That’s not a typo.

I’ve been reading a lot lately—I use reading to think about bigger things, like what I want to accomplish in the coming year.

But Simon Sinek, through his book The Infinite Game, has me thinking bigger.

Most of us, especially in the corporate world, play way too small.

Simon Sinek writes about James Carse and his idea that there are Finite Games and Infinite Games.

Finite Games and Infinite Games

Finite Games are games in which the rules are very clear. Finite Games have a clear beginning and a clear ending. They have a clear winner and a clear loser, too.

Sports are finite games. I can tell when the Denver Broncos or the Green Bay Packers win or lose. Even if there is disagreement, it is about how the rules apply, not whether there are rules and a winner and a loser.

The purpose of a Finite Game is to win the game.

Humans create finite games because they are a fun way to challenge ourselves. But they do not naturally occur. A tree is not a finite game.

Infinite Games are things that have no clear beginning or ending. They have no clear winner or loser.

The purpose of an Infinite Game is to continue playing. The joy is in the playing of the game rather than the destination.

Many things in our lives, especially in the corporate world, are Infinite Games that we have turned into Finite Games.

For example, the goal of a corporation, ultimately, is to continue. To provide a product or service that benefits society and to continue doing that as long as there is a benefit from that product or service.

Starting with Milton Friedman, many began thinking of corporations as a way to maximize shareholder wealth.

In other words, as a Finite Game, with clear winners and losers. The score was kept through stock prices and quarterly earnings reports.

But this can’t be right. Because companies interact with shareholders and suppliers and customers and employees and when a company is thriving, all of those things thrive. Even the environment can thrive when a successful corporation thrives.

To view the corporation as a Finite Game can actually create it as a finite entity. An entity that maximizes profit for a short time and then vanishes. Leaving customers and employees and even whole towns in its wake.

Is that what we really want?

Why This Matters

Why do we play Infinite Games? Why do we keep playing them?

Simon Sinek talks about what he calls a Just Cause.

I recently finished Elon Musk’s biography by Walter Isaacson. It’s not likely to change your opinion of Musk, a mixed bag of a human being if there ever was one.

But like him or not it is clear that Musk does not keep score with money. He has a bigger vision. He wants to save the world with renewable energy—including solar and electric cars. And if that fails he wants us to be able to colonize Mars, to be able to escape the Earth should we render it inhospitable.

That’s a Just Cause.

A Just Cause is something that you will likely not achieve. But you are willing to die in the attempt.

A Just Cause will inspire others to join you. It will motivate people beyond your lifetime.

A Just Cause is a reason people join companies. It is a reason people invest in companies. It is a reason people buy from companies.

A Just Cause may make money, but the money allows greater pursuit of the Just Cause. It isn’t an end in itself.

A Just Cause is about 2124 rather than 2024.

What’s Your Just Cause?

The irony is that I talk to a lot of people who are not willing to look for or own their Just Cause.

They are not willing to own and talk about that thing that motivates them. The reason they do what they do.

Instead they want to talk about the Finite Game of what they do. The business model, the profit margins.

It feels too audacious to have a Just Cause.

It can feel like bragging. But is it, to have a cause bigger than yourself? To do things for the sake of that cause rather than for your own sake (or your bank account’s)?

I want as many people to be impacted by transformative coaching as possible. Because I have seen, over and over again, that people who have had access to great coaching do amazing things in the world and become amazing human beings in the process.

The world needs more of that.

A. LOT. MORE.

I spend a lot of time coaching people and not getting paid for it. I spend a lot of time helping other coaches and not getting paid for it. I am sure I could make more money just building a coaching business. But I am helping other coaches, I am helping leadership organizations, I am on boards of nonprofits for a reason. Because it helps them be more effective in the world. It helps them with their Just Cause.

Yes, there is a small number of people who pay me handsomely. But even in that I know that I will have an impact not only on them but on every person who works for them. On every person who comes into contact with them.

I make enough money that I have time to devote to my Just Cause.

What about you?

How To Go Deeper

I am convinced that more and more people are coming out of the spiritual closet and seeing their work as a vital personal journey to both abundance and meaning.

This is what I write about. For founders, for original thinkers, at all stages of this journey.

The world needs YOU, in all your brilliance and imperfection.

If you are a founder wanting to scale and sell your company, there are three shifts in identity that can help you do so with twice the impact and half the stress. Take a look at this video.

If you want to build a coaching business where you get to be yourself, help amazing people, and replace your corporate income in the process, here’s a video where I share the top three mistakes I see coaches make when trying to build a sustainable business—

http://bit.ly/creatingextraordinarycoaches

You can subscribe to my YouTube channel here.

You can follow me on LinkedIn to make sure you never miss a post by hitting the bell on my profile.

If you want to subscribe to this Creating Extraordinary Futures newsletter, you can do so here.

If you think you are enlightened, spend a week with your family. — Ram Dass

This week’s article is an offering for Thanksgiving.

I know a lot of founders, some of them clients, who will use their success in their business as a way to avoid work on themselves and their relationships.

They often tell me that the person they are most afraid of is their spouse. Or one of their parents.

This resonates with me. I still struggle with it. And I have come up with a personal experiment that I want to share with you.

This week, in the US at least, many of us will spend an extended period of time with our family. Often reentering our childhood homes in the process.

It can feel like we revert to being children again. All the things that used to trigger us—a look from Dad, a button-pushing comment from your oldest sister—show up again.

I find myself in the same political fights with my mother that I have been having for the last thirty years.

What’s your version of this?

What if you did an experiment?

See if you can, just this one time, NOT react. Not fall for the bait.

My mom and I have this strange dynamic where she picks fights with me, and sometimes me with her, to feel alive. It’s like we can’t say the stuff we want to say—that we love and care for each other—but we can show our love, how we care, by fighting.

I’ve talked with a lot of people who have something similar going on in their family. It can feel like judgment but when you look underneath, the energy can only be described as love. You miss it when it’s gone. Even, perhaps especially, the difficult stuff.

The Power of a Pause

If you want to change the dynamic, see if you can PAUSE. See if you can say “Hmm, not sure. That’s an interesting point.” Or “Yes, you might be right.”

When I do this, my mom quickly stops trying to engage. Most of the time, anyway. And we move on to other things. Things that matter more. We have begun to relax a bit more, to enjoy our time together more. Which is important to me because my mom is 87. And I want to feel like I am there for her in her final years, even though there were times I did not feel she was there for me.

It can be strange now. Boring even. There is a vacuum that needs to be filled. People will try to find all kinds of ways to fill it. Sometimes my mom still tries to pick a fight with me. Sometimes she still tries to make me feel small.

But the equilibrium has shifted. And it can for you.

When that opening comes, what will you fill it with?

Happy Thanksgiving.

How To Go Deeper

I am convinced that more and more people are coming out of the spiritual closet and seeing their work as a vital personal journey to both abundance and meaning.

This is what I write about. For founders, for original thinkers, at all stages of this journey.

The world needs YOU, in all your brilliance and imperfection.

If you are a founder wanting to scale and sell your company, there are three shifts in identity that can help you do so with twice the impact and half the stress. Take a look at this video.

If you want to build a coaching business where you get to be yourself, help amazing people, and replace your corporate income in the process, here’s a video where I share the top three mistakes I see coaches make when trying to build a sustainable business—

http://bit.ly/creatingextraordinarycoaches

You can subscribe to my YouTube channel here.

You can follow me on LinkedIn to make sure you never miss a post by hitting the bell on my profile.

If you want to subscribe to this Creating Extraordinary Futures newsletter, you can do so here.

I was just at a four-day event in Santa Monica with a group of 25 people who are focused on creating in the world.

The event featured two coaches that I have worked with in the past and I would say about half of those in attendance were newer coaches building their businesses.

I was smack in the middle between the coaches who were “new” and those who had, at least in my mind, mature businesses.

But I put myself unconsciously in the “new” category. Until I caught myself.

How I Hold Myself Back

I do not have a business that I am satisfied with. While I love my clients and what I am able to create with them, I want more.

Not necessarily more individual clients, but more impact. With larger organizations.

I want to have a team of coaches who can support me as I expand my work from founders to their leadership teams.

I want to share in the growth of the organizations that I help.

I want to create freedom and abundance both personally and for my family.

In my mind, I have just started that. Hence my mindset that I am still a beginner.

What My First Coach Told Me At Dinner

The first coach that I worked with when I was getting started in 2016 was Rich Litvin. I did a small group with him for several months, and paid something like $15,000, which was an extraordinary amount for someone who had no paying clients when we started.

We had not really connected since then. Until dinner last Friday night with him and another coach that I have worked with, John Patrick Morgan.

They coached me and one other entrepreneur for four hours (Rich started as soon as we got in the Uber), and I came away seeing all the ways that I had been limiting myself. All of the things that I had not fully owned about my journey. I came away feeling like all the things that I want to create are not only possible, but inevitable.

Rich told me at one point, “So let me get this straight. You have built a business where you work by referral, with founders who pay you handsomely, and they renew for more work with you? That makes you in the top 0.1% of coaches on the planet.”

Now, I don’t know if that is true. But in that moment, I owned it as if it was. And I fully saw and owned what I had been able to accomplish.

What I Saw The Next Morning

I had trouble sleeping, both from the coaching (and the possibilities it unlocked) and the large Wagyu steaks we ate. I woke up early and journaled excitedly.

And then it all collapsed.

Saturday was the last full day of the event, the day where we were going to let go of our limiting beliefs, and I was enveloped in fear. All the stories that had held me back came crashing in—

That I was not good enough.

That it was dangerous to be myself fully.

That it was bragging to talk about true things from my experience and expertise.

That it was safer to stay small.

But one thing shifted as I worked through my discomfort that day.

I finally saw those stories as just that.

Stories.

I didn’t have to believe them. I could choose to believe my vision for the future over the limiting beliefs of my past.

And you can, too.

Where Have You Been Holding Yourself Back?

What does my story bring up in you?

What is the possibility that you see for yourself where you haven’t taken action?

Because you think it’s not practical or realistic?

Because you’re having trouble finding the right people?

Because you’re not sure you can get an investor?

Want to know the best way to get a result? Commit to it. Keep trying, even if you fail the first five, ten, twenty times. Keep going. Iterate. Allow your vision, your mission, to emerge from you and JUST KEEP GOING.

This isn’t about hustle culture or working 100 hours a week. It’s just about putting yourself out there, doing the thing you love, and continuing to try until you accomplish it.

It’s about what you do as the fullest and most authentic (spiritual even) expression of yourself.

This is my path, and this is who I support.

How To Go Deeper

I am convinced that more and more people are coming out of the spiritual closet and seeing their work as a vital personal journey to both abundance and meaning.

This is what I write about. For founders, for original thinkers, at all stages of this journey.

The world needs YOU, in all your brilliance and imperfection.

If you are a founder wanting to scale and sell your company, there are three shifts in identity that can help you do so with twice the impact and half the stress. Take a look at this video.

If you want to build a coaching business where you get to be yourself, help amazing people, and replace your corporate income in the process, here’s a video where I share the top three mistakes I see coaches make when trying to build a sustainable business—

http://bit.ly/creatingextraordinarycoaches

You can subscribe to my YouTube channel here.

You can follow me on LinkedIn to make sure you never miss a post by hitting the bell on my profile.

If you want to subscribe to this Creating Extraordinary Futures newsletter, you can do so here.

If I get another email from someone telling me I need to “crush your goals in 2024” I think I’m going to puke.

I spent at least two decades of my adult life crushing my goals. And having nothing but exhaustion to show for it.

I felt like I had been had. Like I had done everything I was supposed to do to be happy—go to a great school, get great grades, to to a great law school, law firm, consulting firm, partnership, IPO…

And on the other side of all of that?

Just a bigger goal.

My clients don’t come to me to crush their goals. Like me, they are already pretty good at that.

They come to be because they want to know what is actually going to make them happy. And what I point them to helps to unravel the “crush it” mindset that has gotten them so far but now threatens to crush THEM.

Crushing It Looks Outward Rather Than Inward

When someone is trying to crush it, you can be pretty sure there is something internal going on. Rules like the following—

1. I’ve always believed there is some way in which I am fundamentally flawed or inadequate.
2. I can achieve my way out of it.

In other words, there is some big goal that, if I meet it, I will feel better. Or I will “arrive.”

Maybe it’s a degree, or a job title, or a house in the right place, or a second house in the right place.

I tried to achieve my way into feeling okay about myself for decades.

It doesn’t work.

Because there is always more to do. There is always a goal behind the goal, another mountain to climb or race to run, or another digit to add to the exit.

So when the first goal doesn’t get there, certainly it’s because the goal wasn’t big enough, right?

It took me about 30 years to learn the goal wasn’t the issue.

The Only Thing You Have To See To Be Happy

Meeting a goal will never make you happy (for more than a few fleeting moments, anyway).

Your entire experience of the world is happening inside your brain. Based on what your senses tell you, true, but more important than that, based on the stories you tell yourself about what your senses tell you.

You are living in your stories about the world. And most of them are unconscious.

Until you become aware of this, you will continue to write that you are not enough no matter what you actually achieve. Because it will always look like there is something that you need that you don’t already have.

What Stories Do You Believe About Yourself and Your World?

You may have a story that you need to “crush it” to be happy.

But the people who I see who have learned to be happy actually work less and achieve more. They create impact (and money) with ease.

They have time to spend on the things that are important outside of work. Like family.

If you have believed different ideas you’re not even going to see this as a possibility.

If your rules require struggle to make money, for example, you are going to struggle to make money.

If your rules require productivity or efficiency or exhaustion or yes, “crushing goals,” you are not going to let yourself be happy or fulfilled without them. You paradoxically will need to be miserable to be happy.

Each of your rules is a self-fulfilling prophecy.

And you can let each of them go.

If you see that you must already be enough (that you can’t NOT be enough) because you are the one creating your experience of being enough, or not enough, you are going to set different goals.

What Do You Really Want?

What do you WANT when you see you don’t actually NEED anything?

When creating can be from a sense of play rather than lack?

What will you create just because it is deliriously FUN to do it?

That’s what the “crushing it” culture says is not possible.

But to me, that’s the place where our capacity to create gets most powerful.

How To Go Deeper

You can be happy without being exhausted.

What would that be like? To fully embrace you and THEN create, rather than thinking you have to create to someone FIX yourself?

This is what I write about. For founders, for original thinkers, at all stages of their journey.

The world needs YOU, in all your brilliance and imperfection.

If you are a founder wanting to scale and sell your company, there are three shifts in identity that can help you do so with twice the impact and half the stress. Take a look at this video.

If you want to build a coaching business where you get to be yourself, help amazing people, and replace your corporate income in the process, here’s a video where I share the top three mistakes I see coaches make when trying to build a sustainable business—

http://bit.ly/creatingextraordinarycoaches

You can subscribe to my YouTube channel here.

You can follow me on LinkedIn to make sure you never miss a post by hitting the bell on my profile.

If you want to subscribe to this Creating Extraordinary Futures newsletter, you can do so here.