How to Look at to the Other Side of the Bridge | DFS 419

Welcome to Destin for Success. I'm your

host Jennifer Takagi, and I want to like dive in a little

different direction, sort of the same direction as last week's

episode with Tom Rohrer. And this week it's had a look at the

other side of the bridge. Many many times I've heard this one

story, and I think it's fascinating. And the story goes

something like this: There is a bicycle competition, a race, and

all of the cyclists struggle with a bridge, and it's a wooden

bridge, and there are some gaps between the slats of wood, and

some cyclists make it to the other side. Some don't. They get

their wheels stuck in the middle, and then they fall off?

They crash. They wipe people out. All kinds of bad things

happen. And one year, one team had the biggest success that had

ever happened at that bridge. Every single one of them made it

to the other side safely, no problem. Not one cyclist got

stuck in that little gap. Now everybody wants to know how, and

so the coach was kind enough to share his information, and said

all the cyclists had been looking down, trying to avoid

falling in that gap, and he trained his cyclists to look

beyond the gap, look at the other side, and stay focused on

the other side, so that they get there safely, and it worked. And

I thought, man, this is the greatest story. I've told this

story. I've retold this story. I think it's so great. Focus on

what you want, not all the pitfalls along the way. And then

one day, I was like, I want to find that story. I search, I

search, I search. Much to my chagrin, dismay, maybe even a

hint of devastation. It never happened. It didn't happen. It's

just a really good story to press upon us the importance of

positive thinking and look for the positive outcome instead of

focusing on the negative. So today, as I was doing my

research for today's episode, I thought, well, I want to look at

another place. Like I've looked here, there, and everywhere, and

I haven't found it. So I'm gonna look a little further because

that story is too good not to be true. So I did find a true

story, and the true story goes back to World War II. I don't

know what kind of planes they were, but the pilots would focus

on their target, and they would start shooting at the target,

and they would keep going to the target and crash. So the Air

Force is like, "What is happening? Like they're hitting

their target. They are able to get some of the pieces back and

do research and analysis on it. And the planes are fine. The

pilots are were fine when they went into battle. Like what is

happening? And they finally found out the pilots were so

focused on their target that by the time they realized they got

their target and they needed to pull up, it was too late. There

wasn't enough space for them to be able to pull up and pull out

of it. So once this was discovered, and you can look

this story up for yourself if you really care and get the

words and terminology better than I have. But once they

figured that out, then they started training pilots to shoot

at the target with short bursts. Look out to the horizon and pull

up. What was happening is they were so incredibly focused on

the target that they lost awareness. They lost awareness

of what was around them, the spatial awareness. How much

space they had to pull up and get out of there, and so it was

like look beyond. So focus on the fact that there's a bridge

you're coming to, but then look beyond the bridge so that you

can get past it. What you focus on, you're going to hit. So at

the we have a little place at the lake, and my part of me, my

friends had little boys, and one little boy had a like a little

mini bike, and they were probably four or five years old,

and the yard was large, and they would drive that little mini

bike around the yard, and the dad kept saying to the his son's

friend, "Don't hit that tree! Don't hit that tree!

And the kid made it around like 10 times, and he never hit the

tree. And then the 11th time, he just went straight for it and

just hit that tree. Why? Because his brain kept saying, "Hit the

tree, hit the tree, hit the tree. Our brains struggle with

negative. You see a kid running around a swimming pool and you

scream, "Don't run! Don't run! and they run faster. Why? They

don't translate the negative. So what you need to do is tell the

kid what you want them to do: walk, stop. Right? I mean, slow

down is a little iffy because if they pause half a second, that's

a slow down. So, what what can you do to be positive? Right.

So, in just the overall scheme of things, I don't know if

you've heard the story. Another story I've heard for many years

is a little kid goes up to do show and tell and has his little

car and he's so excited about his car, and he gets to the

front of the room and the class laughs, and he creates a story

in his head that if I take a stage, people laugh at me. Well,

as it turns out, he's six or seven years old, and his pants

are unzipped, so all the kids in the class laugh. Right? It has

nothing to do with him. It has nothing to do with the car. It

has to do with the fact that his pants are unzipped and they're

six or seven years old, and they laugh. But he carries that story

throughout his life, that I'm not a public speaker, I can't

speak, I don't do well, and he carries that story, and carries

that story, and carries that story, and actually can cost him

a job promotion because he's not a good public speaker and hangs

on to that. One of the things I do when I work with clients is

identify the emotions that are tied to the event, and then we

quickly and easily clear those emotions. Once you separate the

emotions from the event, you can talk about the event all day

long, and you're not impacted. You're not impacted because why?

There's no emotion to it. I can tell stories with a whole lot of

emotion, but I'm not negatively impacted because I no longer

have the emotion to the story, so as we are trying to build

something in our business in our home lives, sometimes we come

become so focused on one little thing that we crash. We we just

we just crash. So sometimes we need to shift to what's next. If

the worst case scenario were to happen, what's your next step?

What are you gonna do? Then you get away from being in a passive

panic mode to an active navigation mode. So, what's the

worst that could happen? A friend of a friend was having a

hysterectomy recently, and she was scared to death because

every surgery she had ever had came with complications.

Different doctors, different scenarios, bad outcomes, and she

just kept focusing on the bad outcome and how scary this is.

And my friend goes, "Well, my friend Jennifer had a

hysterectomy, and the next day she was baking chocolate chip

cookies for her husband and her girlfriend, who came to help

take care of her, so like you could be fine. Now let's be

I was petrified of it. I had friends tell me how much

pain I was going to be in, how long was going to last, all this

crap. As it turns out, it was like I've done way harder things

that had a whole lot more pain. That had, but it was all we

could do to convince this woman that it didn't have to be

horrible. So what if it is the worst? What are you going to do?

You're going to take your pain pills. You're going to stay

down. You're going to treat your body gently as it heals and

recovers. Like what's your next step? What are you gonna do?

I've had both my knees replaced, and let me just tell you, on

both of them, I literally stayed in physical therapy until they

told me I couldn't come anymore. I wanted the best possible

outcome. My first one was easy breezy cover girl. You have no

idea how simple that was.

The second one, not so much. But there were all kinds of bizarre

little circumstances that were going on in the background that

I didn't realize at the time. But I still stayed in the

physical therapy. I still did all the things, and now it's

good. So the what's next was, I'm gonna stay in physical

therapy. I'm gonna keep doing energy healing work on it. I'm

gonna keep sending love and light to heal it and make it

better. That's what I'm gonna do. There's a really great

meditation on YouTube, and it's how to manifest anything you

want, and it's really good. You should find it. I might even

find it and put the link in the show notes because it's a really

good manifestation. And he says in this audio file, this

meditation manifestation. What is the next best step I can

take? What is the next best step I can take? So when you're

focusing on movement, momentum, positivity, next best, you

really reshape your brain and how it's thinking. Sometimes,

unfortunately, the worst does happen, and this is where you

have an opportunity to choose your response, how you're going

to act, how you're going to behave, how you're going to

respond. So there's a little thing called the 8020 focus, and

we usually focus 80% of our energy on all the things that

could go wrong and how bad this could be, but what we need to do

is spend 20% of our energy understanding the problem, where

the crack is, where that gap is, and what's going to happen if

you don't pull up on the gear shift or the altitude shift,

whatever it's called on an airplane, figure out what the

problems are, and then spend 80% of your energy looking for a

solution. That is steering your bicycle to the other side.

That's looking out to the horizon and pulling up on the on

the what is that thing called? You know that thing, you know

what I'm talking about, that would lift the plane up instead

of continuing to go down. So spend 20% of your time

identifying possible pitfalls, possible problems, and then 80%

of your time solving them. Who is it that says everything is

figureoutable. Is that Brene Brown? I don't know. Mel

Robbins, one of those brilliant women. Everything's

figureoutable. There's a solution somehow. Sometimes the

solution is I don't need to do this anymore. Sometimes that's

the solution. The next piece of that is broaden the lens. Look

around, like literally look around when stress physically

change your environment. Look out the window, map out an

alternative option, force your brain to get out of the tunnel

vision mode. In the first book I wrote, address the stress. Tips

and tricks to lead to success. One of the things was get out,

get outside of your environment. Go walk around the block. Go

walk around the building. Take a few minutes and do something

else. The other thing is don't eat your lunch at your desk. If

you're an entrepreneur and you work from home and you have a

home office and you're in there working all the time, when it

comes time to eat, get up and walk out. Go eat in the other

room. Move yourself away from the Situation again, movement,

momentum. Keep your focus on the other side of the bridge. Not

every little step along the way. You have to focus on those while

you're doing them, but don't get so caught up in them. You're not

moving forward. You don't have momentum. So keep looking at the

other side of the bridge. Keep your focus on the positive

outcome. What is it that you really want? And focus on the

outcome, and all the little steps are going to come to you.

What is my next best step to move forward on this? What do I

need to do to make this successful? I'm Jennifer Takagi

with Destin for Success. I look forward to connecting with you

soon. If you haven't taken mypurposequiz.com, now is the

time to take it, take the quiz, and then look for the link to

sign up for my workshop, Purpose Accelerated, and we're gonna do

a deeper dive into what your purpose archetype is and how to

incorporate that in your daily life, because you are destined

for more success than you ever dreamed possible.