In this episode, we discuss how we need to be like water and adapt to our environment to become a success and how using the OODA Loop can help us be adaptable.
Full Transcripts
Hi Everyone, welcome to the You’re Daily Cup of Joe Podcast, with your host Joe Bautista. In this podcast, my goal is to give you quick lessons that you can reflect on in your journal so you can grow yourself physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually and have a better career, better relationships, and better personal finances while you enjoy your morning cup of coffee.
I’m also the author of the book “More You Know, More You Grow: How to Get Better Every Day”. In this book I wrote down over 30 tips to help you grow in those four cornerstones. I’m also the founder of Grow With Joe, where I combine self-development coaching and financial planning for Latino Professionals.
At the end of today’s podcast episode, I’m going to give you a prompt question to reflect on in your journal. The idea is to take one to five minutes to reflect on today’s lesson and write a minimum of one paragraph on how you can apply the lesson in your life. You can use an actual journal, a word document like on Google Drive, or your note-taking app like Evernote. The idea is that you’re actually thinking about how to process the information to help you improve your life.
In today’s episode, we’re are going to talk about how we need to empty our mind, be formless, shapeless – like water. This is a Bruce Lee quote that is about being adaptable to your environment. If you look at water. It doesn’t fight its environment to maintain a certain shape. It remains shapeless and adapts its shape based on its environment.
There is no use for the water to argue what is fair or not, it just see what is available and then adapts to the situation. As I’m recording this, we are in the midst of a global pandemic with the coronavirus and a lot of people are trying to hold on to the old way of life. Not much you can do against a global pandemic except for sit inside and wait it out. And there have been many other pandemics and there will probably be a lot more.
The key thing what we have to do is stay calm and be adaptable. I’m so glad I’ve been working on myself physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually because it caused me to be ready for moments like this. One book that I read this year was a biography of John Boyd, who was an Air Force Colonel that changed the way Marines fought with his OODA Loop.
To help you stay formless like water, this is something that can help a lot. The OODA Loop is based on who can process information the fastest and take advantage of the current environment while other people are still confused on what to do.
OODA stands for observe, orientate, decide, act. So you observe what is currently going on, orientate where you filter information and get a basis for what you need to do, decide is where you finally make a decision, and act is where you finally do something. Then you repeat the process on new information.
Right now, while I’m stuck in quarantine, I can’t do a lot beside train. My observation is that I can’t go outside and drum up business, but I can focus on digital marketing and getting better at that. So I found a bunch of marketing courses that I could take, then I decided which ones I wanted to take, and now I’m acting on consuming this information.
You might have five different OODA Loops going on or more, it all depends on your environment and the information that is available. I can still take clients online and that’s what I’m focusing on doing. In this environment, the OODA loop is a good process to follow to help you become successful on the other end.
I have my goals in sight and I just use the OODA Loop to become adaptable like Bruce Lee wanted. I think a poor strategy during this time is take it easy and wait for things to go back to normal. We should have contingency plans for when things like this happen. But we don’t know what we don’t know, and I lived through the financial crisis so I’ve been working creating a life what will make me recession-proof. Right now, I keep my expenses really low and I live in Colombia where health care costs are dramatically lower than the US. I don’t have kids or a spouse, so that makes things easier as well. But if I did have these things, I would think of a plan to help us during these times by being adaptable.
There are also opportunities to take advantage of this crisis. This is where being adaptable and following the OODA comes in handy. I just read an article today that says digital ads are on sale because travel companies and similar cyclical companies are not advertising as much. Because I’m observing my environment, I’ve been testing Facebook Ads to see how that is doing. I spent $10 to reach about 800 people and I feel that’s pretty good. So my OODA Loop is telling me that I need to do more digital marketing right now and that’s what I’m doing.
I’m adapting to my environment and I’ll see where it takes me during this time. Usually I would market myself by going to networking events and other similar stuff in person but the times have changed and people still need my services. So I’m going to learn the new things that will make me successful. It goes back to that Charles Darwin quote, “It’s not the strongest that survive, it’s the one that is the most adaptable.” So we need to be reminded of these quotes by Bruce Lee because it can give the right perspective during times with great uncertainty. Then we are able to make better decisions to help us be the person we want to be.
Plenty of things have gone wrong for me over the past couple of months from not having internet for a couple of days and interrupting business and having a syncing issue that was resolved in two weeks that also slowed me down, I just said, ok this is what is happening, what else can do with my time. With some of that time, I spent learning, working on other things, and relaxing. Life and time are going to move on with me but I don’t want to be dragged by them, I rather have some type of control over the situation and the best way to do that in times like this is by having control over your thoughts and your attitude.
Something like the covid-19 is going to happen again. The question is, are you adaptable enough to handle the next moment of uncertainty?
That’s it for today’s episode, to summarize it, empty your mind, be formless, shapeless – like water as Bruce Lee said. So empty your mind of those thoughts that says this is crazy or things or unfair. Use the OODA Loop to help you decide which direction you need to go and then adapt to your environment so that you can come out of this success. So observe what is going on, then without bias, try to orientate which direction you should go in, then decide which direction you need to go in and then finally act on it. Analysis paralysis can be a real thing so just choose one thing and then if that’s the wrong decision, then choose another thing. Just make sure that if you’re wrong, it won’t be fatal so reach out to an expert from time to time to see if your decision is the correct one if you feel too uncertain. Whoever can do the OODA Loop and not let their minds affect their adaptability in this environment will come out ahead.
So in your journal, ask yourself, are you letting your mind race too much now? How can you use your current environment to help you make a better decision for yourself? I find that the most useful thing right now is to observe what is going and have an understanding of how economics and human behavior work. So take some time to consume some wisdom so you can make a better decision and just keep running the OODA Loop.
Thanks for listening today! To get a free copy of my book “More You Know, More You Grow: How to get better every day” just go to my website growwithjoe.me/book and just pay for shipping and handling.
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Thanks for joining me today and remember if you go with Joe, you can grow with Joe, cause Joe knows Dough.
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