Hey, it's marie forleo and you are watching marietv the place to be to create a business and life you love and you know
If you really want a business in life, you love my brilliant guest today has a new book that will help you create just that
Simon Sinek has a bold goal to help build a world in which the vast majority of people wake up every single day feeling inspired
Safe at work and fulfilled at the end of the day his first TED talk in
2009 rose to become one of the most watched TED talks of all time with over 43 million views and
subtitled in 48 languages
Simon is the New York Times bestselling author of start with why?
Leaders eat last together as better find your why and his latest book the infinite game, which is available now
Simon thank you so much for coming back on the show. It's nice to be back
Congratulations on the infinite game as I texted you I absolutely loved it. It's brilliant. I am curious
What was the inspiration to write this one?
So all of my work is semi autobiographical, you know
It's it's my own journey
start with why I was born out of the loss of my own passion for the work that I did and the
Rediscovery of it and I simply shared what worked for me
with my friends and my friends had me shared with their friends and before you know,
It it took on a life of its own and culminated in a book and a TED talk
Leaders eat last was born out of as my career started to
Grow, I started having trust issues with people simultaneously I spending time with folks the military and kept meeting people
Who would they trusted each other with their lives, you know, we we have colleagues and co-workers
They have brothers and sisters and I wanted what they had and I went to learn about them
Wanting what they had and realized it wasn't the people. It was the environment. It wasn't supposed to be a book
And this new book the infinite game
My entire life I've been
preaching a
version of work in which we
Or even just the way we live our lives in which we can wake up every morning inspired
We can feel safe at work and we can return home fulfilled at the end of the day and quite frankly it gets tiring when?
those in positions of authority or power or wealth
Keep telling me I'm naive or stupid or that I don't understand how business works and when I discovered this little book called
Finite and infinite games by James Carr see it completely
Should have it was a world is flat moment
I realized oh my god, the whole world is walking around thinking the world is flat and it's not it's round, you know
And I realized I'm not the naive one who doesn't understand how business works they are and it gave me this wonderful
Confidence that I am seeing the world through this infinite lens
And and so it ended up becoming another book. It's just the journey
So what I thought was interesting because I have read all of your books and I've really appreciated
And gotten so much benefit out of all of them when I was reading this one
I was like, oh, this is a new different version of Simon that I haven't recognized in his writing before in the tone
Manure always brilliant always so smart
There was an incisive 'no sand there was a bit of like a little fire and spunk. I was like this feels different
Did you notice that while you were writing it? Oh, yeah, actually to tone it down a bit
You know, I think
I think what's so different about this book compared to the others is that the first two books I was making a case I made
A case for this thing called the why and I made a case for this thing called a circle of safety. I made this case
For that trust is environmental here. I'm not making a case for the existence of the infinite game James Carr
See did that, you know, I explain the infinite game in the first couple pages and it's it's understood
Hey, but it raises this interesting point which is we live in a world in which we are players and infinite games
There's no such thing as winning marriage, you know, no nobody in the marriage is declared the winner
And there's no winning and friendship and there's no winning global politics and there's definitely no such thing as winning business
Right, but when we listen to the language of too many leaders
They talk about being number one beating the being the best or beating the competition, but there's no such thing
There's no such thing because we don't have an agreed-upon timeframe and we don't have agreed-upon metrics
We get to decide the time frames in the metrics, so there can't be winners
and so when we play with a finite mindset in the infinite game
there's a few very consistent and predictable things that happen the decline of trust the decline of
cooperation the decline of innovation and the eventual demise of the organization
so
The I wasn't trying to convince people to be of the infinite game it it simply answered the very obvious question
Okay, if we're players in the infinite game and my entire life
I've been taught to play the finite game and all of the pressures and standard business practices reinforce the finite game
Then how do we lead in the infinite game?
And that's what I wrote and it's it's not supposed to convince the people who think I'm naive or think. I'm stupid
I don't understand the business how business works
It's supposed to be a rallying cry for all of us who feel uncomfortable the way business is working yet
We keep our opinions to ourselves because there are people who were way more senior and way
Wealthier than we are so they must know something but it still feels uncomfortable
and so I wanted it to be I
Wanted it to be a rallying cry for all the people who just don't like the way it works
They can't put their finger on it. They don't have the words for it, but they know something's wrong
This can't be the way business should work
And it's also to help us recognize
who the finite players are because we have the right to know who is playing and
Using our lives and our livelihoods to manage their books
We have the right to know
and so it's it's it exists for two reasons one is to be a rallying cry for those who who think there's a
different or a better way and and a filter so that we can recognize who the finite players are so we can
Change our behavior, or at least keep our guard up
when we when we do business with them, yeah, I thought another
Kind of frame that was so interesting was just as a self-correcting mechanism for ourselves, you know
Because so much of society as you shared has kind of taught us
We're playing an infinite game
But we're really not and so if we find ourselves
Veering off into that realm or finding ourselves feeling uncomfortable or running our business ways. Like we must be the best
it's like
Oh
We can kind of do the check yourself before you wreck yourself thing and get back into another
Entire frame of seeing the world and of behaving I thought one of the stories that was so illustrative
And I was wondering if you could share it here was when you were speaking at an educational event
For Microsoft and then speaking at an educational event for Apple because it's so beautifully illustrated
This incredible contrast
I didn't know it at the time but in hindsight, I see the difference in mindsets and it's a
Basically, I spoken at an education summit for Microsoft and Apple a few months apart
And as I sat in the audience for the Microsoft event
The vast majority of the executives spent the vast majority of their presentations talking about how to beat Apple
At the Apple Summit a hundred percent of the executives spent 100 percent of their presentations
Talking about how to help teachers teach and how to help students learn one was obsessed with where they were going
The other one was obsessed with beating the competition
At the end of my Microsoft talk that gave me a gift. They gave me the news Zune when it was a thing. This was
Microsoft's response to the
IPod and this little piece of technology that they gave me was fantastic. I mean, it was really brilliant
It was beautifully designed. It worked flawlessly. The user interface was simple and intuitive. It was really well done
Anyway at the end of my Apple talk
I was sharing a taxi with a senior Apple executive and of course I couldn't help myself
I had to stir the pot and and I turned him and I said
you know Microsoft gave me their new Zune and
it is so much better than your iPod touch and he looks at me and he says I have no doubt and
the conversation was over and
basically, the infinite minded player understands that sometimes your product is better and sometimes their product is better and there's no such thing as
Best, you know, there's a head and behind and the goal is not to beat your competition
The goal is to last your competition and the only true competitor in the internet game is yourself
How do we make our products better this year than they were last year?
How do we make our culture stronger this year than it was last year. How do we
Improve the quality of our leadership training and make it better this year than it was last year
It's it's and we use we use the other players in the game as benchmarks for sure as worthy rivals
But um, but we're not out to beat them or compete against them
We're simply we're simply competing against ourselves, which is an entirely new way to understand our our place in the game
Feels so much more free feels healthier. It feels more exciting
When I was reading the book those were all of the emotions that filled me up when I was
Imagining into an infinite game and also
recognized in myself
where in the past like oh
Here's where I was playing a finite game. And here's why that felt really shitty
Here's why you know it and just going like wow, I could look at this wonderful framework again
Relationships like even outside of business obviously our careers and businesses where many of us spend the vast majority of our waking time
But you can see it everywhere and that's why I think this is just so useful because it's so brilliant
but we can use it in every facet of our existence you shared in the book when we play with an
Finite mindset in the infinite game. We will continue to make decisions that sabotage our own ambitions
Sure so you know every
Business has a vision. Hopefully it's a proper vision and not just some goal
You know to increase top-line revenues by X is not a vision
It's just a goal a vision is something distant and idealized and something that's ostensibly unachievable
But we devote our entire lives to working towards it to making progress towards it
and the problem is when we play within a
finite mindset we become so obsessed with the short-term and we become so obsessed with what everybody else is doing and we sometimes
Change the course of our own strategy
to respond
To what one of the other players has done
Sometimes getting angry when they have success
And it makes us really really
myopic in our view of of how to build a business and in the course of the time we will both
waste the will and resources that are required to stay in the game the resources because we're gonna spend money needlessly on things that don't
Matter and the will because it takes its toll on us and on the people who work with us
It's tiring to work with people like that. Yes, and good people leave
and so when you exhaust the will and resources of your own organization
by
necessarily you sabotage your own ambitions, you know, I I believe that that for the most part not always but for the most part
Bankruptcy is usually an act of suicide
It's an it's it's it's a it's a it's an inability to build structure
it's and an ability to think tournaments and an ability to gnaw to build teams and
For so many organizations, especially big ones success ones that go bankrupt
They love to blame the market or a disruption
But it was there an ability to to foresee that these things were going to happen because other people for soul
for example
Look at look at the struggles that the music industry is having these days
With the rise of the Internet and yet it was a computer company that invented iTunes. Why not the music industry?
It was Amazon that invented Amazon and the e-reader why not anyone from the publishing industry like they didn't even invent the Kindle, you know
Why is it that that Netflix showed up and how can the movie and television industry didn't invent Netflix and
it's because they were so busy protecting their existing business models that
They fail to see that the world was changing around them
it was a lack of foresight now, they're forced to change which is different that's defenses versus offensive a
fun little story
Is as Netflix was this little small company. It was experimenting with subscriptions
And you remember we used to get DVDs in the bath and we knew streaming was on its way
But the technology wasn't there quite yet
but they were preparing with this subscription model and
Blockbuster, which was the 800-pound gorilla if you wanted to rent a DVD in those days pretty much
We all went to Blockbuster. It was the only national chain of any worth
and
the CEO of
Blockbuster went to the board and said I think we really should
experiment and start looking to the subscription model and the board would not allow him to change the pricing models because the company made
12% of its revenues from late fees
Now blockbuster doesn't exist and Netflix
Basically dominates the industry
That's why I call it an act of suicide now
The people at blocks our blockbuster will say it was disruption in the internet, but it was their own foolishness and blinded and blindness
They can find it game playing a fighting game. Actually, they weren't blind. They were actually fully aware. They chose to ignore
they were playing a finite game that couldn't they couldn't bear the thought of letting go of 12% of revenues in the short term to
live on forever
So it cost them the whole company. I thought there was another brilliant descrip distinction
Excuse me between building a company for stability versus building a company for resilience
Yeah
isn't that you know because I struggled with this as I was writing, which is
Which is an infinite minded organization an infinite minded leaders there
They're more than stable and you because the word stability and stable is already used in business, you know
Is this a fast growth within a high-risk company or is this a more stable investment?
You know and stability is the ability to weather a storm
But the way you weather it is you come out basically looking the way you did when you went in
Yeah, that's stability
You know, there's a building there's a storm the building's still there resilience to me is something more profound
Which is the ability to adapt with change?
and and you may come out a completely different organization as a result of change and I think that
Adaptability is way more important in the infinite game because stability eventually runs out of steam
And we've seen stable companies go go belly-up all the time
Resilience is adaptability
One of the best examples I think is the company Victorinox. It's a you remember the Swiss Army knife
Yes, the this was the favorite gift with you know with with your company's logo on it at every single goodie bag for years
And
Something happened to their company, which was September 11th and literally overnight
We used to carry pocket knives in our pockets in our hand luggage overnight
They were banned and so almost instantaneously that entire business evaporated because nobody would give out a knife as a gift anymore
Why would we it even sounds ridiculous talking about it now? Yeah
and
The company was built for resilience. However, the company was built was the the the people who lead
Victorinox Victorinox are infinite minded and so in good times where most companies distribute all the wealth
They would save their money so that they had money to deal with hard times
They had plans in place for for for something that they couldn't predict and they laid off no one they loaned
Some of their employees to local other local businesses, but they stayed on their own payroll
Which was amazing
and they challenged their people to come up with a new way to
To leverage the the talents and gifts and brand strength that they have and to this day
we now
successfully they're very successful and we where
Victorinox watches and we carry Victoire nuts luggage and we've wear Victorinox clothes and they still have you know a
Much much much smaller percentage of their business in an Swiss Army knives
But they're a much bigger and more successful company
Whereas other companies would have hunkered down and tried to figure out new markets for Swiss Army knives and how do we change the Swiss?
Army knife and maybe we can make them dull for TSA and like all of these that's what they would have done
They would have tried to protect what they had Victorinox completely reinvented themselves
Which I think is such a such a great example of what resilience versus tbilisi
Looks like you share that any leader who wants to adopt an infinite mindset must follow five essential practices. I'd love to dive into
the idea of advancing a just cause
How do you define what you call a just cause?
so
a cause is so just
Just causes so just that we would be willing to sacrifice for it
It's something we believe in it is an idealized vision of the future that for all intents and purposes
We cannot achieve but we will devote our lives and our work to to help advance it. We see good examples of sacrifice
in organizations all the time where someone
Would turn down a better paying job offer because they want to stay here because they believe in this
Organization and they believe in the cause
Frequent business trips or working late hours, you know away from our families. We don't like these things
We'd prefer not to do these things, but we do them and they feel worth it
Like we feel like the sacrifice is worth it and if we're doing all of these things in it
It starts to really not feel worth it. Then I would start to question. What is the ambition of the organization?
And this goes and I I've I've talked about this in the past when we work hard for something
We don't believe in it's called stress. Yeah, when we work hard for something we do believe in it's called passion. Yes
It's nothing to do with how many hours we're working
It's whether to do we it's whether to do with whether we believe in the thing we're working to advance or not
so any organization or leader that has any ambition of
Playing with an infinite mindset they have to offer themselves and their people a cause so just that their people would want
To join I thought it was great too. You made the distinction around it's not something we oppose
It's something that we're moving towards they think there was it was so helpful in terms of languaging because you also emphasized
You know once you can identify it and articulate it write it down write it down
So I'm I want to talk just for a little bit about instead of you know
Fighting against poverty your example we fight for the right of every human to provide for their own family
Did you look at organizations or just in your work throughout these many many years of?
Encountering people who are like we're fighting against and you're like wait wait, maybe we can see this from a new frame
It's not inspiring to fight against something and it creates division and it creates an us-and-them and it creates us
You know it create even those who are nobly fighting
against poverty
all they're doing is reminding the people who don't have resources that they're poor like they keep telling them that they're poor as
opposed to saying
To fight for the right of every individual to provide for themselves and their families now
We're telling them you you're a you're just like us and you have opportunity. Yes, and
I'm for example, we talked about getting the unemployment numbers down. Nobody wants to work to get something down
We want to work to get some things up. Let's work to get the employment number up. Yeah, no way
We have ninety-six percent employment. Let's get it close to her closer to 100. Yeah, as opposed to we have four percent unemployment
Let's get it down to zero like nobody wants to work to eliminate things. We want to work to build things
Yes, you know it's it's a it's a human. It's a it's a basic human instinct to like to build
Yes, you know and to look at the fruits of our labor and look up and say look what we built, you know
Nobody wants to look at the destruction that they they they they they brought so
Yeah, I we I think one of the one of the ways in which we frame our just causes and must be affirmative
It must be for something rather than against something
I also love to the qualities of a just cause again
I just kind of highlighted some of my favorite pieces
must paint a specific tangible picture of the kind of impact we would like to make or
Exactly what our better world will look like and you shared the example of sweet green. Mm-hmm
I loved it to inspire healthier communities by connecting people to real food like such a simple statement, but you get it
It's clear. You also share it and it has nothing and it has nothing to do with a salad bar. Yeah, that's true
That's very very true
What's very important about it just causes that idealized vision of the future
Does not include your product or your service your product and your service is the mechanism you use to advance the job
And you're not the only one you're just one of the players working to advance the cause, you know
Though we all have our own individual why our Y comes from our past. It's an origin story. It's our birthright
It's unique to us a just causes is shared and I think in this modern day in society
There's a lot of pressure put on especially young people to have a vision what's your vision it's unfair we're not all visionaries
We're not all Steve Jobs, you know, we don't we don't all have these big, you know, sort of Thomas Jefferson visions of the world
You know, we're not on Martin Luther King
But we can find a vision and that's what's important
which is we if
another leader
another organization has has
painted a picture of a world that
We want to live and we can say that's my vision we can make it our own and by the way
You can have multiple just causes you can have one for your family
You can have one for your work. You can have one for your church
You can like there's many you don't have to have one
You only have one why but you can have multiple just causes the Y comes from the past it tells us who we are
It's the foundation and the Just Cause tells us where we're going
so we it is it is our it is the responsibility of leaders and organizations to
Communicate there just cause and it is our responsibility to find one that inspires us that we want to help build. I
Loved some of the examples throughout the book one particular one
I'd love to highlight is
companies out there that we kind of all know playing the finite game versus one playing the infinite game and I loved the is it
Milan versus at the Milan and their epipen know yet versus Patagonia and don't buy this
Jacket we talked about that a little bit. Yeah
And I don't know if you did this in your other book Simon
Did you where you like calling people out companies out in the other books? Yeah, you were leaders elast. Yeah
I took a few people to test. Yeah, this one I was like, okay. Yeah. Yeah, I mean
These these organizations make us uncomfortable. Yeah, a Milan is a good example. Milan bought the
Rights to the brand EpiPen EpiPen has an almost
monopoly status in that in that
epinephrine sort of delivery system market
They've like 90 something percent market share that brand and they started steadily raising their prices
And remember it's a product that expires after a year
So if you don't use them, you still have to throw em out and buy new ones, right?
So they it's a good business model
You know that people have to throw out your product if they don't use it and buy another one
And and based on their own finite
Ambitions in other words the bonus structures that the board had offered the senior executives
They just started raising the prices for their own benefit and we expect companies to raise prices a little bit
I don't think anybody's offended by that but they started raising the prices. It's
ridiculous to such ridiculous levels on such a faster pace
hundreds of percents
over the course of just a few years that had actually
Ended up getting them dragged in front of Congress to account and this is what I mean. They did nothing illegal
There's nothing illegal about a company having the right to price their own product, but it's unethical
Right that people who rely on an EpiPen
And the price keep going higher and higher and higher and higher and they have to buy a new one
If you kid has a peanut allergy, you know, you basically don't have a choice
It's just highly unethical it may in other words. It makes us uncomfortable and
There's a concept in psychology called ethical fading
and ethical fading is when
People make unethical decisions believing that they're well within the framework of their own
Ethical the other own ethics, no words. They don't think they've done anything wrong because we look at we say things like, you know
How do you wake up and look at yourself in the in the morning in the mirror?
like well just fine because that's what ethical fading does and
there's there's a few things at the ethical fading is a result of self-deception and
There are many things that we do in business that contribute to self-deception and a finite mindset
An organization that operates with a finite mindset is more likely to go through these things
We're an organization that operates with an infinite mindset is less likely to go through through these things. It's it's infinite mindset
It's bit of an insurance policy against ethical fading so some of those
delusions some of those self-deceptions
include things like the overuse of
Of euphemisms, right? So for example
We would never spy on our customers, but we do data mining
Right. It's like torture is something that makes America very uncomfortable but enhanced interrogation that what we need to do to fight terrorism, you know
We never talk about the damage that our manufacturing processes causes the people in our factories and the communities in which those factories exist
We just like to manage the externalities and we create language
that helps us stay just a little bit distant softeners softeners right makes us feel okay, because nobody wants to talk about
the cancerous ingredients that we talk we talk about them in terms of other ways, you know, and so that happens then there's
The old-fashioned slippery slope, you know
Somebody does it a little bit and he did a little more
That's exactly what happened at Milan
which is they did it a little bit they got away with it and a little bit that all of a sudden the speed and
the pace and you started to
expedite
It got faster and faster
And then there's the old rationalization, you know human beings are gifted with the ability to rationalize
Everybody else is doing it. It's just the way the market works
Legal, it's legal didn't do anything illegal
It's what my boss wants. I mean I got to put food on the table
What choice do I have you know?
and we say these things to ourselves to
To help us get okay with the fact that we're doing things that we kind of deep down
No, it was probably unethical right but if you put all these things together you get full-blown ethical fading. We're an entire organization
Happily does things and we saw it happen in 2008. Well, it was a man-made stock market crash a man-made recession
that was basically brought on by very very broken cultures that
practiced that ethical fading
And to this day don't know that they did anything wrong
Because they all say the same thing I didn't do anything illegal which is true but the law is a very low standard
Yeah, you know
Most ethical violations are legal, you know, however you compared it to Patagonia
Patagonia because of their infinite mindset, they're brutally honest they don't use euphemisms
They talk about the actual damage that their products do in their manufacture and it makes them feel guilty and they work very hard
To work around it and have recycling programs and they're there they go deeper than most organizations
To the manufacturing process to make sure that there's ethical behavior not just from the manufacturing
But either from the the the the sourcing of the material which most companies don't go that deep
They actually took out a serious ad campaign
I think some skeptics viewed it as a stunt but it was serious where they took their most popular jacket and said don't buy this
Basically the same don't bite unless you absolutely need it because we don't need more excess in the market
But if you're gonna buy it, thank you and when you're done with it, we'll take it back and recycle it
I mean there was a whole system
and
Infinite minded organizations ethical organizations still have ethical lapses. Of course, they do. We're human. We all do things that are unethical
Yes
The difference is they either take accountability when it happens or if somebody raises their hand and proposes something unethical
There's a system that goes
We're not gonna do that. No matter how much money it's going to make us
There's systems in place to guard against it protected block-and-tackle. Yeah, it's not the absence of
Ethical lapses it's it's the system to to react to and guard against it ethical fading
They're the ethical lapses, but there's no system to guard against it. And so they compound a compound and compound especially when they're profitable
yes, and
Before you know it
You you you you you know, the exaggerated cases are the ones we know about like Milan like Wells Fargo opening up
Millions of fake bank accounts like we know the big ones
But the reality is there are many many organizations whose ethical lapses and ethical fading will never get to the point of such dramatic
Scandal but we all go to work every day like sort of this horrible
discomfort of the pressure that is on us to do things that we know is just not right like
telling if you're a if you're a
Financial adviser and you're recommending a product not because it's good for your client because you make a higher Commission on it
It's a little bit dirty it's not illegal, but it's happening and there won't be a scandal
Yeah, there won't be a scandal but it's gonna keep happening and happening. Oh, I gotta put food on the table. That's the system
That's how it works what it's not my choice. It's what my boss wants you get the point
Yeah, and so what I've learned is that the companies and the leaders that operate with an infinite mindset
It serves as an insurance policy against ethical fading which brings me to one of my other favorite pieces the courage to lead another
Practice and I loved the story you told about
CBS mmm and they stepped up and has a great story. It's a great story
So CBS has a mission statement on their website
Which is to protect the health something to the effect of protect the health of all of our customers, etc, etc. And they
They kept having this experience where they would in in in an attempt to advance their their mission
They would have meetings with doctors and health care professionals and hospitals to talk about how they could better partner
with them in this health care world and
Invariably at the end of the meeting someone would ask an uncomfortable question, which is if you care so much about health care
don't you guys sell cigarettes and
They didn't have an answer and so they made a unilateral decision to stop selling cigarettes in all of their stores
This is billions of dollars off the bottom line billions not billions with Abby. Yeah, right just poof, right?
so when they made the announcement
based on an ethical standard, of course Wall Street reacted negatively and
Wall Street commentators said now all those cigarette sales will go to other people and they won't get the benefit
and
Their stock price went down, right?
as always happens the stock price rebounded but
What ended up happening is not that those?
Cigarette sales just went to other stores. It's actually that in the places where CVS has existed
The number of people who stopped smoking actually went up in other words more people stopped smoking
Yes, and the irony is is their competitors Walgreens and Rite
Aid also have similar mission statements to protect the health blah blah blah blah blah
They still sell cigarettes and when questioned by the press about it when see you know, CBS took the lead
There one CEO said we continue to examine it wool
banks
And the other one said we are selling cigarettes within the bounds of law
Like yeah, we know that we know it's not illegal to sell cigarettes
It's just really weird that you would sell the cigarette next to the nicotine patch
the courage to lead is
It's you know everything that I write about in this book
You know leading with a just cause Bill interesting teams
Learning to see our competitors rather as worthy rivals building the capacity for existential flexibility, though
I simplify them and make them really easy to understand the book
the last chapter really is just a reminder that all these things are unbelievably difficult to do because to
build a business based on a cause is
Really hard. It's much easier to build a business based on short term goals
It just is and who cares if the if the company survives me or not. It's the next person's problem, right?
It's the next group of employees problems. Not my problem, but imagine if we build governments it that way
Imagine if we raised our children that way that just get them AIDS when they get through school and then who cares what happens when?
They get into life like we don't need to teach them how to treat other people like as long as they get A's
Who cares? I mean, it's the same mentality
We have to think about this stuff and so it's really really hard
especially when all of the pressure is both the incentive structures and the pressures from Wall Street if you work for a public company
Or the pressures we put on ourselves or the standard business practices of the day that we're way
We're taught how to build businesses blah blah blah everything. We're taught in business school
Everything is pushing us towards the finite
and so to say no I'm
Gonna resist and I'm gonna do the the right thing and I'm gonna take the infinite steps here take an infinite minded point of view
It takes a lot of courage and that
Courage I believe comes from being surrounded by people who believe what we believe I don't believe that
Then um, there's too few people have that the truth internal fortitude to do it because we doubt ourselves
Sometimes we do see the stock price go down. We do see revenues go down
We do see profit go down in the short term. We see these things happen
We can see the results of our actions that are seemingly detrimental to our organization
but only in the short term and it takes someone who loves us and cares about us and believes in our cause
to stand by us and say
Good nice job. I believe in you. Don't worry. We'll get through this together. I got your back
That's where our courage comes from
our courage comes from knowing that we're doing the right thing and
There's someone there to help me when I when I when I start being filled with self-doubt
Because I will be filled with self-doubt, especially when I start to see the numbers go down, you know
Blockbuster would have lost money if they went to a subscription model, but they would survive they maybe the Netflix today, you know
So it it is
Unbelievably unbelievably difficult to do the right thing. It's so worth it. So worth it worth everything
I'm wondering and I know this isn't your favorite thing to do
but
If you'd be willing to just read a few passages from the end I circled them and I love them
And I think it's the perfect way to end this beautiful conversation. Sure
Our lives are finite but life is infinite
We are the finite players in the infinite game of life
We come we go we're born we die and life still continues with us or without us
There are other players some of them are arrivals. We enjoy wins and suffer losses, but we can always keep playing tomorrow
until we run out of the ability to stay in the game and
No matter how much money we make no matter how much power we accumulate no matter how many promotions were given
None of us will ever be declared the winner of life in
Any other game we get two choices?
Though we do not get to choose the rules of the game
We do get to choose if we want to play and we do get to choose how we want to play
The game of life is a little different
however in this game
We only get one choice. We are born and we're players
The only choice we get is if we want to play with an infinite mindset or a finite mindset
If we choose to live our lives with a finite mindset
It means we make our primary purpose to get richer or promoted faster than others
To live our lives with an infinite mindset means that we are driven to advance a cause bigger than ourselves
We see those who share our vision as partners in the cause and we work to build trusting relationships
With them so that we may advance the common good together
We are grateful for this success. We enjoy and
As we advance we work to help those around us rise
To live our lives with an infinite mindset is to live a life of service
Amazing Simon, thank you so much for
This brilliant new book the infinite game
Which everyone here needs to get a copy of for yourself for your families and for your team?
It's awesome and thank you for coming so much for having me Maria. I really appreciate it
Now Simon, and I would love to hear from you. So got a two-parter today first
What is the Just Cause that you and your team are working to bring to life in our world and second was there a particular?
Insight or ah-ha that you're taking away from this conversation and most importantly
How can you turn that insight into actions starting right now?
Leave a comment below and let us know now as always the best conversations really do happen over at marieforleo.com
So head on over there and leave a comment now while you're there
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Stay on your game and keep going for your dreams because the world really does need that special gift that only you have
Thank you so much for watching and we'll catch you next time on marietv
Hey you having trouble bringing your dreams to life for guess what the problem, isn't you?
It's not that you're not hard-working or intelligent or deserving. It's that you haven't yet installed the one key belief that will change it all
Everything is figure out a ball. It's my new book. You can order it now at everything is figure out a bolt calm
When we work hard for something we don't believe in it's called stress
Yeah, when we work hard for something we do believe in it's called passion. Yes
It's nothing to do with how many hours we're working
It's whether to do we it's whether to do with whether we believe in the thing we're working to advance or not