David Roberts

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Flow. Unleashed. Unleashed. Unleashed. Beyond the dreamer. Ideals and broken promises. How do we actually advance humanity practically.

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Welcome to flow unleashed. I'm Doctor Cameron Norsworthy scientist and High-Performance coach to multiple world champions. In this show, we unpack key insights on specific topics so that you are kept up to date with the latest science and practice of human performance.

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How to make the world a better place is a constant thorn in many people's mind. Often the world we see around us doesn't live up to our ideals and what we know humans are capable of. Whether it's being disappointed with the political parties unrealized promises, seeing a boss at work disempower someone by perhaps shaming their lack of effort, or seeing someone in the street drop litter and not pick it up.

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We all share the dissatisfaction that comes with living with an imperfect world. But how do we change it? Where do we place our attention and effort to help make this world a better place? Does the world need more love, compassion, good deeds, generosity, connection, or more people who care about the world we are actively creating in our habitual sleep?

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All of it. Surely, though, to put this into practice, we need to step into our optimal self lead in the best way possible and act in the manner befitting to our dreams of who we can become. Whilst there is no overnight silver bullet solution, the way we can make this a reality is to continuously level up and ensure we are getting the best training and education possible.

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Learning that meets our day to day needs and not only addresses the too often school curriculums of advancing linear intelligence aimed at progressing the corporate capital ism, but also the wisdom we need to make the world a better place. An article in the Harvard Business Review titled The Future of Leadership Development outlines that training courses to be better people, better leaders have seen an enormous rise.

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Yet traditional educators aren't adept at teaching the soft skills vital for success today, as learners often can't apply classroom lessons to their real world jobs. An issue also known as the skills transfer gap. In other words, what is learned is rarely applied. Companies of all sorts realize that to survive in today's volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous environments, they need leadership skills and organizational capabilities different from those that helped them succeed in the past.

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Businesses who look and operate fundamentally different in ten years from now, which means we need a new type of leader at the helm and new types of workers responding to the day to day demands than we do at this present moment. Therefore, the education that was appropriate 40 years ago, 30 years ago, even ten years ago is not necessarily appropriate for tomorrow or even today.

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One individual who has given the space a lot of thought and attention is our guest, David Roberts. David is passionate about transforming lives through disruptive innovation and education. He's a serial entrepreneur, award winning CEO and regarded as one of the world's top experts on disruptive innovation in government and technology and entrepreneurship. David has been featured on the cover of The Wall Street Journal, Fortune Magazine, New York Times, CNN, and many other popular media, with his concepts and lessons also being taught in many universities today.

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Unknown
Flow. Unleashed. Unleashed. Thanks, David for I'm having the time to have a chat with us today. I hear you're in Greece. Has Greece treating you at the moment? Well it's awesome and thank you for having me, Tamara, today. Greece has been fabulous. I'm here on business and pleasure, but here really to speak with a number of both government and business leaders about a different plan for Greece's future.

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Unknown
I think Greece has really been challenged economically in an extraordinary way relative to the other countries in Europe. And my understanding is that the current plan they have is really about getting jobs. And I don't believe that jobs are actually the best path to prosperity for a country. And, you know, this next century, I think entrepreneurship is. And so I'm working with some fabulous people here around the idea of creating a kind of an entrepreneurial epicenter here, very similar to the one that's in Sweden, to just draw some of the best entrepreneurs to Greece from many of the Greek entrepreneurs back to Greece and create a very different kind of an economy.

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Unknown
What's your challenge? The biggest challenge there, and how are you overcoming it? Yeah, my my belief is sort of the key is how do you attract entrepreneurs and entrepreneurs? Because of globalization, they get to choose where they go in the world. And obviously Silicon Valley has an environment that draws many of them. But, you know, other countries have been successful in programs they created.

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Unknown
For example, Chile created something I think it was over ten years ago called Chile Startup, where they basically, if you came to Chile as an entrepreneur, you could get $50,000 from the government. And initially it was I think you had to hire one Chilean, but I think they even got rid of that. And it was one of the few places where entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley would leave Silicon Valley and go to another country.

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Unknown
They go to Chile and just to do their startups. And as a result of that, the culture that those entrepreneurs have got kind of integrated and injected into Chilean culture, and it's really made an extraordinary impact. So that's one of the things. But I think, you know, I think one of the keys is having a place where entrepreneurs are close to each other and that you get this supportive, experimental, positive culture around the creation of really scalable companies.

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Unknown
That's, I think, the real key, having that kind of bounce factor. And I know Silicon Valley is famous for that, saying fail fast, but when there's a lot of people and a similar aim to take measured risks and social innovation that that does positive things, it's an inspiring ecosystem. Is that something that, you know, I know you've been the vice president of Singularity University, and is that a culture that you've signed is easy to introduce to new systems?

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Unknown
Well, ecosystems are the key. So I appreciate you using that word because that really is the key term of what you're trying to create. They can be extraordinarily difficult. But my belief is that everything is difficult until it's easy. And and so once you know how something works or how to do it, then you can just get it right.

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Unknown
And and I believe that entrepreneurial ecosystem teams, the same so many countries have or are trying to create those ecosystems and many of them don't know how to do it because it's the first time that they've ever done it. And no one yet has written a really good book on how those ecosystems get created. But there are really fabulous examples of what of places where those ecosystems got built.

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Unknown
South Korea is one that did it in a very democratic environment. But what I like about Sweden, and there's a wonderful guy by the name of all our Alverson fact, I just spent a week with him here and Mykonos, Greece, who built that epicenter in Sweden and Sweden has just. If you looked at what countries in Europe create the most unicorns, I think Sweden is either number two or number three.

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Unknown
But even if it's number three, you know, clearly if you looked at economically what's going on in those different countries, it's just it's astounding. It's astounding how many new unicorns get created in Sweden so hard until they're easy. Yeah. And I guess there's also the challenge of keeping it. I mean, we I guess Google is a good example in the sense of starting off very young then and now.

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Unknown
It's a beast. What's your take on keeping that inspirational kind of ecosystem going without falling into the traps over centralization, etc.? You know, I knew the Google founders just because they got funded at the same time by the company. I had got funded and it was by the same people. And I remember in those very, very early days, it was so fascinating to me.

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Unknown
What I realized is that entrepreneurs rarely succeed at the thing they want to succeed at, but they usually succeed at something else. And even even they they were very interested in creating a search engine to sell to Yahoo, which they failed. That. And when, you know, they got to come up with another plan, it was really extraordinary. But yeah, I think there's a challenge right, in scaling.

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Unknown
And how do you, how do you maintain innovation as companies grow? And I think that too has really been figured out. A guy by the name of Clay Christiansen, who is the man who actually came up with the phrase disruptive innovation, he was a Harvard Business School professor who came up with the theory of disruption. What one guy is responsible for that?

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Unknown
But he kind of cracked this idea and what he basically said is that if you have a large monolithic company, they have a profit model, and the profit model sort of forces them to chase high margin activities. And as a result of that, they keep reinvesting in high margin activities, and then they never are able to actually invest in low margin activities, which are these disruptive things.

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Unknown
And so he absolutely believed that big companies cannot disrupt themselves and that if they wanted to disrupt themself. And I agree with them that the only way to do it is to create an independent business unit that has a different profit model. And then because of that, has a different resource allocation process. And so the resources actually go to the right things and they can seize these opportunities, these emergent opportunities.

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Unknown
It's an incredible story. He didn't write as much about that. But I think it does solve this issue that you just brought up about. How do you prevent that giant monolithic company? And, you know, I guess that's integral with the leadership of that system and and who is there and how would you, just to divert a little bit, how would you classify leadership, leadership and leadership?

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Unknown
It's been called many things in the past, and mostly a simplified version, I guess, is to inspire. And whether that's inspire action or whatever. But so often in the past, I feel it's it's been tainted by maintaining compliance with perfection. It's so. Yes. How would you view leadership and the importance of that in creating those ecosystems? Yeah, I mean, I think better leadership definitely has aspects of inspiration.

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Unknown
I separate management from leadership. There's two things to me are very different. You know, management is making sure that things are efficient and productive and that operations run well. Leadership is more about change. But to me, leadership is about influencing people. And so, you know, you can have leadership for bad purposes and you can have leaders that are inherently evil, but they're really good.

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Unknown
Still at leadership. I mean, Hitler was a I would characterize him as an evil leader, but he was still really good at leading, just not in a way that much of the world ultimately appreciated. He obviously had no desire to appreciate. So I think there's different kinds of leadership. So and I also think that there's even different levels of leadership.

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Unknown
At the lowest level, we have self leadership. I mean, I think our own brain actually has many different minds in it. And those minds kind of those little minds kind of compete with each other in that. Even their voices compete with each other. And if you can have strong leadership with yourself, you can have sort of the right voice leading the others and saying yes and no.

00:13:46:00 - 00:14:11:11
Unknown
And I think that's one of the most powerful transformations that people make in their life. It's just even just being able to hear those voices, because sometimes we don't even hear them. We just do. And we don't realize why why we do things or how we go about making decisions with ourself. Yeah, I think the best leadership on the other end of the spectrum is, a term I called exponential leadership.

00:14:11:12 - 00:14:42:15
Unknown
And it means something very specific to me, and has nothing to do with technology. But exponential leadership is the idea that really great leaders can not only create other really great leaders. In fact, it's one of the differences. I think good leaders creates followers, but really great leaders create other leaders. And the greatest leaders create other leaders that know how to create other leaders that know how to create other leaders recursively.

00:14:42:16 - 00:15:09:07
Unknown
And those leaders change the world. And if you looked at any of the greatest leaders in the world, you know, from Gandhi to Nelson Mandela to Martin Luther King, even Mother Teresa, you would find that that is the skill that they had. And it's an extraordinary skill. I love that idea. And I feel self leadership is a key component of that.

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Unknown
I mean, when we look at bringing up children or, you know, kids and then they do what we do, not what we say. And it's self leadership tremendously well commonly left to last. You know, we want to learn how to lead other people or learn how to manage or increase our professional skills. And all the time putting our self leadership get sort of back on the line in terms of priority.

00:15:34:05 - 00:16:00:03
Unknown
But how we do things and how we manage those thoughts and voices in our head. And I always like to think the voices in our head in the boardroom and you know, which directors, I'm leading, our thought processes. And and here's the chairman. Every three, nine, three, another chairman, they can have such significant impact on, moment to moment thinking and that for our actions and insightful.

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Unknown
Yeah. What do you think are the key components to self leadership? I think three key component is almost more of, the key skills and the skills to me are these very critical character traits that we are rarely born with when we kind of master them through experiences. But, you know, as we master these character traits than leadership, whether it's influencing or creating other leaders, in fact, yeah, I think like the greatest leaders in the world, what they do is they just help people to live better lives.

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Unknown
And I think, you know, that's our real ultimate goal is how do we live great lives? Because that's ultimately the only real thing that we have, because nothing obviously states women's Day. So these character traits, I think knowing which ones really matter a lot and then understanding how to develop them because it's not, for example, let's say courage.

00:17:03:06 - 00:17:31:22
Unknown
And I believe courage is is one of the important points. Just like compassion or curiosity, you can't really read a book and become courageous. In fact, I think you can't even listen really to someone else and easily become courageous. In other words, I can't give a bunch of lectures and then create a bunch of courageous people. And and so it's more than knowledge and it's more than just experiences and things.

00:17:31:22 - 00:17:59:11
Unknown
And so mastering character traits is in itself both an art and a science. But if you can acquire these critical character traits, your entire life is transformed. Take curiosity, for example. Curiosity equals intelligence. I mean, if you're not curious, you can never become intelligent. And I sort of genuinely remember this when I went to MIT, and it's a really fabulous school.

00:17:59:11 - 00:18:19:11
Unknown
But when I graduated, I had lost my curiosity for engineering, which is what I was studying, because I just sort of had too much of it and too large of a quantity at too high a pace. And then afterward, I just I didn't want to do it. I didn't do it for many years. But that's the most critical thing.

00:18:19:12 - 00:18:46:11
Unknown
I mean, if you could graduate dumb engineers that were incredibly curious about engineering, you will you will have succeeded. It's one of those times. Famous quotes, isn't it? I'm not telogen. I just was more curious than others. I stayed with the problem longer, looked at the detail longer than others. Curiosity really helps to open ideas and doors more than limit them.

00:18:46:11 - 00:19:06:00
Unknown
And at all. What do you feel is a way to foster that curiosity within us? Yeah, yeah, it's funny you say that because I want to give MIT credit, because one of the things they did do is they made things so hard for those four years. So, for example, if I remember in my freshman year, I took a test.

00:19:06:00 - 00:19:35:10
Unknown
It was a physics test, and I scored like a 32 out of 100 on it. And I just thought I had I just failed miserably. And then I found out I got an 80. So I felt really stupid when I took the test. But everyone, I guess, was feeling really stupid. And because they have that massive when you graduate, you're used to sort of things being really hard and you don't care.

00:19:35:10 - 00:19:57:10
Unknown
You know, you're used to that. You just expect things to be really hard. And so I think a lot of MIT graduates go after really hard problems, because they were really trained to just be used to hard problems. And so even though it killed my curiosity, I mean, eventually came back several years later, I had I definitely had a tolerance for difficulty.

00:19:57:16 - 00:20:24:10
Unknown
I think you had you had asked me, what was it? How do we how do we create them or how do we, you know, foster care seem being such I'm we'll move on maybe later in the conversation to kind of educational systems and whether they promote curiosity or not. Yeah. But in terms of, you know, adults adapting curiosity, you place into chips and me, I was a writer and author.

00:20:24:10 - 00:21:03:03
Unknown
He's talked a lot about meaning and curiosity, and it sort of forms the fundamental components of, of what he calls an auto telling personality, of that kind of curious and challenge minded individual. How in the past have you tried to implement leadership qualities, character traits or just to embody curiosity? I love it, and what I think I've discovered in my own work is and it's a wonderful thing, is that there all all the character traits are just patterns that we have.

00:21:03:05 - 00:21:35:11
Unknown
And we developed those patterns because we were, you know, either rewarded or not rewarded for them. And you can be rewarded without an actual reward. You can be rewarded because something inspired you or doesn't inspire you or rates positive emotion or doesn't create that. And so if we understand that aspect of humanity, you know, emotions and how and why they're formed and that the core of emotions is just how we interpret something.

00:21:35:13 - 00:22:06:04
Unknown
And so once you understand that all of our emotions come from how we interpret something, we interpret things because of beliefs we have. And as we present the truth, I think beliefs get changed. And so as beliefs get changed, our habits get changed, our patterns get changed, our character gets change and it's our character gets changed. So does our life and data and changing those, those habits.

00:22:06:04 - 00:22:36:05
Unknown
There's often a perception that that's so difficult today. You know, I'm I am who I am. And whether that's genetic or whether that's my nurture, it's ingrained. And when we think of them as as habits, patterns of thinking that have formed, patterns of behavior, that have formed neural networks and electrical impulses that travel down the same pathways. When we look at all of that, being moldable, being changeable, it really opens up new possibilities.

00:22:36:05 - 00:23:00:08
Unknown
And, you know, talking about new possibilities, I really wanted to to hear your take on your global inspirational goals. It was quite inspirational for myself when I first read it. And for those that I know, the UN have a list of Sustainable Development Goals in terms of where is action and energy being focused towards and often there towards.

00:23:00:10 - 00:23:27:20
Unknown
As the UN was initially created to stop World War three and and to stop many of the problems that we face worldwide. And a little bit like the, I guess, the journey of psychology, which started off as, a very much problem focused discipline on the US military and government, put a lot of money into helping soldiers who come back with issues.

00:23:27:20 - 00:23:54:00
Unknown
And how do we solve these problems? And in the last sort of 15, 20 years, more research, more psychologists think of some well, hang on, let's think about what we want to create. And in the process of aiming for what we want, perhaps a lot of these issues don't become so significant. And I know we've we've created the, the global inspirational goals and was able to present them to the UN.

00:23:54:00 - 00:24:19:19
Unknown
Can you tell us a little bit about that? We we had greatly influenced the UN to take on, you know, the Sustainable Development Goals. And I have to give them just such credit because honestly, I think if I was trying to think of an organization in the world that was incredibly bureaucratic and political and things like that, I probably would say the UN is such an example.

00:24:19:19 - 00:24:52:17
Unknown
And yet they were able to disrupt themselves from the goal that they had for 70 years in a row to stop World War Three. And just four years. And so for me, you know, the most inspirational part was, obviously was an extraordinary thing that now they're all about the 17 Sustainable Development Goals. But the fact that the UN could disrupt itself in just four years basically says that no organization in the world has an excuse for not being able to disrupt itself.

00:24:52:19 - 00:25:15:19
Unknown
And so it's just super inspiring to me. But I realized about, you know, halfway through the 15 first 15 years or that the Sustainable Development Goals all focus on problems in the world, and they are probably the biggest problems in the world. I think they picked a really great set. I mean, I think they left one off, which I always think is the number 18 to package 17 is such a weird number.

00:25:16:00 - 00:25:37:00
Unknown
I think they left off, you know, governance and and really coming up with modern governance for the world because most of the governance systems in the world, or even the US, which is probably one of the newest ones, is still 200 years old. And the world was pretty different. 200 years ago. But the idea was was really came about when I started thinking about moonshots.

00:25:37:02 - 00:25:58:14
Unknown
And, you know, a lot of companies and even governments in the world have been focusing on moonshot. What's your moonshot and what's the biggest problem that you're going to solve? And how you could go after it? Like the way we went to the moon. But the truth is that we didn't go to the moon to just solve a world problem.

00:25:58:16 - 00:26:22:15
Unknown
And, I mean, there were some reasons we went to the moon, but it wasn't really to solve a problem. We went to the moon because it was incredibly inspirational, was extraordinary. It was like the best of potential and even of humanity's potential. And I realized in the SDGs that there also are problems. And I thought, well, what are we solving all the problems for?

00:26:22:17 - 00:26:41:20
Unknown
I mean, what if we solved all the problems and what would we do? And and so we need more. There's more to life than just solving problems. And this is true even for our own lives. Like we can't just focus on solving problems. There's things, we're bigger than that, and we're capable of doing extraordinary things. And not just us as individuals, but she manatee.

00:26:41:20 - 00:27:10:22
Unknown
And so I wanted to create a set of inspirational goals that were at that same level. They were global, inspirational goals, and they would be extraordinary things that humankind could do that wasn't just focused on solving a problem. So I presented that in July of last year during the 70th anniversary, sorry, 50th anniversary of landing on the moon.

00:27:10:23 - 00:27:37:07
Unknown
And and we'll see, yeah, I imagine the UN's probably still focused on the SDGs, but I think it's it's in some people's thoughts now. And, I hope that they take that. Do you believe that's a UN role or one of, I guess, the lies on the doorstep of, governance within domains or within countries. So I often wondered even whether the SDGs should go to the UN.

00:27:37:07 - 00:27:58:09
Unknown
And, you know, because I thought, I don't know if the UN would be able to convert itself and really focus on the issue. And and yet they have and they've done a truly extraordinary job and they've done an extraordinary job in engaging countries to take these sustainable development goals and make them their own and make their own subsets and things like that.

00:27:58:09 - 00:28:20:09
Unknown
And so, you know, they all of us do that. Each of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals could be solved within the 15 years from the date where they initiated it. I don't know, I mean, it probably really unlikely now that that will happen. But you never know. I mean, things happen exponentially. And so even though, you know, we're not halfway to progress on many of them, you never know if it's an exponential curve.

00:28:20:09 - 00:28:49:10
Unknown
And, you know, we really like, tick things up in those last few years before the deadlines. I think they could do a fantastic job. On the global inspirational goals. These are very, very connected. You know, for example, one of the global inspirational goals is global free internet. And the world would be a completely different place. You couldn't pinpoint necessarily a problem that that solves, but it would solve a lot of problems.

00:28:49:10 - 00:29:22:14
Unknown
But it would be extraordinary. Or just how about global citizenship where, you know, I travel all the time, and I don't know that just because of the place I was born that that should be the place that might that I might affiliate with for the whole rest of my life. And so, like, these ideas are ideas that represent the world now in the 21st century, where we know that we're on this, you know, spaceship and we have a much deeper understanding of where we are in the universe and the future.

00:29:22:14 - 00:29:58:17
Unknown
And, you know, even other planets or other intelligences in the world, like that's actually said, part of some of those goals. So they're very exciting. And it would be awesome if the world started to focus on them together and fund them or would think, and this sort of systemic approach is I can't help but think of the crossovers with education and, you know, I think I heard one of your talks yesterday and he talked about any 2% of your education is actually used, you know, in your day to day.

00:29:58:17 - 00:30:46:04
Unknown
And, it made me think about, you know, how much we teach skills to solve problems or create jobs as opposed to teaching individuals and developing individuals, developing that autonomy and that self-determined nation, that curiosity and courage. We talked about some but more shame shoehorning individuals into, you know, into boxes and I find it fascinating how, you know, countries such as Finland, you know, have been able to produce an exemplary educational systems where know by by disrupting what most educational symptoms would, would think of as good education.

00:30:46:04 - 00:31:13:01
Unknown
You know, they don't do I don't do much homework. You know where a lot of America's got rid of poetry from the curriculum? That's an integral part. And, they've got rid of standardized testing and, very much focused on that local integration community, as well as developing the the human as an individual. And I'd love to get your thoughts on what you see as an ideal education.

00:31:13:01 - 00:31:35:01
Unknown
What would that what would that look like? I think this is one of the most important questions for the entire planet. And and I think that because there are some problems that when you solve those problems, many of the other problems just go away. You know, I'm here in Greece today, but, you know, in Greece has many problems, just like all countries in the world do.

00:31:35:06 - 00:32:10:01
Unknown
But if they solve their economic one and a lot of the other problems will just get solved, because then they'll have the money and if you solve education, then a lot of the other problems, like how to get clean water, how to how to grow food, or how to move to somewhere that has food like a lot of these other things go away and unfortunately, it is my absolute belief that our education system, the entire world's education system right now is completely obsolete.

00:32:10:03 - 00:32:28:11
Unknown
I say that because if you looked at the origins of our educational system and I looked it up and it really goes back, it's kind of crazy. It goes back to sort of British colonialism, where they had an educational system so that people could sort of read the contracts and do the math in order to pay the taxes.

00:32:28:11 - 00:33:02:21
Unknown
And that system is the same system that we have today and in the US. In fact, in most countries, you know, the standardized test for K through 12, for kindergarten through 12th grade till you're 18 is basically two numbers, a math score and a verbal score. And then you have some grades too. But because of that math and verbal score, it will greatly determine whether you can get in into Harvard or Stanford or MIT or whether you, you know, can't even get into college at this.

00:33:02:23 - 00:33:31:13
Unknown
I think it's crazy and it's crazy because your math skills and even your reading skills, as important as they are two for learning, but they have very little to do with success in life. Another way to think about this is, well, what is a successful life? And to me, a successful life is really just like four things. I thought about it a lot and I realized, oh, it's so simple.

00:33:31:13 - 00:33:47:03
Unknown
It's just so simple. And if you just do some of these four things, you'll have a successful life. And if you don't do one of these four things, you will not have a successful life. So health is what make and it's not health doesn't give you a great life. What it does is it prevents you from having a bad one.

00:33:47:05 - 00:34:04:17
Unknown
And you know, our health care system today is not a health care system. It's a sick care system. We we take care of people once they're sick. And the truth is that most of the sicknesses we can't. If we were very healthy, we would never get them. Or if we looked at things like much sooner, we could solve them.

00:34:04:18 - 00:34:24:00
Unknown
And so basically, if you don't have your health, it's the only thing you end up focusing on. So you gotta we have to educate people to be healthy, not just educate. We gotta train people to be healthy, like many of us know what to eat, but we don't do it because we weren't trained that way. Check in one and we talking about economy, right?

00:34:24:00 - 00:34:44:22
Unknown
Well, like we gotta teach people how to create wealth, but we have this very indirect route and instead we try to teach them how to get jobs. And, and then they're working their entire life in a salaried position, and they're after maybe 20 or 30 years, they've stored up enough where they can then, you know, go off and do what they want.

00:34:44:22 - 00:35:09:09
Unknown
But they're, you know, 55 years old then and it's just a crazy system. You know, let's just teach people how to create wealth and not just create it, but how to keep it, because those are two totally different skills. I mean, I've lost all my wealth three times in my life, and now it took the third time for me to realize, oh, keeping wealth is a different skill.

00:35:09:10 - 00:35:31:06
Unknown
I guess it's just a different thing. And you got to learn that to an even appreciating wealth. I have friends that have extraordinary wealth in even a physical sense and in other senses, but they don't they don't appreciate it. And so what good is that? And then the third thing is relationships. And and in that, of course, is emotions.

00:35:31:06 - 00:35:55:15
Unknown
Because emotions you can't have great relationships to figure out emotions. And with it is leadership because the whole purpose. I think that having great relationships besides just, you know, love and compassion, caring for each other is the leadership being able to bring together people to do even harder things that no one person can do. And then the fourth thing is happiness and fulfillment.

00:35:55:17 - 00:36:22:17
Unknown
Happiness, as I've learned, is pretty easy. I mean, you know, you could buy a new car and you can be happy, but it just doesn't last. I mean, you know, it often lasts until the first day, which you get on your car, but if you're not, get by. And so, you know, happiness is fleeting. And even if you learn and I think this is a really important skill, is for people to learn just how to have a successful day.

00:36:22:17 - 00:36:49:00
Unknown
Most people have never learned even that they go through their entire lives, and they've never learned how to even have one successful day. I mean, they've had some, but they never learned how to do it, and so they didn't know how to do it again and again. But even if you've learned that you can get through your whole life having a successful day every single day, and you look back and you think it was an extraordinary.

00:36:49:02 - 00:37:20:03
Unknown
And so fulfillment is different. Fulfillment is about getting a handle of your life and looking back on it and going, wow, you know, that was extraordinary. And so I think these four things health, wealth, relationships and fulfillment are the only things. And we don't teach any of them in school. Not one. So our educational system is broken. And if we were to teach those things to mastery, we'd have a completely different world.

00:37:20:05 - 00:37:43:05
Unknown
I have this thing now, and the idea was like, how do you get global exponential disruptive impact? And I realized I got the letters R, GED. And so I came up with this idea of Jedi, which sounded like some other kind of Jedi I think that we're all familiar with. But I realized, what if we globally educated disruptors and innovators, which is also Jedi?

00:37:43:05 - 00:38:10:21
Unknown
And so now I've got this thing called Jedi training, and it's just Jedi training.com and what we're going to do is we're going to we've actually created a program where we train people to mastery, how to do these four things. And the initial program is really expensive. I mean, it's a two year program, and it's a week or two every quarter and it's $100,000.

00:38:10:21 - 00:38:30:12
Unknown
And so but the idea is that we're going to figure out how to do that really well, and then keep figuring out a cheaper and cheaper way to deliver that until we can deliver it to, you know, a few hundred bucks. That's the idea. And I'm just I'm super excited about it. And it's funny because I think I'm the only academic on the team.

00:38:30:12 - 00:38:49:12
Unknown
We got a team of like 25 people, and I'm the only academic the others are, you know, they're they're maybe Seals or CIA officers or former ministers or they're people that have developed a character. Right. And so they know how to do character, even though it was for their own specific purpose, whether it was military or religious, too.

00:38:49:12 - 00:39:08:14
Unknown
The idea is, how do we how do we train character traits in people so that they can master these four cornerstones? Great idea. Love the name you know, and making it attainable to everyone is, is a real worthwhile aim.

00:39:08:16 - 00:39:30:19
Unknown
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00:39:30:21 - 00:39:53:15
Unknown
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00:39:53:16 - 00:40:16:10
Unknown
Today. Just to pick up on your last point there, in terms of surveillance, you know, for film and you mentioned it's it's that getting to the end of your life before you close your eyes for the last time and being able to close them with a smile on your face and, and a sense of purpose having been fulfilled.

00:40:16:10 - 00:40:58:20
Unknown
And I, I always go back to Aristotle's talks around finding and living with your time and your finding your true nature and the setting that that true nature and living with true purpose and that creating a sense of facilmente. And I also think it's, you know, integrated into our, our daily rituals. And if we take that same and analogy and, and close our eyes every time we go to bed at nights and have, do we have a sense of fulfillment in and what we're doing and, and certainly the process that we go over a lot at the flight centers is a lot about creating meaning in what we do.

00:40:58:21 - 00:41:32:00
Unknown
And I'd love to hear, you know, how in the In the Jedi training program, you, you look to create that fulfillment? Yeah, I, I really love the work actually that you're doing. And I agree with you. I think, you know, the challenge for, yourself and myself are to think, how do we make this successful and how do we make it accessible, especially to the people that have been most disadvantaged simply because of, you know, where they were born and the environment they came in through the world?

00:41:32:00 - 00:41:59:14
Unknown
You so that it's an exciting teacher. And I hope we do get there. How do we go about getting these skills and thing? So it's really interesting. I think, you know, I went through some sort of extreme government training and if you go through training, say like Navy Seal or CIA training or something like that, when you graduate, nobody wonders anymore whether you're capable of doing the job.

00:41:59:16 - 00:42:26:05
Unknown
In other words, you don't go through Seal training or CIA training, reading a whole bunch of books, and then someone at the end says, now go out and, you know, capture some of these top 300 most dangerous people in the world. And and so the difference in that education is that they brought those people to mastery. And until you have mastery, you're struggling.

00:42:26:07 - 00:42:53:07
Unknown
You know, we talked a little in the beginning about I just believe everything is hard until it's easy. But once it's easy, it's easy. And what you want is to make it simple. Life is easy. So the people I've spent most of my adult life struggling just to succeed at light, and you know, now that I've lived much of it, I realized, oh, you know, I could have just been taught that someone could have just told me that.

00:42:53:07 - 00:43:10:17
Unknown
In fact, some of the things that would probably take one minute for someone to say, like, hey, I'm learning to keep your money is a different skill than learning to make money, you know, or being an owner is a much better way to have money that doesn't make you tired. Like being an operator, like being a CEO does.

00:43:10:17 - 00:43:33:02
Unknown
And so, you know, I spend a lot of my time trying to be a CEO and then being a CEO and then realizing, well, that's not even the goal. The goal is to actually be the owner, Dyer CEO. And so, you know, really simple things like that. And so I think in the Jedi program, what we do is we provide knowledge, but what we really want to do is develop these character skills.

00:43:33:02 - 00:43:57:18
Unknown
And the only way to develop character skills, unfortunately, is hard. And so we create experiences that makes really enjoyable, pleasurable, rewarding experiences with really hard, difficult, challenging experiences. And you have to do both, because if you just make the whole thing hard and challenging people, everyone will quit and no one will want to finish. So you got to do both.

00:43:57:20 - 00:44:29:04
Unknown
But if you don't give, you know, we make diamonds by rubbing them against rough surfaces and character gets built kind of that same way people learn powerful lessons for the rest of their lives. Unfortunately, through really challenging, difficult, even emotionally challenging experiences that sit in their brain for a long time and remind them why they do things and what's really important and what matters.

00:44:29:06 - 00:44:49:19
Unknown
And what are those challenging situations you put people in. Can you give us an example of some of those? Yeah, yeah. I mean, you know, so when you go through the course like the, the two year course, we actually offer different ones, we offer a two year course and then we offer a four day one, which is kind of like an overview of what happens in that two year one.

00:44:49:19 - 00:45:07:22
Unknown
So it's more really about the knowledge. And then you'd have to go off and kind of work on all those things yourself. And then we even have a ten session one. So it's ten 90 minute sessions and then it's done over. You get your choice over ten weeks, over five weeks or over two weeks, depending on how intensely you want to do it.

00:45:08:00 - 00:45:25:16
Unknown
And so, you know, in the two year program, for example, we have a whole week that's just dedicated to health. And really the only thing you'd get at the end of that week is that you will exercise and eat extremely well the whole rest of your life, and so you really get just like sort of two skills out of it.

00:45:25:18 - 00:45:50:14
Unknown
And then we have a whole week that's just about it's it's kind of called asymmetric risk reduction. But it's just about how do you avoid really terrible things that would negatively affect the whole rest of your life. And so we teach people extreme driving and we teach them, how to how to actually be a very dangerous person so that they can get out of a deadly situation if they had to give first aid to themself or to someone else.

00:45:50:14 - 00:46:10:11
Unknown
So that week is about that. But, you know, there are other weeks that are not about that at all. There's a whole week about relationships. There's a whole week about, in fact, there's four days. That's just in total silence, where we help people to just start beginning to listen to their inner voice. And one of the weeks, for example, is a week that involves some scheme.

00:46:10:14 - 00:46:31:08
Unknown
And the reason that we do scheme is not to sort of teach people to sleep better, but we certainly do that. But we do it because it's one of the few things that I'm aware of where if we want to teach you courage, if we want to teach you something about fear, then we need to put you in a really stressful situation.

00:46:31:10 - 00:47:03:11
Unknown
And no matter how good a skier you are, we can find somewhere on the mountain that's going to scare you. And so we take you to that place, and that's when we can teach you about fear. And that's when you're super motivated to learn something about it. And in those moments, we can create that experience that's necessary. And those experiences end up being highly memorable.

00:47:03:13 - 00:47:25:12
Unknown
In fact, you know, when you when you've done those experiences, the next time you're in a fearful situation, it's like click. You get flashed back to that moment just because of how the brain remembers things and it remembers things by emotion, I mean it has a factual memory. But when you can put things into the memory because of emotion, boom, you're not drawn back immediately to that moment.

00:47:25:14 - 00:47:57:04
Unknown
And when that lesson is fully accessible for you, that's an example that's super. In our teaching, we're often taking people rock climbing or free diving, and it would be the same aim to sort of shake the the matrix. So to speak, and, and really help identify that, that inner voice and, and the relationship that we have with ourself during that it's times because really like how we deal with stress is quite, quite formulaic.

00:47:57:04 - 00:48:42:01
Unknown
And you know, how we deal with stress. And one thing is often very similar to how we deal with stress. And in every situation. And, you know, typically certainly in education, we're not really we were not taught how to deal with stress or how to deal with challenges and how to manage ourself. And, you know, I've got laid down that much of this, this sort of avoidance is the main reason for the the crazy mental health statistic, you know, where we have so many, you know, over 25% of people being that depressed in our lifetime and having a mental health related illness and the the anxiety that, you know, the kids grow up with nowadays,

00:48:42:01 - 00:49:17:00
Unknown
you know, in, in Australia and there's kids there's anxiety issue in kids five years old around schooling and in and that's progressively said to become exponential in terms of how they deal with their lives, their relationships and, and, you know, just kind of decision makers and, and they create the future. And it's such a, you know, it's so great to hear you doing that work because it's it's such a fundamental pillar of how, how we can act in our lives and take that transferable learning.

00:49:17:02 - 00:49:48:12
Unknown
And even if it's, you know, how we operate in a confronting conversation with that partner, it's amazing transferable knowledge. I think you really kind of nailed it on the head to round this. And the I this idea behind the the beliefs and the voice, you know, I would actually think in the biggest sense, I believe it's about the identity that a person has that if you can transform the identity, then everything gets changed with it.

00:49:48:12 - 00:50:07:23
Unknown
And so, you know, one of the parts, for example, in the program that we do is there's a week where in a single week they learn how to fly a plane. And normally that takes quite a long time. But it turns out, you know, people really are capable of learning how to fly a plane in a week. And so we do that not to teach them to fly the plane.

00:50:08:00 - 00:50:30:11
Unknown
In fact, they can get their full license just in two weeks. But we do it because when you've learned to fly a plane in a week, your identity is transformed. Cassino. Flying a plane is is physical and it's intellectual and it's emotional. And so it actually captures on all three of these elements. And when you've done that, you can't think about yourself the same anymore.

00:50:30:12 - 00:50:51:09
Unknown
And you come across another challenge. There's this part of your brain that says, well, you know, I'm that gal or I'm that guy that learned to fly a plane in a week. And so I'm sure I can do this too. And confidence obviously has an extreme impact on, you know, what challenges people are willing to either take on or stick with.

00:50:51:11 - 00:51:16:17
Unknown
And so we can we can change that in just identity. And so, you know, you talk about these young kids that are depressed even when they're five years old and think thinking it just it kills me because I know that the skill set for us to transform them is there. We just it just hasn't become widespread yet in the world, but we're all going to be able to read and write when we're 18, so we at least got that going for us.

00:51:16:21 - 00:51:23:17
Unknown
I would hope so, you know, so.

00:51:23:19 - 00:51:54:05
Unknown
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00:51:54:07 - 00:52:22:04
Unknown
We only have a limited space to work with a few companies, so if you want your product or service on this podcast, get in contact now! You know how if you were to make one change within education at the moment, to disrupt it and to to innovate it in the manner in which we've been talking, what change do you think is his ideal, even if not so practical?

00:52:22:06 - 00:52:59:02
Unknown
Unquestionably, the change would be we teach character, because if we teach character, all this stuff becomes easy. And as you teach character, identity changes with it. In fact, it can't not be changed. You know, if you take someone that is normally not and then you make them and help them to be calm, curious, compassionate, courageous, you know they're not the same person anymore because, you know, a person is just the set of patterns that they have.

00:52:59:06 - 00:53:20:18
Unknown
And if you give them these new, I think of them as superpowers. You give them these new superpowers. They're not the same person because they don't have the same patterns anymore. And so if you take someone that is timid and not learning and afraid and getting beat up or something, and you give them courage, their life is transformed now.

00:53:20:20 - 00:53:54:05
Unknown
And as their life transforms, so their identity transforms with it. And now, because they have a different identity, they're potential as a human being in their mind is no longer the same. In fact, my very strong belief is that most people, the large that they live, have been constrained by their own beliefs about what they're capable of. And so most people, I think, live extremely simple, meager lives relative to what their potential is.

00:53:54:05 - 00:54:12:01
Unknown
But they don't. They don't believe it. They don't. Most people don't even leave the town that they were born at. Not because anyone stops them. They just they just never think, well, maybe I should try living somewhere else because it might actually be better than here. I might learn something. They never even get to that point because they create their own worlds.

00:54:12:03 - 00:54:52:19
Unknown
And the truth is that we are exponential beings. You know, I spent the last ten years talking about exponential technology, but the truth is that technology is exponential only because human beings make it so, because we are the exponential thing, we're the exponential being. The technology and the exponential technology is just an effect of what we are. And I guess an expression of the exponential action, if you like, that, one might consider think flow in the optimal state of functioning and and so much of that is limited simply by by us.

00:54:52:20 - 00:55:16:20
Unknown
You know, we get in our own way all the time and, and is that right? Reaching a state of optimal performance is often kind of paraded as this sort of elitist, incredibly, you know, you've got to reach the peaks of mastery, and it's only reserved for the amazing people out there. And, you know, and really, I guess the message we try to get across is that let's, let's reverse that, you know?

00:55:16:20 - 00:55:38:22
Unknown
Well, it's a very our optimal state of functioning is a very natural state. You know, one that yes, we all have, we can all tap into and it's it's often a case of sort of getting out, learning to get out of our own way as a, as opposed to bolting on superhuman, skills. It's not even that people have to live extraordinary lives.

00:55:38:22 - 00:56:15:01
Unknown
Like, you can have an extraordinary life, you know, because of a single moment, one single moment in your life. You know, we see that all the time. I know, you know, people ask me and they say, oh, how do I become an extraordinary leader? And and you make me look at, you know, examples of extraordinary leaders. And if any of I've looked at these examples, I mean, I look at, you know, Mandela or Martin Luther King and, God, I mean, I look at these people and I just think, you know, we'd be hard pressed any of us to have the set of character traits that they had to the level that they had.

00:56:15:01 - 00:56:44:08
Unknown
But the truth is that all of them, in fact, even, you know, I think a lot with Martin Luther King, all of his works were inspired by really just one, one that, you know, and it was one woman, Rosa Parks, and she inspired almost all of his works because of where she chose to set in a single day in her life on a bus.

00:56:44:10 - 00:57:15:00
Unknown
And when you realize the exponential capacity of even a moment in our life to change the world, then you realize that it's within the reach of any of us, and that change can happen quickly. You know that butterfly effect can be far reaching very quickly. It is always the butterfly effect, and all big things come from something tiny.

00:57:15:02 - 00:57:59:19
Unknown
We're running a little bit at a time, but and I really want to touch on some of your personal experience as well in terms of, you know, what have you found that as you've had by many eyes, a remarkable life and highly motivated and working on some some really exciting project. And and I know you've, in the past, see you and all American NCAA athletes and you spent time doing martial arts and, and a lot of the lessons that can get learned then and really intrigued to see what you feel has really helped you on your journey to live the life, and hence the mindset and application that you've.

00:57:59:21 - 00:58:42:02
Unknown
Well, I will I will give gratitude to, you know, the people in my life that had such great influence on me and when I say great, I don't even mean it in the sense that at the moment it was great. You know, I think when we can take the hardest moments in our life, the most painful moments in our life, and reinterpret those and understand those as the most magnificent moments in our life, that's when I think we are gaining the greatest benefit from experience.

00:58:42:04 - 00:59:10:10
Unknown
And so, you know, for me, it's not that I look and I think of these fantastic mentors or educators and, you know, I'm very grateful to all of them. But it was the really hard personal moments that happen and the things that I didn't know were coming that I didn't expect, that were, painful or hurtful. It was in those moments that I learned the most.

00:59:10:12 - 00:59:37:17
Unknown
And my my belief is that if we can if we can do that with our life, not only do we change the worst moments in our life to the absolute best moments of our life, but as we go forward, we embrace everything that the world is going to offer us. Things that we we put judgments on is good or bad or, you know, fabulous or the opposite of that.

00:59:37:17 - 01:00:02:12
Unknown
Like we embrace everything and and we really start to not just live in the moment because I don't think it's just about being in the moment. I really think that one of our superpowers is this ability to come forward with the past and to think about the future and to bring them all, you know, into the into the present.

01:00:02:12 - 01:00:22:15
Unknown
In that moment, I if I, if I can take sort of 30 60s and just tell this very brief story, because I heard it in Japan and I think we got connected actually by there, an individual that lived in Japan, and it was a story about this sort of, I don't know, it was sort of like a last Samurai story or something to that effect.

01:00:22:15 - 01:00:50:23
Unknown
And it is this samurai is being chased by a bear, and as he's being chased, he looks ahead into the future and he sees that there's a cliff ahead of them, and he has no choice but to, like, end up jumping off of the cliff because of the bear. And then he's falling, and he hits this branch halfway down the cliff, and now he's on this branch and he looks down and there's a tiger underneath him jumping, which is his new future, you know, leaping up and trying to grab him.

01:00:50:23 - 01:01:15:10
Unknown
And then the bear is above him, growling, and he's sitting on this branch and it's a strawberry branch, and there's a big strawberry right in front of him. And he reaches out and he grabs the strawberry and he puts it in his mouth and shoots are delicious. I just I just didn't understand that story. For the longest time in my life.

01:01:15:12 - 01:01:26:09
Unknown
And now I get it. Yeah. So the full story.

01:01:26:11 - 01:01:56:00
Unknown
And one book, what has been has had the biggest impact on your life? I think Viktor Frankl's Man's search for meaning tells the story. Really? I mean, he was incarcerated in a Nazi prison camp and everything taken from them. Everyone being killed and dying around him. And yet he was able to find sort of an essence of humanity that survives and surpasses everything.

01:01:56:03 - 01:02:19:15
Unknown
And I think it's an extraordinary book with an extraordinary story of a person who had to experience something that none of us would ever want to go through. Very powerful. Great stuff. Well, David Robbins, thank you very much for your time. And if you want to find more information about David Roberts, I'm sure he's all over the internet.

01:02:19:21 - 01:02:39:18
Unknown
You know, I would probably direct them to the Jedi, the Jedi training.com. I think they're, you know, it's not solely built out, but over the next year, I think we will slowly build that out more and more to be able to help people to, you know, acquire skills. And I think that is a really wonderful place for people to go.

01:02:39:20 - 01:03:00:05
Unknown
I really thank you, Cameron, too, for the time that it's, fascinating. And I appreciate you bringing up topics that I know are just important to me. And I believe that really important to the world and to individuals. So thank you for the work that you do and for these podcasts. And absolutely. And I think, you know, key takeaways, developing character, you know, and all that we do.

01:03:00:05 - 01:03:22:08
Unknown
And we may not all work in education that whether we like it or not, we're all educators and and we can all build character and all that we we do and and and how we need. So thank you very much for the tour. Awesome. Thank you again. Flow unleashed.

01:03:22:10 - 01:03:50:09
Unknown
In the fitting words of Martin Luther, the prosperity of a country depends not on the abundance of its revenues, nor on the strength of its fortifications, nor on the beauty of its public buildings. But it consists in the number of its cultivated citizens and its men of education, enlightenment and character. Here are to be found its true interest, its chief strength, its real power.

01:03:50:11 - 01:04:16:02
Unknown
There are two things we have to do alone and life dying and living through character. We all have somewhat of a responsibility to strive towards betterment, to further our gene pool and leave the world in a better place than we found it. Whilst this may seem like a daunting task, it couldn't be more in our control by simply choosing to be our best self in the moment before us.

01:04:16:02 - 01:04:39:13
Unknown
Right now, we breathe life into the words of Martin Luther, and in the collection of many of these moments, we take enormous strides to make the world a better place. If you would like to find out more about David Roberts, please see the show notes.

01:04:39:15 - 01:05:10:14
Unknown
Thank you for listening to Flow Unleashed. If you enjoyed listening, please subscribe to get notified when our next episode drops. The more people that subscribe, the better I can make the show for you. Equally, please leave a review. Your review will go a long way to helping others find this part. Until the next time, thank you for listening to Flow Unleashed.