Scott:  That’s good.

Peter:  (Laughter) Yeah, I don’t know, Scott, to me, you know, there are strengths and weaknesses to the feeling part of this action going on with life, and the strength is that your emotions can really inspire you. They can… You are rewarded by them or you’re annoyed by them. You’re angry and you recognize those emotions and you respond appropriately. But where you really get hung up, I think, is when you don’t recognize what your emotions are. And I think, you know, especially in the business world, we may be just bound by politeness, bound by a certain amount of fear of somebody else who’s got more money or more power of some sort. In some cases, a certain amount of lust that’s probably misplaced. (Laughter)

Scott:  Or ambition.

Peter:  Ambition, all kinds of things, and you may actually kind of protect yourself from being aware of those thoughts.  Fear’s a tough one to deal if fear comes from very early childhood experiences, and you learn how to relate to man. You learn how to relate to women and how those relations go on. They may not be helpful.

Emotional Quotient         21:52

Scott:  But this gets into a concept of emotional quotient.

Peter:  Emotional. EQ.

Scott:  Instead of IQ. But that’s that self-awareness.

Peter:  Self-awareness is a big deal.

Scott:  And if I understand correctly what you’re saying, there’s two aspects. one is the relationship between you and another person, like a business associate or your family. If you don’t recognize the feelings inside of you, you may misinterpret them or say the wrong thing or do the wrong thing.  The other part is if you use the internal to yourself, if you don’t recognize that fear is growing in you, then that can change the….

Peter:  Changes, behavior.

Scott:  Changes, behavior.

Peter:  You know, there’s brain studies out there that sort of show the brain in action. There’s one video, I can’t site it, a weaver is busily making this complicated quilt pattern, and her brain is looking quite cheerful, according to the MRI cheerfulness.  And she discovers a mistake and her brain changes color, goes into sort of panic mode, I’m screwed up mode, you know, and then she basically solve the problem, and then her brain came back up to being cheerful and productive.  Yes, I think one of the really great challenges in life is sort of the martial arts challenge. Of course you’re afraid, but keep going, you know?

Scott: I used to take karate, and I know what it’s like being in the ring and it’s like, “Oh man, they’re a good fighter and I know I’m going to get hit. It’s time to leave.” I mean, that’s the fear that comes in. But you can’t leave.

Peter: Yeah. So somehow you have to deal with it. But I think it’s helpful if you recognize it. You know, when you don’t recognize that you’re afraid and you just shut down. That’s not helpful. So that’s the feeling. The thinking is we are so well-trained and so many different varieties of thinking, you know, whatever discipline you choose, whether the whole world of business analysis, process control methodology, the, you know, circuit design, there are tools and they’re very good, strong logical tools and they work, you know. And so I’m talking about how important it is to be in touch with your emotions.  It’s also important to be in touch with the right tools for the right problem here.

Scott:  And this sharpens the thinking part of the brain.

Peter:  It can, like you were talking about when the business person is in a real crunch and they they just begin to want to shut down. Well, that doesn’t help them solve problems. It doesn’t help with their thinking.

Scott:  So rather than dealing with the problem, they’re numbing themselves.

Peter:  Numbing themselves.

Scott:  Social media or alcohol like.

Peter:  Procrastination. Procrastination is the drug of choice for Betty. I’ve never heard it called that before.

Scott:  Ah, maybe just started a new phrase. So getting back to the thinking part of the tools, but the tools, there’s different tools like a toolbox, and they have a specific use in a certain circumstance. So people in their thinking need to have their own toolbox of different approaches and different methodologies.

Peter:  Right. And many of those thinking tools, they will not have to invent, they’ll just have to learn them. Yeah. Like, I’m thinking again of quality standards and process control.

Scott:  Been around for a couple hundred years, but it’s like it’s like a tool, a crescent wrench. There’s no reason to reinvent a crescent wrench, just use it.

Peter:  But if appropriate, you need to learn how to use it.

Scott:  So what is the difference between, I guess, analytical thinking and feeling thinking?

Peter:  Actually, I haven’t read this book in ages. A guy named Gary Klein wrote a book, “How Experts Make Decisions”. He’s written several books since then that I haven’t read, but it’s basically experts make decisions on the spot because they just know.  And how do you get to the state where you just know? Well, somewhere between five and 10,000 hours of experience in that field! The way I look at it again, this parallel processor that’s working all the time in our head, it’s just on the job. You know, it’s on the job right now. As I’m speaking, it’s very busy queuing up the words that are going to come out of my mouth here momentarily. This is where part of the challenge in talking about this stuff is correct choice of vocabulary. Well, what do we mean by intuition? What do we mean by feeling? What do we mean by thinking? Like so many words that serve multiple purposes in the engineering world, the counseling world, the business world. (Laughter)

Scott:  The family world.

Peter:  The family world. Is there the same words and they sound exactly the same, but they have different nuances, if not completely different meanings.

Scott:  So that makes, sometimes it makes life challenging. So not only do we have to have EQ, that our emotional state, we also have to know the situation so that we can interpret other people when they talk to us in a proper way.

Peter:  I’ve often interrupted a conversation to say, “Well, can you give me a working definition of intuition?” And it may sidetrack the conversation quite a bit. But again, if you and I are going to discuss what intuition is and what helps, if at least for the purposes of this discussion, you and I had the same definition.

Scott:  And between the two of us, we’re in the same room. We can see each other eye to eye.

Peter:  You and I can.

Scott:  We’re actually talking to you, the listener out there.

Peter:  Forgot all about you guys.

Scott:  So that’s the host’s job to do. But so we’re talking about intuition, and now we have a group of people trying to come up with a shared meaning a shared definition of intuition. So can we do that?

Peter:  Well, the working definition I want to use is based on this experience to gain with 5000 hours. And you just know that’s what intuition is. In a given situation, you know how to solve that problem. I can tell two small stories.  A friend of mine was a wildlife biologist, and he spent about 20 years in the backseat of a small plane in Alaska.

Scott:  A bush pilot.

Peter:  He was not the bush pilot. He was the field biologist. (OK) He had a personal rule, “I will not fly with you unless you have 5000 hours of experience,” because the risks for bush pilots are too high.

Scott:  And the weather uncertain.

Peter: Yeah, he’d lost more than one friend in plane crashes.

Scott:  So what’s the other example.

Peter:  Of Ralph Stanley, very famous bluegrass musician, and the vocalist was asked after a concert, “How is it you folks make such good harmony?” and Ralph says, “that’s the joy of singing with good men.” They just know.

Scott:   They just know.

Peter:  Yeah. But one of them was asked, “How old were you when you started singing?” “So I remember my mommy holding me on her hip in church and we would sing together in church.” So by the time this person was 20 years old, he had…

Scott:  He had the 10,000 hours in.

Peter:  He had 19 years of singing experience. Yeah. So that’s one kind of intuition, the intuition that is based on stored knowledge.

Scott:  And which is based on experience and as the conscious and the subconscious. And I’ll take a word from the athletes or a musician: muscle memory.

Peter:  Yeah, muscle memory.

Scott:  That it just comes out and you just know what to do. So what about our listeners who are still developing their first 5000 hours or 10,000? How does intuition come into play there?

Peter:  Well, I’m going to slightly duck that question and go back to the theory U process. You start declaring an intent, an act, and you gather information relevant to that intent. And then you try to go into your nonverbal capability. Process ask that you spend three minutes quieting your mind. And in this quiet period, you rely on sketches, you rely on body sensations, you rely on body posture, and you spend anywhere from an additional three minutes to maybe even ten minutes, just trying to let your nonverbal part communicate with you and then your challenge is, OK, I’ve got my stomach hurts. What does that mean? Or I’ve done a little cartoon showing myself pushing against a brick wall, et cetera, et cetera.  The process honors the fact that we have these nonverbal capabilities, and we want to make a space for those capabilities to function and not just blow right by.

Scott:  So as somebody who has a family and a business that to take full capability of our minds and our subconscious, our intuition and this process ATF, the acting, thinking, feeling process is a way to have your whole body understand.  And if somebody is in the process of developing that expertise for the 10,000 hours, this is a process on how to reach it so that when they do become more experienced, it just becomes automatic. Becomes like this muscle memory to these.

Peter:  As I say, I think it’s a protocol that ensures that you’re paying attention to acting, thinking and feeling. You know, I spent huge amounts of (laughter) I can’t even bear to think of it. I was very long on the thinking part and slow to act and not really aware of what I was feeling.  But I have, you know, I learned a lot.

Scott:  OK, so this theory U, start with some action than you think and then you take the time to for the feeling. So then you go back out of it, back into the thinking part and then you do the action.  So in the action, we’ve already talked about the declared intention, but there’s also tools to help us accomplish this intention to accomplish these goals. What would be some of those tools?

Peter:  Well, you know, so much of my successful experience was in the world of process control, so I think of a potential problem analysis, the situation analysis, just…

Scott:  Those are thinking tools, aren’t they?

Peter:  Oh, you’re right, Scott.

Scott:  But now we’re getting into how you are responding. And so listeners out there, this podcast is unscripted. And so we have Peter going through the process right now, the feeling, thinking. So he started at the thinking stage, and now he’s going to the actions.

Execution     32:33

Peter:  So acting is actually getting up and doing something and picking up the wrench and tightening the bolt. I guess another way to look at it is thinking about the problem is not the same as working on the problem and working on the problem is in fact acting.  So paper to pencil is one of the tools and it’s an excellent tool. Programing your computer to give you the next answer is another tool. Align your feelings and your thinking to let you know, here’s what I am going to do and here’s I have the energy to do it, and hopefully I have the skills to do it. Or it may be that I’m doing something to learn new skills, but you’re acting. You’re actually, I think acting and work might be very close to the same def.

Scott:  Could I use the word execution?

Peter:  Execution works, yep.

Scott:  So for you listeners out there, there’s a couple subtleties here that I like to bring out. Both of us are kind of more of the thinking type, so that feeling and exploring and then actions kind of afterwards. But other personalities and you might be one of them where you take action because you just feel listening to do and then you analyze. In that case, you just kind of reverse what we’re saying. And before you take the action, do the thinking, align that with your actions. For us is taking what we’re thinking and applying a plan for action because that’s kind of our weakness.  Other people see us opposite ways, action first, then thinking ours is probably thinking and then action.

Peter:  One of the strengths of action is a quote from Goethe German poet. “Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it.” Another quote from Hewlett Packard “Ready fire aim.” Oh, wait, that’s wrong. (Laughter)

Scott:  Yeah, that’s in the world of entrepreneurship. It talks about you get ready, you fire, then …

Peter:  See what happened.

Scott:  Yeah, see what happens and make your adjustments. And sometimes in a very fast-moving world, that’s what you need to do, just take the action before you aim and other times you need aim, then fire.  You know, we’ve gone back and forth here for timeline reasons. We probably need to wrap this up, but this is what I’ve been calling the ATF. This action thinking, feeling and this intention and and exploring the feelings is an approach that I think can apply to your situation that you find yourself in.  But once again, you need to analyze your situation and adapt these tools. This approach to where you are that you can better yourself and move forward to your goals and dreams.

Peter:  Well, said Scott.

Scott:  Thank you. So last question and which is what I usually ask. So do you have any other words of wisdom for our listeners?

Peter:  I’d stay curious and have fun if you can arrange your life, so whatever you’re doing somehow has some fun in it. Your brain will work better. That’s all there is to it.

Scott:  So Peter, you’ve been working on a series of writing and looking to get published. Can you tell a little bit about what you’re doing there?

Peter:  Well, what I’ve been talking about today, acting, thinking, feeling is one of a series of journals that they all have the same flavor and that is that they’re short.

Scott:  So these are journals that you are working on and planning on to publish in the future.

Peter:  I’m feeling fairly happy right at the moment because I’ve got five separate titles that are hopefully 90 plus percent done. Artwork and formatting remain and then, so in other words, stepping out into the world of strangers rather than the world of friends. Those are coming along and one of them will be acting, thinking and feeling. It hasn’t got a name quite yet. That’s why I chose this topic is because I’m working on this one journal.

Scott:  So this is actually a journal/book for publication.

Peter:  It will be. It will be.

Scott:  So that’s cool. I’m excited about that. All right. Well, I just want to thank you so much.

Peter:  Scott, it’s been fun.

Scott:  It’s definitely been fun. Very educational. I think this is going to be a great podcast and help a lot of people.

Peter:  And I look forward to your hours of editing.  (Laughter)

Scott:  But I’m not sure if I do, but the outcome will be good.

Peter:  Oh my!

 

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