The SnowHow

Category: Personal

  • How To Create Your Fate Not Be A Victim Of It!

    Do you know, absolutely know, what your future looks like?

    Ok let me ask the question in another way let’s say you were reading this article 12 months from now, 3 years from now or say 10 years from now where do you think you will be.

    Do you have a clearly defined answer to each of those time frames? Or is it a wishy washy hope, or worse an “I don’t know!”

    If not why not?

    Let’s face it none of us knows the answer to those questions as anything could happen right?

    After all we could get run over by a car tomorrow or contract some sort of deadly disease that finishes us off in a blink of an eye!

    No point in planning, as tomorrow we could be dead!

    Crikey that’s not good!

    Maybe there is a better way for us. Maybe we should get all biblical with this one. Hey, you have got to get your wisdom from somewhere and some of the “religious” books do offer us some occasional wisdom, I think that’s why they became popular in the first place.

    OK so in Provers 29 it says words to the effect that “Without a Vision, The People Perish”.

    Or to put it in plain old english “if you don’t know where you are going then you’re f**ked”

    Think about it this way, if you were going on a journey normally you need two things, a starting point and a destination. That way you can plot a path to get you there.

    You have a  point of origin and a point of destination. If you remove one of them, how easy do you think it is to get where you are going. Think about that for a second! Did you think about it? Then let us continue.

    With the first one you have a point of origin, you know where you are, so you head off, but with no final destination you could end up anywhere. You would be zig zagging all the time hopefully ending up somewhere worthwhile. You know what, you may get somewhere good along the way, and hey the journey may be really enjoyable, that is definitely possible. The probability however, is that you would just end up lost and frustrated and have wasted so much time along the way.

    Second option. You know where you want to get to but you don’t know where you are. So you want to get to Timbuktu but you don’t know where you are right now. So do you head north, south, east or west. Do you need a plane, a car, a bicycle, a boat or is it just around the corner and you can walk there? You just don’t know and if you set of in the wrong direction, as you don’t know were you are starting from then, your journey may be a very long and tedious one. Also like in the first option you may stumble upon it by accident. There is definitely that possibility.

    The obvious thing in this situation is to go back to our original idea. Know where you are and know where you want to get to. Then you can draw a straight line between the two points. Or at least plan the quickest and shortest route!

    So now we are starting to see why having a destination is such an important part of the equation in travel.

    The same thing applies to us in our life, the time equivalent of a destination is a personal vision. Knowing what we want from life and how we want our life to look in the future.

    If we just wing it with our life then we could just end up anywhere, thrown about on the ebb and flow of the tide of life. Hey we may end up somewhere good and we may not. But I want to ask you a question. Do you think that is a good strategy for your life? Do you think you might have a better time of it if you knew where you wanted to end up, and you knew what you had to do in order to get there?

    Well, who knows! There are no guarantees, but the thing is I would suggest you stand a much better chance of getting somewhere that you want to get to, if you know where that place is.

    There is a second thing that you need as with our travel analogy. You need a starting point!

    In “The Art Of War” Sun Tsu tells us to know your enemies and to know yourself!

    Our point of origin, is the second part of the statement “know your self”. This means if you know where you want to get to, firstly, you have to self evaluate the person you are right now. You will need to know all of your strengths and weaknesses, you will need to be completely honest with yourself and who you are.

    Then and only then will you know the person you will need to become in order to get to where you want to go.

    So here is what you need to take away from this article today. You need to start to develop a personal vision for yourself. Start small, start thinking about where you want to be one month from now, then start to expand it out six months, a year. Then start going for the big numbers 3 years, 5, then push it out to 10 and 20 then all the way to the end.

    Take some time today just to start playing with the idea, then when you have some ideas and you realise just how fun this can be, devote some time to some serious thinking about where you want to get to. What your hopes and dreams are, what a perfect life looks like for you.

    OK there is also a hard part, you also have to turn a pointing finger back at yourself and really make an honest analysis of yourself. This can be really hard. We as humans are incredibly good at self deception but take the time to do this. An easy way to start is to write down a list of what you are good at, all your strengths. Once that list is long enough it makes the shortfalls that little bit easier to list. Don’t worry if the shortfalls list is longer than the strengths list. You are just looking for a starting point. Once you have that then you can begin your journey.

    Do this please, you will find the process incredibly rewarding and will give you immense personal clarity.

    I will talk at length in another article about the second part of getting to where you want to go to. That deals with having a strategy. But that is for another time. For now take the time to give this gift to yourself.

    Go create your Vision and your Starting Point!

    Until next time.

    Snowy

  • The Ultimate Mastermind Group!

    I don’t know if you have ever tried to get a mentor but often it is so much harder than most people will tell you.

    Especially if you want a world class mentor. Those guys are near impossible to get to.

    So what’s a guy to do if he really wants to get a world class mentor?

    Imagine you were in the tech space what would it be like to have say Mark Zuckerberg or if he was still alive maybe Steve Jobs as your mentor? If you were into business how good would it be to have someone like Richard Branson or Donald Trump giving you advice? Or say you were into personal development and peak performance imagine you had Anthony Robbins in your corner.

    Do you think that would make a difference in your life? I guess you would say “you bet your ass it would”.

    So what are your chances of getting these guys to mentor you anytime soon? Practically a big fat ZERO!!!

    Hey you could try begging and pleading, you could go one step further by trying to be useful to them. By offering yourself and your services in free of charge in exchange of being in their orbit. Still seems unlikely. Hey maybe we can up our game a little maybe we can come up with 10-50 good ideas about how to improve their world. Hey that might help. Maybe it is worth a try… You never know!

    For the most of us this is a hiding to nothing, and you stand about as much chance of getting them as a mentor as landing on the moon.

    So what is plan B?

    Well, I have a rather weird alternative! Oh and a warning this is not for the faint of heart and does require some serious effort! That said the payoff can be nothing short of incredible.

    So let’s begin…

    I have mentioned in another article that in the classic book “Think and Grow Rich” the singly greatest idea in there is completely overlooked by the majority of readers. It is called the “Internal Mastermind”

    So what is an internal mastermind? Well, for those of you who for a start don’t know what a Mastermind group is, it is basically a collection of people who get together to come up with ideas for a common pursuit of purpose. i.e business people getting together to exchange ideas on ways to improve their respective companies.

    The internal mastermind group is exactly the same it is just imagined in your head.

    Did I lose your there? Did I?

    Please bear with me and I might just give you something that can radically alter your life.

    Why do you want a mentor? Because you believe they will bestow upon you ideas and information that will help you improve your lot in life. Agreed? Good!

    You can’t get to the good ones in the physical world but you can get to them in the mental world!

    Let me explain how I went about doing this.

    First I built with an imaginary boardroom in my head (I could tell you that it is wood panelled and sumptuously furnished but that is unimportant!) It has a large table with 5 chairs on either side, a large seat for me at the head of the table and two guest chairs at the end.

    Each chair is filled with people who have skills, knowledge or characteristics that I admire.

    How do you find out who has characteristic that you admire? Well, look to the place you want to get to in life and ask yourself “who is already in that place?” Or alternatively ask what characteristics do I think I am going to need in order to get to where I want to go?

    Next decide who best fills that role?
    And here is the tricky part find out all you can about that person. Read their biography if they have one. Read articles about them. Watch videos of them on YouTube. Saturate yourself in your knowledge of them. So much so that you can get a really good mental impression of them.

    Then sit them in a chair. You can do this with one or many it does not matter what your preference is.

    But this is the good part. You get to ask them questions! This is the really, really good part. They will answer you back!!!! This is the most extraordinary part if you do this often enough they will give you answers that you will genuinely believe did not come from yourself. Yep read that again. I know you know that it is just you and your imagination, but believe me these characters take on a life of their own and genuinely give you insights that you will think, “Where the hell did that come from?”

    Why this happens I have no idea! Maybe it just allows you to get out of the way of yourself and allows your subconscious to work through you, that’s my best guess but like i say I have no real idea. Either way, the results can be wondrous.

    To give you some ideas as to who you should put in your board room I will tell you about some of the people I have put in my chairs over the years (you will start to swap out people over the years as you will feel that you have acquired the skill you brought that person in to gain, or that you find a more useful person to provide that skill.

    Richard Branson (business acumen)
    Sir James Goldsmith (Passion/business acumen)
    Anthony Robbins (Motivation)
    Leonardo Da Vinci (creativity)
    Don Vito Corleone (Leadership)
    Keyser Soze (force of will)
    Paul Atreides (seeing the future)
    Edward De Bono (lateral thinking/problem solving)

    You will notice that the list contains some fictional characters. This is allowed as they were the best representation of skills that I could come up with.

    As I also mentioned if there was a specific problems that were not being able to solved by the fixed members of my board then I would bring in guest members to ask them questions.

    Anyhow by now you might think that this makes me schizophrenic but I assure you, I never once forgot that this was just taking place in my head. All I am stating is that when I go there I often get extraordinary help if and when I need it.

    It can be a remarkable tool if you use it I suggest you do.

    Oh, one final thing for some of you who want a soft intro into the power of this technique i suggest this.

    Whenever you have a problem ask yourself the question “What do I think X would do in this situation?” You might find yourself getting a better answer. If you do maybe you will decide to up your game and take it to the next level by trying the boardroom.

    Snowy

  • This News Could Cost You Money, Maybe Even Kill You!

    The world is out to get you make no mistake! There is a mugger around every corner, someone ready to rob you, rape you or murder you! Your neighbour is probably a serial killer, pedophile or criminal mastermind. Every person who does not look like you is probably a religious fundamentalist terrorist, with sarin gas, anthrax, dirty bombs or weapons of mass destruction hidden in their back pack.

    It’s true it really is! Well it is if you believe the world that the media portray. That world is fucking scary. Worse than any horror film or futuristic dystopia. In their world everyone and I mean everyone is out to get you. That friend you have always had doubts about don’t trust that motherfucker he is likely to be planning something very nasty for you!

    Hey and if it is not the people, then it is some sort of disease! Right now as I write this I can tell you just exactly what is going to kill me according to the news! What I hear you ask is this horrendous thing? Well I will tell you! Are you ready for this? It’s EBOLA!!!! There I said it. oh my god Ebola is going to get me I should not write the word ebola too many times I may be chancing fate after all that shit is deadly.

    In fact it is so deadly i’m probably going to die from it before I finish this article! I better type as fast as I can.

    The thing is Ebola is serious it does kill people but unless you are a medical worker in Africa, you are really unlikely to catch let alone die from Ebola. As of writing 13 americans have contracted the disease.

    1 died from failing to receive proper treatment. The other people are up on their feet and back on the street. They were all in some way involved in the providing of medical care.

    Thus far here in the UK precisely none not one nada zip zilch have died of the disease.

    So why the furore. Well fear sells stuff! News people like diseases great for a panic.

    Most media organisations rely on advertising as their main source of revenue. Advertisers know that if people are unhappy they buy stuff. The more unhappy/worried they are the more stuff they buy. Advertisers want people to be unhappy so they go to where people are the most worried and most unhappy and put there adverts there. Bad news = More Sales. It is a simple equation.

    I get it this sounds like a bit of a conspiracy theory doesn’t it. So don’t take my word for it (never do) go look it up.

    See I told you.

    Unhappiness/advertising costs you money lots and lots of money added up over a lifetime it is a fortune, because to quote Tyler Durden from fight club “advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don’t need.”

    Still don’t believe me well in my life alone there have been a number of things that were going to kill me that failed to. I can remember when HIV/Aids was going to kill 1 in 4 people! No joke that was the story going around.

    Hmm what else? I know the Flu’s… Avian and Swine remember them? They were touted as the next big Pandemic. Hey after all Spanish Flu killed 50-100 million from 1918-1920. So maybe it could! As long as you forget how quickly medicine and effective medical care is available to people from the latter half of the 20th century onwards. Not to mention medical/scientific advances in understanding the disease and how it spreads. Oh and back then they didn’t have the world health organisation and the center for disease control.

    Hmm what else well there was the potential for another outbreak of small pocks (never happened)

    CJD/Mad cows disease well that got a few people in the UK over a hundred in the last 20 years. That said drowning kills 400+ people a year in the UK and we don’t hear the news telling us the dangers of water!

    You get the point!

    For a bit of fun just type the words “set to kill millions/thousands/tens of thousands” or derivatives thereof into google see how many of the set to kill millions etc actually came true.

    I will tell you what is a killer of people and makes people miserable and unhappy… Stress!

    That shit will kill you son! That’s no lie.

    What is the number one causer of stress? I have no real idea but I would bet “The News” is up there on the list.

    So turn that horrendous lie filled filth off. It could save your life.

    Here’s to a news/stress free life!

    Snowy

     

    NOTE: I wrote this article about 3 weeks ago at the start of the ebola crisis. Already we barely hear about it anymore. Surprise Surprise!!

  • Beware False Prophets!

    This is the shortest article I will ever write, but maybe the most important.

    You should question anyone who ever makes an unprovable statement, talks in absolutes, says things like “as we know” or says as X (let’s say Albert Einstein as an example) has shown us (deferring to a third party) or uses big words to make themselves sound knowledgeable.

    Ask who are they, and in what way can they legitimately claim authority on this subject.

    If they cannot offer a reasonable answer to this without using the above mentioned statements, run from them, as they are a giver of opinions at best, and a charlatan/conman at worst. So measure them by that standard!

    Obviously if you follow this to it’s logical conclusion, you should take with a pinch of salt everything I say or write.

    Trust only that, that is provable but keep an open mind as to why it might be wrong.

    Until next time, think for yourself!

    Snowy

  • Don’t Be 10x Better Be 1% Better!

    If you are anything like me you are always looking for ways to improve yourself and make yourself that little bit better.

    It sounds like a good idea in theory and we would all like to do it but the thing is to make any meaningful progress we pretty much know that we would need to radically change ourselves. After all there is no point in doing things by halves!

    Even if we were 50% better than at the moment that really wouldn’t make a significant amount of difference in our lives. Hey it would help but it really wouldn’t make that much difference.

    I mean lets say I can run 4 miles would 6 really make that much of a difference.

    We earn $50,000 (£30,000) would $75,000 (£45,000) make that much difference? Hey I’m not saying it wouldn’t be nice!

    What about a double up maybe that would make all the difference!

    Nah what we really need it a really big increase something significant we need 5X or 10X.

    Yeh, lets go with 10X now we are cooking with gas.

    The thing is how the hell do you go about making a ten times leap? How you improve by 10 times, seems like a really big ask. Especially as none of us has a genie in a lamp or magic wand! The reality of ten times just doesn’t sound real.

    So what are the other alternatives? Well there is small incremental gains, but they hardly seem worth while. No we need the big radical stuff. Small and simple that’s just no good.

    Or is it?

    Let’s take a look and examine the reality of it.

    Can small gains make big improvements?

    It is at this point I want to tell you a story I heard when I was watching the Olympics in 2012. The British Cycle Team had just pulled in a record haul of medals. The mastermind of this triumph was a man by the name of David Brailsford.

    Elsewhere Brailsford was in charge of team Sky and had helped Bradley Wiggins become the first Britain to win the Tour De France the worlds most prestigious cycle race.

    So what was his secret to getting such amazing results. Well the people around him tell of his philosophy and it was this, Brailsford believed in a concept that he referred to as the “aggregation of marginal gains.” He explained it as “the 1 percent margin for improvement in everything you do.”

    Let me point out the important part again it was “The aggregation of marginal gains.” It wasn’t a 10X strategy. It was small incremental improvements. That 1% when added together with other 1% made all the difference and brought in a flurry of golds and other medals.

    Before we go any further I want to make you two offers

    Offer a) within 1 year you get to be 10 X better than you are today!
    Offer b) each day for a year you get to improve 1% from the day before!

    Which one would you choose?

    Without examination offer A looks infinitely more appealing doesn’t it?

    The thing is if you took that option you would be massively robbing yourself. Really?

    Well yes it does! It all comes down to a wonderful thing called compounding! Allegedly Albert Einstein called compounding “the 8th wonder of the world.”

    The funny thing is that 1% compounded everyday gives you a 38 X improvement over a year. Don’t believe me go check it out on your calculator. (just do this put in the number 1 then press the X twice followed by 1.01 to represent 1% now press = 365 times for days of the year you will get just over 38)

    Ok great so now we know about the power of compounding and we know that we really can make a radical difference to the quality of our lives if we just keep making small improvements.

    So the next question is in what areas of your life should you start making these improvements. Well I will be writing articles on the ten main areas of life improvement in future articles. For now I think there are two areas you should concentrate on.

    To start your physical body. (I will be talking much more about this as I have mentioned but for now, think about exercise, nutrition and sleep.)

    Ask questions like what one thing can I do today to improve my physical performance?

    Maybe you will say well I could think of my food as fuel rather than just something I use to satisfy a need. Maybe instead of sitting down in front of a TV for half an hour you could go for a walk or do one pushup. Maybe you make your bedroom that little bit darker to help aid sleep.
    Mental Health. Avoid negative people and look for ways to reduce/eliminate stress from your life.

    Ask Questions like who or what causes me the most stress in my life?

    Maybe you have a specific person or persons who always come to you with their problems and dump them on you. Maybe you begin to reduce the time you expose yourself to these persons. Maybe there is a thought that always causes you to worry about things, so maybe you reach for a better thought, at least for a couple of moments.

    If you just do that then you will start to get marginal improvements in your life and as we have seen that it is the sum total of all these little improvements that in the long run make all the difference.

    The secret to both success and failure is small things repeated over and over for extended periods. So make sure the things that you do serve you, not steal from you.

    Each day strive for your 1%.

    Until next time I hope you become at least 1% better.

    Snowy

  • What Bugsy Malone Can Teach Us About Success!

    The thing is with knowledge you have to take it as and when you find it.

    For years when people have asked me where do you get all your best ideas I used to tell them Bugsy Malone. Partially as a joke but secretly there was a lot of truth in what I said.

    You see Bugsy is not just a great film, there is also a lot of great wisdom in there that is often overlooked by those who watch it.

    If you are not familiar with the film it is Alan Parkers take on the gangster film. The difference is that all the characters are played by children. The guns don’t shoot bullets they shoot custard. The cars are peddle power. Much of the dialogue comes in the form of song. So if you will Bugsy is in essence a gangster musical with kids.

    As a child I was mesmerised by the film oh how I wanted a splurge gun and a peddle car. Jodie Forster as Tallulah was my idea of all thing glamorous, there were definitely no girls like here in my school.

    Scott Baio who played the eponymous title character was the very definition of all that was cool! He was smart he was funny, he was street savvy and he seemed always to be one step ahead of the game.

    All that is unimportant for the purpose of this article, the important point is that, in the songs there was wisdom. Some of it truly profound.

    Yep I know what your are thinking, really in a kids film? I tell thee yes!

    Ok you want proof!

    Have you ever procrastinated about anything or said to yourself i can do that tomorrow? Yep! We all have that is part of the human condition right?

    Well the film gives us some advice on the subject from the song Tomorrow. In the film there is a character who keeps on trying to get an audition for a job as a dancer from the owner of a speak easy. Everyday the owner says to the character ok you can get an audition tomorrow. The lyrics state “Tomorrow never comes, tomorrow a resting place for bums!”

    Clearly stating that if you put off living your life for too long you might end up in the worst off all situations living like a down and out! Our character knows that there is no tomorrow he states “what kind of fool do they take me for!”

    The thing is he also gives us the cure for being put off. He says “I won’t take no for an answer!” Or to put it another way I will take control of my own fate and not be at the whims of others! The whole song is a masterclass in seeing how you claim control of your fate!

    You want some more advice from Bugsy, in a song entitled “Down and Out” it gives us a cure from complaining about your situation. At the start of the song we hear these lyrics.

    You don’t have to sit around
    Complaining ’bout the way your life has wound up
    Think of all the time you waste
    And time’s a precious thing to let go by

    Talk about philosophy hidden in plain sight!

    They also go on to give your there cure in the very next lyric it says..

    Sure you’ve hit the bottom
    But remember you’ll be building from the ground up
    Ev’ry day’s another step
    That takes you even closer to the sky, so give a try

    It goes on a little further to tell us how we do it by really taking a stand for ourselves and how we can start to make progress by taking a chance and making some new changes!

    Fight and fight some more
    Until you know the world is ready to receive you

    So be a man you know you can’t be certain
    That you’ll lose until you try, so give it a try

    You want some more?

    Ok how about Karma or if you prefer sow and reap or to put it another way, if you provide value first, then you will reap the rewards! We here this in the lyrics..

    You give a little love
    And it all comes back to you

    Simple, yet completely accurate.

    It also goes on to tell you about the importance of Character and how we should strive to keep ourselves to our highest standards and be impeccable with our word after all….

    You know you gonna be remembered
    For the things you say and do

    I won’t go on any more about just how good a film Bugsy is because every time I watch it I think for both children and adults it is a philosophical masterpiece.

    That said I will leave you will one final lesson from Bugsy Malone it comes in the form of telling us that we become the sum total of the choices we make and it is never to late to start making better ones.

    We could’ve been anything
    That we wanted to be
    Yes, that decision was ours

    We could’ve been anything
    That we wanted to be
    And it’s not too late to change
    I’d be delighted to give it some thought
    May-be you’ll agree that we really ought

    There are so many other great bits of wisdom in the film take the time to watch it if you haven’t or reacquaint yourself with it if you have.

    Hey, maybe you will realise somewhere in the film that you really can be anything that you want to be.

    Until next time.

    Snowy

  • Who is John Galt? And Why You Should Give A F**K!

    When I was young I was a massive fan of all things Martial Arts. I was obsessed. I had the book, the films, the equipment and the compulsory subscription to “Inside Kung-fu” magazine. This was the late 80’s so all that was cool (well sort of) back then.

    In film there were many great stars of the genre Jackie Chan, Sho Kosugi, Gordon Liu, Jet Li and up and comers like Van Damme and Segal. The undisputed heavyweight of the genre though was still Bruce Lee (Even though he had died some 15 years earlier).

    Bruce Lee had made martial arts cool, well at least for a little while, and I was a big fan. I had all his films and all his books. The Tao of Jeet Kune Do is still on my bookshelf in my dads house.

    There is wisdom in the book statements like “Absorb what is useful, reject what is useless!” wise words Bruce!

    You see Bruce had something I didn’t, he had a philosophy. It told me so in all his books. Then I learned that Bruce had studied philosophy in university. That was it for me, if it was good enough for him, then it was good enough for me.

    Out I went to the book store, and picked up “ The Basic Teachings Of The Great Philosophers” and I was all in.

    A whole new world of ideas was opened up to me. Why was I here? What was my purpose? On and on the big questions came, with ideas of how to answer that from some of the greatest minds in history.

    My world had magnified by a multiple of ten. No longer was a this little kid from Cardiff I was thinking about the big things the Universal Questions.

    I read more and more books on philosophy, Kant, Nietzsche, Hume, Spinoza, Hegel on and on I read. Deeper and deeper I went down the rabbit hole. More questions, more answers to find.

    Finally, Objectivism and Ayn Rand landed on my door step. I read “The Fountainhead”, “We The Living”, “Anthem” but it was “Atlas Shrugged” the big daddy of them all that really rocked my world. In it I found a philosophy that perfectly suited my then self. It gave me (with the help of reading some of her more academic books) a structured belief system that I could assess other ideas against.

    I had my own me specific philosophy my own personal mental operating system, let’s call it MyPhilosophy 1.0.

    This gave me an advantage over most people my age, in that most of the people I knew if they were to think at all had unformed opinions based on hearsay or whimsy or whatever the prevailing ideas were popular in our social circle. Not me though I had a framework. And like I say an intellectual advantage.

    I would “not live for the sake of another man, nor ask no other man to live for the sake of me!” I even had the original quote next to my bed.

    My thinking has come on a long way since my Ayn Rand days (not to say I don’t still hold with many of her ideas), but that is not the point. What I had at the start was an objective measure of how to frame ideas that were presented to me. Right or wrong at least I had that measure and could make fixed decisions as I had a philosophical foundation.

    So here is the real big question “What do you believe, and why?”

    If you have no answer or have never asked yourself these questions or maybe you have weekly formed notions maybe it is time to start to think about this.

    For one it will free up so much mental energy that you have to use on trying to decide how you feel on certain subjects. It will give you to some degree logic and reason. Your views on certain subjects will be much more fully formed when you discuss things. So you may like to give philosophy a try.

    Philosophy is a hard subject to jump straight into. So I want to give you a soft in. The easiest way I know to do this is to read the wonderful novel “Sophie’s World” by Jostein Gaarder. It works as a fantastic introduction to philosophy and also has a bit of an Alice in Wonderland feel to it.

    Maybe from there you will progress and find a philosophy of your own and who knows maybe you will stand at the door of Ayn Rand and be able to answer the enigmatic question of “Who Is John Galt?” and maybe when you can you will actually give a f**k!

    Yours Philosophically

    Snowy

    NOTE: I wrote this a while ago and think maybe that it is a little rushed there is far more that I could add to this subject but hey maybe I will come back to it at some later stage. Until then give philosophy a go.

     

     

  • Don’t Change Yourself, Upgrade Yourself!

    So from time to time we want to change a habit or adopt a new one. The thing is the process of change can be really hard, especially if you have to make a big change.

    When we are trying to make a change there is so much to get in the way of us succeeding.

    First of all we have an inbuilt system within our brain to regulate change and stop us from doing it. The homeostatic part of our brain literally stops us from making changes.

    If you are not familiar with homeostasis it is a self regulating system within the brain that tries to maintain a stable environment and to be wary of change.

    Why would your brain have such an inbuilt system? Well it is for a very important reason. It is designed to keep you alive. How does that work? Well your brain “knows” that if you do anything out of the ordinary it increases the “Risks” you are taking. The more risks you take the higher chances of you dying.

    Or at least that’s the way your brain thinks.

    There is a really big problem with that. Let’s say that we know exercising is a good idea as it will improve our overall health. The thing is all your homeostatic brain sees that as not a good idea it says to itself RISK so it will do everything in its power to stop you from making that change. It will literally throw thoughts into your mind about why it is not a good idea and why you should avoid making the change.

    It kind of sucks doesn’t it.

    This doesn’t just happen for physical things, let’s say we want to start a business, get a new job, end a bad relationship, start eating healthy food? All these are subject to the same scrutiny.

    So every time you are looking to make a change you have to fight that part of your brain.

    So what can you do about this well most people try and use will power to get past this. The thing is what most people don’t know is that will power is in limited supply within us all. And to be honest if you are a regular person you really don’t get that much of it.

    Certainly not enough in most people to make big changes. That is why virtually all New Years resolutions go out of the window within a couple of days from the start of the year.

    Well if you have not got enough will power to get you through it what have we got left. Well we have a few things. One is the BIG DECISION.

    If you make a decision in your mind, one that is absolute, and without question, somehow your mind knows it. This can’t be a wishy washy decision or a hope or an i’d like to decision this is an absolute deciding. Somehow this cuts through the homeostatic gatekeeper and gets taken on board.

    Most of the time these come from rock bottom. They come in the form of a sort of Never Again moment.

    They can come from a good place but that involves building so much positive emotion around the idea that it literally gouges a new neural pathway in your brain. Most of us don’t have the inclination for such practice.

    So unless you are in the depths of despair the big decision may be out of your reach.

    So what else is left? Well we have auto suggestion, affirmation and incantation. Which deal with repetition of chosen words or phrases that slowly change your thinking over time. The latter can be especially effective as it adds the emotional component to it, which your brain takes special attention to, as it (your brain) operates in an emotional capacity. Also we tend to become what we think about most of the time. So hey don’t dismiss this approach it can work for you.

    That said most of us don’t have the discipline to start such a committed routine.

    So what have we got left. Well I will tell you….. Tiny changes and trickery.

    So like i say when you try and make a big change your brain says to itself “forget that” or words to that effect, and does what it can to throw a spanner in the works.

    Aha so if we have the intention to make big changes but don’t want to scare our brain what can we do. Well we can go all psychological stealth ninja on our brain that’s what.

    So how do we do that. Well we take the big change and we break it down to it’s smallest component.

    Let’s say that you decided to get healthy and you thought that the best way to do that was to join a gym and commit to going 4 times a week first thing in the morning. Your brain panics, throws up a million ideas why that is not a good idea, and that is not the person you, are after all we’ve never even done any exercise in years. The plan is scuppered before it begins.

    So what can we do? Well we just do something small to start. Let’s say that you there is something that you do consistently each day. It could be anything taking a shower, brushing your teeth or putting the kettle on for your morning coffee. We will use the latter as an example.

    Here is what you do. You put the kettle on and as it is starting to boil you drop to the floor and do just one push up. No more, just the one! You get up and give yourself a fist pump. (The fist pump is important, new habits love positive rewards/reinforcement) Actually it does not have to be a fist pump it can be any reward (maybe chocolate) but you must reward yourself in some way.

    That’s it your done! Do this for a couple of days and then if you like, start adding one more push up each day. If you like after a while do this every time you put on the kettle. Then maybe add one extra exercise a squat maybe or a jumping jack (star jump). Do this slowly.

    Then before you know it your mind starts to get the message that you are a person who exercises. Then maybe you decide to go to the gym once a week not 4 times just once (your brain thinks, “ok, I do some exercise the gym is not that big a stretch!”) Do that for a couple of weeks. Your mind then thinks to itself and says to it’s self “I really am a person who goes to the gym.” Add one more session each week over a period of time. Your brain will readily accept this.

    This is how you sneak up on your brain to make lasting change.

    This works for virtually any area of your life. Just think of the change you want to make break it down to its smallest component. Attach that to an existing habit. Reward yourself. Add small increments. Simples!

    I also like to use this sentence as I’m making changes, it is amusing to me and it makes the thought of change easier in my mind. Give it a try here it is.

    “I’m ready for an upgrade!”

    For some reason we associate upgrades as a reward and not a change, so your mind let’s it slip through.

    So that’s how you can easily make a big change without the hardship and failure. I hope you try this.

    Snowy

  • Why Your Fantasies Can Make You Miserable!

    Why Your Fantasies Can Make You Miserable!

    When I was young I always wanted to be the richest man in Wales (I come from there! If you don’t know where that is, it is the country next to england look it up!)

    In fact I should say that I was totally convinced that I would become said richest man.

    Now that does not mean much unless you know what it takes to be the richest man in Wales. As we speak the two richest Welsh People according to The Sunday Times Rich List are

    Sir Michael Moritz (Sequoia Capital) £1.6 Billion

    Sir Terry Matthews (Newbridge Networks, Celtic Manor) £1.19 Billion.

    So I can feel you asking how am I doing? Well I will tell you I am fucking light years away. Light years I tell you.

    If I compare myself to my fantasy aspirations I’m a total and utter failure. An embarrassment to myself, my family and the Shaolin Temple. In fact I should be apologising to anyone who ever set a goal, to everyone for my very existence and all those who have ever helped me taught me or given me the time of day.

    Does that seem a little strong?

    Well the thing is this, this is how most of us treat ourselves. We compare ourselves to our idols, (Rockstars, Film Stars, Celebrities, Business Leaders even Spiritual Leaders) and we fall so far short of them. Jeez that’s depressing.

    Why oh Why oh Why can’t i be more like the people I admire? Life is so bloody unfair!!!!

    I’m definitely not the only person doing this not so long ago a guy I know asked me if I was upset that I had not achieved as much as Elon Musk (He owns Space X the first commercially successful private space enterprise. Not only that but he founded PayPal and also Tesla Motors) after all we are virtually the same age. Holy Cow. Look how far I am from the mark!

    So does this mean it is bad to aspire to anything for fear of falling short and being a failure?

    Hmm I think that is a good question.

    Buddha said words to the effect of “All suffering is created through desire!” So maybe we should give up on the idea of betterment.

    Or should we?

    Well maybe we should ask a better question.

    How about “How can we feel good about the pursuit of our goals without being reliant on the outcome?”

    Thus far the best definition of success I have ever heard came from Jim Rohn. He described it like this.

    “The progressive realisation of a worthy goal or ideal.”

    You notice there was nothing about completion in the sentence.

    Hey but that still may leave some of us falling short.

    Let’s get a little bit more scientific with this and let’s make a measure that is a little bit more concrete.

    Firstly we are going to do a little thought experiment.

    Have you ever looked at the horizon? Yep we all have.

    Have you ever traveled to the horizon? No you can’t! Why not? Because the horizon is not a real place, it is just our brains way of helping us deal with distance and geography. It is a trick of the mind and certainly not real. Agreed? Good!

    If as a traveler you had to judge your success by how well you were in getting to the horizon you would be leading yourself down a very miserable path.

    Ok this helps us with the second part of this.

    We all have unrealistic ideas of how we would like our lives to be. You know when everything is perfect you have everything you want things life fame, fortune, glory, the big house, the Ferrari, the Yacht and the private jet. You have everything you ever wanted right?

    (Some people get this and they are still not happy) But not you, you’d be over the moon right? The thing with fantasies is that they are always a moving goal post. That’s why some celebrities who seem to have it all are miserable because the posts always move. They are just like chasing the horizon.

    Crikey Snowy you really are depressing me!!! Throw me a bone man for goodness sake!

    OK so here is the bone and here is how you win the game.

    First we have to realise that our fantasies are just like the horizon but instead of geography this is how our brain deals with time! Please take a moment to get the implications of that sentence.

    Second, we have to look at three points.

    1. Our fantasy life (or if you prefer, your compelling goals) We will call this Fantasy 1 (F1 for short)
    2. Where we are right now! We will call this Reality 1 (R1 for short)
    3. Where we have come from (our journey thus far) We will call this Starting point 1 (S1 for short)
    S1 —————————— R1 ——————————————————————— F1
    All pain comes from comparing yourself to F1 when you are standing at R1.

    All pleasure comes from pursuing F1 but looking back from R1 to S1 and enjoying the journey and how far you’ve come.

    So clearly I’m not the richest man in Wales (yet) but I am happy where I am and how far I’ve come, and I am still looking to the future with optimism. And well to be truthful by most peoples standards I’m doing much better than OK.

    Each day is a win because I get a little bit closer to my fantasy and travel a little further from where I have come.

    My friend Julian has tattooed on his arms the words Journey and Destination when I asked once asked him about them he told me that there was no difference in either word, he said “The journey is the destination!”
    Snowy

     

    Picture courtesy of the legend Julian Castaldi (c)

  • I Will Have My Vengeance! In This Life Or The Next!

    Sorry, this article is all about being great has no relevance to the title. So I know that this sounds a bit like bait and switch but if you came here looking for vengeance then your shit out of luck. If you came to this looking for greatness then read on.

    I want to be the best person I can be. That is a sentiment that we can pretty much all get on board with.

    The problem is, that usually in order to be our ideal self we need an objective measure of just exactly that means.

    For the most part we have no real clarity on what a fully self actualised person looks like. After all we are bombarded from all sorts of directions as to what “success” should look like.

    From pop stars, movie stars and other celebrities to business moguls and spiritual leaders.

    So how do we compare and how do we stack up? You see it’s a hard comparison.

    Each of the groups often have quite different individual characteristics, so there is no real way to tell which area we need to improve.

    Often we start to break down this idea by making individual goals for each area of our personal self.

    They could be physical, emotional, mental, spiritual, creativity etc.

    Ok that may be a start, and for many people that works. Sometimes isolation of a particular area gives us clues.

    But what if we wanted a more complete measure of what we think we should look like?

    There have been people from history who have been held up as examples to us all. People like Buddha, Jesus, Lao Tsu from the spiritual realms. We also have the great military leaders like Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar and Ghengis Khan. Hey lets not forget the creatives like Leonardo Da Vinci, Mozart or Shakespeare. Or should we just go for the pure intellects like Newton, Einstein or Hawking.

    See it is a tough ask to find one person who embodies everything.

    For years I used to have an imaginary master mind group (I got the idea from Napoleon Hill’s book Think And Grow Rich) it contained many different people who I believed were the embodiment of a characteristic I thought that I needed in order to become successful.

    (If you have not read TAGR then you certainly should. Many of the most successful of people site it as the singularly most important book they read when it comes to success. The thing is the internal mastermind group idea was the one idea from it that I found the most useful. Surprisingly, I have never met one other person who has ever used that idea… Go figure!)

    Anyway I read countless biographies trying to find my guy, the person who I thought embodies all I want to be. Not one person stood out from the crowd, a few got close but each and every one fell short in some way.

    Then I read “The Memoirs of Marcus Aurelius” and I found my guy!!!

    By the way it was not Marcus Aurelius himself, great man though he may have been. It was one of the people in the book he described.

    Have you seen the film Gladiator with Russell Crowe? I’m sure you have it is a great film. Marcus Aurelius (Richard Harris) puts an appearance at the start. He is the one killed by Commodus (Joaquin Phoenix).

    The funny thing is that what most people don’t know is that Maximus was based on a real historical character. His story in the film is fictionalised but he really did live. And believe it or not he was my guy.

    Not the film version but the version that Marcus Aurelius wrote about in his memoir.

    Here is his description. Her is my model of what a self actualised human being looks like.

    “Maximus set an example of self-mastery, steadiness of purpose, and good cheer that no circumstance, not even illness, could extinguish. He combined in beautiful measure gravity with charm, and he did whatever needed to be done without making a fuss. Everyone believed what he said was what he thought and that he never acted with an intention to do harm or give offense. Nothing surprised or frightened him, and he never seemed to be in a hurry or slow to accomplish a task.

    He was neither intimidated and embarrassed on one hand, nor aggressive and suspicious on the other. So giving, forgiving, and loyal was he by nature that he appeared to be a man whose virtues were inborn rather than acquired. It is unimaginable that anyone ever felt inferior or superior around him, perhaps as a result of his pleasing sense of humour.”

    Ever since I read that description I have my model for the person I am looking to be.

    I now have my objective measure. I can compare myself to the above description and see where I live up to that description or where I am falling short. I can assess myself in each of the areas and make the adjustments and improvements as and when I am falling short. Now I have my measure.

    Have you got a measure of what greatness looks like? If not maybe you should find one.

    Maximus is my guy.

    Who knows maybe he can be yours too.

    Snowy