Deep Dive mit Torsten Koerting — Folge 066
Teil 1 -  Martin Frey und Stacy Taniguchi - Über lebensverändernde Entscheidungen, Erkenntnisse und magische Momente
2021-03-26

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Quelle: https://torstenkoerting.com/podcast/066-teil-1-martin-frey-und-stacy-taniguchi-ueber-lebensveraendernde

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Gast 2: And in that perseverance, I found new levels of strength. And then I started to do it.

Torsten J. Koerting: To be able to continue, but it has something with patience. Also to learn what the young people are doing.

Gast 1: They're really making me think with these questions, it's wonderful.

Torsten J. Koerting: Ein herzliches Willkommen hier heute Abend zum ersten und einzigen öffentlichen Expertencall der Curtings. Ein Call, der normalerweise nur für unsere Mentees vorgesehen ist, nur für unsere engsten Kunden, denen wir Zugang geben möchten zu magischen Geschichten, kreativen und wirksamen Botschaften und ein Stück weit das nächste Puzzlestein vielleicht zur eigenen Transformation. Herzlich Willkommen und einen Riesenapplaus gebt euch mal, dass ihr heute Abend euch die Zeit genommen habt, hier dabei zu sein. Großartig. Super. And these are probably the last words we are going to talk and we are going to speak in German tonight. Because it's a great honor. It's a once in a lifetime magic moment that never happened before. And it might not happen in the future. It's the first time that two, how we call them, massive action giants are on the same stage, whether it's offline or online. Two extraordinary people that have inspired so many lives in their past that will inspire at least 53 lives tonight. And there is far more to come that is out of our imagination. One of them I have met about four years ago in San Diego. It was a coincidence that we happened to be in the same group of people in a room full of 600 in the same team for about four to five days of magic transformation in an environment that has been set by Tony Robbins called Leadership Academy. And we became friends. We spent many magic moments together. We have climbed mountains together. We have traversed muds and glaciers by car. We have even won an award in the Land Rover experience, which is the award not being the fastest on the track, not being the most outrageous on the track, but we have won the award of the most people in the car.

Torsten J. Koerting: Six fellows and one dog. He is somebody that has inspired me and us, and not just us, but also our two kids since we got to know him. It's within his DNA to go out, to be on an adventure, to have others come with him in a safe environment and to stretch their boundaries and to stretch their comfort zone, to reach something that might probably be out of their imagination. He is mentioned and written in the Guinness Book of World Records because he's the only person that has climbed the seven summits, which is the highest mountain on each of the continents, including Mount Everest. And 400 people have done this before. However, he had still some time left and he said, that's not enough. I'll have another vision that might be bigger than myself. And that he's been at the North Pole, at the South Pole and many other peaks and rivers and countries, sometimes steps a little bit back because this is what he is known for. He lives in Salt Lake City in Utah with his wonderful wife and his beautiful little daughter, Lily. And tonight he's here with us to share his magic moments, his experiences, and what he has learned over that 13-year journey to climb the seven summits and the seven seas and share the messages behind those experiences with us. And please welcome, with a big hand of applause, Martin Frey.

Torsten J. Koerting: And the second person I would like to introduce to you. I didn't know him for a couple of weeks or have known him just for a couple of weeks. However, he's been in my heart and in my imagination for as long as I know Martin. Because Martin has inspired me. He said, look, TJ and Birgit, you are execution giants. You take a goal and you achieve it. And for whatever reason, you strive and thrive to reach the next level. And you're taking others with you. So there is one person in the world that I would like to get known to you. You have to meet this guy. And I took my whole courage. I took my faith. I took everything that I had that I obtained over the last 49 years. And I wrote him a message on LinkedIn. And you can't believe it. You wouldn't believe it. It took about a couple of hours. And he replied. And he was so open-minded, like the inspirational leaders we would like to see more in the world. And we came together in a pre-scheduled meeting for about 15 minutes. And my biggest wish was during those 15 minutes that I wanted to ask him. I wanted to ask him whether he would be willing and available. And if it's okay with him. And if he can make the time to be part of a podcast interview. That was my goal for that 15-minute meeting. However, it turned out to be a 75-minute conversation. And luckily, I recorded it. And it was published last week. Or this week. Last week, Friday. For all the ones that are now here in the room to get a preset of what he's capable of doing. He is the guy that whatever he writes on the list, he achieves it. And he wrote 100 items on a specific list. And how that list came together, he will talk more about it. He has written a couple of items on that list. It was 100. So there was that item. I want to become a PhD. I would like to lecture as a professor at a university. I want to climb Everest. And 97 other items on that list. And as you could imagine, these are not tiki-tiki-mini-mini items. They are huge items. There are golds, each one of them, that are bigger than he was at the moment when he wrote it on that list.

Torsten J. Koerting: So he became known in the U.S. and worldwide for the guy with the 100 list. And some of you might think that's the bucket list. But there is a twist. There is something different to it. And by ticking off that 100 list, he came across so many experiences, so many learnings in life that he's now capable of sharing, willing of sharing, so that he is able to inspire others to reach their goals and to turn their vision into reality. And we are so honored to have him on this call tonight and to have him share his experience, his breakthroughs, his perseverance that at some point had to take place to achieve something with all of us. And I'm so glad that now the two execution giants are here together. And please welcome to this call tonight, Stacy Taniguchi. So that's for the introduction. And not that I'm handing it over to them. They have asked me to do a Q&A. So they are great messengers and they have the capability to, you know, if they're triggered, to talk about their passion. But before we start, please open your chat. It's turning hot already at the moment. Open your chat and just in English, if you can, so that Marty and Stacy are able to read it. Just write one word how you feel tonight, but don't press return. We do it as a waterfall. So don't press return. Type the word. And when I count to zero, I would like all of you to press return. And open the chat. So open the chat. Write down how you feel right now. And at three, two, one, press return. So, Martin, Stacy, that's the energy. That's the energy in the room. Feeling great, awakened, impressed, enthusiastic. Agatha feels energized. She danced her hell off. You know, I just thought, you know, everything would jump out of your skirt.

Torsten J. Koerting: Julia is excited. Justus, aggressive. All right. We're not going to dive into that one tonight. We might have a different call on that. So Lutz is so excited. And Philip feels inspired. And I'm so thrilled to hand over to Birgit to spread some words to you, as well as to ask the first question. Wow, that is a surprise. Yeah, I'm so excited to have you, to meet you, too. Because, as you can imagine, of course, knowing Martin is a big inspiration. And having spent some time with you and your family is a big inspiration. And really, I miss you guys. And I wish the world would be a bit different so that we could be hearing about Humberg again all together. But this is a great way to, yeah, to meet and also to have you here and to get you into our community. And Stacey, you can imagine, since TJ talked to you, I've heard a lot about. And we've been so busy to make this happen. So my first question to you is, what is the, let's say, the three things you would always tell people that are important to, yeah, to follow. Follow if you want to achieve anything, whether it's an item of a 100 list, whether it's a Mount Everest, or whether it's the next step to, that you have on your imagination, on your vision list. So, what are the three things you would share with everybody?

Gast 2: Who's it? Are we starting with me or Stacey? Or we start with TJ? We can do all the talk.

Torsten J. Koerting: No, we're asking the questions to you first. So, Martin.

Gast 2: All right. The first, guys, I am just thrilled to be with you today. And obviously, TJ is a great friend. And so is Birgit. I'm really excited to join you and be part of your experience today. And I want this to also be a little casual. Just, I think there'll be more Q&A, but just feel free to ask a question in the chat while we're going along. You don't have to be real formal. We've got a group. I think we can manage that. But I think the three things that come to mind are, number one, to embrace life like a grand adventure and to look at it in a way that you're like, bring it on. I want to take and get the most out of life I can. And I'm going to look at challenge differently, not as something that is for other people to embrace. Stacey and I happen to love the mountains, but adventure doesn't mean you have to be a mountain climber. It doesn't mean you have to, you know, do extreme sports even. It's about looking at where you are in life, creating a vision of something you'd like to pursue, and then stepping outside your comfort zone and embracing the uncertainty of not knowing how it would play out. And that you really then have to grow into the experience. And by doing that, you have this transformational experience or this process that you go through that both Stacey and I will talk more about. So that's number one, embracing it. Number two is realizing that all of these adventures, you sort of have this same process that you need to follow. So the first is this idea of envisioning and then preparing and then embarking and then navigating your way, persevering, and then hopefully you will reach the summit, but you may fail. And so this whole idea of having this transcendent experience and these moments of awe and flow, which really then reshape who we are as individuals and enable us to take on bigger things in the future. So that's sort of number one is what I'll call the adventure mindset. Number two is recognizing that there is a repeatable process that you can turn over and over again and apply to new situations, whether it's learning to play the violin, whether it's succeeding at work, or whether it's embracing, you know, high level mountaineering challenges. And then number three, let's see, what is number three?

Gast 2: Number three is that a lot of people on these expeditions that Stacey and I have done, they let anxiety get the best of them. Right now in the world, the world is rampant with anxiety, both because of the pandemic, but also because people are feeling less self-efficacy, less belief in themselves, and less capable, which is self-determination. So if you can embrace self-determination, which is the skill set to figure out how to do it, and then resilience with the ability to recover from failure and get back on course. Those three things are the benefit, those three things are the outcomes of past adventures. They're the benefit, the value of why we do this. Each of my adventures has taken me beyond my sense of self and helped me to grow into somebody I didn't realize it could become. And I'm so grateful that I've been able to navigate through life in a way that I've always had new, fresh experiences to embrace and never got stale all along the way. So I think those would be my three.

Torsten J. Koerting: Wow. These are three major. I think all of us need to digest this because in these three most important things, there are probably 20 in each itself. And I'm sure we're going to deep dive into those tonight as well. Thank you so much, Martin. Stacey, what are the three most important impulses? I saw him making notes. You would like to share.

Gast 1: I'm learning from Martin is what I'm doing.

Torsten J. Koerting: Yeah.

Gast 1: You know, I think, you know, you introduced Martin and I'm sitting here thinking like, wow, I'm kind of like the pouch potato of this group. With all the incredible things that he's done. So you definitely want to listen to what Martin is telling you. But I, you know, to add on to what Martin is saying, my message is I think people, I want people to understand that something that you always will have and cannot be taken away from you is the agency of choice. And even during this difficult time, even during this pandemic, there's so many people who feel like their life has been turned upside down and people are losing hope and they feel like things are being taken away from them. And my message to people is you always have the ability to choose. And what I'm really focusing on is to choose how you will progress through your life. And so my message is consider that the two choices that people have right now, especially is you have a choice to thrive in your life or you have the choice to just endure it. And my hope is people will begin to realize that if I have this choice, hopefully I will choose to thrive. And that has to be a very intentional choice. You must be very deliberate on how you go about making your life being one that you thrive in. There's a, I always tell people, one of your fellow countrymen, Frederick Nietzsche, he, he asked this question once. And, and it's a very thought provoking question.

Gast 1: If someone were to, was able to grant you what you choose to answer this question with, and he calls this question, the eternal reoccurrence of the same. And the question is, if you could live your life as you have lived it to this point, over and over again for eternity, how would you answer the question? When I mentioned this to people, I can see within their facial expressions that they're, they're thinking very deeply. And I usually see there are people who are shaking their heads. No, I would not live my life over and over again. And there are some who just have a blank stare. And there are some who will say positively, yeah, you know, I would. And when I start to take a look at what, how, why people would answer the question, the negative, no, I would not live my life over and over again. It is typically because they are focusing on the negative things that have happened in their lives. And they, it was so painful and horrible, they would not want to live that over again.

Gast 1: What I try to tell people is change your perspective so that you're not looking so much into your past. Granted, it has lots of important lessons. But to answer Nietzsche's question would be, what can you control at this point? And that is the vision of your future. Martin mentioned that already, is you, if you look toward your future, that's where the plan to thrive can start. And it can start today. Because that's what you have control over. You can deliberately make that plan. So the first part would be, understand you always will have the ability to choose. And to choose a life to thrive versus just a life to endure. Which I hear a lot of people in this time period, especially during this past year, that's what they've been doing. It's just enduring because the pandemic has, you know, changed their lives so much. The second thing I would say is don't be a ship in a storm without a rudder. In other words, identify what your core values are. What are the things that matter to you most?

Gast 1: If you've never taken the time to literally think about that, identify it, and write them down, then you are no better than a ship without a rudder in the storm. You'll get blown in the winds to whatever directions the environment wants to take you. And that's how I think a lot of people are right now during this pandemic period. So that would be the second thing. And if we have time, I can show you some tools that I use to tell people that, yeah, you can figure out what your values are by just running through this exercise. And then the third thing would be is consider then what would help you to live a life to thrive. And that's, as you mentioned, TJ, this might be similar to what some people might think is a bucket list, but a bucket list has the connotation that these are the things you want to do before you die. I don't want you to be thinking about your death. I want you to be thinking about your life. So I call it the list to thrive. And my list just happened to be 100 things. For you, it may be 1,000 things. It may be only 10 things. Whatever you decide it to be. But this is a life to thrive. So this is a list to thrive, not a bucket list. And what you'll do is when you start to identify them and you actually write them down, one of the things that you begin to see is there are so many opportunities in your life that cross your path. And you start to think differently about those opportunities. You begin, one, you begin to realize I have lots of opportunities to thrive. Now the decision is, am I going to follow through with that or am I just going to let it pass by? When you know that these are the things that you want to do to thrive in your life, chances are you tend not to just let them pass by. You don't use the excuse, oh, I just don't have the time now. Or maybe I can't really afford to do that right now. You start thinking along the lines of, wow, that's on my list. If I don't take advantage of it now, I may never have this opportunity again. And that kind of pushes you into what Martin says is that adventure spirit, you know, to go after the things that have value in your life and help you to thrive. So those would be my three.

Torsten J. Koerting: Thank you. So, especially with number three, it feels for me that it becomes like a magic circle. Because if you live this life of thrive, you come back to number one, where you have the always see and understand that you have the choice. So, number one inspires, number three inspires back number one. Thank you for this beautiful insight. And I haven't looked into the chat, but I think there's already like lots of questions that have been sent into the chat. And I hand over back to TJ to either pick up the questions or dive deeper before we take questions. Before you take questions. It's our room, our questions, our rules. Stacey and Martin, thanks for those insights and some core elements that you took out of your journey that you have taken over the last years and decades. And Stacey, I think one of the messages we can send to everybody in this room, to everybody that will have the opportunity to maybe listen to the audio recording or even a video recording that we might share, that there is one core message.

Torsten J. Koerting: It's not too late. You can start now in living the life and thriving for the life you want.

Gast 2: And CJ, not tomorrow. Not today. On this call.

Torsten J. Koerting: So, the ones that know us as the Umsetzung stärkste Business Mentoren in Deutschland, they know that there might be, you know, a commitment at the end of the call. What you have learned and what is your decision that you have made after those 120 minutes? So, Martin, I think we should come back to that one, Stacey. What do you think? What's the decision you made in those 120 minutes that might change your life for two millimeters? And if you change your flight path going from Los Angeles to New York, which is, I think, I don't know, 4,000 kilometers or something like that. If you change it by two millimeters, you end up in Boston or in Philadelphia or I don't know. So, even if you change it dramatically, you might end up in a whole different light. So, we'll come back to that question at the very end. I would like to, as we now all listen to you and heard you, that there is a trigger question and then there is so much substance, so much beliefs and experiences that have led to those three items that you have just mentioned. And I would like to get everybody that has probably not dived into your past a little opportunity to get known to you a little bit better. So, Martin, you've been, and I wrap it up a little bit, you've been employee number 20 at Cisco. And because of that, later on, a huge opportunity flower came because of this. But during the last two decades, you, I think, were sitting with a friend in a pub and you made a decision. You made a decision that led to the first seven. And maybe you'll take us on that journey, how you made the decision, what happened, what has driven you for that first phase to climb the seven summits, which then led instantly. And I love that turning point that you're going to focus on instantly to the seven seas. And just take us on that journey so that everybody understands where that substance comes from. And, Stacey, you, again, have that advantage to prepare for a similar question, how it came about that you put 100 items on the list and thrive for those 100 items. So, Martin, take us a little bit on that journey. What happened two decades ago?

Gast 2: I moved from California, Silicon Valley to Utah, and I missed the ocean. I didn't know what to do in this area. Well, Utah has lots of mountains, and I didn't know anything about mountains. And so I asked my buddy, I said, what do we do here? And he said, hey, we like to go play in the mountains. Why don't you come with us? And so I started to learn how to do things like ice climb and backcountry ski and all the fun things you do here at a play. And so we started a process of training together and preparing to do a mountain called Denali in Alaska, which is 20,000 feet. It's the tallest mountain in North America, and it's actually colder than Everest. And Stacey's climbed it over 20 times. He's a true expert up there. But it was my first big mountaineering expedition. And a lot of things went wrong. It was minus 40 degrees Celsius. It was windy and stormy when we got up to progress on the mountain. So many of the climbing expedition team dropped out. And I couldn't understand why guys who were more stronger than I was, more fit, more experienced, were dropping out, and I was still climbing. And there was a lesson in that that I'll get to later. Then, my buddy at 16,000 feet started to get altitude sickness. And we had this storm come in at the same time, and we limped him up to high camp at 17,000 feet. Sorry, I don't have that in meters. Do you know what that is, Stacey, in meters?

Gast 2: High camp.

Torsten J. Koerting: Okay. One guy in that chat, you haven't phrased the answer. He's got, you haven't phrased the question. He's got the answer already. I'm sure, Philip, you're diving into this.

Gast 2: Philip, give us 17,000 feet in meters. So, there we are, my climbing bar partner Steve and I, and he's altitude sick. He had cerebral edema. And we suffered getting him. He wouldn't eat or couldn't get out of a sleeping bag. And this storm raged on. So, slowly, he started to get better. But we were in that storm for six days. And then we had to make a big decision at the end of that storm whether we were going to go for the summit or take him back down. We couldn't take him down. We couldn't call a helicopter. We were kind of stuck there on the mountain. And anyway, we summited together and had a great experience. And then on the way down, we said, wouldn't it be great to climb the seven summits? So, within three months of that climb, my buddy Steve died at age 46 due to a brain aneurysm. And we don't know if it was connected. But that then set me on a path to honor Steve and to challenge myself to do the seven summits. So, I went around the world and I climbed all the tallest mountains on each continent. And I really pushed myself. And I learned that mountains can teach me a lot about focus and a mental game. And we can get into that a little bit differently. But I came home and I still had this family at home. And so, the whole idea was, what could I do with my family? And we have a disabled daughter who's in a wheelchair. She doesn't talk or she can't feed herself.

Gast 2: And so, how could we do an adventure and take our daughter, Lily? And then that made us think of plan B. And plan B became, let's see if we could sail around the world. And so, that's what started me on a journey to do the seven seas to match the seven summits. And we took Lily for nine months through the South Pacific and we island hopped. And then I took some friends across the Indian Ocean because it was too rough for Lily. But we made it around the world. I circumnavigated. And then I thought, well, I'm not done yet. There's five oceans in the world. I need to hit all of them. So, I sailed through the Southern Ocean down along the coast of Antarctica. And I sailed what's called the Northwest Passage, which is where you sail over Alaska, across Northern Canada, and down the coast of Greenland. And became the 83rd boat to make that. And then I finally, for my last, the seventh sea, I sailed from China to Seattle, 6,000 nautical miles nonstop in the roughest oceans of the world. And ended up completing the seven seas and becoming quite an achievement. It took me 11 years to accomplish all of that.

Gast 2: So, that's my journey.

Torsten J. Koerting: Thank you, Martin. And we've got the answer. 17,200 feet is 5,242 meters.

Gast 2: So, do me one more favor. Denali, yes. Put in 53,000 miles of sailing. How many kilometers that is? 53 miles of sailing. 53,000.

Torsten J. Koerting: Yeah. Yeah. Philip will do the math. Yeah. Okay. You will post the answer in a second. Martin, maybe just before we turn over to Stacey, how many years was that ago? And what have you done ever since? What's the phase in life you're currently at? Probably take the pandemic out of that equation a little bit. But there is an inner drive and an inner motivation to give something back. And let's share this with us.

Gast 2: Yeah, I have a real passion for getting young people to embrace adventure and to set their summits, their vision of what success is and for their life. And then we have a number of youth programs that we do where we take young people out on adventures, challenge them. We take them out of their comfort zone. We make them face new experiences that they're not familiar with. And that helps them learn decision-making and deferred gratification and all kinds of character strengths. And we've been scaling that program up until COVID hit us, but we will continue to ramp that up. And I love watching people grow from adventure. And that's what I'm focused on.

Torsten J. Koerting: Thank you, Martin. And let's turn it over to Stacey. How did it come that you put together your 100 list? And what was your inner motivation to drive that? What was the impulse you got to find that list of thrive? And what happened ever since? There are so many fun stories that you've got on your profiles that you can look up at the internet in some of this, some of them with us, Stacey.

Gast 1: Uh, yeah, I, um, so I was born in Hawaii. Uh, my, my parents, uh, worked on a, uh, cattle ranch, actually on one of the islands there. And, um, most, most people don't go to this island. This island is called Molokai. And, um, it's, it's, it's, it's still pretty rural even today. Uh, and probably if certain things didn't happen in my life, I would probably still be living there, picking pineapples for a job and surfing every chance I got. But our family subscribed to a, a, a magazine, uh, and your audience is probably too young to remember this magazine because I think it went globally. It was called life magazine. If you've ever seen the movie, the secret life of Walter Mitty, that was the magazine. It was a pictorial magazine came out every week and it was just filled with pictures from all around the world with some interesting stories. And I just loved looking through it every week when it came in the mail and in the back inside cover of this magazine was always what they called the picture of the week. And one issue had a picture of a man who was standing there holding up a piece of paper that had a bunch of things written on it. You couldn't tell what they were. And there were so many lines, you, you know, you, unless you actually took the time to try to count it, you, you didn't know how many things he had listed, but the caption underneath was he completed his list. And so that caught my attention. And so I started, um, looking at what he was doing and he, at an earlier time in his life, just decided that he wanted to have kind of a roadmap with the things he wanted to do in his life. And so he created this list. And as the caption said, the reason why this picture was there is because he had finished the list, which was quite an accomplishment. And as a teenager, I just thought, that's a very interesting idea. So I just took the time to start writing a few things that I just thought would be kind of cool to do in my list. Places I wanted to go, people I wanted to meet, things I wanted to learn, things that I wanted to accomplish. Some of them were probably pretty normal. Like I wanted to graduate from school.

Gast 1: Uh, but there were some that at the time just was like, well, this will probably never happen, but it's something I would like to do. And, and it included climbing Mount Everest, the highest mountain in the world. You know, here I am living at sea level on an island and I've never climbed any mountains except maybe a hill in my backyard. And, but I just put it on the list. So that's how that all started, man. And to, to get to my 100 items, it took me over 10 years. So the list was small to begin with, and it just kind of grew over time. And I just kept adding things to the list. And like I said earlier in our podcasts, when you have these things on your list, all of a sudden you start to notice that things that you were just dreaming about yesterday can be an opportunity that just comes across your path. And you're now thinking like, uh, you know what, this is a once in a lifetime opportunity. I, you know what, I better find a way to make this happen. And, and that kind of led into this beginning of the journey. And what you find is once you start getting on the journey, uh, one of the most incredible opportunities that you get is you get to meet a whole bunch of variety of people, you know, people like yourselves and, and, and that opens more doors and those doors open more doors. And all of a sudden you begin to really feel the sense that there's a purpose in your life and you're, you're moving ahead and you're making progress. It's, um, what, one of the things that I think is very important for your audience to understand is we can talk about opportunities and thriving all we want, but it is not the same thing as as you experiencing what it means to thrive.

Gast 1: And when you have those opportunities, because you're checking something off your list, all of a sudden you begin to feel like, wow, that's such a good feeling. And so people start looking at their list and they started looking for those opportunities. I had a person who had heard one of my presentations about thrive. She had created a list. One of the things on her list was she wanted to learn how to play the guitar and be able to be good enough to perform in front of friends and family. So she spent two years taking lessons and practicing. And then one summer in the town that she lived in, the parks and recreation department had a, uh, what they called a summer stage. And people could sign up to go perform on the stage. They could sing, they could dance, they could recite poems, whatever they wanted to do. She felt like this was my opportunity because she had learned a couple of songs very well. So she signed up. She said, that is so against what I normally would do, but this is what I wanted to do. It was on my list. She goes and performs. She said, I wasn't like super good, but what was very interesting was at the end, people were clapping. And she said, it was such a great feeling. And she was walking off the stage and she saw, wow, that was so cool. Then she went home, pulled out her list to check off the one item. And then she said, you know what, Stacey, I realized right then and there, what I was experiencing, what it was like to thrive. And it is such a great feeling that she said, I immediately looked for something else on my list that I want to work on next. And that's how she's been progressing in life. And she's saying, I'm thriving. Even though the world around me is changing and things aren't happening the way I had planned it to be, I'm thriving because I've got a pathway to make that happen.

Torsten J. Koerting: Thank you, Stacey. And I think the message that you send at the very beginning, now with what you have described and what you have take us, you know, shared with us is even more important. It's not too late. You can start now putting your list together. And maybe the second core message is that, you know, the goals and the objectives and the items on the list could be small ones, as well as the ones that are far bigger than yourself.

Gast 1: I have a good friend who is also a professor at MIT. And he told me one, it's actually the title of a book that he wrote on change, but the message that he says that's very interesting for you to get across to your audiences, is that even though your list is 100, make sure your audience knows that the list starts with one. And that's all you have to do is just start with one. And like I said, then I think you begin to find that there will be others that will follow. Even if you can't come up with others, that one may become the door gateway to 50 more other ideas that you have. But it starts with one. And, you know, the one thing that I think Martin and I can do for your audience today is we can give you some tools during this podcast. They don't cost you anything. You don't have to go take a class on it. You take these tools and you can start today, just like Martin says. You can start today to live a life, to thrive, to live a life of adventure, to have purpose in your life and a way forward.

Torsten J. Koerting: Stacey, we can ask the audience. All right. So just open your chat. And if you like to hear a little bit more about the tools, yeah, this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Yeah, there is no PayGateway. There is no EloPage link or Digistore link or PayPal link. It's just pure Stacey and Martin who would like to hear a little bit about the tools so that you can start today. Write yes in the chat. If you don't want to see those tools and don't want to thrive and maybe, you know, reach some goals in your life that are overdue, put a no in the chat. All right? And Stacey will have a little glimpse into the chat. It might be a 50-50 thing knowing. No. So I think it's, you know, it's a unanimous, is that right? A unanimous decision. Yeah. And it's up to you guys when you think it's the right moment to share those tools with us and to endeavor and explore these a little bit further. Stacey.

Gast 1: So the first, I think the first tool, and Martin, jump in here because you've heard this a lot of times and you've got some stories and things to add to this. The first tool is Nietzsche's question. The eternal reoccurrence is the same. Ask yourself that question. In your life right now, if you were given the opportunity, would you choose to live your life over and over again for eternity? And think about that. And remember, I'm asking you to take it into a perspective of a vision of your future because that you can control. That you can make plans for. Your past, learn the lessons from your past, but don't dwell on them. It's kind of like, where are you going from here for? Just like Martin had said. So that would be the first tool. Ask the question. And if your answer is, I would absolutely love to do that. And I would suggest you couch it in a different way, too. This is not a question to answer it because you personally want to just live your life over and over again. It's because you want to come back and teach future generations of all the lessons that you've learned to help them thrive in their life. When you get to be my age, you definitely start thinking of not yourself as much as you do, of your children and your grandchildren and the future generations. And I just feel like, you know, if I can keep one of my future grandchildren, great-grandchildren, great-great-grandchildren from stumbling in a hole that I've stumbled in, it would be worth it for me to come back and live the life over again to have that opportunity. So that's the first tool. The second tool is this one.

Gast 1: And so Martin and I have climbed big mountains all around the world. And most of those mountains are surrounded by huge rivers of ice we call glaciers. And I know in Germany, you guys have plenty of those and the Bavarian Alps and whatever. Just beautiful country, by the way. I love when I get a chance to be there.

Torsten J. Koerting: This year in September.

Gast 1: And you know that glaciers move because they are a fluid and because it's a solid. If there's any difference in the movement of a certain column of ice, there's going to be cracks that form. And we call those cracks, crevasses. And those are crevasses are sometimes very big. So big that you could probably take the car that you drive and drop it into one of these gapping holes. And it would just disappear. In fact, you may not even hear it as it's dropping out of sight. So if you can imagine that and you're trying to get from one place to another and you have to negotiate these crevasses, these gaps. Well, for climbers, most of us, we try to find places where the gap is narrow enough where we can step over it or jump across safely. But if we can't find that, then we look for the second best way to cross it is look for snow bridges, places where the snow and the ice is still a solid piece that goes from one side to the other side of the crevass. It's always dangerous because you never know if it's solid enough to hold you. So we rope together.

Gast 1: But hopefully we can find something that's safe. But if we can't find that, then we will plan to take aluminum ladders. And we may have to lash them together, but we're hoping that if we come to an obstacle that's too far apart, we can get the ladders, expand the gap, and then we walk across the ladder. So if you can imagine that, and it's over a deep hole, so if you fall off that ladder, life is over. The tool that I would like to introduce to you is to think about you being on one side of the ladder and having to cross it to get to the other side, to your life goal that's on the other side. The question I would have is, what would get you to cross that ladder? And so the example that I start off with is, would you cross it for one euro?

Gast 2: I wouldn't.

Gast 1: Right? That's not a value enough to you. Would you cross it for a hundred euro? And realizing that one misstep, one gust of wind could blow you off that ladder. Okay? Now, I want you to think of someone you care very much about, especially someone very young, under the age of five. Think of a child, you know, son or daughter, grandson, granddaughter, niece, nephew. Just think of that one person. And that person comes across the ladder with me because I know they can't do this. Martin and I do it all the time. So we're pretty confident that we can take that person to the other side. Now, we're on the other side. You still have to come across that ladder. And you realize that all we've done is we've taken them across and we put them down in the snow. And then because they're just young and rambunctious, they're running around on the glacier, not realizing that the edge of the crevasse is right there. And I'm busy trying to make sure that the ladder is secure for you to come across. And I'm not paying attention to your loved one. And all of a sudden, you're beginning to realize Stacy's not going to save them from dropping in that crevasse.

Gast 1: You could. But you have to come across the ladder. So the question I would ask you now is, would you cross the ladder then to save that loved one? Would you hesitate to cross that ladder to save that loved one? Then I would suggest to you, you have just identified one of your core values. That's the tool. Ask yourself, what would you cross those ladders for? And whatever is your answer, that should be a core value. And that is what I'm suggesting to you is the rudder of your boat of your life to get you to where you want to go. Now, if you will do that and answer the question, what would I cross the ladder for? And if you have a significant other, ask them to do the same thing. And when you both feel like you've taken, you've got a good list, and it doesn't have to be a long list. In fact, most people, probably five items might be all they can come up with. Compare your lists. And those items that are the same become your core values as a couple, maybe as a family. And those become the things that you want to focus on to teach your children, to teach your members of your family, and to live your life that way. So that's just an example of the kind of tools that we have.

Gast 1: It's simple. You don't have to spend a lot of time learning about it. Just have the imagination to think of the crevasse and the ladder, and then ask the question, what would I cross a ladder for? So that's just an example, TJ.

Torsten J. Koerting: Thank you, Stacey. Is it fair enough to ask that question to the audience, and let them put it into the chat, what they would cross the ladder for?

Gast 1: Yeah. No, I'm sure everyone. Typically, what I have discovered is things that people will cross the ladder for are usually people that are very dear to their heart, or a principle that they believe in. Maybe even a passion or a purpose. I call them the four Ps. A person or people, passion, principle, or purpose. But, you know, I don't want to restrict anybody to anything. Just think of the metaphor of what that crevasse is like, and the ladder stretching across it, you know, and what would you cross it for? That's the tool.

Torsten J. Koerting: Thanks for sharing, Stacey. And is it fair enough for you, Martin, if I ask you the question, you've crossed many ladders in your life. What would you cross it for? Hey, that was the first part of the Experten Calls with Martin and Stacey. And in two days, you'll see you in two days, then comes the second part. Bis dahin.