The Thursday Thesis - 29/12/2016
“A Change Will Do You Good” You, like me, will break your New Year’s Resolution within 10 days of making it. Everybody does it, so don’t protest: you did it last year, and the year before that – same as I did. But what happens after you break your NYR is more important than whether you broke it in the first place. If you do what most people do, you’ll throw your hands up in the air and bemoan your failure as though it were the end of the story. To add insult to injury, you might conclude that you’re a miserable piece of dog-crap and that you knew you’d fail. Congratulations! You’ve just turned a temporary setback into a permanent defeat: no wonder you feel so down on yourself. So what else can you do, having – once again - failed to keep your promise to yourself? Get over it. So you scoffed a massive slice of cake, drank too much or lit up yet another foul-smelling cancer-stick: so what? It was something you did in that moment, so maybe you could remind yourself that you’re better than that and begin again? No guilt, no self-loathing – how would you feel, giving yourself another chance to rise again? Call it a course-correction, a glitch, a temporary error – call it something that is NOT PERMANENT and NOT PERSONAL. Not permanent and Not Personal identifies the fact that breaking your NYR was a behaviour occurring at a point in time, and is not who You are. And you already know that you’re only failing as long as you keep doing what you don’t want to do, or being who you don’t want to be. If you fail for one day, then get up off your knees and keep doing what you really want, you will be successful in the end. One day of failure in your diet or fitness Resolution is not the end of the story – unless you decide that it’s all over and you give up. Errors and failures are inevitable, but defeat is only an option. The trick is to try again, just one more time than you fail. The Samurai say “Six times down, Seven times up!” In Texas they tell you that you aren’t a real cowboy until you’ve fallen off your horse six times. Get up off the floor, get back on the horse and try again. It’s only defeat if you choose to accept it. You’re better than that, aren’t you? Happy New Year. © Neil Cowmeadow 2016 Please Like and Share The Thursday Thesis with your friends, family, your cat and anyone else. I’d love to hear your comments, along with any ideas you’d care to hurl at me. Neil@cowtownguitars.net
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 My Kind of Christmas Card. Thanks.
The Thursday Thesis - 22/12/2016 “My Everyday Christmas Wish” Peace on Earth, goodwill to all men. So it goes – the traditional Christmas message. But I have a problem with that. Here it is: it’s only one day. What about the other 364 days of the year? Why are we urged to exude goodwill, but only on one day of the year? What if we adopted that approach every single day? How weird would that be? Ditch the tinsel and pull on the gaily-coloured stockings of jollity every single morning. HoHoHo! Merry 22nd December. Tomorrow will be Friday, so I’ll wish you a happy 23rd December, too!! Can’t have too much of a good thing, can we? © Neil Cowmeadow 2016 Please Like and Share The Thursday Thesis with your friends, family, your cat and anyone else. I’d love to hear your comments, along with any ideas you’d care to hurl at me. Neil@cowtownguitars.net The Thursday Thesis 15/12/2016
Re-Framing Reality... I’d been deceived. I’d been lied to by people I had looked up to. It was terrible. I asked myself “why?” over and over... until I finally asked myself “what’s good about this, then?” That’s when I realised how lucky I was. Lucky, because the truth had bubbled to the surface – as the truth always does: it’s a bugger for it. Lucky, because discovering the error gave me the time I needed to change course. Lucky, because the insistent gut-feeling that had plagued me for months had hardened into a realisation, and finally into action. Lucky, because I immediately stopped wasting precious moments of my life on someone else’s idea of how life should be, and of what was right for me. That’s what was good about it – instead of waiting for the right moment, waiting for something or someone outside of myself to change, I changed. I realised that my hours and days would cease to bleed away. I realised that what was being told to me was true – but only from one particular viewpoint. From their viewpoint it was going to protect me from potential failure and humiliation. But from my point of view it was bogus, preventing me from taking a risk and finding out how good I could be. If I continued to accept their limiting belief, I was a prisoner of it. Our authority figures may be doing their best to protect us, but their good intentions might not align with what’s best for us as individuals. I’m not the first – and I won’t be the last – person to be blindsided by someone I looked up to. We all have people we look up to, admire and respect: parents, teachers, friends and family, public figures – they all have their place in guiding us. But if we find out that they were wrong, I believe that we should mentally thank them for their input, ask ourselves “what’s good about this?”, and remind ourselves that we are lucky that it’s not too late to correct our course and get on with the rest of our lives. If we are still breathing, we can begin to write our brand new ending, because we are not too late to learn and try again. That’s what’s good about this whole “life” thing, when you think about it, isn’t it? © Neil Cowmeadow 2016 Please Like and Share The Thursday Thesis with your friends, family, and anyone reckless enough to come within three feet of you. I’d love to hear your comments, along with any ideas you’d care to hurl at me. 
The Thursday Thesis - 08/12/2016
“The Fine Art of ROWF’ing” It hit me like a sledgehammer-blow to the side of my head. One of those “D’oh!” moments – you know the ones: where you wonder how on Earth you never noticed it before. For me it was the sudden clarity with which I realised that if I asked Life for what I wanted, then I’d open up a channel to receiving it. Maybe I was having a ThickDay... All I had to do was open my mouth and give life the chance to say “yes”. Life said “yes” a few times, and sometimes Life said “No”. The Yeses were great, but the interesting thing was that the no’s were great, too, as I noticed that I didn’t bleed or get arrested for my cheek. And while they initially felt more like “No, bugger-off!”, I could at least go on to ask for the reasons why not. Once I knew why not, I could make changes before I asked again. My tiny little brain finally figured out that if I kept on asking questions and making changes, I’d eventually find something that worked and got me what I wanted. This strategy is what I call “Running Out of Ways to Fail” – ROWFing, for short -and I’ve got it down to an Art-form, now. Ask, get a refusal, get more information and adapt, then ask again. Repeat until you run out of ways to fail. How simple can it be? Get failing, now, and you’ll get closer to your YES! Fail Fast, Fail Forward. Ok, enough said – I’ve gotta go – I’ve got to chalk-up a ton of failures today! © Neil Cowmeadow 2016 Please Like and Share The Thursday Thesis with your friends, family, your cat and anyone else. I’d love to hear your comments, along with any ideas you’d care to hurl at me. Neil@cowtownguitars.net  The Thursday Thesis - 29/09/2016
Like a Leaky bucket... Drip...Drip...Drip... That’s the sound of our brain, leaking away anything it has learnt, but that isn’t needed. Drip... Over time, our brains physically re-form themselves to perform the functions they do most often, and that’s why we “use it or lose” it – as far as skills go. Drip... It’s called Neuroplasticity, the ongoing “soft” state of the human brain, restlessly self-improving and sleeplessly trying to get more, for less. Drip... Neural pathways are the connections between nerve cells, and the human brain has a staggeringly large number of them: around 1,000 Trillion of them. Drip... Each nerve cell – or Neurone – is networked with others, which – in turn – connect with even more. The result is that each neurone interacts with all the other neurones in the brain via it’s connections and their neighbours. Drip... Redundant connections are reconfigured and recycled to help better performance of new skills. Drip... That’s why we forget what we once used to know - and why we vaguely remember what to do as we start to do it again. Drip... Learning new skills, thinking in new ways, learning another language, and any other new activity cause our brains to change their own structure: we are endlessly self-improving. Drip... The old stuff drips away from the leaky bucket of our brains. Perhaps the bucket empties almost completely, and only the deeply-learned knowledge of our earlier lives is left? Drip... Dementia (from the Latin de, meaning from; and mens, meaning mind) is a rising problem in the UK, reaching much higher levels than ever seen before. The question is “Why?” Drip... I submit the suggestion that we’ve become too comfortable, less involved in the world, retreating back into our lounges and dens; becoming passive spectators of a televised World from the sidelines and sofas of a life lived vicariously by remote control. Drip... Unstimulated and dumbed-down, what reason does our brain have to grow more connections? Drip... And why would it labour to pack itself with even more cells? Drip... For the same reason that a muscle will not grow if it is never used. Drip... Learn something new, every day, and re-fill your leaky bucket. However slowly it is leaking, it is still leaking. Drip... May your own bucket run over with its fullness, today. Evermore. © Neil Cowmeadow 2016 Please Like and Share The Thursday Thesis with your friends, family, your cat and anyone else. I’d love to hear your comments, along with any ideas you’d care to hurl at me. Neil@cowtownguitars.net |
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