1082: How Driven People Can Achieve Success and Inner Peace with Gino Wickman

Pete Mockaitis
Gino, welcome!

Gino Wickman
Thank you, Pete. I am thrilled to be here.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m thrilled to be chatting. I’ve heard your name many times and you have done a lot of stuff, written a number of books, and I’m fired up talking about your book, Shine. And could you kick us off by sharing any particularly surprising and fascinating discoveries you’ve made about humans, professionals, leaders while putting this together?

Gino Wickman
Well, the big idea is that it is possible to be driven and have inner peace. And so, what we teach are 10 disciplines that will maximize your energy, impact, and inner peace. And we teach three discoveries to help you free your true self. And so, you and I were talking a little bit before we started, and so a great word is, you know, how to stay in flow, how to be more productive, make more of an impact on the world while experiencing more peace.

And you use the word flow, we actually have a word in the book we call “flowt,” which is spelled F-L-O-W-T. It’s the combination of two words – the word flow and the word float, because the reality is, when you implement what is in this book, you will be in a better state of flow while working and making the impact and doing the stuff that you do in your work-life, while, at the same time, feeling like you’re floating through life, and that’s that inner peace. And it’s this beautiful combination of making an impact while having inner peace.

Pete Mockaitis
Gino, that almost sounds too good to be true.

Gino Wickman
I love that.

Pete Mockaitis
So, tell us how’s that done?

Gino Wickman
Yeah, you bet. All right. Well, let’s do that. I’m going to create a big picture context and then I’m going to follow your lead in terms of how deep you want to go. But the big picture context is this. It starts with understanding these 10 disciplines, and these 10 disciplines have evolved. They started with what I call an outer-world focus.

And so, in this conversation we’re going to have, we, human beings, we all have an outer world and we have an inner world. And those two things are very different from each other. And so, when I created the 10 disciplines originally, it was all about outer world focus, being more successful in your outer world, only to discover, over time, they also help you in your inner world.

And so, what the 10 disciplines are is they create a foundation that allows for time and space to do what I call inner work, which then takes us to the three discoveries for freeing your true self, which is where the real fun work goes, it’s where we really go inside. And there’s one of the discoveries that I’d really love to focus on in our time together. But, again, they’re called the three discoveries for freeing your true self.

Now what I’d like to do, that’s the big picture, I just want to take it down a little bit and just get really specific in terms of what the discoveries are and what the disciplines are so that there’s a high-level understanding because then I’d love to just kind of drill down on one or two with the limited time that we have.

But, very quickly, the 10 disciplines for maximizing your energy, impact, and inner peace are, number one, 10-year thinking; number two, take time off; number three, know thyself; number four, be still; number five, know your hundred percent; number six, say no, dot, dot, dot, often; number seven, don’t do $25-an-hour work if you want to make six figures; number eight, prepare every night; number nine, put everything in one place; and number 10, be humble.

So, that’s a mouthful, but I wanted to share those because I want to put as much out there as possible. But when you implement those 10 disciplines in your life, you create this incredible foundation, like I said, that creates space and time to then do the inner work, which is where flow really happens. And those are the three discoveries.

And so, again, the three discoveries for freeing your true self, discovery number one is, “I am driven.” And so, for us driven people out there, it’s a blessing and a curse. It’s important to understand exactly what we are. Discovery number two is that all decisions are made out of love or fear. And we take you to the root of fear- and love-based decisions. And that’s where I’d love to kind of drill down on today with your audience.

And then discovery number three is where we started. And that is, that it is possible to be driven and have peace. And so, there’s the big picture, if you will, and we can drill down on any of that wherever your gut is taking you.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. So, with regard to the flow, which of these 10 disciplines or discoveries gives us the most of that?

Gino Wickman
So, I wanted to start with discovery number one, which is 10-year thinking. And with each one of these discoveries, I always love to do three things. Number one, I’m going to start with a bold statement, that if you’ll just give me blind faith and do this, you will get all the benefit from the discipline. Second thing I want to do is share all the benefits. Third thing I want to do is give you an action that, if you do this, you will start to get the benefit.

So, with 10-year thinking, the bold statement is, if you just do this, and that is, shift your mind from short-term thinking to thinking in 10-year timeframes. Now the benefits. If you do that, time will slow down for you, a peace will come over you, you make better decisions, you will actually get to where you want to go faster, you will have more clarity, more alignment.

And then the action I urge is a great little exercise to get the neurons in your brain to shift, because that’s what it’s all about, is to simply write the date, your age, and a goal 10 years from now. So, write the date 10 years from now, how old are you going to be, and what’s the number one most important goal. And just doing that starts to shift your brain.

But then there’s a fun little secondary exercise, is when you look at that goal, think about all of your actions and decisions right now, here today, and are they all in alignment with that goal? For most people walking the earth, we’re short-term thinkers.

We want everything now, now, now, now, now. And if we can shift that to thinking in 10-year timeframes, I discovered it at 35 years old and it changed my life, all of a sudden, like I said, time slows down and, ironically, you get there faster. And there’s a great quote that says, “We tend to overestimate what we can accomplish in a year, but we greatly underestimate what we can accomplish in 10 years.”

So, there’s a whole bunch of stuff we can accomplish in one good decade, we just got to shift our mindset because we tend to be making short-term decisions.

Pete Mockaitis
Intriguing. Well, could you give us an example of someone who was doing some short-term thinking, they shifted to a 10-year horizon, what that 10-year goal was, and how that ended up being transformational for them?

Gino Wickman
I think about myself, all through my twenties and my early thirties, and I just was very impatient and I wanted everything immediately. And I set way too many goals and I wanted everything really fast. And so, as a result, I was making bad decisions. I was making these short-term decisions.

So, for instance, in its simplest form, if you want to be healthy 10 years from now, today, if you eat that piece of cake or drink that soda, that’s an action that is not in alignment with where you want to be. And so, the shift to that is exercising, eating well. And so, you want examples, and I’m trying to give you the best ones I can, but when I shifted to what I really wanted out of my life – relationally, physically, business-wise, income, net worth – I started making decisions today.

So, it’s as simple as how much I saved every single day, week, month in the short term. Again, how I took care of myself, how I treated my loved ones. So, if I want to be in a great marriage, if I want to have great relationship with my friends and family, today, that thing I’m about to say, I say it a little bit better, a little bit different than I would have just kind of living in the now and short-term thinking. So, does that help?

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. So, you can see more, I guess, weight, importance, consequence, implication of your action when you are beholding the compounding, aggregated, multiplicative effect of the thing over many years.

Gino Wickman
Exactly. Yeah. Well, I’ll stop there, so I think you’ve got it, but please ask if you want to dig deeper.

Pete Mockaitis
So, then when it comes to the flow, tell me more.

Gino Wickman
And so, we’re talking about energy and managing energy, which is certainly flow. So, like I said, when you shift to 10-year thinking, all of a sudden, your body calms down. You’re no longer having angst and feeling that urgency and that impatience, because now you realize there’s a lot you can accomplish in 10 and 20 years. When you lengthen that time horizon, all of sudden, your body calms down.

And in that calm state, just imagine what that just did to your energy. Now, all of a sudden, you’re making better decisions. You’re thinking better. You’re clearer. So, just the difference between feeling that urgency and feeling a calm in that state of calm, you are making much better decisions.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that’s interesting. And sometimes I can think about these states just naturally arising when I’m trying to crush the email inbox, you know, like all these messages, “Let’s go, go, go, go, go. Move, move, move. Send, send, send. Archive, archive, archive. Forward, forward,” all that. So, there’s that state, which is fast, rapid, and can conjure up some angst along the way.

As opposed to if you’re at a strategic planning retreat and you’re just staring out the window and pondering what are the strategic goals and visions to be done over the years. And so, I could feel that emotional contrast and it is more fun and enjoyable to be in the big dreaming vision, strategy retreat, setting.

I guess I’m wondering, it could be easy to fall into old habits. And in the heat of battle, in the moment of urgency, do you have any pro tips on pulling it back up?

Gino Wickman
Well, actually, your example that you just gave was perfect in helping me give a clearer answer about that. Because, when I say shift to 10-year thinking, I’m not talking about going to a strategic planning retreat and sitting there staring out the window.

I’m talking about when you are sitting and ripping through those hundred emails that sucks, quite frankly. Two mindsets. One mindset is you are short-term thinking, you’re worrying about all your short-term problems, you want everything now, now, now, now, now, you are not looking past next week, compared to you are thinking in 10-year timeframes.

You clearly know what you want your life to look like 10 years from now, and you know you can get it because in 10 years you can accomplish anything. When you rip through those hundred emails, the answer, the response, the tone, the quality of the answer will increase with long-term thinking than short-term thinking.

So, that email is a great example, but now let’s go to every interaction and touchpoint between all the people you interact with on a day. Your friends, your family, your loved ones, your coworkers, your boss, whatever it is, when you are thinking in longer-term timeframes, when you get your body to calm down and see life in a longer timeframe, you respond better to people. You make a better decision in that moment, just like you would in answering those emails.

Pete Mockaitis
And I suppose I’m thinking about the actual internal physical state there. It’s good to have that perspective, and that does influence the state itself right there. I guess I’m just saying, it seems that it’s quite possible to get caught up in the moment all the time, any kind of context, whether you’re talking to somebody or you’re irritated by something.

Gino Wickman
Yeah, absolutely. And I’m not talking about something you’re going to snap your fingers in one minute and shift to 10-year thinking. This is a discipline. That’s why they’re called disciplines. You’ve got to change your neurons. Ninety-five percent of the planet’s neurons are only capable of thinking short term. And so, they’re making all these short-term decisions that most of them are not great.

To shift those neurons to thinking in long-term timeframes, you’re going to make better decisions. The other thought that comes to mind is, like, when I’m sitting in a meeting, whether that’s on Zoom or live or wherever it is, I just have this ability to cut through everything and see everything so clearly because I’m so calm in the moment. I’m not feeling any urgency. And for some reason, better answers come.

You’re tuned in more to everything going on because, again, you’re taking a long-term outlook. You’re not feeling like you have to accomplish everything right now. And so, it’s like, I feel it in my body right now, both sides of it. For the people that sit there in angst, feeling so hurried, they’re just not making great decisions for the long-term.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. Well, that’s a lovely statement there. It’s like, “I feel no urgency,” which is wild to hear from Gino Wickman, because I think a lot of us in entrepreneurial world, we think, “That’s one of the top things a leader entrepreneur needs is sense of urgency in order to execute and make things happen.” And you’re saying, “Well, quite the opposite.”

Gino Wickman
Yeah, exactly. And so, I like the word driven. So, you’re still going to be as driven as ever and you actually become more driven when you find this inner peace and have this calm. But absolutely, you don’t feel that urgency. And I get that it’s hard to believe if you’re sitting there in an urgent state right now, but I’m here to tell you, it’s possible and that’s why it’s one of 10 disciplines. There’s only 10, and when you apply all 10, look out, baby, because they have a synergistic effect on each other as well.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, do you have your pro tips, sort of like a stop, drop, and roll? If you find yourself getting hooked, sucked into the urgency, how do we shake it off?

Gino Wickman
Step one, take a deep breath. Just take a deep breath. It takes less than 10 seconds. Number two, remember your 10-year thinking. Remember your 10-year vision. Remember what you want. And then, all of a sudden, the right answer is going to come out. So, take the deep breath and shift to 10-year thinking and the right answer is going to come out.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Understood. Well, let’s talk about being still.

Gino Wickman
You bet. Well, so this is a nice little tie to the deep breath I just talked about. So, driven people, by design, most really struggle with being still. And so, the discipline is being still. It’s discipline number four. Again, I just want to start with that bold statement, then the benefits, then the action. And so, the bold statement, if you will just simply sit in silence for 30 minutes every day.

The benefits, you will get more energy, more clarity, more creativity. more ideas, stuff comes up and down, I like to say, I’ll explain that to you in just a second here. You get downloads, you shed layers, you experience true freedom, calm, and your nervous system calms down. And so, the action is simply do it tomorrow morning.

So, tomorrow morning, we urge you to just maybe start with 10 minutes if you really struggle with this, but this is really hard for most people. Because, when we get still, when we truly get still, now this is one of four things. It’s meditation, it’s contemplation, it’s prayer, or it’s journaling. Those are the four we recommend. There’s a hundred other ways to do this, but start with one of those four.

For me, it’s mostly meditation, but I do all four of them, but it’s just being in stillness. And so, in meditation, in silence, the reason it starts to get uncomfortable for people is when we get still, all the stuff starts to come up. In other words, our bodies start to talk to us. So, the angst that we tend to feel, there’s stuff going on inside of us that happened through our life. It’s trauma that we’re carrying around.

And so, for me, most of them, when it’s in my chest, it has something to do with the past. When it’s in my stomach, it’s something about the future, but you will have sensations that come up, and your job is to pay attention to those sensations. Your body’s telling you something, and things will come down. I call them downloads.

When you really are in stillness and it’s a practice, you will get downloads. You will get answers to problems you’re trying to solve. You will hear things, see things. You will literally get downloads. And the net effect of all of it is your central nervous system calms down. Now we’re back to that flow state, being more calm when things are very intense, you’re making better decisions, you’re seeing everything where most people aren’t.

And so, I’ll shut up and let you ask your questions.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that’s intriguing. So, sitting in silence, 30 minutes, prayer, meditation, contemplation, journaling, so I suppose, let’s cover all the things that we’re not doing. I suppose we’re not looking at any form of a screen along the way.

Gino Wickman
You got that right.

Pete Mockaitis
And we are not eating. We’re not talking to another human. So, that’s the idea, is that there is silence and we are, in a way, we’re mostly not doing much at all.

Gino Wickman
Right. Well, you’re not doing anything. So, yes, yes, yes to everything you said. So, total stillness, total silence, uninterrupted, so you are locked in some room that is silent and quiet. It’s okay if you’re hearing birds chirping or wind blowing, things like that, but, yes, you are uninterrupted. This is time for you and yourself to connect to your body in a big way. But, yes, yes, yes to every statement and question you just asked.

Pete Mockaitis
And so, then do you start with a question, or a prompt, or an intention, or it’s just nothingness, just blank-slate opening.

Gino Wickman
Yeah. And it depends on which form of stillness. So, let’s take them one at a time, okay? So, meditation, you know, there are a thousand meditation apps. There are a thousand meditation books. So, meditation, there are so many ways to do it. So, I’m going to give its simplest form, but just know there are many ways to do this.

But meditation is all about, again, sitting in silence, sitting in a chair, whether your back is leaning against it or sitting up, that’s okay, you’re going to hear a lot of different philosophies around that, but it is absolutely silencing your mind. And so, for me, it takes about 10 minutes for my mind to stop racing and go ultimately completely calm. And I get to a place where I can literally go 20 minutes without a single thought.

So, that’s where you want to get to. But believe me, if this is new for you, your mind is going to race for a while so just stay with it. So, yes to your question there because it is absolute nothingness in meditation. The goal is to have no thought, and when thoughts come up, you just stay aware of those thoughts and they pass. They come and they go and they pass. You’re just observing those thoughts. So, that’s meditation.

Contemplation is different because contemplation is you’re really contemplating something. You might be trying to solve a big problem. When I’m doing writing or solving, I will spend time in contemplation. A lot of great answers will come to me. In prayer, you’re talking to a higher power, whatever you believe in. So, yes, you’re saying words either out loud or silently.

And then in journaling, you’re sitting there writing. And the goal there is to just, it’s called hot-penning is just to write. You don’t want to do too much thinking, but you’re just literally writing. So, that’s where they’re each very different. And it’s, ultimately, about finding your own formula. I spend the most time in stillness and meditation, but I absolutely contemplate, pray, and journal when necessary.

Pete Mockaitis
And I’m intrigued, as we talk about flow, I’m thinking about Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, and finding that balance associated with not being too lethargic, low energy, bored, dragging, and not being too anxious, hyped-up, whatever, as well as finding an appropriate difficulty, like, “This is not so easy, I’m bored. And not so overwhelming, I’m freaking out.”

So, we talked about a couple of approaches here along the lines of taking the 10-year perspective, taking a breath, having some silence to sort of bring it down, which is probably more necessary as you’re working with a very driven entrepreneurial population so often. I’m curious about the times when we need to pump it up. It’s like, “Oh, we’re feeling sleepy. Not into it. Just one of them days.” It’s like, “Ah, there’s a hefty dose of I don’t want to,” going on for whatever reason. How do we crank it up if we need to?

Gino Wickman
Well, if we’re still on the subject of stillness, because I can give you a couple other answers, but I want to stay on stillness with that, is sit silent for 30 minutes. So, when the race horse is burnt out and tired, sit in stillness for 30 minutes. It will, literally, recharge your batteries. It will re-energize you. You are burnt out.

Now, all of the 10 disciplines applied to your life will avoid all the burnout. So, I want to be careful not to teach all of them in answering your question about feeling burnt out, but start with 30 minutes of silence, and just do that for the next seven days, and you are going to feel your battery recharged. You’re burnt out because you’re going so fast and hard and you’re not taking a break. The 30 minutes of stillness is that wonderful break that recharges your batteries, and again does so many other things that I’m describing but it will recharge your batteries.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Well, Gino, tell me, any other top do’s or don’ts you want to make sure to mention before we hear about some of your favorite things?

Gino Wickman
Well, I would jump to the three discoveries now. Discovery number two, all decisions are made out of love or fear. And what I want to teach there, it’s a very deep, heavy topic, but it’s so powerful and simple when you understand it, and it gets to what I was just talking about. And it’s understanding that our egos have been trying to protect us for a lot of years. And as a result, it has created protective layers that are not serving us well.

And so, every decision, emotion, thought, feeling we have is coming from love or fear. And that angst that I talked about, most of my decisions were coming from fear. Most of them now come from love because I went to the root of what was causing that. And what is at the root is to understand that your ego is hanging onto stuff from the past, protecting you from it ever happening again, and you can shed that.

It’s simply known as an energetic block inside of you that you need to remove. And when you remove that block, you start making better decisions because you don’t feel the need to protect yourself anymore. And so, it’s all about getting the ego to relax. Again, very deep topic. It’s the lengthiest chapter in the book, but a very, very powerful concept to remove the angst and to start to shift to more love-based decisions.

And then we go back to the emails you talked about, and the meetings that you’re in, and all these things going on. When all of those responses are coming from love, you are going to have a better life. You are going to have people that want to follow your lead. You’re going to get a better response from people in your life. And so, that would be the last little nugget I would throw out there.

Pete Mockaitis
And so, that’s a nice sort turn of a phrase, the ego relaxing, like, “Hey, chill out, dude. It doesn’t need to be all about you and being impressive, or winning, or shining, or performing, or dominating, or standing out, like, whatever, so just chill.” So, that sounds very useful. I’m curious, do you have any top perspectives, prompts, pointers that can get that ego chilled when it’s flaring up?

Gino Wickman
You bet. So, we offer 30 resources for shedding in the book. There are thousands of resources for shedding, as we call it. And so, again, now that you’ve grasped the concept that our ego has us hijacked and held in a prison, and it’s just simply trying to protect us, so, please, its intentions are good. It is still trying to protect us from saber-toothed tigers because it thinks every threat now in business and in life is a saber-toothed tiger, so it’s trying to protect us. Its intentions are good.

And so, great disciplines are to be aware. So, just be aware. That’s the final root of that second discovery that I’m talking about. When you start to become aware that this decision, thought, feeling, emotion came from fear, or this thought, feeling, emotion, decision came from love, it’s just an awareness thing. And when you notice the ones that are coming from fear, you can start to chase it back to what’s really going on.

And so, awareness is the first thing I would suggest. This takes practice. But, you know, assuming talking to your audience out there, on average, you’re going to be around for another 40 years. Invest a year in this. Invest a year in just being aware of watching your ego operate, and it will start to relax. Become aware of when it’s trying to protect you.

When you find yourself being reactive to someone else, something they said, that is your ego. You should never react to anything. You should and can respond to things. But when you’re reactive, then they’ve got a hold of something going on inside of you. So, just be aware. That would be the first tidbit I would offer.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Well, now let’s hear a little bit about your favorite things. Can you start us off with a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Gino Wickman
Yeah, so my favorite quote is, “You get everything out of life if you help enough people get what they want.”

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, Zig Ziglar, very nice. And a favorite study or experiment or piece of research?

Gino Wickman
We talked about stillness. And there was a study done with hundreds of people that would go into a room and there was a button that, if they hit the button, it would give them an electric shock that hurt. And so, what they were told to do is sit in stillness and silence for 30 minutes.

And if they didn’t hit the button, they receive some financial reward. And so, in that study, most people hit the button, and they all received the shock before the study so they knew the pain of the study. So, all agreed they do not want to feel that pain again. But sitting in stillness for 30 minutes, most hit the button because it was more painful for them to sit in stillness, like we talked about where things come up.

And one particular, I wish I could remember the number, but one particular subject, hit the button something like 63 times. I mean, some ridiculous number. So, just that really powerful insight in how we human beings struggle with being with ourselves.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And a favorite book?

Gino Wickman
Letting Go by David Hawkins.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And a favorite tool?

Gino Wickman
My legal pad. I’ve been running everything in my life from a legal pad for 37 years.

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite habit?

Gino Wickman
Favorite habit is we talked about, is stillness meditation.

Pete Mockaitis
And is there a key nugget that you’re known for, a Gino sound bite that gets quoted often?

Gino Wickman
Probably the most common one is “Vision without traction is hallucination.”

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And if folks want to learn more or get in touch, where would you point them?

Gino Wickman
Yeah, I would say two directions. So, if you love what you heard and Shine is appealing to you, I would pick up the book Shine. You can get it at any retailer. But if you go to our website, The10Disciplines.com, you’ll find out about all things 10 disciplines. But you could also go to my website, which contains all of my content that I’ve created, GinoWickman.com.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And do you have a final challenge or call to action for someone looking to be awesome at their jobs?

Gino Wickman
Well, what I would suggest is go to the website, The10Disciplines.com, and just download the free chapter and read those first 27 pages and see if it pulls you in.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Gino, thank you.

Gino Wickman
My pleasure.