E558 | Past and Future Bias Personalities

Welcome back, to the P.T. Entrepreneur Podcast! Today, I am talking about personality types. You are either fixated on the past or you are thinking about the possibilities of the future. The better you can understand this in other people, the better you can help improve the lives of those around you. Enjoy!

• What you can learn from conversations with 10-year-olds
• Being reminded that consistent practice leads to improvement
• Developing relationships with the people that matter most to you

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Podcast Transcript

Danny: So one of the best ways to improve your customer experience, which we know will dramatically improve your business, is to have clear lines of communication with your clients. And that's something that can be really hard with these multiple channels between email and text. And what you really need is to centralize that in one place.

And that's something that we've been able to do as we switched over to PT everywhere within our client's accounts. We can actually message right back and forth with them. They can manage their home exercise plan within there, and it allows us to really compartmentalize the communication. That we have with those clients, instead of losing an email in the inbox or missing a text and then you're, it's very hard to dig yourself outta that hole because they feel like you're not very responsive, with them.

And for us, it's made a really big difference. It helps make our staff more efficient. It helps us not miss things as much with the volume of people that we're working with. And it's a really smart way of really compartmentalizing your communication with your clients so it doesn't interfere with the rest of the channels.

You have communication with family and friends and things like that. So I think it'd be. Huge for your practice to centralize it the way we have. Head over to pt everywhere.com. Check out what our friends are doing over there. I think it's really cool and I think you really like it. So here's the question.

How do physical therapists like us who don't wanna see 30 patients a day, who don't wanna work home health and have real student loans create a career and life for ourselves that we've always dreamed about? This is the question, and this podcast is the answer. My name's Danny Mate, and welcome to the PT Entrepreneur Podcast.

Hey, what's going on guys? Dr. Danny here. We're the PT Entrepreneur podcast, and today we're talking about two types of personality biases that I see. And this comes from a conversation actually that I had with my son and his friend. My buddy or my son had one of his buddies over to to hang out and spent the night they played Mario cart for who knows how many hours.

And we did a bunch of stuff outside and played ultimate Frisbee with some middle school kids and they they had a great time, right? And we're sitting there having having dinner and his friends started talking about things he was thinking about cuz they're in fifth grade.

Started thinking about middle school. He's I wonder if middle school's like this or this. And so I started chatting with them about it and he goes He goes, yeah I catch myself like thinking about stuff like that's gonna happen a lot. And this is a 10 year old, and I thought this was really interesting.

I. And I go, that's interesting. Do you think about a lot of things that happened to you in the past? And he goes, no, not really. Just like things that are like going to that are coming up. And I told them, and I asked my son the same thing and he said, he doesn't really think about things, in the past so much, but he thinks about things in the future a lot.

And I told him, I said, there's, look, there's two ways that people bias their thought patterns. The first one is very past biased thinking. These are people that are reminiscing about the way things used to be. The good old days, the, or they are like f fixated and focused on.

Negative things that have happened to them, and either A, they wish that they didn't, or B, they wish they could change something. And and you can't, right? But they're focused on it and their attention gets drawn to that. And then there's other people that they focus on things that haven't happened yet, the future, the the possibilities of what could happen and this could be in.

In regards to being excited about it, or it could be out of anxiety. And fear of the unknown. And that's how it was when they're talking about middle school. That's a, it's a scary step. To go from being in fifth grade where you're like the oldest kid in the school to now all of a sudden you're in sixth grade and you're the youngest, smallest person in the school.

And it's a scary transition, I think, in a lot of ways for for most kids. Even though it really isn't scary. It's just the unknown. They don't really know how to handle that. So I told 'em that. I said, look there's future biased people and there's past biased people.

And I said the challenge is that both of them struggle with being present and being present biased, which is very hard. Very few people are truly present. Most of the time at least people that I know now. Maybe there's some very wise people out there that I haven't met yet that are just constantly focused on what's happening right now.

But in my experience, it's not that common. In fact, it's very hard. It's very difficult for us to draw ourself back into what is going on. And I ki I talked to him about that. I was like, listen guys, I gotta think about what just happened. Like we just played, we played a pickup, ultimate Frisbee game with a bunch of middle school kids.

And our team was the winning team, and they were super excited about it, like running around chest bumping each other, yell, yelling, let's go. And probably these are a bunch of eighth graders. Like the eighth graders were not happy. They had an old man and a couple little kids. Beat beat them. But they were super excited.

And I was like, think about that. You wanna think about what's happening in the present, right? And it's just like such a different feeling. And it's so interesting to have these conversations with I. 10 year olds, right? Like young kids that just now are starting to be able to understand some of the things that I wish I could, like I wish somebody would've told me and be able to have those conversations.

And I don't know how much they retained from this or not, but as I thought about it, I wanted to share it because the same two kind of types of ways that you can bias apply to you as well. And to me, obviously, And most people that are listening to this podcast are gonna be future biased people.

You're thinking about the possibilities of what could happen. You are planning for things. You are, you're thinking about your company or what you would like to do, and those are things that happen years down the road, sometimes decades. And for me, I'm somebody that. I basically live in the future in my mind, if I do not pull myself back into present day, because I'm so future biased, I'm so optimistic on what's gonna happen as well as I don't wanna say pessimistic, but r I'm planning for whatever other.

Things may occur or may not occur, whatever backup contingency, thing that I need to be able to do. And if I do not draw myself back into the present, then I don't focus on it at all. And I completely waste these opportunities to be present with the people that I, am around. I'll give you a really good example.

We have we have. Some investments that are very long term investments. And that as part of what I do for our family's, just financial planning is I sit down every month and I look at where we're at with everything and make sure that, that we're tracking the right things.

And I have to have this monthly financial meeting with myself just to see where we're at. And I track the things things you track, you get implemented and improved. So I track it every month and I was. In my meeting yesterday with myself cause I'm the only one in the meeting. And as I was looking at some of this stuff, like some of the projections were going out to like, when I was like 80 years old, and I'm 37, so do the math on that, like another 40 years roughly. And I just stopped for a second and I was like, this is so dumb. Not dumb. It's important for me to do, but there's so much shit that could happen to me or frankly just. Other, just society. In, in 40 years there's so many things that could be so different.

But what's not different is, how much of my time and intention am I able to focus on the people that are important to me and to impart what I think is, IM important lessons for them to learn and a legacy of being able to be a functional. Happy, successful human being in many aspects, many variables.

And it has not necessarily financially, maybe a small part of that but many other ways. And as I, I sat there, I was like, damn, I'm being so future biased right now. And when I catch myself doing that, then I just draw it back to reality. I draw it back to, being present. I draw it back to things that I have to do.

In, in the short term and it's things like coaching my kids teams or I used to not want to volunteer to do that at all. And partially because I'm very competitive and I get very I get very heated if. I lose something. And it's actually been a great way for me to focus on improving that and, working on being, emotionally controlled, balanced both highs and lows with little kid sports, it's but it's, any outlet is that's competitive.

I, I would get into, so I shot away from that for a long time. But what I like about it so much is it forces me to focus on, okay, Monday. And Thursday we have practice. Here's what our practice schedule's gonna be. Here's what I need to work on with this player because she's not listening to me or whatever.

I'm gonna try this. And I'm working on like current present skills with these people, with these little adults. And trying to get them to, do the things they need to do to improve in this sport. And show them that if they work on something, that they'll have progress.

I think that's like the most important thing for them to see. It's man, look at this. You practice this. You're better at this now because of this. Like, how's that feel? You've, you have momentum, you have an accomplishment. And for me, like that's very helpful for me to be drawn back into the present.

So if you're like me and you're very future biased, focus on the things that really you can do in the short term that, that is is drawing you back to the present. And for those of you that are very past biased, I doubt there's a lot of past biased people on this call or on this podcast because. If you were, you probably wouldn't be listening to this, but maybe you have been in the past, maybe for you, you used to just become obsessed and fixate on these things that you can't change, or mistakes that you made.

Or maybe you don't really like where you're at, but you really liked, when you were a senior in high school and you whatever, some big accomplishment that you had, and that was 10 years ago or something, and you think about it all the time and you get, we were buddies and you talk about how awesome things used to be.

And I get it. Like I, I get around friends of mine that I've had since high school and we'll like reminisce about stupid shit that we used to do, and it's funny and it's funny because, it's, we're just so different now, right? And, but there's so many people that just live in that reality and the past is a reality.

And I had somebody tell me one time, they were like, listen, if you live in the past or the future, then you die in the present. So if you live in the past or you live in the future, you die in the present. And for somebody like myself that historically would live in the future, in my mind, thinking about all these things we can do and being excited about that and just being part of the way that I'm wired very important, has been very helpful for me to really focus on things that are in the short term.

Things that are, I need to be present for the people that I need to be around and be present for so that I'm not. Live in a life where they're not a part of it and I'm not a part of their life in the present because I'm too busy thinking about the future. Cuz if that's a case, they're not gonna want to be involved with me in the future.

And I heard this really interesting podcast and it's a together, owns a software company and he's just gone around and interviewed older billionaires. So he interviews the guy that is the c e O of Kinko's and he sold us for like a billion and a half dollars in the nineties. And he asked him, he goes, what's your what?

Like what does success mean to you? And what the guy said, I thought it was really interesting. He goes, success to me is when you have adult age children that want to hang out with you, that's success. He goes, if your kids are adults and they want to come home for the holidays to be around you, if your kids want to go on a vacation with you, you know if your kids want to be around you in some capacity, if your kids want to work with you, like he goes, that is.

The ultimate sign of success to him and say a thing about money. It was about the relationship you have with your kids as they get older. And I thought that was such an interesting perspective. And it's funny because it's something that, my wife and I talk about how important it is for us to have this really healthy relationship with our kids and want to be a part of their life in a meaningful way long term.

And. I, this guy just solidified to me that we're on the right track. And a lot of that doesn't necessarily have to do with money. Now keep this in mind. It has to do with time. It has to do with time and being present. That's it. And I have, I know so many people whose parents were financially successful and they not around them, and they have very little to no relationship with them, and that is a huge loss, a huge failure in my opinion, and not what I want.

To end up and hopefully you don't either. And so for me, as I, was thinking about what I wanted to talk about today, this is just a mixture of a few thoughts that I have about, having these conversations with kid, with these kids and understanding lyric where I fall on this spectrum, where you probably do, if you're listening to this podcast and really.

Hopefully helping you realize how important it's to really focus on things that are happening now and how important it's to build and develop those relationships with people that matter the most to you. Because that is actually the most important thing that you can work on going forward. And if you forget about that and you just focus on the business, you just focus on, oh, I've gotta grow by this much this year.

And you forget about the people that are around that are. That are waiting for you to come home and you neglect them, like they're not gonna want to hang out with you one day. So keep that in mind. Even if you don't have kids, it could be your dog. Don't neglect your dog. He wants to see you when you get home, and you gotta take, take care of the people around you, be present with those people.

Don't take 'em for granted. And make sure that if you catch yourself being very future biased. And just you're living in the past, pull yourself back into reality. Focus on the people around you, the important things that are happening right now, because who knows if you're gonna even get to that future that you think is possible.

I hope that you do, but we ob we obviously have no idea what's gonna happen and especially not 40 years down the road. So anyway, guys, hopefully this is a message that, positively hits you. And I know it sometimes it's like a kind of difficult topic to talk about, but this stuff's important for me to.

To relay to people that have any interest in listening to this cause I think this has just been so helpful for me to really understand my mind a little bit more and like how I can improve the lives of the people around me, but also just like my level of happiness, honestly, and understanding like what goes into that and how to manage my own my own natural tendencies.

So anyway, if you're anything like me, hope this help. As always, guys, thanks so much for listening and we'll catch you next week.

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Get signed up for the challenge today. It's totally free. We think this is gonna be a game changer for you and are excited to go through it. Hey, real quick before you go, I just wanna say thank you so much for listening to this podcast, and I would love it if you got involved in the conversation. So this is a one way channel.

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