ONWARDS AND UPWARDS

August 23rd, 2018

This is a phrase we hear every once in a while. 

There’s a problem with it.

While it indicates a good direction, a positive direction, it devalues the present and idealizes the future.    The only thing that is as steady as ‘onwards and upwards’ implies is the rising of the sun each day.  (and even that doesn’t always happen depending on where in the world you are.)

Idealizing the future further ingrains a notion that the present is less useful and less desirable. 

Compared to the present, however, the future doesn’t really exist at all.  It is a phantom.  An idea. A dream. 

These can be good and useful things.  But only if action is taken with such things in mind. 

Action can only happen in the present.

Consistently dedicate the present to the hopes, dreams and ideas of the ‘future’, and the future will not come. Instead, the present will slowly morph into those ideas, hopes and dreams.  There’s a a subtle but important difference.

Progress on any front will not ever be as consistent as our actions and efforts.

So.

Is it better to look up at some idealized sky where a paradise might lurk in the clouds?

Or.

Concentrate inwards, compressing hope and dreams and ideas into the first action, the next action that can be done. right. now.

POSITIVE MENTAL ATTITUDE IS JUST FIRST GEAR

August 22nd, 2018

All the motivational speakers are right: positive mental attitude helps. You will do virtually everything better if you have a positive outlook.

But.

The positive mental attitude is just the start. Given a big enough, complex-enough task, and the positive mental attitude can lose it’s steam, sputter, and often require some recharge. Many go so far to say that motivation needs to be cultivated daily, and this is a good habit to figure out for one’s self.

But what else?

The analogy of someone banging at a wall in hopes of getting through it, versus the one who stands back to survey the whole wall and notice the door at the far end is a good one because it seems so accurate. So many people seem to be banging against walls in their lives. Many of them do it with healthy doses of positive mental attitude also. But if the wall is made of stone, or titanium, it’s going to take a cosmic amount of positive mental attitude to keep up the ridiculous act for any length of time. Too much positive mental attitude can even create blindness, as though it were the only answer. If I stay positive, I’ll get through this wall!

What’s better?

The experimental attitude.

Take an action. Receive feedback. Analyze the feedback and reassess the strategy. PERSEVERE OR PIVOT. Take new action. Repeat.

Step away from the wall. Look at the wall. The whole wall. Analyze the feedback.

Perhaps you didn’t notice that it’s only an arm’s length taller than you and all that’s required is one good pull-up? Or maybe there’s that door down the end. Would anyone really go back to banging on the wall? Even the most positive person would abandon their previous efforts.

Sadly, many of the walls in our lives, we have built ourselves, limiting ourselves, holding ourselves back.

Positive mental attitude certainly helps when the time comes to earnestly confront the walls that hold us back, self-made or not. But even better is to shift gears and LEVEL-UP.

Build an experimental attitude. All that’s required is curiosity.

What walls are you mindlessly banging against?

This episode references Episode 42: Level-Up, and Episode 72: Persevere vs. Pivot, if you’d like to fully explore the reference, please check out that episode next.

QUESTION

August 21st, 2018

What is a question?

Culturally, at this point in time, it seems as though we think of questions as a sort of lock where the answer is much like a key that unlocks the question, like an enigma, a puzzle, or a riddle.

But does this sort of image really capture the essence of a question?

We might think of the questions we ask others when we already know the answer, when we prompt people in certain directions of thought.  In this way, we test people, we see if they can conceive of the key to the conundrum that we have placed before them.

Perhaps we all know the strangely disappointing sense of surprise when we get a response that is equally valid, but not the answer we were planning on hearing.

A question is not one half of the call-and-response, jigsaw puzzle, one-key-fits-the-lock idea that we tend to carry around.

A question is an open-ended concept that creates forward momentum.

Just think about the word for a moment.

Question.  Take the last three letters off the word and what do you get?

QUEST.

A true question creates a doorway, a portal to a kind of adventure.  If only we have the courage to look at the unknown in this way, because questions are the first and ONLY TOOL  we have when it comes to the unknown.

Unfortunately, not all questions are equally useful, but as we describe THE ONLY TOOL, we see that a question can be used to sharpen itself.

Questions can breed better questions, if only they are turned back on themselves.

Often we need only ask: “Is this the best question I can ask about this dilemma right now?   What would be a better one?”

If we don’t ask the right question, then we can spend an awful lot of time on a quest that does not lead to our desired destination.  This is the sunk-cost fallacy in psychology, when we spend a disappointing amount of time and resources investing in something that does not ultimately lead to the outcome we want.

So when we find ourselves facing a dilemma or an undesirable circumstance, or waking up to a life we never sought nor wanted.  We might benefit from thinking of the current situation as a starting point.  We will stay stuck in that RUT unless we can mindfully craft the right question, which is really to say: what sort of quest must I go on in order to get to a better place?

Often that better place is a better state of mind.  This can be a very difficult concept to wrap a mind around.  We think of our brains and our bodies as static entities, which severely hinders the idea of radical change.  Fortunately we suffer from a heavy dose of myopia when it comes to this subject.  Over the course of a long enough time scale, we change, whether we like it or not.  Whether we direct it or not.  And this can be a powerful REALIZATION; one that opens us up to conscious direction.  A direction that we can choose.

Just as an archer uses both bow and arrow to achieve movement in a certain direction, this REALIZATION is an opportunity, just as there is always potential energy stored inside of a bow.  If we can hunt around for the right question, with the right destination in mind, then it becomes a simple matter of practicing our flawed execution and improving as we ITERATE in order to hit the mark and end up where we dream of going.

Just as asking the wrong question can set us on a quest to the wrong place,

we are perpetually – always – on a quest to find a better question, a better quest that will lead to a better life.

This episode references Episode 30: The Only Tool, Episode 124: Realization and Episode 121: Iterate

ENDLESS WAYS

August 20th, 2018

Often when we express an idea or statement, we feel we’ve nailed it.  And when someone does not understand, we find it mind boggling.

“How can they not understand!?  I said it so clearly!”

(Strangely, we think repeating the exact same words will do the trick.)

The feeling of expression is the culprit.

But we can take it one step further.  We can remind ourselves that there are endless ways to express an idea, an opinion, a feeling, a concern.

These different ways of expressing an idea, opinion, etc. are merely different perspectives on the same given topic. 

As though the topic were in the center of a vast circle.  Every point on that circle is a different perspective.  A different way of looking at the same thing. A different angle, a different set of details.

This subject is fussed about a lot with interpersonal skills:  telling a subordinate that they need to improve, talking to a boss about a colleague, expressing frustration to a partner..

But what about the things we say to ourselves?

Self-talk is a real thing.  We all do it.

But have we thoroughly sussed out all the better ways we can talk to our selves?

Colleagues, bosses, subordinates, friends, family, spouses…. we connect with them and progress if we take the time to phrase things with more thoughtfulness.

Might we progress faster and more efficiently if we devote some time to the endless ways we can speak to ourselves?

A LUCILIUS PARABLE: UNINTENTIONALLY EARNED

August 19th, 2018

Lucilius was sitting on a patio, eating and drinking with a beloved old friend, watching people as they walked up and down the street.  The sun was bright and people were in their summer clothes.  The wine was light and cold and the food was too much for Lucilius.  He smiled looking at one of the murals up on the buildings.

Lucilius’ friend was looking out at the people also, and with a mouth full of half-chewed food, said with not a little disgust.

“So many tattoos…”

Lucilius followed the attention of his friend and looked at all the designs that people had adorned their skin with.  Some people had nearly all of their arms and legs covered with the designs.

Lucilius’ older friend turned to Lucilius and asked with a face confused and sad:

“Why would you ever do that to your body?”

Lucilius looked off at some bright patch of the sky and remembered his time aboard the old whaling ships during the early 1800’s.  He remembered how sailors would come aboard a new ship with all of their tattoos showing.  It was the resume of the times, and everyone aboard knew where a sailor had been, and what he had done to earn those tattoos.  An anchor for crossing the Atlantic and Swallows to mark the many thousands of miles over the water.  Every design and image had a meaning.  A meaning to be earned and worn with pride.  He remembered his first tattoo, the dip and prick of the point tapping into his skin.  A slap on the back from a fellow sailor and swig of rum.  All of his tattoos had long faded over the last couple hundred years and his skin shown unknowingly clean.

He looked back at all the designs people had showing on the sidewalk.  How many of them meant something, he wondered.  Had any earned their tattoos in the same way sailors earned them in years long gone?  Lucilius smiled, and remembered his old friend’s question.

He turned to his old friend and looked at his friend’s round pot belly.  Lucilius poked his friend’s pot belly and with a smile asked,

“Why would you ever do that to your body?”