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Connecting the Dots Backwards: Why the Future Cannot Be Planned
8 Plays25 days ago
Connecting the Dots Backwards | The Butterfly Effect of Success
Why do our lives only make sense looking backward?
In this episode of Voice of Growth, Manny Teran explores one of the most misunderstood realities of success, entrepreneurship, and life itself:
- You cannot connect the dots forward.
- You can only connect them backward.
We are taught to plan our futures with precision — careers, businesses, relationships, outcomes. But real success rarely follows a straight line. Instead, it behaves more like the butterfly effect, where small decisions, chance encounters, and seemingly insignificant moments create massive downstream consequences.
From unexpected opportunities to career-defining pivots, this episode explores why high performers don’t predict the future — they position themselves to adapt to it.
You’ll learn: Why long-term planning often fails entrepreneurs How tiny decisions reshape entire life trajectories The hidden danger of waiting for certainty Why action creates clarity How to operate strategically in an unpredictable world
The Stoic mindset behind resilience and adaptability Success is not about controlling outcomes. It’s about creating possibilities.
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Transcript
Introduction to Voice of Growth
00:00:04
Speaker
The Voice of Growth, Mastering the Mind and Market. Welcome to the Voice of Growth podcast, Mastering the Mind and Market. My name is Manny Turan, and I'm your host.
Living in the Moment vs Planning for the Future
00:00:16
Speaker
I fell into a trap. a massive trap for decades and decades and decades. The trap that I was in was that I was able to plan my future and have it unfold the way I wanted it to be.
00:00:33
Speaker
I fought that kicking and screaming for decades. I was the kind of guy that always lived in the future. And ever since I was ah a child, a kid, and all through my grade school and middle school and high school and even college, I tended to live in the
From Small Town to Big World
00:00:50
Speaker
future.
00:00:50
Speaker
Came from a small town. where there wasn't much going on, came from a family where my father passed away when I was very young. So i had all these experiences that always led me outward to the big city, to the the world at large.
00:01:07
Speaker
And by doing that um sort of living exercise of going through that. And then ultimately having reality slap me hard as hell in a couple different ways. The first of which was after having ah gone through a very difficult divorce and subsequent relationships, I realized that,
00:01:31
Speaker
I needed to figure out a way to get myself back. I felt I was being torn from the past in the sense of all these experiences I had with my partners and
The Cost of Future Focus
00:01:44
Speaker
in the past. and And then of course the future was i was there calling my name and I didn't even live in the present. I missed the present for for years and years and years. i had events happening in front of me. i missed them.
00:01:56
Speaker
um my My kids growing up, I miss them. Now, I'm not saying it it was completely gone, but I didn't really settle in to smell the roses, if you will. I didn't do that as much as as I
Meditation and Mindfulness
00:02:10
Speaker
could have done. and it was about five, six years ago when I realized the full power of what meditation did for me.
00:02:20
Speaker
Now, today's podcast is not about meditation. By the way, it's a great tool that I highly suggest you dive into. But what I am saying is that as human beings, we tend to want to plan our future. We want to lay out the framework so that whatever we desire unfolds naturally.
00:02:39
Speaker
We do this by... going and planning to go to college. And then we go to college and then we get the white picket fence and then we find the partner and then we marry them. We have the kids that we, we want all these things to unfold and your path might be different. Your desires might be different. You might want a a plane before you're 30. You might want this, you might, whatever they might be, these things always have a forward looking thing.
00:03:02
Speaker
But as you realize, as you gain wisdom in your life, you recognize that we not only crave uncertainty, we want it to happen in a certain way, but we don't get it.
00:03:17
Speaker
We cannot plan our
Life's Unpredictability and Entrepreneurial Expectations
00:03:19
Speaker
future. We can only create it. Now that is likely going to get some backlash from people because it's not a very popular idea. But as business people, as entrepreneurs, we believe success looks like this.
00:03:34
Speaker
We let out some goals, we have a clear plan, and it's a predictable outcome after that. a B, C, then D. The problem is that life hands you lemons, the path that you thought was straight becomes jagged, becomes broken.
00:03:55
Speaker
You have things from the outside coming in and disrupting that. And then more importantly, this is the big topic for today, you have things on the inside that derail you.
00:04:07
Speaker
There's a whole massive amount of data regarding this particular subject. I'm just going to talk about high level, how it actually works.
Connecting the Dots: Wisdom from Steve Jobs
00:04:15
Speaker
The idea here is that we want to connect the dots, but what we don't realize is we cannot connect the dots in the future.
00:04:26
Speaker
We can only connect the dots in the past. These success narratives that we hear by Steve Jobs, who actually mentioned this in a um convocation of, I think it was ah to Stanford many years ago, you can actually look it up.
00:04:40
Speaker
We believe that you know these dots being laid out are just showing a direct path. But if you if you've lived life, you know that you might have some dots connected and then you have another dot over here, another dot over here, but from the present looking backwards, they all look like they're aligning.
00:05:01
Speaker
there is this idea of hindsight is 20-20. You've heard that before. um When you're living life and the the future, quote unquote, is being brought into the present and you're and then that present is going into the past, that whole thing is the way we see life. We see it as like we're on a train heading somewhere and whatever we passed a minute ago is gone in the background and whatever's coming in the future is in front of us.
00:05:30
Speaker
Well, it's not exactly that way. if you If you spend some time looking at the way that relativity works or quantum mechanics or just if you, those are the more scientific traditions, or you look at Eastern or even Western philosophy lays out that the present is what we have. And and it doesn't ah necessarily operate that way.
00:05:50
Speaker
mom why this is so important for entrepreneurs is because we want things to work the way they are supposed to work. And we want our product, our service, our magic to be discovered. And then we get this and then this and then this.
Small Decisions, Big Impacts
00:06:06
Speaker
Well, it doesn't happen that way.
00:06:08
Speaker
Have you ever heard about the butterfly effect? This is the idea that the flapping wings of a butterfly can affect a storm a thousand miles away.
00:06:20
Speaker
Sounds ridiculous, but let me read it back. What the butterfly effect means to me is little events that happen where you make a decision And that takes you in a completely different direction than if you had not made that decision.
00:06:39
Speaker
I give this example all the time because it's so stark, the idea of this event happening and the entire, my entire life has been on a certain path.
00:06:52
Speaker
Again, looking backwards, I can see the dots. At the moment, I never would have thought that it would have been this way or that way. In college, there I was in my thermodynamics class, I remember. This guy walked in with a backpack and he had a quick presentation right before class started. He spoke for about 30 seconds.
00:07:14
Speaker
He said, hello, my so my name is Cedric Bonight and I am part of an engineering fraternity. We're having a barbecue this Friday. love for all you to come. And he then he walked around and had some flyers out.
00:07:27
Speaker
And I thought, okay, what's this? I didn't really know what it was. I took the flyer, I put it in my backpack. Didn't think much of it. That was on a Monday. Days and days and days passed by. And on a Friday, I got picked up by a buddy of mine. We're going go to lunch somewhere.
00:07:43
Speaker
and i And this is in college. And I was digging through my backpack and I found that yellow flyer. And I said, hey, why don't we go try out this ThetaToth fraternity thing? I don't know what it is, but they have free food. I mean, why not?
00:07:57
Speaker
So we went. We went and we, I didn't know anything about anything with respect to this fraternity. you i I didn't know if fraternities were. i didn't know how they operated. I didn't know anything.
00:08:08
Speaker
I showed up, me and my buddy, and we had some free hot dogs and we talked to a few people and talked to this one guy named Phil Zareng and I said, hey, Phil, you know, what's going on? We just spoke briefly and then we left.
00:08:22
Speaker
We left, that was it. And it was ah about three days later, actually it was on a Sunday, i called the number on that card because I didn't know what what was next. there was Nobody said, hey, this is what happens next.
00:08:36
Speaker
called the number, Phil Zerang picks up the same guy. i said, hey, Phil, or I said, hey, hello, hello ah my name is Manny, and I went to this barbecue on Friday, and what's next?
00:08:47
Speaker
So what I didn't know is that everybody, there was a signup sheet that we didn't sign up for. We didn't put our name or our email or number, nothing. And what they did is they handed out bids to pledges on on on that Sunday.
00:09:03
Speaker
and And I didn't get it because I wasn't on a list. And I said, I'm interested in in learning more and and doing this fraternity thing. I don't know what it is, but I'll do it. So he he happened to be the president of that chapter, of the regent, and he made it happen. He brought me in.
00:09:18
Speaker
And the rest of my life is this huge branch that came from that one flyer. Because from that branch, I became very invested in the fraternity to the point where I was a pledge trainer. i was also the president of the region. lot of my friends ah came from that are still from the fraternity.
00:09:39
Speaker
And I went through this whole landscape. I had relationships that I have cultivated for decades from that fraternity. my Even my son that is in college actually also went through that fraternity now. So what this means is that there's going to be things that happen in your life that are going to be butterfly effects that you have no idea until you're way past that that moment.
Complex Systems and Present Opportunities
00:10:05
Speaker
And why I say this and and with a backdrop of business and entrepreneurship is because we're looking for these little tiny things that are going to make this massive change, but we're not going to find them until we look backwards.
00:10:18
Speaker
So these things with these little minute details that we overlook or that we don't overlook are going to change our lives massively. And the idea here is that life is a complex system.
00:10:33
Speaker
We cannot expect to be hunting for these small effects that will take us ah one direction or the other. The only thing we have back to this is the now.
The Role of Relationships in Career Shaping
00:10:44
Speaker
And the now, what it does for us is it creates so much opportunity and so much beauty. There's a one hell of a lot of beauty in the now. If you just live your life, if you live your life, if you lean on your values and and fundamental beliefs and go out adventuring, meet people, converse with people,
00:11:11
Speaker
Again, going back to your values, you're not going to do things that are going to go against your values, but lean on this. Careers evolve through chance encounters. Relationships evolve through chance encounters. All these things, businesses that i that I once did business with that were going in this direction pivoted and are going in this direction. Or the company that I was running for for a long time, I created from the bones of my life corporate career, i brought in all these people and we grew it to be this amazing engineering company and now it's gone.
00:11:50
Speaker
And these things aren't to make me bitter, they're to teach me, they're to help me understand and to help me learn about how I can be a better business person, a better partner, a better father, better son.
00:12:04
Speaker
And these are all just beautiful experiences. So this is why planning forward fails. Number one, limited information. You may not know what is happening a month from now if you're looking at a investing in a company.
00:12:22
Speaker
you don't and You have three companies you're gonna invest in one. You don't know what they're planning. You you don't know what's in their in their strategic plan. You don't know that there's an acquisition at play. You don't know that they're gonna have massive layoffs. You don't know these things. You're always gonna be operating from limited information.
Limits of Information and Decision-Making
00:12:37
Speaker
These little little things, little nuggets of poison are going to do a couple of things for us in this regard. They're going to give us bias. We're gonna pick up this device, we're gonna jump on social media, we're gonna look at the news, and we're gonna make decisions based on people's opinions. We're gonna make decisions based on whatever the media says. We're gonna make decisions based on whatever is viral.
00:13:01
Speaker
All these things are a form of bias, and they're going to create smoke in the midst of us seeking clear vision. So it fails because of limited information.
00:13:14
Speaker
It fails because of these unknown feature variables. It also fails because of these hidden casual connections like this butterfly effect. And also we are navigating in in the dark, but we are executing in in full light. What that means is that we let Let me give you an example. We go to a networking event and our goal is to come back with three business cards. okay seems seems fine, right? You go to this networking event, and you're going to get three business cards and and that to you is some level ah of a check mark, whatever.
00:13:53
Speaker
Instead, you go to this networking event, and as you're signing in to to get into the event, somebody comments on something that you're on, on your backpack or whatever, and you start this conversation, and then you have this amazing situation where there is so much business to be had. You guys are just vibing and flowing, and at the end of the night, you don't get any business cards, none, because they didn't have a business card. You just traded...
00:14:22
Speaker
email and phone number and that was it. So even if though we, you had that goal, imagine if it would have gone this way. Imagine if you would have shown up to that event, if you would have been signing in, the person made a comment of whatever you were talking for a minute and then you said, you know, listen, I really need to go inside because I have this goal to get three business cards. And unless you have a business card, I still need two more and see how artificial that sounds.
00:14:48
Speaker
And this doesn't mean that you don't plan. This doesn't mean you don't have a strategy. It doesn't mean you don't have a direction you're going in, like a vector. But what it does mean is you also have to be very fluid and let things play out.
Adaptability in Business Strategies
00:15:03
Speaker
this This concept is something that has come natural to me once I actually let go. When I would when i let go of holding onto the future so much and I just let things happen and be like like a a tree in the wind that is is just firmly footed, but is also able to move and and being being able to go with the wind.
00:15:25
Speaker
Man, so much power comes from that. this This idea that we we have a strategy for our business. Yeah, we do our best. We lay out the strategy based on on what trends are at play, what we know from the market signals, weak signals. We've talked about this in the past. There's all these things we we can lay out with a strategy, but there's never going to be a guarantee that it's going to go that direction.
00:15:55
Speaker
You might be going generally in that direction and then something might derail you completely. I've seen situations where I was at a ah startup many years ago, actually 20 years ago, and we had this plan that we were executing. We had the money, we had everything laid out and it was just like, okay, it's A, B, C, D, all the way through Z. It was all laid out and i was, know,
00:16:20
Speaker
much younger man and I had in mind, okay, this and that, I was already spending the money I was making and I wasn't even like, we were like on step D of 26. And as we were playing out and doing these things, the investors that were supporting us came in and took over the company.
00:16:40
Speaker
They fired the founder, they fired, ended firing me as well. It was a complete disaster. And all that illusion of strategy buckled like like a house of cards, like throwing a wet towel in a house of cards just came crumbling down.
00:16:54
Speaker
And so that these are all elements that helped to shape the way I think. And really the message I wanna give here is that high performers, what we actually do We don't predict the future.
00:17:12
Speaker
We look at trends. We look at, at for instance, use this analogy. We're gonna go camping. We're gonna go someplace. So we go when we understand what is the environment look like? Is it gonna rain? Is it gonna be cold? So in the same way as business people, as high achievers, we look in the future in in the sense of what are the trends at play?
00:17:34
Speaker
What's the market saying? What are my offerings? What are my resources? What can I bring that will create value and I can exchange that value for for money or for whatever? So that's a loose framework.
00:17:48
Speaker
That's not a rigid in stone framework. That is a loose framework like that tree that has the ability to to move as the wind blows. Then, Once we have that framework, we can lay out what we believe is the one that manages ah success,
00:18:09
Speaker
Risk, and that success, by the way, has different pieces to it. It could be financial success. It could be market success. It could be success finding the right people. It could be tied to regulatory. It could be tied to resources, human resources, whatever.
00:18:24
Speaker
So you define your success. And then the risk component, what are the things that can derail us? What are the things that can knock us down? So we lay that that that path forward, loose forward, and then we take action.
00:18:37
Speaker
I've spoken about this ad nauseum, the idea of just take some action. a A bad move is recoverable. You can make a bad bad move and and you decide it's not the right move. So you you make a different decision and you get back to whatever you're trying to do.
00:18:55
Speaker
And if it doesn't work out, you do it again and you kind of meander forward. But a non-move is also a move and that can sometimes paralyze you and keep you pinned down.
00:19:06
Speaker
When I was in search and rescue back in and about the same timeframe, um I was, there was several occasions and there was even some lore about people that had been on the trail, fully dehydrated to the point where they were completely emaciated and and almost going to die. And the lore part of that is people that were actually dead with full canteens.
00:19:32
Speaker
They had the resource right there, but they chose not to use it. Why? Because they were afraid that they would get thirsty later. So that's just the way it was. They made the decision to not drink the water, and that's what caused them to fall and for some to die.
00:19:53
Speaker
It's crazy. So after we we actually go through the action part, then we create the feedback loop. We look at how that's going for us. We compare that to the direction we want to go in.
00:20:09
Speaker
Again, all loose framework, all with open eyes, all with open ears, all there ready to pivot if you need to. And after that feedback loop, we adapt.
00:20:21
Speaker
We adapt, we make small changes, we make big changes. We cut the cord. I've seen situations where there's huge plans laid out and the entrepreneur just decided to just cut the cord and said, I'm done and go a completely different direction.
00:20:36
Speaker
They were leveraging those market signals, those trends. They knew things that were happening down the road. And even though they invested so so much time and money in going in that direction, they cut it off because they knew that the biggest company in their market had just developed a tool identical of to what they were developing as well.
00:21:01
Speaker
So it's like those face recognition apps that were so popular three, four years ago are now gone because you have all these other things at play with AI and all that. So those that are the examples of when it's okay to pivot.
00:21:15
Speaker
Um, there's also the idea of clarity that, that follows movement. If you're moving in the, just in the direction and you're following this feedback loop, you can gain an understanding, a deeper vision of the direction you're going in by, by understanding where you've been.
Creating Future Opportunities
00:21:31
Speaker
And so just to kind of begin to to bring this to a head and close it out. Remember that every decision you make ripples forward. It creates waves in the future.
00:21:44
Speaker
People you meet, the networks you are part of, the things you say, the things you interact with in social media, all these things are at play helping to shape the the foundation of the future you're building for yourself.
00:22:02
Speaker
I have relied upon conversations I've had years and years ago when I remembered some conversation I had with somebody and I called back years ago and I said, remember when we talked about that? Well, now I'm looking and I need your support and and here's what I've got to offer.
00:22:16
Speaker
And so these things are all at play. ah The problem with social media is that it sucks you down, it sucks you in, and you go down this endless loop and then you're not you're not actually acting. You're not creating, you're not executing. You're just living in this box and there's great ideas on here. And matter of fact, this podcast is all on social media and all that. This is the way we get this to our audience.
00:22:41
Speaker
But there's this propensity for us to be sucked down to the point where we are missing the opportunity to act.
Embracing Risk for Reward
00:22:52
Speaker
Something else to do about risk and the path we're we're defining here for ourselves is risk is always going to be there.
00:23:02
Speaker
There's the idea of no risk, no reward, correct? Well, it's 100% alive and well. You need to risk at some level. You need to act at some level. If you don't risk, you're never gonna get any level of reward.
00:23:16
Speaker
Yeah, you can you can just, sure, you can go to school to become this and that, you can make a good living, and you can go work for the federal government and you think you're you're fat, dumb, and happy and you're great.
00:23:29
Speaker
And then there's layoff. And then there goes your your pension or whatever. I mean, there's just all these things that can happen. So there's always going to be some level of risk, no matter what.
Aligning Actions with Future Possibilities
00:23:39
Speaker
So to to sort of wrap up here, release the idea of these outcomes and recognize that timing and external events and all these things are gonna be unfolded to you in and you living your life and being receptive to it.
00:23:57
Speaker
You got to be receptive to it. You have to be open to what is happening in the world. You know, stop asking what exact future should I plan and start asking what action today creates the most future possibilities.
00:24:14
Speaker
That that old old adage about luck is when opportunity meets preparation, 100%. one hundred percent If you're ready, if you've done your homework and an opportunity persists himself presents itself and and then you act on it, there it is.
00:24:34
Speaker
So keep your eyes open to the present. Keep your feet right on the ground of present and reach towards the present.
00:24:50
Speaker
Thanks for your time. Cheers.