[Music] when they asked me to come up and share something new with you guys I thought what I would do is share something I've been working on for a long time and I want to share a talk with you that I believe that you will remember forever I know that seems like a a pretty big claim but it's I think it's really foundational stuff and that is something that I've been developing called the hindsight window and the hindsight window is the window of time between an event which you perceive to be bad at the time
and the time sometime in the future that you see it as a symphony you see it as something that was meant to be you see it as something you're grateful for so you got fired and you were angry and then later you go of course that was meant to happen right how many of you have had this experience okay we call that the hindsight window and here's kind of my general idea it strikes me that the longer your hindsight window the less you are happy and the shorter your hindsight window the happier you'll be does
this make sense so my father for example very often has a long hindsight window on stuff that happened to him 30 years ago the window is still open and so that stuff can come up for him right and and and so if you have this long hindsight window then it's harder to achieve present day happiness and if you can have a short hindsight window then you can have more in fact here's another formula for you emotion here's an emotional formula for you resentment regret in the past equals fear in the future however much resentment and
and and and regret you have about your past will will show up for you as fear of your future but the opposite of this is however much gratitude you have for your past will show up as faith in your future and so we need to clean up our past so that we can look out into the future because by the way if you're hanging on to some not of certainty about your future that everything you want to do is going to work out the way you want to do it Jim Ron said it best if
you picked up a book and you read chapter one and everything was all right and then you picked up the book and read chapter 2 and everything was all right you wouldn't read chapter 3 you picked up the book for drama you came into this living here for drama he just did and so so what we want to do is figure out how do we ride that drama best how do we learn from it and grow from it best so there's the past present and the future and if you think about it the past the
present or the future which one do you think's easiest to clean up which one is hardest how about actually it's the present and I I'm going to I'm going to kind of give you an example of this you see when you know something's going to be traumatic in the future you can solve it beforehand I used to do road rage does anybody do road rage you little road rage here and there here's me doing road rage I got my new little convertible I was driving along in London on a beautiful sunny day is anybody here
from England you probably remember remember that day and so I'm so so I'm sitting in my little convertible and I just bought it and I'm so proud of myself in this big for those of you who are in England maybe Australia you guys know white van man for those of you who don't know white van man is a neanderthal he's like 99% meanderthal and and he drives a big van and it has no company names on it and so he drives around obnoxiously and there's hundreds and thousands of him and white van man pulls up
beside me and I'm in my little convertible and I'm and I can feel him staring at me I can feel him staring at me and I know he wants me to look at him and then when I look at him he's going to say what are you what's he gonna say what are you looking at he's just He's a Bully and so he want I'm not going to do it I'm having fun I got the music I'm not what the hell am I doing I look and true to form he knows his lines he goes
what are you looking at and at this point I'm like I don't want to say anything a red light I'm trapped here I don't want to say but my mouth has other plans my mouth says the ugliest bugger I've seen all day what are you doing assist suicide by mouth this guy by the way his head was this wide his mother didn't give birth to him she found him in a glacier and thw him I like he's a huge guy I am terrified I have adrenaline coursing through me and he he sucks his head in
through the window to talk to his brother for a second and then he sticks his head back up out the window to talk to me now I can't do Cockney so I'm going to do Southern American he says to me I bet your daddy probably bought you that car and I'm I'm going I bet your brother or he says I'm sorry he says my brother says your daddy probably bought you that car and I said I'll bet your brother is your daddy the light turns green and I'm gone right gone and it's funny but I
felt like crap all day the adrenaline from the fear of it you know and a couple of weeks later I'm driving my friend's BMW Z8 for those of you who don't know the zed8 that's what happens when you mate a Harley-Davidson with a Ferrari it's it's a really fun car to drive with all the rumble and I'm driving this car and I'm in Vancouver I pull up to a red light and I suddenly realize I'm in the wrong lane I pull into the wrong lane and I'm kind of straddling these lanes and a bus pulls
up beside me and four cute girls come walking down the sidewalk and they cross the road in front of me and they must have timed this cuz all four of them go nice car dude and and I'm like sitting there going that's right cuz when you're in your friend's car and somebody says nice car dude it's your car right and I'm in there and and then the bus driver he's over here and he goes too bad he can't drive and then I'm like yeah well if I could drive any better I'd be a bus driver
only I didn't say it cuz it's funny as hell and a lot of our humor unfortunately in the western world is funny at somebody else's expense and had thy said that to him who knows but it could have been Soul destroying condescending and and and I didn't say it and the reason I didn't say it is I stopped doing road rage and the reason I stopped doing road rage is I figured out life hacks and the life hack was very simple I lived in England England is all about football and so I took a red
and a yellow card and I put them in my visor and I drove around realizing I was no longer going to do road rage I wasn't going to do that anymore I was going to become the traffic referee that's my new plan the traffic referee and so what did I do I I I would drive around and look for incidents and the funny thing as soon as I had the red and the yellow card up there nobody cut me off anymore it was the weirdest thing and then finally one day this guy cuts me off
and I'm like red or yellow and I'm like ah let it go let the game go on I could never have let it go before no I had to let him know he was wrong I him know that he needed he needed to say sorry and you know and by the way you can try every finger gesture in the world and every arm gesture in the world does anybody ever say sorry no they don't say sorry but I then one day I'm driving along and a guy does a U-turn right in front of me right
in front of me 30 mph 50k does a U-turn right in front of me but there's no there's no space in the other lane so he ends up stopping in front of me and I end up having to slam on my brakes is this a red or a yellow C defense it's a red carard defense grabbed the red card I had my convertible set up high red card he busted out laughing he knew he was wrong everyone else busted out laughing and then he apologized to me for the first time ever I'd ever seen anybody
apologize in traffic like that he did and what happened is is that my whole day was improved his whole day was improved and all the people who watched their day was improved I had life hacked Road ra road rage so we can we can do that we can clean up our past before it happens we can stop that stuff when we know when we know we have a habit we can figure out the hack and break it but what do we do when it's in the moment moment or what do we do when it was
in the past you know so I was working with this woman she had self-esteem issues the reason she had self-esteem issues that her mother had abandoned her when she was three that's by the way not the reason she had self-esteem issues it's the triggering event the reason is because some meaning she assessed when she was three Because by the way when you're three and you create meanings like we saw in the talk earlier today you set up your rules for life by the time you're nine when you create a meaning at the age of five
about what's going on around you how much life experience did you have none no not even five because your cognitive memory kicks in at three you've been a lot you've been a human for about 20 I mean in in mental cognitive terms for about 24 months then something happens and you go oh that means that for the rest of my life that's what happens right and so this woman what meanings did she create my mother left because I'm not worthy I'm not capable of being loved I'm not a valuable human being does this sound familiar
to anybody and so I asked her to go into the memory and tell me what happened she got so upset she's in there she's like I was on the bed and I was crying and my mom was packing up and she was crying and then she left and I cried even more and it was awful and she descended right into it and I said okay now stop come back to me I said now and she used to be a professional sports person so I said here's what I'd like you to do I'd like you to
give me the playby playay and the color right the play-by-play is what's happening in the field and the color is the background you know well Jim they're moving down the field well that's the fourth time he's moved down the field are you with me so I said I want you to give me the play-by-play and the color of what's going in the room so step out of the memory and she goes oh okay she goes well there's a baby sitting on the bed Jim and uh the mother's packing up her clothes over here they're both
crying a lot why are they crying I said well the background here is she's leaving and the baby knows she's leaving and everybody's upset by that and I said and why is she leaving she's leaving because she's sick she said she's leaving because only earlier that week she had gone shopping and forgotten the baby in the house for 4 hours on its own and she realized she was sick and she loved the baby so much she was doing the only thing that she could do to keep the baby safe and that was to leave and
as soon as she said those words she burst into tears and she started crying because she had just cleaned up the past it is never too late to Happ have a happy childhood we just have to go back and remember it differently we have to go back and remember the truth of what happened not the truth of what we believed happened at the time does this make sense okay so now it's fine we know how to do it in the future we know how to clean up the past the toughest one is the present isn't
it you're fired handle it right that moment how about right so I'm going to give you an example of how I handled it in the present how many of you familiar with Victor Frankl if you are not please read man search for meaning I read the book twice I read the book every two years it's a hard book to read Victor Frankl was a Jewish psychotherapist dealing with what he called logo therapy which was meaning based therapy he basically believed that if you could have somebody assess the correct meaning for an event they could clean
anything up and he had finished finished his book and he had his manuscript on his hand and then he found himself on a train to aitz and his life as he knew it was over and in that moment he thought you know what I have an opportunity here I have an opportunity to prove my life's work by going to the concentration camps and his book is fascinating it's difficult to read so the way I read it by the way this is my formula if you want to read it the way I read it you get
it as an Audi book and you go to Whistler BC although any ski hill will work you read the book as an audio book on the chairlift going up and then you listen to Leed Zeppelin Going Down it works very nicely now I've been working on this book The hindsight window and and one day my wife and I arrived home we've been on the road for six months six months we had not been home we had everything we owned pretty much of value with us all the computers I had just been in the bush with
a hodza Bushman for a for a week with with all original footage that was not yet on the cloud I had all original photography from some time that I spent with wild chimpanzees in Mahal we had $45,000 worth of stuff with us now now the reason I know that is because soon as we arrived home somebody stole all of it passports money cameras everything gone we went in shopping we left the driver to take care of the car and instead of taking care of the car he texted his friends and he told them to come
and clear out the car six months on the road giving six months on the road working with people six months on the road of creating all kinds of Miracles around the world and this is our repayment that's how I'm feeling right and so here's what what going on you I open the back of the truck this stuff's gone I am heartbroken it's gone first there's denial oh he moved it he must have moved the stuff then there's reality he didn't move it now we we've heard a few people today talk about changing your eyes to
change your stress levels one of the first things you do when you become afraid is you look intently at stuff and focus if you are afraid of public speaking sometimes it's because you're focusing rather than having a cast out view of the entire audience when you open your eyes into a relaxed State you become more relaxed in that moment it's difficult to do that because this stuff's missing and you're looking for Clues and I'm angry and I'm frustrated and I'm pissed off it's all gone and my wife crying her eyes out that pissed me off
now I'm angry but is anger going to help no anger is not going to help at all the next two weeks of our life are ruined I'm angry I've got adrenaline coursing through my system she's crying and I have to ask myself is anger helping and I realized it isn't and I thought to myself okay but what would help and I said calm but calm was not available to me it was not Avail it was not an available emotion in the App Store couldn't get it and so I started asking a new question I asked
I suddenly realized the Victor Frankle thing if he's on a train with his book about meaning and he's on his way to aitz and he can reconcile with that surely I can reconcile with this and so I started thinking to myself all right I have actually zero regret I have I have I I I have no regrets no anger no resentments about my past none and I had a tough childhood I I had to call the police once to break up a fight between my mom and my dad over a knife you know I had
a tough childhood I'm grateful for it I was homeless at 15 years old in Edmonton Alberta in the winter I would like to tell you that that means minus 40 and for those of you who are Americans it's the same minus 40 isus 40 in both it's cold but I don't have any anger or resentment about that so I looked at this event and I thought well you know what I know that one day I'm going to feel grateful for this one day I am why might I why might I one day be grateful for
this event why might I and I started thinking okay well can't come up with anything no come on why might you be grateful for this one day well to be fair you and Elise could use two weeks without work distraction what have you so without laptops you're going to have two weeks of nothing so you're going to have a lot of time together I thought that's pretty cool that's pretty cool and also my phone was gone and I'd been trying I'd been thinking about living without a phone which by the way as a result of
this I ended up living without a cell phone for 6 and a half months wrote an 880,000 word book and had the single most six Monon productive six months of my life that's a whole another talk for another day six and a half months without a phone and the only reason I bought one is my wife got pregnant then I had to have a phone fair enough so I started thinking okay then I'm going to try my no phone experiment I don't have a laptop plus I told my wife when I sold my last business
that we're going to take her on this huge shopping spree I told her $115,000 of anything you want clothes all of it just whatever you want she hates shopping for clothes we've never done it now she has no choice plus she has a three and a halfy Old Mac and I'm her IT director which means I'm the one fixing everything all the time I find and she won't let me buy her new Mac now I get to buy her new Mac hey while I'm at it I get to buy myself a new Mac I am
not kidding you I'm still standing there with the door open looking at the empty truck and I started feeling good about this theft and I had a longer list I I kept coming up with reasons that this theft was a massive gift in my life and I'm like this is incredible and I turn around I put my hand on my wife's shoulders and Men by the way if you would like to know what women really want to know from you what they really want to know above all is that everything is going to be okay
and so I turned and I put my hands on her shoulders and I looked her deep in the eyes and I said listen I'm telling you everything is going to be okay and she looks at me and she goes how and I said this is going to going to be hard for you to understand at this moment because you have all the adrenaline in your system but I'm telling you look at me right now do I look angry she goes no do I look upset no I'm excited she goes you're excited why and I go
laptops this that plus you and I are going to have two weeks with no electronic distractions we're going to have a ton of fun we're going to have great sex walks on the beach it's going to be the best two weeks of Our Lives she's like cool and I want to tell you something it was the next two weeks were fabulous and it would put me in a position where by the way I was the one editing all the surveillance video for the police I was directing the investigation because when you are rational people listen
to you when you're all anger based they don't so here's how it works event happens you figure out the emotion you're having and you decide is it serving you then you say what emotion would be serving me better and then you ask yourself what would have to happen for me to find gratitude right now the more gratitude you can find for your past the more faith you will have in your future thank you guys so very much it's been an honor to preg to be here with you thank you thank you all thank you
