Recently I have noticed a growing trend on my wife’s blog. The last group of posts have been about me and my misadventures.  The last one was about comments I made when I was marking recently.  Before that was how some old lady confused me for a dog thus giving the impression that I was cute… of course they were talking about my dog.  Before that I was buying bargain bread and destroying a possum with my awesome flatulence.

I like the one where I ended up working a long week and worked out that I was making $10.50 an hour. The other one is where I am eating snacks and leaving my rubbish in the car… priceless.   I could go on for hours… and I will.  No, I won’t.  Suffice to say that reading several posts (probably in the order of 100) of the dumb things I do.   Given that this is the problem solving blog and not my life story there is a lesson.  It’s this: it’s good to be reminded of how human you are.  You often don’t realise the silly things you do and how other people think about them. Having someone else write about you is also very surreal.

On the other hand some of those posts have left me shaking my head.  Still, it’s been interesting to read about my life from my wife’s point of view.  I am still waiting for the next suprise. Off the top of my head I can name five things that I have done that are what we call “blog worthy”!

Over the past ten years I have learned many things about life and personal development.  One of the hardest lessons I have had to learn and indeed am still learning revolves around tough decisions.  It’s more than likely true that when you make tough decisions you will have some resistance… but what happens when you don’t make these decisions?

Making tough decisions despite opposition

The ultimate goal in life is I think a simple one.  To live it as you were supposed to live it.  I think most of us were created with a purpose in mind… to find the purpose is the first part and the second part is to use that purpose for the greater good.  It’s of no use to accumulate endless reams of money if we don’t live a balanced life pursing that which we know we should.  Hence, I find myself constantly hitting a brick wall when it comes to others.   I find as a person who, for some bloody reason, see’s things happening around him before others do that I get frustrated when people don’t see things my way.

So much so that instead of doing something about it… I will capitulate.  This is a habit I am unlearning at present.  However, I have realised that sometimes when you see things it’s because you have developed a talent about something that others haven’t or for some other spiritual reason.  That doesn’t make you better at life than them… it just gives you insight.  So, I have learned that you need to develop yourself as somebody who thinks and acts accordingly.  When it’s in your power to do so… do something.  When it isn’t … don’t.  Remember, not everybody knows what you are talking about.

Making the tough decisions anyway

I like to keep people happy and tend to avoid conflict most of the time.  The reality is as I am learning, you can’t actually keep people happy.  Conflict is unavoidable and a necessary part of life.  For me it’s extremly hard to front up to a situation and have the balls to tackle it.  I would rather not.  But, you must do it.

I want to leave you with a thought.  Don’t put off the tough decisions for long.  If you have to wait.  Wait.  Use wisdom, discernment and whatever else works for you.  Remember though that you will still have to make it through at some stage.  You will have to face that tough decision even if you don’t want to.  That’s life.  What we can do is learn be afraid and take the chances we know we have to and even if we fail we can still remain happy knowing that next time we can do it all again!

*Image credit: brbankston

One of my pet hates is this idea that you can solve a problem by doing something obvious that you have already thought of.  What am I talking about?  It’s best described by an example:

“Hey Luke, did you know you can stop renting and buy a house?”

“No really how do I do that?”

“Well… all you gotta do is save up a deposit and the bank will lend you money.”

I call this kind of advice: all you gotta do is syndrome.  Over the past year my frustration has grown exponentially as I have listened to voluminous amounts of horse plop flow forth.  That’s right I said “voluminous”.  I am up to my eyeballs with advice that tells me to solve my money worries that informs me that all I need to do is live on a budget and save more.  I already know that!   How’s this gem: all you gotta do is buy a house and you won’t be renting… I KNOW THIS!

Some of my favourite all you gotta do examples:

Problem: I don’t have a job

All you gotta do is: Buy the paper and find one!

Problem: The car won’t start

All you gotta do is: have you tried the key?

Problem: I got this credit debt I can’t pay.

All you gotta do is: pay it off.

Problem: There’s this crisis in the middle east

All you gotta do is: Forge a treaty.

All you gotta do is syndrome is the taking the problem and applying the most obvious answer to the situation.  What I call “at hand” information.  I was watching television the other day and one of big financial gurus was explaining how to have wealth.  It was all good until my wife said, “where do I get the money to invest?”

And herein lies the problem… if you have no money (i.e. on the street) or you are like the 4 billion people on this planet who don’t have enough money to cover their needs what do you do with advice like that?  I can tell you that those stuck in poverty wish to God there was a way out!

Please remember that next time you are giving advice to someone don’t be afraid to say that you can’t help them because you don’t know.  I think it’s a lot worse to offer advice when you only have “at hand” answers.  Still, in some cases you need to judge that because some people really need that kind of help. However, I can bet you that most desperate people have considered most of the obvious and almost ALL of the non-obvious solutions.

This all time classic “rap” song was a hit back in the day.  I was listening to this song again and reflecting on it’s ability to infuse it’s way into my brain when suddenly the lyrics didn’t quite add up.   Here are three things that I thought you should NEVER do when attempting to solve difficult problems.

If you have a problem yo I’ll solve it…

Most shrinks that a worth a dam will tell you that you can’t solve problems for other people if you want them to grow.  As a lecturer I can tell you the answer… but what’s going to happen when you need to actually know it?  You may remember me but I doubt you will remember the answer.  So I would disagree with Ice on this point… you should never take on problems for other people soley.  Don’t get me wrong I am not saying… bail out of the deal.  I am saying… work with people collaboratively to solve problems.  Facilitate!

I’m on a roll time to go solo…

In the opposite manner a difficult problem is best solve by a group of people.  We have this sick notion in western society of the hero.  The early pragmatists believed that you could best solve problems by working with people in a team situation.  Collaborative endeavours and multiple views were the order of the day.  Fast forward a hundred or so years and now we are trying to be our very best without thinking of how we can make use of many minds.  It’s a sad state of affairs.

In WWII the war effort saw the greatest bringing together of disciplines.  Social scientists working alongside mathematicians and so on.  The concept of the mastermind group is amongst these great ideas.  If I had actual friends I think I would like to have a group of problem solvers with different ideas.  Sure, we would fight… but imagine the problems we would solve.  It would be great!  And yes, I think that economics rules the day at the moment… we need more perspectives!

Proof of concept lies in what works not what is said

Words words words!  I hear this and that about running dope and a “borrowed” hook from Under Pressure by Queen… what Vanilla doesn’t do is show me.   What we say in our problem solving efforts are largely just words… what actually works… now that’s where the money is.   The problem with ideas is that they can be thought of as being in two forms… passive (not used) and active (used).  When you take an idea and put it to work in an open environment there a many more variables than in the closed one of your mind.  That’s why the results are always different that you thought… you didn’t know the variables!

In other words, ideas are only as good as their proof of concept.  How well do they work?  This is gutsy because when you put them to work you may have an idea, data, intuition, knowledge, facts and so on.  You know that when you let them go… they are tested… much like how we stress test metal.   Imagine if that expensive car you have was not tested.   They just bolted bits and pieces on it and let it roll.  What if they went for the cheapest materials?   Stuff that works and improves things, proves the concept.  That doesn’t mean however, that we have reached the end.  We may not know the flaws for a couple of years yet!

The best thing I have heard (well one of the best) is that most people are rational.  When you see somebody doing something… there’s a reason for it most of the time.  Instead of judging you need to find out what works and why they did it.  Then you will find the concepts at work in the situation.  So in Vanilla’s case I have found a genuine concern in his ability to solve problems.  He wants to do it on his own and he wants to solve your problems.  Not only that but he talks too much and acts too little.  In short, I hope you are not the same.  I can’t say beyond conjecture why he thinks he can solve your problems… maybe he has access to metareality.  For the rest of us I would against his problem solving advice.

*Image Credit: Fish

Ok so I am bit short on ideas at the moment.  But after my last post and some work I nailed during the week… I got to thinking.  How powerful are concepts in our lives?

A concept

Academic Peter Checkland coined the phrase, “a framework of ideas” to describe really what a concept is.  I think in our lives there are all kinds of ideas we make use of on a daily basis.   We have concepts of family, concepts of community, concepts of society and so on.  A concept is really a set of ideas.  Take the current media hype about petrol prices.   We have a concept of crisis that’s framing those issues at the moment.

Using another concept to create tension

Let’s now express the problem as an opportunity.  What opportunities could come from the high price of petrol?  More ethanol, hydrogen?  What about a new concept?  What about teleportation?  No need for fuel or even parking vouchers.  Just zap and you are there.  How about more working from home solutions… more flexible working hours… cars that run off water.   Every crisis breeds opportunity!

The concepts of what we think stuff is

In life there are things we build up in our minds that tell us what stuff is.  There are people, places and things that demand our conceptual attention.  Say for example you are an upwardly mobile single person who is getting older and older.  You have no partner and desperately want one.  What’s your concept of the future?  Do you see my point.  Why not start thinking ‘opportunity’ instead of ‘crisis’.

So here we are for some reason talking about change of concepts.  I am wondering if this blog would survive without commentaries… probably not.  That said, this was an interesting post and as I wrote it I realised… I need to use better concepts of the future… at the very least!

*Image Credit  Hajime NAKANO

Well I have been working my big ass off over the last week and I can tell you I feel the pressure of it. So much so that I have made a decision that I no longer wish to live a life where I am constantly required to answer email, work overtime and not get paid. So I began thinking what changes could I make? As I thought about it I noticed all the things I would have to do to actually make the change happen. This is not to mention serendipity either (something I appear to have no control over… or I do and just don’t know or perhaps combinations of both… but I digress).

Change requires learning

To make a change you need to learn your way forward. What is going to work and what is not going to work? What concepts will we use and what won’t we? A plan takes time to emerge and direction is not always forthcoming. There are just sometimes when you have to do it to be where you need to be. That means making a commitment to take action and suffer the consequences… rather than put up with a life that’s less than satisfactory. Change therefore requires learning and learning requires action. What a horrible pair they are!

If you want to do it… you must go through it!

Unfortunately taking new directions probably doesn’t mean the path of least resistance. You have to fail your way to success more often than not. So a holiday is better than change in that respect because change takes a lot more work than a holiday. However if change is lasting and makes a long term difference in your life then it’s worth it isn’t it?

So in summary I can’t conclusively say that change is as good as a holiday with this micro thought. I can say I would like to have a holiday to defer change. Because taking a holiday is shirtloads better than making changes! It’s very hard to change.

* Credit: Derrick

At the moment I am reading a book called Do what you love and the money will follow by Marsha Sinetar. I have found it interesting to read about how the actions have an impact on the internal pictures we hold in our minds. One of the things I have always assumed was that it was a matter of positive thinking to focus your mind on a goal. Perhaps though (as I am sure most of you already know), there is a deeper reciprocal relationship between what we think and what we do. One that we may never fully comprehend.  In particular, how do actions influence our unconscious minds?

If we have positive thoughts and our actions don’t match…

What fascinated me about what I read was that the symbols we hold to in our mind are confirmed by the actions we take (so the author said). So if we have a certain perception of business for example, our actions should reflect this inner belief.

When they don’t match we experience a form of what we call cognitive dissonance. When we act against our inner beliefs we feel a churning in our gut or at least we should. If we do this for long enough… what happens? Our hearts become hard and we lose ourselves. Here is an example that might help:
Say you you have a goal to be a leader. You visualise that goal, you see yourself doing it and being what you want to be. Most self-help (Christian or otherwise) will tell you to do this. You take confirming actions to line up with your vision and eventually you begin to move towards ‘realisation’ of that goal. Apparently, it’s a one way process that’s ‘intentional’. But what if it isn’t? What if the visioning process works both ways? Images float into our unconscious to and fro and whether we like it or not we are always doing it!

What if we get these goals from other people?

What I think the author is alluding to which I didn’t realise was this: I can be brainwashed to the point where I can believe unconscious things about myself that other people are affirming. No big revelation is it? However, it does mean that visioning could very well be a two way process. Thoughts can come to me from the outside and build a nest in my unconsciousness!  I have received external information, which I can process into a belief that resides on the inside.

People who have ‘visioned’ have often reported this process.  A process by which they suddenly realised and begin to expect something to happen to them based on a vision they created.  Delusional?  Some of the greatest achievements started this way. This external confirmation is mysterious.  I have experienced moments like this myself.  There is however something I think we have ignored in western culture that involves an inner knowing.  Even scientifically we have a code (DNA) that guarantees we have certain biases.

The other problem we have is that our unconscious minds also contain our desires

So while we may have desires programmed into us we can actually know our desires.  The things that stir us and the things that are natural giftings to us.  As Billy Joel says… you just recover when another belief is betrayed.  The world has conflicting beliefs running through it… beliefs that people are adjusting too constantly.  As these beliefs intersect and create new ones which are adapted, maintained and developed (or destroyed) newer beliefs emerge.  For example, my parents believed in getting married early and having children.  Most people today have a different belief.   Therefore the confirmation through actions is entirely different.

We confirm our beliefs through our experiences the author of this book argues.  That is, the actions we take send a message back to our unconscious that we are serious.  In the same manner that an ‘affirmation’ sends a positive thought out… actions send the thought as a received symbol back into the unconscious that, “hey I am really doing this”.  So there is a reciprocal relationship between the unconscious mind, the mind and the actions we take.  We knew that.  What I didn’t realise, because I am a very slow person, was this: the actions act as symbols to my unconscious mind that I am prepared to act on unconscious thoughts.  That is, the real me deep down there that’s trying to get out is looking for confirmation.  You will feel this when you do it… it’s like nothing else I have ever known.

Therefore, as I find something about myself on the inside and begin to develop it… I am developing the real me and I will find a level of joy in what I am doing.  If I don’t do it… I will find a level of discomfort, depression and perhaps even sickness.  I found a similar out by watching my children.

They often play and do things they want to do.  You hear them making their own little worlds and building realities to engage in.  They will pick up a pen and draw, they will paint or sing.  Who told them to do that?  Nobody.  It came from their inner being.  I encourage my children to be creative and follow these inner desires (now) because I have begun to realise that we already know what we want… the problem is it’s buried under layers of wrong thoughts and teachings.  Now to get the bugger out… that’s the trick isn’t it?

Where there is no level of unconscious awareness the conscious mind begins to build maps

So where no unconscious belief is found… your mind goes about building one.  If you say, “I am agnostic about God” that is your map… your belief.  If you value science over religion… your mind will affirm as much.  The opposite is probably the case.   That belief can be thought of as a castle that sits in your mind dominating your conscious thought.  Try and change it.  Make yourself say things you don’t believe and notice what happens.  Something on the inside gets you.  You start getting shirty!  Why?  The map you have in your mind is now attached to the unconscious you and is seeking confirmation from the outside world.

That thought you had might have been fed to you from books, television, people and/or whatever.   The question I always ask is this: how did that perspective form itself? Another post for another day!  These things are the hidden assumptions we shape our lives with.  And as much as we know some beliefs are clearly bad for us.

In closing this rather obscure post I would like to say this: I am starting to think that my relationship with myself and the world around is non-linear and bi-directional.  So much so that when we speak of ‘intentions’ and the desire to manifest new realities for ourselves we are almost always speaking of a shift in belief first leading to action that confirms to our unconscious that we are serious about it.   I am not a psychologist… but I have noticed that when a belief changes in someone’s life (a deep seeded belief) people’s actions almost always change… at least for a while.   So, action taking is important as it confirms that you are prepared to live from your true desires.  The question is: are we as people prepared to begin walking down this path?