Steven Snyder - Focused Passion (J1117)

Welcome to the Exit Coach Radio show, the show for baby boomer business owners who are looking for cutting edge information as they plan their 3 to 10 year business succession and exit. Every week we interview top professional advisors for. The best tips, strategies, and precautions so you can be well planned. And don't miss our one minute exit coach tip of the day on exit coachradio.com. And now here's your host, the exit coach, Bill Black. Oh, we're back. I'm not sure what happened there. I apologize for the delay. My next guest is Stephen Snyder, and Stephen is joining us from my favorite city in the whole wide world, and that is Hana, Hawaii on the island of Maui. Beautiful, beautiful place. If you haven't been, you must go. And Stephen is joining us from Stephen Snyder seminars, and we're going to talk about focused passion. And I can't think of any when I'm in Hana, I am focused on the beauty of the area. It is a place to go and think clearly, and I'm looking forward to this next interview. So Stephen, thanks very much for joining us and aloha. Hello, good morning from beautiful Maui. Uh, more, more beautiful than Hana, most beautiful, more better. Well, actually I'm in Lower Nikiku, which is about 15 minutes west of Hanatown, but it's a little, a little place right on the ocean. It's just so beautiful here. That's fantastic. Now, how long have you lived in, in Maui? This month is 10 years actually since my wife and I moved here. My wife was a member of Visage and sold her business for a whole lot of money, so we bought 70 acres on a cliff overlooking the ocean here in Maui. We're having a that's terrific. That is fantastic. Well, congratulations and what a great lifestyle. And so what? Tell us about Stephen Snyder seminars. What, what's your topic? What do you do for people and, and how does it, how does it work? Well, I've been doing this for a very, very long time, 47 years now. I actually invented a speed reading technique when I was 12 years old, started teaching it for a living at 15, I never actually had a job. I spent about 10 years working with students, about 20 years working with schoolteachers, and the last 25 or 30 years I've been working mostly with corporate executives, focusing in on CEOs with YPO in the last 20 years, mostly with Visage. I just did my 1,350th Visage presentation last week. And a couple of years ago, Visage awarded me with the Lifetime Achievement Award. Only several, only a few handful of business speakers have ever been awarded that, so it was a great honor. My, my primary topic are the powers of the mind, a topic I call it mind matters, brilliance, passion, and the nature of mastery, how to be better, faster, smarter, and happier with far less stress and much more passion, sort of an owner's guide for the brain, a user's manual for the human mind. I understand how the mind works and how to make your mind work most effective. That sounds amazing and, and this topic is, uh, uh, you've given this particular topic that many times, 1350 times. That's just the visage alone. That's not counting YPO and the work I've done for Apple and Hewlett Packard and IBM and probably 150 of the Fortune 500 companies. Well, tell us about this. What is the state of focused passion? What does it mean? A focused passion is technically it's the alpha brainwave state. It's called the zone. It's called the flow. It's a state of total focused concentration on one thing and amplified passion interest in that thing. See focus brings to bear the power of the conscious mind and passion brings to bear the power of the subconscious mind. And when the two minds come together in harmony in the state of focused passion, something really remarkable happens when the two minds come together and marry, they actually create a third mind. Which is a higher consciousness. These days it's called mindfulness. The ability to step back and observe yourself doing what you're doing and realize you're not your thoughts and you're not your feelings. You are the observer of your thoughts and feelings and therefore you can choose which thoughts to agree with and which thoughts to release. And in that way, all thoughts are good because you say yes to the good ones and embrace them and you say no to the bad ones and release them and every thought you think allows you to feel even better about yourself. Now, I know a lot of people that are focused and I know a lot of people that are passionate about what they do. I don't know how many of them have married those two to create that state of mindfulness. How do, how do they know when they're there? Well, it brings about a state of peak performance. The mind is fixated. You're not wandering, your attention is intense. Your heart is engaged. You feel like you're doing what's right for you to do. You know, it's the zone. The athletes are there, great salespeople are there, great leaders are there, you know, when you're just, you're on your game. You're just doing everything right. That's, that's the state of focus passion. It's the flow. It's an awesome state. Everyone's been there, you know, but people who are doing what they love to do for a living or are in a fantastic marriage, they spend a lot of time in that state. And when things are going right, when the mind is fixated and the heart is engaged, that's the state of focused passion. OK, well, I love that. Now I, I work with a lot and I talked to a lot of business owners who have been doing what they do a long time and they're longing to do something else that they, but they're, they're hesitant to do that. But it's they're looking for that new passion, and it might be something that they wanted to do since they were children, but Uh, they, they're not quite sure, you know, how they can get into that. And, and so a lot of them are, are doing what they do, but they would probably do so much better and feel so much better, uh, by, by exploring that passion. Do you find that a lot of people, do you, I mean in your talks, do you, do a lot of people say you've inspired me to go after something that I've always wanted to go after? You know that does happen quite frequently actually. Everyone in business needs, as I'm sure you understand, an exit strategy, you know, you have to have a way to finish this thing up, to move on to the next thing, and, and somehow for most successful people, it's to go from success to significance. It's to go from a You know, doing what you did to make a living that you might have really enjoyed doing, but there's something more. There's something in your heart that burns to be philanthropic or to be, you know, make a difference in the world, be significant in the world. So there's two different paths that people choose to do that. One is a little bit at a time and the other is just You know, all out, go for it. You have to take a look at your life circumstances. I mean, can you right now sell the business or give the business to your children or whatever and move on and do it right now? Or, or is it a process where you have to take a look at a 5 year plan to, you know, take steps slowly to move? So I believe, I firmly believe that everyone deserves to do what they love to do and what's what their heart calls them to do at some point in their lives. You know, sometimes you have to pay some dues. You have to save enough money or you have to like. You know, make, make the plans. You have to have the right education or the great experience. You might have a lot of stuff you have to do before you can get to that place, but I think everybody needs to take a look at where is that place and how can I get there? What's my exit strategy for what I'm doing now to move into what I want to do next. Yeah, and we talk a lot about that because without that vision, that passion, you won't move from point A to point B. Now a lot of people, of course, are, are getting to the age where, especially in our audience, where they're saying my obligations, I've fulfilled my obligations, it's time for me time, and some of them are seeing parents pass away, they're seeing friends get sick, they're seeing different issues and going, Wow, this is real, this is, this is not a drill, this is my life. I better get on with it. So what are some of the first steps towards exploring and finding those passions for people? What do you counsel them to do? Well, you know, one of the most important things they need to do is listen to their heart before their head and then use their head to decide if that's real or possible or not. But if you, if you really want to find out what you want the most. It's not a logical process. You can't use deductive reasoning. You can't look at a menu of what's available and say it's not that, it's not that. It's got to be that. The only way you can ascertain the answer to the question what do I want the most is to go to the heart, the heart mind, the subconscious mind where your emotions live and ask yourself what do I want the most, and listen to the answer. It's, it's an intuitive process. If what you wanted the most was logical, then everybody would want the same thing the most because logic doesn't change. It's a very emotional question, so. You, you ask yourself what do I want the most, and then you listen for the answer. You just wait, sit receptive, listen for the answer. It's called introspection or reflection or prayer. I mean, if you believe in a higher power, then you can ask for guidance from a higher power, and the answer can come through you. You don't believe in a higher power, you can have the answer come from you. But in either case, it can't be a logical process. It's got to be an intuitive emotional process. You ask, you sit, you wait receptive for the answers, and one. You know what you want the most, then you can use the logical mind to decide how to get there, how to move toward there, and that's a process of programming the mind using what I like to call the four Ps of programming. You have to imagine what you do want positive, as if you've already got it, present intense over and over and over and over again practice or persistence or perseverance, and then most importantly a great passion because if thoughts are the steering wheel. You know, a negative thoughts move you in a negative direction and positive thoughts move you in a positive direction, then emotions are the pedals, and fear is the break and joy and love and happiness are the gas pedal. So it's aimed toward what you want the most. Imagine you already have it over and over again with great passion, and the best part is if you don't really feel the passion, just fake it till you make it, because the subconscious can't tell the difference between real and imaginary. And once you pretend to passion, then you tend to passion. Wonderful stuff, wonderful stuff. Now, now it's important sometimes for people to, you know, we have always heard don't just, don't just sit there, do something well, it's important also to don't just do something sit there is what you're saying and find that quiet place and I'll tell you one of my favorite places is at at the Travasa out there in Hana and walk. Up to the cross and back and just the exquisite quiet and beauty that we're not used to, especially here in Southern California, is, is amazing. The quiet is deafening. I'll put it that way. That's so true. I grew up in Southern California and moving here to Hana has just been an awesome experience. It's, it's, it smells good. It tastes good. It sounds good. It looks, it's just an amazing place to be. Mhm, I agree, I agree. So, uh, how do people become better, faster, smarter, and happier? Well, the process involves learning to get into the alpha brainwave state. You can call it self hypnosis. You can call it meditation. You can call it neurolinguistic programming. There's so many names for it. I have a book called Focused Passion that they can get on Amazon that that describes exactly how to do it and what to do once you're there. I have 3 programs if they're interested. Go to info@focupassion.com. and I'll send in 3D audio programs, podcast kind of programs. I've got especially my great passion is the gentle overthrow of the school system, so I want to help children become great learners. So I've got programs on accelerated reading techniques and memory improvement and study techniques and test taking skills, all free. So if they go to info@focuspassion.com and send a send a request for that, I'll send out these free audio programs on all these accelerated learning techniques. That's what you guys have to get into the outer state. OK, info at focus passion passion.com. Very good. OK, I was gonna point that out. So, so, uh, let's talk about your lifelong mission. What's your lifelong mission? Well, you know, I, I learned to read when I was 2 years old. I was a child prodigy, and by the time I went into first grade, I'd read 1400 books. The teacher didn't know what to do with me, stuck me in the corner, and said, You read while I teach them, and I decided at 6 years old to devote my life to the gentle overthrow of the school system, and that's been my life's work ever since. Really why I work with CEOs because they're the influencers and as much as I love working with school teachers, they don't really have the power to change the school system. But but CEOs do. So basically what I'm advocating is getting rid of school. School from the Greek word ice cream means to hold in place to keep them going like a school of fish. They all swim the same way. And replace it with education. Education from the Latin name you carte means to drop for, to bring it up the claws to grow, where schools basically zip open brains, stuff in fact, zip it back up, and vomit on Friday. It's all about memorization, which is a useless skill in today's world. We can Google it now. Education is about helping kids discover their own unique gifts, talents, and abilities and develop those. And then have a schooling process because you're as much alike as possible, the end of educational. they're as much diverse as possible. It couldn't be more different, and the shift, the simple shift we have to make is to take the emphasis off of teaching children what to learn and put it on to teaching children how to learn, because we don't know what information's going to be essential in the year 2020, but we know they'll be able to Google it. Memorization has become a useless skill. It's the lowest form of intelligence. It takes so little intelligence to memorize something that a parent can do it, so. So really what we kids need to know is how to think, how to solve problems, how to make decisions, how to use their minds, not how to regurgitate data. So we really need to shift from school to education, and that's my great passion, helping to facilitate this transition from a school system that is essentially the same as it's been since the late 1800s to a 21st century educational system where kids really learn how to learn. And how do you go about that? What I mean, great ideas, great ideas. I applaud your ideas and I'm, I'm right with you on it. How do we go? How do you go about that? It's actually already happening in, in private schools and in charter schools and in all kinds of religious schools and international schools. The, the real challenges in our public school system because the, the emphasis on the standardized tests, which is really all about memory. school teachers are they're handcuffed. They can't, you can't introduce anything new because they got to, you know, their, their evaluation is based on how well their kids are doing on these tests. It's crazy. It's stupid. So what we really need to do to me is overthrow the public school system by bringing more and more. Highly educated exceptional learners into the public schools. The way public schools are currently constituted, they don't know how to deal with exceptional kids. I mean, you have 30 kids in a classroom and 25 of them read at regular speed and 5 of them read 5 times faster. What's the teacher going to do? They're going to put those 5 kids aside and then the parents are going to be justifiably upset about that. Pull them. Out of the public schools, put them into the private schools or the charter schools if they can afford it into the religious or private schools, and then, and then the numbers in the public schools are going to dwindle, and the government's going to go, this is horrible. We can't do this anymore, and they're going to have to realize that they need to change to compete with the private schools that are now teaching kids how to learn instead of what to learn. So it's a grassroots roots movement that has to start with one by one with with parents realizing, you know, that this is not the right way to learn. And let's let's get back to our business owners who are saying, you know, I, I wanna learn a new skill. I want to learn a new topic. I wanna do something different. I wanna not retire, but I wanna rewire my life. Now, are there, is there a certain pointers that you could give someone who wants to learn something new today? Obviously memorization is not the key. Sure, sure, actually my friend Ken Blanchard, the guy that wrote the One Minute Manages, has a new book called Refire instead of retire. That's kind of a cool concept too. I like Rewired as well. Um, yeah, the most important key to learning is to be able to intake process and output information most effectively. So I've got a six part study skills or learning skills technique that I introduced. It's in, it's in the Focused passion book. Essentially the first step you need to do in terms of learning something new is to get The mind thinking about that subject. Take your mind off of everything else and bring yourself to that. So it's sort of a scanning concept. It's start thinking about the topic. If you're reading a book, look, look at each page for a few seconds, get the key ideas that pop into your mind. Just, just like, like in real cold weather, you're to warm up the engine before you drive away, you know, it's sort of warming up the mind before you drive away, letting go of what you were thinking about and moving into thinking about this. The next step is after warming up the brain really is to warm up the heart is to get interested. If interest is there, evoke it. If it's not there to create it. And the way you create interest, by the way, if something's not inherently interesting to you, is to understand interest has really nothing to do with what you're doing. Interest comes from the past or the future. If you're interested in something because something happened once or more than once in the past to lead you to believe this is going to be great, it's going to feel good, or you're interested because you imagine by learning this now something great's going to happen. So if you don't have an interest in something, imagine that by learning this something, some wonderful outcome will be there for you, and, and that will evoke the interest. The next step is to take in the information to listen or read for the duration of your attention span. There's there's no sense in attempting to learn beyond the duration of your attention span after your attention spans over, you know, which is many seconds or a few minutes. It's not, you know, it varies from individual to individual. It doesn't really matter how long your attention span is. The key is how. That is your recovery rate because regardless of the duration of your attention span, if you, if you space out for a few seconds, you come right back where you left off. If you space out for several minutes, you have to start all over again because your short term memory doesn't last that long. So the key is not how long your attention span, it's how rapidly you recover your next one. So you pay attention to something for seconds or minutes and then relax for a few seconds and then come back and then come back. Um, and then once you've taken in the information you want, the chapter you've read, or the lesson you've listened to, then what you do is you close your eyes and you take a deep breath and relax a bit and get the feeling. It's an emotional experience that you know that. Get the feeling like you've got that. That's mine. I own that. It's like processing information with a feeling of confidence like that's mine. I paid attention. I understood I got that. And then finally, Imagine yourself using the information. See see yourself telling somebody about it or you're a student taking a test on it or in the workplace utilizing it with employees. See, see yourself using the information. So when it comes time to remember it, it's already been remembered. The mind feels like I've remembered this already before. I know the route to take. I know the. Pathway to go to to get this information back to my consciousness. So it's sort of scan and then warm up the mind and then and then warm up the heart and then take in the information and then process it with confidence and then imagine using it, imagine successfully remembering and utilizing the information. That's the real key to learning. That's fantastic, Stephen it's it's so such a delight to talk with you. I've learned so much from this, and I'm sure our listeners have now do you have, are you booked out for visage talks and business talks for quite a while, or how would someone get in touch with you if they wanted to have you come talk to their group? Yeah, essentially all of 2015's already booked. I mean, I might be able to make space for one or two more, but pretty much I've got everything I need. I'm sort of semi retired. I don't really need the money anymore. I just love the work. So, so yeah, I've got about, I usually work like 1 week out of the month. I go out to the mainland for 4 or 5 business talks and then come back for a few weeks. So there, you know, I have a lot of time off, but, but there's always room for 1 or 2 more and. And then 2016's not booked yet, so there's always that as well. They can get a hold of me at info@focusedfashion.com or if it's Visage can then get hold of me through Visage, and again they can get the book Focused Fashion on Amazon or I actually have a website called Focus PassionThebook.com where they can get it there as well. Focuspassionthebook.com. So listeners, be sure to look that up. Great information and A tremendous, tremendous asset for you to learn about getting passionate, meeting focus and passion, creating mindfulness and, and really taking charge of this next phase of your next life. So Stephen, thanks very much for joining us, real pleasure and I look forward to the next time we speak. Great, might be a pleasure. Aloha from Maui. Aloha. We'll be right back after this, so please stay tuned and uh and hang on there with us. We'll be back with another guest. Just thinking about what will happen to your business if you're gone keep you awake at night? Will you get the price you need from your business to carry you through retirement? The BEI Network of Exit Planning Professions is the world's leading advisor network with the power to help business owners transition out of business on their own timeline and terms. Ask your most trusted advisor to create a BEI plan for you, or visit us at exitplanning.com. That's exitplanning.com. You're listening to Exit Coachradio.com, the information station for age 50 plus business owners, where we're interviewing top advisors for their best tips, ideas, and precautions so you can be well planned. We upload new one minute tips every day. Exitcoachradio.com. Come listen for a minute. Thank you for listening to Exit Coach Radio. 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