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My Generation

“People try to put us down – just because we get around”

So sang Roger Daltrey in The Who, back in the latter half of the Sixties.

Most of us – my generation – are now in our late sixties or early seventies and many of our music heroes are now over 80 or getting close – that is if they are still around.

There was a lot of ‘hard living’ going on in that era which was not conducive to long life, if you get my drift.

“Hope I die before I get old” – was another line from the song – quite prophetic really.

The thing is, I still feel much the same as in the first line of the song, but this time it’s not the ‘adults’, the older people, who are trying to ‘put me down’, it’s the young ones.

The people whose parents hadn’t been born when I and my peers were listening to The Who, The Stones and The Beatles and many, many more of the classic bands of that time.

My physical energy may have reduced a little, but I still have the same Soul Energy I had way back then over 50 years ago.

But it would seem that many people of my generation have lost that impetus we had back in the Sixties and Seventies.

That unflinching hope in the face of adversity – remember the Cold War? A far worse scenario than anything we face today.

It didn’t happen – and neither did the other cataclysms that were predicted – like civilisation coming to an end at midnight on 31st December 1999.

And here’s a secret. Don’t tell anyone because it will upset them. None of the other worldwide or local disasters are going to happen either.

Global warming for example has been going on since the end of the most recent Ice Age. We have evolved to cope with it and we will continue to do so.

It’s all there in Genesis and other older religious texts. We are supposed to be using the resources of this planet, this Garden of Eden, so that we, the spiritual part of ‘us’, can grow and move on.

We need to stop being so self-important. The human race has not yet reached its ultimate state even though some people would like to think it has.

There are illustrations that we are in the last few minutes of our evolution. That’s just being pompous and arrogant – we are probably still in the first five minutes of the journey we, our ancestors and our descendants are taking.

Read ‘Conversations with God’ by Neale Donald Walsch if you want to know more, oh yes and read the Bible and the Qur’an as well and interpret the words for yourself.

But I digress.

I have two questions.

  • Has anything changed?
  • If not, why not and if so why?

Do the post millennials – the children of the millennial generation who are now at that exciting late teens time of life think the same way as we did?

Would Daltrey and Townshend’s song resonate with them?

Or do they dismiss it as ‘old music’, now out of date?

I know that if I think back to how I was then, when we thought we had all the answers, when we thought that we would make a better world, when we thought that we’d never make the same mistakes as our predecessors – and the people who were trying to ‘put us down’.

We were an arrogant bunch really – we thought we knew it all.

I suspect that things are much the same. That generation – the ‘baby-boomers’ children’s children, maybe sometimes grandchildren, probably think the same way as we did.

But things have changed.

We and our children changed things.

We moved from the industrial age to the information age.

The ‘world’ has changed, and the way people live their lives has changed.

And that has had an effect on how we think.

Back in the day, TV advertising had just started – but only on two of the four available channels.

There was no internet, no email, no social media. (I wonder what current 17-23 year old’s would make of that!)

There were no computer games – and no computers for that matter!

There were no mobile phones. (Who remembers pressing button A or B in a call box?)

Life was much simpler – but we did ‘get around’!

The thing is – we made our own lives – we decided what we wanted to do.

(Maybe that’s why ‘they’ were trying to put us down.)

And some of us still do.

We decide who we want to be, what we want to do and what we want to have.

But sadly many of ‘my generation’ don’t.

They’ve given in, given in to the continuous propaganda coming out of the TV and the media about how they ‘should’ act, how they ‘should’ behave, what they ‘should’ be buying (and from whom), and how they ‘should be conducting all aspects of their lives.

So sad.

All that bursting out potential gone from so many people of ‘my generation’

They succumbed to the ‘put down’.

And now because it is so much easier to influence and subvert people through propaganda disguised as advertising, reality shows, and ‘soap operas’ together with the insidious influence of social media, all the generations seem to be being affected.

In the way they behave.

In their expectations of life.

In the decisions they make.

In what they think is available, or not available to them.

In who they believe they really are.

By this 21st century communications overload.

No wonder people feel overwhelmed because unlike the sixties and seventies there is just too much to cope with.

Unless.

Unless you filter it out.

Unless you see it for what it is.

Unless you decide for yourself who you are and how you would love your life to be.

And encourage others to do that as well.

That doesn’t mean that you should go ‘off the grid’, but that you understand it, realise how it works, realise what it’s attempting to do, and explain this to everyone you care about as well.

So to the all forces trying to influence us:

“Why don’t you all f-fade away
Don’t try to dig what we all s-s-say
I’m not trying to cause a big s-s-sensation
I’m just talkin’ ’bout my g-g-generation”

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VisionPower

Over the weekend I gave a presentation at the Best You Expo at Olympia in London

The title of the workshop was VisionPower  – it was about how you ‘power’ your vision to bring it into reality.

But that’s not the whole story.

There are some other messages some of which I’ve written about before, but the key was that if you don’t implement something else than you will have no power to achieve your vision.

The purpose of the workshop was to promote the ‘Dreambuilder’ life coaching programme created by Mary Morrissey which our team in Life Mastery – Now! are all trained and certified to deliver.

The programme itself has a 15-year pedigree and has helped around 100,000 people, mostly in North America, to achieve their goals, visions and dreams.

It’s quite a simple concept – as are most things that work well – and could be described as a goal achievement ‘SatNav’.

There are three stages to the coaching we provide and like setting up your navigation system these are –

Where are you starting from?

Where are you going to?

How will you get there?

In the ‘getting there’ or journey stage we’ll look at things analogous to ‘the quickest route’, ‘avoid tolls’, ‘avoid motorways’, ‘go via a specified waypoint’, and so on.

But the first lesson we explore is that the route from A to B, from ‘Here’ to ‘There’, is never ever a straight line.

Even a laser bean doesn’t travel in a straight line – it’s a beam of light that vibrates at a certain wavelength. It might ‘look’ like a straight line, but it isn’t – it’s a wave.

The ‘journey’ you and I take when we are in the process of achieving a goal or vision is just like that – it hits highs and lows, it encounters obstacles, and there are often ‘diversions’ that we have to take or choose to take.

When you or I are on a journey, unless we know the way exactly, and unless we know how to make diversions if we anticipate obstacles, we usually use a navigational aid – a SatNav – to help us on our way – and that’s exactly what it’s like when we take on a coach to assist us in achieving a goal.

A business goal or a personal goal, it’s the same either way.

Part of the process is setting it up, and in ‘life’ or ‘business’ you have to first know ‘where’ you are, or indeed ‘who’ you are.

What we’ve found is that practically everyone we talk to has an ‘idea’ of who and where they are, but the process always generates some revelations about who and where they really are in their lives.

Knowing exactly where you are starting from is always a great help in starting a journey.

‘You are Here’ as it says on the maps in town centres and, sometimes the old adage “Well if I was going there, I wouldn’t start from here” comes into play – because sometimes you do have to ‘start’ your journey from somewhere else.

Think of it like catching a train. Unless you live on a train station you have to go somewhere else before you can ‘start’.

And then you have to set your destination.

Usually in your SatNav you set a postal code. Sometimes the actual building you are heading for has its own postcode but usually not, so the system will get you close, but there’s still a final piece of the journey to complete when you ‘get there’.

The overall lesson is that you must have absolute clarity on the three elements of the journey.

Now here’s another thing and it relates very importantly to defining your destination, setting your goal or describing your vision.

Clarity and specificity are two quite different things.

You must be clear about your target – let’s keep it simple and say you want to hit the bullseye with an arrow in archery. That’s clarity.

But if you decide you want to hit the dead centre of the bullseye, or the top left quadrant of the bullseye or any other particular point on the bullseye then that’s being specific.

It makes your task far more difficult.

Until.

Until you get much closer to the goal – the closer you get, the more specific you can be – but the start of the journey is not the time for specifics.

Specifics are the final piece of the journey you can only complete once you’ve arrived.

Up front they will actually cloud your clarity and increase your resistance to taking the journey in the first place because you’ll be saying “I’ll never be able to achieve that – it’s just too hard”.

A clear target is easier to hit.

So far you have a plan.

  1. Discover who/where you are,
  2. Get clarity about where you want to go or who you want to be,
  3. Identify the route and the obstacles as far as you can.

Then you need to do two things, and I have talked about this before, but they are important, no, critical to your success.

You will not achieve anything without doing these things.

One of them of course is to take action – to get started – to take the first steps.

But there’s something else before that.

Bob Proctor said:

“There is a single mental move you can make, which in a millisecond, will solve enormous problems for you. It has the potential to improve almost any personal or business situation you will ever encounter . . . and it could literally propel you down the path to incredible success . . . We have a name for this magic mental activity. It is called – DECISION”

The decision for what you want to achieve, and the decision to take the action to achieve it.

Your vision cannot power itself and cannot drive itself.

Like your car it just sits there.

Until you decide to take the action required to drive it forward

Oh, and don’t forget your ‘SatNav’!

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Life’s a Pitch

Like it or not, everything we do in life involves some sort of ‘sale’!

Now you know that I don’t like ‘sales’ and I don’t like the 20th century sales culture that many people still adhere to – I wrote about it some time ago in a series of insights called ‘Death of the Salesman’.

And I try very hard, when I’m talking to people about growing their business and so on not to use those old-fashioned terms like ‘prospects’ and ‘closing’ and all the other abrasive terminology that goes with it.

It’s not easy to avoid using those words, they are deeply embedded. My new book “How To Set Up Your Own Personal Business” (coming soon) uses terms like purchaser, engagement and candidate instead of customer, closing and prospect – and it seems (at least to me) to make sense.

After all, do you like being thought of as a ‘prospect’, do you like being ‘closed’?

I don’t think so.

When I was training in the States to become a certified Life Coach, we were given some marketing lessons. Most of it was very American and very old fashioned, but the trainer, Rich Boggs, did say one quite profound thing.

“In every transaction someone always makes a sale”

He explained that “if you don’t close the prospect, then the prospect will close you – one of you will close the sale”.

Meaning that if you don’t do your pitch well, then your ‘prospect’ will bring in a stronger pitch convincing you that they are going to say ‘no’ and that will be the end of it

“They will sell you on the idea that they are not going to buy”.

Life is all about the pitch and the counter pitch.

In a debate one person tries to convince another about something they are opposed to. Argument goes one way and another and it usually ends up by those present voting on who made the best argument.

It’s much the same in a Court of Law. The Prosecution and Defence present their ‘evidence’ and their arguments and the Jury decides who was the most convincing. Sadly, that sometimes has very little to do with truth or fact.

It’s all about the pitch.

You and I started making pitches when we were born.

Initially our arguments consisted of making quite a lot of noise until our parents gave us what we wanted – or didn’t – but one way or another someone ‘closed the sale’!

The education system is the same.

Children from a very early age including education by their parents, are presented in various ways with certain ideas and convinced (or otherwise) that they should adopt them.

You and I took on the ideas and values our parents presented to us – we ‘bought into’ them. We might have rejected them later but throughout our lives we have been ‘pitched’ certain ideas, stories and ‘facts’ that have shaped who we are now.

And it goes on.

The media and the advertising industry are doing it all the time, not to mention (which I did the other week) the propaganda we are bombarded with via reality shows and soap operas.

It’s all a pitch to buy into a certain way of life.

So be aware!

They are all out to get you.

They are all out to get you to agree with their ideology, to buy into their culture – to vote for them or to buy their stuff.

But it’s not just ‘them’.

It’s you and I as well.

It’s ‘us’.

Because we are doing it all the time too. We are all pitching something to someone.

It might be the 60 second presentation beloved of business networking groups, it might be a webinar – even if there’s no distinct ‘sales pitch’ at the end, it might be a chat up line or even a romantic proposal, it might be a lecture or talk on some educational topic. It might even be a post on Facebook with pictures of where you are today.

It’s all a pitch

A pitch about you, about who you are, about what you do, about who you want to be . . .

Because it’s only when others understand who you or I really are, that they will engage with us in any way that me way wish them to – and that of course depends on the nature of the pitch.

So, here’s the thing – how do you and I make our ‘pitch’, whatever it is intended to do, actually ‘work’.

My mentor Peter Thomson frequently explains a key principle he has learnt over the years which only very few people really understand.

It has a military background.

When two warships engage in battle what happens?

Well, they don’t line up the crew to fire at the other ship with rifles – that’s not going to have any effect whatsoever. What they do is fire their big guns first.

That way they can have maximum impact on their adversary. That way they get noticed.

It’s the same in any battle – the big guns, the artillery, or the bombers are the first to engage.

It’s the same when you or I are engaging with a potential client or purchaser or just someone we want to get to know.

Show them your best stuff, fire your big guns first, tell them what you can do at your full potential.

That way you get noticed, that way you get credibility, that way you engage – instead of being passed by.

But many people don’t want to do this because they are afraid of ‘giving the good stuff away’.

Instead of the ‘big guns’ they bring out a revolver or a bow and arrow and expect that to make an impression.

They are afraid that their ‘competitors’ will steal the show if they reveal what they really have to offer up front whereas in fact their so-called competitors are more likely to think ‘we can’t compete with that – if that’s what they open with, they must have something even better to follow up’.

The battle fleets going back several centuries created a reputation at which the Royal Navy were pretty good – firing their big guns first put them in the ascendency, made them the battle fleets not to get on the wrong side of – scared the living daylights out of their competitors.

Life’s a pitch.

To ‘win’ the pitch you have to let people know who you are.

You have to create a reputation.

Fire your big guns first and get the advantage.

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Memories are Made of . . . ?

It’s an interesting subject, memory.

No-one can really define what it is.

Here’s Wikipedia (the fount of all knowledge – not)

“Memory is the faculty of the brain by which information is encoded, stored, and retrieved when needed. Memory is vital to experiences, it is the retention of information over time for the purpose of influencing future action.”

Whish is a bit like saying sight is the function of the brain which enables you to see.

It doesn’t say what it is or how it works.

Quite a few scientists have investigated how memory works and observed patterns of electrical impulses in the brain but that’s about as far as it goes.

No-one, coming at it from a logical scientific point of view is really sure what’s going on.

But does it really matter?

After all, you and I don’t really need to know how a car ‘works’ in order to use it, in order to drive it.

And it’s the same with memory.

To an extent.

You see, memory has many different facets.

People talk about long term memory, short term memory and sensory memory, the latter being how we understand things like smell, taste, colour, feelings and so on.

Short term memory pertains usually to what you or I are doing ‘now’, in this particular slice of time – you could call it our operating system memory.

Most of the time it works fine, and it’s not only when you get ‘old’ that you forget why you chose to go into a particular room – kids do it as well.

Long term memory is more about our ‘hard drive’ historical memory – all the stuff we have stored away in our subconscious we don’t always have access to.

It’s just as well, because if we did remember everything all the time we’d be overwhelmed as the subconscious stores everything!

From time to time ‘something’ triggers off the brain to open a particular file, to release a ‘memory’, and we find ourselves re-living, or at least observing, something which happened in the past – often for no apparent reason.

Why does this happen?

Why do these memories just ‘crop up’ – out of the ‘blue’?

The answer is simple. Something just happened which called up the memory, like a cue in a play. A certain set of circumstances seemed familiar and because the mind always seeks the familiar, the memory is brought back.

This is also how regression works in hypnotherapy, but in this case the therapist deliberately provides the cue to the subconscious to recall a specific scene.

Just like selecting a specific file and helping the subject to open it in order to reveal the reason from the past why something might be happening in the present.

All this works because the brain stores everything you have ever experienced, consciously or unconsciously, as electrical patterns or more exactly energetic patterns in the brain, just like, but in a rather more sophisticated way, you and I store data as a series of electrical signals in our computers.

But there are other kinds of memory.

Sometimes when a subject is undergoing regression therapy, they come up with a memory which is clearly not from their current life.

Past life regression is real. Some of the things that come up are way beyond most peoples’ imaginative powers and have not been stimulated, as some people would have it, by a film or book.

We have access to memories from other times and places and another variant of this is what is sometimes referred to as ‘race memory’ passed down from our ancestors.

Some work has been done on RNA and there is some evidence that patterns in RNA and DNA can carry the same memory signatures as are held in the brain.

People can ‘conjure up’ visions and voices from the past, and, if you reject the theory of linear time, from the future as well.

Let’s look at it a different way.

What if ‘memories’ and ‘ideas’ were the same thing – the same type of energy – remembering everything in the Universe is simply energy in space. (Neither of which could exist without the other).

You and I often have ideas – things which occur to us to be, do or have.

Are not these just another form of ‘memory’ – maybe a future memory?

And we know very well how easy it is, if we don’t act on those ideas, for them to just fade away like our ‘past’ memories.

And don’t our ‘memories’ give us ‘ideas’ from time to time?

And there’s another thing, how many times have you or I not acted on a ‘great idea’ only to find that usually quite soon someone else implements the very same idea?

Memories and ideas are the same thing, energy patterns which come to us on specific occasions when something else, usually our intuition but maybe an external prompt, cues them to appear.

And then we have to act.

We must act on our memories or our ideas according to their nature.

Sometimes to avoid things, sometimes to make something happen.

And if we don’t act, the energy in the idea or memory will just dissipate back into space

So Wikipedia had it right – at least the last bit!

What memory or idea are you going to act on today?

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Two Tribes – and More

Back in prehistoric times when we were divided up into autonomous tribes we were often at ‘war’ with the tribe next door.

Usually over some argument about land or some other resource that we needed.

Back then things were different.

We were ‘hunter-gatherers’, we hadn’t developed even the first vestiges of ‘civilisation’ and when we found a food source or a nice bit of shelter somewhere, we needed to claim and hang on to it.

Because in truth we never knew where our next meal was coming from or even when we would find it.

So, we had to lay claim, as a matter of survival, to all that we discovered.

That meant we had to prevent our neighbours from getting a look in or even taking it away from us.

There was no ‘sharing’ then – and sometimes no sharing even within the tribe.

Back in the day – in order to survive – it was vital to ‘compete’ all the time, for everything.

If we hadn’t learnt to do that we wouldn’t be here now.

‘Competing’ is a basic instinct.

But now, in our civilised social society it’s not relevant any more and it’s certainly not useful except in a very limited number of circumstances.

The early civilisations recognised this innate need and introduced the idea of sport as a substitute for military competition around 3000 years ago.

Instead of competing with each other for some form of territorial or hierarchical gain, the idea of competing for a prize, a trophy, or just honour came about and continues to this day with more and more ‘sports’ being invented to satisfy this competitive urge.

Sport is a great concept, it’s an artificial construct which has very little to do any more with the military realities from which it was born.

After all, there really isn’t much point to have 22 people kicking a ball around a field, or 22 people driving very fast cars around a track, or 22 people throwing a ball at some sticks in the middle of a field and using another stick to stop the first sticks being knocked down.

Most sports do seem to involve some sort of ‘track’ or have something to do with getting balls to go somewhere specific.

But there is a point – it satisfies the competitive instinct, that of the players and that of the observers – two tribes – who support one team or another.

Now this would all be great if our obsession with sport did use up our competitive instinct.

But it doesn’t.

The instinct is so strong within us that we’ve extended it to pretty much everything else – totally unnecessarily and in my opinion to the detriment of our society and civilisation.

Is it really necessary for hospitals to compete with other hospitals or schools to compete with other schools?

Is it really necessary to post ‘league tables’ for pretty much everything to show who is winning the competition to be ‘best’?

And by what criteria are they ‘best’ anyway?

People interact with people, not league tables. We associate with who or what we resonate with. I really don’t care what or who is ‘top of the charts’, ‘top of the league’ or ‘best’ if I don’t resonate with them.

People are driven by all this to think that they are always in ‘competition’ with someone else and if the run a business that they are in competition with other businesses.

And then they try to work out the criteria by which they are competing, by which they are measuring this ‘competition’.

Well, in truth there aren’t any valid criteria.

Just because one company sells something at a cheaper price than another doesn’t mean it’s better, nor does it mean they are better if their product meets different standards.

People will buy what they want to buy from who they want to buy it. At the end of the day all those criteria don’t matter.

It’s all about rapport and resonance with one another and that has nothing to do with competition.

Worrying about ‘the competition’ is a waste of time and energy that diverts you and I from doing what we are doing and from being the best we can be – according to our criteria.

Only by doing that will we attract the people who we want to interact with and form relationships with them in any context that we choose.

Even some of the top sports people completely disregard other competitors so that they can focus their energy on their performance in the game.

But even when you and I do all that and do focus on doing our own thing there is still one more competitor.

The instinct is so strong that from time to time we turn it in upon ourselves. We start to compete with ourselves and this can go horribly wrong.

Measuring our performance at important tasks whether they be sales or driving a car is essential as it helps us get better and more efficient at what we do but we have to be on our guard.

When that self-measurement and self-examination becomes obsessive it can cause stress and anxiety as we drive ourselves to repeat a particular ‘win’ over and over again.

Sometimes we just need to stop.

We’ve achieved something great, we’ve achieved a goal or objective – do we really need to do it again?

There was shock and surprise in the F1 world when Nico Rosberg announced his retirement from the sport after winning the World Championship. He’d proved to himself he could do it – there was no need to do it again – it was time for something else.

When you get to the top of the mountain, stop. You don’t need to go back down and climb it again.

Climb another mountain, pick a new objective, find a new vision, start a new career.

There is no need to keep on competing with yourself once you’ve achieved what you wanted.

If you’ve proved yourself a good enough actor to receive an Oscar – do you really need another one?

We no longer need to compete for food and shelter and there are ways to divert out competitive instincts into something harmless.

Self-competition is harmful to your health and can be life threatening.

Be the best you can be – but don’t beat yourself up on the way.

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No ‘U Turns’?

“This Lady’s not for turning” was a memorable statement made by Margaret Thatcher when she was Prime Minister – and it heralded the beginning of her downfall.

We see it time and time again in politics – especially in politics.

And in sport, in business, in military affairs, in everyday life . .  .

You see, for some reason ‘changing your mind’ is seen to be in some way ‘wrong’ or a ‘bad’ thing to do.

When public figures do it, they are accused by the press of ‘making a humiliating U-turn’ when in fact they have usually, due to changing circumstances or the revelation of new information, made the choice of making a change in direction.

The first decision that you or I make according to a certain situation and objective may well be the right decision at the time – but changes in the ‘environment’ frequently dictate a change in direction and a new decision.

Making a new or revised choice is not a humiliation but a positive and strong decision.

Leaders who change their minds according to what’s going on around them are far better than those who stubbornly stick to their original decision, often heading for disaster.

Sadly, we see examples of this every day.

The thing is that ‘changing your mid’ does not mean that you’ve ‘made a mistake’.

After all, what is a mistake?

A ‘mis-take’ or a mis-understanding, a mis-conception – anything, anytime where you ‘mis out’ on something – maybe as simple as taking a catch in cricket – a mis-take.

But then there’s this common concept that making a mistake is in some way ‘wrong’ and to be avoided.

A ‘mistake’ is only ever the result of a choice.

A choice in itself is neutral, never wrong or right. It’s the results of the choices you and I make that we have to consider.

If the choice turns out to make matters worse in some way or not to make matters better, then it gets labelled aa s mistake.

It’s interesting that there isn’t a word to describe the opposite of a mistake – if things work out well there is often very little reward or praise coming from outside.

If a politician makes a good decision, then it gets glossed over while the media wait to pounce on their next ‘mistake’.

(Unless of course it’s one of those humiliating U-turns!)

What people don’t understand is that so-called mistakes are generally useful. They are about learning.

If we try something that ‘doesn’t work’ then although some might see it as a ‘mistake’, you and I see it as part of the learning process.

We just learned that a particular way of doing something doesn’t achieve the result we are looking for – so provided we remember that and learn from our ‘mistake’, we can move forward, learn and grow.

Throughout the course of my life I’ve made lots of ‘mistakes’, tried lots of things that ‘didn’t work’, and as a result changed my approach, my attitude, and my whole understanding of myself.

This process hasn’t slowed down, because as I grow and become comfortable with myself I expand my ‘comfort zone’ continuously exploring new boundaries, new horizons, new ways of being.

Or at least new to me. Whatever you and I explore is already there, it’s just that we’ve not yet discovered it.

Everything in the Universe has already been created and has already happened, including the ‘future’ – it “is, was, and ever shall be”, and you and I just have to discover or realise it – and we do this through the choices we make.

And sometimes, when we do find we’re on a path that we don’t want to travel, or no longer need to travel, then we have to make a turn off that path onto another path, sometimes even a U-turn to backtrack to where we can change direction.

This journey through life is all about choices. We don’t make mistakes in life, just choices, and those choices lead us in a particular direction towards a particular goal.

The real mistake is not to keep on making choices. To be ‘set in concrete’ or ‘cast in stone’ about who we are.

To doggedly pursue goals or policies that are no longer relevant because we’re afraid of being ‘humiliated’ if we change our mind, make a new choice, follow a different path which may of course be that U-turn.

After all, if you’re walking towards the edge of a cliff you don’t just carry on until you fall, do you?

Only if you find yourself unable for some reason to make a new choice to stop or go back.

Are there any goals you want or need to change?

Are there any life policies you need to alter?

Are there any new choices you need to make about who you are, who you want to be, do and have?

Are there any U-turns you need to make?

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False Economy

I was having a conversation the other day about how the harnessing of technology is bringing about disruption, democratization and demonetization of the society in which we live.

These are three of the ‘6 D’s’ suggested by Peter Diamandis but this insight is not about that – apart from the concept of demonetization.

As usual this was discussed some time ago in the realms of Science Fiction and quite recently in the Gene Roddenberry ‘Star Trek’ philosophy.

(It’s amazing the philosophical and other boundaries you can break as a science fiction writer)

In the ‘Federation’ we have multiple planetary systems and civilisations who exist quite successfully without the need for money.

And those which do have currency of some form seem to manage it without any necessity for the grotesque capitalistic system that we seem to thing is the ‘only way it works’.

One alternative is the Ferengi who do use currency and base their society entirely on business – but more like business as it used to be on our planet s few centuries ago before the industial capitalistic revolution.

The Ferengi are a race of entrepreneurs – ‘small’ (and they are small) business men who compete with one another to create profit. Profit equals status and the more profit you make the more credibility you have in that society.

They are ‘managed’ by the Ferengi Commerce Authority (FCA) whose job through implementing the ‘Rules of Acquisition’, is to make sure they don’t undercharge, don’t do stuff for free, and don’t give any money away. They collect a payment (bribe) for every transaction.

Seems that whoever decided to change the FSA to FCA wasn’t a Star Trek fan! (or maybe they were)

Anyhow, our whole financial system and indeed lifestyle is based on something called ‘Economics’.

Now I’ve had two eminent Economics professors as clients. One advised the Labour Party and the other the Conservatives. They always came up with different, indeed usually opposing, ideas or theories but they were good friends because to them the whole exercise was entirely academic.

They built ‘economic models’ to attempt to predict what would happen if . . .

They and their teams went into a lot of detail, a lot of supposition, a lot of assumption, and a lot of speculation – and came up with their advice about how the country should be run.

But it’s all theory – and there’s always another theory about why the first theory, and all the other theories didn’t come true.

And there was no real way of testing the theories before they ‘went live’, before some ‘economic policy’ was adopted.

And you and I paid the price for all this speculation, supposition and assumption.

Most of global society (‘East’ and ‘West’) is based on this in one form or another. There are some Ferengi like states where local operations take place, but they are highly corrupt and lack humanity – as of course did the Ferengi.

We’re moving towards a ‘cashless’ society, but what about a ‘moneyless’ society?

How could that work?

It works in Star Trek because there is a limitless source of free energy and they have the technology to create things at will by by breaking down waste products to molecular or atomic level and then reassembling them like Lego bricks into something else.

Energy/Matter (which is of course energy) cannot be created or destroyed – just ‘moved’ or repurposed.

The closest we’ve got to this so far is the 3D printer, but who knows in a few years . . .

They can do it with people to move them from one place to another as well and believe it or not there are people out there working on that!

But it all depends on that free limitless energy that can be harnessed without destroying anything.

It’s coming but until then you and I must continue living in his ‘false economy’ we call the ‘civilised’ world.

In the Star Trek world people would develop the skills and occupations they wanted to develop, there was no need to ‘work’ to purchase food or the other things we need to keep us going – it was all readily available – at the touch of a button.

Now here’s the thing – we don’t always have to exchange money for goods and services. We can do wat we always used to do and exchange goods and services for goods and services – according to the ‘values’ we mutually placed on them.

So, think about this – what can you exchange today with someone who has or does something you want?

Forget about the ‘monetary value’ – what’s the real value to you of the things that you consume?

And when you’re the provider – what’s the value, not to you but to the person who wants what you have or do.

Remember you can both always decide not to do the deal if the values don’t match.

Money seems to make this process easy, but does it?

Are we living under a false delusion about the ‘value of money’ based on the Economists suppositions, theories, assumptions and speculations – and their ‘mathematical models’?

If so it’s time we stopped.

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“How Hard Can it Be?”

And “What Could Possibly Go Wrong?” are two well-known catch phrases used by Jeremy Clarkson on the ‘Top Gear’ and ‘Grand Tour’ motoring programmes.

Everyone who is familiar with the shows knows that as soon as he says it, some form of disaster is about to happen, and Jezza will probably hit something with a hammer!

But there’s another side to those questions that goes back a long, long way.

‘Some say’ – that there are lot of caveman traits in Mr. Clarkson, and they are right.

They’re right because there are a lot of caveman traits in all of us.

You see, our ancestors needed to consider these two questions all the time in their daily lives.

Caution and the ability to assess the ‘negative’ side of things and the possibility of something horribly negative occurring were what kept them going.

Kept them alive.

Which is why we are here now.

Albeit we’ve ‘progressed’ as a species, but those old caveman instincts are still there.

And we use them every day.

To stay alive.

When we cross the road.

When we buy and cook our food.

When we ‘lock up’ for the night or switch our intruder alarm on.

These are all practical things that we do to protect ourselves just like the caveman did.

But the thing is – we take it too far.

We start – and continue – to develop negative scenarios imaging all the things that could even remotely possibly go wrong.

We start to work out ‘probabilities’, often based on pure speculation, of what will ‘go wrong’ if we take a certain action or follow a particular path.

We go into detailed ‘risk assessment’ considering not only the likely outcomes but all the highly unlikely possibilities that may occur.

If the cavemen had carried out ‘risk assessments’ before they went out hunting for food none of us would be here now.

Sure, we do have to consider ‘what could possibly go wrong’ but it seems that these days this has become an obsession taking things down to the very last, minute, detail.

And then we miss the big things like volcanos going off!

Negativity and caution are quite natural but carrying it to extremes is not.

It becomes counter-productive.

It stunts growth and development.

It represses new thought and invention.

It constantly tells us – every one of us – that

  • You can’t do that
  • It won’t work
  • It’s too ‘risky’
  • It’s not ‘safe’

And so on, and on, and on . . .

So, how about you and I try this?

Let’s, like Clarkson, turn these two phrases around and make them positive.

How hard can it be?

Meaning – it’ll be easy, it won’t be hard at all, it’ll be a doddle

What could possibly go wrong?

Meaning – if there are problems we’ll deal with them, let’s face that problem if we come to it, let’s give it a go, let’s just get on and do it!

Let’s you and I see both sides.

The practical caution without being ‘negative’ and the positive outcome without being foolhardy.

Think things through

Use these two questions to help in your decision making

After all

What could possibly go wrong, and how hard can it be anyway?

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Take Control of Your Calendar

If you’ve been in the corporate world, you’ll probably be familiar with the concept of the ‘away-day’.

It doesn’t always happen like this, but the idea is that you take some time out with your ‘team’ to reflect on or review what you are doing or going to do next.

I’ve been to a few of these, both as a manager and as a consultant.

Some have been good, some a complete waste of time – a ‘day off’ in effect.

In my experience there never seemed to be any pattern to these events, they were arranged as and when someone felt the need perhaps to pull things together.

But the main problem with these things was the failure to put much of what was agreed into practice.

Back in the workplace things usually returned to ‘normal’, not always, but usually, and in many cases these events were discontinued after a short while until someone else came up with the idea again.

In reality however, if you run a business of any size, it really is essential to take time out on a regular basis to review where you are and to create new strategies or tactics.

Indeed, you and I should do this on a personal basis as well – reviewing out current lifestyle and looking forward to whatever we want to happen next.

Far too often we get into a ‘routine’ a sort of ‘Groundhog Day’ existence where every weekday has a similar pattern and so does every weekend.

We just get stuck in the rut of life which is only broken by ‘holidays’ but even they quite often develop their own routine and regardless of where we are, we end up doing much the same things.

My friend Phil Olley has a different take on things.

He prescribes that we should take a number of days every year, maybe every three months as what he calls ‘Hotel Days’ where we go somewhere different – not work or home – and consider our business or life strategies.

It’s not a ‘day off’.

It’s a time for deep reflection and review, a time for creating new visions and strategies and setting new goals over one or two days away from our normal environment.

Phil also proposes that we take one day a month as a ‘Focus Day’ devoted to measurement and checking and making sure we are on track with those goals – we don’t necessarily have to ‘go away’ for these but we do release ourselves from the ‘routine’ stuff.

Thirdly, Phil, along with many other people also suggests that the first thing you and I do when we come to set our calendar for the year is to book in our holiday time.

This is a lot easier for business owners than those who are employed (especially in the United States) but to be honest if you own a business you should be able to take around 12 weeks of the year ‘off’.

Not necessarily completely out of touch with your business but certainly not working ‘in’ it.

Mary Morrissey adds another aspect to this idea.

The time you take away from your business should be in synch with the different domains of your life.

Mary identifies four domains: Health, Relationships, Vocation and Freedom.

She suggests that you take control of your calendar to ensure that you spend the appropriate amount of time focused on each of these.

(They will not be evenly balanced for most people)

This time should be devoted to each of the domains, not only the time you spend each day as part of your normal routine, but maybe a long weekend, a week, 10 days, or a month.

To explain the domains are about –

Your relationships with individuals, groups, communities and society as a whole – who are they to you and who are you to them?

Your health and wellness, including nutrition, fitness and spirituality.

Your ‘vocation’ is what you do, not necessarily your ‘work’. It incudes that, but also what you love to do when you’re not working.

Your ‘freedom’ is about your lifestyle in general and more particularly your ability to have enough time and money available to you to pursue the lifestyle you choose.

If you want, you can also apply those parameters to your business as well as your personal life.

What confuses a lot of people who attempt to do this planning is the way our year is divided up.

Because of the idea of weeks which relate to the four phases of the moon, the full cycle being a month, and the more recent concept of the ‘weekend’ people now have the idea that ‘holidays’ or more correctly vacations should take one or more weeks.

I use the term ‘vacation’ partly because that’s how it appears in most languages (including American) as its meaning is to ‘vacate’ or leave what you are doing, so I think it’s a much better word than ‘holiday’ which is derived from Holy Day which means something entirely different.

So, when you plan your ‘hotel days’ and your life domain themed vacations don’t be constrained too much by the calendar.

Forget about the weeks and months – there is always a way around the ‘timetables’ imposed by travel companies and airlines.

Take control of your calendar.

Plan your essential ‘away from routine’ time, your time for reflecting, and reviewing, your time for vision building and strategizing whenever is appropriate and best for you.

Just strings of days and a day or two here and there.

You and I should be able to find 90 days for this throughout the year.

Why not make your plans now?

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Guilty or Not Guilty?

The subject of ‘guilt’ came up this week and provoked an interesting train of thought.

It all started with Day 12 of the Rapid Transformational Hypnotherapy for Abundance Quest led by Marisa Peer on Mind Valley.

She asked, as one of the activities, for us to write down a list of things we have done ‘wrong’ and feel guilty about.

And then she said that if you’ve done something that you feel to be wrong, but have understood and committed not to do it again then you are forgiven

Because the only way you and I learn is by making mistakes.

Of course, most of those mistakes are not things that are ‘wrong’ or that we need to feel guilty about in any way.

But some – well, there are those ‘guilty secrets’

But there’s a second type of guilt that most of us suffer from.

And that’s all to do with being made to feel ‘guilty’ about things we have done or not done, to or for another person – or indeed to or for society in general.

I’m sure you’ve encountered this, I know I have because it happens all the time.

We are made to feel ‘guilty’ for not giving enough to charity.

We are made to feel guilty for having ‘too much’ money.

We are made to feel guilty for not having enough money

We are also made to feel guilty for being ‘alone’, especially at certain times of the year, and this ties in with all the other ‘offences’ we apparently commit if we don’t conform to the ‘normal’ way of doing things.

We are made to feel guilty for being ‘different’ – even for being who we want to be when that is seen as breaking away from our assumed peer group.

In other words, if we leave one per group and join another, the group that ‘loses’ us attempts to load us with guilt for doing so.

In the work arena, most companies I’ve encountered have a strong ‘blame’ culture – someone is at fault – someone is ‘guilty’.

And you don’t eve have to open the daily papers or watch the ‘news’ because there is always one group pointing the finger of blame at another. I think ‘guilty’ must be pretty high ranking among journalists’ favourite words.

There are two distinct definitions of guilt, which in a way conflict with each other, and this certainly leads to confusion.

One definition is the fact of having done something wrong in the sense of committing an actual crime or breaking a specific law.

That’s straightforward, but the second definition is the feeling of worry or unhappiness that you have or might have done something wrong in the eyes of someone else.

The first definition is simple and external, but the word is most often not used in that sense.

The second definition is internal and can be applied by you and I or to you and I from a third party of some type, the most common aspect of which is the assignment of political ‘guilt’ by one party to another.

But where did all this come from?

Neale Donald Walsch in ‘Conversations with God’ states that there is no right or wrong – there are just choices.

Society and Religions have for themselves decided that some choices are ‘right’ and some are ‘wrong’- it just depends on the point of view and how you are involved in the choice and there is considerable debate still going on. Euthanasia and abortion are two topics that spring to mind.

But then there’s this idea of ‘Original Sin’ (which I’ll deal with another time) which developed into the religious concept that we are ‘born guilty’ (of the original sin, whatever that was) and should spend our lives seeking forgiveness.

Forgiveness for what? you may ask – I’ll pass on that one.

When someone commits a crime and is found out, they are punished in some way and this is supposed to ‘wipe the slate clean’

But it doesn’t

The guilt for committing that crime is retained (usually) by the person who broke the law.

They continue to feel guilty – which is very different from saying that they are guilty, or even were guilty.

It goes back to that second definition that guilt is primarily a feeling, rather than a fact.

And if guilt is a feeling then how do you and I get rid of that feeling?

It’s called forgiveness.

Now here’s what most people get hopelessly wrong.

We cannot seek forgiveness, or be ‘forgiven’ by someone else

It just doesn’t work like that.

We can only forgive ourselves or forgive others.

And when we forgive others it doesn’t work by going and telling them we’ve forgiven them because they may not even be aware that they need to be forgiven or that they have done something that might require forgiveness.

Someone may have offended you in some way and be completely unaware of having done so.

It’s all within you and I

We are the only one who can forgive us.

We are the ones who became offended or upset unwittingly by someone else – even if they did do it on purpose!

We are the ones who have feelings of guilt.

It’s entirely up to us to forgive ourselves for being offended, for doing something we think we shouldn’t have done, or becoming upset by another person.

It’s down to us.

Forgive yourself and the guilt you are hanging on to; the guilt that is sabotaging your progress and prosperity will go away.

Make a list of all the things you personally feel in any small way ‘guilty’ about.

Make a list of all those incidents where you’ve been offended or upset by other people.

Now forgive yourself for being upset, forgive yourself for being offended, and forgive yourself for everything else that is niggling at you where you feel any sense of guilt.

Tell yourself –

You are forgiven.

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