Today is my 70^th Birthday and I feel drawn to reflect on ‘age’

What do we understand by ‘age’ as it pertains to you and I, and to other people in the world?

Primarily people see it as a measure of time passed – of how many years or planetary circuits of the sun, one has been ‘alive’ in the form of a corporeal human being.

(That may of course not be the same as how long you and I have been – and will be –  ‘alive’ as spiritual beings but that’s another story.)

People also see a person’s ‘age’ as a label.

Because someone is a certain age they are first of all labelled as ‘old’, ‘young’, or ‘middle aged’ (whatever that means) and these adjectives are then given certain attributes depending on the perspective of the ‘labeler’.

I must admit that I get annoyed, even offended, when people in the media describe people who are 20 years younger than me as ‘old’.

I may have lived for 70 years so far but my mind and my spirit are not by any means ‘old’.

I prefer the term ‘wise’, because for you and I – as our age increases and our experience is added to over the years, and we make mistakes, and we find better ways of doing things, and we learn new stuff, we, by default, increase in wisdom.

That doesn’t mean we ‘know everything’; it actually means that we know that we don’t know everything and that we can still learn more . . . and more. That’s the essence of wisdom.

The pity of it is that society doesn’t encourage this, at least not western society.

‘Old folks’ are supposed to ‘retire’ gracefully, sit down and shut up, preferably in a ‘home’ and ‘wait for God’.

Many younger people who haven’t yet acquired the wisdom that comes with increasing experience and personal development, actually resent the ‘burden’ (as they see it) placed on society by ‘old people’.

But what about the earlier stages of our corporeal progress through the ‘ages’?

In Shakespeare’s ‘As You Like It’ Act 2 Scene 7, Jacques expounds on the ‘seven ages of man’.

This is a prime example of ‘labelling’ and it should be remembered that in the 15^th Century the average ‘lifespan’ was a lot shorter – for a multitude of reasons.

However what Jacques described in his monologue still bears some comparison with present day society.

The first stage – Infancy, was described by Shakespeare as ‘helpless’. But that was never true.

Infants are great goal achievers. Infants set their mind to do something and learn by themselves to develop the skills to do it. Despite what parents may think, infants learn to eat, learn to walk, and learn, by themselves, to imitate those things they see their parents doing: not ‘helpless’ by any means.

But then the parents start to interfere with the fateful words “you can’t do that” and so on.

As we reach the second age that Shakespeare calls ‘schoolboy’ the process begins where society, led by teachers and parents starts to ‘mould’ people into the image that it wants.

No wonder children are reluctant to go to school, find it boring and so on because they feel contumely held back and have their goals and dreams summarily dismissed without a second thought by those who are supposed to be educating them.

They aren’t being educated they are being trained, as an official of the National Union of Teachers recently put it “for the world of work”.

The third age in the 15^th Century and indeed until quite recently was separate, now it overlaps with the ‘educational’ age and the fourth ‘work’ age which Shakespeare described as ‘young man’.

The third age is when puberty sets in and this has a massive impact on whatever else is going on. It’s the cause of much anxiety for everyone and has a negative effect on self confidence and personal development apart from being a complete distraction from ‘normal’ life.

This third age is probably the time when our corporeal and spiritual elements are in greatest conflict.

The fourth age is described by Shakespeare as the ‘bold and fearless soldier’ and in a modern terms this is when people first enter the ‘world of work’.

It’s an apt description because, unless they manage to escape from the societal paradigm of school-work-retirement, they become ‘cannon fodder’.

Regardless of educational standards achieved they will be low paid, overworked and in debt.

Some people remain in this age as ‘workers’ until they ‘retire’ into the sixth or seventh age. That’s what they’ve been trained to do.

Others go on to the fifth age which Shakespeare called ‘Middle Aged’ and I call the ‘career’ age. In most cases this still means being employed, but at a higher and more remunerative level.

Some people are lucky enough to be employed to do a job they love and other move on into self employment or business ownership in order to be able to do what they want to do.

Now there comes a divergence as you and I will be aware.

Some people adopt Shakespeare’s sixth age, where they suddenly become ‘old’; they behave ‘old’ and they dress ‘old’. In terms of years they may still be quite young, but they think ‘old’.

The seventh age soon follows, dementia sets in and they end up having to be cared for and in many cases, like my mother, actually want desperately to die.

Again, it’s so sad that this is what society believes is ‘normal’.

The alternative to this is the scenario I laid out at the beginning.

The alternative sixth age is the age of wisdom. It is the age of understanding, but continuing to learn, and it’s also the age of ‘giving back’.

And we can still be in the fifth age at the same time – it all depends what you and I want for our lives.

The sixth age goes on for as long as you and I want it to or until we reach the alternative seventh age which I describe as the age of enlightenment.

Difficult to describe, but there are probably less than 10 people alive who have reached this – possibly Nelson Mandela and his Holiness the Dalai Lama are two of them.

Which age are you in?

Over the last few weeks the subject of ‘sales’ and ‘selling’ has kept cropping up at various events I’ve been attending.

It’s a thorny subject, or at least seems to be for a lot, probably the majority, of people.

And there’s a lot of confusion about what activity actually constitutes ‘selling’.

Many people get mixed up between selling and marketing, but for the moment hold that thought.

You and I buy stuff.

We like to buy stuff – even things like fuel for our cars, insurance, gas and electricity, things we need but may not think we want.

But really, we do want that stuff – not necessarily the product in itself, but the benefit that it provides.

And the thing is, when it comes down to it, we only ever buy things we want, or the benefits we want that those things give us.

And we put a value on those wants, how important they are to us, in comparison to other wants.

The Greek philosopher Aristotle considered that every object (or thing or ‘stuff’) had two uses, one being the purpose for which the object was designed and the other being as a means of exchange to obtain different ‘stuff’.

The idea of ‘the market’ or ‘marketing’ was a place where you could take your surplus ‘stuff’ and exchange it with someone else for other ‘stuff’ that you wanted.

So people would spend the day at the market ‘trading’ one thing for another until they had gathered all the things they needed to fulfil their wants.

This could take some time and maybe at the end of the day they ended up with some stuff they didn’t want because they couldn’t find anyone who was willing to exchange that for the stuff they did want.

So instead an easier way of trading one thing for another developed.

You’d exchange, or ‘trade’, what you had but didn’t want for, shall we say a handful of cowrie shells, and then you’d exchange those shells for something you did want.

Cowrie shells (or it could have been grain, or anything that was readily available)  became ‘money’; which in itself is valueless, it’s just a token we use to facilitate exchange.

And according to the abundance or shortage of supply of the various things we all want we ascribe different values to different things.

To get some stuff you need lots of shells, for other stuff only a few.

You see – you and I must now ‘persuade’ each other of the ‘value’ (in money) that we put on what we provide and the ‘value’ (in money) that we place on our wants.

When the ‘values’ match up – the value of our want is equal to the value of what is being provided – then a ‘sale’ is made on the one side and a ‘purchase’ concluded on the other.

This is often referred to as a ‘deal’.

And when the values don’t quite match it can become a ‘good’ or a ‘bad’ deal for either ‘side’.

Back to ‘sales’ and ‘marketing’.

Marketing is what it always was – finding, or attracting, people who want our stuff and finding the people who have the stuff we want.

We advertise our goods and services and we go to the shopping centre – real or virtual to buy stuff. That’s marketing.

When we find a potential buyer or provider that’s where the ‘deal’ comes in and where ‘sales’ and ‘purchasing’ starts.

It’s important to look at these two activities separately because otherwise it can easily go wrong.

Some people are excellent at marketing – finding the right people or sources; and others are brilliant at the buying/selling bit, making the ‘deal’ work.

Not many people can do both well.

The trick is to stop thinking about the money but to think about the trade.

Consider the real value of the exchanges you and I may be making by measuring value according to what the other person wants, not the value you or I might put on something.

What is the value of what you and I have to offer, not from our point of view, but from the potential buyer’s point of view?

They may want what we have to offer more than we realise!

More on this another time.

Happy trading!

You and I often hear the phrase that “there are two schools of thought on this question” or something like that.

Sometimes there may appear to be more, as different people hold different opinions, but it does really boil down to two.

These are often identified as ‘pessimistic and optimistic’, or ‘positive and negative’ which really amount to the same thing and don’t tell us much.

Wallace Wattles, in Chapter 11 of his book ‘The Science of Getting Rich’, originally published in 1910, provides what I think is a much better insight.

He proposes that the ‘two schools of thought’ are ‘creative’ and ‘competitive’ thinking.

These are based on two primary subliminal human paradigms. The ‘scarcity paradigm’ and the ‘abundance paradigm’, the latter maybe better understood as the ‘paradigm of increase’.

So what? Well, the thing is that the predominant ‘school of thought’ certainly in ‘Western society’ is based on the scarcity paradigm – competitive thinking – or the idea that there isn’t enough (of whatever) do ‘go round’ and therefore everyone has to compete for resources.

You and I are surrounded by pessimistic media reporting, a seeming hunger for ‘bad news’ and a continuing quest by politicians, corporations and even ‘celebrities’ to ‘succeed’ or ‘win’ – and here’s the important bit – at the general expense of others.

Because there isn’t enough power, money or fame to ‘go round’ – or at least that’s how they see it.

And without getting into detail, that’s how the vast majority of people have been convinced that this is how ‘life works’.

Now ‘competition’ in itself isn’t the issue, competition can be based on increase as well as scarcity. For example, sporting competition is based on increase, doing something ‘better’ than it was done before, achieving better results and improving personal performance.

If you think about it sport isn’t really about ‘beating the other guy’ (although many ‘supporters’ or ‘fans’ may see it that way), it is really about self-improvement, either as an individual or as a team.

It’s about ‘increase’ rather than ‘scarcity’.

So where do you and I as creative and optimistic thinkers fit into this scenario?

And how do we ‘compete’, in a positive sense with the society around us?

Wattles uses the phrase ‘person of increase’ which is what you and I are, or should aspire to be.

You and I think differently to the majority. You and I see opportunities to improve, to learn, to add value, and in general to ‘make a difference’.

To paraphrase John F Kennedy, we think first of what we can do for the world rather than what the world can do for us.

Because you and I know that when we give of our knowledge, our skills, our time, and or ‘take’ on any particular situation we are ‘persons of increase’.

We are adding something and we are, in our own ways and in our own environments, ‘making things better’.

To put this into perspective I’ll use my mentor Peter Thomson’s phrase “Money is the silent applause for a job well done”.

Combine this with Wattles’ maxim in Chapter 14 of his book “You must so impress others that in associating with you they will get increase for themselves. See that you give them a use value greater than the cash value you are taking from them”

The result is that when you and I focus on creative thinking and providing value for others then we do receive a reward – there is no need to ‘compete’ for it – so long as you and I avoid slipping into that all pervading ‘scarcity paradigm’ and beware of the competitive mind.

This is well summed up by Samuel Milton (Golden Rule) Jones, mayor of Toledo in the late 19^th century – “What I want for myself, I want for everybody”.

I do, how about you?

“Hope for the best and prepare for the worst”

I was party to a discussion the other week about this maxim.

I dropped out fairly quickly and just listened because it was obvious that I was in the minority on this one.

You see, most people believe this is a really good philosophy!

But it isn’t.

In fact, this is one of the worst paradigms that society has ever come up with.

It might sound good but it’s totally counter-productive.

It goes along with –

“I’d like this to happen but I won’t think about it too much because I might be disappointed”

And

“It sounds (or looks) good but I can’t see it ever happening”

And

“We can’t possibly do that because something bad might happen”

So even when a historical custom or tradition has been played out for hundreds of years the ‘safety officers’ and ‘risk assessors’ step in and ban it because even though nothing serious have ever gone wrong before, ‘something’ might go wrong and “we can’t take the risk”.

This thinking is helped along by the, again entirely false, ‘Law of Averages’ paradigm (much beloved of some sales trainers) which says that the likelihood of a ‘positive’ event increases with the number of ‘negative’ events that occur (and vice versa).

Or in sales – the more times you get a ‘no’ answer the more likely it is that you’ll get a ‘yes’ which gives rise to the ‘Go for No’ idea – probably the worst advice that can be given to anyone involved in sales!

In fact, the salesperson isn’t succeeding because they are probably doing something wrong and need to change what they are doing in order to achieve a positive result.

And the Edison example gets thrown in here forgetting to point out that Edison didn’t repeat the same thing several thousand times before his light bulb worked. He tried thousands of different things!

Edison was a creative thinker. He didn’t prepare for the worst or he would never have achieved anything – he prepared for the best, because he knew that it would happen. He didn’t even conceive the idea that it wouldn’t.

‘Preparing for the worst’ is negative thinking, or as Wallace Wattles defines it ‘competitive’ thinking, as it is fundamentally based on the scarcity paradigm that resources (physical and mental) are fixed ‘there isn’t enough to go round’.

The thing is that negative thinking, once it gets ‘inside you’ takes over.

Somehow it always seems much easier to think of a myriad of reasons why something will ‘go wrong’ or ‘not happen’ than it is to think of the reasons for success.

Eleanor Roosevelt once said “All the water in the world cannot drown you, unless it gets inside”, and that’s exactly how negative or competitive thinking works.

Once you let it inside you drown.

People start to imagine all the things that could ‘go wrong’ and instead of directing their activity to focus on what they actually want they focus on what they don’t want.

And guess what – it happens!

Of course, some people insist that this is ‘being realistic’ or ‘practical’ but you and I can be just as realistic and practical about those things we do want to achieve and ignore the ‘reality’ or ‘practicality’ of “what could possibly go wrong”.

As you and I proceed towards our goals we know that we always have the capability (like Edison) to cope with the ‘little’ things that go ‘wrong’ along the way.

You and I take the approach that we’ll ‘face that problem when we come to it’ – if in fact we ever do ‘come to it’.

To paraphrase Mary Morrissey, you and I do what we can with what we have, knowing that we always have way more than we are aware of.

Knowing that we don’t have to envision everything that could possibly ‘go wrong’ before it happens and have a solution ‘in the bag’ that we will probably never need to use.

Remembering that if we focus on the desired outcome and not on ‘the worst’ then ‘the worst’ is far less likely to need to be dealt with.

So the counter maxim, for you and I, might be –

“Prepare for the best, and get on with it”.

I am.

How about you?

“It’s a goal!”

The object of a soccer match is always to score goals, to evade the opposing team and get the ball over the line into the net, whilst preventing them from getting the ball into your net.

But what happens when the goal is scored?

A ‘goal’ has been achieved, so what next?

In sport, it’s simple – just do it again – score as many goals as you can during the time allotted for the game.

Of course, your team, and your manager, and your fans will have a vision of winning the game, which means scoring more goals than the other side.

But the thing is that this ‘vision’ can only be achieved by ‘scoring goals’ one at a time.

The second goal cannot be reached until after the first has been achieved.

And there’s more.

Your team may have a ‘dream’ of ‘winning the league’ – scoring more goals and wining more matches than the other teams.

But this ‘higher vision’ cannot be achieved until after the first goal has been scored, and indeed, until after the first match has been won, and the second, and the third and so on.

But here’s the thing.

Without that ‘dream’ or ‘higher vision’ why would you ‘play’ in the first place?

Some say that ‘it’s just about taking part, playing the game’ or ‘there are no winners or losers’.

But if that were true then humanity would probably never have invented games in the first place.

How does all this apply to you and I?

In the wonderful world of ‘personal development’, or as some bookshops would have it ‘self-improvement’; there are thousands of speakers and writers who talk a great deal about goal setting and ‘dream building’.

The majority of speakers I’ve heard and writers I’ve read focus their attention on encouraging or inspiring you and I to go for the big ‘dream’, the all-encompassing vision or the ‘big bold goal’.

But only rarely does anyone give us any practical advice on how to get there.

Certainly, there are lots of techniques like affirmations, vision boards, mind movies, meditation, subliminal media and so on.

These all work and do help you and I to elevate our ‘state’ from the ‘normal’ level of consciousness adopted by the vast majority of people.

But most people I’ve engaged with about this do find it difficult to ‘grasp’ the entirety of their own ‘big vision’ or dream.

You and I are often exhorted to ‘write everything down in specific detail’, but for us and most other people that would probably take tens of thousands of words to cover, in detail, everything that we wish to be, do, have and give.

You see, what you and I need to do is to break down our big vision into ‘seasons’, ‘leagues’, ‘matches’ and ‘games’ – and then set about scoring one goal at a time.

Our ‘seasons’ would be our vision for this year, the next three years, five years and so on and our ‘leagues’ are the different domains of our life such as health, relationships, vocation etc.

Our ‘matches’ are the smaller more specific visions we have in each of those areas and our games are the discrete targets and goals we need to ‘score’ to win those matches.

Then for you and I things become a lot simpler. Our goals and targets are clearly defined, as is the process we need to follow to ‘score’.

The soccer analogy helps us again because a goal is scored by hitting a target, but the process of doing so is, as everyone who watches the game knows, simple, but not necessarily easy!

For you and I to achieve those big visions or dreams all we have to do is break them down into simple goals and targets, probably thousands of them in each domain of our lives, that are clearly defined and simple to understand.

Then you and I have to ‘play the game’ and score the goals one by one by one until our first ‘match’ is won and our first mini-vision realised.

And then we’re on to the next game.

I’m off to ‘play’.

How about you?

My mentor Peter Thomson has framed ‘six seemingly simple questions’ which are perfect for analyzing any specific situation, problem or circumstance that you and I may encounter in business or in life.

(That is of course if we choose to separate those two contexts).

Those questions are:

1. Where am I now?
2. How did I get here?
3. Where am I going?
4. Why do I want to go there?
5. What are the obstacles?
6. What am I going to do next?

I’ve found these really useful when dealing with specifics and challenges but they aren’t as effective when it comes to answering the ‘big life’ questions of where you and I ‘stand’ in the ultimate question of ‘life the universe and everything’.

Peter’s questions are great for dealing with goals, targets and obstacles, but don’t quite (to my view) have the ’power’ to deal with the big visions and ‘dreams’.

Rudyard Kipling famously identified his ‘six serving men’:

“I KEEP six honest serving-men
(They taught me all I knew);
Their names are What and Why and When
And How and Where and Who.”

All the right words, but as Eric Morecambe said (in another context) “not necessarily in the right order”.

To get the set of questions that we need to answer our own personal question of the meaning of life, the universe and everything, you and I can follow Peter’s formula.

The six ‘seemingly simple questions’ become:

1. Who am I now?
2. Where have I been?
3. What do I want?
4. Why do I want it?
5. When do I want it?
6. How am I going to make it happen?

They do seem very simple, don’t they?

They are, simple, but not easy, not easy by a long chalk.

The first question – Who am I now?

Ask yourself who you really ARE at this point in time. What sort of person are you? What does your life mean to you and to other people? Who are you to other people?

Hard questions which will take some time and meditation to answer.

Question two – Where have I been?

This is about how you became who you are, what has influenced your development over the years, what has given rise to the person you described in question 1?

Question three – What do I want?

This is your ‘dream’, your vision of who you want to be, what you want to do and what you want to have. It could include your ‘bucket list’, your 25-year plan etc.

This sounds like an easier question, but it might take you some time to really think it through because then you and I come to –

The fourth question – Why do I want it?

What will all those things on your ‘bucket list’ achieve for you? What will having all those things you want achieve for you? How will all these things contribute to your purpose in life – who you really want to be, and why do you want to be that person and be seen by others as that person?

Oh yes, and if you discover going through this process that there’s anything on your ‘list’ in Q3 that doesn’t contribute to your life’s purpose, your ‘why’, then perhaps you might consider taking it off – or at least seriously downgrading its priority!

The fifth question – When do I want it?

For most people this may seem the easiest – just pick a date. But it might not be that easy.

Sometimes, well most of the time really, you and I need a ‘plan’.

There are often some things that can’t happen until something else on the list has happened. So as part of this answer we have to get all the ‘stuff’ we want in the right order.

The final question – How am I going to make it happen?

You might say that this is a sort of a ‘trick question’.

You see, most people will first of all have been trying to answer this question as they go through the others, particularly question three.

Most people will spend a lot of time trying to figure out what they need to do and how they need to do it in order to achieve their objective – in order to get what they want.

But for these questions, as opposed to some extent to Peter’s questions, it doesn’t work like that.

For these questions, for the questions about your purpose in live, your dreams and ambitions, it’s not really about figuring out the ‘how’ of ‘doing’ all the stuff you might think you need to do, it’s more to do with thinking about you.

The thing is that now you know who you are, where you’ve been, what you want, why you want it, and when you want it, you ask another question –

Who am I then?

Who will you be when you’ve achieved your purpose, done what you wanted to do, and obtained what you wanted to have?

Imagine yourself then – write down in the present tense (as if it were now ‘then’) what your life ‘then-now’ is like, making it as vivid and specific as possible.

Over time the ‘how’ of getting there will reveal itself – provided you keep your vison ‘alive’

Once again –

“Whatever the mind of a man can conceive and believe, it can achieve”

Napoleon Hill

Have a thoughtful week!

“In the beginning was the Word” (from the Christian Bible the gospel according to John, Chapter 1, verse 1) this phrase or something similar appears in many religious texts.

You and I have frequently visualised those things that we want to be, do or have.

We’ve ‘created’ those pictures ‘in our mind’s eye’, and maybe we’ve put together a ‘vision board’ or a ‘mind movie’.

You and I may have personal ‘affirmations’ – short phrases that embody the vision that we have for ourselves. But do we actually say them out loud or do they become a ‘silent prayer’?

All religious use prayer in one way or another. The trouble is, particularly with the established religions that these prayers are (with a few exceptions) written and often spoken, not by the members of the congregation, but by a member of the religious ‘order’, or whoever is leading the ‘service’.

The visions that the religions speak of are not necessarily those held by the subscribers to that religion. People pray for the vison that the religion has for them.

In some cases though, usually in ‘breakaway’ or ‘splinter’ groups from some of the main religions, people do pray for themselves, and for people who are important to them. They pray for their own vision, not that of the ‘church’.

But the thing is . . .

Praying on an ordered or scheduled basis is missing the point – and it wouldn’t be very effective in bringing about your or my personal vision.

Because praying is simply saying – out loud – what your and my vision is of who or what we want to be, do or have.

It’s about not silently repeating some affirmations a couple of times a day, it’s about having the conviction to say out loud what it is that you and I have envisioned.

We can do this with short or long statements. Sometimes it can be a ‘one liner’, sometimes maybe 100 words or so – whatever it takes to describe our ‘dream’.

But that’s not all – there’s a lot more to it – it’s not just about ‘praying’ for what we ‘want’.

You see –

Whenever we speak about anything you and I are making a ‘request’.

A request for what or how we want our lives to be.

You and I may be describing our business plans, a holiday we want to take, an event we’re attending, improvements we’re doing to our homes, how well ‘things have gone’ recently – or not.

We all talk a lot.

Whatever we say is ‘recorded’, and whatever you or I recognise as the ‘higher power’ takes note and endeavours to bring such things into reality.

So be careful what you ask for – and be careful what you say, because everything is interpreted in some way as a request.

And be careful what you say about others, or to others, because the higher power doesn’t discriminate between you and them.

If you wish ill on someone else than it’s almost certain that at some time in the future, that wish will be reflected back on you.

It’s happened to me and I’m pretty certain it’s happened to you as well – one way or another.

Some people call this Karma.

But it’s not just ‘talking’ – writing is just an extension of talking.

What you write to or about other people, if it’s in a public domain such as social media, is exactly the same as taking to them face to face.

You and I cannot hide behind a screen and pretend we’re not there.

A huge amount of damage in the world has been caused and is being caused by people who think they can do that. Many things written on social media would never, ever, be said face to face.

But there’s more

You and I can use writing to reinforce and enhance our ‘prayer’ activity.

When you and I write down, in as specific detail as possible (and we can always change it later), all those visions of the things we want to be, do and have, it empowers our visions and empowers the words we speak.

This works best when you and I write, by hand, on paper.

When we do that pathways are created in our brains between the thinking parts and the doing parts that help to cement in those visions.

Maybe within a generation or so the same thing will happen when people use a keyboard and screen rather than a pen a paper, but tests have shown that this doesn’t work nearly as well – yet.

This week I’m saying my affirmations and ‘prayers’ out loud and writing them down on paper.

And I’m working very hard on not criticizing or saying ‘bad’ things about anyone!

You . . . ?