What To Say Now: Episode 22
The Martial Arts Of Achievement

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Dan Stewart (00:15): Hey everybody. It's me, Dan Stewart. It is Tuesday, 2:00 PM Eastern time, which means it's time for another episode of What To Say Now. And today, guys, I'm super, super excited to be introducing this very first inaugural edition of something I've literally been working on since 1997. It's called, affectionately, the Martial Art of Achievement. And I can't wait to share it with you.

Dan Stewart (00:43): So, first thing I'm going to ask you to do is get in your time machine with me. Let's go way back to when in 1997 I was 27 years old. I was a new dad. I was trying to pull my life together and figure out what I wanted to achieve. I had my first corporate sales job, and I was getting crushed underneath the stress of working in a commission sales role. It was a very, very stressful time in my life.

Dan Stewart (01:11): And I had a client, someone I was serving, who had a martial arts studio. I went to sell him advertising and he ended up selling me. I came away an enrolled student in that martial arts class, and I learned some things that are still serving me today in 2020, all these years later.

Dan Stewart (01:35): I mean, so much has happened since then. I've gone on to have two more children. I've started seven companies since then. I've earned more money and lost more money and earned more money again than I ever thought I'd see in my life. And I know for certain that I've done that while enjoying a great sense of calm and confidence and certainty and happiness and groundedness that just wouldn't be present if I was never exposed to this knowledge.

Dan Stewart (02:03): So, today my job is to pay that forward. Because if you think about martial arts, right, we're fascinated with martial arts as a society. I mean, how many of us have watched Cobra Kai recently? Raise your hand if you've seen every episode of Cobra Kai? We have these people we're introduced to, these martial arts heroes that we follow through popular culture. And it's really interesting to think about the impact they have on us overall as a society.

Dan Stewart (02:37): I think about some of those moments in movies where you've got someone who's weak and powerless, like think of Daniel-san in the Karate Kid. He doesn't have the skills, he's being bullied, he can't stand up for himself. And then through applying knowledge from someone that's passed into him, he's able to create these outside results.

Dan Stewart (03:00): I see Lisa's here. I love that you're here, Lisa. It's so great to see you. I hope you and Thomas are doing well.

Dan Stewart (03:07): So, we've got Daniel-san. He's getting his butt kicked left, right, and center. Which is exactly what was happening to me in my career back in 1997. I couldn't figure it out. I kept hearing these little bits of advice and then a situation would come and it would just kick the absolute crap out of me. So, I knew there had to be a better way. What I didn't know and what I could only have discovered through the accident of enrolling in this class was that the philosophy of the best martial artist was exactly what I needed to transform my business career.

Dan Stewart (03:45): I'm going to share with you a few of these today, and then because this is a big subject, I'm starting a webinar series. Beginning next week, Tuesday on the 27th, I'll be going really deep here and I'd love it if you'd enroll. Just go to happygrasshopper.com/webinar. It's free. There's nothing to buy there. It's just a place where I get to pour back into you what was so gratefully poured into me.

Dan Stewart (04:09): We're going to start today with staying relatively high level. I think there's some myths that we got to get out of the way right in front. While it's true that to become a true master of martial arts requires years and years of dedication and study, that is not the case for what I'm going to show you. What I'm going to teach you is something that you can learn today and you can literally apply instantly. In fact, one of the tenets that I'll be teaching you will show you how you can accelerate those moments where you go from not knowing to knowing so that you can make progress towards your goals much more quickly.

Dan Stewart (04:46): To do this, to apply this in our lives, we need a framework. We can't just hope it occurs. We can't just take a little bit of knowledge and hope it works. We actually have to have a framework or a philosophy that we can follow to guide us. And I don't know of one better than was created by a Chinese philosopher Jun-fan, whom most of the world knows as Bruce Lee. He majored in philosophy, and he wrote these tenets that I'm going to teach you today. They will be very useful for you and your business.

Dan Stewart (05:24): The first thing I have to teach you for you to apply this is that the philosophy can form to fit any shape. You think about why Bruce Lee was successful as a martial artist. There was a lot that goes into that, but he drew from lots of different martial arts and styles. Wing Chun was the foundational martial art that he studied in his childhood, in his youth. But he went on to pull from boxing and fencing and savate and Muay Thai and FMA, Filipino martial arts. So many different styles and resources went into inform his martial [inaudible 00:06:05].

Dan Stewart (06:05): So, that's the first thing that we have to adopt is that there's no one way that's the right way. There's no one way as way. Rather than become rigid in conformity, rigid in saying, "This is the way we do things," we're going to allow ourselves to remain flexible and pliable so that we can adapt to the situation we're in. That's very important.

Dan Stewart (06:32): The second concept we need to embrace is that there's no limitation as our limitation. No limitation as limitation. What this means is, no matter where you are, we tend to set a sort of internal thermostat. You earn a certain amount of money, you go, "Okay, that's where I'm comfortable." You kind of cool it off a little bit. Well, what we want to do is say, "You know what? We don't have that internal thermostat any longer. We're willing to embrace having no limitation as our only limitation." This way we can blow the roof right off the place. We can set outrageous goals for ourselves.

Dan Stewart (07:11): The third that we're going to cover is, and this will sound familiar to some people who were raised in environments like I was, there's actually two here. The first is absorb what is useful. And the second is discard what is not. Stuff happens to us in our lives, and it's up to us what that stuff means. We can choose to absorb the useful parts and then discard the rest. We don't have to hang on to absolutely everything. Things either empower us or they hold us back. All communication either imprisons or empowers. We're going to focus on empowering ourselves as we go through this process together.

Dan Stewart (07:50): The fifth one. This is where we're going to talk about accelerating these moments of learning. Think about this for a moment. You might study something for years and not truly understand it. Do you remember being in a class in school, there's a tough concept, maybe it's trigonometry or calculus or chemistry, whatever it was, you struggled, you struggled, you struggled, and then all of a sudden there's a breakthrough, right? So, to advance more rapidly, what we need to do is limit the time that we spend struggling and increase the time we have making those breakthroughs. And to do that, we must discover the cause of our ignorance. So that's the fifth tenet here that we're going to talk about today. Discovering the cause of our ignorance.

Dan Stewart (08:45): To do that, we have to really be deliberate in our thinking. We can't think about it and then not resolve our thinking. We have to be deliberate. We have to think it through completely. Bruce Lee used to teach that there's a punch, there's a truth in a punch or a kick or a block. But what's half a punch? What's half a kick? It's nothing. So, just like you can't have a whole kick unless you complete it, you can't have a whole thought unless you complete it and you see it all the way through.

Dan Stewart (09:16): If you're going to accelerate these moments of breakthrough, you've got to get there by developing the discipline to think about something deliberately, really think it all the way through. You have to be brave enough to be honest with yourself. What is the thing that's preventing me from understanding this? What is it specifically that I don't understand? You want to narrow that range of thinking to as small a place where you're certain that you don't have the understanding. Then as soon as you identify it, it's amazing how quickly, rapidly that space fills in. So, that is the fifth one. Find the cause of our ignorance.

Dan Stewart (09:54): And number six is really my favorite. Number six is exactly what I'm doing today. Number six is we add what is specifically our own. What I'm doing here today is passing on some knowledge that is not original thinking on my part. And yet I'm adding to that original thinking things that are specifically my own. My experiences, my passion, my purpose, where I believe this can go for each of us that choose to apply it. The things that I'm super, super excited about in my life right now. There's so many things here that I could talk about. But this webinar, this process of sharing what has been so fundamental to my growth over the past 23 years, I get so lighted up by that. I just can't wait to share it with you.

Dan Stewart (10:46): So, let's recap here. We've got six tenets that we're going to cover. First is no way as way. We will not accept any way as the only way. We will find a way. We'll pull from different disciplines to empower the achievement of our goals. Second, no limitation as limitation. We're going to erase that internal thermostat. We're going to separate our thinking from what might be possible. We're going to truly embrace that there is no limitation, except for those limitations we apply to ourselves. Third, we're going to absorb what is useful. Well, five or four rather, discarding what is not. Five is where we're going to think more deliberately to find the cause of our ignorance. And number six of course is to add what is specifically our own.

Dan Stewart (11:39): If you find this at all fascinating, tell me about it in the chat. I definitely want to see it there. And I'd love to see you guys attend my webinar next week. I'll be emailing out some information. I'll be inviting people personally. If you're not on my list and you definitely want to be invited, go ahead and DM me or comment below with your email address and I'll make sure you're invited. That webinar, it's up right now. You can look at it at happygrasshopper.com/webinar.

Dan Stewart (12:09): And I will see you back here next week for episode number 23 of What To Say Now, Tuesday at 2:00 PM Eastern. Thanks, everybody. Have a great day. Bye now.