Pete Richardson — The Master Coach on Creating a Vision for Your Life, Reflection, and Replenishment

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Have you ever spilled your guts to a complete stranger?

Pete Richardson did many years ago, and that conversation has since changed his life.

In this episode of Outliers (which is brought to you by Flow), I sit down with Pete, the Co-Founder, Chief Visionary Officer, and Master Guide at the management consulting firm Paterson Center. We discuss:

• The history of the Paterson Center and its inventor, Tom Paterson.
• The four questions every listener should ask to understand their purpose in life.
• Why it’s important to slow down, ask for help when you need it and think of self-care as a necessity.
• How both the Paterson Center’s LifePlan and StratOp services can help people reach their full potential.

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When he was in his 20s, Pete Richardson met Tom Paterson as part of a leadership development program. Their conversation changed Pete’s life, opening his eyes to a journey of self-discovery and deep reflection.

Later, Tom would ask Pete to partner with him in guiding people through the Paterson Process, a strategic way of thinking that emphasizes perspective and clarity before planning one’s actions.

Now, 28 years later, Pete has guided more than 1,000 people through the Paterson LifePlan, a process designed by Tom to bring more clarity and perspective to individuals.

Describing his experience with these programs, Pete says, “I can kind of see at times where things are headed, but I dare not say that. I’ve learned over the years to withhold my perspective or withhold my point of view and, and wait for a person to self-discover that. Because that’s where it’s like fully owned and it’s not mine to tell, really — it’s mine to guide and it’s theirs to discover.”

While LifePlan helps facilitate journeys of self-discovery for individuals, it also has an organizational counterpart — StratOp — that helps to guide companies and teams forward.

Using this process, Pete explains, “We look at a company holistically, not as a bucket of parts. … Then we clarify all the strategic pillars, especially the vision, [like] where are we headed? And then we build on that.”

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Connect with Pete

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Links from the Episode

• Paterson Center
• Tom Paterson
• Existentialism
• Viktor Frankl
• Logotherapy
• Peter Drucker
• Winston Churchill
• “Silence: In the Age of Noise” by Erling Kagge
• Saturn Corp., the car company that Tom Paterson helped create
• “Man’s Search For Ultimate Meaning” by Viktor Frankl
• “Living the Life You Were Meant to Live” by Tom Paterson
• “Built to Last” by Jim Collins
• “The War of Art” by Steven Pressfield
• “Managing Oneself” by Peter F. Drucker
• StratOp, the Paterson Center’s approach to help leaders clarify their purpose, make their vision clear, and move forward with strategic impact
• OtterBox, a company owned by Pete’s brother that uses StratOp
• “The Artist’s Way” by Julia Cameron
• Julia Cameron’s Morning Pages

Favorite quotes

“Talent must be identified and then it must be cultivated. And oftentimes this takes years to cultivate and invest in and grow and bring it to its full expression.”

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“In the information age that we live in, it is so much easier to get swept up by all the noise. There’s so much noise, and the question is ‘Do I have rhythm and cadence and structure in how I literally wake up in the morning and care for myself and replenish myself so that I have enough to give in the day?’ And ‘Do I have structured time for key relationships and key investments of time and talent so that I’m cultivating and nourishing my sense of contribution to the world?’”

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“We don’t go into backstory to stay stuck in history. We go into backstory to learn from it.”

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“What’s on the other side of surrender is freedom.”

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Big Ideas

The life plan process is built on existential questions

“We spend significant time asking the question ‘How did I get to where I’m at?’ It’s like a four-hour conversation, and there are multiple pieces to that. But when it’s all said and done, your whole life backstory is visibly up on these huge charts. And that’s how you got to where you’re at today, from your earliest years as a kid to where you are now. We call that the turning point storyline … and no one in the future will ever have that same story you have. So for good or bad, that’s your story. So you ask ‘What will I carry forward and what will I leave behind?’ That’s a good conversation.”

Live your life with hope, not despair

“The way I see it, there’s at least two different significant pathways a person can travel. One would be one of existential confusion, existential — perhaps in the worst cases — despair and hopelessness and meaninglessness. And unfortunately to me, too many people live their lives and go to the grave with that being their reality. And so we believe that there’s an option of existential discovery, an existential clarity and existential hope in meaning.”

Follow your heart — but make sure it’s guided by your true self

“The heart points the way. It’s the compass. What do I mean by heart? Not your physical pumping heart, but your invisible heart, that’s where your passions reside, where your desires reside. Sometimes those are burdens for the world. Like when you see something that’s wrong in the world and you have a burden to address it, to bring some kind of healthy response to it — to fix it or to restore it. That’s where it gets messy because … there’s a true self, false self, genuine self, shadow self … I don’t want to talk to the shadow self because it has its own selfish, self-absorbed narcissistic stuff. I want to talk to that true self and see where the true self is passionate to apply those talents.”

Dive deep into your talents without overthinking your purpose

“I believe that everyone has a calling in life to contribute their talent to the world in some meaningful way, to make a difference in the world and in other people’s lives. And we have to pause long enough to discover that. I don’t think we fabricate it and I don’t think we create it. I think we discover it. And if you don’t listen to the invitations of life coming at you, you won’t engage those questions. So oftentimes we hear the whisper, like, why am I here? Is there more, is this it? And if we don’t hit the pause button right then, and begin to like, have those conversations, we speed through the business of life.”

Ask yourselves four main questions to discover those talents

“We call it the four helpful lists, things they could ask right now like first, in my life personally, and my family, vocation or work and in my community, what’s right? It may not need to be perfect, but it’s right … Make a list of everything that’s right. And then number two, ask the question: What’s wrong? What really should be right and needs to be changed? I don’t have to solve it right now, but let’s make what’s wrong visible. Be honest, be true. Three: what’s confused? What needs clarification of some kind? I don’t know if it’s right or confused or missing or whatever. It’s just like, there’s fog around it. And then lastly, what’s missing something that needs to be added? What feels void? So just asking those four questions, you can do that in a coffee shop on a piece of paper.

Self-care is a necessity, not a luxury

“A common theme of especially high-capacity leaders that I engage is they say, ‘I just don’t have enough time to take care of myself.’ When 24–7, it’s all said and done, that’s got to go, which means health goes physically. There’s weight gain, there’s high blood pressure. … And there’s oftentimes fatigue, mentally sleep isn’t happening. There’s no rest. The body’s not replenishing, which means the mind isn’t replenishing, which probably means I’m not managing the reality of my emotions really well, and I’m probably not cultivating what I really value and deeply care about. So those are all signals. So what that means is that we’ve got to reconstruct our mindset towards self-care and not see it as this option, not see it as this narcissistic, self-indulgent thing I do, but it’s actually as critical as eating food is to my existence.”

Don’t forget that there’s more to life than your job

“Life is not all about work. I would suggest that someone’s life purpose or sense of calling in life must transcend their vocational life. That clarity or calling or purpose helps define your vocational focus, but it should also be applied to your personal life. How you care for this gift of a body, mind, emotional soul, spirit, and how that applies to your family, to your marriage, if you’re married with kids, or how it applies to your circle of friendships, how it gives back to your community. However you define that. It’s not just about work.”

Fear will try to get in the way, but don’t let it

“Unless you wrestle with the concept of surrender, you will never fully engage and live out and experience the joy of your life purpose on earth. So what does that mean? Every story, including mine and yours and everybody listening, has an antagonist … Well, in our stories, it’s some form of fear. It can play out as doubt or anxiety, but it’s the opposition or the opposer or resistor to our story. And so we have to identify those fears. The voice of fear has a lot of forms, a lot of creative applications, and so when you begin to discover your life purpose and what life is inviting and calling you towards, you can count on the voice of fear to be amping up. … [But] Fear can actually point the way … you should move towards the fear in that doorway.”

We’re built for relationships and there is benefit to that

“I don’t think we’re meant to do life alone. Tom Patterson said he’s ‘never met a healthy hermit.’ We’re built for relationships. Even though I’m an introvert, believe it or not, but I am around people totally. I must integrate critical relationships into my calendar knowing there’s benefit to that. And it will help me not get constricted or not be confined in fear. Those things help me live. They encourage me to live a surrendered life.”

Life is not a sprint, it’s a marathon

“Be at peace with where you’re at, but also be committed to the discovering phase, however long that takes. We’re prone in our culture to want everything fast and you’ve probably heard of the 10,000-hour principle that if you really want to master something, you’ve got to put the right discipline into something for the right amount of time. So, pause long enough to get clarity, get help if you need help and be patient with your development and you’ll get there.”