The "law" is an ass

I'm a massive fan of personal development. I embrace the growth vibe that it encompasses. At the same time, I'm fully cognizant of the importance of self-acceptance. Accept who you are, warts and all.

On the surface, there's a conflict. Try to be more than who you currently are but accept that there's absolutely nothing wrong with you. Actually, I see this as a healthy tension. If you focus only on the personal growth angle of more, more, more then you'll never be happy. If you get fully lost in only accepting your lot and the world around you, you miss the opportunity to lift yourself out of hardships.

Combining the two means that you accept the core of who you are, while realizing there's so much more to you than you're revealing. To me, that's a healthy place to be. Try to have a better understanding of the bigger picture rather than just a silo.

As I keep thinking throughout these blog posts, we live in a world of stories and n ot "the truth". Malcolm Gladwell tells a story. Freakonomics tells a story. The Undercover Economist tells a story. They could all be explaining the cause of the exact same situation but with different conclusions. We live through stories and liberal explanations, even more so when social sciences shape our understanding.

Commentators keep using the term "laws" to explain how some things work in our existence, as if they are irrefutable mechanisms within the universe. When such laws are based on physics, maybe there's some proper scientific underpinning. It can be tested. There's some rigor. 

But when you apply "laws" to something which should be loosely termed "rules", you do diminish it. The Law of Gravity has more depth than the Law of Attraction. Don't get me wrong, I'm into the Law of Attraction. I've read The Secret and seen the movie, and I try to live the principle. And I definitely see the value. But do I, hand on heart, believe that it works in equal measure for the 7.9 billion people around the world? No. Do I think the Law of Gravity applies evenly? Well, yes.

We can't take everything at face value. Keep observing. Keep growing a bigger picture. Challenge your thinking. Be curious. That's what I want to do.

Represent

“Don't explain your philosophy. Embody it.”  – Epictetus.

One of my biggest weaknesses is being smart. I do say that half in jest, but I've always been a thinker. Pseudo-intellectual, if you will. The trouble with that has been I've been excellent at conceptualizing and horrible at execution. Absolutely dreadful.

I've got so caught up with proving how right I am, how clever my thought process is, how mind-blowing my insights are, I haven't got close to following through on a lot of things.

At the route of it is a combination of a lack of focus and fear. Sometimes my thoughts are so diffused I get lost in the layers of thinking (and that's something I'm finding in writing these blog posts recently). 

But at the crux is a lowish tolerance to failure. It has to be perfect or not at all. The fact that I know all this means that I'm looking at different ways in which to drive action. (I'm also well aware that by talking about it all now, I'm very subtly procrastinating that bit more).

So I'm going to look to practice what I preach. Be more dynamic. Represent an ideal. Embody it, as the quote above says. Live by the principle of Be-Do-Have.

Ok, I've been here before. I just need to keep reminding myself what I'm trying to achieve. Personal and financial freedom.

So time to do things bit by bit. Iterate. And learn along the way.

The world is, well, challenged...but...

The world is going to hell on a handbasket. Or at least that's what we're told on a daily basis by the media.

I have no doubt that things will be challenging. Zero-interest rates for so long finally have a cost, a pandemic that disrupted industries and social structures alike, an uncalled-for war in Ukraine, energy prices hitting crazy levels. I could go on.

The truth is, none of us knows how this is going to play out. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise. We live in the world of narratives. The same story gets played out through different lenses. We all live a version of the Rashomon effect - one storyline played out through multiple viewpoints. It really does depend on which ones you expose yourself to and which ones to run with.

But this is not the tine to sit back, eat the popcorn and watch things play out. You really don't want to leave things to chance. You don't want to be ill-prepared for what's playing out in front of you. 2008 proved that. You need to shape the narrative. Your narrative. That means not relying on your job, the government, or whoever. 

This isn't some conspiratorial prepping vibe. It's far more pragmatic than that. The world owes you nothing so you have to control what you can. Stay nimble. Get skilled. Take the initiative. 

If only it was so easy

Part of my problem is that I overcomplicate things. I have so many amazing/excellent/inspirational...(fill in the gaps) ideas that I simply don't know where to start.

Am I alone? No. We all manage to find ways in which to get in our own way. 

And during those times of overwhelm, very often we know what we should be doing. Sometimes our head is telling us. Sometimes it's our heart. Sometimes the gut. Regardless, we know.

But we just to live in our thoughts rather than to do anything about it. That's the "knowing-doing gap". We know exactly what we should be doing (or at least have a fair idea), but we choose to overcomplicate, overthink, procrastinate.

The key (of course) is action. Deep down, we know that. It doesn't have to be massive, life-changing moves. At least, not normally. Just putting one foot in front of the other is what counts. 

And to do that, to eat that elephant one bite at a time, we need to trust. 

Trust that we are on the right path. Trust that our gut feelings are correct. Trust, fundamentally, that if we are not on the right path or are gut feelings are wrong that we will be okay. That's the key reframe.

None of us knows truly what the future will bring. How can we? (Futurists, tarot card readers, stock market strategists take note). All we can do is work on ourselves and our worlds in order to better our environments for what might come tomorrow. To work towards something.

We don't have to beat ourselves up about having too many ideas. We just simply need to experiment. To play. To explore. Keep observing and keep iterating. 

Blurred lines

Ahh, the joy of distractions...

There are so many ideas out there. Some are as old as time (have something physical to sell and find somewhere to sell it), and some are new "shiny object" types (NFTs anyone?).

That's been part of my problem. A lack of focus. Easily distracted. An inability to prioritize. 

It's no wonder I haven't been able to kickstart the road to my millions...

And yet I have been consistent in my thinking in relation to certain aspects of my philosophy. We all have to take ownership of our worlds. We cannot rely on the government, our companies, our jobs. 

You could have the best boss in the world. But what happens if she is ordered to downsize your team? What if she leaves for a better opportunity? What if she's downsized? 

You can work for the best company in the world (at least as far as you're concerned). But what if that company turns out to be a WorldCom, Enron, Wildcard, Lehman Brothers....?

And you can be in what you think is the perfect industry for you. But what if that industry goes the way of the Blackberry manufacturer. Or vinyl record-maker? Or digital camera maker? 

Things change. You simply need to start to control the controllable. To me, that's all about taking control of your finances, career skillset, emotional resilience, health, and relationships. It's about investing across all those areas.

It's about observing how the world is changing around you and adapting. It's about being proactive and not reactive - because being reactive can sometimes be too late.

As investor Warren Buffett once said: "Predicting rain doesn't count. Building arks does."

Time to build arks. How? Well, that's my goal.

You can't always get what you want

I've had two wake-up calls in the last few weeks. Firstly, someone I know passed away. He was a friend of a few friends of mine. He was a larger-than-life character, could always carry a conversation, great at quizzes and liked a drink. I don't know the full story yet but it seems like his lifestyle got the better of him. Mid-50s. Very sad.

Then a few days ago an old friend from university posted on her Facebook account a link to her new weekly blog. This was going to be a no-holds-barred expose on her life. Life hadn't turned out as she had hoped. She was divorced, childless (not by choice, as she states), about to housesit to save on rent, in debt, and struggling to make ends meet working for herself. And the wrong side of 45. None of that fitted with the life path she had expected for herself. And, to be honest, it wasn't the path that I thought she was on either.

The trouble is, that's how life can be. We can only control so much. And pandemics and the like will always be out of our control. But it also makes me think about doing our best to try to shape our reality. Or, more realistically, make ourselves as adaptable and resilient we can be to changing circumstances.

You can't always get what you want. But we all have to at least work towards trying to get what we need.

That's kind of what I want for myself and want to do in the future to help others. These musings do have some rhyme and reason. I just need to flesh them out... 

We're all making this up

I'm a massive fan of personal development. I've read a ton of books, been on seminars, drunk the Kool-Aid. I've often found it to be uplifting stuff. Admittedly, that can be in the form of a short, cheap dopamine hit. But enjoyable nonetheless.

But there's one thing I've come to realize.  It's all nonsense. Not in the sense of it having no value. No, I think there's plenty of value. It can help guide, it can bring you peace, it can help make your dreams come true. The thing is, personal development and its ilk is full of subjective truths, as opposed to objective truths. One guru will tell you that X is the answer, contradicting the other guru saying that Y is, only to be challenged by the scientist that says it's Z. Meanwhile, the mystic tells you it's A all along...

Something that has increasingly seeped into my thinking is that we're all making everything up. Or are, at least, blinded by our little slither of knowledge into thinking we know more. We all think we have a better understanding of the world than we do have, have more control over the world than we actually have, and can navigate the complexities of life better than we actually can.

Sure, you can say the advice is backed by peer-reviewed science. But it's amazing how well scientific input gets cherry-picked to suit a narrative. And it's all narrative. It's not the "truth" because we don't have the capacity to know the full picture. We know so little in the bigger scheme of things. 

Where am I going with this? There's plenty of advice packaged as true. But what works for Peter may not work for Paul. We've all got to get to know what works best for ourselves. Experiment. Take notes. Don't take everything at face value. Iterate. Learn. And start again.

It's about learning to trust yourself a bit more. Ask questions. Question answers. Don't take advice at face value. Adapt accordingly. (That's my view - don't take it as gospel). 

And....I'm back....

Well, that was a strange two or so years, wasn't it?

The last post I made on this site was August 2020. My journey to building income streams for "financial freedom" was taking a slow, meandering path. Too slow. So I stop chronicling it. I'd had enough of spinning the wheels.

Anyway, a lot has happened in the world since then. The pandemic properly kicked in globally and we were still waiting for a vaccine to be approved, the US found itself an even more elderly leader (not before a skirmish on Capitol Hill), Russia decided it was a great time for an invasion, and inflation has gone insane. It's been quite a period.

One thing that hasn't changed is my lack of additional income streams. That's not entirely true. My dividend strategy remains in place. I'm still selling a few ebooks. And I do the occasional paid writing gig. But there's no consistency. No structure. No uniforming narrative to drive me to the next level. 

So what I've decided to do is to use this blog to help me get clarity on my philosophy. Yes, it'll be a bit of self-indulgent noise. No, I'm not likely to monetize much here.

I just want to get in writing some of my thoughts. To shape a worldview that I can build upon. I don't exactly know how this will play out. I'm not even sure of the regularity. I just have this urge right now to try to define my "mission". 

I want to have some body of work that will provide the foundations for consulting / coaching / digital products (all of which I want to have as part of my future - at least, I think so...). At the very least, I'll get to practice thinking outside the box. 

So, here I am - starting here once again. It's been too long!