Having a Vision

A reading from an unexpected source leads to a discussion about the importance of having a clear vision.

Show notes:

• Be Useful: Seven Tools for Life by Arnold Schwarzenegger
• Arnold (Netflix series)
• StrengthsFinder
• Penny-farthing
• Extreme Ownership
• Lincoln (film)

Episode Transcript

Harry (00:00):
People that have the ability to create and maintain

(00:03):
and constantly evolvecontinuously a strong vision
that has enough distinction,enough clarity, enough of a
soundtrack, it's a lot easierfor them to know when they're
off course.

Narrator (00:21):
You're listening to Traction Heroes, digging in to
get results with Harry Max andJorge Arango.

Jorge (00:31):
Harry, it's good to see you, my friend.

Harry (00:34):
Oh, excellent.
Good to see you, Jorge.
Thank you for making time today.

Jorge (00:38):
I value our time together because I always learn something
new.

Harry (00:42):
Me too.
And I'm often surprised itreminds me of, think something
that...
who was it that called out thenotion of a refrigerator laugh?
You don't realize something'sfunny and stand up comedy until
you're taking milk out of therefrigerator.
Is it Steve Martin who saidthat?
And this is like refrigeratorinsights.

(01:03):
It's like I don't realize thatI've really learned something
profound until I go to takesomething out of the
refrigerator.
I'm like,"Oh, wow.
That was insightful."

Jorge (01:14):
I don't know about the refrigerator bit, but I often
find myself having those kindsof sparks happen when I get up
and shift positions, like I walkaround or something, it's like,
"Oh, okay.
That's what that was about.
That's cool."

Harry (01:29):
Yeah, and I wish it had happened at the time that the
conversation was taking place,is often my response.
I could have been so muchsmarter in that moment.

Jorge (01:41):
I think we can all relate to that.
Let me share with you something,I've brought a reading as usual,

Harry (01:48):
Cool.

Jorge (01:48):
And the challenge I'm gonna have here is that this is
quite long and I'm going to haveto be editing and that probably
means that there's going to besome disjointed things.
So let's see how it goes.

Harry (02:01):
Okay.

Jorge (02:04):
"So many of our best people are lost.
So many of the good ones don'tknow what they're doing with
their lives.
They're unhealthy.
They're unhappy.
70% of them hate their jobs.
Their relationships areunrewarding.
They don't smile, they don'tlaugh.
They have no energy.
They feel useless.

(02:26):
They feel helpless, as if lifewere pushing them down a road to
nowhere.
If you know what to look for,you will see these people
everywhere.
Maybe even when you look in themirror.
It's okay, you're not broken.
Neither are they.
This is just what happens whenyou don't have a clear vision

(02:46):
for your life and you've takeneither whatever you can get or
whatever you thought youdeserved.
We can fix that becauseeverything good, all great
change starts with a clearvision.
Vision is the most importantthing.
Vision is purpose and meaning.

(03:10):
To have a clear vision is tohave a picture of what you want
your life to look like and aplan for how to get there." I'm
going to skip ahead a littlebit.
"This is what a clear visiongives you: a way to decipher
whether a decision is good orbad for you based on whether it

(03:32):
gets you closer or further awayfrom where you want your life to
go.
Does the picture you have inyour mind of your ideal future
get blurrier or sharper becauseof this thing you're about to
do?
The happiest and most successfulpeople in the world do
everything in their power toavoid bad decisions that confuse
matters and drag them away fromtheir goals.

(03:56):
Instead, they focus on makingchoices that bring clarity to
their vision and bring themcloser to achieving it.
It doesn't matter if they'reconsidering a small thing or a
huge thing.
The decision making process isalways the same.
The only difference between themand us, between me and you,
between any two people, is theclarity of the picture we have

(04:19):
for our future, the strength ofour plan to get there, and
whether or not we have acceptedthat the choice to make that
vision a reality is ours andours alone."

Harry (04:33):
That's impactful.
I thought we were going down thedowner slide, and then it picked
up and really brought it intofocus.
I'm super curious.
I don't think I've read thatbefore.
What did it come from?

Jorge (04:48):
This comes from a book that came out in 2023.
The title of the book is BeUseful.
The subtitle is Seven Tools forLife, and the author is Arnold
Schwarzenegger.

Harry (05:08):
Whoa.
That's so cool.

Jorge (05:11):
Yeah, it surprised me.
I don't think we've talked aboutthis book before in our
conversations, have we?

Harry (05:17):
No, I don't think so.
Being that usefulness is centralto how I grew up, my father was
very much about...
he would, there I was, I don'tknow, 11 years old and he'd be
teaching me to set points in a1968 Chrysler station wagon or
change the oil or bleed thebrake lines or do whatever it

(05:41):
was.
And I had pretty much nointerest in any of that at the
time.
But sometimes he would say,"Don't just do something.
Stand there.
Be useful."

Jorge (05:52):
You wanna know something funny?
The title of Schwarzenegger'sbook comes from something his
dad told him.

Harry (05:59):
Oh, interesting.

Jorge (06:00):
So his father also taught him to be useful, and he talks
about that.
So this is a kind of memoir, butit's packaged as self-help.
And, and I got the sense thatit's packaged for a particular
demographic.
I don't know why, but in my mindit's like, it's probably a book

(06:20):
that is most attractive to ayoung man who's starting out in
the world, the sort of personwho would gravitate to pumping
iron or whatever.
It's almost like a morepragmatic version of the sort of
thing that Jordan Peterson talksabout where he's that, that

(06:41):
demographic that he appeals to.
But anyway, I read this book,when it came out and, I actually
listened to it as an audio book,which is really cool because
it's read by ArnoldSchwarzenegger himself, in his
very distinctive Austrianaccent, right?
So it felt like a few hoursspent, with Uncle Arnie, talking

(07:05):
about how he succeeded in hislife.

Harry (07:10):
That's so cool.
And part of why I think it's socool is I think as a society and
as a general rule, I think wehave done just a very poor job,
we being I'll include myself, increating conditions for young
men to grow up and feel a senseof self-confidence and be good
people, and having role modelsthat are out there in the world

(07:32):
accomplishing great things.
It may not be obvious to youwhich way to go, but at least
there's an exemplar, right?
And somebody who arguably hasdone a lot of good in the world.

Jorge (07:44):
I don't wanna over-index on the young man thing.
I just brought that up becauseas with anything that Arnold
Schwarzenegger has been involvedwith, this feels like very kind
of high testosterone.
It's like you, you remember hismovies in the eighties with

Harry (08:00):
Oh, totally.

Jorge (08:01):
All the machine guns and stuff.
And the subtitle of the book isSeven Tools.
And let me just read you thetitles of the tools, and you'll
get a sense of why I said that.
But I think that this is a bookthat might be useful to anyone,
not just young men, is thereason why I'm giving this
disclaimer.
So, here are the tools.
The first one is have a clearvision, which is the one that I
read from, right?

(08:21):
And it's the one that I actuallywanna focus on, right?
I wanna focus on this idea ofvision.
But I just wanna tell you whatthe other ones are.
The second one is never thinksmall.
The third one is work your assoff.
The fourth one is sell, sell,sell.

(08:42):
The fifth one is shift gears.
The sixth one is shut yourmouth, open your mind.
And the seventh one is breakyour mirrors.
And we might come back to theseventh one.
Anyway, so they gist here, andthis is something that I

(09:05):
don't...
I'm not especially keen onpeople who have been super
successful and then late in lifethey write down a bunch of
lessons and and somehow Implythat you just do this and you'll
be successful.

(09:26):
As I recall, Arnold does talkabout the role of luck in his
life and he acknowledges that.
But again, it was a couple ofyears since I read this.
But this is him trying toreverse engineer the conditions
which got him to his success.
And I think that when you startlooking at his life, and I'm not

(09:51):
like an Arnold scholar by anymeans.
I've just read this one book.
And there's also a, adocumentary series on Netflix
that I watched, which wasactually quite good, about his
life.
And it's based on this book, sothe two are, related.
But the gist of this is that hegrew up in a very small town in

(10:11):
Austria.
And he was a kid with big dreamsand through grit basically, made
it happen.
And there's a lot more to itthan that obviously.
And if you think about his lifestory where he went and became a
Mr.
Universe, So like the top of thebodybuilding world.

(10:33):
Then he pivoted from that careerand he became a movie star.
And he was at one point, I thinklike the biggest movie star in
the world, like one of the bestpaid movie stars, if not the,
best paid movie star in theworld.
And then he pivoted from thatand became the governor of
California.
It's incredible when somebodyachieves one of those things,

(10:55):
this guy did three of them, So,there's, something interesting
there.
And he did it, I would say alsoin spite of what some people
could consider prettyinsurmountable obstacles, right?
So becoming a Mr.
Olympia after growing up in thisvery small town in Austria where

(11:18):
there wasn't really abodybuilding culture.
Then, becoming a huge movie starwhen, he did not have the build.
If you think about who are thebig movie stars in the 1970s, it
was people like Robert De Niroor Al Pacino.

(11:39):
Big bodybuilders were notbecoming movie stars.
Much less big bodybuilders witha strong Austrian accent, right?

Harry (11:48):
Yeah.

Jorge (11:49):
So he became a big star despite those two things.
And then becoming a governor ofCalifornia again, someone who
was not born in the UnitedStates and very obviously so
because of his, accent andstuff.
Anyway, I, thought that the bookwas worthwhile, especially in
audiobook format.
I wrote a blog post about it atthe time.

(12:10):
But, I did want to pinch andzoom on this notion of vision
because for him, that's where itstarted.
And you notice that he listed itfirst: have a clear vision.

Harry (12:22):
First off, I love where you're going with this.
Let's just start there.
Next is, it's an unassailableexample, whether you're an
Arnold fan or not.
His life story sort of lays outthe supporting points that make
it clear that, at least for him,these were strong drivers.
The idea behind the vision, I'veI spent a lot of time thinking

(12:46):
about this in part because oneof my business partners doesn't
actually make pictures in hishead.
It's a phenomena that I didn'teven know existed.
But he is so purpose-driven.
He's very clear about why hedoes what he does, even if he
doesn't have an image that he'sheading toward, or a movie that

(13:09):
he's heading toward in his mind,or an image or moving that he's
trying to get away from, right?
You think about the NLPmeta-pattern of away and
towards.
A vision can be either, andmaybe some combination of those
things.
The reason I think this is sointeresting and plays directly
into what we want to talk topeople about is, I put a

(13:32):
proposal out, a businessproposal last week.
It was well received.
Looks like the work is gonnahappen.
And I put an a line item on thatproposal that I called optional.
Can you guess what that lineitem was?
The CEO's vision.
And the reason for that is thatin almost any consulting or

(13:54):
executive coaching environmentthat I go into, what I find is
that if a person doesn't have apretty well-developed sense of
their vision or as a proxy,their purpose, there's a very
good chance that many of thethings that they don't want to
have happen are happeningunderneath their leadership
because they assume that otherpeople can just read them or

(14:19):
understand what it is they havein their head.
And it's a little bit likeyou're, you may be familiar with
Gallup StrengthsFinder.
I think there's aStrengthsFinder 2.0 and it as
part of the definition of astrength, a management strength,
it's a mental or physicalbehavior that you do naturally

(14:44):
and you undervalue it inyourself and you assume other
people can do it.
And the, result of that is it'seasy for you, it's hard for most
other people.
And vision is a lot like that.
I think people that have theability to create and maintain

(15:05):
and constantly evolvecontinuously a strong vision
that has enough distinction,enough clarity, enough of a
soundtrack, it's a lot easierfor them to know when they're
off course.
I have a strong vision formyself and what I'm doing in my
life, and I'm also very stronglyoriented toward the purpose why

(15:28):
I do what I do.
I think it makes it very easy toknow when something's going on
that is off-path for me.
It's taken a lifetime of work toget to this point, but When I
think about the seven lessons,parlay your winds is probably
number eight.

(15:49):
you kinda missed that one.
I grew up down there.
I grew up rioting on the beachin Venice, in Santa Monica.
Most people are highlyentertained to learn that I used
to own a penny farthing, whichis one of those bikes with a big
giant front wheel and a littletiny rear wheel.
And when I was in high school, Iused to get paid by the bicycle

(16:15):
shop cafe to ride along theboardwalk and down on the Santa
Monica Pier and throughout SantaMonica in a top hat and tails
with a big cardboard sign inthat front wheel that said
Bicycle Shop Cafe.
And I would go down to Veniceand I would see the
bodybuilders.
So this is very real for me.
And I would get attention, andit was fun.

(16:37):
And I was making a fortune,right?
I was making like 20 bucks anhour when I was in high school.
And I've never been like aginormous Arnold fan, but I've
never not been either.
And I'm definitely definitelygonna go read that book because
I'd like to understand how hetalks about vision and how much

(16:57):
of that is a vision towardversus how much of it's a vision
away from, and how much of thatis the actual movie that he
plays in his head or whetherit's static pictures or whether
it's a vision board.
There are lots of different waysto express vision

Jorge (17:10):
Yeah.
He talks about it primarily, asI recall, as something to aspire
towards rather than something toavoid.
And the example he uses and hehas some suggestions on how to
do it, which we can get into.
But I remember that he talksabout starting big picture and

(17:34):
then honing in on the details,

Harry (17:36):
Hmm.

Jorge (17:37):
Like he says, for example, that for him, the
vision when he was very, young,started with just wanting to get
to the U.S.

Harry (17:48):
Hmm.

Jorge (17:48):
He had idealized America through his exposure to the
movies and stuff like that.
And he just wanted to get out ofthe place where he grew up and
where he was going to school inAustria.
And he didn't really know whathe wanted to do when he got
there, but he knew that hewanted to be there, right?
And as I recall, he offers thatas an example of starting very

(18:08):
broad and fuzzy, but that's astart, right?
But he also talks aboutsomething that I think your
friend who cannot form mentalpictures would have a hard time
with, which is visualizing theeffects of having achieved the
vision.

(18:29):
I don't know if I read this inthe book or if it was in the
documentary, but he talks aboutimagining what it would be like
to walk up to receive the Mr.
Universe prize and all thecameras going off.
And like he had it in his mind,like he had that vision in his
mind of what it would feel liketo be standing there, being

(18:53):
recognized as the top person inhis field.
And this is something that I'veread other athletes in other
fields doing, where they canvery...
I was gonna say graphically, butlike in detail kind of imagine
what it would not just looklike, but feel like, what, do

(19:16):
you hear?
What do, what are the smells?
What are the, what does it feellike to be, in that situation?
I'm just revisiting my notesfrom when I read this, I have
this note here that some of theadvice might sound close to
kinda woozy metaphysics, and Iput in parenthesis here, for

(19:38):
example, the law of attraction,right?
But he acknowledges this and hesays that, that, yeah, I know
that this sounds a little weird,but from personal experience I
think that, being able to havesuch a clear idea of where you

(19:59):
want to go that you canvisualize it internally for
yourself, does give you an edge.

Harry (20:06):
A hundred percent.
And once again, as a probablyspend 50% or more of my time
working with people who aretrying to get better as an
executive coach, either withhigh performers or with
senior-level operational leadersor CEOs or whatnot, and having a
clear vision and being able tostep into that vision and not

(20:29):
have it be a thing of the futureor not have it be a thing of
possibility but have it be anexperience that you are playing
out as if it is true is a verypowerful device.
Because the mind...
and this does get to the kind ofwoowoo stuff, right?
the mind doesn't reallydistinguish between what we're

(20:51):
experiencing now and what wecould be experiencing in the
future if we made it anexperience that we were having
now, like a dream.
And this sort of hearkens backto some of the conversation that
we had about self-deception andabout the positive and negative
sides of self-deception and howyou could say that Steve Jobs

(21:12):
and his reality distortion fieldwas the master of
self-deception.
And that ability to deceivehimself and to believe, to step
into that world, and communicatewhat he saw to other people
effectively and line up a largeorganization in an ecosystem to
support all of that is wouldthat have happened without a

(21:33):
vision?
Maybe.
Maybe not.

Jorge (21:37):
It's funny you should mention that one.
Of the sections in this chapterin the Schwarzenegger book, it's
actually the closing section inthis chapter, is called Look In
the Mirror.
And what he's basicallyadvocating for there is being
honest with yourself and notthat you're going to keep
yourself from developing avision, but you're not gonna

(21:59):
effectively move towards thevision if you can't have a good
read on where you are.

Harry (22:07):
Yes, that's right.
And we may have talked aboutthis before, some of the ideas
that Jocko Willink and LeifBabin talk about in their work
with Extreme Ownership is it isfar more important to know where
you are on the battlefield thanto know where your enemy is.

Jorge (22:25):
Right.
And we talked about the Lincolnthing, right?
The speech from the SpielbergLincoln movie, where he talks
about the compass, right?
The vision part here is,"I'mheading south," right?
Now, you may find a swamp in theway, which will cause you to
have to move west for a littlewhile.
But you know in your mind thatwhat you wanna do is you wanna

(22:47):
head south.
You have to have both the clearvision of where you want to be
heading but also you have tohave your senses attuned to
conditions on the ground, if youare to make it there.

Harry (23:02):
We could talk about this topic for a long, long time.
And I've written down a numberof other books and things that
we could be talking about, but Iknow we're running short on time
and usually I outsource to youthe how do we...
what are the tire chains to gettraction?
What do we leave people with?
And it seems pretty clear to methat the absence of having a

(23:27):
vision is gonna take yousomewhere else.
And if you have a vision,whether it's a compelling vision
of the future and that you canstep in and really, breathe life
into, or whether it is grainy,but it's still, maybe it's a

(23:48):
grainy static picture, that'sbetter than nothing.
And making the investment to getclear about that future state,
that compelling future state,there's a lot of leverage there.

Jorge (24:00):
Yeah, absolutely.
I'm, and I'm gonna close byagain, quoting from the
Schwarzenegger thing, the lackof a vision, you've taken this
is now in the book, right?
Like,"You've taken eitherwhatever you can get or whatever
you thought you deserved." Soit's like, yeah, if you don't
have a clarity around whereyou're heading, you're just

(24:21):
gonna be buffeted by whatevercomes along and that's no way to
go about it.

Harry (24:30):
It's one way.
It's just probably not thepreferred way.

Jorge (24:33):
right.
Anyway, I wanted to share itwith you.
Maybe we'll return to some ofthe other tools because I really
found value in this book.
And it's a fun listen especiallyif watched, Arnie movies in the
eighties.

Harry (24:47):
Yeah, I'm gonna go get myself some more audiobook
credits and spool it up and takeit on a walk.
It sounds great.
Thank you.

Jorge (24:54):
Alright, thank you Harry.

Narrator (24:57):
Thank you for listening to Traction Heroes
with Harry Max and Jorge Arango.
Check out the show notes attractionheroes.com and if you
enjoyed the show, please leaveus a rating in Apple's podcasts
app.
Thanks.