The Thursday Thesis - 30/08/2018
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The Thursday Thesis - 09/08/2018 Say the words “I am” and your entire nervous system stands to attention. Tell me what you do and I’ll likely drift off to sleep... It’s a funny thing, but when you think of those two statements the chances are that you’ll conflate them down to being the same thing – even though they are chalk and cheese to anyone interested in making changes to their lives and behaviours. Here’s why they are different: “I do” is an activity statement, whilst “I am” is an identity statement. Whenever we say that we do something we are just talking about an activity, a behaviour pattern: it’s just something we do. For example, when someone tells me that they play guitar, they are telling me what they do. This is different to when someone tells me that they are a guitarist: in this case they are telling me that playing guitar is a vital part of who they consider themselves to be. The same goes for a person who repeatedly puts lighted cigarettes in their mouth but wants my help to stop doing it. The subject who tells me that she “...is a smoker” or says “I am addicted to cigarettes...” has made smoking a part of who she believes herself to be. Making a change to her identity will be challenging and painful (for her) because it places her sense of self under threat: we all fight like demons to preserve our sense of self and what is right and proper for us. Contrast this with the same person who says “...I smoke 20 cigarettes every day” or “...I have a smoke at break-time when I am at work”. This person is recognising – probably below the level of her conscious awareness – that smoking is just something she does. In this case smoking is not part of her identity, so change will be easier to implement and maintain because it conveys no threat to her sense of self. So what? Here’s the cool part: if you consciously make the things you want part of your identity, they will feel much easier to accept into your life and to integrate with other aspects of who you feel yourself to be. Likewise, changing your unwanted behaviours can be made easier by de-coupling them from your sense of self. Both of these routes are driven by language patterns and your sense of identity; simply changing the words nudges your behaviour either towards what you want or away from what you don’t want, and this is one of the reasons why daily journaling, affirmations and goal-setting are so effective. The daily re-statement of desired outcomes, statements made in terms of our identity, realigns our sense of who we are and what is right and proper for us. In essence, we believe the lies we tell ourselves about who we are and how the world is. Try this for yourself, right now: say out loud “I am a singer”, and just notice how that feels, deep down inside... Now say “I do sing, from time to time” and notice how that feels, deep down inside of yourself. There’s a big difference between how those two statements make you feel. Unless you are already a singer, the “I am a singer” statement will probably feel bigger, more significant and more uncomfortable that the “I do sing...” statement. After all, singing is just something you do, isn’t it. This is why we resist the thing we want, rather than integrate it into our identity and do it more whilst having more fun along the way. And here’s a little sidebar to stir into the mix: some people will add a situational qualification to their behaviour and constrain it to a place or time when it is acceptable – for example, singing might only be OK when we are in the shower, driving the car, or when nobody else is at home. So what do you say about yourself, and what does that say about you? I used to say (jokingly) that I was a good guy who did bad things – just to even things out. The problem is that my tiny, pea-sized brain doesn’t have a sense of humour and interpreted the joke as a mission statement, with disastrous and life-changing consequences. D’oh! Now I remind myself that I’m a good man who does good things. And it’s getting better. Everything begins with a single thought...
© 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 The Thursday Thesis - 02/08/2018
Episode 109 - No, Yes But, Yes And...
The Thursday Thesis - 26/07/2018 All I suggested was that we should go out for a coffee, so how did we end up here – flying a hang-glider over the snow-capped mountains, in search of owls? It must have been something I said, or she said, or both... Yes, I was on yet another course – learning more interesting “stuff” to add to the rag-bag of other people’s brilliance and the random churning of pig-headedness that pass for my mind – and now that what I learned there has been stirred into the melange and fermented... I was told to ask my play-buddy out on a first date, and we were instructed by the course leader, Claire, to answer each other with the word “No...” and then our reasons why not. It didn’t go well: within a few minutes of “no” after “no” I was done. My usual state of boundless, puppy-dog energy was flagging and my self esteem was down around my ankles. We traded places and revenge was mine! Frustration reigned and we were both battered by rejection. Claire gleefully pointed out that hearing someone say “no” to us and our opportunities – especially the incredible prospect of going out on a date with me (she didn’t actually say that a date with me was a great opportunity, but I knew that’s what she meant) – would quickly shut us down and train us to not bother asking again. Life’s like that: if you keep saying “no” to doing good stuff and life will stop offering you the chance to play. It got a little better in the next game, when we were invited to play the scenario again, but answer “yes, but...” and give a conditional response. This was simply annoying. “Would you like to meet up for coffee and to talk for a while?” She asked. “Yes, but only if we can meet at a place that serves real Italian coffee.” I said. “Yes, but Italian coffee makes me woozy, so how about Costa, on New Market Street?” “Yes, but Costa is a big chain and it’s totally un-authentic” I countered “Can we go somewhere with a more personal vibe?” Grrr – frustrating! Every opportunity was accepted, then modified or a condition attached. My play-buddy was annoyed by my evasiveness. We swapped sides and she immediately began to get on my nerves. I felt like I was trying to nail a blancmange to the ceiling: no matter what I suggested, she always dodged and added a condition. Claire stepped in before the violence began, suggesting that we try to get a date one more time, but always answer each other with “Yes, and...” and to see what happened. “Would you like to meet up for coffee and have a chat?” I asked. “Yes, and perhaps a Panini for lunch, too?” “Yes, and then we’d probably need – just for research purposes, you understand – a nice pastry or a very, very small dessert to polish it off. What do you think?” “Yes, and then perhaps we could take a walk by the river and enjoy the late afternoon sunshine?” “Yes, and if we’re having fun we could watch the sunset and listen to the owls waking up: I love owls” “Yes, and...” I don’t remember exactly how we ended up flying a hang-glider or where the snow-capped mountains were, but we laughed and egged one another on to make the hypothetical date exhilarating and exciting. That’s what happens when we say “Yes, and...” our brains get all creative and stuff, they begin to play and invent, to sniff out opportunities and possibilities. So, are you having a fabulous day? Answer “Yes, and..” and see where it takes you – you might be pleasantly flabbergasted. © 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 108 - Your Inner Thermostat The Thursday Thesis - 19/07/2018 Deep, deep down inside of you and I there is a something resembling a thermostat. It’s just like the thermostat which governs your hot water, central heating or air conditioning. It’s the thermostat which governs us: I call it an “Innerstat”. Now, a household thermostat is a device which responds to changes in temperature (thermo) and produces a response from an attached system – say, a heater or fan unit – to restore and stabilise (static) the temperature to a pre-determined value. Thermostats are marvellous domestic gadgets, taking care of the tedious business of maintaining a stable temperature at whatever comfort level we dial-in: that’s what they are for. But our Innerstats – our internal “thermostats” - are perhaps not such a great idea. They are trying to keep us the same as we are: to resist change and challenge. This means that we will have our innerstats set for comfortable levels of health, wealth, confidence, performance, intimacy – pretty much every aspect of how we behave. And that’s the problem: every time we act in a way which is outside of the acceptable limits of our Innerstat, our Innerstat will initiate a response to restore us to our default, pre-set value or level of performance. This is a double-edged sword So, if we receive a bonus or an unexpected windfall that moves us outside of our acceptable level of wealth or income, the chances are that we’ll immediately figure out ways to be rid of the money. Maybe we’ll splash out on a new car, jewellery, a bigger home – it doesn’t matter, really. We probably won’t even notice the peculiar compulsion to blow the money: it just seems that the money “burns a hole in your pocket”. That compulsion is our instinctive response to something which is badly out of whack: it’s a drive to stay the same, to operate within our comfort zone and stay true to our concept of who we are. Out Innerstats are setting us up to sabotage ourselves, just so we can stay true to our own opinions of ourselves. How mad is that? If we don’t manage our Innerstats, they will manage us: and they’ll do it all without us even noticing what’s going on, just below the threshold of our attention. Whether you are operating above or below your default values for anything, the outcome will be behaviour designed to restore what you think is right and proper for you. If what you have is “too good”, you may begin to sabotage your situation in order to restore normality: if what you have “isn’t good enough”, you’ll probably begin to scramble frantically to restore order and your idea of what is acceptable. Putting on too much weight and wanting to start dieting or working-out is an obvious example of this phenomenon. We can manage our Innerstats, but it takes a little time to determine their initial settings and a little more time to make repeated adjustments to those settings. Money is a good example of how this works. Let’s say that you earn £25,000 per year and begin to look for another job. Research indicates that you’ll tend to apply only for the jobs whose salary is around 10% of your current salary, and that you’ll be deterred from applying for positions whose salary is outside of that range, even if you are a good fit for the job with the big salary increase. Small changes of around +/- 10% are not significant enough to trigger our Innerstats and initiate sabotage or scrambling behaviours. If our sub-10% change is positive, that’s very good news, because the new higher value will become our new normal, over time. It’s just like edging your heating’s thermostat up half a degree at regular intervals. The easiest way to edge up your Innerstats’ settings is by deliberately thinking of what you want, and making those thoughts your new “normal”, or default, settings. You see, our brains have a lot of trouble distinguishing between imagination and reality (there’s no such thing as reality, by the way), and this is a loophole that we can exploit in order to manipulate ourselves. Is it wrong to manipulate ourselves? Absolutely not – and best of all, it’s ridiculously easy. Just write down what you want – in detail – on a card that you carry in your wallet or purse, and place it so that it is visible every time you pay for something. So, if you want to raise your income from £25k to £40k, write “I earn and deseve £40,000 per year, after tax”; for your other desires, write a similar statement of fact, in the present tense. Then, read the statements on your card out aloud at least twice a day. When I'm teaching guitar or working with coaching clients and mentees, we spend time re-calibrating their Innerstats for playing guitar, business success and positive mindset, because it's obvious that a negatively maladjusted Innerstat will slow progress and sabotage success. I think you’ll agree that it’s perfectly legit to manipulate ourselves in pursuit of a worthy goal, such as a better life or higher income, deeper relationships, etc. And we would probably also agree that it’s dead wrong to manipulate someone else to conform to your will, in opposition to their own best interests. So, get busy manipulating and influencing you Innerstats to re-calibrate what you’ll settle for and have in your life. Happy Knob-twiddling! © 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 107 - Want, Should and Gonna
The Thursday Thesis - 12/07/2018 “Michael, what do you want?” As a coach, that’s my killer question, and it really is the killer question in life, isn’t it? As our session continued, my question morphed into several, subtler variations, aiming to pick out what Michael was serious about, what was just a fantasy, and which of his answers were just other people’s plans for him. You see, we all have wants and wishes, but the chances are that we won’t end up with the things we want. Why is that? There are three levels of desire, as far as I can tell:
Those three levels of desire are based on the words we use to describe what we want. I’d go as far as saying that the elusively obvious truth is that our words are cues to what really matters, as well as dead-giveaway cues to our relative levels of desire, motivation and certainty. A wish or a want is a nice-to-have-it sort of desire: we’d like to write a Christmas number one record or wish we could win the lottery, but... That “want” is a wishy-washy kind of desire – it simply isn’t strong enough to compel us to take massive, determined and focused action over time. A “want” won’t cook the rice, as the old saying goes. And as for wishes – don’t waste your time wishing for anything. Write that wish off as a pleasant daydream with precisely zero chance of it ever coming true, because that’s what a wish is. Wanting and wishing will have you coming up empty every time, because there’s no action to back them up. And action is the key. Getting off your arse and doing something about your own life and how you want to live it will move you – imperceptibly at first – in the direction of your dreams and desires. But to inspire yourself to take action you have to focus and intensify that simple want and that nebulous wish into a desire. Our personal energy is like sunshine: unfocused, we can warm a wide area of the earth. Only when we are able to gather and concentrate that energy – like sunshine through a magnifying lens – can we begin to make massive progress. Our warming sunlight can become a blazing dot of searing heat, but we need the lens to do it. So, what is the lens for personal power and achievement? I’ll tell you in a little while, after we deal with the red-herrings of all the goals we “should” and “ought to” go for. “Red-herrings?” you say. Yes, a red-herring: a false or misleading idea or thing; a device of deception. Our should and oughta goals are not really our goals: they are somebody else’s goals, or our idea of what would be acceptable to somebody else. Whether it’s a societal expectation or the desire to match-up to another person’s expectations, those outcomes are almost always expressed as “should” or “oughta”. We might achieve those goals, but we’ll invariably find that to be a hollow achievement. Think of the executive climbing the corporate ladder for decades, finally making it to the boardroom or the CEO position, only to realise that the ladder they fought so hard to climb was not leaning against anything that they, themselves, actually gave a hoot about? Here’s another thing to consider about should and oughtas – especially if you are running a team or a relationship: if someone is pushed or coerced into complying with your wishes, then you may get your project over the line or hit your target. But – and it’s a big but – expect resistance from the team or your partner along the way: there will be pushback and passive resistance any time you are forcing the issue or compelling someone to do something they are not comfortable with or aligned with. Pressed people will get even, sooner or later. So it’s safe to say that the things we should and oughta do are being verbally flagged for our attention by the words we use. Once you perceive those cues you can set about doing something that matters to you, rather than chasing someone else’s bus. Pay attention to the words... Finally there are our highest, most puissant desires – out Gottas and our Musts. These are the ones that count, and the ones that have a chance of actually happening. The moment we decide that it’s GOTTA happen, that we absolutely MUST get it done – no matter what it takes - we are much more likely to commit ourselves to taking action and making things happen. Our moments of decision are the moments in which everything changes: the change begins as a change of state, a change of heart or a change of mind, and from that moment we are never the same again. Once your attention is focused on the goal you Must have, the you’ve Gotta do, then you begin to navigate the world based upon that goal, creating a self-fulfilling prophecy of success. But this will not be easy. Goal oriented people are not like anyone else, they are changelings, and they will not be controlled or subdued, they are a tribe apart, a primal force of relentless energy - all eyes on the prize, all attention focused. So here’s the thing: what do you want? How you talk about it, especially to yourself, will be an accurate predictor of whether or not you will get what you want - that's why your words are the lens that focuses your attention. Just like a magnifying glass gathering sunshine into a pinprick of ubearable heat, the right words can gather your attention and focus your energy into a tiny dot of unstoppable power. Pay close attention to your words, they may be trying to tell you something. © 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 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 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 - 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 “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 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 The Thursday Thesis - 15/02/2018 When credible Professionals call someone Obsessive-Compulsive and then expect them to be able to change it’s a really stupid plan, don’t you think? Yet that’s the kind of conventional psycho-twaddle we are expected to believe will make us better, more “normal” – whatever that is. I’ve already discussed why “normal” is bollocks in earlier posts, so I’ll give you a reminder of the take-homes about normal:
So, if someone you respect or believe tells you that you’re OCD, you might want to not accept their diagnosis. I’ve even heard tell that some parents say this to their kids, believe it or not. It’s like you’ve won the lottery or something... Congratulations – you are OCD! But here’s the thing about a diagnosis or a label for a condition: believing in it and complying with it. The moment you accept the condition and start telling everyone about your disorder or – better still – your fancy-sounding syndrome, you’ll start to act it out. The more you research it, the better actor you’ll become: the longer you practice, the more type cast the role becomes for you. Listen, if you’re going to obsess about something, at least man-up and get serious about something more bloody important than how many coloured pencils are in the cup on your desk or how many birds are on the fence. Of all the fascinating, dynamic and fun things people could obsess over, why is it so often the trivial and irrelevant minutiae that fixates? This makes OCD about as trivial as any other hobby, sort-of like trainspotting but without the upside of permitting anorak-wearing. Did you know that anoraknaphobia is an irrational fear of trainspotters? I guess I’m ranting about this because last week I decided to challenge my students and clients who declared themself to be OCD: the results were fascinating...Cures took less than a minute for the youngsters, because they haven’t had as much practice as the adults, who took a little longer. Thinking positively about OCD: could it be the making of you if you focused it on something that mattered more than how many times you flipped the light-switch before bedtime? If you really must have a condition, disorder or diagnosis I think you owe it to yourself to challenge it, defeat it or utilise 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 Sharp Dressed Man... The Thursday Thesis - 08/02/2018 Steve Jobs was never known for being well-dressed, was he? The Apple founder was invariably seen wearing jeans and a black turtleneck jumper, sort of scruffy, but very much in keeping with Steve Jobs’ projected personality. Why would such a successful entrepreneur wear the same clothes every day for most of his life? Where are the gorgeously tailored Armani suits, the hand-stitched shoes and mega-dollar watches? Not a trace of them. Now here’s the thing: Jobs was both making a statement and defining himself. Effectively he’s saying “here I am, I’m not interested in conforming to how you expect me to be: you must accept me on MY terms”. It ties into Apple’s famous “Think Different” ad campaign, as Jobs defies the conventional image of a corporate success. But the real power of that turtleneck is what it gave Steve every single morning: clarity. You see, selecting an outfit from a huge wardrobe takes a certain amount of effort – it’s actually a stressor. Steve Jobs was savvy enough to know that his finite attention was too precious to squander it on the trivialities of how he dressed from one day to the next, so he made a strategic decision to only buy blue jeans and black turtlenecks. That turtleneck eventually became a part of Jobs’ personal brand – it shows up in almost every photograph of the guy. Inevitably, I decided to try out having my own dress code for a little while... All of my T-shirts went into black bags for the trial, and were replaced by 6 long-sleeved grey jerseys and 6 grey T-shirts – nothing fancy, just Marks and Sparks’ own brands. The first few days were strange – the drawer missed my brightly coloured T-shirts, and I was close to rummaging in the black bags for that red shirt I love. But, in the name of research, I stuck with it – even though it was weird. After just one week I found myself relieved that I didn’t have to think about what to wear. Now I just open the drawer, take out a grey jersey, and get on with the day – it’s so easy. Bizarrely, having a huge choice of colourful T-shirts was actually a bad thing; and having no choice was a very good thing. Steve Jobs was no dummy, was he? Please remember to Like and Share this post.
Pass it on. The Power of No... The Thursday Thesis - 01/02/2018 There are some very powerful words in the English language. Some words are almost guaranteed to soothe, others to anger, and some to outrage. But there’s this one little word – NO - that seems uniquely powerful when it comes to creating a state of fear in us. It’s the fear of no which makes asking someone out on a date such a big deal. We know – deep down – that he/she is not currently part of our lives, so the only real risk is that they will remain that way. Yet we prevaricate and flounce around the issue, summoning up our courage and bracing ourselves for rejection. “What if she says NO?” we wonder... Dude - if she says NO - it’s no biggie, ok? So she says NO and there’s no change in the world as I know it: what was all that worrying about? Tragically, I know one woman who is so afraid of hearing NO at some time in the future that she flees every relationship that’s going well! So much for romance and rejection, then. But what about when people ask us to do something we don’t want to do? We know we don’t want to do it, but we often cave-in to their demand and say yes, just to be nice. Now, I think this is both odd and ludicrous. Saying yes to what someone else wants might mean that we have to say no to what we want, perhaps even violate our own moral code. In this situation we might start to worry that the other person might fall out with us if we don’t go along with their request, even though it is not in our best interest or attuned to our values. Personally, if someone will fall out with me because I won’t go along with something that is anathema to me, they’re probably not the best sort of person for me to be hanging out with anyway. The flipside of fearing NO is equally powerful: just say NO. As soon as you learn to harness the power of NO, you have control of your own time, lifestyle and, perhaps, even your destiny. Say NO to what is not in your best interest, and you can say YES to what is. Say NO to what you don’t want, and you gain the ability to say YES to what you do want. When was the last time you said NO to anything? And what are you doing, today, that would you like to say NO to? It’s your call. © 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 The Thursday Thesis - 25/01/2018
It was embarrassing, and my friend was concerned. My head lolled around and I could barely keep my eyes open, then my words started to shut down... It was embarrassing, not to mention weird. I wasn’t drunk: I never drink. But it felt unpleasantly like being drunk – if I remember correctly how that felt. Incidentally, if you want to know what’s unpleasant about being drunk, ask a glass of water. But something wasn’t right: something had shut me down. Think back, Neil... Two double espressos, cheese on toast, cappuccino to follow lunch... blah, blah, blah. Nope, nothing sinister in that list, right? In fact, with all that caffeine rushing through my system, I should have been wired! But I was nodding and flopping all over the place, struggling to string a sentence together - what the hell was going on? I remember wondering if I was having a stroke or some life-altering health crisis: that’s how bad it was. My friend propped me up in my chair and now tells me that my eyes rolled upwards, then closed and I began to snore like a diesel engine idling. Flattery! Twenty minutes later I was wide awake and raring to get on with the day. Peculiar... Two double espressos, cheese on toast, a cappuccino... It bugged me, the way that only a mystery can bug a restless mind. It’s happened too often, and I kept thinking about it, asking why I had these episodes, these shutdowns and crashes. I thought back about them, looked for a pattern, a possible reason for the mysterious crashes. Bread. Bread – or more accurately – wheat. It seemed that every single crash had been preceded by some kind of wheat product: a sandwich, a pastry or snack grabbed from the supermarket en route to somewhere. Now this was bad, bad news for me, because I LOVE bread – especially fresh bread, still warm and aromatic from the golden oven. I didn’t want to be right, because I wanted to have bread in my life. Ah, bread... A test! Yeah, that’ll do it – “I’ll go wheat-free for a few weeks and see what happens” I thought. “I’ll prove that bread (aaaah, bread....) has NOTHING to do with my crashes. Then I can have as much bread lovely bread as I want and I’ll be absolutely certain that it’s not part of the problem; well, that’s what I thought. The cravings were the worst – worse than when I stopped drinking alcohol in my twenties. I’d find myself on autopilot in Sainsbury’s in-store bakery, breathing THAT smell in like it was the half-remembered perfume of a love affair, my mouth wet with anticipation, only just able to wrench myself away without a crusty loaf or a bag of Danish. But the crashes stopped. What a pisser. The very bread I loved had been knocking me out for how long – months, weeks, years? Who knew? Digging deeper into the mystery I heard stories of increasing gluten content in genetically modified wheat, gluten intolerance and Celiac disease, and all sorts of anecdotal evidence of other people’s experience. That was all very interesting, but nothing very solid that I could point to for sure. So I decided to just go with my gut and trust the evidence that I’d got, first-hand: at least that was reliable. That was several months ago, and the crashes receded into memory. So – naturally - I did something stupid: I had a huge cheese butty. If you don’t know what a butty is, you need to get out more. That crusty butty was so delicious that I had another – then I had a nap in the car because I was too dozy to drive. I did tell you it was stupid, didn’t I? Now, here’s the thing – if I’d not tested the daft idea that bread was my problem, I’d still be crashing after breakfast, lunch and dinner, or even just a snack, because wheat is cheap and abundant it finds its way into all sorts of food – especially cheap foods and fast foods. If you’ve ever fallen into a Carb Coma after lunch, test what you’re eating. Perhaps you’ll find – like me – that the sandwich you think is topping-up your energy levels is flat-lining you instead. If it works, you can change, but until we test what we are currently doing we are flying blind, guessing and bumbling through the day. Life’s like that, isn’t it? © 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 Dead, Dead, Dead, Dead....Lines The Thursday Thesis - 18/01/2018 It’s Friday – my blog post is a whole day late – Shame on me! Hmmmm...It’s not like me to run blow a deadline: I’m normally pretty good at that kind of thing. So what gives? Truth is that I settled down to do a ton of office work Wednesday night and – you know how it is – lost track of time. Before I knew it the sky was getting light. “I’ll just do this one last thing....” Then it was after 9am – definitely time for bed. So I missed my deadline for Thursday posting to the blog, and I’ve been thinking about deadlines for a fair bit of the day: what they are and what we think they are, and how we all can use them to get a little more juice out of life. A deadline is a target for completion of something - no surprises there. But what makes deadlines so powerful for us is the limitation of time itself. If we have forever to get things done, that’s usually how long it will take, right? We will – of course – do double tomorrow, but today’s slice of Elephant Sandwich is left untouched to grow dry, mouldy, and curled-up at its edges. We’ll eat it tomorrow... Now here’s the best bit: you’re going to die. Yep. You, me and everybody else is dying right now. We are mortal, and mortality is the greatest gift mankind ever received. Death, in and of itself, is the endpoint of your project, the blinking-out of your existence. It is neither good nor bad: it is merely an ending. Acknowledging the inevitability of death is the supreme focuser. Wise people regard the future and its end with a steady eye, unblinking and ready. They will have lived to the fullest a life of their own choosing, worked like billy-oh to bring their dreams to life, conscious that every day is a day closer to leaving it all unffinished. Death is the greatest driver of Progress because people with passion and vision fear that their vision will never be realised before the last tick's echoes fade into silence. The clock is always ticking. And for some people the end of their life will arrive unexpectedly, leaving them with no time to learn to play the guitar, write that book, call that friend, say the words... There’s a deadline on everything, and it’s foolish to ignore that inconvenient truth, because it ain’t going away. So, before we all meet the deadlines of our demise, let’s set a deadline on living, chasing our dreams, daring to grow, reach, stretch, learn. Today - before midnight Friday chimes and my day-late blog gets a day older - do something to begin to live the life you really want. My friend, you and I have a deadline to meet 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
"Timing, perseverance, and ten years of trying will eventually make you look like an overnight success" Biz Stone, co-founder of Twitter That quote drifted into my consciousness earlier today, and I got to thinking about the phenomenon (well, the myth) of "Overnight Success" - the come-from-nowhere band, the unheard of entrepeneur who is suddenly on every social media stream, news channel and billboard ad. It's a funny thing, isn't it - the idea of an "Overnight Success"? Most people look at a successful person or a high-performer and think that they "just are" successful - that it all happened at once. We make the assumption that Successful is just how these people are - that it's an innate or inborn quality, not available to "ordinary folks" - people like you and me. Now, here's the thing - that kind of mental shortcut - jumping from where we are now to where That Successful Person is - completely skips over the journey that got That Successful Person to where they are in the first place. It's like thinking of Tokyo and wondering why we are not there already, without ever considering the necessity of booking a 'plane ticket and getting to the airport. But there's a problem here, and it's almost a universal: we envisage making the instant transition from here to there in a single bound - thousands of miles in a single instant. A leap like that is just too much, too big, too far - impossible! So most people don't even try - it's tragic. But there are ways around the problem - here's my favourite bypass around the perceived mega-leap. Think of yourself in possession of the outcome you want - the destination, and ask "What did I do before that?" over and over again. You will then backtrack in time to figure out how you got there, right back to the very first step of the journey - the step you can take today. Take that step. © 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
The Thursday Thesis - 04/01/2018 I confess... last night I bunked-off. When I really should have been writing this post I was mucking around doing a Facebook live video, aiming to share the way that poor/inefficient technique gets in a guitar player’s way and makes life harder than it need be. Why do I tell you this? Because of the responses it produced. Now, some folks “got it” and liked the clip, but a lot more people didn’t get it and gave me some feedback, suggesting that I am a “soulless hack” and a “limited player” on the basis of me explaining mechanical principles as they apply to guitarists. This was to be expected though, because I understand that it is our human nature to defend our current belief systems in a drive to prove ourselves “Right”. As a species we absorb and adopt all sorts of ideas and beliefs, usually without being aware of it happening. If an idea works once, we’ll probably try to do it a second time because it worked before. If it works a second time we’ll use it again and again until it becomes our normal way of operating. Now here’s the thing – clinging to one idea and refusing to test or consider alternatives locks the mind into a prior point in time, shutting-out the chance to learn and grow, to do something better. We humans are funny creatures, aren’t we? What we currently know, we will defend. Opinions which contradict our current understanding of how things are make us feel threatened, so we will usually fight back against new ideas. That’s why the comments were mostly from those who didn’t get it. The risk is that the scary new thing could be exactly what you need. That new thing could be the mental equivalent of an upgrade to your computer software that finally fixes that bug... What we currently know could be causing us to push away the thing we really need to know. History is littered with the bodies of dead dogmas which have been superseded by innovations and discoveries. That’s progress. What do you currently believe that you’d like to be wrong about? What do you “know” that you’d like to change? What is it that you are sure of, right now, that you would like to be unsure of? Please Like and Share The Thursday Thesis with your friends, family, and your cat. I’d love to hear your comments, along with any ideas you’d care to hurl at me. Neil@cowtownguitars.net © Neil Cowmeadow 2018
The Thursday Thesis - 28/12/2017 Well, that was 2017. So, how was it for you? Did you keep your phoney-baloney New Year’s Resolutions, or were they just too much trouble? Research shows that the vast majority of people who make New Year Resolutions fail to keep them within the first two weeks: this will come as no surprise to you, because you and I have both done it, haven’t we? And the chances are that we will do it again...and again... We might even have noticed that New Year’s Resolutions don’t work. It’s no big deal, and it’s no surprise to US!! I propose that we both give New Year’s Resolutions The Finger, and figure out something that actually works better. I’ve made a start, and here’s what I came up with: if you want to change, there is no better time to start than at midnight. By “midnight” I mean any midnight – common or garden variety midnight - not just January 31st. That’s because midnight is the tipping point of time: it’s when today becomes yesterday and tomorrow is no longer an unfulfilled promise, just out of reach. Time “tips” over at midnight every single day, 365 days every year – how did we miss that fact and settle for New Year’s Eve as the very best day to make changes? Why only one day? Come on, now: if you did something once a year would it become any easier? What if you did that thing every single midnight? If you have just one attempt and you blow it, then it’s all over for another year. Now imagine you have another 364 goes at it – a whole 365 chances to make that change you want in your life... Remember that you only need it to work once... How do you rate your chances of hitting the target now that you’ve got another 364 extra shots at it? To make A New Year’s Resolution might be a massive mistake, because it’s a one-shot deal: it’s shit or bust, make or break. Give me one chance every year to get what I want and I’ll take it, if that’s the only offer there is. But the reality is that there are always 365 chances on the table, and I am going to take them all: how about you? I’m going to seize 365 of those 365 chances to make choices about how I live, work and love – and I only need one of those chances to work – just like you do. So, how are you doing today? Share your Awesomeness! .Please Like and Share The Thursday ThoughtCast 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
Abracadabra!
The Thursday Thesis - 21/12/2017 And with a word, it came to pass... Just like in fairytales, words are truly magical. Though nobody knows for sure where it came from, the magic word “Abracadabra” has been around for a very long time – at least since the Second Century. The frontrunners for its origins are the Hebrew "I will create as I speak" and the Aramaic "I create like the word". Whichever one of these you prefer, the underlying principle is this – words create the world. When I’m teaching my guitar students, working with my coaching clients, negotiating with someone in a business deal or just talking with a friend, I’m listening closely; not just to the meaning they are putting across to me, but to words they are saying. Why would I pay close attention to the actual words? Because the words we use are a map of our thoughts and the way we think about the world. It’s amazing to think that whatever you or I choose to say is going to declare our whole philosophy and way of being to anyone who is really listening. Say “Life is hard”, and guess what? What if you said “Life is an endless dance”? Or perhaps “Life is a game, and I’m enjoying playing”? Do each of those phrases give you a clue as to how the person speaking them lives on the inside? Abracadabra! Here’s the good news – it doesn’t matter whether you select the words first or develop the mindset which generates the words first. It’s a circular process, so you can begin anywhere. Today’s fun game is to begin to notice how you say what you think you’re saying. What words do you use when someone says “hello” and asks how you’re doing. One of my dearest friends always responds that she’s “plodding on”... Come on! What if she said “I’m awesome today; thanks for asking”? That’s a whole different vibe isn’t it? Is my friend going to feel differently when she tells the world that she’s awesome, rather than plodding on? Of course. We each create our own version of reality, because there is only our interpretation of external events – all of which we filter through our own prejudices and preconceptions. What I’m suggesting here is that we all notice – through our words – what our filters might be and how we might enjoy tweaking them for more fun, success, happiness, closeness, wealth, or anything else we’d care to have more of. So, how are you doing today? Tell me, in the comments box below. Share your Awesomeness! |
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