Episode 105 - Reality Check
The Thursday Thesis - 28/06/2018 “If only they’d said...” You know how it goes, don’t you? Your gut has been telling you for ages that something isn’t right, and it’s finally reached the point where somebody mentions the “elephant in the room”, the great-big problem that everybody knows about, deep down, but nobody wants to talk about. For weeks, months – perhaps even for years – the great grey pachyderm is skirted around, ignored and pretended out of mind. The problem is that reality has a habit of poking its nose in where we’d really rather it didn’t. When that happens, the secret’s out and the bad news is travelling faster than the speed of light. But, often, when the bad news hits you, it’s usually a relief. For one thing, there’ll be no more elephant-dodging, no hoping that somebody else will blink first in the game of looking-through-the-elephant that you’ve been skilfully engaged in for all that time. There’s no more stand-off with the truth. When the faecal matter finally hits the rotary air circulator, the mess is made and you can start cleaning up. If only they’d said something earlier... Former General Electric CEO, Jack Welch, is famous for asking his staff “What’s the reality here?” It’s a great question – it doesn’t presuppose that everything is awesome, and it doesn’t assume that everything is wrong, either. It just asks for an objective assessment of the situation, just the facts. Getting a handle on the reality of any situation is always, always better than trying to react to non-facts, half-truths and pretending. The sooner you get the facts, the sooner you can take appropriate action and create better outcomes. There may be uncomfortable moments. There may be difficult conversations. And yes, there may even be tears. But wouldn’t you rather have those difficult talks sooner, have the uncomfortable moments, and perhaps shed the tears, than to spend your time waiting in dread for them to arrive – spending your present time inhabiting a future you hope will never come? Ask the question, “What’s the reality here?” If your counterpart feels safe enough you might be lucky enough to find out what’s going on – and together you can deal with reality, before it becomes a crisis. And it applies to us, too – as individuals – when we are trying to get clear about our own lives. If we apply The Reality Principle to ourselves, we open ourselves up to being more objective, to square-up and meet situations that are not the way we planned them, long before we are about to be flattened by a rapidly-approaching deadline. If we can get the facts, we may still have time enough to fix things. Now, wouldn’t that be a relief? © Neil Cowmeadow 2018 Please Like and Share The Thursday Thesis with your friends, family, your cat, unicorn and anyone else. I’d love to hear your comments, along with any ideas you’d care to hurl at me. info@NeilCowmeadow.com
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Episode 104 - Resistance is Futile
The Thursday Thesis - 21/06/2018 And then the alien bellowed “Resistance is futile, earthling!” I used to love those old black and white sci-fi B-movies – the ones with titles like The Day The Earth Stood Still, Plan 9 from Outer Space, and the wonderful Invaders From Mars – when they cropped up on the BBC, late at night. Resistance may be futile in the face of Gort, the inscrutable giant robot in The Day the Earth Stood Still, but what I’m thinking about today is a different kind of resistance: not a fictional alien threat arriving from outer space, but a real and thoroughly human kind of Resistance. Call it Fear, call it procrastination, call it what you will – whatever stops you from beginning that one thing you’ve always said you’d do some day – that’s Resisatance. Perhaps the author Stephen Pressfield put it best in his book The War of Art: “Resistance is experienced as fear; the degree of fear equates to the strength of Resistance. Therefore the more fear we feel about a specific enterprise, the more certain we can be that that enterprise is important to us and to the growth of our soul. That's why we feel so much Resistance. If it meant nothing to us, there'd be no Resistance.” A man could catch religion from reading a thing like that... “Fear is good... fear is an indicator. Fear tells us what we have to do...The more scared we are of a work or calling, the more sure we can be that we have to do it.” The thing that matters most to us, you and I, is the thing we are least likely to do. It’s absurd and messed-up, but it’s the truth, nonetheless. Why do we fear to do the thing that matters most to us? Because it matters to us. Does it matter to anyone else, your mum and dad, your old schoolteacher, the lady in the corner shop? No, of course not! Most of these people are utterly indifferent to what you do: come to think of it, most of the people on the planet don’t care at all about what you are doing. If you knew how little time other people spent thinking about you and your stuff, you’d be disappointed: most of them don’t think of you at all you’re not around. Seriously. The Universe doesn’t give a toss about you – so what are you afraid of? The Universe is way too busy to notice anything we are likely to do, create, build, or invent – it’s just too big, too busy and too dark to know we even exist. All that Resistance comes from inside of you and inside of me; but here’s the thing about Resistance: it’s useful. Resistance can guide us and point us in the direction we already know we want to go. When we feel the fear and the repulsive force that stirs in us when we contemplate the big thing that matters to us, I believe it’s a strong indicator of the direction we must go. If the thing scares us – we must go towards it. We must go resolutely towards it and brave the pushback and fear that is Resistance. Our degree of fear will ratchet up as the significance and importance of the task rises – as it becomes more personally significant to us. Resistance is our Pole Star – the True North of our lives. Let’s see where our compass points and set our course towards the dark black heart of Resistance, through the badlands, deserts and jungles where the bandits, dragons and wraiths lie in wait for us... What scares you most? Ask yourself; What would you dare to do, if failure was impossible? What would you dare to do, if your ultimate success was assured? What is the biggest, most audacious thing you can imagine doing? That’s what you should do. Link to: The War of Art © Neil Cowmeadow 2018 Please Like and Share The Thursday Thesis with your friends, family, your cat, unicorn and anyone else. I’d love to hear your comments, along with any ideas you’d care to hurl at me. info@NeilCowmeadow.com Episode 103 - What's In The Box? The Thursday Thesis - 13/06/2018 Of all the things a state’s education system has to be good at, top of the list has to be imposing conformity, suppressing new ideas and discouraging critical thinking. No wonder Tony Blair was a big fan of Education. But when you impose conformity and suppress new ideas, you inevitably kill imagination and murder Play. And when The Right Way to do something is dogmatically enforced, and when non-compliance is punished, children shut themselves down to avoid negative consequences. That’s what school does to kids. An American study found that 98% of pre-schoolers described themselves as highly creative – that’s exactly what we’d expect if we watched a bunch of kids for any length of time: they have no limits on their play or their imaginations. But put the little ‘uns into the sausage machine of school and watch their creativity die down, down, down...until there is little more than a faint glow. Then, when the US school system finally released the researchers’ cohort, the percentage describing themself as highly creative had plummeted to a miserable 5%. This is not good. But what’s worse is that the majority of the now-uncreative kids had a paper trail of documents, reports and exam certificates that proved – categorically and absolutely – that they were not creative. Armed with such undeniable evidence and a negative belief about themselves they will probably shy away from anything related to creativity. I see a lot of this legacy of education in my work. Time after time, guitar students and coaching clients tell me that they are not the creative type; they tell me they’ve never written or created anything since they were kids. Obviously, I’m not going to accept that! So, here’s my favourite game to get playfulness and creativity back on the menu – it’s called “What’s in the Box?” and it came from Patricia Ryan Madson, of Stanford University. I ask my student to close their eyes, then I tell them that I am handing them a box with a lid on it. “There is always something in the box” I tell them. “Now, open the box and tell me what’s inside” Usually the student is reluctant to say anything about what’s in the box, but a little encouragement can work wonders. “A cat” they say, or perhaps “a wrought-iron bathtub”, “a pair of scuba flippers”. What they “find “ in the box is then made the subject of a song, lyric, story or poem. And they simply created it out of thin air – not bad for an uncreative person! As soon as the box is opened, the student has something to work with – a seed of an idea. “Tell me more” I’ll say. “What colour is it?” I’ll ask, if they are having trouble getting started. “Where did it come from, and what is the secret it is hiding?” Together we play with the contents of the box, we toss the ideas back and forth until the student is capable of looking after it - all by themselves – when they begin to be creative again. I’ve lost count of the number of students who have discovered that there is always something in the box, that they were actually highly creative and could enjoy playing this imagination game, and who could cheerfully ask themselves “What’s in the Box?” So tell me - what’s in the box, right now? © Neil Cowmeadow 2018 Please Like and Share The Thursday Thesis with your friends, family, your cat, your unicorn and anyone else you care about. I’d love to hear your comments, along with any ideas you’d care to hurl at me. info@NeilCowmeadow.com Episode 101 - That First Date... The Thursday Thesis - 31/05/2018 As first dates go, this was a stinker – the food was divine, the service immaculate, and my date was... well, beautiful, graceful and vivacious. So she was not the problem, but there was something going terribly wrong. “Aha!” I got it, I knew what it was. Her friends had shown up, uninvited and en masse. Our cosy little table-for-two, tucked away in a tastefully lit corner of a carefully chosen Italian restaurant, was being overwhelmed by their incessant chatter. I didn’t invite them to join us, but they came anyway, the bastards! She reached across to pick up her phone once again, did the screen-swipe thing and stared at me. I raised my eyebrow – a silent question... That was the last time I saw her phone that night. Come to think of it, that was the last time I saw her, too. It seems she didn’t like the message I’d sent to her across the table, via satellite: it read “Look at me. Talk with me. Put away your phone and let’s be human with each other, please.” She texted to say that it wasn't going to work, but that wasn't exactly any kind of news to me. “No biggie...plenty more fish...” I reasoned. Look around you: you see it everywhere – people together, but estranged. From the couple at dinner to the family at play, phones intrude and headphones exclude. How stupid have we become? When you’re with someone, really be with that person; give them your undivided attention and show them some Love. Don’t put the things that matter most at the mercy of the things that matter least: don’t make your kids, your wife, your date or your friends play second fiddle to a Tweet, Facebook update, text message or anything else. Be with them. Be with them completely, and pay attention. Leave your phone in your bag when you are at dinner with your date, partner or spouse. Leave it in the car when you’re with your kids. Believe me, nothing that is more important than the person you are with will come through your phone in the moments you are disconnected from it. Be with them. Your antisocial media will still be there in all its self-indulgent glory when the special time is over and you’re back on the hamster wheel again. Failing to honour the real, face-to-face skin-and-bone people is tragic and it is immoral. Taking a slice of time from someone’s life to be with them and then offering them only the fag-end of what’s left after you’ve “kept up to date” with everything else is a bloody insult to them. Don’t do it. Be with them. Look around you and you’ll see masses of people, hooked up to – and hooked on – their phones. Notice how often they (we) check for new messages – even at inappropriate times? We’re like a bunch of crackheads in need of a score every thirty seconds – it’s pathetic and it’s tragic. Ask yourself, honestly, do you own the phone or does it own you? Now do yourself a big one - write this down: Leave your phone in the car, put it in your bag, silence it completely. If you have balls of steel you could even turn it off – if you think you’ll be able to cope with the anxiety that you will feel should you dare to do such a thing. Put your headphones away and grow up! © Neil Cowmeadow 2018
The Thursday Thesis - 24/05/2018 “One HUNDRED blog posts! How cool is that?” I gushed as I drove Alex to school last Thursday morning.I'd jammed my moonface into "Smug" mode and It wasn't getting any better... The Urchin wasn’t impressed: he never is these days. This week his affectation is being “utterly indifferent” to all suggestions and ideas that don’t involve him spending his entire weekend playing games online with school-friends. The joys of parenthood... “So, Dad” he asked, “why do you write your blog – what’s it actually for?” I paused, and said “It’s a good question, when you stop to think about it: why does anyone write, especially when there is no expectation of reward?” “So...?” he said. “Firstly, Alex, I write for you. I hope that you’ll read my ramblings and “get it” – that you’ll have access to some of the things I’ve found useful, and have that access at a younger age than I did.” “And secondly, I write for myself because I love the process of writing - the great distillation and clarification that I get when I write about things. When you think on paper you can handle bigger, more important things, I think.” “But deep down, right at the bottom of everything I do – teaching, writing, landlording, coaching, mentoring, blogging and podcasting – I really just want to help people – anyone, anywhere – to see themselves as better than they have been told they are. I hope that, in some small way, my words will resonate with another person - I suppose I'm trying to send out a ripple into the World.: I may never know that person, but if just one idea in just post helps just one person to raise themselves up and have a better life in some way, then it will have been worth my time and energy writing a hundred posts.” Isn’t that what life is all about, too? I ask you, please, to DO something - right now - to lift someone else up. I don’t care how small or big a thing you do, just do it. A smile, a hug, or a kiss; a kind word or a thoughtful act: do something. To you, it might only be a smile you give away: but that smile might just change a tiny something in another person’s life. It’s only a ripple, but it’s a start. © Neil Cowmeadow 2018 Please Like and Share The Thursday Thesis with your friends, family, your cat, unicorn 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 - 17/05/2018 I could have kicked myself. Come to think of it, I felt so stupid at that moment that it would have been a better idea to hire someone to kick me instead. There had been a dim recognition, somewhere in the deeper recesses of the old grey matter, that I’d soon bepublishing the 100th post of this blog – The Thursday Thesis: I knew I’d been posting once a week for almost two years, I just wasn’t sure about how many posts I’d made. My inner troublemaker was playing up again, telling me how awesome I was to have been so consistent and got something out every single week. He also said I should have a celebration to mark the event, and to be proud of myself for yada, yada,yada... But I had a problem – I didn’t know how many posts I had actually made. I’d always posted by date, rather than by episode or post number, and I had no easy way to accurately track the number of posts. Bum! It takes a lot of work to re-name all the posts in a blog and add an episode number, then to re-name the original document file in the archive. It’s also intensely dull, unless you can transmogrify the process into a game and make it fun for yourself – perhaps by thinking of the process as “capturing and branding” the wayward episodes. Life’s like that, too. So, here’s the thing I want to share: start out as you mean to proceed. When you begin something, be it health, relationship, financial, or whatever – begin with a vision of how things will look when they are done. I hadn’t started the blog that way: I just thought it might be fun to share some of the things I wish I’d learned a lot sooner. So I didn’t think of how many posts I might make, about the milestones and celebrations I’d miss out on if I didn’t keep score, or how to refer to previous episodes. It was an embarrassing planning failure, frankly. Next week I’ll post the 100th episode on this blog, so I am going to celebrate the milestone. Celebrating is something we could all do a lot more of – especially me. When I was awarded a First I didn’t want to go through the rigmarole of attending a graduation ceremony – I think that I was secretly afraid of being rumbled as the imposter I knew myself to be. Fortunately, my then-girlfriend was a lot smarter than me and persuaded me to collect my degree in person. Without her intervention I would have missed a memorable day and more or less dismissed my achievement, so I’m grateful for her wisdom. But we all do it, don’t we? We all seem to dismiss our achievements; it’s a British thing, I reckon. There’s a daft idea that anyone who celebrates their achievements is arrogant, big-headed and probably not very nice. It’s totally wrong-headed, of course, but it’s very common. One friend of mine has gone from not running at all to running 10km, solo, in less than six months: not too shabby for a woman in her sixties, is it? But she’ll have none of it: none of your fancy-pants celebrations, no “well done” messages, and no recognition of her achievements in her own mind. Personally, I’m impressed by people who set themselves a target, plan their trajectory, and launch. Oddly, their actually hitting the target is not the main thing for me – it’s the intention and the action that matter most, in my opinion. The medals, certificates, and T-shirts are just markers of what has been achieved. In themselves they are mere trash, worthless clutter – but they are concrete evidence of what happened before race day and before exam day. If we examine each fresh new day we can find something to celebrate, every single day of our lives. Embracing our own achievements can release a spurt of dopamine (your brain’s feel-good chemical) into your system, setting-up the anticipation of more and greater rewards. What’s your celebration going to be about, today? What awesome thing was it that you did? How awesome are you, today? Write it down... Do it more... © Neil Cowmeadow 2018 Please Like and Share The Thursday Thesis with your friends, family, your cat, unicorn 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 - 10/05/2018 Sometimes, not very often, you see something you can’t explain; something that stops you in your tracks and makes you go “Huh?!” I’ve seen a lot of that sort of thing over the years, and some of it I could make sense of; well, most of it anyway. Some things, though, are just so damned odd and bizarre that reason cannot reconcile the observation with any explanation. That’s magic, or else it’s something that looks like magic to me. I saw a great deal of magic last weekend, when I spent two days in London, improving my hypnosis and NLP skills. The trainers were TV hypnotist and change expert Paul McKenna and “The Godfather of NLP” - Dr Richard Bandler. I stood, slack-jawed and incredulous, unable to debunk what I both saw and experienced. Today is Thursday, and I’m still processing what I saw at the event and assessing its ramifications: this could take a little time... I’m working on it. For now, I’ll just remind myself of - and share with you - a few truths that were demonstrated most forcefully and seemingly magically. Print them out and read them every day, once as you rise, and once again as you retire.
© Neil Cowmeadow 2018 Please Like and Share The Thursday Thesis with your friends, family, your cat, unicorn and anyone else. I’d love to hear your comments, along with any ideas you’d care to hurl at me. Neil@cowtownguitars.net Why Your Haters Hate You... The Thursday Thesis - 03/05/18 A little while ago I posted a short Facebook Live video into a large-ish group aimed at guitar players. The clip was a simple explanation of the biomechanics behind one aspect of playing the guitar. I was clear, unambiguous, and put my points across logically and sensibly. That was when the hate began. Oh my word – I had no idea that demonstrating reality meant that I enjoyed giving same-sex oral pleasure! At least, that’s what one hater said, in not so many words. Other “keyboard-warriors” piled-in to demonstrate their ten cents’ worth of ignorance and intolerance, clearly angry that I should question their beliefs and their gods – their blessed Clapton, Vaughan, Hendrix and the rest of ‘em... Then I got it: they weren’t talking about me at all – they were telling me about themselves. It was beautiful – rather than consider the facts and my reasoning, the haters attacked and proclaimed their own positions. I’d never seen it so clearly before: haters don’t hate You, they hate how you make them feel; and that’s a big difference. At the time it was a radical idea, but now it seems obvious. Whenever you or I step outside of what other people think and believe to be right, we risk the opprobrium of those other people. You see, when we suggest a different way of seeing things, a different opinion, or ideas which conflict with the groupthink, we provoke a defensive response from the group. The group tightens and “circles the wagons” to defend itself from the perceived danger of being outdone, bested, proved wrong or foolish. Very often, internal divisions within the group are set aside to defend the common interest against the outsider, the blasphemer, the heretic. Such is life. It’s never comfortable being different: ask anyone who has challenged the status quo, a governing elite, the prevailing wisdom of “experts” and the conventions of academics about the backlash and ostracism. That’s how power and influence are exercised. Some people just hate you, and you are going to have to deal with that fact if you are to be of any consequence in the world, because the only way you are not going to upset someone is to be so insignificant and inoffensive that you might as well have never lived at all. Getting your first hater is a marker, if you will, of significance: somebody, somewhere was so influenced by what you did, said, wrote, sang, painted, danced to or drove that they took time out from their lives to comment on your life. How cool is that? The hater gave more attention to hating you than they did to pursuing their own life! So, get over one simple thing: whatever you do in life somebody, somewhere is not going to like it. You’ll probably never meet that person, and they don’t know you well enough to hate you for who you are. They are strangers who didn’t like how you made them feel when their prejudices came under pressure from your ideas. That’s all a hater is – a faceless person who feels bad because you made them uncomfortable – lashing out at someone who dared to think differently. It’s dangerous and stupid to shut ourselves down and censor our thinking or beliefs because it upsets someone we’ve never met. Remember that the ultimate rational position is to please at least ourselves. Remind ourselves that other people’s opinions of us are inconstant and beyond our control, so remembering to please at least ourselves is the only logical course to follow. Some people will hate you for saying “X”, others will revile you for uttering “Y”, and then there are those fanatics who go berserk when you dare to impugn their sacred “Z”... Look, whatever you do in this life of yours, you’re going to upset someone, somewhere. Deal with that fact and crack-on with living your own life. The bottom-line is that haters always hate someone, and today might be your turn; so, take the hate – when it comes - as a compliment and a testament to your significance, then wave at them with one finger and carry on with making a difference in The World. © Neil Cowmeadow 2018
Please Like and Share The Thursday Thesis with your friends and family – maybe they’ll “get it”, too; maybe you’ll send out a ripple into someone else’s life. Would that be a good thing? I’d love to hear your comments, along with any ideas you’d care to hurl at me. Neil@cowtownguitars.net You’re So Weird!
The Thursday Thesis - 26/04/18 Nina was not a happy camper – not by a long stretch. The plan I’d persuaded her to test was working beautifully, and people were noticing... Nina had been very down and depressed for a few years, so I invited her to experiment with being positive, optimistic, and unconditionally happy - just for a change. The test was supposed to last for a few weeks – just to see if she liked being deliberately happy better than being depressed. Now, it wasn’t that Nina had a problem with depression – she was very good at it, as a matter of fact – but it wasn’t making her happy or fulfilled. No surprise there, then. Anyway, she agreed to play my “stupid mind-game” and, six weeks into the programme, she was having a lot more fun, laughing more and thoroughly getting under the skin of her downbeat, unhappy co-workers. In fact, she’d been so happy that the misery-guts crew were convinced she’d either fallen in love or found God. Either way, it wasn’t going down well with the glumsters that she’d dare to flounce into work and actually enjoy her day. Such effrontery! They asked her to stop being so damned happy, because she was getting them down! They asked what was wrong with her. They said it wasn’t normal for someone to be that happy! Then it happened – someone called her “weird”. Now, Nina’s a shy sort of woman who likes to keep a low profile, so the W bomb rattled her mightily. All I could do was grin at her story. “You are weird” I said, “That’s what I like about you”. She threw me one of those looks that somehow manage to convey disbelief, fury and bewilderment all at the same time. “How can it ever be good to be weird?” She asked. “Because weird is such a fabulous word, and such a fabulous thing to be”, I said. I pulled down my Oxford Dictionary of English and flapped around a bit until I found the definition of weird. Here’s what it said: “WEIRD: adj. 1, Suggesting something supernatural, unearthly. Informal: very strange, bizarre. 2, archaic, chiefly Scottish: a person’s destiny. ORIGIN: Old English wyrd “destiny” of Germanic origin. The adjective (late Middle English) originally meant “having the power to control destiny”, and was used especially in the Weird Sisters, originally referring to The Fates...” Nina considered that definition for a moment, and I could see the understanding turning the corners of her mouth upwards. She “got it” - why I believe that the nicest thing anyone has ever said to me is “You are so weird!” It even beats that precious and tender moment when my then-girlfriend said I was the oddest person she’d ever met. I understand that many people would be insulted if they were called weird – but I revel in it. Why would I choose to be pleased to be weird? Because the word itself denotes other-worldliness, the supernatural and the mysterious: what’s not to like about that? I also love the connotation of being able to control my own destiny. As for Nina, she’s happy to be weird, and her colleagues still think she’s weird to be happy. Which side of the fence are you on, and how wonderfully weird are you going to be today? I’m off to dree my own weird and be annoyingly chirpy. Happy Thursday, you weirdo! he Thursday Thesis - 19/04/2018 Why Being Filthy Rich might be a Bad Thing We’d all like to be “filthy rich”, wouldn’t we? It stands to reason that to be rolling in readies would be a good thing, doesn’t it? I’m sure we’d all benefit from having a few million more in the bank. So why aren’t we? Could it be tied up with how we talk and think about money? There’s a lot of research out there that suggests there’s no shortage of money, so where is it? It’s in the hands of those rich bastards – the Filthy Rich, of course! But what if you suddenly became Filthy Rich – how could it ever be a bad thing? Let’s take the phrase apart, starting with Filthy. Do you want to be filthy? Notice how that word sounds when you isolate it, sort of dirty, grimy and unpleasant? Now let’s look at the other part of the phrase: Rich. First of all, Rich is a comparative word used to contrast abundance with lack. And, of course, Rich is also a political term, often used by those who don’t have money to attack those who do, usually with the intention of “redistributing” (a euphemism for stealing) some of that money. Forced redistribution (theft under menace – or mugging, as it is known in street terms) is immoral and counterproductive because it removes the incentive to produce or excel whilst simultaneously reinforcing the “right” to a free ride. Fair tax is one thing – and remember that you have a legal duty to pay only the minimum amount of tax due in law – but penalising the successful because they’ve worked, invested, saved in order to improve their lot under their own steam? That’s truly immoral. But here’s the thing – “rich” people get rich by providing “poor” people (also known as customers) with a product or service that the customers value more than they value their money. So a fair exchange is struck, and the money passes from one person to another. No duress, no coercion: it’s an exchange of perceived value, that’s all. It’s not political. But, depending on the political climate in which your ideas were formed, it is possible that your idea of wealth has been distorted and loaded with negative images of money and of the people who have money – for example, the Filthy Rich, the Stinking Rich, Dirty Money, Filthy Lucre... you know the type of thing, don’t you? Now if your images and descriptions of people with money are semantically loaded with negatives, then you won’t want to be that kind of person. In fact you’ll probably aim to be the opposite of that kind of person, and since the opposite of Rich is Poor, you may well be unconsciously aiming to be poor. If your attitudes and beliefs carry the idea that there’s something wrong, filthy or immoral about being wealthy, you will likely remain poor. Furthermore, if you ever get to your mental threshold of acceptable wealth, you’ll find a way to get rid of the uncomfortably large sum of money that feels wrong for you to have. That’s why so many lottery winners are skint again in next to no time after their big wins. Having money simply makes you more of who you are, for better or worse. If you are a fool when you have a little money, you’ll probably still be a fool when you have lots of money – but the effects of your foolishness will be amplified by the leverage of your new-found (and probably fleeting) wealth. Similarly, if you are a caring and generous person when you have a little money, your capacity to care and be generous will be amplified by the leverage of wealth. The money itself is neutral – it doesn’t care: money is neither good nor bad. As a kid I was told that rich people were greedy and selfish, and I believed it. Who actually said that sort of thing? People who had no money, of course! But I’ve met many very wealthy and successful people over the years, and I’ve completely changed my mind, because the richer and more successful people are, the more positive, generous and caring they are. They became wealthy and successful because of those traits, and the money amplified what was already there. Perhaps today would be a good day to examine your beliefs about wealth, the way you think about money and the people who have a lot more money than you. What do you reckon? © Neil Cowmeadow 2018
Please Like and Share The Thursday Thesis with your friends, family, your llama, unicorn and anyone else. I’d love to hear your comments, along with any ideas you’d care to hurl at me. Neil@cowtownguitars.net “By the end of Today...”
The Thursday Thesis - 12/4/2018 I am writing this post to one person in particular - a friend – to remind them of a conversation we had about staying positive and becoming buoyant whilst navigating the seas of negativity. It all began with a little book. One little book and a single word. The word was – and still is - “Today”. My little book and that one word have made a big difference in my life: perhaps you will try them too. It is widely known that goals and ambitions are vital to achievement and happiness, and I’ve written about goals before on the blog, though I’ve mostly discussed long-term goals. So, what about short-term goals? I have set daily goals for business and work for decades, and I recommend them for anyone. The problem with business and work goals was that I didn’t set any personal daily goals or remind myself of some important parts of my life. Dumb. I’d blundered along doing work-stuff with a sense of purpose and a timeline to get things done, but other things fell apart from neglect and error that I should have known better than to fall into. Dumb. But a few years ago I was listening to Peter Thomson - a very charismatic speaker and trainer - describing what he did every morning, before he did anything else at all. I adopted the practise the very same day, reasoning that a few minutes in the morning and a couple more, last thing at night, couldn’t do any harm and might just do a little good. They are the most important minutes of the day. Every day – whilst the coffee machine warms up - I open my little book and write my daily journal entry. I don’t write much, just four things I want to be true by the end of the day, and a list of what I have to be grateful for, and what I want to have, in order to be grateful for that, too. I pick up my very best fountain pen and begin with the date and these words: “By the end of Today, I will it to be true that...” I then list three or four things that I must have in my life, like this: “By the end of Today, I will it to be true that:
My list is almost always the same these days, but it has evolved over the years. The second half of the morning journal is the list of what you have to be grateful for, or want to have and be grateful for. So my journal reads like this “Today I am grateful for life, Alex (my son), health, home, food, friends, love, honesty, courage, helping people, confidence, wealth, ambition, drive, patience, clarity, energy, strength, grit, laughter, optimism, choices, wisdom; my big heart and healing gifts” I’m particularly proud of the Big Heart thing, because it was my great friend Krish’s description of me, whilst Jason - a Shaman and friend – described my teaching skills as “Healing Gifts”. Now I’ll confess to feeling like a fraud when I started journaling, and I almost quit after a few days because I didn’t feel any different. But I stuck with it, and I’m so glad that I did. After several weeks it started to feel natural to write positive things about myself every day, and to remind myself of what I would do in the day ahead to be a better man and to hold myself to account. Unsurprisingly, the days began to pass with more vitality, self-care, and fun. That’s what Peter shared, and it’s what I do every day, and what I want you to do - from today onwards – for the rest of your life. And now we come to the end of the day journal: it takes around two minutes – so don’t skip it. Before sleep, just reflect on the day, and write:
Then add the good stuff from your day, perhaps something like this:
DO this every day, and you will inevitably begin to feel curiously uplifted as you recognise and record the many positive facets your life already has, and begin to attract more good things to you. Constantly reminding yourself of what you want, value and are grateful for is crucial to success and happiness. This daily routine primes your Reticular Activating System* to seek out what you want more of and what is important to you. This is the difference between taking aim at a target and randomly firing in all directions! Start your own journal today, and see where it takes you. Keep it positive and believe in yourself. To you, my friend, I say this: you are enough, and you are not broken. *see the previous blog post 08/03/2018, The RAS. © Neil Cowmeadow 2018 Please Like and Share The Thursday Thesis with your friends, family, your pet squirrel, monkfish, unicorn 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 5/4/2018 My friend Simon mentioned them in passing, and his words caught my ear. “...and that’s The Spirit Bead” he said “Oooh!” I responded – “I love that...The Spirit Bead...yes, very good. Beautiful.” Leaping from the Middle East to the Prairies of North America with a single bound, Simon linked the parallel practices of Moslem rugmakers in Persia to the Nations of the Dakota Sioux, Blackfoot, and many more tribes of North America. We had been talking about perfectionism’s long shadow, during an interview for my upcoming podcast, and Simon explained to me how traditional Persian rug-makers always include a tiny flaw in every rug: these deliberate errors are called “Persian Flaws”. Their belief is that only Allah can create perfection, and that to create a flawless rug or carpet is an offence against Him. Fascinating. Native American jewellery makers also included deliberate errors in their works, in honour of the Spirit World, and as an acceptance that man is imperfect. You can still see the practice today, in the Heishii beadwork made by the Navajo and Kewa Pueblo people. In both Moslem and Native American traditions, everything is made with an error included in it. Since only Allah and the Great Spirit can create perfection, the deliberate inclusion of an error reminds us that everyone is imperfect and flawed in some way. Call it a Spirit Bead or a Persian Flaw, the eye is drawn to the flaw. Whilst the great majority of the rug, or necklace is perfect - but there’s just that one little thing that bugs us and fascinates us... What’s your Persian Flaw, your Spirit Bead? Who cares what we call it – it’s our Spirit Bead that we are best known for, isn’t it? We most often remember the flawed and imperfect people because they are unusual, unexpected and strange enough to capture attention. As a guitarist, I am drawn to the imperfections present in older recordings – before digital editing made it possible to edit such things out. That’s where the “soul” is in music. In the tiny hesitations and rushes that move the player outside of perfect timing there is the musical magic of what we call “swing”. I truly believe that the dullness of playing dead on the beat is the origin of the modern slang “deadbeat”. Spare me the pristine perfection of some modern music, please. I remember when the Pure Trance music producer, Rich Mowatt - aka Solarstone - asked me to include additional pick and string noise in a guitar overdub/solo. There’s a man who “gets it”! My ears listen for the sonic Spirit Beads... And, as I said, we seek out the Spirit Bead in the people we meet. I’m not perfect, not by a long road, and I count my blessings that I am not. Perfect would be so dull! Perfect means that there’ no room to improve, no cracks to fix and no leaks to plug. Perfect means that we are irredeemably “done”. Nothing left to learn or do: I’m done. Can you imagine how depressing that would be? How dull it would be to know everything, to be perfect at everything? Where’s the growth? Where’s the failure to rise up again from? Where’s the falling-down and the bloody knee? If there’s one thing I’ve learned over the years it’s this: enjoy being yourself and enjoy your imperfections, because if you were to subtract your imperfections there’d be sod-all left except for the amorphous grey eternity of perfection. Yuk. I’m thoroughly imperfect, and – damn it all – I’m proud of it. So, to give The Finger to a world which worships perfection, I’d like to propose a toast to imperfection. Here’s to being gloriously glitch, fabulously flawed and delightfully defective; here’s to our Spirit Beads, our Persian Flaws, because they are all that stand between us and the eternal sterility of perfection. Now go and be Gloriously Imperfect: go and show off your Spirit Bead. © Neil Cowmeadow 2018
Please Like and Share The Thursday Thesis with your friends, family, your cat, unicorn 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 - 29/03/2018 In the course of the last 18 years teaching people to play guitar and make music, I’ve become familiar (not in the biblical sense, you understand) with an exotic beast: The Unicorn of Cleverness. Such is the beauty and power of The Unicorn of Cleverness that both students and myself have been lured off the path of simplicity and elegance by this scintillating creature. Whenever The Unicorn of Cleverness puts in its appearance...“Ooh, look – a Unicorn!” we cry, with glee. But here’s the thing, the moment a Unicorn prances into our heads, then “POOF!” rational thought goes down the pub for a swift loosener and a bag of scratchings: and it’s all downhill from there. And we are always looking for Unicorns, you know. At this point I’d like to go on record as stating that I have nothing against Unicorns per se. I’d go so far as to say that one of my best friends is a Unicorn, but “she’s not the Unicorn you’re looking for”, as Obi Won would have put it. But Unicorns are really intellectual vermin: an infestation of the psyche. Here’s the problem: when we are learning something new, exploring a new idea, we can too often presume the presence of some esoteric or special quality one needs to advance into competence – that’s our Unicorn. Our lack of skill and understanding makes us fill in the blanks with The Unicorn of Cleverness And nowhere is this more prevalent than in “The Arts” – music, literature, painting and the like – the domains of talent and inspiration. And Unicorns. It’s all bollocks, of course. The Unicorn we’ve been lured into believing in is nothing more than a swaybacked old mare with a carrot stuck on her forehead, hyped and puffed-up beyond recognition. I posit thus: there is no such thing as special talent or inspiration - everything is learned, and everything is trainable. Ever see a baby, newborn and screaming, reach for a paintbrush? Me neither. So much for the “born artist”, the “innate gift” and the “talented genius”. Everything is learned, and everything is learnable. So, logically, I have a problem with the presumption of Talent and the pretensions of The Arts with a capital “A”. Some practitioners of The Arts would have you believe in their special gifts and their uncommon inspirations – their Unicorns of Cleverness, which are available to you at a knock-down price, of course. In lieu of understanding that technical skill, willingness to fail, and airtight self-confidence, we fall in love with the toxic myth of Talent: better known as The Unicorn of Cleverness. Many of my students have spent decades believing in Unicorns, and will fight like tigers to prevent anyone taking that belief away. I ‘m a teacher. I slay Unicorns © Neil Cowmeadow 2018
Please Like and Share The Thursday Thesis with your friends, family, your Unicorn 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 - 22/3/2018 The Joy of Biting Off More Than You Can Chew I’ve done it again. To the people who know me personally it will come as no surprise to hear that I’m in over my head, yet again. It’s a familiar pattern – commit to something without knowing how to do it, then working like mad to be just good enough to get by, and then working even harder to get good at it, then harder still to become outstanding, and then keep learning. Some people say it’s stupid – but it works for me. This week I’m writing and recording the first six episodes of a podcast designed to share what I’ve learned about the business of tutoring in nearly twenty years of my guitar teaching business. I have 171 episode topics on my list, so this should be a long-term thing – if I cover one topic per weekly episode it will take me over three years to clear my basic list... Why would I do that? Chewing muscles. That’s what I’ll grow by doing the podcast: strong and powerful chewing muscles – the ability to handle a challenge. Comfort bores me, and I have to have a new bone to chew every so often. However big your chewing muscles are, there’s room for more. Find your challenge or obstacle and start with a nibble, then a small bite, then a chomp... Sink your teeth into it; then chew like billy-oh! I don’t know about you, but I’m feeling peckish. Gnash, gnash! © Neil Cowmeadow 2018
Please Like and Share The Thursday Thesis with your friends, family, and the people you want to enrage. I’d love to hear your comments, along with any ideas you’d care to hurl at me. Neil@cowtownguitars.net The Thursday Thesis - 15/03/2018 Last week I invited you to look at the way that everything boils down to One Good Reason. Logically, this week I’d ask you to consider having a thousand Good Reasons. I’m not being contrary or wilfully difficult – though I am very good at that, too. No, what I’m talking about is having your One Good Reason, and setting it atop a thousand smaller Good Reasons – usually called goals - that mark out your path, way-mark your journey, provide reminders and spurs to compel you to act in pursuit of that ultimate One Good Reason. How does that sound? You see, here’s what I’ve learned about goals: they are powerful and compelling when they are the right reasons; and they are “meh!” when they are not important to us. The more goals - reasons to act - you have, and the more powerful they are, the more likely you are to take action to capture that goal. Makes sense doesn’t it? So why do so many people not have a goal: and even fewer have definite multiple goals? Beyond the vaguest of half-arsed wishes, like “I want to be happy”, very few people have goals at all. And let’s face it, if your wishy-washy wish is to “be happy”, how are you going to get there, and how will you know when you’ve achieved that? What if you had 1000 definite, written-down goals for your life? And what if every one of those 1000 goals led you along an inevitable path to your One Good Reason? How would that feel? Imagine yourself, every day, taking action designed to bring your own dreams to life – how would you feel about the day ahead of you? Imagine having a plan for your own life; a plan that transported you toward becoming the sort of person you’d most like to meet? Tragically, most people spend more time planning their summer holidays than they ever do planning their lives. And most people spend more time planning their wedding than they do planning their married life. So there’s a game for us to play this week, all about figuring out what we want and how it supports our One Good Reason – the one thing that gives us fire in the belly, makes us glow and makes us GO! Grab yourself a notebook and pen, because research indicates that writing by hand causes us to re-process information and learn more deeply. Got it? Great. Here we go, then. Make a list of everything you want. It doesn’t matter if what you want is material, spiritual, financial, animal, mineral or vegetable! Don’t edit yourself or judge whether you’re right to want what you want. There is no good or bad, there is only what you want. Keep going until you have at least 100 things on your list, and keep the list open so you can add anything else that presents itself as we play the rest of the game. Now, look down the list again and add a tag to each line, indicating which area of your life each goal fits into. The tags I use are
Let’s suppose that your goal was to finish writing the first draft of your book, telling the story of a childhood incident. At the top of column 1 you’d write “When I complete my first draft, I will enjoy...” and list all of the good things that will happen when you achieve your goal. At the top of column 2 you’d write “When I complete my first draft, I will not suffer...” and list all of the bad things that completing your goal will prevent. At the top of column 3, write “If I fail to complete my first draft, I will be unable to enjoy...” and start listing all the positive things which may never happen if you fail to achieve your goal. And At the top of column 4 write “If I don’t complete my first draft, I will be forced to accept...” and list all the negative outcomes that could happen if you do not achieve your goal. When you spend time doing this, you’ll have over a thousand good reasons to capture your goals. Only column 1 is built on the anticipated pleasure of your positive outcomes, whilst columns 2, 3 and 4 are based on the fear of negative consequences. Fear and pain will get you moving much more effectively than anticipation of pleasure. That’s what makes this goal-setting routine so powerful: it’s more than a list of what you want – it’s a list of the horrors you’ll have to endure if you don’t get what you want. Powerful stuff. © Neil Cowmeadow 2018
Remember to Like and Share The Thursday Thesis with your friends, family, and anyone else. I’d love to hear your comments, along with any ideas you’d care to hurl at me. Neil@cowtownguitars.net 20180308 Gimme a Reason... The Thursday Thesis - 8/03/2018 In life, everything boils down to One Good Reason. Sounds simplistic, doesn’t it? “Surely you can’t be suggesting that life is just about one thing?” I hear you say. That’s exactly what I am suggesting, and don’t call me “surely”. Yes – life is really all about one thing. Find that one thing and give it capital letters, make it your One Thing and pay attention to it every single day. “All well and good,” I hear you say, “but how do you know what your One Thing is, smartarse?” I thought you’d never ask! Simply ask yourself a few questions, pay attention to your own answers, and ask yourself what lies behind those answers. It sounds pretty simple, but when I’m coaching and mentoring people it’s rare to find a client who has given their One Thing much thought. Even businesses that have been successful and want to develop can be fuzzy about their One Thing. So, grab a cup of coffee, a pen and some nice paper or a notebook. Divide the paper into five columns and get settled – you’re about to discover your One Thing... We’ll start with this simple question:What do I want? Write “I Want” at the top of the left column and immediately start writing your answers down underneath it, one item per line. Don’t edit yourself, just write it all down without worrying about whether you are right to want something or not. Keep writing until you have filled a couple of pages, because you’re aiming for a hundred or more answers. Take a sip of your now-cold coffee and write “Why do I Want It” at the top of the second column. Once you’ve done that, go down your list of things you want, line by line, and answer the question: “Why do I want that?” writing your answers down in column 2 as you go. This will give you your Why behind your What: a superficial understanding of why you want what you want. For example, if you wanted to start your own business, your Why might be that you can escape your day-job. Still with me? Good, because here’s where it gets interesting – where the gold comes. At the top of the third column write “Why do I want it?”, and repeat the previous step. Now you’re peeling back another layer, finding the Why behind the Why behind the What. So your “I want to start my own business so that I can escape from my day-job” will be followed by the reason why escaping your day-job is a good thing. “I want to start my own business so that I can escape from my day-job, because that job is going nowhere.” Now do the exact same thing in column four, with exactly the same question: “Why do I want it?” This will get you deeper into your motivation - the Why behind the Why behind the Why behind the What. This is what’s really driving your wants and needs: this is the really powerful force behind you. At this deep level, some of your answers might make you uncomfortable, but they will also alert you to problems in your behaviours and motivations. Around about now you will begin to see that certain things you thought you wanted are not so important after all, and you can discard them. You might begin to notice that what you thought you wanted is only a vehicle to take you to some other destination: a marker for your deeper purpose, so to speak. Your “I want to start my own business so that I can escape from my day-job, because that job is going nowhere and I want to be in control of what I do every day.” Now repeat the same thing for column five, and be really fearless about this one, because there may be tears... “I want to start my own business so that I can escape from my day-job, because that job is going nowhere, I want to be in control of what I do every day and I want to express myself through my work”. Add as many more columns and sheets of paper as you want. Just keep asking “Why?” until you hit your deepest Why – and you’ll know it when you hit it. This is the moment when your One Thing will snap into focus with a suddenness and force that will shake you. Instantly, you’ll know it. And it will feel so obvious and natural to you that you will wonder why you never really saw it before. Write it down. Look at it. Admire it. That’s your One Thing. Now get busy doing it. © Neil Cowmeadow 2018 Remember to Like and Share The Thursday Thesis with your friends, family, and anyone else. I’d love to hear your comments, along with any ideas you’d care to hurl at me. Neil@cowtownguitars.net Same Difference...
The Thursday Thesis - 22/02/2018 We humans are a contradictory lot, aren’t we? As a race we are always saying one thing and doing something completely different. Fickle, fickle, fickle! We have an inbuilt drive to experience change, novelty, difference – it’s human nature. Of course this manifests itself in unexpected ways: nothing is ever as straightforward as it seems the moment humans start getting involved. But here’s the thing: if you have lots of change you’ll crave a change away from change. Anyone who experiences massive ongoing change will begin to seek stability and sameness. You just can’t please some people... So there’s a sort-of continuum in human behaviour – an imaginary line – with the need for change at one end and the need for sameness at the opposite end; and whichever end of the continuum you are on, your chances of success are low as you shuttle repeatedly from one end to the other, trying to satisfy both needs. As you and I both know, chopping and changing reduces our chances of success, be it living more healthily, building a business, or learning to play a musical instrument. The constant flitting from one bright-shiny new thing to the next is a dead-certain way to never achieve very much, as every switch incurs a time-cost whilst preliminaries are completed and new skills are learned. In a contrary way, too much sameness can be a massive contributing factor to failure: we simply get bored and lose interest. So how do we come to terms with these opposing behaviours? How do we stay interested and have enough variety whilst simultaneously staying focused on our One Big Thing? The answer is to fold the change-sameness continuum in half, so that both ends point the same way. Now your sameness and difference needs are aligned. And that’s the magic trick: make sure that everything you do is congruent and consistent with your values and your One Big Thing. It’s that simple, and it’s that complex. Within the limits of whatever it is you most want to do, you have absolute freedom to do different activities, to experiment and explore – as long as you stay in line with your One Big Thing. The penny dropped with me when I realised that everything I do is aimed at helping people. When I’m teaching guitar, I’m aiming to save people years of precious time, frustration and self-doubt. That’s the real, deep-down goal – I suppose you could say that the guitar is the means to that end. When I’m with my coaching clients I’m helping them to change their lives for the better, relieve their pain, release them from some constraint. Likewise, when I’m working with business owners to grow their businesses, I’m helping them to get past their sticking-points or to change their perspectives so that they can better serve more people by solving their customers’ problems. My property business provides safe, secure homes for people in the long-term. Families need not worry about the house being sold from under their feet on a landlord’s whim, because my business exit strategy is death! And when I write a book, a special report, or even this blog post, I’m not writing to show off or make myself look good - I’m trying to pass on something that’s helped me, in the hope it will help another person. Perhaps it will help you or someone you share it with. So everything adds up to just two things - just five words. Those five words have been the first line in my daily journal every day for three years: “have fun and help people”. Everything points one way, but there is always enough variety to prevent me from ever getting bored. And if I can “have fun and help people” every day then I will consider myself successful and that my life will have been well-lived, assuming I manage to live long enough to offset all the stupid, hurtful and selfish things I used to do! So, what’s your One Big Thing? What gets you excited, keeps you awake and buzzing deep into the night? Figure that out and you’ll have the consistency that you need. Do different things which all serve your mission and you’ll have all the variety you need to keep the fire in your soul burning, day after day, year after year. It’s all different, and yet it’s all just the same. Just like me and just like you. © Neil Cowmeadow 2018 Remember to Like and Share The Thursday Thesis with your friends, family, 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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