Capableism
Capableism
Capableism
Dan Sullivan
Cartoons by Hamish MacDonald
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Chapter 1 14
Everything Starts With Capability
Chapter 2 20
Everything Comes From Capability
Chapter 3 26
Everything Grows With Capability
Chapter 4 32
Being A Committed Capableist
Chapter 5 38
Multiplying Your Capabilities
Chapter 6 44
Combining Capabilities With Others’
Chapter 7 50
Reviewing Your Capability Past
Chapter 8 56
Expanding Your Capability Future
Conclusion 62
Increasingly A Capableism World
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Introduction
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Introduction
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Chapter 1
Everything Starts With Capability
You realize that everything you need to have a
bigger and better future is already available to you
in your existing set of capabilities.
You might find it surprising to learn that you already possess
everything you need, and you might not even be aware of all
the capabilities you have.
When you first learned how to crawl, then how to walk, and
at some point how to make your way up and down stairs,
those were capabilities that developed before you likely
thought of them as capabilities.
This means first taking all of the senses that you were born
with seriously, and then taking seriously the abilities you’ve
learned.
dealt a hand, and it’s what you do with what you’re dealt
that determines how well you’re going to do. It’s partially
what cards you get, but it’s mostly how you play those
cards.
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Chapter 1
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Chapter 1
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Chapter 2
Everything Comes From Capability
You realize that who you are, who everyone else is,
and the world around you are always the result of
the constant expansion of human capabilities.
At seventy-three, I’m the result of all the capabilities I’ve
developed over the course of my life. Strategic Coach
started with two people, and now we’re 130 people. Every
time I now start a new workshop group, it’s achieving reve-
nue that’s equal to everything we made during the first three
years of the company.
When you look at facts like that for yourself, you have to
appreciate that the acquisition of capabilities is the constant
factor for all of that growth.
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Capableism
If you accept that who you are is the sum total of the capa-
bilities you’re using right now, it becomes a platform for
going further and expanding those capabilities.
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Chapter 2
All the people you’ve ever known, and all the people you’ll
meet going forward, are explained by how they uniquely
expand their capabilities.
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Capableism
You can take great comfort and confidence from the simple
understanding that everything in the world is continually
being created from the endless combining of everyone’s
individual capabilities.
You’ll notice that the person who gets the furthest ahead is
the person who takes their capabilities the most seriously.
This is because it’s our unique capabilities on which we
base our growth, our development, and our expansion.
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Chapter 2
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Chapter 3
Everything Grows With Capability
You understand that all the growth you’ve experi-
enced is the direct result of increasing your own
capabilities and taking greater advantage of
everyone else’s.
At Strategic Coach, we recently had a November and
December that included a similar number of client registra-
tions to a November and December in a previous year. But
in that previous year, we were charging $3,000 per person,
and now, the average is $13,000 per person.
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Capableism
It’s also much more integrated with your past; it’s an exten-
sion of what’s happened up until now. You wouldn’t be able
to make the jump in capability that you wanted to if you
didn’t have the capabilities you’ve already jumped to.
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Chapter 3
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Chapter 3
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Chapter 4
Being A Committed Capableist
You permanently simplify your understanding of
what your whole life is about by making the single
activity of growing your capabilities the central daily
focus of everything you do from now on.
The idea of making the growth of your capabilities the daily
focus of your life might make you nervous at first, but let
me put your mind at ease by saying that it’s really only the
first step that might be risky and require courage. Soon
after you’ve taken that first leap, you’ll experience why this
works.
Within the first 24 hours, you can start getting the rewards
for focusing on your capabilities and not using anything else
as your primary goal. All you have to do is be committed
to the jump and be willing to go through a short period of
uncertainty.
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Capableism
You still have to work, you still have to problem solve, and
you still have to go through trial and error, but you know that
you’ll always be starting from where you’re capable. And
because you’re working with your capability, you’ll immedi-
ately see where the line of your capability ends and some-
one else’s capability is required.
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Chapter 4
But your capabilities will never tell you to retire. They’ll never
tell you that you’re falling behind. They’ll always tell you to
go bigger and get better. When your capabilities are your
focus, all you’ll think about is how you can expand, where
you can go, and who you can combine capabilities with.
When you’re dealing in capability, you can see all over your
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past how this one thing led to this other thing, and that
other thing led to another new thing. Disparate experiences
will form into a network, and your life will become integrated
around this theme of capability.
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Chapter 4
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Chapter 5
Multiplying Your Capabilities
You grasp at a fundamental level that the essence
of each of your capabilities is to expand where it
is right now, especially by using it to unpredictably
multiply the usefulness of many others.
Think of each of your capabilities as a Lego block. They can
be built upon and combined in myriad ways to create some-
thing completely new and different.
Once you recognize what you have to work with and build
with, your thinking will naturally move to considering what
blocks you can combine with what other blocks. You don’t
get that combining ability until you’re willing to say that you
actually have it. The capability isn’t going to do too much
until you identify it.
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Chapter 5
where you got a check?” I can talk to them for a half hour
and pick out five or six things they always do when they’re
successful. I tell them, “These are the building blocks. Any
day in which you put these six building blocks together,
you’ll probably achieve the result you’re looking for, and
you’ll learn other things along the way because you’ll begin
to bring in other capabilities to that basic process.”
If they stick with these building blocks that work, they’ll put
each prospect they speak to through the same process.
And if the person doesn’t respond to the process, it proba-
bly won’t be a sale, so it makes sense to end the interaction
and move on to the next person.
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Chapter 5
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Chapter 6
Combining Capabilities With Others’
Your growing confidence about your own capabili-
ties extends into the world where you increasingly
cooperate and collaborate with other individuals
whose capabilities are also growing.
After you’ve spent years and years identifying your own
capabilities, recognizing them as unique and combining
them, you can then look at other people and see their
capabilities as unique and where you can combine your
capabilities with theirs.
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Capableism
And since you know how you created your capabilities, you
know that you can never create someone else’s. Their capa-
bility is unique, as yours is. The best each of you could do is
create a mediocre version of the other’s capability; you can’t
actually produce it.
For one thing, you won’t have all the skills necessary to
achieve the impact you’ve envisioned, and you won’t be
able to develop them because it’s not your unique thing.
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Chapter 6
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Capableism
This will become habitual, and the more you strengthen your
capabilities, the more natural it will be for you to use them.
There’s no comparison.
None of this is possible if you’re involved in comparing your-
self with the outward performance of other people.
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Chapter 6
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Chapter 7
Reviewing Your Capability Past
You now use the single factor of increased capa-
bility to transform your understanding of your
entire life until now — namely, that every happy
experience was where you increased a specific
capability, and every unhappy one was where you
failed to do so.
We’re born with a desire to increase our capability.
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Chapter 7
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These are great memories for me, and what makes them
so pleasurable is that in each one, there was a growth of
capability or a combining of capabilities happening.
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Chapter 7
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Chapter 8
Expanding Your Capability Future
You now simplify and empower your personal and
entrepreneurial future by seeing all growth, prog-
ress, and achievement strictly in terms of expand-
ing individual and organizational capabilities.
Your life can continually expand without complexity if you
simply focus on capabilities. This is because the starting
point for any project will always be the same: You look at
what capabilities you’re working with and go from there,
with each person on the team staying in their area of unique
skill and talent.
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Chapter 8
Here’s how the formula works for you: Your increasing focus
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Chapter 8
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Conclusion
Increasingly A Capableism World
You now understand how the whole world around
you is always developing and expanding — billions
of other individuals, every one of them uniquely
working each day to increase their capabilities.
Capableism is based on the notion that there is a powerful
instinctive drive in humanity to constantly increase human
capability, and that this is what drives all progress in the
world.
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Conclusion
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Conclusion
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The Strategic Coach Program
Expanding Entrepreneurial Freedom
The Strategic Coach Program, launched in 1989,
has qualifications, measurements, structures, and
processes that attract a particular type of talented,
successful, and ambitious entrepreneur.
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Capableism
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The Strategic Coach Program
When you compare the two scores, you can see where you
want to go in terms of your achievements and ambitions.
If this fast exercise tells you that you want to multiply in all
these areas, contact us today to get started:
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The Strategic Coach Program
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Capableism
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About The Author
Dan Sullivan
Dan Sullivan is the founder and president
of The Strategic Coach Inc. and creator
of The Strategic Coach® Program, which
helps accomplished entrepreneurs reach
new heights of success and happiness. He
has over 40 years of experience as a stra-
tegic planner and coach to entrepreneurial
individuals and groups. He is author of
over 30 publications, including The 80% Approach™, The
Dan Sullivan Question, Ambition Scorecard, Wanting What
You Want, The 4 C’s Formula, The 25-Year Framework,
The Game Changer, The 10x Mind Expander, The Mindset
Scorecard, The Self-Managing Company, Procrastination
Priority, The Gap And The Gain, The ABC Breakthrough, and
Extraordinary Impact Filter, and is co-author with Catherine
Nomura of The Laws of Lifetime Growth.
CAPABLEISM
Every individual strives to become more
capable. I believe this is essential to what
it means to be human.
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TM & © 2019. The Strategic Coach Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced in any form, or by any means whatsoever,
without written permission from The Strategic Coach Inc. Made in Canada. July 2019.