Have you ever found yourself ‘tripping over yourself’, stopping yourself from doing something for no apparent reason, finding reasons not to do things, or just having so many things ‘on the go’ that you end up sometimes doing none of them because you don’t know which way to turn?

Sorry, but if you answer ‘No’ – I won’t believe you.

From time to time everyone finds themselves in this situation, even you and I.

Go on, admit it, I do!

This insight is an experiment. I’m writing it at the suggestion of a very dear friend; challenging myself to see if I can write at short notice on a topic suggested to me.

I’m sure I don’t have all the answers on this – or anything for that matter, but let’s just see where this takes me.

You and I ‘get in our own way’ – but the question is – where is it we are going, to get in the ‘way’ of ourselves?

Now let’s say that we do know where we are right now.

And that we do know where it is we are going.

But here’s the thing.

There are an infinite number of ways to get from where we are to where we’re going.

Minus one.

There is one way we cannot go.

You and I cannot travel in a straight line.

Because there is no such thing as a ‘straight’ line.

You might think that a laser beam is a straight line – but it isn’t. It’s a wave. It’s a vibration. It’s an infinite number if infinitesimal ‘course corrections’.

It just ‘looks’ like a straight line – just like a ‘straight line’ drawn in two dimensions on a piece of paper. It’s not a line at all but a connection of an infinite number of one dimensional points, and we see it as a line because it reflects light – another wave – another vibration.

But I’m going off topic. Why do we ‘get in our way’?

To get from where we are to where we’re going we have to make a decision, or a series of decisions.

Which way to go?

The way we decide upon may need us to make further decisions along the way.

But a decision is an odd thing. You and I can ‘decide’ to do something and then not do it.

Three frogs sitting on a lily pad, one decides to jump off. How many frogs are there on the lily pad?

You and I know that the answer is 3 (most people would say 2 by the way) because the frog has only decided to jump off, it hasn’t done it yet.

It hasn’t made the choice to act on its decision.

Something got in its way.

You and I are just the same.

Until we choose to do what we intend to do and do it, it doesn’t matter how many decisions we make, there will always be things in the way of our taking action.

So, we know where we are, we know where we’re going, and we’ve decided which way to go.

But then what happens? We may have not yet chosen to start, or we may be moving along our chosen route; but something gets in the way.

In truth, we get in our own way. We hit a ‘blockage’ – or what seems to us to be a blockage.

• We encounter some sort of inhibition that makes us unsure of whether or not to proceed.
• We find ourselves in an argument about whether or not this is the best way to go or even whether we should be going there in the first place – even after we did make a decision and we did choose to start.
• We come up against imagined blockages that tell us we can’t or shouldn’t do what we’re doing.
• We get distracted into taking a detour that could have a serious impact on reaching our destination.
• Something ‘crops up’ that we ‘trip over’ when it appears to take priority over our previous decision and choice.

And I’m sure there are lots more ‘reasons’ you can think of.

But the thing is –

These ‘blockages’ are all imaginary, they’re not ‘real’ – even though they may seem to be real.

Remember – we made a decision and chose to act on it – but now all this ‘stuff’ comes up.

Doubt, fear, uncertainty, misinformation, disinformation.

“Am I doing the right thing? Maybe I should do this other thing first? Is what I’m doing ‘allowed’? Should I not stop and re-think the whole thing?” And so on.

We just get in our own way and sometimes decide and choose to do something completely different, abandoning our first objective and our higher goal.

And then we regret it.

And then the cycle starts again.

How do we stop it? How do we make sure that when we make a decision and then choose to act on it we don’t get in our own way?

When you and I make a decision of any sort and then act on it we choose to have a particular experience, to create a new reality, to add to our existing ‘bank’ of experiences as a sentient being.

We decide and choose to go where we have not gone before.

Now even if we’ve chosen to repeat something that we have done before, this iteration of that (generic) experience will be different – because we are different, because you and I have moved on from when we last had that type of experience.

Every ‘new’ experience we have is genuinely new, it has never happened before and will never happen again – ‘You can’t step in the same river twice’.

But in that bank of experiences we carry around in our subconscious mind we will find some similar experiences and some counter experiences.

We have information that gets in our way, that gets in the way of having this ‘new’ experience, and, in terms of our previous experience –

• It may be outside our comfort zone and ‘scary’
• It may be ‘risky’ in relation to previous experience
• It may be something in a ‘forbidden zone’
• It may be something that we decided to do before but never chose to do
• It may be something like something we chose to do before that turned out badly (in our view)

All of these things and more.

But sometimes we look at what we’ve decided and chosen to do, and we cannot recall why we are being ‘blocked’ or what is getting in our way – it just ‘is’, and we ‘stop’.

The problem (if you want to call it that) is that these past experiences are not just our immediate past experiences – many, maybe most, of them come from way back.

• From our very early childhood before we were really cognisant of what was going on
• From our ancestors – sometimes called ‘genetic memory’
• From our past lives (yes, we do have them)

And it’s sometimes difficult to clear this stuff out, because a lot of it is definitely no longer relevant.

The good news is that they can be cleared out – but we usually need someone else to help. (At the simplest level hypnotherapy can be useful for example)

But if you know that this is where the blockages are coming from, if you are aware that your intention, the choice you’ve made, may be being interfered with, and if you take the trouble to notice when this starts to happen, you can take avoiding action.

You can get out of your own way and succeed in fulfilling the decisions and choices you make.

Notice what you’re noticing.

It’s all gone horribly wrong!

Somehow as a species, humanity, we’ve managed to completely screw things up and lock ourselves into ways of thinking and behaving that are entirely counter productive.

I’m speaking of course in general, as not everyone, and probably not you or I, is ‘bought in’ to the way things are done round here on this planet.

But even then, many people’s ideas of how things should change are still based on the ineffective paradigms that society holds as truths, as ‘givens’, and the changes proposed only scratch the surface or apply a ‘sticking plaster’ solution to whatever is seen as the problem.

Three key things stand out

• The role of women.
• The role of the ‘elders’.
• How we raise our young.

Many thousands of years ago in so-called ‘primitive’ societies things were rather different. Indeed, there may still be one or two tribes hidden away in the ‘depths of the jungle’ who have not yet been found and suppressed by ‘modern’ society.

The role of men was two-fold, procreation and heavy lifting or hunting. Women ran society, women made the plans, women were the leaders, the ‘managers’, the decision makers – not the men.

Why, because women are much better than men at all those things. They were then, and they are now.

It’s just that, for reasons beyond the scope of this insight, men decided that they were fed up with being treated as sexual objects and providers of the ‘hard labour’.

They replaced the Earth Mother Goddess and redefined the Source of universal creation as male, and in addition created the idea of an ‘Evil One’ (also male) and even assigned some ‘dark’ attributes to the supreme (male) being.

And so, along with the idea of heaven and hell, a ‘Devil’, and a vengeful, wrathful, punishing, supreme being came into the consciousness of society.

The fear that men created by doing this led to a reversal of roles.

Women were displaced from their position in society, they became the sexual objects and they became the performers of all the mundane and boring tasks that were needed to keep things going.

I admit, this is a simplistic summary and there’s more to it – and of course there are exceptions. There is though a huge body of evidence that this is what happened, trouble is that men (in general) have suppressed or destroyed most of it.

Then there are the ‘elders’.

Elders are people of both genders – women who have naturally lost the capacity to bear children and men who are no longer attractive to the younger women who can.

In primitive society the elders had a vital role, probably best described as coaching, mentoring, and acting as advisors to the community. In addition, and as part of their role in society they became thought leaders, innovators, philosophers and so on.

Elders, unlike today (and again I speak in general), were treated with respect as the most valuable members of society and relied upon to influence and guide the decisions and activities of the younger people.

After all the elders had done all the things the younger people were doing, had discovered new and better ways of doing things and were allowed to pass them on.

Today it seems that anything that anyone over 50 has done or experienced was simply a waste of time, younger generations seem insistent on rediscovering everything that is already known for themselves.

We have ended up in a society where people who ‘know nothing’ about how the world works are directing those who know differently- who do know the secrets of life – how they should behave and what they should or should not be doing.

The elders are now seen as a drain on society rather than the most valuable contributors it could possibly have.

Roles have been reversed.

Which brings me to my third point.

Back in the ‘bad old days’ of primitive societies it was the elders who raised the children, not the child-bearers.

This is logical, as the child bearers were still children themselves – and they had too many other things to do to keep society running to take time out to raise children when there were other people around them, the elders, perfectly capable, more capable than them, of doing it.

But then, with the diminishing role of women and the loss of respect for the elders’ wisdom, and as women were no longer permitted their role in running society, they were expected to raise their own children.

More recently an ‘education’ system was invented where people would be ‘trained’ to educate the youth of society.

It would take too long to go into the fundamental flaws in most education systems, but common practice is that the ‘teachers’ are barely more than children themselves and have rarely been outside an educational establishment in their lives.

They just don’t have the experience and importantly – wisdom of the elders.

When I first walked into a classroom I was only about 6 years older than the pupils and I’d never had a job or had to fend for myself in society. One year was enough for me to realise it was s system that just doesn’t work – or at least operates at a far far lower level than would be possible if we went back to the ‘old’ ways.

Society today is so riddled with all these false paradigms that have been ingrained for millennia that it will take some time – not long because other things are happening – to rectify, but (in this context):

If you’re a woman – you’re right

If you’re an elder, you’re right

If you’re a man – get used to new ideas – well old ones actually.

If you’re a child – ask your grandparents

(Thanks to my mentor Phil Olley for inspiring this insight)

Remember when you were at school and the teacher came into the classroom and told everyone to ‘settle down’?

Remember when your parents or some other adult, or even your peers suggested that you ’settle down’?

And you’ve probably told your kids at home to ‘settle down’ and maybe suggested to friends that they ‘settle down’ and get married.

But what does it mean – ‘settle down’?

Millenia ago billions of tiny sea creatures ‘settled down’ over time – what happened to them? They became the white cliffs of Dover and other chalk deposits worldwide.

In the same way tiny particles of solid matter ‘settled down’ and became all the other rocks that now form the lands we live on.

To settle down basically means to ‘stop’, to become ‘settled’ to cease activity, to stop, not instantly, but to slow down and ‘change state’ from being in motion and active, into being, for want of a better phrase, ‘set in stone’.

When you and I become ‘settled’, when we ‘settle down’, what that means is that we’re not progressing, we’re not moving forward, we’re not growing, we’ve ‘stopped’.

Which, although appropriate sometimes, and if so usually temporarily, is not necessarily a good idea.

To progress and to grow, you and I need to stay in motion, to stay active, not to ‘settle down’.

Now you and I know that, but most people don’t.

Most people seem to think that ‘settling down’ is a good idea, a good objective or goal, a good plan.

Settle down and stop having to worry about things.

Know ‘where you are’.

Be settled, be secure, be normal.

Like everyone else.

In his audio programme a long, long time ago (so long ago that it first came out on 78rpm shellac gramophone records – remember them?) Earl Nightingale in his programme ‘Lead the Field’ said that most people don’t follow leaders, they follow followers.

Most people follow the crowd – because in the crowd they find stability, they go with the flow, they get a sense of ‘belonging’.

That’s all very well but in fact what it does is it suppresses the need for people to think.

They don’t need to think about who they are – they’re one of the crowd.

They don’t need to think abut what they’re doing – they copy the others.

They don’t need to think about where they’re going – they go with the flow.

They’re beginning to settle on the sea bed, they’re beginning to turn to stone.

The thing is that humanity cannot afford to do that.

We are not destined to become just another layer of fossils in the rocks upon which some later creatures will tread.

We are destined for higher things.

So how do we get out of the mud we (most people) are being sucked into?

What causes people to take action and become ‘unsettled’?

It happens a lot, and most people don’t recognise it when it occurs.

Instead, they protest, they object, and they resist because it’s unsettling, it implies change and it might actually require them to think for themselves rather than following the crowd.

It makes them uncomfortable.

Disruption

Disruption can be initiated by many things.

By the weather, by ‘accident’, but mainly by people.

Most politicians, innovators, writers and artists, and ‘leaders’ are disruptors.

Just think for a moment about who is disrupting, or potentially disrupting, ‘the crowd’ at this time.

Many will spring to mind.

Disruptors ask difficult questions, disruptors do things differently, disruptors think outside the box, disruptors promote new ideas, disruptors cause things to happen, and so on.

And like icebergs calving from an ice-shelf, new ‘crowds’ will form behind them, picking up on their ideas and actions.

And sometimes (as happened in mid-20^th Century Germany) those new crowds will replace the old ones, ideas will change, ways of doing things will change, and ‘normal’ will change.

Disruption is extremely powerful, and the results are often unknown. Sometimes things get ‘worse’ but sometimes things get ‘better’ but the Disruptors are never really sure what exactly is going to happen other than that they know their actions will result in change.

And however you and I look at it, in the longer term, in the ‘grand scheme of things’, change is more often than not, a ‘good thing’.

Which means that you and I, if we want to see change (which we do), at any level, large or small, whether it’s just for ourselves or for society in general, need to disrupt.

We need to ‘shake things up’, ask ‘What would it take?’ questions, and maybe throw a spanner or two in the works.

Without change nothing grows, you and I will not grow, society will not grow, humanity will not evolve to the higher level for which it is intended.

The alternative is sedimentation, settling down, turning to stone, slowly but surely ceasing to be who we are and becoming a full stop in some future world’s history books.

What are you changing – what do you want to change?

You don’t need to know all the details of how to effect that change only how to disrupt the present status quo.

Be a Disruptor.

Make it so.

Whenever you and I come to making a decision about something, one of the questions that inevitably pops up one way or another is about ‘value’.

“What’s it worth?” we ask.

What’s it worth – or what is the value for me in doing this or buying that?

When faced with a decision you and I have to evaluate the benefit that we will obtain out of making that decision – either way.

The benefit of not doing or buying it, versus the benefit of doing or buying it – whatever ‘it’ is.

But how do we measure the ‘benefit’?

You and I have two currencies to consider – time and money.

To ‘do’ something we will need to spend time and to ‘buy’ something we will need to spend money.

But how much do we want to ‘spend’?

And will the benefit we obtain from that expenditure be ‘worth it’?

In other words, how does the value obtained from the perceived benefit compare with the value of the time and/or money ‘spent’ in obtaining it?

Is it ‘worth’ using that time or spending that money?

Sometimes of course, obtaining a benefit requires the expenditure of both time and money so the ‘value proposition’, as far as you and I are concerned, becomes more complex.

The thing is that ‘measuring’ benefit is not straightforward.

Unlike measuring an amount of time or money, there is no ‘benefit scale’ (at least not in this context) that we can use.

There are no ‘units of benefit’ like minutes and hours or pence and pounds.

Benefits are subjective, and you and I are likely to place different ‘values’ on the same benefit.

To some people for example, life coaching or fitness training are very important, for others they are perhaps the least important for them in terms of benefits, or maybe they don’t see them as benefits at all!

Similarly, some people would see watching a sports event either live or on TV as a real benefit that gives them great enjoyment where others would see it as a complete waste of time!

But everyone sees an hour as an hour and a pound as a pound. Money and time (in this context) are finite and tangible. Benefits are not.

Benefits have a perceived value that depends on the individual.

But there’s a complication.

Most people, and sometimes you and I, often don’t think in terms of the benefit they get from doing or buying something.

Partly because no-one ever teaches them to evaluate benefits, but mainly because the providers of these benefits, whatever they are, rarely describe what they provide in terms of benefits.

They talk about features.

They offer ‘bright shiny objects’, sometimes real like a product, sometimes virtual like a learning programme or other kind of service.

They enthuse about how wonderful ‘it’ is and how many great features it has, and all the things you could do if you had or did whatever it is they have on offer.

To be fair it’s all they can do, because they don’t really know what benefit you and I are really looking for – and often, neither do we!

All the provider can do is describe potential benefits and trust that these will be recognised by potential purchasers.

And it’s not just people who are offering a product or service; everyone is in the ‘business’ of providing benefits of one sort or another to other people, members of the family, work colleagues, friends, society in general.

You and I, in everything we do, are doing it to create or provide a benefit of some sort to ourselves or others – otherwise why would we do anything at all?

The word ‘benefit’ comes from the Latin ‘bene facere’ which means ‘to do good to’ and the modern interpretation is ‘to bring advantage to’ or ‘to receive an advantage’.

It’s about the ‘advantage’ that you or I get, or give, by doing or buying something.

And having identified that advantage what is the best way of achieving it?

Now at least we can get closer to the original question of value – what exactly is it worth to achieve that advantage, that benefit?

Fortunately, some providers of the benefit we want do help us with this.

Unlike their competitors they focus on the benefit they have to offer, and more than that they are clear as to how that benefit will be achieved.

They don’t focus on their end, the great features of their offer, they focus on how they will help us, through product or service, to achieve the advantage we want.

Why they can provide the best way for us to realise the benefit.

It may or may not be the least expensive way, it may or may not be the quickest way, but if they can make a good case for their way to be the best way, the most effective way – whatever the price and whatever time it takes, then they will have a significant edge over other providers of the benefit being sought.

Once a provider presents that argument and makes that case then there is little or no ‘competition’.

People will purchase whatever solution appears to them to be the best way of achieving the benefit they seek.

People will do whatever appears to them to be the best way of providing benefit to themselves or others.

Look for the best solution to obtaining or providing the benefits or advantages you seek.

This may, and usually does, mean discarding the cheapest and the quickest, and it may also mean discarding options at the other end of the scale that require too much time or expenditure in terns of the benefit you are really looking for.

But first, you and I need to really understand what advantages or benefits we are looking for, to receive or to provide, and then make our choices accordingly.

I can assure you, it’s not that easy, but if done, it does save a lot of time, trouble and money – and that’s a great benefit in itself.

Apparently, as soon as we reach the grand old age of 50, huge stresses suddenly appear in our minds – or so some insurance companies would have us believe.

Now I’ve spoken to quite a few ‘over 50’s’, and they had no idea that they were supposed to be agonising and having sleepless nights over the cost of their funeral!

I’ve spoken to a few over 70’s as well and they don’t see it as any sort of priority either.

Most people say something like “well, I’ll be gone then so I don’t really care”.

I’m wondering if there’s some sort of conspiracy going on between insurers and undertakers to turn funerals into the vastly expensive events like those that weddings have become!

But here’s the thing.

The really sinister thing about what’s going on, of which this is just a single simple example.

I call it social engineering.

You and I know that when you make a statement over and over again it becomes ‘true’.

And it’s not just about persuading ‘over 50’s’ that they are going to die soon and need to have ‘peace of mind’ about their funeral being provided for.

It’s about everything else that goes on to manipulate the way people think.

I am talking here about ‘most people’ probably around 87% of the population.

You and I are usually aware when attempts are being made to manipulate us – but not always – we have to be really ‘on the ball’ to prevent certain ideas creeping in under the radar.

It’s not easy because the subconscious hears everything.

And takes it in

And stores it away

Along with all the accumulated ‘data’ we already have there – along with all the data passed on by our ancestors.

It doesn’t matter if you’re not ‘listening’ or even ‘ignoring’ all the data being thrown at you. The only way you can stop it going in is to switch it off.

But unfortunately, we don’t have a ‘mute’ button for everything, particularly real life, when we overhear people ‘talking rubbish’ and reinforcing the messages and ideas they’ve been ‘sent’.

There is a huge amount of false information – ‘fake news’ – coming at us all the time.

Why?

For two reasons

To persuade us to do something we don’t want to do or would not have otherwise thought of, and more importantly (for the propagators), to persuade us to think in a way that we would not have come up with ourselves or about a subject that would otherwise never have cropped up.

Most of what you and I are subjected to is propaganda – it’s not advertising or marketing which are relatively ‘clean’ ways of getting a message across – it’s the way that messages are put across in time of war.

Propaganda is rapidly becoming the norm.

It’s effective – it gets the job done quicker than more civilized methods of marketing.

It simplifies things down to those binary choices that I’ve discussed before.

All this ‘stuff’ goes in whether we like it or not.

What can we do about it?

How do we avoid making decisions influenced by all this questionable ‘data’?

Well, there are some effective techniques we can learn such as Ho’oponopono, the Hawaiian ritual that basically means ‘making things right’ which will ‘clean’ or suppress the unwanted data and memories we have in our subconscious.

But there is an easier way – well perhaps ‘simpler’ would have been a better word because sometimes, as you and I know, it isn’t all that ‘easy’.

It’s called ‘choice’.

You and I have to choose. We have to choose how we think and choose what we do.

You and I are the creators of our own reality.

We become what we choose to become.

Whatever ‘happens’ in our lives is the result of a choice we made.

And that includes contracting a disease or getting knocked down by a bus as the saying goes.

Nothing happens ‘to’ us.

Everything that occurs in our lives happens through us, through the choices we make.

And it may be that those choices were made earlier in our lives, not necessarily immediately before a particular incident, occurrence or decision.

And a decision by the way is not a choice, it’s a result of a choice.

“To be or not to be – that is the question”.

But let me get back to this concept of ‘peace of mind’.

That state that is being held up as some sort of ‘ideal’ – something that everyone should have.

Really? Is that what we really want?

To be static – to be ‘secure’ to be ‘certain’, which as I discussed last week are not necessarily the states we really want to be in.

‘Peace of Mind’ stands for the status quo – it means that the mind is at peace, quiet, not doing anything.

And that’s just what it’s promotors want.

For people to quiet their minds, stop thinking, and follow wherever they are led.

But you and I aren’t going to fall for that are we?

We’re going to keep our minds ‘open’ – we’re going to use them to think, and to help us with that we’re going to make choices.

We’re going to ‘clear’ as much of the unwanted ‘data’ as we can and make our choices based on what we know to be ‘real’ -even though it might not be ‘tangible’.

But to do that you and I need to figure out what actually is ‘real’ for us because only then can we make the right choices for our immediate or long term future.

It’s easier than you might think.

I know what’s ‘real’ for me

How about you?

I’m not a numerologist and that isn’t what this is about.

Neither is it about the ‘numbers game’ myth perpetrated about sales – I’ve covered that before.

This is about the ‘numbers’ that keep cropping up in our lives.

Why is it that some numbers – 3, 7, 40 and 90 for example seem to have a higher significance than others?

Why is it that some things seem to demonstrate a particular ratio of numbers – 3:10:87 for example?

This one was famously demonstrated in a study at Harvard University many years ago (and for those who say it was Cambridge University, they are forgetting that Harvard is located in Cambridge Massachusets)

A group of students were asked about goals. 3% had clear written goals, 10% had an idea what their goals were, and the remaining 87% had no goals.

That 3% went on to generate more wealth than all of the others put together.

The same stats crop up in the Network Marketing (MLM) industry. 3% of those who join a network generate a significant income over a short space of time, 10% generate a modest income over a long period and 87% crash and burn making no income at all.

There are many more examples of this particular ratio working, but what about the other numbers?

‘Forty days and forty nights’ – a biblical term obviously, but it’s interesting to note that 40 as a timeframe is used a lot.

When I was going through my PGCE (Postgrad Certificate in Education) we were taught that the maximum timeframe for a ‘lesson’ was 40 minutes as there is a marked drop off in attention after that.

So if you are planning anything ‘educational’, keep it to 40 minutes, or groups of 40 minutes with breaks.

90 is another ‘timeframe’ number.

The life mastery coaching programmes that I use are based on 90 days. And I do most of my development planning based on that timescale – not too short and not too long, but long enough to achieve something relatively significant.

And then of course, follow it up with another 90 days.

This is an old one, it’s been used a lot – used to be called quarterly planning because 90 days is about 3 months, a quarter of a year.

Doing a ‘quarterly review’ of anything and everything you and I are involved in can be really useful. So if you’re not doing it already . . .

7 is often regarded as a ‘magic’ or key number.

We often hear about ‘The seven big mistakes’, ‘7 Steps’ to this that or the other. Lots of hierarchies are based on 7 levels.

And of course, there are 7 days in a week, 7 main chakras, the ‘seven stars in the sky’ (the Great Bear/Plough constellation) – and lots more.

It’s a good number to use when creating a framework or a plan, and of course you and I tend to organize our regular routines into weekly – 7 day – cycles.

However, if you take out the ‘weekend’ you’re left with 5. Five working days in the week.

Moses organised the Israelites into groups of 5 when they were on their journey through the desert. I suspect this may have come from the Egyptians, and many military and other organisations are based on groups or hierarchies of 5 (rather than 7).

It’s a good number to work with if you’re planning a speech: introduction, 3 key points, summary. One item for each finger on your hand so you can remember what to say.

I have known people write keywords on their fingers to help with this!

I just introduced 3 – 3 key points.

Three is really important.

Three represents the ‘Trinity’.

It’s used in a religious sense and that’s where you’re likely to have come across it first, but the ‘trinity’ concept crops up everywhere.

About us, it could be ‘mind, body, spirit’, ‘subconscious, conscious, superconscious’, ‘thought, word and deed’ (or ‘think, say, act’) and so on.

It crops up in design and heraldry – three lions, three orbs, most flags are tricouleur – three colours. Garden designers like to have groups of three of the same plant, sometimes five, but never two or four

And what about ‘before, now and after’, height, length and depth’ (the ‘three dimensions’).

Three is the triangle and you and I should be able to break down pretty much any concept into this because essentially everything works in triangles – or combinations of triangles.

And there’s another number that we don’t often see as a number but do work with all the time. It’s a basis of our thinking.

That number is 2.

Unlike 3 which is descriptive of dynamic relationships or ‘higher realm’ relationships where something is ‘happening’, 2 is a one to one relationship, a binary relationship.

‘On or off’, ‘black or white’, ‘You and I’, male and female, up and down, fast and slow, big and small, hot and cold, left and right, high and low’ and on and on and on . . .

It’s one or the other, but we know that in most cases that isn’t true. There are ‘fifty shades of grey’ between black and white, there’s a lot of difference between high and low, but we tend (because we’ve been trained to) make decisions on this ‘either – or’ basis.

Millions of people have died because of decisions made on the basis of ‘them or us’, and many more have died because of similar binary choices – made by them, or by others on their behalf.

2 is probably the most dangerous number in the set because although it can be productive if two things or people come together in a positive way, it is far more often used in a negative way through our insistence as a race of choosing between apparent ‘alternatives’.

When a decision like this presents itself you and I should think of the triangle – because there is always, always, another way.

There is always ‘yes’, ‘no’, and ‘what if?’.

What would it take for the ‘answer’ not to be a simple choice between Yes and No?

Another time I’ll talk about what we really mean by numbers anyway and why they don’t actually exist.

But for now, consider how you can use them to organize yourself and make better decisions.

After all it’s only a numbers game . . . or is it?

Those are the words I sometimes hear from my sat-nav after I’ve taken a ‘wrong turning’.

It means that I’ve ‘deviated’ from the route – the route to my objective.

Taken a ‘wrong turn’ on the way.

It’s great to have GPS to help us find our way geographically from where we are to where we’re going.

Stopping to look at the map or relying on road signs didn’t really work that well.

But we could do with ‘GPS’ for other things in our lives.

We have a natural tendency to go round in circles.

There’s a reason for this but the explanation would take too long for this message.

It’s well known that when people get ‘lost’ say in the desert or at sea or anywhere there are no landmarks to guide the way, or they can’t see the stars to help in navigation – they end up going around in circles.

Even when we get ‘lost’ in a city we often walk on in what we thought was a straight line following our ‘sense of direction’ but end up somewhere we’ve already been on that particular journey.

Once we take a ‘wrong turn’ we start to deviate from our route, and the further we go, the further away we get from our intended destination.

When I was taught navigation as part of a seamanship course during my dive leadership training it was demonstrated how a slight, one degree or less, deviation from the course could cause us to miss the target – usually an isolated wreck or reef site that we were planning to dive, by a considerable distance.

Without making course corrections – changing course little by little to get back on track, you can end up in the middle of nowhere.

NASA estimated that the moon rocket was only actually on the intended course about 1% of the time, constant corrections had to be made to enable it to reach the landing site rather than miss the Moon altogether!

Geography is one thing – but what about everything else in our lives?

You and I set goals.

We set targets

We have visions or ‘dreams’ of the life we would love to live.

But how often are we actually on track towards those goals?

I shouldn’t be surprised if, like the moon rocket, it was only about 1% of the time!

Now here’s the thing.

Are your relationships ‘on track’?

Is your health ‘on track’?

Is your career or business ‘on track’?

Are your finances ‘on track’?

Is your lifestyle ‘on track’?

Are YOU ‘on track’?

Guess what?

The chance of all of these being ‘on track’ at the same time is less than 0.0001%, much less, in fact too many zeros for my calculator!

And all because you and I have ‘deviated’ just a tiny bit from our ‘track’ and then not made a ‘route recalculation’.

And it’s so easy to do, as the friend who I was out walking with last week will testify! We had to ‘re-route’ quite a few times to get to where we wanted to be.

Now, it’s not too difficult to do that ‘course adjustment’ if we know where we’re going, no matter how far off course we find ourselves.

But do we know if we’re off course?

And is it a matter of just going in a different direction to get to where we want to go – or do we have to go ‘back’ and take the turning we should have in the first place?

And what happens if we’re not sure where we’re going anyway?

Well in a way it doesn’t matter because if we don’t know that, then ending up in one place is as good as ending up in another – any wind is good for a sailor who has no destination.

So besides you and I knowing where we’re going with all those aspects of our lives, we also need to know the route we intend to take.

Then all we need to do is to monitor our progress along that route.

And the more frequently we do that the closer we’ll stay to the path.

And when the path is ‘blocked’ it becomes easier to find a way around it and make progress – but if we’re on the wrong path and meet an obstacle then we’re really not sure at all about what to do or where to go.

Sounds simple doesn’t it?

Until we ‘forget’ about the monitoring, until we get so wrapped up in what we’re doing, thinking or being that we miss a few turnings and find ourselves somewhere completely different from what we intended.

Now sometimes you and I decide to change our destination in the light of this – we may have discovered something along the way that modifies our goal – but often we don’t and need to get back on track.

Which means it will usually take longer, cost more, be harder or whatever.

But what if we had a ‘sat-nav’ that would help us keep on track, point out our ‘deviations’ and present us with alternative ‘route recalculations’.

Someone who will spot our deviations from the course, keep us focused on the way forward and help us make sure we really are heading towards where we want to be.

That ‘sat-nav’ is called a ‘coach’.

You and I need coaches for all the domains of our lives. Sometimes they can be a partner, sometimes a friend and sometimes a professional guide who has experience of a particular route we want to travel.

Who are your coaches?

I know who mine are.