Tag: Gratitude

People Aren’t Dumb

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“People aren’t dumb. The world is hard.” Richard Thaler

Managing your finances is hard. Planning for retirement is hard. Holding down a job is hard. Balancing priorities between family and work is hard.

It’s easy to think that people who struggle in one or more areas of life are dumb, but there is so much assumed knowledge as you become an adult. If someone doesn’t take you aside and teach you about everyday things like Medicare, private health insurance, car insurance, the importance of superannuation, then it’s possible you may never know how to manage them.

Add to that, sometimes, just getting through the day is a challenge, let alone trying to keep it all together, feeding all the people in the house, paying all the bills and planning ahead. It takes a lot to be a person.

What if we thought the best of each other. What if we put judgement aside and gave the people in our lives some slack. They aren’t dumb, they aren’t awful, the world is hard and they are just different from us.

It’s that sort of generous outlook as we think about other people that gives us the space to accept people for who they are, and where they are right now. We all want everyone to try and get better as a person (I know I want that for me and those around me), but some people wont change. Who they are today is who they will be. That’s okay.

We all manage the tension of loving people for who they are and at the same time hoping for something more for them. But the world is hard. Let’s love people (and ourselves) in this moment and let tomorrow take care of tomorrow.

Lagging

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“All success is a lagging indicator” – Ryan Holiday

All good things come after the work.

If something good comes that you didn’t work for you usually waste it because you don’t fully understand how valuable it is.

So, the hard work that you are putting in right now, the discipline that no one else is seeing, the incremental progress which is almost invisible to anyone but you, that is the foundation of future success.

No one has ever won a gold medal without working for it over a long period of time. The medal is a lagging indication of how hard they have worked.

Success is a combination of that hard work, along with planning, reassessing, consistency and a whole lot of luck.

The cold hard reality is that success is never guaranteed, so you may as well find a way to enjoy the hard work that you are doing, because this could be the only reward you get from it.

Probably the most important part of this is to map out what success is for you. What are you aiming for? Is that really success? Start with that, and then do the other things. It will save you from faux success in the future, which is actually failure.

Generous Identity

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Each person, no matter who they are or what they have done, has intrinsic value, the value and beauty of life. There is something magical about it. We struggle to find the words to truly express just how amazing life is. If you are living and breathing, you are so valuable. You are a miracle.

From that foundation of value comes gratitude. As we experience this amazing life, as we get to take the next breath, as we enjoy life with other people around us, it is natural to be grateful for what we have been given. And it is absolutely something we have been given – we didn’t create ourselves, we didn’t produce the life force that flows through our bodies, we are just experiencing and benefiting from it.

This gratitude then, is the birthplace of generosity. Because we have been given so much, therefore it makes sense to give to others.

Generosity is at its strongest when it comes from a place of valuing yourself.

I have value as a person, I bring value just by existing, and out of that I can be generous to others. My value doesn’t come from what I give, but from who I am. I am confident in who I am and out of that confidence I give.

Stinginess, on the other hand, is weakness. Stinginess is the easy way out. It requires no effort, no forethought and no creativity. It is also toxic to everything it touches.

Choose gratitude and generosity.

Put off until tomorrow…

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“What if this is as good as it gets?” Melvin Udall (Jack Nicholson, As Good as it Gets)

Well, it is if you want it to be. Because there is always more to learn, something else to try, another place to visit, a different version to read.

If this is where you want your life to stop and stay, then don’t do anything new. This will be your peak.

Unfortunately, it is unlikely that you will be able to maintain the status quo for long, because things change. Sometimes things change slowly, sometimes they change quickly.

When asked how he went bankrupt, Mike, a character from Ernest Hemingway’s “The Sun Also Rises”, said that it happened “Gradually and then suddenly.” Often that’s how things go, change happens slowly, almost unnoticeably slow, then it happens all of a sudden and at that point there is nothing you can do about it, except for hold on for the ride.

Regardless, change comes to us all.

If you put off until tomorrow the work of becoming the kind of person you want to be, who you are today is the person you will be. And then I can guarantee that this is as good as it gets for you.

Success Will Follow

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Give first and success will follow.

Although, it depends on what your idea of success is. If success means ending up a stingy old person, making no positive impact on the world, then giving is most definitely not for you.

But, if your idea of success is having a loving family, being a generous person, sharing your life with those that you care about, having a life of growth and learning, then that will require something of you first.

I have become more aware over the years that a generous act is the catalyst for most of the good things in life. Some of those good things are guaranteed, like the positive emotional and psychological effects that generous acts have, and some of them are not guaranteed at all.

For example, there is no guarantee that if you are a generous person that you will have a happy, loving family life. But I can guarantee you definitely won’t have a happy, loving family life if you are not generous. It’s a risk to be generous and hope that good things come, but the consequences of not being generous are heavy.

The irony is that being generous solely for the sake of reaping the benefits takes something away from the generous act, but it doesn’t completely cancel it out. So, even if you can only muster a generous act because of what good it will bring you, keep doing that. Over time, being generous will change you and you will begin to seek the rewards less and less.

So, give first and then see what comes.

To those who are still giving…

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Again, we find ourselves in a crisis (there’s always a crisis). Sure, inflation seems to be slowing down, but talk of the cost-of-living crisis is strong in the community and there is no doubt that some are really struggling to make ends meet each week.

Here’s what I know, more people are giving less, and less people are giving more. Some are giving to charities at their normal levels, and more on top of that because they are able to, and some are giving less than they normally would as they juggle financial priorities. But those who are still giving have made it a habit, one which they don’t say goodbye to when finances get tight. They still give but give less because it’s easier to increase and continue than it is to start something that you have stopped.

So, no matter how tough things are for you right now, make sure you find a way to maintain your generosity to those around you. It will make you feel better about yourself and it will make a huge difference to the organisation that you are giving to.

To those who are still giving, we thank you.

What are the chances?

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Out of every person that was born when I was born, what are the chances that I was born in Australia?

In the year I was born (which you can guess at), there were 124,287,658 other babies born in the world. In Australia there were 223,034 other babies born in that same year.

That means that I had a 1 in 557 chance of being born in Australia.

At the same time there were approximately 65,000,000 children born in Asia, most of which, at that time, were born into poverty. So, going on the numbers, in the year that I was born, there was approximately a 1 in 2 chance of being born in Asia, most likely into poverty. That doesn’t take into account the African continent at all. The numbers get pretty intense at that point.

Suffice to say, the chances of me being born into a country that wasn’t experiencing debilitating poverty were slim at best. But here I am, lucky I guess.

So, what’s the point?

The concept of the ‘self-made man’ or ‘self-made woman’ start to lose meaning for me at this juncture. I find it a little amusing when people start talking about how they pulled themselves up by their own bootstraps to get to where they are, or that it was only through their hard work and skill that they have succeeded in life.

More and more I strongly doubt those assertions. Hard work is definitely necessary in life, but looking at the odds laid out above (and this is just location of birth), I think it is more to do with luck than anything else. Where you were born, your gender, your race, your family of origin, all of these have a huge effect on your life before you even get the chance to start working hard.

Maybe something happened to her

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“Saturday night is probably not the best night to go for a run on that route”.

That was the first thing I said to my wife after I returned from an evening run. I felt a little cooped up during the day and thought that a brief run would help me feel a bit better. What I didn’t take into account was the day of the week nor the time of the day. When it’s night, I will run where there is enough light to do so safely, and this just to happens to take me past the local tavern.

As I approached it this particular night I noticed an older woman leaving it and walking the same direction that I was headed, she was noticeable swaying as she went. I gave her a wide berth as I passed her on the footpath and then stopped to let a car leave the car park, before jogging off again. My new headphones have noise cancellation, which I am loving, but I could still hear someone calling out. I assumed it was coming from the car that just left, but the sound stayed as the car got further away. Finally, I looked behind me and the swaying woman was chasing after me, screaming. I thought she may be in trouble, so I stopped to see what was wrong.

“I’m not going to let you walk past my complex. I am barring you from walking past my complex!” She yelled as she walked past me in an attempt to block my path, continuing her barrage, complete with excess saliva.

“It’s a footpath, I’m just going for a run” I said, but it was not use, she would have none of it and was committed to stopping me in my tracks. Realising that it was no use to engage, I said “I’m going now” and slipped past her to continue on my way and the noise cancellation covered the screams and yells as I left her behind.

My path was a loop and brought me back around to that exact spot a few minutes later and I was a little wary and a tiny bit jumpy when I came back but she was nowhere to be seen. Hopefully she made it safely back to her complex, maybe watching me with wary eyes. Maybe passed out from consuming too much of whatever she had.

The following day I was talking to a friend about this interaction and my seven year old listened in and asked a few questions. (My patience for my seven year olds questions when I am talking with another adult can be a little thin, but I still talked with him about it.)

7yo: “What did she want from you daddy?”

Me: “She wanted me to stay away from her home, even though I was on the footpath where everyone is allowed to be”

7yo: “Why did she do that daddy?”

Me: “Well, I think she may have had too much alcohol and thought I was someone else.”

7yo: “Maybe something happened to her.”

And there it was. The most profound, generous and thoughtful response I had heard for a while. And most likely true. I don’t know the trauma or pain that this women had experienced. I don’t know what life had dished up for her, but it is likely that there was something troubling that was going on for her in that moment.

I hope that my seven year old will take that mentality with him for the rest of his life, to look past people’s behaviour and see the hurt that is motivating that behaviour. Because really, everyone has had something happen to them, and being able to recognise that, whilst is doesn’t excuse how people behave, and try to understand it even a little bit, is a great act of generosity.

It’s easy to judge. It’s generous to try and understand.

Top 5 Books from 2023

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Looking back at my reading over the last 12 months I notice that it was a very fiction heavy year. Perhaps a little embarrassingly so – as much of the fiction was what I call my ‘junk food’ reading. But, here we are, overweight with murder solving stories from L.A. Outside of that, there is the embarrassment of discovering books that have been around for a couple of decades. I can be a little slow when it comes to finding good books, but it’s nice that they still hold up.

Here are some incredible highlights:

Man’s Search for Meaning – The Classic Tribute to Hope from the Holocaust, Viktor Frankl

A re-read. I keep hearing so many people talk about this book as a significant one in their lives and no matter how many times I read it, it still moves me. I come out with something different each time. The quote that has stuck with me this year is, “Happiness cannot be pursued. It must ensue. One must have a reason to be happy.”

Chasing happiness as an ends in itself will not work.

A second stand out quote:

“Man does not simply exist but always decides what his existence will be, what he will become in the next moment”.

We are not set in concrete. We get to choose what our existence will be.

If you have not read this book, read it. I have a copy that I can lend to you (I’ll need it back to read it again).

Blink – The Power of Thinking Without Thinking, Malcolm Gladwell

Sure, it’s been out for almost 20 years, but it was one of Gladwell’s books that I had never found my way to, until this year. There were a lot of illustrations about the way we can utilise the initial response we have in given moments. The one thing that I still find myself thinking about is the section on micro expressions, and how our expressions can change the way we feel. So I’ve been trying to smile more…

Fooled by Randomness – The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets, Nicholas Nassim Taleb

Published in 2001 and still totally accurate, also probably the only book that I have read by Taleb that I mostly understood.

By sheer weight of numbers and chance, some people are lucky for a period of time (in both life and markets). Often they then believe that their ‘method’ is the reason for their success, but then their luck runs out and they implode. If you give luck enough time, it will run out. This book highlights that just because something seems to have worked for you, that doesn’t make it the best method or even an effective method. Also, just because something hasn’t happened before, it doesn’t mean that it won’t happen in the future. Again, this book was written before the Great Recession, Donald Trump’s Presidency and COVID.

The Obstacle is the Way – Ryan Holiday

Another re-read and a great way to end the year. It is always a constant reminder that we will face obstacles in life, that is a guarantee, but our response to those obstacles shapes what our life looks like. It comes down to how we perceive the obstacle, the action we take and the will we have to keep going.

Fiction of the Year

Station Eleven – Emily St John Mandel

I don’t even remember how this book got on my list, but I’m so glad it did. It was an incredibly compelling story, flitting back and forth through time to share the characters’ journeys into a new world after a virus wipes out most of the global population (first published in 2014). I loved it and would read it again. It has also been made into a miniseries on one of the streaming services. That was okay (but they are never as good).

Other books read:

Wolf of the Plains: The Epic Story of the Khan Dynasty – Conn Iggulden (Very good read)

The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry – Jon Mark Comer

Originals – Adam Grant

The Lincoln Highway – Amor Towles

The Course of Love – Alain de Botton

The Screwtape Letters – C S Lewis

The Secret – Lee Child

And then many Michael Connelly books…

A Darkness More than Light – Michael Connelly

Lost Light – Michael Connelly

The Narrows – Michael Connelly

The Closers – Michael Connelly

Echo Park – Michael Connelly

The Overlook – Michael Connelly

Nine Dragons – Michael Connelly

The Drop – Michael Connelly

The Black Box – Michael Connelly

The Burning Room – Michael Connelly

The Crossing – Michael Connelly

The Wrong Side of Goodbye – Michael Connelly

Two Kinds of Truth – Michael Connelly

Dark Sacred Night – Michael Connelly

The Night Fire – Michael Connelly

The Dark Hours – Michael Connelly

Desert Star – Michael Connelly

The Late Show – Michael Connelly

Hurting people hurt people

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The hardest thing for me to do is to looking past someone’s outward behaviours to see the motivations of their behaviours. Everyone acts in a way that makes sense to them at some level. For those that commit acts of violence or aggression or seek to tear people down, mostly what motivates those actions is pain, hurt and trauma. Sure, some people are psychopaths, but most people are just in pain. That doesn’t excuse their behaviour, nor should it inoculate them from the consequences of their bahaviour, but it does give insight as the reason why. Once we can see the hurt, pain and trauma, then we can attempt to heal those parts and, hopefully, bring an end to violent acts and aggression, at least in that person.

You see, hurting people hurt people. If you have been hurt in your life (and who hasn’t?), it is likely that you are hurting those people closest to you, without even realising it. It is almost a guarantee, unless…

Unless you have done the work of healing, unless you have access to gratitude, unless you have been generous to yourself.

Being generous to yourself helps you heal from the hurt, hurt people less and gain superpowers to not be as hurt by other hurting people.

Hurt, pain and trauma is a big fat mess, but generosity can be starting point to bring some healing to you and those around you.