Find your North Star with Will Polston

Will Polston: 00:00:00

I think perspective is everything. So most of us think about living a reality, but most people have never made the distinction between actuality and reality.

The number one reason why almost anybody ever sets a goal is to change the way they feel.

Sal Jefferies: 00:00:15

And while that sounds quite simple, it's actually profound, isn't it? He said, there is no such thing as a lack of resources, only a lack of resourcefulness.

Will Polston: 00:00:23

The North Star is the mission. The trajectory is the goals, if you want to call them that. Reverse.

Sal Jefferies: 00:00:29

Welcome to mindset, mood and movement. A systemic approach to human behavior, performance and well being. Do you know your North Star? Well, today I'm joined by Will Polston.

Now, Will has written this amazing book. It's called North Star thinking, which is spot on. So we're going to leave some details for that in the show notes. But, yeah.

So North Star thinking is a big picture thinking that's going to transcend where you're going. So those in the coaching domain, in the growth domain, and running businesses, being able to have that vision ahead is going to be very powerful.

So I'm delighted to have Will in conversation today to help us understand how to leverage that a little bit more. So, will, really good to have you.

Will Polston: 00:01:08

Thank you very much. I'm grateful to be here.

Sal Jefferies: 00:01:10

Sal. Will, let's get in. So, first of all, I'm a big fan of clarity and definition. What is North Star thinking in your description?

Will Polston: 00:01:18

Great question. I believe in having a mission in life. That's the equivalent of trying to empty the sea with a spoon. So what does that actually mean?

Well, for me, it means having something you're willing to work towards that never gets finished. And there isn't a this is it done. And that, for me, really is what North Star thinking is about.

You know, the story that many of us have heard of, it involves a baby born in December a couple of thousand years ago. And there were three men, supposedly wise, all carrying presents, found this little baby born in this table. They'd been following the North Star.

But in every version of the story that I've ever heard, these three men, they never went to the North Star. They just used it as their guiding light. And that. That, for me, is what North Star thinking is about. What's that guiding light?

What's that thing that you're going to focus on, that you accept that you're never going to actually go to or necessarily get to, but it can provide all of the direction, the fulfillment, the growth, the contribution that you would ever require.

Sal Jefferies: 00:02:27

Beautiful. And it's a different take, isn't it on outcome thinking, goal thinking, and there's a place for that, and we'll get to that.

But there's something so much more transcendent from what you're saying. There so much more about this gravitational force or this point of putting you towards something.

You and I spoke briefly before the show and I said, oh, that reminds me, I was in Barcelona some years ago, 90 degrees, sweating, hot, surrounded by gaudis, amazing things, and I went to see the Sagrada familia. And if those who don't know, it's basically a massive building with lots of nuance and artistry, it's fantastic.

But he knew that he was never going to see this in his lifetime. He knew that it's going to take so long to build that.

It was in many ways a close reference to your north Star analogy, that it was bigger than the individual. And I love that.

It's really interesting because I know in my touching domain, we're always trying to find an outcome, a goal, and that's great place for that. But is there something transcendent? Is this something bigger than the self, which is a really powerful place to go to?

So this is good stuff, will, but how did you get to really kind of anchoring on this as your focus of your work and how you're thinking now?

Will Polston: 00:03:37

Great question. I grew up with a belief, and my belief was that money equal happiness. So I went on a tangent.

To make as much money as I could as early as I could, I become pretty good at that. What was happening though, as I was becoming better and better at that, is I was setting goals.

I first stumbled across personal development when I was about 18 years old. And I was like, this is brilliant. The more personal development I do, the more money I did.

And it was what I thought, surface level personal development, goal setting, and some real basic NLP stuff, and was like, this is really, really good.

But then what I was finding myself doing was setting a goal, achieving it, setting another goal, achieving it, setting another goal, achieving it, and then finding myself feeling really unfulfilled. What's the point in doing this? I'm setting these goals, like, next, next. I now label that when then syndrome. When I achieve this, then I'll be okay.

When I achieve that, then I'll be all right. When I achieve this, then everything will be sorted. And it was really disheartening.

And then it was eleven years ago at the time recording this, where I had what I call my lightning moment and bam, it just hit me. And in that moment it was a realization where I cried my eyes out for about 15 minutes because I realized my real driver wasn't money.

It never really been money.

What it was really about was my dad, how my dad hadn't achieved certain things he was capable of and the impact that had on him and my mum and me and my family and a whole host of other people. And I vowed in that moment, I don't want other people to go through the suffering that he went through and we went through.

So that's a combination of those two things, of realizing, right, well, what can we do? And that's sort of the birth, really, of kind of North Star thinking of, right, well, what can I do for the rest of my time that will fulfill me?

It will feel good. It isn't just about money.

And that was where my own north Star of empowering people to transform excuses into results and live the life they love was born so that it benefits not only them, but their family, their friends, their communities, society, humanity, the universe. That's the ripple effect that I talk about.

Sal Jefferies: 00:05:45

Beautiful, really nice. And it strikes me. There's a beautiful book by David Brooks, and it's called the Second Mountain.

And it's maybe, I know it's David's entire work, but it's a concept most of them get. We climb up the first mountain, and I know you've been up a mountain because you read it in your book that I'll talk to you about shortly.

But we can climb up that mountain, right? Like, I want to make some money or get a house or start a family.

All these natural things that are very culturally acceptable, and they're what we understand as perhaps steps to success. And it's completely natural. But at some point, there's a pinnacle, there's a summit, and at that summit, it's often a realization point.

It sounds like you had it with that, you know, really lightning moment where that's not the right mountain to be climbing. There's a bigger mountain.

And David Brooks talks about this, the second mountain, where there is a different quality of fulfillment, contribution, real, something much more transcendent.

And it's fantastic, isn't it, when coaching goes to that space, and it isn't just about the individual or the company, it's something much, much wider. This is really powerful. But if someone's listening, thinking, yeah, this sounds really, really interesting, but why would I need to do it?

Because I'm running a business, I've got my life, there's a lot of stuff going on that feels nice, but maybe I'll push it back to a certain point in the future. What's some of the power around having a north star that you can gravitate to?

What are you seeing with the work you're doing that really does make the difference with this north star approach?

Will Polston: 00:07:13

Great question. I'll answer it, but I'm going to come back to the mountain piece. I've never heard of the book.

It sounds like an interesting book, but I would argue that it's not about having a second mountain, it's about learning to love the mountain you're on. And you can think, well, I'm going to do this mountain, whatever the mountain is. Oh, and then I'll go and do another one.

Well, what happens if you actually fell in love with the mountain that you're on? That changes things because it's very easy. Well, I want to be on that one. I want to be there. I want to be there. Which we've all done at times, right?

Every single one of us have looked at something and gone, I want to be somewhere where I'm not.

But the real art of life is knowing that, sure, there are some things that we're going to want to change and some things we are wise to change, but then there'll be a hell of a lot of things that we absolutely can't change. So it's not always about being somewhere else, it's about learning to love where you're at. But in answer to your question, which.

Sorry, you have to remind me what exactly the question was. I just wanted to make that point because I thought it was an important distinction.

Sal Jefferies: 00:08:18

I think it is. And I'm going to sort of anchor that.

You're talking about perception here, which we're going to get to, we're going to sort of weave it through, because perception is almost everything, and whether it's one's perception of I need to be on a different mountain, or need to, but that perception can be both power or prison, depending on how we deal with our own perception. But we're going to cycle back to that. Yeah, I was really intrigued.

So you've been implementing this north star approach for a while, and obviously you're your coach, your business strategist. Why is this important? What is that? That this approach is making a difference than the goal setting model that perhaps we've said before.

Will Polston: 00:08:53

Yeah, sorry, great, great question. In a word, fulfillment is about being able to have fulfillment whilst being on the journey. Right? So if you access.

Most people go through life with when then syndrome, they're so focused on being somewhere. And they spend their life focused on trying to close the gap of where they are.

You know, the old fashioned computer, say old fashioned, some people still probably use them, but back I use a Mac, so I dont have it anymore. But when I used to use windows computers, you would have loading bars and ITd be like zero to 100, and everyones trying to get to 100.

Whereas the idea of having an all sight is there is no 100, there is no end, you are just constantly doing it.

So what you can do is very much buddhist philosophy is detach from the outcome and focus on the process and get your fulfillment from the process itself. So thats one of the things.

The second thing is, if you take Tony Robbins, for example, his six human needs, the two spiritual needs of growth and contribution. Well, there's continual growth. There's a kaizen approach to life, constant, continuous improvement, and you get that growth.

But then almost always, when anyone I've ever met that has a north star, it isn't just about them, it's about other people, which is where the contribution element comes in, which is the second spiritual needs. So having the ability to continually grow, to have and to have an impact on an ever growing greater number of people feels really good, right?

And then you overlap it in with looking at that and having that. And I personally don't have any scientific studies that I've carried out on people having a north star to prove that they live longer.

But there's a very similar concept that the Japanese have called an ikigai. And an ikigai, direct translation means a reason for being. And there's a fun, fantastic book about it.

I touch on it in the book, but there's basically four questions that you answer. What am I good at? What do I love? What do I feel the world needs? Which is basically, what problem am I solving and what can I be paid for?

The cross center of those four. So if you imagine a Venn diagram, four circles overlapping in the middle, the cross section of those is the ikigai.

Now, where the ikigai comes from is a tiny little island just off Japan called Okinawa. And on that island, it's one of the blue zones of the world.

They have more centurions, more people over 100 years old than anywhere else on the planet.

Now, all other things being equal, diet, exercise, etcetera, these people have this mission, and they continue to live it well into their eighties, nineties, hundreds, 110. They're living this process. Yet in the western world, we've become conditioned since the industrial age of we're gonna learn, earn and yearn.

You know, we introduced retirement at 60. Retirement at 65? Why? Because you spent all your time working. Right, well, then I'm gonna go and do the things I really want to do.

No, I've got no interest in spending 40 years of my life working, not doing something I don't want to do to then maybe hopefully get to that age and then be able to do what I want to do.

There's another element of actually, it can prolong, it can enable you to live longer, but not just live longer in terms of having health span, as in your age is actually having lifespan in the sense of your doing the stuff that you enjoy doing as time goes on.

Sal Jefferies: 00:12:20

Nice. Really nicely put. A bit of a nod to Peter Attia and the english professor who came up with it before him. Yeah.

Healthspan and lifespan are such an important one. Right. I want to talk about pensions because actually.

And we're going to talk about perspective because in our culture, I grew up probably not much older than you. My dad went to work, you know, worked grafted hard, and then sort of went up the career ladder, you know, gets a retirement.

And there's the famous saying by Alan Watts, and if you haven't, I can't do it as beautiful as Alan does because he's the great philosopher. But he sort of says, you know, life is, you start at school and, you know, things are getting ready and you get to college, things start ramping up.

And then when you go to a first job and you're going up and at some point you go, oh, is this it? And that whole model of. And in fact is a kind of mountain metaphor again, isn't it? Is very much a western thinking.

If we look at Maslow's hierarchy of needs, it's done in the triangle. You've alluded to the Buddhism, and I have a lot of influence by the eastern traditions, from Tao to. I studied yoga, studied Buddhism.

There's a lot more circular. Even your book, you reference a point in it where you've got the spiral dynamic. And by the way, there's science around spiral dynamics, too.

But this whole effect that we're kind of always growing, evolving is an expansive process rather than I'm trying to get somewhere process. So when I get to 65, then I can relax. That's quite a redundant model. And does that service, I think, in the mid two thousand twenty s.

I don't think so. There's a very different approach. And I love what you're saying there with the North Star philosophy.

The North Star anchor point that helps you live not just where you're going, but how you're going. That's really powerful. Really powerful. And for those in the. I love blue zones, I've seen, studied those to some degree.

Interesting, isn't it, how their lifestyle is? They've got. Yes. Was it one of six areas? I think there are six blue zones, but the ladies there, they still free dive.

And if anyone's tried free diving, it's really hard free diving in their eighties. But that sense of community and contribution, something bigger is very, very powerful.

And what I'm kind of pointing to here is perception and perspective. You know, you've touched on this in your book and I come across this all the time in my coaching work.

When we change our perception of ourselves, our business, our life, really, the whole world changes.

Pat, you could say something from your perspective, will, because I know you're working with this, I know you've written about this, but how are you seeing this perspective shift and what it does? Or maybe how do you work with it? It's an open question. Wherever you want to take that.

Will Polston: 00:14:52

I think perspective is everything. So most of us think about living a reality, but most people have never made the distinction between actuality and reality. So if you were to have.

There's some great little infographic examples of this.

If you were to have two people looking down at the floor and there's a number drawn on the floor, and for one person, that number drawn on the floor is a six, another person standing opposite them, that number drawn on the floor is a nine. Who's right? Well, one person's reality is one thing, one person's reality is something else.

But in actuality, there's a number on the floor or there's a drawing on the floor, let's say that and I. What we almost never get taught is the ability to influence and change our perspectives, which means we influence and change our reality.

That's literally what we have the ability to do.

And I think that it's probably one of the most powerful tools that any single one of us can have in any given moment to be able to truly live a life that we love, you know? So for me, and I'm very mindful of all or nothing thinking, you know, well, if you only have this, then you're sorted.

If you only have that, then you're sorted. But it is a combination of different things. But perspective is absolutely huge.

And if you were to ask the majority of people, what do you really want? Almost everybody says to be happy, right? And my definition of happiness is happiness is equal to or greater than your expectations.

So therefore, you either need to meet or exceed your expectations to be happy.

Now, that said, how many of us have gone through things in life where in the moment we hated it, but we look back weeks later, months later, years later, decades later, in some instance, and go, actually, in that moment it was a blessing, because that lowest low is directly correlated to my highest high, or whatever it might be. And if it wasn't for that moment, I wouldn't be who I am today. Yada, yada, yada.

But the art is being able to do that in the moment, not having to wait ten years, five years, 15 years. People say time's a healer. I don't think time's a healer. Well, time can be a healer, but it doesn't have to be the healer.

Perspective actually is the healer, and we can change the perspective. Now, that's the difference.

Sal Jefferies: 00:17:22

Nice. Really nice. So how might a person do that?

Will Polston: 00:17:27

First of all, I mean, you mentioned sort of seeing things as duality, right? So let's talk about hot and cold, for example. Hot and cold are subjective.

You know, certainly in my house, for me, living with my fiance, there'll be times where she's like, well, it's absolutely freezing. I'm like, it's absolutely boiling. That's her perspective. It's my perspective. In actuality, it's like 20 degrees or whatever it is.

The key is being able to gain a different perspective by looking for the opposite. So what I mean by that is if you're seeing something that's a negative situation at the moment, go, right. Well, what are the positives to this?

What are the benefits to it? Some people say, well, there's no benefits. There's always benefits, and we've got to look.

And the stronger the emotional charge is towards something, the harder it will be to find its opposite.

And when I say something, I'm being very particular about my language, because if we're fully infatuated with something, so it's not even love at that stage, it's just fully infatuated. We're blinded by the downside of what we're doing. It can be very difficult to see it.

But at the other end of the spectrum, if we're really resentful, we can be blinded by the upside for it. So it's looking for those. And the analogy I like to use, I mean, you might not be able to see it, but behind me, I have balance scales.

And for me, it's the perfect analogy of actually, not all things are weighted equal. So if you imagine typical balance scales, we could put a brick on a balance scale and find a grain of sand.

Well, that one grain of sand is not going to outweigh that brick. But if I keep adding lots and lots and lots and lots and lots of little grains of sand, eventually we're going to get to equilibrium.

Eventually we're going to get to balance. And that's the art in this process, is finding all of the small little, the opposites, if you want to call it that, to create that balance.

And that's when we can truly get to a place of gratitude. And seeing something as it is, not as we maybe want it to be, is super powerful.

And one of the sort of the litmus tests for that is any situation in life if you were to go back.

So let's say it's a particularly negative situation, if you were to go back and go, if I had the ability to which we don't, to physically go back in time and change that event, would I change it? If the answer is yes, you haven't got to gratitude. If the answer is no, I wouldn't change it.

Then you've got to gratitude with what happened at that particular point.

Sal Jefferies: 00:19:56

Beautiful. Yeah, beautiful, isn't it? It's interesting you mentioned about the duality, because we can be kind of quite ping pongy.

Like, I like this and I don't like that. I want to be wealthy, I don't want to be poor. And it's. They're quite ends of the scale. Of course the Buddhists would talk about the scale.

They're not disconnected. It's one continuum, as you know. And in your book, you talk about the three driving forces to be quite simplistic about it.

There's pain, there's pleasure, but there's inspiration. And I think that third leg of the stool, if we're to use that analogy, is what gives it something much more of a quality of balance, of richness.

Because pleasure in play is natural. Our brain is hardwired for threat detection. We move towards things, we move away from things. I'm a big fan of looking at ancient stuff.

I've been reading a lot about the ancient Greeks and how their formulation of language is really profound and it goes way before that. But their interpretation has really shaped modern culture.

And Plato is a famous name who's been around philosopher, but he really got into this idea of dualistic thinking. So, you know, this and that forms and different things, and it's really taken hold. But it may or may not be true.

Quantum physics would suggest that it's absolutely not true. A lot of the taoist principles about how everything is part of a continuum network, as opposed to separate pieces, would also suggest the same thing.

So when we think about inspiration, rather than I want to be successful and I want another million in the bank and grow my business by ten, x or whatever the goal is, rather than be driven by pain or pleasure, I want this, I don't want that. Let's talk about inspiration. Because I think this cycle links in beautifully to the North Star approach, isn't it?

Can you say a little more around inspiration? How you do, how you work with it, how you build it?

Will Polston: 00:21:44

Yeah, absolutely. So when we talk about pain, pleasure and inspiration, the example that I want people to picture in their minds is imagine an upside down tea.

So on what would normally be the top of the t, the cross bar is now on the bottom. It's the bottom bar. And then you've got a line in the middle. Pain on one side, pleasure on the other side.

They are what I would call lower levels of thinking. Pain and pleasure are borne out. The amygdala, the part of the brain, the oldest part of the brain, the reptilian brain, as some people will call it.

Yes, they are. People will say, well, pain and pleasure is to be what it is to be human.

Well, not necessarily because animals experience pain and pleasure, but that. So that for me, I think of lower level thinking, higher level thinking. We have, as part of our brain, we have a prefrontal cortex.

It's the thinking part of the brain. And for me, there is a distinction between thoughts and thinking, which we can maybe go down that rabbit hole in a minute.

But thinking is the ability to influence something one way or another. When we think of inspiration. Inspiration. Inspiration. What's another word for spirit? Energy. You're in your energy. So what is inspiration?

When you're living in your energy, when you're living in your highest values? Every single one of us has a completely unique set of value, a completely unique value hierarchy.

It's as unique as the fingerprint on the end of your finger. And I refer to values in two different ways. I call them end values, which are typically feelings. And you have end away or end towards feelings.

So typically pain or pleasure. Or you have your means feelings. So the things you do that give your life meaning. Hence means values.

When you're living in your means values, you are inspired. I don't believe that people burn out because they work too hard. I don't believe that to be the case.

I believe the reason that people burn out is because they're spending too much time not doing enough stuff that they love doing. And that comes back to means values.

One of the ways that I'll know if people are living in their values or somebody else's from the language they're using. So if they're using language like, I need to, I ought to, I should, do, I have to, it's an indication they live in somebody else's values.

And when I say somebody else's, we get influenced from such a young age, and those people could be a whole variety of it. Sometimes it's parents, grandparents, teachers.

Society has a way of influencing us, yet we've got our true, you might want to call it, internal compass, whatever you want to regard it as. And that's the thing that when we're living congruent with it, we're living our highest values.

And your north star is a reflection of your highest values. And that's really what inspiration is.

So I think people are wise to want to operate in their highest values because that's where they're going to get the most fulfillment, but also get the most growth from as well.

Sal Jefferies: 00:24:38

Beautiful. Having done yoga for many years, when you study inspire, which is when you breathe in, it's actually the word inspire. It's another piece of them.

It comes from the latin spiritus, which means to breathe, but it also means energy. So we follow its etymology all the way back.

Actually, this has been known for a long time, through the generations, that this quality of in breath taking stuff, in energy, in versus expenditure, which you're alluding to with the burnout example. And it's a really interesting concept, isn't it?

Because we can be caught in the lower level thinking, you know, which is, I'll be happy when I've got to work harder when I make that money. It's always, is it subjugated?

I think the words are going to put to the future, there's something's going to happen in the future, and then I'll be okay. Which is, there's Karen's stick model, isn't it? He's simplest one, like, oh, there's that carrot. Keep chasing it.

But actually, when we're talking about inspiration, one of my coaches, he would talk about as doing from being so, rather than so. The doing of life is natural. We do whatever we do.

But if you're doing it from a state of being, which is inspiration, some very different frequency, brain frequency, energetic frequency to come from, versus the pain pleasure model, which is, again, back to dualistic ping pong. In fact, in many ways, you're at effect of the world there, aren't you? Rather than at. Cause it's a really different way of coming at it.

Will Polston: 00:25:59

Absolutely. And it's interesting.

So coming back to what we were saying about inspire, when we think of when do we no longer live, it's when we're no longer breathing. Right. So the breath is the thing that gives us a life. Well, again, you. I like you. I love etymology.

And it's fascinating to come and learn the words of why certain things are the way that they are.

And I will intentionally use I want to be in live from a place of inspiration rather than use the term live with passion, for example, because the etymology of the word passion means to suffer. Like why don't I want to suffer over and over again? It doesn't make sense.

So when we think about that, we go, right, well, I'm going to live in my values because that's going to give me life. It literally wakes you up, it fills you with enthusiasm, it gives you the energy, you want to focus, you want to go and do and. Yeah, absolutely.

Operating from a place of being, we're human beings, not human doings. But most people, they will live their life doing something to have something to then hopefully be something.

Whereas if we make that conscious choice of I'm going to be how I want to be, choose the state I'm going to be in, I'm going to think how I want to think, I'm going to feel how I want to feel and then go and do the things from that place and then have the things from that place.

The irony is the doing and the having almost is the same, but you've had the actual experience that you want to be experiencing the whole way along the line. Because almost anybody that almost, well, the number one reason why almost anybody ever sets a goal is to change the way they feel.

So if you can, and we can do that in any given moment.

So if you experience that now and then operate from that place, you're getting the outcome that you want in the meantime, whilst being able to do other things. And I think there's a lot of power in being able to do that.

Sal Jefferies: 00:27:46

Yeah, really nice. And it's such a good point. You said that most people want to get that goal, to change how they feel.

And while that sounds quite simple, it's actually profound, isn't it? Because if we all pause for a second whether.

So I coach a lot of founders who run their businesses, and there's goals in businesses about growth or sales models or impact in the world, and that's all fine, all good. But if we don't look at that with a really clear mind, go and ask, why am I doing this? What am I going to get from it?

And really sit with that in a conscious state? Is this moving towards, let's say, a state of impact? Am I coming from inspiration, making something that's impactful in the world?

Or is it that I'm trying to not be worried about my sales funnel or something like that?

Because actually, if you can handle the feeling in the moment and work with the feeling and maybe transcend or change that feeling, because you have, as you say, inspirational or a north star as a gravitational point, you don't need that goal. You can choose the goal. You can choose an even bigger goal. But there's a real subtle distinction here, isn't like, whose choice is this?

I did a mini podcast on this at the moment, it's a bit of mind boggling, but whose choice is this? So when we're choosing a goal, am I choosing it? Is it my mom and dad's story choosing it? Is it culture choosing it?

Whereas if we're inspired, are we choosing that for something bigger or something more powerful? Deeper? And if we are, that's just a whole different mind space to come from.

I want to touch on the point you said here, will, because it's a metaphor I use, which is having an internal compass, because I use a lot of different mindset qualities with people I work with.

One of them comes up often, is the explorer, because if you want to grow into a different state of being, you might need to be like an explorer, going off about traveling the psychological, emotional world. But you need a compass. You may not know precisely where you're going. And of course, if we got your north star, we know what's pulling us.

But if you've got a compass, you can stay on point, which, as you've alluded to, is your values and what you really care about. Because it comes down, doesn't it? Doesn't. If you don't have that alignment in your value space, then why are you doing what you're doing?

Is it your choice? Yeah. Is it on point? Or is there a kind of a disharmony in your thinking and your behavior? So really, really nice.

There's a couple of things I want to say to you. There's a quote in your book. I want to read it here. And I love this. Apparently you popped this on your wall somewhere.

And you said, there is no such thing as a lack of resources, only a lack of resourcefulness. I'll just read that again. There is no such thing as a lack of resources, only a lack of resourcefulness.

Now, this comes up a lot in my space, and I'm very interested to hear how you experience this, but sometimes people don't have whatever, enough people, contacts, money, business plan, investment, whatever the thing is. And that's simply not true, is it? Well, they may be true on one context.

You might need to get some investment or hire some team or whatever that might be.

The resourcefulness is, how do you overcome that issue with what you have now, you're clearly working with this, and I'm very intrigued to know what and how you might have worked with this. So our listener can get a grasp of this. Because if you think, I don't have x to do y, then we don't move.

So could you say a bit more around working with resourcefulness as a principal?

Will Polston: 00:31:10

Yeah, absolutely. So I'll share what was a really challenging time for me personally.

So I had a situation about six years ago where I was in a really, really tough position financially. I had a big financial disaster. It completely rocked the business and I didn't have the means to be able to carry on in the way that I desired to.

Right? So hence lack of resources. I didn't have the resources. I found myself. I'd been trying all these various different things and not getting anywhere.

And I just remember thinking, there must be a way. There must be a way I could do this. And then one day it just dawned on me. What I was trying to do was raise money. And at the time I was trying to.

I was raising money in the form of debt finance, right? So someone lend me money, I pay them a return. And then somebody reached out to me and said, hey, will, let us meet up for a coffee.

And he knew I was going for a bit of a challenge. And he presented this opportunity. He said, well, look, why don't you look at selling part of the business?

And I was like, hmm, I hadn't considered that. And I went away from the conversation and was like, it's a different way of doing it. And then what happened?

Was he, funnily enough, then sort of less than one working day later, because we met on the Friday, he came back to me on the Monday and said, actually, based on everything you said, I'd be that investor for you. Anyway, long story short, we went through stuff and he wanted too much of the business for too little money. So I said no.

But what it did was it sparked something in me because I used to raise private equity for a living, so I used to run a division of a stockbroker, I used to raise money for businesses. And I thought, oh my God, I have the resources to be able to use. I can put together an appropriate pitch. I could go out to different investors.

I just hadn't thought of doing it. So what I was doing in that instance was I was using my own resourcefulness to look at something in a different way to go and get the outcome.

Anyway, long story short, in the matter of a couple of weeks, I'd solved that problem because I had been more resourceful. Now the lack of resources comes back to how can we look at things in different ways?

And I'm a big believer that any problem is simply an unasked or unanswered question, and you ask the right question to the right person, problem solved. It really is as simple as that. Now, does that mean you need to ask the question once? No, absolutely not.

But thinking about the resources, thinking about the people around you can be extremely powerful.

And, yeah, that kind of touches on something else I talk about later in the book, which is about the power of mentors and having what I call the ultimate peer group to be able to help solve challenges as well.

Sal Jefferies: 00:34:11

Yeah, that's such a powerful point, and thanks for sharing the story. It's hard, isn't it, when something goes wrong? I had a time when I got into a real pickle myself. My story was I was going to be a photographer.

So I'd worked in advertising for some years back in my twenties. I moved on from that and thought, I'm going to become a photographer now. I'm someone who likes, I can vision big.

I'm like, yeah, I could totally see this happening. I used to commission photographers at the agency. I was like, this is going to be great. Took myself to night school.

Only problem was that I hadn't actually used a camera before and I couldn't even take a decent picture. Oh, it's literally zero. Like starting from zero. But because I had a passion for it, I could envision it happening. I basically went to school.

This is way, this is before digital slrs came around. So old school film, you had no results immediately. You had to send the film to the lab, get it back.

Anyway, long story short, with this one, a graph did on that did I think about a year and a half of night school to do some other stuff at the time. And I thought, right, so I'm going to set up in business.

Then digital photography came in, the SLR quality got good enough to then blend that in, and it took me three years to get going, and I thought it would take one. So my vision also had a hole in it. And I think this is one of the problems with entrepreneurial mindsets, is that you don't see the shadow side.

You're like, yeah, this is going to totally work. What about if it doesn't? So I suddenly had two years to bankroll, and it was hard. Like, hard, really hard. And it was almost the point.

And I was literally at back against the wall where I could have folded the whole thing, walked away. And at one point I changed, and I changed everything in the mind because I was literally had to have a level shift because it wasn't working.

And from that point, I had a successful photography business and did really great work and loved it. But I remember that adversity being. So I made it about me.

And I think what I learned from that one is when you made it about you, which it is in part, but it's not about you, the human, it's about you, your resourcefulness, your capabilities. And actually, adversity is a space which we can tap into.

It's a pain point that has a lot of knowledge and skill in it if we can go in there with the right attitude.

So with that in mind, when you're taking someone through, say, becoming more resourceful, like you've done, like, I'm sharing my own experience, how might you take someone to become more resourceful, particularly if they're in a hard point, then they like, oh, well, I don't have a, I don't have the capital. I don't have the resources. How might you take someone through a shift in thinking so they can become more resourceful?

Will Polston: 00:36:35

Great question.

The actual starting point has zero to do with resourcefulness and zero to do with the resources is actually by getting crystal clear on what's the outcome that we really, what do we really want? Because a lot of people, they think they want something only to realize that they actually want something else.

So by knowing what's the outcome that we really, really, really want helps shape the rest of that process. So really drilling into that, and sometimes we have to go two or three layers deep to be able to find out what that really is.

And, and that in itself becomes very powerful. Then it's a case of a bunch of different thinking strategies. So one of my favorite questions is, who might I know? Yeah.

So who might I know that's done this? Who might I know that has decision? Who might I know that knows someone that could help?

And just even by going through those three questions alone, you know, most of us have got a mobile phone. We scroll through our mobile phone. This person might be, this person might be, this person might be. This person might be.

As options, we start to give ourselves some, some central solutions there in that respect. And another one that's super powerful is by putting ourselves in the position that it's already happened. So actually thinking through.

So from a thinking perspective, right. Very much sort of NLP timeline type work of. Right. Imagine weve already done this. What would I have done?

Reflecting back and looking at it, what would have been my option?

So youre looking Albert Einstein, that said you cant solve a problem at the same level of thinking that created it, or if you were to then put yourself in a state that the outcomes already been achieved, and then you put yourself in that mental state, physical state, and you look back, what would be some of the options is something thats super powerful.

And there was another thing that popped into my mind as I was talking in relation to resources, which was not something that I can remember off of my head. So it may come back in a moment. But yeah, there's a few different examples when it comes to the other one.

This is a really, really, really important one, actually is. So many of us don't do things because of a face of, because we're coming from a place of fear.

And a lot of that fear can often be how we, we fear how we will be perceived. So it's an ego thing, right? Well, I'm fearful our ego is not gonna let us do it. So it's coming from that place.

And I appreciate you may not want to go and tell and sundry, but who are a few people that you feel really safe in being able to be 100% honest and vulnerable with? That's one of the powers. I know you do a lot of great work with a lot of people.

As a coach is sometimes a coach is that person that is the only person in the world that you feel you have that psychological safety with. To be completely 100% open, honest and vulnerable. And it doesn't have to be a coach, it could be a close friend, it could be anybody.

But often telling that one person what's really going on and taking the mask off, that in itself can be super, super powerful because then there isn't that emotive element of it. And the, I forget that. I forget exactly where it came from. I actually think it might be sort of a biblical text, but the truth will set you free.

Sometimes just having that conversation as well enables you to just see it from a different place, have that conversation, and then you can come up with ideas from there. So, yeah, just some thoughts.

Sal Jefferies: 00:40:36

Yeah, very nice thoughts. It's such a powerful point you make there. The art of speaking out your problem to another. Now, you're right.

You can tell it to your mom, you tell it to your mate. They're going to be biased, right, because they have a vested interest in you and they'll have an opinion.

And there's a big difference between an opinion, which is someone else's constructive belief normally, and a.

A justified belief, something, a justified understanding if you're working with a mentor or coach, that has the best in mind for you, but they're not attached. They're like, no, I wouldn't do the best for you, but I'm not attached to it because we're clean here. That can change everything.

Because there's someone there that has no judgment, has only the space to help you grow, evolve what you need to do. And that's a really powerful thing. I want to say one more point to this.

So my background is from psychotherapeutics, so I've got a deeper level understanding on some of these points where if we speak of something, it removes the shame. Because if we can't speak of it, there's secrecy and secrecy and shame. Often our siblings, they kind of go together.

So when we say, hey, will, listen, mate, can I talk to you? I'm having a struggle at the moment. I need to raise some finance. And you're like, yeah, sure, let's work through that.

It's like, okay, the shame's gone because I've spoken about it. It's not hidden anymore. And that's a very releasing space to be. But you made a really good point.

Then you need to create safety, however that happens, because if we feel at threat by default, we need to find at least enough safety. Or if I say safe enough, because safety is actually an illusion. But you can feel safe enough to make a decision, have a conversation.

Whatever the action is, if you're safe enough, it diminishes the threat response, which changes your state, and then your state predicates you the way you're thinking, which is really, really important. Now, you mentioned mentors in your book, and obviously you said that perhaps.

So we really get this because there's a coach, a mentor and consultant, and I don't know about you, but I sometimes go into one of three spaces depending on work with. Sometimes I'm only coaching.

Occasionally I'll be doing a bit of mentoring because there'll be something I can bring in a mentoring capacity and sometimes I'm consultant where there's a slightly different edge to it, really. It's about helping someone get unstuck and grow at its simplest description. What's, what's your understanding of working with mentors for your own?

I know you've got a network as well.

Perhaps you could say a bit more about mentorship and how that space really helps us shift and also then how does that link to our north star thinking?

Will Polston: 00:43:03

Yeah, I think you're right. I think that there's certain people will like to be put into boxes.

You know, some people, I'm just a coach or I'm just a consultant or I'm just a mentor. And the reality is if we chunk up to use some NLP, NLP language, what are all of them doing?

They're designed to help in some degree and okay, the techniques and the way that things are being done. And certainly organizations that have been constructed might say, well that's not coaching, it's. It's mentoring and this and the other.

But I don't think there's a single person I believe, and obviously I've not spoken to every person on the planet, so I can't say this, but there's a single coach on the planet that hasn't slipped into consultancy within a conversation or mentoring within a conversation. I just don't. Anyway, we digress slightly, but the, where does mentoring come into it?

For me, a mentor is someone that is a few steps ahead of where you would like to be. And often mentors are thought of as people that are often attributed to business. Right.

So you can have a business mentor or they've done, I want to, I don't know, I want to grow a farm. So I get a mentor that is someone that's grown the farm and they've done it in the past. Right. That's an example of a mentor.

And the idea being is that the mentor has some experience and knowledge that they can impart on you so that you can learn from what they've done to get to where you want to get to fast. Right. There's what I call direct mentors and indirect mentors. So a direct mentor would be, I want to become a psychotherapist.

So I get you to help me understand what's the best training to do. Why would I use this training instead of that training. How long is it going to take me?

What are some of the things, what some of the roadblocks that you can help me overcome as this time goes on? An indirect mentor would be someone that I might read about. It might be someone that I listen to.

I might watch them on YouTube is an example of an indirect mentor. But I believe you can have mentors in any area of life.

I could look at a friend of mine and his wife, for example, that got an amazing relationship and I could see him as a mentor of who I would love to have in my own relationship. I'm going to improve my relationship. They perceive to have an amazing relationship.

Now I've either got my perception completely wrong or they've genuinely got an amazing relationship. And, well, what are some of the things he's like? Well, for example. Well, what we do is this. Yeah. And it's horses for courses.

Of course, certain things are subjective. Not all things work for all people, but we do this, this and this.

And the more I'm a big fan of patterns and for me, one of the things that I love about being in the role that I know I see so many common patterns.

People talk about success leaves clues, and there's lots of common things that happen over and over and over again in certain situations and you'll often pick up from those. So, yeah, that's the benefit of that.

When it comes to using North Star, I think for North Star, so you have the guiding light and then I almost sort of draw a line back to it, something sort of ahead of me and I draw a line back to it until where I am now, that's what I call the North Star trajectory. And then, so I'm a pilot and one of the things I'm thinking about when I'm flying is that you never fly perfectly on course ever.

You know, you're constantly having to make, even when you're in your autopilot on autopilot is making constant small adjustments to course correct you. That's what it's doing, you know, for the wind, the weather, the flock of birds, whatever it might be, it's making these changes.

And mentors have the ability to guide you a little bit like having bumpers up, you know, when you're. So when you're a kid, there might be some adults do it as well.

When you're a kid and you have the bumpers up at the bowling lanes, you know, they're there just to try and keep you in the lane, keep you on the straight and narrow. And that's what I think that they can do.

Now, that said, I'm going to caveat that with what I've learned is that one of the most powerful things that you can learn from a mentor is not what they do but how they think.

And I've seen so many people employ mentors or engage with mentors, and the mentor doesn't serve them simply because they're doing everything the mentor says, but they're nothing thinking how the mentor thinks. So one of the best questions you can ask the mentor is, well, what do you think? What's your belief system when you have this opportunity?

What's running through your mind? Like, are you thinking, I can't wait to do this or I don't want to do this? You know, like what? Just even those little things.

And they're questions that most people don't ask and then they wonder why they don't get the same results.

Sal Jefferies: 00:48:05

Really powerful. Yeah. It's not what you're thinking, it's how you're thinking. It's so powerful, isn't it? And you're right. We can get very caught up in the content.

Like, oh, my mentor said, I go do this, so you go do that.

But if you don't understand the why and the thinking, then you haven't really been able to take the resource from the mentor and integrate it, which is such a powerful thing. So what I find is that most people come to my coaching practice at a certain level of understanding.

Like when I went to my first coach and first therapist. You start at that level and you don't realize where you can go. We have a sort of starting point. Where's the starting point? People are coming to you.

What's present right now, that where people come and say, hey, will, you know, someone recommended you, however they come to you, what are some of the things people are coming to you and say, well, I've got this thing I need help with. What are you seeing?

Will Polston: 00:48:55

Yeah, I mean, again, if I was to use it, in a word, it's unfulfilled. You know, they're unfulfilled. Now, people can be unfulfilled for a few reasons. For some people, it's because they're just lost.

You know, directionally they are lost.

For some people, it's they know exactly where they're going, but they're so frustrated because they're not getting where they want to get too quick, roadblocks, hurdles, whatever it might be, sometimes unrealistic expectations.

Other times, they know exactly where they want to be going, they know exactly what they want to be doing, but they're just procrastinating and doing it. But in a word, it's unfulfilled and unfulfilled in life, unfulfilled in business.

And that's the part that I love, is just getting people that are in that place, they're dissatisfied, really, you know, unfulfilled, dissatisfied. They're dissatisfied with something in their life, or often multiple things in their life that we look to change and we change very, very quickly.

And, yeah, that's where they're.

Sal Jefferies: 00:49:57

Yeah, interesting. It's a similar angle which I'm coaching. Most people I come to are roughly 40 or thereabouts plus. And there's a, seems to be a consciousness shift.

And I know I had it had a, at an existential crisis awakening. It depends how you manage in it. One is going to be a cliche and one's going to be a growth point.

So how you manage this awakening, and by the way, it's completely natural. They're ego state development points.

So there's a lot of our culture which would ashamed that, oh, you know, look at you having an existential crisis. You've just woken up to another level of your being, which I find fascinating. So been through that. But you rise so much in.

People want to do something different.

And what I see, so a lot of the guys I coach are founders of businesses, and they're either doing something new, something different, or it's a growth point.

But that is an expression of that person, the business is an expression of them, like how they approach challenges, how they approach fulfillment, as you rightly said, and satisfaction. So in many ways it becomes a mirror.

So although we're working on, quote, the founder and the business, we're really working on their entire inner system of their mind. And actually fulfillment is almost like most people don't really see it, but when you say, well, is that what you want?

They're like, that's exactly what I want. But I find it's only expressed as an outcome because it's quite hard to quantify that.

So the outcome might be, I want to set up the business to do x, but the x means I will feel full. And of course, if we're not full, then there's a suggestion that are we coming from a place of lack?

And then if we're coming from a place of lack, what does that do with our, you know, your three points of pain, pleasure, inspiration, you know, which of those are the driving energies there? So important, important things to think about if we're. If we're listening and thinking, like, oh, yeah, I need to. I want to do some change work.

What is it that I'm really after? Because often the external is an expression of the internal.

Will Polston: 00:51:53

Yeah, absolutely. And I think as well, like, there's. There seems to be this obsession with zeros. So what I mean by that is we talk about a big birthday.

You know, nobody ever says, oh, yeah, I want to be a millionaire before I'm 29, or millionaire before I'm 31. It's like, I want to be a millionaire before I'm 30. I want to be a director by the time I'm 40, I want to have sold my business by the time I'm 50.

I want to have x, whatever it is, by the time I'm 60, whatever this is. So I think a lot of people do a lot of reflections.

So many people have the blinkers on and they're just honed and focused and they're sort of running their race. And then what happens?

They look up from time to time, unless they have a significant emotional event, something dramatic happens and there's a real shift. But often people approach a big birthday, 40, 50, 60, whatever it is, and go, yeah, things aren't kind of what I imagined. And I.

And that's where I come back to this. Happiness is equal to a greater than expectations. Whilst a lot of people have never articulated their goals, they've never written their goals down.

They've never. People have an idea at some level, of what it is they want and what they don't want. And sometimes I jest with people around.

Certainly I have no idea what I want. And I go, well, okay, so you want to be in 100,000 pounds worth of debt, living on the streets and have not watched for a month.

Well, no, I don't want that. All right, so, you know, you don't want that. Well, that's a starting point. Okay, so we know it's definitely not that.

Well, that just gives us a whole load of other options. Right. And we can start. And then even if it. Even if it's quite vague and broad, it gives us something to be able to work with.

But people have some degree of viewpoint of what that. What that is for them.

Sal Jefferies: 00:53:44

Very nice.

Will Polston: 00:53:45

Yeah.

Sal Jefferies: 00:53:45

And of course, that's the coach's job, right. Is to pull that out, to ask those powerful questions, those revealing questions, to help someone articulate what is in kind of sifting for gold.

You know, the old analogy around the midway in the west, in America somewhere, they'd be sifting the mud and somewhere you sift through enough. There's beautiful gold in there. We just need to sift, right? You gotta sift it through. The gold's in there.

Well, I'd really like your closing thoughts to cycle back to where we started and to anchor into the North Star. We're going to leave links in the show, notes, of course, for Will's book and content details.

But for a listener now, what's something you want to share that really will help someone connect with their north star?

Will Polston: 00:54:30

Two things actually come to mind. The first thing is, if you don't know what it is, that's okay. The majority of people don't, but you can start to get clear on it.

And for a lot of people that might be just buying the book and start reading. I've designed the book to give people the questions and everything they need to be able to do to work it through themselves.

They don't need to come on a training program. I don't need to go and do anything. You can work through by working through the questions that we give. The second thing is, it's absolutely not a set.

And forget. Yeah, it's not right. This is it. It's done. I will read my. And we talk about a north Star and a north Star trajectory. Two separate things.

The north Star is the mission. The trajectory is the goals, if you want to call them that, reverse engineered. I read mine on a weekly basis.

Not a week goes by without me tweaking something. And that process of intentionally keeping in front of mind engages me. It helps keep me focused.

It engages what's known as the reticular activating system, which is the part of the brain that helps you focus. And what it also does is it keeps me open to opportunities. You know, we've all done it, haven't we?

You know, you go and buy an item of clothing or a car or something. I've never seen anyone with this. You get it, and all of a sudden you see it everywhere. That's a ridiculousness at play. So keeping.

Keeping yourself open to options by looking at that and seeing what's going on. So, yeah, I know. You said one thing with s two that will be helpful for people.

Sal Jefferies: 00:55:54

Two is all good. Thank you. Such an important point. So, will, it's been absolute delight to dig into North Star thinking with you today.

I really appreciate your time and thoughts and energy, my dear listener. I say it every time, but there's literal gold in here. You literally just hung out with two coaches for an hour there's so much gold in it.

So replay capture the show notes. Do something with this because if you don't do anything, it's just a concept. If you do something with it, it could become a new reality.

So I trust you do will hope we catch again catch up again in the near future, my dear listener, until the next time, take care. Thank you so much for listening. If you enjoyed the episode, please subscribe.

And if a friend would benefit from hearing this, do send it on to them as well. If you would like to get in touch yourself then you can go to my website which is saljefferies.com spelled Salje double f e r I E s. Saljefferies.com.

hit the get in touch link and there you can send me a direct message.

If you'd like to go one step further and learn whether coaching could help you overcome a challenge or a block in your life, then do reach out and I offer a call where we can discuss how this may be able to help you. Until the next time, take care.