Tea-Shop_Coaching.pdf

Tea Shop – Coaching Lesson

Hi, this is AJ and welcome to the coaching lesson. Now, in this conversation I talked about the tea shop,

Tomoe’s tea shop and, of course, me trying to help her with the tea shop, and all of the difficulties and

problems we had. And ultimately the fact that we, what, y’know, failed. I hate that word, failed, but that’s

what most people would say. We failed. It didn’t happen. We couldn’t open it, oh no.

But I think that’s not the lesson of this story. Rather I think that the important lesson of this whole

experience for me, and for Tomoe, has been a phrase that comes from an old Clint Eastwood movie. I

think I mention it in the conversation. The movie itself, it’s called “Heartbreak Ridge”. I don’t know, it’s a

so-so movie. But I love the phrase in that movie. I love the idea, this catch phrase that Clint Eastwood

uses in the movie constantly. He’s this old marine sergeant and he’s always telling these young Marines

that under him, he’s always saying, “Improvise. Adapt. Overcome.” It’s his motto for life. Improvise.

Adapt. Overcome. And I think that’s just a great motto and it doesn’t…you don’t have to be in the Army.

Sometimes I think I ought to just put it on my wall because it’s a great thing to remember. Anytime you

have a challenge, anytime things don’t work the way you want them to. Anytime you feel like you’re

failing or something has failed or something’s gone wrong, right? Because so many of us are

conditioned, we’re trained in a way, by life, by society, by schools, especially, to kind of give up and to

feel depressed when we fail, right?

In school there’s this idea of failure, y’know, of grades, A, B, C, D, F. And if you get a D or an F you have

failed. And it’s a terrible thing. And oh man, your parents are going to be upset and you should be upset.

And this kind of gets into us; and we sometimes have this idea about life in general, like somehow we’re

being graded. So if we start a business and the business is not successful. Y’know, we have to close the

business, it loses money, we have this idea that we have failed. We got an F in business. And then we

feel all kind of ashamed or embarrassed.

And that’s just, that’s just fucking crazy is all it is, really. Because that’s not how life works. If you read

biographies, or even just articles, about famous businesspeople, for example, famous entrepreneurs,

people who’ve made tons of money and they’re super rich. Let’s imagine that’s what you want. You will

find that nearly all of them, I mean I would think it would be 99%, maybe even higher, I don’t know, but

very, very, very high percentage of them, have failed. They did not just immediately become successful.

They didn’t just start their business and the money came rolling in and they became super rich and they

live happily ever after. That’s not how it works.

Nearly all of them, first of all, started another business in the past and it totally failed. It went out of

business. Maybe they lost money. Many of them, even with the business that was ultimately successful,

was not successful in the beginning. In the beginning nobody believed them and it had all kinds of

problems and struggles. And it lost money and they had constant problems, until finally, they learned and

www.LearnRealEnglish.com

Tea Shop – Coaching Lesson

they changed, and they learned and they changed, and they learned and they changed, and then finally

they got success. And people only notice the last part, right?

You only hear about the last part where they suddenly get a lot of success and tons of money. But

usually in the media, the news, you never hear about the beginning part where they’re broke and poor

and losing money and failing and trying things and nothing works. But that’s the very important process

of learning.

And see, one thing these successful people share, it doesn’t matter if they’re businesspeople or athletes

or in relationships, it doesn’t matter what it is, in all things, what they all share is that they don’t quit after

the first one or two failures. And most of them do not see failure as the end, right? They get a bad result

they don’t, a lot of people now, oh I failed, that means I’m not good at this, right? A lot of people try to

start a business and then it goes, it fails, they lose money. They close their business. And a lot of people

then think well I’m bad at business so they go back and they get a job and they never try again.

But the truth is everybody’s bad at business in the beginning, right? Nobody’s just born with this, y’know,

skill of learning business. And it’s the same with athletes. We have this really wrong idea that like

somehow these super athletes are born as little children as perfect little football players and amazing

baseball players. And it’s not true. Now they may have, y’know, some certain kind of talent, but if you

again read about these people’s stories, you will find that nearly all of them went through periods where

they were failing.

Michael Jordan is a great example. I think a lot of people know this about him. Michael Jordan, of

course, may be the greatest basketball player ever. He was cut from his high school basketball team.

When he was in high school the coaches said, “You’re not a good basketball player, you’re not good

enough,” and they fired him from his team. Now a lot of kids in that situation might just quit and say god,

I’m not good at basketball. And then they would never try again. But y’know, obviously Michael Jordan

did not do that. He learned from it somehow. He went back. He changed some things. He focused on

practicing. He kept trying and, y’know, he became the greatest basketball player. I’m sure he had many

other little failures or big failures along the way, a lot of challenges.

And so what I think when I see successful people and I read about successful people and I read their

stories, in any area of life, I find that they all seem to live by this Clint Eastwood motto. Improvise. Adapt.

Overcome. So when they face a problem, when the face a failure, when they face a challenge, they don’t

say, oh I’m depressed and give up. No, they don’t feel good but they don’t just quit. What they

immediately think, okay, improvise, adapt, overcome.

Improvise means to just get creative. It means try something totally different. Don’t keep doing the same

thing. See, that’s another problem a lot of people do. Maybe they don’t quit but they just go back and

www.LearnRealEnglish.com

Tea Shop – Coaching Lesson

they keep trying the same thing, again and again and again. Let’s say weight loss is a nice example.

Like so someone will go and they’ll just try a diet where they just don’t eat anything. They hardly eat at

all. And then they, maybe they lose weight a little bit. But then they can’t sustain the diet and then they

quit and then they go back and they gain weight. And then three months later they just do the same

exact thing again. They say oh now I need to go on a diet again. And they repeat that same mistake.

They do exactly the same thing and they’ll do it again and again and again.

And I use my poor mom as an example of this all the time just because through most of my life I’ve seen

her repeat that same pattern. And I’ve done it, too, in different parts of my life. We all have, y’know, we

get stuck and we just…ugh. We think if we just keep trying the same thing hard enough and more, more,

more, harder, harder, harder, that eventually it’s going to work. And sometimes it does and usually it

does not.

So I like that first word of this motto, improvise. Because it tells us that the first thing we should do when

we face a problem, when we face a challenge, when we face a failure, when something’s not working, is

instead of doing the same thing we should become creative. Improvise means just try something else.

And it has this idea of try something creative. Maybe try something crazy, really just totally different. It

means find a solution that’s not normal. Find a solution that’s completely different than what you’ve been

trying or what you’ve been thinking about. Focus on something totally different than what you have been

focusing on.

And that’s sort of the first step then of this, the Clint Eastwood method, of problem solving, right? It’s

improvise, so the first thing you should do, look at your life and any part of your life where you’re stuck,

where you’re not making the changes you need to, where you’re failing. The first thing you should do is

improvise. Just totally stop doing what you’ve been doing and look for some totally different crazy other

way to do it. You might get online and search for other people who are trying totally different weird

solutions.

And maybe those new solutions you try might also fail but you’re going to learn new things by trying

something different instead of sticking to the same normal stuff. So it doesn’t matter whether it’s health or

relationships or business or your career. No, it doesn’t matter what it is, learning English, right? A lot of

you by using our method you’re doing something a little different. You’re improvising. A little crazy,

maybe for years and years and years and years you’ve been trying, more grammar, more grammar, more

grammar, more grammar, more grammar, memorize more words, memorize more words, memorize more

words.

And finally you thought this isn’t working. I’m sick of this. And you said I’m just going to try something

totally different and weird. I’m going to listen to these crazy teachers and these different conversations

and these totally crazy mini-stories. It’s just totally different. You’re improvising. And that’s great.

www.LearnRealEnglish.com

Tea Shop – Coaching Lesson

The next part of the Clint Eastwood method is adapt. Adapt. And adapt means that you, you change to

fit the situation. See a lot of people sit around hoping the situation will change, right? If they’re in a

relationship and it’s not good, there are problems, well they sit around hoping the other person will

change, waiting for them to change, expecting for them to change. Or let’s say economically, if you’re

struggling with your finances, with money. A lot of people just sit around waiting for the economy to get

better. Well, maybe it’s not going to get better. Maybe it’s going to get better ten years from now. Do

you want to wait around for ten years, right?

People sit around waiting for external things to change instead of seeing the reality and changing

themselves to fit the reality. And that’s what adapt means. It means you change. You don’t wait for the

environment or the situation to change. It means you take total responsibility. It’s up to you to change,

not for the situation to change.

So it’s very important. So first thing is you start improvising, trying different things. But you don’t just

randomly keep doing this forever. You’ve got to monitor and see what happens. So you try something

new and then you’ve got to adapt. You look and say well, did that work? Is that helping or is it getting

worse? And then you have got to change your approach again to fit what’s happening, to fit the results.

And then you try changing it again. Try something else. And then you adapt, you look, what’s

happening? Is it getting better? Is it getting worse? I don’t know.

But you finally, y’know, oh, okay, I guess this is working. I’m going to do more of that. Now I’m going to

try this. You keep changing. The idea is you keep changing. And you keep looking for the opportunities

in the situation, always realizing that it’s you who must change, not the situation. You’re never going to

be passive sitting around waiting for something else to change.

I’ll give health as one of my favorite examples. So sometimes, y’know, I used to get frustrated because I

was trying to be healthy. But the environment is so unhealthy. I mean there’s nothing but sugary junk

food everywhere. And I was a sugar addict. And everywhere I go, especially when I travel, sugar, sugar,

sugar, sugar, sugar, sugar, sugar. And I used to just get all depressed about it. But then I though,

y’know, the environment’s not going to change. I am not going to suddenly change the whole food supply

industry in the world.

So I have to do something different. One thing I started doing was carrying little bag of snacks with me

that were healthy. And so I always have something. So if I get really hungry I don’t need to depend on

the environment, I’ve got something with me. It’s just one small example. But I just realized that I have to

change. I can’t just complain about the environment. It’s not going to change. At least I can’t control if

it’s going to change.

www.LearnRealEnglish.com

Plik z chomika:

Inne pliki z tego folderu:

Inne foldery tego chomika: