The Long and The Short Of It

Episode 413 - Looking Back

Transcript:

Jen: Hello, Peter.

Pete: Hello, Jennifer.

Jen: I don't know if you have this feature on your phone. But sometimes when I open my Photos app, it puts together a little collage of days gone by, around a certain theme or a certain person.

Pete: Yeah. Or like, "One year ago, on this day...". I love those.

Jen: Yeah, they're fun. Anyway, I've been going through some of those lately, and it got me a little curious about something I like to do once in a while and why I don't do it more, and that is looking back to look forward.

Pete: Oh my god, my brain just went off on five different directions already. This is going to be a fun tangent. Okay, yeah, looking back to then look forwards. This is The Long and The Short Of It.

Jen: Okay. So Pete, you know I run the quarterly review four times a year. And we do a little look back at the last quarter. And then, we look forward. So, I do this on a fairly regular basis. And then, once in a while, I do this thing where I look at my calendar from the previous year. If I'm like, "Oh, I should probably reach out to someone," I go, "Okay, what was I doing a year ago today?" And I look at last year's calendar, and I'm like, "Wow, I went and saw that show a year ago today," or, "I had that coaching." And then, I'll reach out to that person and be like, "Can you believe it was a year ago that we did this?"

Pete: Oh, nice. That's cool.

Jen: But let me tell you something, Pete. Not today but two days from the day we are recording, this will be (and I learned this by looking back) the ten-year anniversary of the first time my daughter, now sixteen, came to me and said, "Mom, I wrote a song. Do you want to hear it?" And I have the voice memo on my phone, because I turned on my voice memo app and I was like, "Yeah, sing it to me." And it's so good. It's actually good.

Pete: At six years old? Oh my god, that's wild.

Jen: But I was like, "Wow, she planted a seed ten years ago, and she's come so far." And I'm like, "I wonder what I was doing ten years ago?" So, I looked back at some blog posts. I looked back at what was in my email inbox. I looked back at my calendar. I looked at my photos.

Pete: What did you learn? What did you learn? Ten years, in 2016...what did you learn?

Jen: Well, I learned a lot. I learned a lot about myself as a business person and how much my classes have evolved. But the thing that gave me so much pleasure looking back, Pete, was at this time ten years ago, I was with some of my best friends who are still my best friends.

Pete: Oh, that's cool.

Jen: And that really made me happy. And I also learned that there were exercises I created in classes back then that I had forgotten about.

Pete: Yeah, of course.

Jen: That were really good.

Pete: You're like, "Oh, that was a good one. I should use that again."

Jen: So, I'm going to bring them back. And then, there were some things where I was like, "Oh, if I were to write that today, I wouldn't write it like that."

Pete: Nice. We're evolving. We're growing. That should be the case. I feel like we should be a little bit embarrassed about things we did ten years ago, in a way, because it shows we're evolving or growing. But also, it's nice to look back and go, "Oh, yeah, I still like that person," or, "I still have that framework. That's a good one."

Jen: Yeah. So anyway, I wanted to just share that because I'm like, we live with ourselves every day and we may not really see the leaps and bounds. But when you look back...I mean, I was doing a ten year situation, because I'm fifty-one. You know, forty-one to fifty-one, that's a big leap. If you're a much younger person, it might feel crazy to look ten years back, so maybe five. But just be like, "Wow. At this point in my life, I still am changing so much." It's amazing.

Pete: Yeah, it's cool. It's amazing. It's worth thinking about reflection, because...I mean, for so many reasons. But one of the things that comes to mind, for me, is it helps close the loop on certain learning.

Jen: Yeah.

Pete: Like, I feel like you're walking through the world. You're working in your job. You're starting a family. You're doing all these things, whatever. You're evolving over time without kind of realizing that you're evolving over time, because you're just showing up every day. And unless you pause and go back and go, "Huh," to your point, "these friends are still my friends. I can close the loop on who my close friends are, at the moment. Or that framework is a framework I forgot about, and now I'm going to reuse it," it's a process of learning, looking back. Which to your point, I like the language you use, which then enables you to look forward more effectively.

Jen: Right.

Pete: So, I love this idea. I mean, I'm realizing I'm doing versions of this using Claude Code, at the moment. I've mentioned in a few episodes, I've set up Claude Code to sort of be like a second brain, where it's got like all my emails, all of our podcast transcripts, all my blogs, all of the agendas, all of the workshops, all of the things that I've learned. You'll like this one. It has all of the manuscripts that I started and still are sitting there. I mean, I'm talking like a hundred thousand words worth of ideas and books. And I use it to say, "I've got this thing coming up, this keynote I've got to deliver. Look back through time and see, is there any framework or story or idea or question that I've used in the past that would be useful for this?" Not because I'm just going to regurgitate it, but I'm sure I've said something about this before. So,I did this the other week. I rediscovered and then told on a recent episode that's coming up (depending on when you listen to this, listener) about my mum being a leader who used to hop out of the car, when we were on a road trip, and then sit herself in the middle and put my brother in the front. And that act of leadership would change the conditions of the drive. And I used it in a workshop on Friday last week. And people were like, "Oh my god, I love that story about your mum and the car." The only reason I used it was because I remembered, because I asked Claude Code, "Have I got anything?" And it was like, I think it was eight years ago or something. I did it on my blog. Well, seven years ago.

Jen: Woah.

Pete: Yeah. I was like, "Oh yeah, I like that story. That's a fun story. I'm going to use that." So all that to say, I agree. Let's reflect. Let's look back. Let's capture learnings. But also, let's look at like, what have we done in the past that we can use moving forward?

Jen: Right. And like literally as I'm talking to you, I'm looking at this day in my calendar ten years ago.

Pete: Because you still had Google Calendar or Apple Calendar? That's wild. Oh, I don't know if I could do that.

Jen: Yep. So I had two strategy sessions on this day with actors, ten years ago, because that was the first year of the Reboot. Which is crazy to me, which is now like this major part of my life. And they are two people I have not spoken to in years, who I like very much.

Pete: Send them the episode, yeah.

Jen: This would be a great reason for me to reach out to them and be like, "Wow, ten years have passed. I'd love to know, who are you today? How have you changed?"

Pete: That's cool.

Jen: Right? It's just wild.

Pete: I feel like there's a flip side to this. So I have every single notebook / journal / Five Minute Journal / whatever you want to call it. I've got so many notebooks. They would date back well over ten years. And I have not done it recently but once upon a time, I used to, every now and then, just pick one up and read like a day from five years ago or six years ago or whatever. And it's kind of shocking how some of the loops you go around in are the same loops that you go around in now.

Jen: Yeah.

Pete: And I've talked to Kirsty Stark about this quite a bit. Like we'll catch up once a month and we're having a chat, and we're talking about like, "What's the hard part for you?" And it's like, I say some version of the same thing. And she's like, "Oh, yeah, so the same thing we talked about five years ago?" And I'm like, "Yeah, it's the same loop. It's the same loop as five years ago. Running a business, like, 'Where's your next opportunity coming from, Pete? Where's your next project? Who's the next reach out? Is your business just a house of cards?'" That story, I'm like, "Oh, yeah, that was the same story as eight years ago." So part of me doesn't like that part of it, because I'm like, "Come on, man. Have you not evolved to be able to deal with that story / work with that story / navigate that story?" It doesn't mean it's not worth doing. Because I think it's worth calling yourself out, to go, "You've been looking for evidence that this was true for ten years. And guess what? Your business still runs. Everything's still okay. So maybe focus on that evidence, as opposed to the story that you make up every time you have this conversation with yourself."

Jen: Yep.

Pete: Call yourself out by looking back.

Jen: Wow, wow, wow, wow, wow. That is such a great insight.

Pete: Yeah.

Jen: Yeah. Now, you have ten more years of data about this, or however many more years of proof that you're going to be fine.

Pete: Yeah. It reminds me of something you once said to me, which was like, when someone gives you feedback and you maybe take it the wrong way, one of the questions I believe you told me was to say, "What was the actual quote, using quotation marks?"

Jen: Yep.

Pete: The act of being like, oh, what they said was (I'll use a silly example), "I really like your shirt." And what was the story I told myself? "I have seven terrible shirts and only one good shirt, and my fashion sense is awful." That's what I heard. It's like woah, woah, woah, woah, woah. The quote was, "I really like your shirt." What are you talking about? It doesn't mean the rest of your wardrobe is a pile of crap. That's just the interpretation, the story you told yourself. It reminds me of that, of like, "What's the evidence? What's the quote, in quotation marks? What's the proof of the last eight years, ten years, five years, versus your interpretation of it?" Because they're very different.

Jen: That is a great insight. This morning, I was teaching a workshop about values. And I was reminded, as I was prepping that workshop, that I had a friend who used to do a lot of values workshops, who had this belief that your values are your values and they don't change. And I was like, "I'm not sure I believe that." I think your values do change, and it's worth examining them on a regular basis. And what is so interesting, as I was thinking about that this morning, when I go back and I read old blog posts or listen to old coachings or look at things that I wrote about classes and what I wanted for the studio, it's very clear which values have withstood the test of time. And it's like, wow, personal agency and self-expression has always been baked into my DNA. But in recent years, I've really started to value simplicity. And that is not something that ever appeared even as a word in my vocabulary ten years ago or even five years ago.

Pete: Nice.

Jen: So, that's another way that like looking back can help us kind of see where we are right now. And when we know where we are right now, we're able to make clearer choices about where we want to go.

Pete: Oh, I like that. Clarity in where we are right now. Because saying to someone like, "Get clear on where you are right now," is perhaps harder to respond to than like, "Where were you five years ago? And what part of that are you still in agreement with?"

Jen: Right. Adam Grant has this question...I think it's Adam Grant...which is, "When you are examining a deeply held belief, what could make you change your mind?"

Pete: Oh, I love that so much. Yeah.

Jen: And sorry, Mr. Grant, if I misquoted you. But that's the gist. And I think one of the answers to that question is reflecting backwards.

Pete: Yeah.

Jen: Knowing that you are capable of changing your mind.

Pete: Right. I feel like I've heard that question used in relation to asking someone else, if you're in a disagreement. Say you and I are disagreeing about what color this banana is. And I say, "Jen, I think the banana is yellow." And you say, "The banana is definitely green." And I say, "What evidence would you need in order to change your mind?" If the answer is "None," then it's like, "Okay, we can't really have a productive, collaborative conversation because we're never going to agree. And nothing I say to you will help you realize or help see things from a different perspective." Versus if someone said, "Oh, I would need this exact Pantone read on that banana. And if I could see that that actually marries up with the Pantone of yellow, then sure, I could change my mind." It's like, "Okay, now I know what I need to do in order for us to see the same thing." So if you can't answer that, then it kind of indicates in a conversation with someone else, it's like maybe not worth your time trying to convince them.

Jen: Well, this is very interesting, Pete. Because I am such a Questioner, just textbook. So I'm like, I'm questioning, "Why should I be the one to change my mind? What's it going to take for you to change your mind? Maybe we both need to ask each other the question."

Pete: But also, in the context of what you're talking about, how do you ask yourself that question? Back to this idea of looking back and going, "Oh, that limiting belief or that story I tell myself about, I don't know, you know, where's your next project coming from in your business, Pete?" And it's like, "What context would you need to change your mind?" "Oh, I don't know, ten-plus years of running a successful business." "Okay, well, let me present that to you. So, what are you going to do now?" And it's like, it kind of forces you to go, "Oh, shit, I guess I have to change my mind or work to change my mind about that."

Jen: Right. Well, we have in previous episodes (a long time ago, actually) talked about the Dear Future Self exercise.

Pete: Yeah.

Jen: And I'm curious if we have just maybe developed the Dear Past Self exercise: Help me understand myself now, based on who I used to be and what I now know.

Pete: Yeah. So, that is a good reminder. I used to, every couple of years, record a video as if I was my future self and describe the world two years from now, as I'm standing. And then, I would go back and watch it. I haven't done that for years. I don't think I've done it since Covid. I'm cringing internally at the thought of going back to watch some of these right now. But yes, that was the Dear Future Self. What would it look like to do a past-self version of that? That's a head scratcher. Huh.

Jen: Yeah. So at the end of the Reboot, I have everyone write a letter to their past self, a thank you note to their past self for making this decision to go through this program.

Pete: Beautiful.

Jen: But I hadn't really thought about it in another context, of like, "Hey, Past Self, what were you trying to teach me?"

Pete: Yeah.

Jen: And it's interesting how life sort of works out. I've mentioned several times in recent episodes, I'm at this big sort of crossroads with the studio, about what to do. Because we are actually moving out of our space at the end of September, and there's lots of decisions to be made. And I'm like, "I have to make all these decisions." And it's just funny that, as I'm looking back ten years right now, I'm like, "Oh, ten years ago, I made major decisions to leave the job I was in as an Artistic Director to start the Reboot program, to find my own studio space. Like, I was making huge decisions. And all of it worked out."

Pete: Yeah. I love that. "I've come to forks in the road before. And guess what? Everything was okay. Everything was okay."

Jen: Yeah.

Pete: That's why one of my favorite questions to ask leaders, if they're stuck, is like, "How have you solved problems like this before?" Because so often, I think that there's a version, there's a rhyme, there's a problem that we've solved before that speaks a little bit to the problem I'm stuck with right now.

Jen: Yeah.

Pete: Also, it's so wild to think ten years ago, I didn't know Jen Waldman existed. That is crazy.

Jen: Yeah. We had no idea that an error of mathematics would bring us together, a couple years later.

Pete: I had no idea that there was a tiny short version of me, with the same kind of brain, in a completely different world, in a completely different industry.

Jen: Yeah. And I realize people who are newer listeners have no idea what I was just referencing. So basically, I met Pete because I did bad math and selected the wrong time zone for a program that Pete was a coach in, and that is how we met. Oops.

Pete: I mean, here's to bad math. I feel like if we reflect on that, we reflect on the mistake of making a "silly decision". And what we can realize is that even making the silly decision can lead to a pretty positive outcome, I would like to think.

Jen: That's right. And that is The Long and The Short Of It.