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Episode 911 · Jan 23, 2024

Reframe Your Past, Present and Future to Accelerate Growth

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George Wright III opens this episode of The Daily Mastermind with a Colin Powell quote that sets the tone perfectly: there are no secrets to success, only preparation, hard work, and learning from failure. But Wright goes further than motivational fundamentals. Drawing on ideas from Dr. Benjamin Hardy and Dan Sullivan, he lays out a practical mental framework for rewriting how you think about where you have been, where you are, and where you are going.

If you have ever felt trapped by your own history, or limited by what you think is currently possible, this framework is worth sitting with.

Why Your Past Is Not Fixed

Most people let their past define who they are in the present. You carry the weight of old failures, difficult relationships, and missed opportunities, and you use all of that as evidence for why your present self looks the way it does.

Wright flips this around. Conscious creators, the people experiencing rapid transformation, do not let the past define the present. They use the present moment to reframe the past.

"As you get further in life, you'll look back on the tapestry of your life, and you'll realize that events in your life take on a different meaning."

That perspective, borrowed from Dr. Wayne Dyer, is a powerful reminder that the meaning you assign to past events is not permanent. The divorce, the failed business, the fractured partnership: in the middle of those experiences they feel overwhelming. Looking back from a stronger, wiser vantage point, you often find they were the very things that pushed you forward. Your past is a draft, not a verdict.

How Your Future Self Should Shape the Present

Here is the second shift Wright introduces, and it is equally important. Most people use their present circumstances to project a version of the future. They assess their current skills, resources, and opportunities, then aim for something modestly bigger.

Truly transformative people reverse that sequence. They build a vivid, compelling vision of their best future self and let that vision govern what they do today.

"It's not about the number of years you have left in your life. It's about the amount of life that you live in your years."

This is not wishful thinking. It is a strategic move. When you anchor your daily choices to a 10x version of yourself rather than a 2x improvement on today, you naturally stop spending time on activities that will never get you there.

The 10x Framework: Why Bigger Goals Require Fewer Distractions

Wright leans on a concept from the Hardy-Sullivan book "10x Is Easier Than 2x": going 10x does not mean doing ten times more work. It means identifying the small number of actions that actually produce transformative results and cutting everything else.

When you set a truly large goal, 80 percent of what you are currently doing will not get you there. That clarity is the gift of thinking big. It forces you to identify the 20 percent that genuinely moves the needle and to find new pathways, new collaborators, and new skills that your current situation cannot yet show you.

Why the Mind That Got You Here Cannot Get You Further

One of Wright's most direct challenges is this: you cannot think your way out of your present moment using yesterday's logic. The mindset, habits, and strategies that brought you to where you are today are not sufficient to take you to the next level.

This is not criticism. It is a call to expand. It requires a leap of faith, a willingness to believe in a version of yourself that does not yet fully exist in the evidence of your daily life.

"You're not your past self."

Physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually, you are not who you were five years ago. The question is whether you are willing to stop thinking like that person.

Choosing What to Emphasize

Because the past and future are both drafts, constantly being rewritten by new perspectives and expanding knowledge, the present moment is where you hold the pen. You get to decide which experiences from your past you carry forward and which ones you let recede. You get to decide whether your future vision is modest or genuinely transformational.

This is not about pretending difficult things did not happen. It is about choosing emphasis. Are you going to build your identity around the hardest moments, or around what you learned from them? Are you going to build your future around what seems safe, or around what you are genuinely capable of?

Action Steps

  • Write a vivid description of your 10x future self: who you are, what you have built, and how you spend your time. Make it as concrete as possible.
  • Review your current weekly priorities and ask honestly which ones connect to that 10x vision. Eliminate or delegate the ones that do not.
  • Reframe one difficult past experience: write down what it actually taught you and how it contributed to who you are becoming.
  • Identify one new path, skill, or person (a "who" not a "how") that your 10x future requires and that you are not currently pursuing.
  • Ask yourself daily: am I acting from my future self today, or am I acting from the version of me that existed last year?

Commit to Your Future Self

The framework Wright describes is simple but demanding. It asks you to release the grip your past has on your identity, stop building futures that are just slight upgrades on the present, and step into a larger vision with enough conviction to let it shape your actions today.

It is never too late to start living the life you were meant to live. The only question is whether you are committed to your future self, or still operating from who you used to be.

READ THE FULL TRANSCRIPT

All right, welcome back to the Daily Mastermind. George Wright III with your daily dose of inspiration, motivation, and education. I hope you're having a great week. And if this is your first time listening to the Daily Mastermind, I hope you gain some thought-provoking ideas that are going to help you take your life to the next level. My whole goal, the whole reason I put the Daily Mastermind together, was to help you to create your best life, to really unleash the potential I know you have. So let's get you started with the quote of the day. The quote of the day is from Colin Powell, and it's, there are no secrets to success. It is the result of preparation, hard work, and learning from failure. Now I want you to take that quote, and I want you to remind yourself, these quotes, even though you might have heard of them before, are designed to get your mind shifting into a state of awareness and learning and growing. So remind yourself that there's no secret sauce. There's no silver bullet. It takes hard work. But one of the things I want to talk to you about today that is going to help the work and the results come even sooner, quicker, more rapid, is to understand how you frame your past, your present, and your future. So I want to talk to you about a concept that kind of stuck with me just recently. I was listening to Dr. Benjamin Hardy. And some of you have heard me talk about them before. He wrote actually three books with Dan Sullivan. So Dan Sullivan and Dr. Benjamin Hardy, they wrote three bestsellers. And these are books I talk about often. One is 10x is easier than 2x. And that's talking about the idea that, you know, it really is easier and it is a different framework to 10x your life. You know, doing 2x, that's just twice as much work. 10x takes thinking outside the box. And then the other book was Who Not How. And what you'll learn from that book is that it's not so much how you're going to get there or how you're going to develop a strategy, but who is going to help you to get there. And there's a whole bunch of great concepts in that book as well. And then the final one, the third one is the gap and the gain. And that's the idea that as entrepreneurs, most of us, we always kind of measure that gap between where we are and where we're going versus the gain that we've accomplished in our life. And the motivation that comes from measuring the gain really will help you to get further ahead in life. So one of the things that's common about these three books is that they challenge the framework, the philosophy, the filter you use in a lot of areas of business and your life. And one of those principles that Hardy spoke about just recently that I really liked was how you use your past present and future to shape your activities your results in your life How you view your past present and future So let talk about that for a second because obviously your philosophy, your framework, your filter that you use on life is going to determine and change the direction of what you do in your life and the results that you get. So here's what most people do. Most people, they look at their past and they use that to define who they are in the present. Think about that for a second. We all look at all the circumstances and situations and experiences we had in the past and we say, well, that's why I am who I am today. And if you're part of the mastermind, you're saying, I take responsibility. I am who I am based on the past. But what you've got to realize, the empowering principle here is rather than using your past to define who you are in the present, successful people, people that are conscious creators, that are rapidly transforming their life, they use their present moment to frame their past. They use the present moment to frame the situations in the past. Dr. Wayne Dyer talked about this quite a bit, where as you got further in life, and he says, as you get further in life, you'll look back on the tapestry of your life, and you'll realize that events in your life take on a different meaning. And you know what this is like. When you're in the grind, when you're in the moment, you're experiencing something really overwhelming, whether it's a divorce, a failure, a bad business deal, a business partner separation, all these situations seem very overwhelming, and you try to learn what you can. But as you go through life further, you can look back on those situations and you can learn and grow and use those to a different, you know, tune in your life. So most people use the past to define who they are, but if you're going to create rapid transformation, you have to learn to use your present to look back and frame the past and focus on what you want to focus on. Another thing that's very important to understand is that most people, and I'm guilty of this, you're guilty of this, most of us use our present moment and where we are to frame where we want to go. How do we 2x our life? How do we 3x our life? Based on our skills, our situation, our opportunities, we try to create a compelling version of the future. But successful people, truly rapidly transforming people, use a big, compelling, clear vision of the future to shape what they're doing in the present moment. They don't use the present to create the future. They use the future version of themselves the best version of themselves that 10x version of themselves to determine what they do in the present moment And so it very very important that you learn that you got to use your present to shape to frame your past but use your future self the 10x version of you to determine what you're doing in the present. Now, I want to make a point to you that I really want you to think about. And that is that your past and your future are just drafts. What do I mean by that? Well, your past is constantly being rewritten by the filter and frame that you put on it, right? So it's just a draft. It's not fixed. And your future version is constantly expanding based on your knowledge and confidence and things like that. So knowing that your past and future are drafts, it's just the present moment that you can really choose to write the past and write the future. So you have to choose what you're going to focus on, what you're going to emphasize on. Are you going to emphasize the bad experiences that you had? Are you going to emphasize the things that happened to you instead of for you in the past? No, you're going to emphasize the things that will help you to grow and learn and move forward. And in the future, are you going to focus on what you think you can do? Are you going to create some epic goals? Create some big vision. So how do you do that? How do you create the epic future and present version of your life? Well, here's how you do it. You set bigger goals. you 10x the future that you right now think you want to create because based on your experience in your history you're saying well my my skills i think i could do this and i'm stretching i'm here to tell you you need to 10x that 10x the future version of yourself create the best version of yourself create the best version of your business the highest that you can for revenue and why do you do this well the reason is simple when you set massive goals 10x goals and you limit your pathway to actually get there. There's only certain things that can make you get to that 10x version of yourself. You can't just do twice as much of what you're already doing. You've got to create new pathways. So when you set massive goals, it requires you to take stock in what you're currently doing. And you realize that 80% of what you're working on is not going to get you there. It's the 20% creating most of the results that you've got to really double down on and then you got to find new paths and new abilities and new opportunities and and and it's very important for me that you understand that I believe you have the potential to create massive massive results in your in your future but you've got to set big goals and you got to remind yourself of something you're not going to get out of your present moment using yesterday's logic the mind that got you here is not the mind that going to get you further so you got to have a leap of faith You got to take some steps to believe that you can create that compelling future and that you are not your past self That not you I mean, think about that. Just, you know, logistically, physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually, you're not your past self. And so you can't be thinking like that. You've got to expand your vision to the 10 X of who you are and ask yourself this. This is what it really boils down to. Are you committed to your future self or are you stuck in the present nor past? Ask yourself that. Are you committed to being that version of yourself? Because if you're committed to being the best version of yourself and having the life that you were meant to live, and I do believe it's never too late to create that life you're meant to live, you've got to ask yourself if you're committed to your future self. And if you're committed to your future self, then you've got to start acting like that in the present. And it's not about, this is a thought I want to leave you with. It's not about the number of years you have left in your life. It's about the amount of life that you live in your years. That's such a great quote. It's not about the number of years you have left in your life. It's about the amount of life you live in your years because you could squeeze 10 years worth of productivity in the next year. You could be looking back and saying, I'm 20, 30, 40, 50 years old, and I've done more in the next year than I've done in that entire time. But you've got to get focused on creating a vivid future vision to guide your activities in the present and only frame your past to the extent it's going to help you. That's the message I want to leave you with today. That's the message I want you to think about. I want you to really truly focus on creating your best life in the present moment and that requires a vision now I'm going to ask you to do me a favor hit me up share this show on Facebook Instagram wherever you share it tag me so I can see you're you're sharing it and then hit me up every once in a while I'll give out my personal email address I'm surprised how little people take me up on it although I do get barraged at times my email address is george at g3worldwide.com george at g the number three worldwide.com email me let me know what you're working on tell me what you're struggling with what can i do to help you what can we do to help you create the faith and the belief in a 10x version of your life that's the goal of this mastermind and that's the goal of this episode i hope you have an amazing day i look forward to talking with you more tomorrow once again my name is george wright the third and this has been the daily master BORWORK