 The Thursday Thesis - 25/7/2019
“Dude, you have to leave – you have to leave right now and go and do something that doesn’t make you feel like this, ok?” I told him. “...But what if I can’t get another job? And I only have 12 years to go before I can retire...” he said, in between the Monday morning sobs that announced another week in the job we both hated. At the time I was puzzled: why do so many of us do jobs we hate? When a Gallup Survey suggests that only 13% of the global workforce enjoy their jobs, something funny is going on. Why do so many people stay on in jobs that they don’t like? Or stick around in bad relationships? Or repeat behaviours which make us feel ill – and bad about ourselves? The answer to those questions – and many more – is the same thing that tends to keep us alive and safe; it’s a basic part of being human. It turns out that we humans have an inborn tendency to keep doing what we are already doing. We don’t like to rock the boat, and we have a need for stability Humans are very resistant to change, and strongly attached to the familiar: that’s a strong component in how businesses set about branding and marketing to us, and why existing customers are much easier to sell to than new customers. And that’s why it’s so hard to leave a job, relationship or change a habit which does not serve us: we are programmed not to change. Change is hard because humans like things to stay the same all the time – even if that means continuing pain and unhappiness: it’s called homeostasis. In your body’s self-regulating world, change is bad, because Change is risky – especially in evolutionary terms. If your current behaviour is keeping you safe and fed, it’s good behaviour and you will fight to continue that behaviour: seems like a good idea, doesn’t it? The problem here is that your resistance to change is a meta-pattern: it exists across all contexts and all of your behaviour – be it good or bad. So you’ll hang on to your damaging behaviours with the same tenacity you cling to your helpful behaviours, because change is risky – regardless of whether it is change for the better or for the worse. Consequently, it’s commonplace to find people who stay in jobs they hate, relationships that hurt, and pursue unhealthy activities – even when they know that these things are damaging and a waste of their time, effort and resources. I’ve done it, and you probably know someone who has, too you might even know them very, very well... I stayed in that job – even when Monday morning had me cringeing under the duvet until the very last moment. I stayed in a relationship – even though it made me feel worthless. And I continued going to the pub and getting shitfaced, despite the dreadful hangovers that lasted for days and made me feel shabby, helpless and out of control. So it goes. We habitually test behaviours which we’ve already proved don’t work for us, because we perceive making a change to be too risky. But the truth is that NOT making a change is beyond risky: we have proof that not changing doesn’t work, because we’ve tested it and tested it...and it still doesn’t work! We might rate our chances of success in a new or different endeavour at, perhaps 5% - one chance of success in twenty. We might rightly describe it as “risky” – based upon our best guesses. But not making the change is proven to have a 100% chance of failure, based upon our solid experience and knowledge. Let me ask you something: if you were in a car skidding out of control at 80 mph toward a brick wall, would you grab the steering wheel and try to make the car turn in any other direction than toward the wall, even if your chances of avoiding the brick wall were only 5%? The odds are the same, but you’re going to grab that wheel, aren’t you? Even though it’s “risky”. © Neil Cowmeadow 2019 Please Like and Share The Thursday Thesis with your friends, family, and your chosen deity. I’d love to hear your comments, along with any ideas you’d care to hurl at me. [email protected]
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 The Thursday Thesis - 18/7/2019 Steve Jobs of Apple told the graduating students of Stanford University “...you can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backward. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future.” To put it another way, when you are further down the line, you can look back and see the turning points and decisions that got you to where you are: you can see how everything connects up along the way and – from the future’s perspective – make it seem inevitable that things turned out the way they have. For most of us, “Looking forward to the future” is a pretty good description of how we think, because when we imagine the future we usually create images and visions of the future in front of us, and usually dead-centre. Maybe it’s because humans’ normal direction of movement is forward that we hold the future in front of us, as though we could step into it in the same way we walk to the corner shop. But the future is more like a fall, backwards into the unknowable, looking at the “dots” which preceded the fall. This is why imagining your future is vital to any kind of planning and personal growth; by visualising our future we can “step in to” our idealised, imagined future and observe our course from that position. We can visualise the steps of the journey which culminated in that imagined future, notice the turning points and critical moments, the decisions and actions which shaped the pathway to where we imagine we want to go - our imagined future. You can’t do it from where you are, but you can fast-forward into the future and look back, joining the dots and admiring how perfectly the route you took got you to where you wanted to be. What’s your future going to look like - and when you look back from it, which dots will you connect up? © Neil Cowmeadow 2019 Please Like and Share The Thursday Thesis with your friends, family, and your chosen deity. I’d love to hear your comments, along with any ideas you’d care to hurl at me. [email protected]  The Thursday Thesis - 11/7/2019
“...what would life be like if everything in it were perfect?” asked the weasel-faced bloke in the shiny trousers. That was the moment he lost his credibility, and my mind wandered off in search of something less tedious amongst the stands and demonstrations at The Best You – an annual self-help event held in London. You see, I don’t believe in the perfectible self or a perfectible life: there are no such things. Nobody is perfect, and nobody I have ever met or heard of could possibly claim to have a perfect life. Nobody. And this is why I think self-help gurus are off the mark when they peddle the idea of having a perfect life and meeting the perfect person, having the perfect kids and the perfect whatever else you might hanker after. Is self-help a cult which sells the illusions of perfection to its devotees? No, because the guidance provided by the self-help movement and the weasel with the blow-dried hair sometimes works and turns lives around. At the same time, however, it hypes its promises and massively oversells the prospects of being better versions of ourselves. What might be better, more honest – less scammy and tainted by the whiff of snake oil? How about setting aside the idea of everything being perfect and facing up to reality instead? Since perfection is a myth, maybe a more honest pitch would suggest becoming an interim, better version of ourselves instead: not The Best version – just better. Not The Ideal Self – just the latest and best version, to date. Just Better is an improvement, and that better you can be a springboard to the next, even better version of yourself, and that next version the springboard to the version which follows it... Russian sports psychologists dismissed the Ideal Self as an uninspiring and unachievable illusion. They urged their elite sportsmen and women to aim – not for a Perfect or Ideal Self – but to become better versions of themselves, over time. The athletes were asked to visualise what they would be like if they were better than they currently were, then to adopt the habits and behaviours of that better version – the “Target Self”. The athletes were put through this process every few months by their coaches and sports psychologists, refining their Target Self from the new perspective of who they were becoming and recalibrating their Target Self upon their newly-acquired habits, behaviours and attributes which were the results of previous iterations of the process. Behaviourally, this is like a ratchet which moves a person through self-change by degrees; relying upon the gradual attrition of obstacles and unhelpful behaviour by time and effort. If The Weasel had asked everybody in the arena “What would a slightly better version of yourself look like in three months’ time look like?” he would have been asking a better, more actionable question than blathering on about your Perfect Life. But he would have sold a lot less of his books, courses, immersive experiences and mastermind products. The tragedy is that becoming a little better every three months is doable for almost everyone - but hardly anyone would listen to a speaker who suggested they should pursue that course of action, would they? The fact is that people are beguiled by the myth of The Perfect Life and The Perfect You because it is so very sexy, and evolving yourself from who you are now - “Version 1.0”, so to speak – into Version 1.1, then to Version 1.3, and so on is deeply unsexy and will require a smidge of effort and self control. Personally, I’ll take my chances with the upgrade of my Target Self Version to 1.1, and when I’ve completed the upgrade to Version 1.2 I can build Version 1.3, then figure out what Version 1.4 should look like. The Target Self is never perfect, it is only the next upgrade and the next level of experiment – the next step along the path which goes on forever; always changing, twisting; surprising and delighting, with ups and downs to make it all more fun. That sounds like a better way to spend our days than being Perfect, doesn’t it? © Neil Cowmeadow 2019 Please Like and Share The Thursday Thesis with your friends, family, and your chosen deity. I’d love to hear your comments, along with any ideas you’d care to hurl at me. [email protected]  The Thursday Thesis - 4/7/2019
Unless you - like me - are a geek, chances are that you’ve never heard of Warren Buffet, the American investor, businessman and philanthropist. Now, Warren is an interesting guy – maybe even a genius – content to conquer the world of investing from Omaha, Nebraska rather than a glass tower on Wall Street. In fact, Warren thinks differently about almost everything; “observe the masses, do the contrary” could almost be his mantra. Here are a few key points about “The Sage of Omaha”
Apart from his philosophy of thinking long-term and being frugal, Warren has a pretty cool trick up his sleeve when it comes to managing his time – here’s an overview of the process: First he makes a list of his top 25 goals. From that list he identifies the top 5 goals. His top 5 goals go on his List One: The Vital Few things which will make all the difference. The other 20 goals go onto his List Two: the Avoid-At-All-Costs List. I think that’s brilliantly simple – and I’m whittling away at the unnecessary things in my own life in order to focus on the “Vital Few” things which will be of greatest value to me and the people I love. It’s a very clear system, but it requires discipline and focus to stick to it, because it’s hard to let go of things we love – even when they don’t serve us – and it’s hard to resist the temptation of short-term pleasure in order to achieve a long-term goal. But above all else, Buffett’s system demands we understand what is important to us. So, put the kettle on and brew yourself a nice cup of tea, then sit quietly and mull over the questions: What would be on your Vital Few list? What would you have to disregard in order to have only 5 things on your own Vital Few list? Your answers could change your life. © Neil Cowmeadow 2019 Please Like and Share The Thursday Thesis with your friends, family, and your chosen deity. I’d love to hear your comments, along with any ideas you’d care to hurl at me. [email protected] |
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