Sometimes we resort to “amateur psychology” when an area of our life isn’t going the way we’d like. It’s natural to ask WHY and look for answers that often lead to some version of “What’s wrong with me?” What if you could replace that thinking with a new system focused on actions that explore possibilities?

In this episode, host Meredith Bell discussed these ideas and many others from The Power of Systems with Trevor Timbeck, who co-authored the book with Steve Chandler. You’ll hear about Trevor’s experiences that led to the realization that everything in life can be viewed as a system. Trevor also shares the system he and Steve created for writing their book that made the process fun and energizing for both of them.

You’ll learn two simple questions to ask when evaluating a current system, and you may feel a sense of freedom in hearing how easy it is to start playing with a new one. Trevor has thought deeply about the power of systems, and his brilliance shines through in this conversation. Be prepared to take notes and listen to this episode more than once. There are many thought-provoking insights.

About the Guest: 

Trevor is a coach and author who lives and plays at the intersection of Love, Language and Leadership. He's on a mission to transform the world of leadership from fear-based command and control to love-based inspire and enroll. Trevor spent the first forty years of his life getting a masters in righteousness and has committed the next forty years to a masters in workability. He loves to walk really slowly and listen to the Universe.

Website: www.trevortimbeck.com

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/trevor.timbeck 

About the Host: 

Meredith is the Co-founder and President of Grow Strong Leaders. Her company publishes software tools and books that help people build strong relationships at work and at home.

Meredith is an expert in leader and team communications, the author of three books, and the host of the Grow Strong Leaders Podcast. She co-authored her latest books, Connect with Your Team: Mastering the Top 10 Communication Skills, and Peer Coaching Made Simple, with her business partner, Dr. Dennis Coates. In them, Meredith and Denny provide how-to guides for improving communication skills and serving as a peer coach to someone else. 

Meredith is also The Heart-centered Connector. One of her favorite ways of BEING in the world is to introduce people who can benefit from knowing each other. 

https://growstrongleaders.com/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/meredithmbell

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Amy, thank you for tuning in to The Ultimate Coach podcast, a companion to the transformative book The Ultimate coach written by Amy Hardison and Alan D Thompson, each conversation is designed to be a powerful wake up call, reminding us of what's possible for you and your life. So if you're on a journey to expand your state of being, this podcast is for you. Welcome to another episode of The Ultimate coach Podcast. I'm Meredith Bell, one of your hosts for the show, and my guest today is such a special person, I'm so excited to have this conversation. Trevor Timbeck, welcome to the show.

Thank you. I notice a lot of aliveness, so I'm excited to be here.

Well, you know, there's a lot for us to talk about, and I know it's going to be such a valuable conversation for every person who is listening to this. Trevor is a very successful leadership coach, and he recently co authored this fabulous book with Steve Chandler called The Power of systems. If you don't have it yet, I know you're going to want to get it by the time we are finished with this conversation, we're going to be discussing some of the ideas in the book and how it ties in with who you are being and what you're creating in the world. And this book's impact on my own life has been profound, and I continue to review it and learn from it, because there's so much depth to it. So Trevor, thank you for joining us today, and I think it would be fun to start out with how you first discovered this world of being. You know Steve Hardison, the ultimate coach book, The being movement. Tell us a little bit about that.

Yeah, but to when I first started my path down to becoming a coach, I did a lot of research. That's one of the things I love to do, is research. And I started researching who are the best coaches? And as I was researching and coming across certain people, I then started to track, Well, where did they get their coaching from? And as I kept going, all roads, or a lot of roads, seemed to point to Steve Chandler. And as I was reading Steve's books, he is very clear, I think, in every single book that he worked with Steve Hardison. And so I I needed to find out who is this Steve Hardison person. And to me, it just was so powerful to see so many roads kind of coming to the same place. And of course, I couldn't stop at Steve Hardison. I wanted to know, Well, where did Steve Hardison get it from? And that's how I uncovered Byron Katie and Werner Earhart. And as I was going through I realized even the coaching program I had gone through, the founders of that program had worked with or done work through, like Werner, air, hearts, organization, and it was like all of these threads seem to be coming from this one place or this sort of one lineage. And I just keep, kept diving in. I like to explore rabbit holes, is what I said. I just kept going down further and further into that rabbit hole

I can connect with that. I'm that way too, and it is funny. That is how Steve Hardison came into my world as well reading Steve Chandler's books and wondering who is this guy, and connecting with him on Facebook years ago, and here we are today. Well, let's look then at your relationship with Steve Chandler, and how the two of you decided, or did you decide to write this book? I think that was an interesting creative process in itself. How did this book evolve and become a real thing?

Yeah, so the little bit longer version is I fell in love with Steve Chandler very early from the prosperous coach, and then started consuming every one of his books. I was actually revisiting Time Warrior today because I realized it was one of my most highlighted books ever. I think there's maybe now I have one or two that are more highlighted than Time Warrior. And so early on, I just studied everything Steve Chandler, all of his books. I bought all of his audios. I was consuming it all. And now, when I look back, realize it was a system I was using. I. And I would listen to his audios before coaching a client. And one day, in one of his audios, Steve Chandler said, In the beginning, just find someone who you love their coaching or their style or their approach and copy them. And he's like, pretty soon, it will be your own, really quickly. And so I heard that as like, Well, Steve Chandler just gave me permission to copy him. Not that, not that I needed permission, but that's how it landed. I'm like, so I'm just gonna do what Steve Chandler would do, which I now look back thinking that's so funny, because I had no idea what Steve Chandler would do. I'd never met him. I had just read his books, but it was so powerful for me, of like, oh, and then I had this system. I would just listen to his audios, read his books, I would show up and coach people. And it worked. And it worked really powerfully and really quickly. And I just started following now when I see all the systems in the prosperous coach and built a very successful coaching business really quickly, and then attended Steve's school back when he was doing it live, and loved that. And it was even called ACS, and we always short formed it, but it stood for advanced client systems. And so to me, as I was coming up with this idea, it sort of hit me one day with this distinction, because I love distinctions. I have systems, not psychology. That was originally how it came up. And so I was so excited about it, and I was working with Steve as my coach, and I shared it with him and my excitement, and he said, You need to write a book on this. And I, I sort of dismissed it a bit. I'm I thought, sure, I'll write a book, but I don't know how to write a book. I haven't written a book. I was excited about the possibility of a book, and then a few weeks later, I think Steve noticed that I hadn't made any progress on writing the book, and so he said, Would you be willing to write the like, let me write the book with you. And so for me, that that was just a dream come true. That's like, if you're a wanting to be a singer songwriter, and Elvis Presley says, Hey, do you want to write a song together? But obviously yes, and then the rest is history, so to speak. But it was like the most fun I've ever had creating a project, in this case, a book that I'd heard all the stories of. It's going to be hard, and it will be tough, and you'll not want to do it, and you'll end. For me, it was just a testament to Steve's approach and his system. It was so easy, so much fun at the point, at the end, when Steve said, I think we've got enough, we can stop. I was like, I don't want to stop I want to just keep writing.

You know, I just love that story because it it kind of, it causes all of us to pause and think about how things come to be created. Because you didn't set out to write a book, the idea was planted in your mind. And then another idea was created by Steve saying, let's do this together. And I think that what it seems to me is is this place of being open to possibilities and to things coming in aren't necessarily how you would map things out. Can you talk a little bit about the evolution of the writing process? Because it just from reading the book, it sounded like you had a lot of fun doing it with each other and with what you just said, but I think helping people understand that was a system before we dive into what you even mean by system might be interesting as kind of laying the groundwork.

Yeah, we had written a lot of the book before I knew we had even started. So in the beginning it was just excitement. And so I would send Steve, and Steve would send me Facebook messages, Facebook Messenger messages back and forth. And then we started using email for a little bit longer conversations. And then at one point, this was a few months later, Steve said, Okay, I think we've got enough material. We could just now put it into book form. And I like that. I was dumbstruck when he said it. I was like, What do you mean? I thought we hadn't started right? And he was like, No, we've got all of this is gold. And he kept saying, and I just missed it. He kept saying, save this. It needs to go in the book, right? Send them an email. And he'd be like, This is gold. This is going in the book. And I, I just totally missed all that, because for me, I was just sharing from excitement. And so then when we, quote, unquote, started writing the book, Steve just sent me an email one day and said, Hey, here's what I suggest. I'll send you my opening volley. And that was the words he used, because we talked about it like, Hey, we're gonna. Write this book and have it be fun, just like you send hit the ball over the net and you hit it back to me. So he said, I'll send you my opening volley, and then you send me yours back, and we'll just keep going back and forth, and we won't take more than four days, which I was so appreciative that he said that, because I probably would have taken three weeks with each one, and then he said, at some point, we will say we're done, and then we'll edit. And I was just so blown away. Because, of course, everybody knows, you start with an outline, right? You start with a plan, you do and it's like there was none of that. And to me that that was what was holding me up. Because I was like, Oh, I don't know what what the plan should be, and I don't know what I'm going to put in. And so, like, all of that was wiped away. And the four days was so helpful for me, because, and I always joke, although it really was this way, Steve took one day and I took four days every time, right? And but he shared with me he wasn't waiting until he got my chapter, he would already be thinking and writing, and he's got a great process around writing, so I really just took inspiration from that of like, okay, this is what I'll do, and I tapped into all of my Steve Chandler knowledge around his systems for inspiration and morning routine, and created that system for myself. Of like, all my writing happened before 8am it was part of my morning routine. On my calendar, it says radical act of love. That's what I call that time period. That's when I do my meditation and other work, and that's what it felt like. It was like, Oh, this is another radical act of love, of writing, love notes, back and forth, right?

You know what I was sensing and feeling as I was hearing you describe that is the ease of the flow, not forced, not hard, but fun. And I think there's such a To me that's an important benefit to convey to those listening that haven't read your book yet about systems and how they don't because that word systems can be off putting if people see it in the context of, you know, systems in the workplace, and it sounds like they could be complicated. I love the phrase that you and Steve use, systems, not psychology, and I think that would be kind of a good jumping off point for explaining what you mean by systems, so everybody can relax into what we're really looking at here when we're talking about systems for living your life.

Yeah, it's, I love that you said what you felt, right? It's to me, it was clear that this was in the center of Steve's zone of genius, right? Which is, in our zone of genius is something that is just easy, fun, flowing. Time passes quickly, but he's it's such a big zone of genius for him that, like, I got sucked into the zone of genius, and all of a sudden it was easy and flowing and fun for me. And that's what I start to see of like, okay, that's powerful, because I would have said before that was something Steve had versus starting to see like, oh, this was his system for writing. And he just offered me his system. He said to, let's use this system. And we started using it. And so for me, it was an example of what I had seen. And in the beginning, when I came to Steve, I sort of felt like I was just telling him what he already knew. Because, from my perspective, I got it from Steve's books, and this is just one of the things I've started to see. Is my, I suspect my zone of genius is I love to take in lots of information and then see the patterns and the connections, and then sort of distill it down to, in this case, like maybe one phrase, like systems, not psychology. And so for me, it's like, this is just what Steve's been writing about the whole time. And the part that I think that I I added a bit onto it, right was I just started to notice, again, looking at patterns, that as a culture, we're very committed to a psychological interpretation of everything, everything we say and do, just sort of goes into this domain or paradigm or world of psychology and the real distinction for me was like, Oh, hold on, there's another world. There's another paradigm. We don't have to use the paradigm of psychological interpretation or mind for everything. We could look at the world a different way. Or really, what I would say is we can talk about the world a different way. You. Yeah, and so in the beginning, it was like a flash of insight. But then it was when I started to play with it, with my clients and with myself, as I would notice people would come and when they were stuck, they were in the world of psychology. They thought there was something wrong with them. They thought they were missing confidence, or they didn't have knowledge that they needed or something. And when I took them out of that world into the, what I call the world of systems, they could see possibilities that before they couldn't see, but they didn't think we existed, and they could. They would start playing, and they would start testing, and they would get back into the flow and back into the action. And so partly the word the word systems could be any other word, right? I had a great conversation with a client early on, and I got clear. We could have called it the power of games, and we could just search and replace and replace the word system with game everywhere in this book, and it would have a similar impact. The reason I love systems is because I love wholeness. My favorite thing in the world is probably wholeness and whole and complete. And one simple definition of system is just organized whole. And so to me, systems was this huge word that I could, I could, I could fit anything and everything into it. And I heard, and I forget, who this? Who said this? It was, I think it was the date the grateful dead's road manager said something about God is like, God is the blanket we throw over top of everything so we can see it, right? He's like, that's just a word we use to throw over top. And to me, it was like, oh, system is just a word. It's like a blanket I can throw everything that then gives it shape, and I could start to work with it. When I say, well, that's a system. And then I can change the system, and I can play with it, right? So it was really in the beginning, for me, the shift in behavior like that got created by just playing with the words. And this is something I got from Steve. Steve always talked about changing the words, and when you shift the words, things happen and and I just started doing this myself, and then with my clients. And then after I shared it with Steve, he started doing that with his clients and seeing the impact and the behavior change. And so I appreciate what you shared, because for some people, where I got really excited about the word system, some people get really put off by the word system. And to me, that's just one of our systems, right? Which is we add meaning to everything, and, of course, to every word, and we don't always notice it. And so I call it a semantic reaction. That's what people are having. They're having a semantic reaction, or reaction into the semantics of the word system. And so I used to at the beginning, I was worried about that, and now I embrace it. I love it when people have a adverse semantic reaction to the word system, because when we slow down and then they see it, they kind of see how the system of languaging works, but also they can tap into freedom that they they're missing in other areas of their life because they're having similar adverse semantic reaction to words. And so that's where, like to me system is, is almost like the word possibility. So this is interesting. So I love this conversation because I'm about to say something I've never said before. I just hit me as I was sharing. There's like system. The reason I love the word possibility is it's this word that's almost like a space, like it has no definition or form or like to me, that would limit the word possibility too much, even sometimes people would want me to define the word possibility, and I'm always happy to distinguish it, but never want to define it. And system is kind of like that. For me, it's like, I put it in that group with words like possibility, like words like responsibility, words like freedom. Love being. I love those words because to me, they they just open up a space and then create things that weren't possible before in the case of possibility, but for me, systems like that, people would be like, I see no options, and then we would start to talk about their systems, and then they could see 1000s of options. And I just got so curious of like, how did that happen? Like, a minute ago, you saw no options, and now you see 10 or 100 or 1000 options. And that's the part that I got really excited about the power of systems and started to see it's it's even there. If I was being more rigorous with my speaking, I would say they didn't see something that they couldn't see before they started saying something that they weren't saying. Being before, because nothing changes with your eyes or the word world when you start using the word systems. So it's not really a seeing phenomenon, it's a speaking and then being phenomenon of like how you create the word world, you really stop reporting on the world. You start creating a different way. And then you can take actions you couldn't take before. Normally we would say you could see things you couldn't see before. Maybe to me, it's like, all of a sudden, you'll create possibilities and actions you couldn't you didn't think were there before. So I just realizing now maybe I veered way off the question, oh, but I got excited myself with that. I love that this

new idea occurred to you real time as we're talking because I think that enriches the whole discussion. There's so much you've said. I want to unpack a couple of these things. One of them is this whole idea of psychology, and you mentioned some things that we do. You and Steve do an excellent job in the book of distinguishing professional therapists psychologists from the amateur psychology that we often apply to ourselves. And I think it's important for folks listening to this to really understand the distinction between those two, because you weren't disparaging the profession. It's the things that we do in our own heads that get in our way of seeing these possibilities that you just talked about. And so I think let's bring it to a concrete example with a client where you've seen or witnessed them kind of sabotaging themselves with what they're saying, what they're seeing inside themselves, that amateur psychology and the difference it makes when they perceive a different way through a system.

Yeah, so I'll use my own example as a client early on, when I first discovered coaching, I had been promoted to head of sales, and I had no real sales background, and so I was literally sweating through my suit every day for a year. And then I found a coach named Keith Rosen, and I started working with him, and at the beginning, I thought, Oh, I'm lacking confidence, right? And my CEO actually told me I was lacking charisma, right? And I was lacking certain things. And so I was scrambling to trying to find these things I was lacking and not making any progress. And so I finally turned to a coach because I thought, like, listen, I normally, I can figure these things out. And I spent a year reading books, and I couldn't find this confidence I couldn't find this charisma I was lacking and working with Keith. And what I loved about Keith is he focused a lot on my language and what I would how I would say things and and one day, he just said to me, Oh, I see what the problem is. And there's I wrote about this a little bit in the book. But he said, I said, Oh, thank god. Please tell me what the problem is, right? I just wanted the answer. And he said, Do you still think it's your job to have all of the answers? And I was like, Well, duh Of course, Keith. Like, that's my job to have all the answers. It's been my job my whole life. I went, like, 20 years of school. My job was to have the answers. I got promoted because I had the answer right. And he's like, Oh no, no, your job's to have the questions. And the amount of like visceral relief in that moment, like something in my nervous system shifted, and now what I saw was like, I had this system, which was I was always trying to have the answer and give the answer, and sweating because I didn't know the answer and missed it because I was looking in the world of psychology, amateur psychology or folk psychology. I'm not trained, and that's what I love. What you notice? It's like I had a client who was a neurosurgeon, and I would never think to give someone neuro or like brain surgery advice, right? And my wife is an occupational therapist, and so much schooling, I would never think to give someone advice about occupational therapy or something like, it would never cross my mind, but it's just so interesting to me that we are all so quick to give psychological advice when we haven't had the years of training and the masters and the PhD provided. So it's like, Okay, that's interesting. And so that was my first experience that I had no idea that was a switch of systems, but it really just I stopped looking for confidence and just started practicing this new system, and it started working really quick, and that that actually is what triggered something with me when I started reading Steve Chandler's books, and he would talk about confidence and say, like you don't, it's not a confidence issue. It wasn't as extreme as I am now, when I talk to my clients and I. Say, like, confidence doesn't exist. I don't think it's a thing. I think it's like the Easter Bunny. You can talk about it, but it doesn't exist. But just having that my own sort of visceral experience back then, I just thought, this is the power of coach, and why I ended up becoming a coach, seeing the impact on my own life. But as I started to play with it more, it's like, actually, yeah, this psychology is a wonderful domain if you're well trained, right? Just like neurosurgery or occupational therapy or something else, if you are well trained and you know what you're doing, wonderful if you don't. To me, it's like the the ability to inflict damage is just as much as if you were playing armchair neurosurgeon.

You know, as I'm listening to describe that, I was thinking myself in the reading of the book and understanding the difference there and how much time I've expended on myself, questioning, why don't I have this? What am I? You know, what do I need to do to develop that? Instead of looking at the two questions that you lay out is such simple things in the book, what's your current system, you know? And then looking at, well, what might work better? Or is it working and so? And one of the things that you you and Steve both talk about there, is looking at answering that first question, first, before you start trying to come up with a new system, why is it so important to look at the current system and how do we even know what Our current system is?

Yeah, so I love that question. And what I would say is, because without that, we get stuck where I got stuck, which was like, wow, my coach is smart. My coach is brilliant, like, but I'm not that right. But he just he could see something I couldn't see. And so at the beginning, I was like, I need to go learn this coaching thing so I can be just as great as that. Versus what I would now say is, what he saw was, Oh, my current system, because we had been working for a few months, and he saw I did it with him all the time. It was my system. Was I always need to have the answer. That was my system, and I was well trained in it, because I got valedictorian top marks, like I knew how to always have the answer until I got into an area where I didn't. And so that first question of what's your current system takes away the there's something wrong with me, or there's something where I'm not smart enough, or whatever it's it's just to see like, Hey, listen, what's going on is there's a system in place, whether it's yours or just that case, I would say it wasn't what is it wasn't my system. I got that one from my culture, right? I just got thrown into a system that said it's all about answers, right? At school, you're very quick. They sort of beat the questions out of you and tell you, this is, this is what you need to do as a student. You need to learn how to have all the answers, not how to ask the questions. And so I just adopted that system really well, and it had helped me really thrive, right? And so until I saw that as a system, I went years just thinking I got lucky. I had a coach who had this clairvoyant moment and could fix me, right? And so I still sort of thought that's what happened with my first coach. Was like, Oh, I got fixed. But it just never made sense to me, because I had never really struggled with confidence my whole life, right? Generally, having all the answers and being valedictorian like confidence wasn't something. And so I struggled, and probably took a lot longer, spent a whole year and read a lot of books, because I didn't think it was a confidence issue, and it and it wasn't right. And in fact, that was the part that really helped me, is sisters, because he said, you have questions, don't you? And I was like, oh my god, I have so many questions. And he's like, just start asking them. And at first I didn't believe them, but I just loved the relief I felt in my nervous system. Like, okay, I'm just gonna start. And then what I noticed was the questions started working. And sometimes the question I had other people had, but no one had just bothered to ask it, because they had been in sales for so long, and I wasn't. And I was like, this makes no sense. Why do we do we do this? And then people would be like, good point. Let's stop doing that. And so that was the shift. And so that's why I think that first question is maybe the most important question, right? It's like to really slow down and say, What's my current system, or what is the system? And as you said, it is often not obvious. So it takes practice. And now I was going to say, I almost said, I see the world this way. I say the world this way, and then I see it. This morning, I was out for a walk, and often I'll go out for a walk and I'll see garbage and trash, and I'm always like. I want to pick it up, but I don't want to carry it with me the whole time, so I'll take up one piece and then throw it away. A man was walking his dog, and he had a bag, little bag he was carrying, and he was picking up trash and putting it in his bag. And I was like, That is a brilliant system, right? I'm like, I could take that system. I could walk with a bag. And then, when I now, when I see trash, I can just put it in the bag, and then I can throw the whole thing away. And that's when I started to see, like, Oh, my current system was not have anything to put the trash in. And once I saw that, then I could see, in his way, I love systems. I can borrow other people's systems. He had a system called bring a bag so that I can put the trash in it and then throw it away. And that, to me is the power of starting to practice that first question of like, what's my current system? Or and sometimes it's easier to see it in other people, what's their system, but it is so powerful because it does really depersonalize it and takes us out of the psychological domain and gets us into the real world and creates a lot of freedom and possibility when we see at least. What I say is when, when I play with it, that it's just a systems issue.

Well, there's two things from there. I'm not sure which way I want to go. One of them is your example with this guy with the bag is so perfect for one of the statements that you make multiple times in the book, and that is seeing everything as a system, as you were saying earlier. You know, system is the thing that kind of blankets over everything else. So if everything is a system, there's an opportunity to observe is my system working. The other thing that was occurring to me was this whole idea of how much time we can expend in looking at our shortcomings and thinking, oh, we need to fix these before we can adopt a new system, when the answer is, adopt a new system. But we don't have to do this internal work to get better if we perceive this gap, it and and the focus on action, taking action, getting into action, to play with and create. And it was interesting, when you were talking about, you know, the thinking of system being synonymous with possibility, my first thought was, well, wait a minute, one of those is more open ended than the other. And then I thought, no, it's examining my own analysis of that, because what you advocate with system, and I want you to talk more about this, is the idea of experimenting, playing, dancing with life, and not seeing it as some new, rigid thing that you have to adopt To replace what you previously had that wasn't working,

Yeah, so I noticed I got excited as you were sharing your excitement. That's what I love about what I call the great system, which is the universe. That's what I worked for, the universe, the great system. And so I don't know of anything bigger than the universe, right? It's like that that includes everything, the great system, by the way I am creating it, way I'm speaking it includes everything. So there can't be something outside of the great system. It's now in the system. So it's like, okay, that's that contains everything, all possibilities, everything yet to be created. It's in the great system, and then I get to start to play with it that way, right? And to me, that is what I notice, is it changes our behavior away from fixing and there's something broken, something wrong with me. The coaching school I went to, I'm very clear. I went because of one line I read, and they said, we believe everyone is naturally creative, resourceful and whole. And that just had such a deep resonance for me that I'm in and then coming out of there, I started looking around and and my experience was, well, no one else thinks this. My clients don't think this. No one like no one else is believing they're naturally creative, resourceful and whole, like, what's going on. And at first I thought, oh, and they used the word and I used it here, belief. I'm like, Oh, it's a matter of belief I need. But to me, that's the psychological interpretation. Psychological interpretation is I need to believe. But for me, when I get out of that, it's like, I don't need to believe in gravity, like, whether I believe in gravity or not, gravity works, and it's the same for everybody. And so I started to see, like, okay, there's something outside of the psychological interpretation, or outside of belief. What is it that works like gravity? And to me that's like, well, that's a system. Gravity is a system, the system of. Gravity, the system of the solar system, the way the planet is like, oh, there's something in that that doesn't require my belief or my disbelief. It works regardless of that. And that's what I started to get so excited about. Of like, Well, when I get outside of the default domain, and into the systems world, there's just something that works. And that's kind of where the subtitle of the book came how to create a life that works. It really came from this insight that Steve and I both have, which is, life just works. The universe works 13 point 8 billion years of workability, that's what I say. So if life's not working, it's not the universe of the great system, right? There's something I'm doing, or someone else is doing, or in the system that we put in, it's just simply not working. And that's why I love that approach is like it just takes it away from something's broken inside of me. I really get to stand in I and everyone else is naturally creative, resourceful and whole, and we can just start to look around and then play dance. Those are the metaphors I like to use right experiment, test. And I think that's sometimes the challenge people have with the systems, the shift to the systems paradigm. In the systems paradigm, you can't really know ahead of time. I mean, you can think you know, but you don't know if the system is going to work, but you can always test. You can find out real quick. And so it takes a little bit of practice with right? Because, like myself, I wanted to, I wanted a guarantee. I wanted to know, right? But to me, that actually is what trips us up, because we'll stop paying attention to if the system is still working. And that's why I love you've said earlier that one of my favorite questions is, does it work? Is it working? Is it still working? Does this work? It'll be obvious if it's not, and if it's not, I don't have to get upset. I just play with it, tweak it, test it, dance with it until it's working again.

You know, one of the things I think you and Steve both talked about too with your clients, this idea of exploring with them, to help bring the idea of a system to be real, is ask them about what is one area of your life that maybe is not working as well as you wish it were. In one case, it was a man and his wife were arguing so much, and that was something that was a system that wasn't working well. And I think we can make it more concrete and tangible for people just by asking them that what is one aspect of your life that isn't working as well? And then what system do you have in place now with that and and help them to think about it in those terms, so they're not blaming themselves or shaming themselves or others, because I think we can get hung up on, well, that system would be working if this other person would just do a B or C. Yeah, so talk a little bit about, you know, how we how we can shift our thinking a little bit to look at possibilities more than looking externally at what somebody else might need to do from our perspective. Yeah? Well,

I got excited as you were sharing that, because what I saw or heard and what you were saying is like, yeah, most of us use the system of blame. That's a system we blame. We point right, and as the saying goes, when you point the finger, there are three pointing back at you, right? So that's one system. Blame. You don't have to use that system, right? So I love the example Steve gave of like the system of the person's listening for what's valuable and what do they appreciate. I heard this system, since I'm always hearing and collecting systems the other day, and it blew my mind, and it was gay and Katie Hendricks talking about how to end an argument, any argument in under 60 seconds. And I was like, I'm in like, how to end any argument in under 60 seconds. That's got to be a powerful system. And they didn't use the word system, but I can translate everything to systems, right? And what I heard was this powerful system where they said you can end any argument with anybody in under 60 seconds. Is if, as soon as you notice you arguing, you stop and then tell them what you're scared of, right? And I mean, I got chills, just as I said it now is like I totally now, that's not what we all want to do. That's not like, that's the last thing usually we want to do, right? But I'm like, That is such a powerful system, and we can start to practice it. I can imagine with my wife, with anybody, right? It's like, we're getting into an argument. It's like, well, that's because I'm scared. Usually, there's something she's scared of. We don't say that, but. We keep going trying to be right, and it's like, well, what if I started practicing this system instead of the system of trying to win the argument? I am very familiar with that. When I always say to people, I have a master's in righteousness. I know how to be right. I've got all the tricks, including just Outlast people when it's not going well and they won't give in. I'll just I'll outlast them. So I've got a lot of work in that system, but I don't like how it feels, and the other person doesn't like and so I'm always keeping my ears open for systems that help me move away from righteousness. And when I heard that system, it was just so powerful, or it's like, okay, I can that system could also called be could be called Radical authenticity, because what's really going on is I'm scared, and that's when I get really righteous. But had it never occurred to me to just say to the other person, I'm scared, and this is what I'm scared of,

Well, it requires being vulnerable, and that's that could be a whole new way of being if you're used to being coming from the place of being right and proving you're right. You know, there are a number of different things that you have in the book Trevor. And one of the ones that was coming to mind as you were just talking here is this idea of starting, or had written down starting is a powerful system in itself that that really is, because too often we can talk ourselves out of trying something new and different because it's uncomfortable. We haven't done it before. We have this uncertainty around it. Like you said there's no guarantees, and yet, the place we're coming from or have been in is not working for us. So what are your thoughts on helping someone get started with a new system when they might be hesitant because of whatever past experiences?

One of the things I learned from Steve is that you can always have fun. That's one of his systems. And so when I'm working with someone and they don't want to start something, it's usually because whatever they've picked to start is not occurring as fun for them. And so I like to because I know the power of starting is so powerful it's like, well, let's start with something fun. Let's start with something small. Let's start with something that you would be excited about, because I've learned that it's much more powerful in my nervous system when I do anything from excitement versus when I'm with Steve Chandler, would say, like, low down on the ladder, or what I might say, below the line, or I'm in fear, essentially. So I'm not a big fan of like, be afraid and go do it right? And do it from fear. I would rather say, Listen, there's unlimited possibilities. Any multiple systems we could use. Let's pick a system that will have as be a little bit of fun or a lot of fun and light and and to me, that's the the power of the system. It's like, okay, starting is a system. So then most people like, Okay, I need to start. And every day you can, like, err, and they throughout, like, even their face gets I'm just gonna start. And it's like, well, that's that's one system of starting start with effort and hard, or you could start with lightness and fun. And to me, it's like, okay, you keep playing with the system so that it's something you're excited and want to take versus the the thing you're afraid of, right? And so to me, it's like, the system, you can just keep extending it, because system is, like possibility, and it's the biggest word I could really think of. It's like, okay, so starting as a system, and they don't want to do it, it's like, okay, that's because your system is to start with things you hate or you don't like. Like, if a client comes to me and says, I I don't like working out, but I want to work out. Can you make me work out? I would say, No. Why would I make you do something you don't want to do? Right? And it's like, okay, we can. If you want to get in shape, there's another system to get in shape. And going to the gym, you don't have to use the gym system to get in shape. You could go ballroom dancing, you could do, like, a million things, and when we find something that they get excited about, they just start taking action.

Such a good example. And I think I'm so glad you mentioned that. I love the distinction you make between, you know, this heart and lots of effort to lightness and fun. They just feel different in your nervous system. And I think they have a real impact on your willingness to take action, to get started and do those things. You know, something else that you have talked about throughout our conversation, Trevor, and you've been very intentional about using the word say instead of see or hear. Yeah, and, and that's another theme that really runs through the book, this idea of the language, and looking at the power of our words, which ties in so beautifully with the whole being community, and making these declarations, how can people play a different language game and not fall into the psychology piece of things.

So I notice I'm getting really excited, and I know we don't have a lot of time, so I'm gonna try to bottom line it. I get so excited because this system shift also applies to language in that most of us and I did for 40 some odd years talk about language in the psychological domain. And so we would say things like Lang the purpose of language is to communicate information, or transfer information from me to you, and that's the psychological interpretation of language. It's for communication. It's for transfer of information in the systems domain, the interpretation of languages. Languages for coordinating behavior. That's what language is for. It's not for transfer of information, it's not for communication, it's for coordinating behavior. And when you can start to make that shift to me, it woke me up completely to like, oh, that's the power of language, right? It's coordinating behavior. It's actually creating things. It's not information I always loved, and I think Steve Hardison often uses this example too, of like, when you say chair, a chair doesn't fall out of your mouth, right? But when you say promise, a promise falls out when you declare something, a declaration comes out when you request something. A request comes out because those things are actually coordinating behavior. And to me, it's like when you can make that shift. And I could write a whole book and do a whole talk just on this shift from language as transfer of information or communication to language, as coordinating behavior. It just re contextualizes everything. It's like when I start to say everything is systems what's going on. It's not new information, but it changes my behavior. It changes what I look for. It changes how I act. It changes how I speak. And so to me, that's the, you know, nervous system is probably my favorite system in the world. My second favorite system is the language system. But it gets its power when I take it out of the psychological interpretation of it's about information. And how do I get the information from my head and put it into your head so you'll do what I want you to do, or whatever it is, is like you can start to have a lot more fun and more possibility and a lot more dancing with the language when you're kind of coming from this paradigm, which I'm not saying it's the truth. It's just another paradigm of okay, languages for coordinating behavior, and what behavior do I want to coordinate? What behavior Am I actually coordinating? Is it working like I wanted to coordinate this behavior, but I'm getting this behavior? Okay, great, that's not working. I don't need to say it louder or again, or give them this more of that information, right? It's like, okay, I can play, I can dance, I can experiment. Because language, I say, In this world, is coordinating behavior. And so to me, it becomes beyond powerful. It's just unfortunately, I say, we live in a culture that's committed to a psychological interpretation and says things like, talk is cheap, right? And I say, No, you cheap in your talk, right? And that's why I love integrity. And that's, again, I was very attracted to Steve Hardison right around integrity. And you know, talk is not cheap for him. And it's like, well, then you have access to this very powerful tool for creating the world, the world, and to me, systems is tapping into that when people just start to use the word system.

Thank you, Trevor, that you know that is just kind of touching the surface of what I know is possible there for us to explore, given our time, we'll we'll have to save that for another day, because the book just goes into so much detail around the things that we've just touched on today. So I want to really encourage everyone, if you haven't already gotten this book, The Power of systems. I really encourage you to get that, because you're going to learn another system that we don't have time to go into today of slowing down. I loved that one. So there are a number of systems that you and Steve introduce that are very real and practical for us in terms of application in our own lives, so that we can see, as you said, the possibilities of a different. Different way than perhaps we've opened our minds up to in the past because we didn't even realize the choice was there. And I think that's one of the beauties of what you have done, is you have freed us up to explore other ways of looking at the world, of speaking into the world and taking actions that are going to help us have a more fulfilling life. I love the the subtitle, how to create a life that works. And I like the simplicity of what you said. You know life works. And so if we're experiencing areas where it's not working for us, your book is truly a gift that can help people find that peace, find that simple, easier way than all the effort and struggling they may have had in the past. So Trevor, I want to acknowledge you for your brilliance, your unique zone of genius that has been on full display here in our conversation and is, you know, inside your book, and I know available in your coaching with your clients. Please share with folks. How can they connect with you? How can they get a copy of the book and learn more about you and the work that you're doing.

yeah, so the book is on Amazon. That's the easiest way to get the book, and you can just search power of systems. And for me, my website is Trevor timbeck.com and it's a very minimal website, mostly just some of my favorite quotes and then my email address if people want to reach out. And I so appreciate you. You shared with me your system for preparing for this call, and my experience of our call was flow and freedom. And I get excited whenever I surprise myself with what I'm what I'm saying, I know it's coming from someone who's really created a space and can hold a space for possibility and for exploration. And I felt that throughout our whole call. So I so appreciate that.

Thank you. Well, I think the result was fun, enjoyable and rich conversation that I would encourage our listeners to absorb more than once, because there are a lot here to tap into. So thank you again, Trevor, for who you are, who you're being in the world, and for what you've contributed to us today. Thank you for joining us today. If there's someone you know who could benefit from this conversation, please share this episode with them. Also check out our website, being movement.com, you'll find valuable resources and links to connect to an engaging and wonderfully supportive community. Together, we can inspire and support each other on the path to a greater understanding of being until next time, take care and be kind to yourself. You.