Lessons - The Abundance Mindset That Changes Everything | Saul Blinkoff - Disney Animator

In this lessons episode, explore how true leadership begins after achieving success and shifts focus from personal wins to lasting impact. Discover why responsibility and service redefine fulfillment beyond career milestones. Understand how awareness of mortality brings clarity to values and decision-making, and uncover how using creative work to help others creates meaning that outlives achievement. When did you start to think like that? Because this is leadership lessons, it transcends growth, it transcends accomplishment. There's many people that are highly successful that don't think that way, and we're aligned with everything that you're saying. But you achieved what you wanted to achieve, and you could have just killed it at Disney, and never really taken a second thought as to what you wanted to accomplish your own life outside of that. Yeah, you know, it's so you ask it beautifully. I mean, I was at Disney. I got my dream. I had worked on Pocahontas, which was the first movie I worked on, and I worked on the Hunchback of Notre Dame, and then Mulan. For four years, I worked on Mulan. Remember that one? Of course. Let's get down to business, right? To defeat some people are singing in their cars. The Huns, right? Some people ain't never heard the song. So after Mulan, before I went on the movie Tarzan, we had at Disney what's called Downtime. Basically, they were figuring out the script on the movie Tarzan for like a year. So the animators would come into work with nothing to do. They said, you know, we're going to pay you, but you don't have to come into work at all. This is amazing. Like I said, it's called Downtime. I always tell my kids, if anyone ever offers you a job and they say, we have Downtime, take the job. Take it. You're getting paid to do nothing. And you know what Downtime isn't Disney World. You ride roller coasters all day. It's Space Mountain, Splash Mountain, Thunder Mountain. Woo! Right. I became quite the mountain here in Disney World, right? And Downtime went to six months. They said, you don't even have to come in. So me and my buddies would go to the pools at the Disney hotels. There's over 15 hotels in Disney World. And they had one of those lazy rivers at the Beach Club Hotel. I love those. You know, you don't have to be alive and you can swim, right? That moves you. It moves you for years, right? Yeah. Yeah. I got a whole opinion cloud in my head. I remember my brother was in law school freezing. He's like, Saul, what are you up to these days? I'm like, Jay, you don't want to know. I live in the dream. I actually live in the dream. Yeah, I really was. And I had a checklist of every single thing I ever could have wanted. You know, what if you could make a list and check off every single thing you want? I had my dream job. I had this incredible girlfriend who I later married, right? My friends, I'm living in happiest place when I had everything. But something felt like it was missing. And you know, I grew up, I'm Jewish and I grew up, you know, not so religious. You know, my parents definitely had a love of Judaism and a love of connecting to Judaism. But as an individual who is now an adult, I didn't really understand my own Jewish identity. So I got out of the pool one day and I found myself in Israel on a program to learn about Jewish history and my place within the Jewish people. And when I went on that trip in Israel, I started learning about tapping into what makes us unique. And really like you ask, what changed? It was really that one word responsibility. I never, I really never, I always saw my life as like, if I get to Disney, I'll be happy then I can make money and I get my name in a movie. I can buy a sports car and I can get more when I want you know, there's a big buzz word you hear right now and a lot of people's podcasts, a lot of motivational speakers, they're going to use this word. I think it's a turn off word. I don't like it. I hope I don't offend anybody. The word is abundance. Abundance here at all the time now, don't you? It is. Everyone talks about like, oh, if you do this, you'll have more abundance. You know what abundance means? It means the word more. If you listen to my seminar, you can have more of what of whatever it is you want. Is that what life is about? I've actually heard it in a different context. Tell me. So I've heard in the context, you want to live a mindset of abundance where everything you have is meant, everything you achieve is meant to give to others. Oh, so your mindset is towards giving everything. I think that's the right mindset for it. I've never, so I would say that the way you just define it is that's a horrible representation of how you feel. I hear it, but I look the way you're saying it. Interesting, because you're saying it's a mindset of giving as much as you can. Like there's so much in the world that even if you make a million bucks or 10 million bucks or 100 million bucks, like give it as much as you can, they'll always be more beautiful. That's the way that I've heard it. Okay. I'm aimed to what you just said. That's awesome. I love it. That's how I've heard it describe. You want to live a mindset of abundance. There's so much like, for example, if you're in, I don't know, say you're in business with somebody and you have to be ethical and you're going to lose a deal, you lose that deal because there's so much more out there that you shouldn't be worried of a compromising who you are as a person. There's more. Yeah, there's a lot of other opportunities. Yes, but not personal abundance, just like the world is infinite. Right. So much, there's so much of everything. Right. That's a different form of abundance. I love that. Well, I wish I had your definition back when I was starting because I needed that. Well, that's what Israel gave me. They gave me that kind of understanding more in line to what exactly what you said. Scott more about the idea of the other people of how do you serve other people? And by the way, they changed everything in my life because now I didn't just see myself as a filmmaker making whatever movies. It was like, what are the values that I'm putting in the projects that I work on? And I've turned down projects from studios that I don't think are in line with the values of what I want to do. Like right now, today, I'm a supervising producer, a dream works animation. And I look back at the projects that I've done. And I got to direct a show called Doc McStuffins. I don't know if you know this show. I don't know that. Okay. So this was only the number one preschool show in the world. That's fine. But it was about eight years ago. I am older. You are not that young. Right. But like this show, which is an incredible show created by Chris knee and incredible show creator, this show made a huge impact because it's a show about a little girl who's a doctor to her toys. And because of this show, it had the goal of letting kids know that they can be comfortable when they go to the doctor's office. And how many people have come up to me over the years and said, I'm so grateful that you made this show because it shows kids it's okay to go to the doctors. It really made an impact. And now as a filmmaker, I try to use my love of being a filmmaker to make stories and tell stories that I think are going to impact others and to make a difference. And that's really how I look at my life now, you know, because someday I hope this doesn't sound morbid, but the reality is someday we're all going to die. Like we're all going to be in the ground. That's a fact. It's true. You know, in Judaism, there's an idea. It says, if you have to choose to go to a wedding or a funeral, choose the funeral. And some people hearing that are like, are you crazy? Like, why would you do that? Go to a wedding, get the dress up, eat the sushi, celebrate, give a cheers, drink champagne, sing dance, beautifully steak. That's what you want to do. Who wants to go to a funeral? But you see, when you go to a wedding, do you have a glorious time? And it's wonderful. Yeah. And you give the brining room all this great pleasure. Sure. But when you go to a funeral, every single one of us stands there. And for at least a moment, we have a realization that someday that's going to be me that I'm going to be in the ground. And when we leave a funeral, hopefully we have the mindset of thinking, you know what, I'm on limited time. What am I waiting for? What else do I want to accomplish? And that's what we have to ask ourselves, what are we waiting for? Did you ever heard the concept of stoicism? No, what is that? That's the concept of stoicism. It's being very cognizant of your mortality. Yeah, I think there it goes back to Roman Roman philosophers. And I could be misquoting because I don't have a computer to fact check. But one of the concepts of stoicism is always be cognizant that one day you're not going to be around anymore and always to humble yourself to that fact, even to help as much as you can, to the point where I think there was this is a story that I've heard through a friend of a friend. So excuse me if it's not 100% factually accurate. But the story is when people when when generals would come back from more and cities were celebrating them and whatnot, they were in chariots and they were going through the city and people, there was like a big parade, right? Because they just were successful in their conquest of whatever part of the world they conquest it. And they would have somebody in the chariot that would always be whispering in the generals ear like you're only human, you're going to die to make sure they didn't think they were gods. So that was something that was that's awesome. You know Steve Jobs, I think, said a quote about that. He was at the Stamford University address he was giving. I know this I know that I've seen this clip. See this clip, right? It says like one of the greatest gifts to humanity is having the awareness that one day we're going to die and that that should give us the understanding, the clarity that we need to not wait. You know, we don't have the rest of our lives. We don't know what tomorrow is going to bring. And that's why when you go to a funeral, you leave that funeral with more clarity of what's important in life and what what matters in life. And that's the kind of clarity that I try to put into everything and I do. And I know that someday my kids are going to see my name scrolled out on a gravestone. The same name that's been in the credits of Mulan and Tarzan and all these big Disney movies. But who cares about those? And my kids are going to want to know, you know what, did my dad try to become a better person? Did he try and live the values that he talks about? Did he try to become a better human being? Because at the end of the day, I really think that's what life's about. How do we grow? You know, I had on my podcast, George Foreman, the boxer, heavyweight champ. You probably think he's from the grill. You don't even know I do know he's a boxer. Okay, right. I have that. I know I'm from the grill. I know from the grill more. Yeah, you know, all right. You're that generate. Yeah. Right. So, right, he was heavyweight champion in the world twice with a 20 year interval. By the way, I didn't know that. He was heavyweight champion in the world at 20 years old. And then 20 years like goes into retirement after he was a laughing stock. And then he was even trying. He does it again. He made for the Foreman grill his first year on that grill, $138 million. The guy is doing okay. He was a gold medal Olympian. That's incredible. Gold medal Olympian, heavyweight boxer, fortune 500. The grill is on a TV show. I mean, he's done everything. And I asked him one question. George, what's the legacy you want to leave your kids? How do you want the world to remember you? What's your legacy? He didn't mention anything about money. He didn't mention anything about grill or boxing. He says, there's one thing I want people to remember about me. And you know what it is that I loved humanity that I loved human beings that when I walked down the street, I had the mindset that I wanted to smile at a person and make their day just a little bit better. You know, I said earlier about the word responsibility. I heard a beautiful thing about that word once. It says response ability is really the ability to respond. Response ability is the ability to respond. And wherever in life we have the ability to respond, we should. We're responsible. How can we make a difference in another person's life? Because when we do that, we get that real pixie dust. We get that life of meeting. Thanks for tuning in. If you found this valuable, don't forget to hit that subscribe button so you never miss an episode. And if you want to dive deeper into this conversation, check out the links in the description to watch the full episode. See you in the next one.