As we move through life, everyone has periods where they may not have a complete understanding or awareness of where they are going or what they want to do. Everyone also has instances in their past, whether in their personal or professional lives, where they look back and wish they had done something different or wish they knew what they know now so they could have made a better decision that would have made their lives easier.
In this episode of Brothers, Battles and Bounty, the Gfesser brothers discuss how we can look back at experiences in our past and learn from them to make better decisions that can lead to future success. This approach is valuable for improving our personal and professional lives and entrepreneurs especially can benefit from taking this approach with their business to turn past mistakes into a catalyst for a better future.
You can watch the full episode here:
Treat Your Past as Research and Development
Stefan starts by making an interesting point about how he looks at his past. He views his past as the research and development of his life, in which all of the experiences he’s had and the situations he’s gone through are viewed as the research and development for his future. While he points out that it is common for people to allow things from their past to hold them back, he believes that this can be damaging as it often prevents people from progressing in the future.
The future is a unique part of our lives because unlike the past and present, it is wide open with a range of possibilities. Stefan explains that he cannot change the past but recognizes that it made him who he is, and that if he has a vision for what he wants to create in the future, he can draw from his past to do what gets him the closest to realizing this vision and surround himself with future thinking people who are not limiting themselves by what happened in the past.
Write Down Your Goals
Andreas sums up this point by recognizing that treating your past like research and development and applying what you have learned can help you take a more resourceful approach to the future. Martin adds that no matter what we plan for our future, you never know what life will throw at you that will make you have to change direction. He suggests writing down ten things you want for your future, whether you can control them or not, and decide on the one thing on that list that is the most important. Then throw out the rest of the list and start writing down what you need to do to accomplish your main goal for the future.
Anton expresses his initial skepticism at the idea of writing down goals, once believing that it wouldn’t make much of a difference. However, he followed Andreas’s suggestion to write down his goals and then check on them in six months or a year. When he went back to look at the goals he wrote down, he was amazed to find that many of the goals on his list were accomplished. He believes that writing down his goals ingrained them in his subconscious which is why he was able to accomplish these goals even though he rarely looked at his written list over this time period. At the very least, writing down your goals can provide a guide that can help you navigate unforeseen things that may come up in your life.
Approach with Intention and Collaboration
Stefan uses the budgeting process as an example of how to approach a future full of unknowns. When it comes to budgeting, one of the unknowns is the revenue a business will make over the next year. Stefan explains that when planning the budget for the future, he approaches the process with intention of where you want to see it go and acknowledges that it takes a collaborative effort from those who are going to be a part of this future. Stefan may use historical data to come up with his forecast for the budget which he presents to the team, and each member of the team then gives their input on what they see for the forecast. Through this collaboration, they can form a clearer picture of what the future might be that they will all be a part of.
Andreas makes an interesting point about while we may try to move into the future with intention, we often don’t experience things in life intentionally. He explains that we are exposed to a stimulus that we must interpret and react to in the moment, and we remember the lesson from the experience for future reference. When we experience similar situations in the future, our minds automatically go to our past experiences to determine how to react.
Andreas tries to break this cycle by reacting to the new experience as if he has never experienced a situation like this before so he can have a new reaction. He further explains that he realizes that the journey towards your goals is more enriching and exciting than achieving the goal and by taking this approach of reacting to similar situations in a new way, it enriches the journey instead of repeating what happened before.
The reason Andreas takes this approach to the future is because he wants to be a better version of himself. He wants to look back at himself a year prior and not recognize who he was, which reinforces his own growth and development. Martin expands on this concept by explaining how it can be applied to a business. Businesses may come up with a vision of where they want to see themselves in ten years or fifteen years with the hope that when they reach that point, they can look back and see a version of their business they no longer recognize. Andreas drives this point home by saying that businesses cannot survive by doing the same thing year after year.
Focus on Your End Game
The Gfesser brothers also discuss how important it is to plan for the end game of your goals and where to go next after your goals are accomplished. Stefan explains that if you stop making plans for your future, you may find yourself in a position of not knowing what to do next once you accomplish the goals you have set for yourself or your business. Andreas then talks about the importance of setting lofty goals and that goals that may seem unachievable, such as increasing your business 10-fold or even 100-fold, are achievable because there are businesses that have accomplished this. He further explains that when a business has the right pieces in place, the only limit to how much they can grow and what they can achieve is in the perceived limitations in the mind.
Martin rounds out the discussion by acknowledging that having a clear vision for where you want to take your business in the future will help you determine the best plan and strategy to get there, whether your end game is to one day sell your business or pass it down to the next generation.
Andreas circles back to a point made earlier in the discussion about how many people base their future potential on their past experiences. However, he explains that people’s actions in the past were the result of limited thinking at that particular point in time. When considering what you have learned and how you have grown since, as well as the new capabilities offered by technology, Andreas concludes that where you take your future becomes a matter of choice.
If you want to see more of the Brothers, Battles & Bounty podcast with the Gfesser brothers, visit Trendler’s YouTube channel. You can watch the complete episode about shaping your future here: