Guard Your Perspective. Zoom Out.

Oct 25, 2022 | Capstones & Spotlight

This is a Capstone Project from a Guardian tier member within The Guardian Academy (TGA) who is also a Wolf Den Wolf Pup (WDWP) holder #1354. A capstone is one of the requirements necessary for an individual to complete on their journey to ascend to the final tier of TGA, Guardian. To learn more about what a Capstone Project is I’ll leave a link at the bottom.

In this Capstone, WDWP #1354 covers how he was able to integrate the lessons from TGA into his life. He leaves some great takeaways that when used can lead you to some great insights into your own life. If you found this article useful we’d love for you to share your thoughts with us and the author, the twitter links will be posted at the end of the article. Enjoy!

Table of Contents

Zoom Out

6 months ago was the first time I heard these words from a Nic Peterson livestream. It was in regards to looking at snapshots of various crypto and stock charts, and how they don’t show the entire picture. Snapshots don’t really speak for anything as a whole. There are so many influencing factors that ultimately a snapshot doesn’t really show progress or failure. It is just a single point metric that means nothing without looking to the past and future and finding all of the influences. You aren’t the embodiment of that awkward thing you said in third grade (I hope), so why focus on your business, finances, business, and life in that way?

When I joined TGA, I had just finished a book called The Art of Thinking in Systems (recommended book list below) by Steven Schuster and The Personal MBA by Josh Kauffman before that. Both books significantly changed how I saw pretty much everything by opening up my eyes to see systemic influences. TGA continued to change and improve my perspective, so much so that I quickly joined the Guardian tier because of how valuable the information, networking, collaboration, and proximity are. The amount of educational content is STAGGERING, but I dove in headfirst, and it fundamentally changed my perspective for the better.

The Solvable Problem

My first experience in anything Web3 was for a project that intended to help clean coral reefs, but ended up being a rugpull after the devs gave up on it. This left me with a disdain for all things crypto, until I was led by a close friend to TGA. “It’s not just a crypto project.” The first experience I had of TGA was watching one of Nic’s videos on the Solvable Problem™ (SP) and at first, I didn’t really get it. How could I possibly know what I want out of life, and how can knowing that possibly get me closer to achieving it? It’s great to have dreams, but whether I want to sail around the world in a fancy boat, have a successful business, or help feed the hungry, how can simply knowing lead to achieving?

Now that I’m reviewing this, it seems silly to say.

With more education, it started to click. The Solvable Problem™ is a solution. It’s an end goal. It doesn’t have to be the final goal, just an actionable goal (or a set of goals) that influences decisions to continuously move towards that goal. You can have multiple solvable problems. Once you solve one, onto the next. All actions should lead closer to achieving these goals, not take you further from them. A solvable problem can be paying off a house. It can be seeking a promotion at work or getting a personal business to a profitable point. Putting your kids through college. Performing regular acts of charity.

In my own case, I had been planning a career shift from one facet of the media industry to another for some time. At first, I was taking on low paying, time intensive freelance jobs in the first facet of the industry.

Wait.

If I am letting my time get sucked up (especially by something that doesn’t serve me financially and emotionally), how am I going to ever achieve shifting jobs? I wouldn’t take a full time job that I don’t want in order to give myself more time to work on other things. Why keep dragging out the same freelance work if it isn’t serving my goals, helping me change careers, and is not necessary for my survival? Learning to say no was a huge milestone in working towards what I really want; towards my solvable problem(s). I am nearing completion of this SP, and will be onto the next soon.

Zoom Out: are your actions working towards your SP, or are they taking you further from it?

Macro Beliefs

A caveat: don’t give up everything to try to solve a single SP.

What do you believe in?
What is important to you?

These come first, but make sure they serve you. Do you want to spend more time with your family? Taking more hours at work doesn’t align with that. Is it critically important to you to take a walk before work every day? Those 7am meetings aren’t helping. These concepts are called Macro Beliefs. A macro belief is something that is part of you that is non-negotiable and helps you play your own game.

Your macro beliefs help you create ‘bumpers’ and boundaries to achieve and continue to live the life you want to live. Your SP is what you are using those bumpers and boundaries to work towards. A bumper of mine is to say no to jobs that are in my old field that are time-intensive and not worth the hourly rate. A business decision might yield short term gains, but if it requires significant resources and isn’t aligned with what the company does, it is best to establish a bumper to keep on the right trajectory. That short term gain might throw off the timeline of a project.

Your ultimate SP is a mixture of your end goals and your macro beliefs coexisting. Your SP is nothing without your Macro Beliefs. Nic Peterson’s book Bumpers outlines how to create those boundaries and fix your trajectory. Short read, great read.

Zoom Out: what bumpers and boundaries can you put in place to maintain your macro beliefs?

Time Preference

Now, back to snapshots. Things take time. A momentary glimpse of something doesn’t account for the whole. Now that I had more time and was making better decisions, I could dedicate it to learning, practicing, and growing.

But how long do things take?

Well, it depends.

It all depends.

If you are expecting an S&P500 investment to 10x in a few days without any valid data from the stock’s history and systemic influences, your time preference might be too short (it is). You want your business to grow exponentially in a few weeks without hiring on a marketing team? Time preference is too short. Your first ever song just released on Spotify, and you are expecting 100,000 plays, but you only have 5 regular listeners and no PR campaign? Well… not only is your time preference too short, you need to zoom out and look at the bigger picture.

Time preference plays a huge role in achieving the SP, and creating a realistic timeline for it. Once you establish your time preference, you can do things (zoom out: educated systemic influence) to collapse (shorten) that timeline. In business, if you are expecting to net 10 million dollars over 10 years using a reliable strategy, bringing the right expert marketer could help increase sales, customer-base, and general visibility to shorten that timeline to 7 years or less. In 10 years, you could hit 15 million with the right strategy. With Time and Randomness, the timeline can be cut even shorter due to market conditions and new opportunities.

In my own strategy, I dedicate hours of education and separate hours of practice into my daily routine to continue growing towards my goal of changing careers. Time spent studying has brought me closer to my SP. Randomness has led to a few great practice opportunities for me to improve my portfolio. Establishing bumpers allowed me the time, mental bandwidth, and energy to accomplish all of this.

Zoom Out: have you established your time preference?

The next big lesson for me was when $GUARD went from a US Dollar price of around $3 to $18, then settled down around $1.50. That run up felt GOOD. Why? I had invested some money, it grew 6x (yay dopamine)! But then it went back down (goodbye dopamine). All of this was in a month’s time. This is where the reminder came in: Zoom Out. “Guard Your Perspective.” Look at the system.

What is going on in the system?

Well, ok, $GUARD went down… but TGA did not. In fact, TGA (called The Wolf Den, at the time before the split) was building. Not just building; networking, growing, developing, collaborating, refining, educating. A small part of the system was low, but the rest of the system was improving. And the system continued to improve and improve, as well as helping projects and partners outside of the system!

When conditions are down, develop. When conditions are up? Keep developing.

Why do I believe in $GUARD and hold it as one of my Macro Beliefs? Because I believe in TGA and Wolf Den Labs. TGA and Wolf Den Labs have been constantly working to help bridge the gap for Web3 by implementing Web3 tech for businesses, helping launch incredible projects to help people, providing stellar education, and creating a strong community of people from so many different walks of life brought together to learn, build, and grow.

I leave you with one last note: Guard Your Perspective. Zoom Out.

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