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NO B.S. FRIDAY: Die with this regret… and you’ve won!

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I take a look at some of the guff written on regret. The results will surprise you.

Today, I’m going to give you a glimpse into your future life.

I’m going to show you what lies at the end of your road, and the one thing you will regret, when your number finally comes up.

… I mean, if you’re lucky. Most people die with a thousand regrets. But if you live your life well from this point on, follow my advice, you will take just one, beautiful regret to your grave.

And I know that because it is the same regret that I carry now.

So pay attention. I think this might be about to be the most important blog I’ve written.

(And oh, haven’t I written some doozies!)

Anyway, a lot has been written about regret. There was a story doing the rounds a few years ago about a nurse who worked at a retirement home, who did a study on the things that people regret on their death bed.

I don’t know why we focus so much on that death-bed moment. It’s just like any other really.

I mean, maybe I regret not playing professional ping pong in my twenties. That’s something I might regret on my deathbed. It’s definitely too late do anything about it then.

But it’s also too late to do anything about it now. The window has definitely closed on my professional ping pong career. That horse has well and truly bolted.

The really interesting questions should be what do people regret not doing last year or last month. Regrets fresh enough to actually do something about.

Anyway, contrived scenario aside, this nurse reckons that people always regret the stuff they didn’t do, rather than the stuff they did.

That sounds profound until you think about it.

The stuff we do – that just tends to dissolve into the history of our lives. It just becomes part of who we are.

So maybe you regret selling your Bitcoin in 2010. But then you meet your future wife at a ‘no-coiner’ support group, and so you think it was all for the best.

Life has a way of working out like that. Which is really to say, we have a natural tendency to make the most of things, get on with it, and celebrate what we have.

(There’s even cases of people who have lost limbs in motor accidents who say that they are glad it happened to them.)

The other part of it is that it is very easy to romanticise the road not travelled.

So you think back to that girl you knew when you were 17. You should have kissed her. Why didn’t you kiss her? You fool.

And then you imagine the life that might have been. You imagine yourself falling in love, madly and foreverly. You see yourselves in Paris, eating croissants by the river’s edge. You see yourselves as an old couple, in a motor-home, driving across the Nullarbor into the setting sun.

You see her crouched over your grave, her tears falling on to a single red rose, the sky darkening overhead.

Sigh. What could have been…

But of course this is the romantic version. You don’t imagine her, at 3a.m, feeding the baby, hair electrified, giving you death stares because “YOU ALWAYS WALK TOO LOUD!!” You don’t imagine her at 60, cocking her leg at the breakfast table and letting go with one of her signature farts. You don’t imagine her at 75, pawning all your stuff and moving in with Shane from the bowls club.

You don’t imagine any of this stuff, even though it’s just as likely.

We romanticise the lives we never lead.

And so of course we regret the things we never did. Those things were gateways to these romantic and fantastical lives – lives that are always going to be more magical, more colourful, more wonderful than the ones we are living now.

So of course we regret the stuff we never did.

To a point.

And this is where we start talking about the one regret that I have.

Because I’m someone who opened the door and had a look at what lay beyond all the gateways of regret.

I have lived a life of relative freedom. And I’ve done it all.

When I was a young man, I threw myself into soccer. I gave it everything. I had my tilt at professional sport, and the glory it promised. I did my best. I took my chance. I have no regrets.

As a young man, I also threw myself into the feminie like a box of Whitlam samplers. By the time I found my wife, I was certain there was no one else I wanted to be with. I had found the perfect one for me. And I haven’t regretted a single day of our marriage.

(I can’t vouch for her though – I think she’s already thinking about pawning my stuff).

And I also had my crack at business. I chose not to follow the road of the nine to five and strike out on my own. It was a gamble and it paid off. Some people die not knowing.

I know.

And with that success, I now have freedom that most people only dream about. I can travel the world. I can track down the relatives in Greece. I can take part in bizarre medicine ceremonies in the Congo. I can throw myself out of an airplane over the French Pyrenees.

I can do whatever I want.

And my bucket list is completely cleared out.

So, all good then, hey? No room for regrets right? I’ll die a happy and regret-less man, quietly smiling into my last glass of whiskey..?

Not quite.

Because this is the thing I’ve learnt about having opened every door, having tasted every fruit, having ticked every box I could find:

None of it matters.

Having done everything on my bucket list, I can say that the amount of happiness I drew from each item on that list, is actually kind of minimal.

I mean sky-diving was awesome. It totally was. But knowing what I know now, would I go back to a younger version of myself and say, “You totally have to do this before you die.”

Nah.

And the same goes for everything on there. It was all awesome. It was all good fun. But was any of it “must do before you die” worthy?

Not really.

I mean, I do enjoy knowing that I have done everything I ever wanted to. That’s a nice feeling of completion – a feeling of satisfaction. That’s nice.

But that feeling of completion could have come with any bucket list really. It could have been a shopping list. The individual experiences just didn’t matter.

More and more, my adventuring has brought home that simple truth – happiness is an inside job.

Doing everything on the most epic bucket list in the world won’t make you happy – not if you’re not already primed for happiness from the inside out.

And this is what I regret.

I regret the hunger I brought to everything when I was younger.

I regret those days where I always wanted more. Where I had a great job, but I wanted a better job. Where I had a great girlfriend but I wanted a better girlfriend. Where I had great friends but I wanted better friends.

I brought a hunger to every thing I did, and that hunger always kept my eyes on the horizon, on the hunt for bigger, and better, and more exciting.

And in doing so, I missed out on a lot of life. The life that happens in the moment. The happiness that comes when you are just present to what is, when you are just grateful for what is.

In hindsight, I can see that I lived through countless blessings, through a charmed life full of wonders and beauty, and I was a misery guts for most of it.

My hunger kept me blinded to what I actually had.

And so this is what I regret.

I regret that I spent so many years as a slave to this hunger. I regret that I let so many moments for potential ecstasy and bliss pass me by, simply because I thought bliss was always over the next hill.

And I regret that it took me so long to figure it out. That the energy and the passion and the hormone-driven stamina of youth was wasted on someone who just couldn’t see how good he had it.

This is what I regret. And I’ll carry this regret with me to the day I die.

Funny old thing, life.

And I hope that this regret is the only regret that plagues you on your death bed too. I hope that from this day on, you heed this wisdom, and become present to and grateful for the wonderful gifts you have already.

But I don’t really expect you to.

I mean, I wouldn’t have. I couldn’t have been told. I wouldn’t have listened.

I had to see for myself. I had to taste every fruit in the garden before I could know that fruit was not the key to happiness. No amount of grey-beard wisdom would have helped.

And so if you won’t take my advice, then I wish that this journey will find you too. That you will have the freedom and the resources to chase down every desire, live every dream –tick everything off your own epic bucket list. Leave no stone unturned until you are convinced that happiness is nowhere to be ‘found’.

Perhaps it is the only way.

But however you find it, I hope this one beautiful regret becomes yours too:

I only wish that I had found my freedom sooner.

(… he whispers to the nurse, as she pours him a final whiskey.)

JG

No BS Friday: Why dirty people aren’t rich

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Would it be better to start treating money as a chore?

A few weeks ago I asked a provocative question: why haven’t you got your money situation sorted?

If it doesn’t feel like it’s sorted, then you should really ask yourself why. Your answer will be illuminating. Take a look at your excuses. How many of them are real? How many have relatively simple solutions?

(You might be surprised).

Anyway, I wanted to look at one excuse I get a bit. It goes something like, “I haven’t focused on money because I’ve been living the life I love and doing what I want.”

“What I want” might mean extreme BMX. It might also mean something more righteous, like feeding the homeless or saving the planet. Whatever.

But it’s the idea that I put energy into non-monetary but meaning-rich pursuits, and as a result, I don’t have much money.

There’s nothing really wrong with this, as long as you are genuinely happy with the results, especially the part about being poor.

But I find most people aren’t really all that happy about being poor, actually, once you ask the question.

I also don’t really get the level of analysis – like why we’re even setting money and meaning up as competing pursuits.

The way I see it, taking care of your finances is like taking care of your house – it’s like doing housework.

Very few people derive their life’s meaning from housework. But you very rarely hear people say, “I’ve chosen to spend my time on more meaningful pursuits, and so as a result, I live in squalor.”

No one would really buy that. They would say, “Don’t try and pull that crap on me again Jon. There are some things in life that you just have to do, that are just a basic part of living – they are basic responsibilities that create the foundation from which you can launch more meaningful pursuits. So give your mother a break and pick up your clothes.”

We all need structures that support us in life. Money is one of those structures. It’s not the only structure, but if you’re not going with money, you still need to go with something.

So taking care of your finances is as basic as taking out the garbage.

The other thing with it is that money is just one of many essential things we need to get by in the modern world. But it’s the only one that has the meaning razor applied to it.

For example, money is an energy that helps me do what I need to do.

So is food.

But I don’t spend time worrying about whether my eating habits are increasing the amount of meaning and happiness in my life.

And so a statement like, “I’ve decided to focus on the things that make me happy, so I’m spending less time making money” sounds like it makes sense. You might even get a pat on the back for being so righteous and wise.

But if it’s true then a statement like, “I’ve decided to focus on the things that make me happy, so I’m spending less time eating” should be equally true. But it’s not. You sound ridiculous.

And so giving less time to your money, to me, makes about as much sense as giving less time to eating, household chores, personal hygiene, and time spent in traffic.

Some things you just have to do.

Of course there is a sweet spot to be found. If you spent all of your day in the shower grooming yourself, you’re life would be pretty shallow. Likewise, if you spent all your time working and chasing money, you are also wasting your life.

But I think the solution is to see your finances as a sort of ‘cost of doing business’. As rent on planet earth. Time spent there is just a necessary expense.

The flip side of that is that money is not an end in itself. It’s like electricity. The wise person stays focused on what they’re going to do with the power they have, not the power itself.

And that’s all not to say that you should stay in a job that makes you miserable. There are better ways to earn money – methods that are better suited to your personality – just as there are nicer things to eat, better vacuums to use, more efficient ways to commute to work.

It’s worth spending the time finding the systems that work for you.

But don’t think you’re winning any righteous points by shirking your chores.

Pull the finger out and just get it done.

What every salesman hopes you don’t know

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Memory isn’t linear, and people might use that to their advantage.

Ok, imagine you work in a clothes shop.

A man walks in and says he wants to buy a suit and some shirts.

What do you do? Do you take him to the suits section first, or the shirts?

If you’re like most people, you start with the shirts.

You figure you’ll warm him up. Get a few smaller purchases on the board before going over to check out the more expensive suits.

… slowly pry open his wallet, in a gentle way.

But this is where you, and most people, would be wrong.

Professional sales people start with the suit and then go to the shirts after.

The reason is something psychologists call the ‘comparison effect’. It’s a kind of bias.

The idea is that human memory isn’t consistent. It’s not a linear thing. The more recent an event is, the more it stands out in our memory.

Kind of think of it like driving a car through the desert, looking in the rear view mirror. From that perspective, a billboard you just passed looks much bigger than a billboard you passed 10 minutes ago, even though they’re actually the same size in real life.

The brain and memory work the same way. More recent experiences seem much more relevant, even though they’re not really.

And so a professional sales person who knows this will take our man to the suits section first.

After he’s just dropped $1,000 on a new suit, if then he goes and looks at a shirt that’s $100, it’s going to look cheap.

It doesn’t matter that it doesn’t really make sense to compare the price of a suit to the price of a shirt. That’s a tad too complex for our brains.

All our brains know is that $100 is a lot less than $1,000, so $100 is cheap.

Of course it works in reverse too. If you took him to the shirts first, he’s comparing $100 against what he might expect to pay for a shirt. Maybe it’s about right.

But then take him over to the suits, and if he’s just um’d and ah’d about dropping $100, to suddenly face a price tag $1,000 is going to be a little scary.

This is one of the basic tools of persuasion and negotiation – be conscious of or consciously use the comparison effect.

For example, you’re a builder quoting for some work. There’s some expensive structural work, and new kitchen, and then some guttering work. Go high to low. Start expensive and go from there.

Or watch for it when people are trying to sell you something. Notice if they start with the full suite deluxe version, before offering you something more reasonably priced.

Of course, we’re not just talking about price. It goes for all comparisons. Walk into a used car lot and they might show you a real dud of a car. Anything you look at after that is going to look awesome.

And be aware of it in yourself. Even if you know about this effect, it doesn’t make you immune to it.

We’re running some fairly basic software here.

But watch for it this week. I guarantee you’ll see one ad, one sales pitch, or somebody using this technique.

Persuasion 101.

OPE – Manipulation vs Persuasion

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Leveraging OPE (other people’s energy) for fame and fortune – are you manipulative?

What’s the difference between manipulation and persuasion?

Someone was asking me this the other day. And I had to pause and take stock.

It’s true a lot of the techniques are the same. And the game is the same – take a meat-bag of emotions and bring it around to a particular idea.

So did I just persuade you to go into a joint-venture with me? Or did I manipulate you?

The line’s not clear.

Like a lot of things in life, I think you know manipulation when you see it. Like what’s the difference between porn and erotica? You know it when you see it.

That’s not entirely satisfying. It still leaves a lot up to subjective interpretation. One man’s porn is another man’s room full of Roman cos-play enthusiasts enjoying their birth-right to embodied joy and bliss.

So I think it comes back to intention.

When you engage the techniques of persuasion, what are you trying to do?

Are you trying to convince someone to do something that you believe is against their own interests? That’s manipulation.

Are you helping them to see how the outcome you’re presenting is actually awesome for them too? Then that’s persuasion.

So if you’re trying to get someone to shell out a small fortune for a lemon of a car – that’s manipulation. Trying to convince them to buy your product, rather than your competitors, because you genuinely believe its superior value-for-money? Persuasion.

This is one area where sales theory is actually pretty well advanced.

I think good businesses know that their product isn’t for everyone. They’re upfront about it, and they actually invest a good chunk of their marketing to find the ‘right’ customers, not just ‘any’ customers.

And from there, their sales techniques come from a place where you genuinely believe your product is a great product and a great fit for your client's needs.

You’re not trying to ‘con’ them into a sale. You just trying to help them see the situation the same way you do.

Call it the difference between manipulative sales and persuasive sales.

The interesting thing is that persuasive sales is so much easier. You’re just speaking your truth. You’re genuinely interested in finding common ground, and you have a genuine interest in your client’s success.

Anyone can be trained up in this kind of sales technique.

Manipulative sales on the other hand is a real art. It takes a lot of skill to engage with someone for a decent length of time, and not set off their BS trip-wires.

You’ve got to hide what you really think from them. That involves creating a façade – a construct.

(The best I’ve seen do a process of self-deception first – where they convince themselves that its good for the client, and then let themselves sell from there.)

But it’s hard. It’s not for everybody. It’s not something you can teach anyone.

And so look, if you can, be persuasive, not manipulative.

You get a better outcome and it’s just so much easier.

JG

Fancy Language Equals Fuzzy Communication

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A few years ago someone got me a bottle of ouzo for a present.

The bottle shop they went to only had one brand – Akroplis Oyzo – written in greek looking letters, and with some stereotypically Greek designs on it.

To me, it’s kind of funny. I mean, the Acropolis is one of the most famous tourist landmarks in Greece. It’s selfie-central.

So calling something Greek “Akropolis Oyzo” is a bit like calling something Australian “Sydney Harbour Bridge Beer”.

To an Australian, it sounds ridiculous. But there’s probably someone in Russia who thinks that sounds authentic and alluring.

From a creative perspective, it’s incredibly lame. It says you spent about 15 minutes on it with your marketing department and then went for lunch.

But here’s the thing – it works.

Just as most Aussies would buy Akropolis Oyzo without giving it a second thought, so would many Lativians chug down a nice cold schooner of SHB beer.

Why? Because they’re not overthinking it. They’re not throwing a critical eye over it because pfffft, who can be bothered?

As leaders, I think we can often overestimate our audience. And not overestimate their intelligence. I’m not saying they’re stupid. I’m saying we can overestimate how critical they are going to be in any given moment.

It’s like, you might spend hours crafting the perfect email, striking the right balance of flair and efficiency. Clear and to the point, yet warm and familiar.

And the person reading it gives it 5 seconds before forwarding it on to the relevant person with “plse send jon this stuff. ta.”

When we’re deep in something, especially something we’re creating, we can make the mistake of assuming that everyone is as deep in it as we are, as invested in it as we are.

That is rarely the case.

The master of this is actually Donald Trump. Remember when some professor analysed his language use and found it was set at a grade four level?

Everyone laughed at him and ridiculed his intellect.

But literally, no one had noticed up until that point. Why? Because no one was watching the words he was using. They were just focused on the meaning.

And his meaning, always, was very clear.

I think that’s probably because he’s a product of corporate culture.

Power comes through effectiveness – through getting things done. The best way to get stuff done is be very clear with the people doing stuff for you.

Dumb it right down, make it crystal clear, don’t leave any gaps for ambiguity.

Get your requests focused and bite-sized. Don’t trust people’s attention spans an inch.

Trump talks to the people the way he probably talks to his employees. It’s not an accident.

So be wary of any feeling within yourself that’s telling you that you should use fancy words or complicated concepts to IMPRESS your reader.

As soon as you’re trying to impress, you’ve lost it.

Ideally, you want your reader to think that you’re a boring writer, but always very clear.

In every mode of communication, don’t overshoot the mark.

Why your money has to work harder

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You don’t have a choice. Educate or die.

I’m surprised there aren’t more people in financial panic.

I think it probably comes down to financial literacy. Maybe people just don’t realise how dire their situation is.

On the first front, the income side of the equation isn’t too flash.

The average individual full-time salary is $82,000 pa.

That doesn’t sound too bad, but that number hides a lot of ugliness.

First it’s the average. So it means half of Australia’s income is above that line, and half below.

But we’re not interested in income. We’re interested in people. And so when we look at the median salary (where half the people earn more and half the people earn less), that’s just $55,000 pa.

So half the Australians in full-time work are earning less than $55,000 a year.

But wait, it gets worse still. Because that’s looking at full-time work, and we know that full-time work is dying. There’s been a trend shift away from full-time work, towards part-time and particularly temporary employment.

So the actual reality for the majority (51%) of Australians is probably much worse.

I don’t know about you, but those numbers freak me out a little.

Next, consider how much the average Australian has accumulated in their super. The most recent figures on superannuation from the ABS for 2013-14, show that at retirement age, men have an average balance of $322,000 compared to $180,000 for women.

There’s not a lot of fat in those numbers, but again, what we’re saying about average and median applies here too.

The representative Aussie probably has much less than that!

So income is sh!tty, savings is crappy, but at least stuff is getting cheaper, right?

Well, no, actually. Inflation is low and contained, but it still exists. Prices are still rising.

And the low headline figure tends to disguise where the inflation actually is. So while consumer electronics are getting cheaper, housing costs (rent and mortgages) are getting more expensive.

As one economist joked, “The prices on the stuff you need are going up, while the prices on the stuff you don’t need are going down.”

And the net effect of that is that Real Disposable Income is failing to keep pace with the cost of living.

And more and more, as a society, we’re relying on credit to fill the gap.

So put it all together and you have a pretty alarming picture. You have a vision of the majority of society failing to earn enough or save enough to keep pace with the rising cost of living.

The necessarily means growing credit or falling living standards.

And who wants that? And who wants that after 45 years in the workforce?

But with wages stuck in the gutter, there’s no way to earn yourself out of this mess.

Wages are going nowhere, and the increasingly temporary nature of work means that they’re going to stay going nowhere.

To me, the only way out is through leverage. It’s through putting your money to work.

We all do that. Even if you just let your super sit in your industry fund, it’s still working for you.

But could you be getting more out of your money?

This is the question you’ve got to ask yourself and keep asking yourself.

And the key here is knowledge. As the carnage playing out in the financial planning industry shows us, it’s a risky business trusting your fortune and future to someone else.

Far better to skill-up and educate yourself. It’s not that hard. Look at me. I couldn’t even get through high-school on my first crack.

But now I have to knowledge and skills to command my wealth with confidence.

Seriously, do you have another choice?

Because time is running out.

NO B.S. FRIDAY: Time to Tap the Power of, “No!”

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Life is what you are willing to accept.

Life is not what you achieved. It’s not what you went out and got.

It’s what you were willing to accept.

(Can some one stick that quote over a picture of some dolphins climbing a mountain at sunset or some crap like that for me? I want to get into motivational posters.)

Life is what you are willing to accept.

This idea struck me when I was in the shower, and it stopped me in my tracks. (I have a treadmill shower, to stay fit.)

I focus a lot on achievement. On making things happen. And that really is important. It’s a key element in the make-up of your life.

But in the balance of things, it’s small fry. If you were to break your life down in to what you went out and got, and what came to you and you received, what would the break down be?

90% : 10%?

Or think about it this way. How many things are you working on achieving right now? Maybe the most productive people might have a list of 20 things, maybe 50 for the uber-driven.

But how many ‘things’ are there in life? It’s almost infinite. Who sits next to you on the tram? What is the weather is doing? Do they have any bananas today?

So maybe a ratio of 9:1 is optimistic. Maybe its more like infinity : 50.

Ok, it’s silly trying to put number on it. The only want to make the point that a lot of what we have in life is what comes to us.

In that sense then, there is an important and overlooked leverage point for creating the life you want. What you are willing to receive.

For example, if you are willing to sit next to stinky drunken hobos on the train, you’re life will contain that flavour.

However, if you are not willing to accept that, if you get up and change seats whenever that happens, your life will not have that flavour.

There is an important filter here.

And I would say that ‘what you are willing to accept’ is probably the key way to understand your life.

Are you willing to accept verbal abuse from in-laws? Are you willing to accept mundane job tasks? Are you willing to accept living in a hovel above a train line? Are you willing to accept driving a 30 year old Datsun with broken indicators?

This is the power of no.

If you say no to these things, then something has to change.

If you say to the universe, no, I’m not willing to accept a circle of friends always trying to bring me down, then something has to change. It has to.

Now of course this has the element of a gamble to it. If you say, no, I’m not willing to accept a boyfriend who is suffocatingly protective, then you do open the way for the universe to give you the reality of ‘no boyfriend’.

That is a possibility.

But if you can accept that, then you can clear the space for the universe to give you something different.

More often than not, in my experience, the universe tends to be embarrassingly generous. The probability of no boyfriend is much lower than the probability of better boyfriend.

(Gary please stop calling me. Todd and I are happy.)

Professional scrabble players know this. (Yes, they exist). They ‘chuck in’ a huge number of times – much more often than amateur players.

They know that you don’t have to be stuck with a hand of shitty vowels. That’s hard to work with. Much better to clear the decks, trust fate, and try again.

Ok, I’m slipping off point. The central thing here is that to create the life we want, we have to be strong. We have to be really strong in what we’re willing to accept, and really strong in saying no when we need to.

If you get clear on this – if you get really strong on your no, it will have a huge impact on your life.

The Secret to Win/Win

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Putting win-win in its proper place for full power

“Why do you think he’s going to go for vendor finance?”

“Oh, well, you know. He gets to help me out. There’s a feel good factor. It’s win-win.”

This idea of win-win is deep in the collective consciousness now. I don’t know exactly who came up with it, but I’m pretty sure it was Stephen Covey in The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People that made it famous.

But like a lot of things on the way into popular culture, the message has been diluted, distorted and bastardised.

Like my mate. ‘Win-Win’ is not a persuasive tool. “C’mon mate. Give me some money. It’s win-win.”

It’s not something you apply after the fact to justify a decision or bring someone around to it.

It’s a mindset. It’s a way of coming up with solutions. Not a method for selling them.

I see a lot of people get this wrong. Even if their intentions are more genuine that my mate’s.

They decide on what they want, and then look for a way ‘sell the benefits’. And in that moment, they’re not trying to deceive the other party. They’re genuinely looking for the things in the deal that are good for the counter-party.

But this isn’t where you apply win-win.

At its heart, win-win asks you to step into the shoes of the other. Before you’ve decided what you want, empty your agendas and look at the situation through the lens of the other person’s interests.

In that way it’s an act of empathy. It’s about being able to connect with and understand the drives and motivations of another.

It’s a very feely process.

But what happens if you can do that is that you open the space right up, and open the door to many possible solutions. You get to see where your interests and their interests intersect. You get to get creative.

That doesn’t happen if you’ve already decided what needs to happen and are just looking for a way to sell it.

This mindset approach to win-win also puts you in a position of strength. If you have taken the time to understand what’s driving another person, you’ll do much better in negotiations. You’ll be able to anticipate where directions will go, and sell the benefits of particular outcomes much more effectively.

So remember this, win-win is first and foremost an act of empathy.

The challenge is not losing sight of your own interests by focusing on the needs of another. This is another important life skill, but we’ll leave that for later.

Who would have thought? So much personal development on the road to becoming a titan of business.

NO B.S. FRIDAY: My Easy Solution To Your Next Challenge.

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One question to ask when you meet any challenge.

I was at a wedding the other day, and I got stuck looking after my niece’s 3y.o girl, while she went off with the bridal party to get photos done.

It’s been a while since I’ve had to entertain a toddler. I was actually a little nervous.

“Tell me a knock-knock joke.”

Oh gawd. Knock knock jokes? I haven’t thought about them in years.

Ummm… Ok. Knock knock.

who’s there?

Bob.

Bob who?

Bob down I can’t see the television.

Ha hahahahaha. Tell me another one.

Oh. Um… Knock knock.

Who’s there?

Amanda.

Amanda who?

A man to fix the television.

Hahahahaha. Tell me another one….

Crikey!

This went on for ages – or what felt like ages. And I was seriously bending my head trying to remember knock knock jokes, or even invent them in my mind on the fly.

Eventually her mother came back. What have you been doing?

Telling knock knock jokes.

Oh yeah, she’s obsessed with them right now.

Yeah, I was struggling to come up with the goods. It was a lot of pressure.

Oh really? You shouldn’t have bothered. She doesn’t get them.

Hey?

Watch. Knock Knock

Who’s there.

Rabbits have

Rabbits have who

Rabbits have fluffy tails on their bum.

Hahahahahahaha.

Yeah, she doesn’t get that the first bit has to be a name or anything. I don’t actually know what she finds funny. It’s just breaking up sentences in funny ways I guess.

I felt a bit silly.

And it’s not that I’m in a tux telling knock knock jokes to a three year old. It’s that I forgot one of my own golden rules – always check to make sure that the easiest road is closed first.

We have this idea in life that nothing comes for nothing. If you want something, you have to work for it.

Go to school, you won’t get results unless you put in the work. Get a job, you want get a raise unless you put in the work.

Play a game, get on a computer – you won’t get the points unless you do the hard yards.

This is a cultural mindset. It’s useful, because sometimes things do require hard work, so it’s good to be ready to put the shoulder in when you need to.

However, it’s a kind of human idea, and maybe a modern one.

I mean, ask a bird if he ever gets something for nothing.

He’d say, all the time. I wander around the garden, and there’s worms and bugs all over the place. I just go over and eat them.

Or ask the worms. Do I have to work? Nah, I just wriggle about the place and eat whatever I come across. It’s pretty easy really.

And so I’ve found it useful to remember that the great majority of things in existence enjoying something for nothing all the time.

It’s only humans who have invented a concept of work – of having to push really hard to achieve great things.

And so with that in mind, I try to remember that whenever I meet a challenge, there might actually be an easy way through it.

For a long time, when I met a challenge, my first instinct was to start steeling my spirit. C’mon Jon. You’ve got this. Put your head down and push on through. You can do it.

But I was doing that without checking whether the challenge was actually a challenge at all – without making sure that there wasn’t an easy option available to me already.

Because if you’re not looking for it, you often won’t see it.

So take the knock knock incident. If I had stopped for a moment and thought, is there an easy way out here? I might have then checked whether that little girl really understood to complex nuances of knock-knock jokes, or whether she just wanted a bit of adult attention.

But because I didn’t do that, and because I was already steeling my spirit for a challenge, I made the whole encounter 100 times harder than it ever needed to be.

I’ve found that this sort of thing comes up in life a lot. A great many challenges in life actually have really simple solutions if we take the time to look for them.

It’s the taking the time that matters.

So it’s great if you have that capacity to steel your spirit, harden up, push on through.

That will take you a long way in life.

But recognise that that’s not what’s required every time.

Sometime, there’s a simple solution right under your nose.

So always ask yourself, ‘is there an easy solution here?’

Check yourself before you wreck yourself.

NO B.S. FRIDAY: Love – the most unrealistic expectation of all

by

Valentines day reminds me of how good we are at burdening ourselves with unrealistic expectations

I saw something cute on Facebook this week. It was someone talking about being a working mother.

She said, “Working mothers are expected to work like they don't have children, and mother like they don't have a job.”

Too true.

If it's one thing we've become very skilled at in the west, it's placing totally unrealistic expectations on ourselves

… and then beating ourselves up with a spiky stick when we don't live up to our own ridiculous ideals.

How much misery is this causing us right now? I'm not just talking about moody teenagers – at least they have the luxury of imagining that their future might be different.

I'm talking about everybody.

We should be cut like an Olympic athlete (no matter how old we are), as creative as cocaine-happy graphic designer, as up-to-date as a news anchor, as enlightened as a Himalayan man with no pants, as compassionate as a nun but as staunch as Donald Trump…

Ok, maybe I'm being a little specific here. Perhaps some of these are just me. But you get the point, and you probably have your own version of this drama playing out in your own head.

Unless we're careful, we tend to ask too much of ourselves, and then make ourselves miserable trying to keep up. It's a contemporary epidemic.

And love is the worst.

As I wander past the post Valentine's Day clutter in the dumpster outside my office – wilting roses and teddy bears and all that guff…

(seriously, ladies, I'm married. To the fellah who dropped off the golf clubs… thanks. They're very nicely weighted.)

… I'm reminded at just how much industry and endeavour is geared up into making us feel totally inadequate about our relationships.

And I feel like I'm seeing a shift.

We used to worry about whether our partner was ‘the one'. Taking our cue from 90s romantic comedies, we felt that our lover should knock us off our feet, and keep us there on the floor. If we tried to get up, they should knock us down again. And again.

Even at 5.30 in the morning, after you've both been up feeding the baby all through the night, she's got breast milk stains all down her singlet, he doesn't even know where his pants are… even in that moment, the sheer attractive power of your immutable soul bond should knock you on your arse.

Love is not being able to get up off the floor. Ever.

This is the fairy-tale and it's incredibly seductive.

It's starting to lose its grip on us though, slowly but surely.

At a conscious level (if not wholeheartedly) we can see that the fairy-tale is unrealistic BS. We get it.

That's nice.

However, I see it being replaced with fluffy personal development mantras. About being, self-sufficient, independent, complete on my own.

That we should love our partner like we love our I-phone. We deeply appreciate its sleek design functionality, and would be proper pissed if someone stole it, but ultimately, they're easily replaceable.

And you know, it is good to be independent. It's good if your own sense of self worth has nothing to do with whether there's someone on your arm or not.

However, a relationship should not be a theatre for the expression of independence.

That's not what relationships are about.

To me, relationships are a shared journey – towards shared and independent goals. To make it work, you need to think of yourself as a team.

And I mean that in a very sporting sense. You have to work as a team. You have to share your vision of what life is going to be about, and you have to work cooperatively, picking up slack and supporting each other wherever possible.

Great relationships work like well-oiled teams. Each person in the pair is independent and autonomous, but they understand their place and their role in the team, without saying.

It's not a theatre for expressing independence. There's no “I” in “Get with the program, dickhead.”

And what we don't realise is that both of these misguided notions of love – the co-dependent and the independent – both of these have been driven by the same merciless machine that makes us all miserable.

Our ancients never put so much stress on their relationships. Why?

There's probably a myriad of reasons, but I think on the whole, they were just generally more secure. They didn't need their relationship, or their relationship to the relationship, to make themselves feel ok about themselves.

And that's because advertising.

The marketing industry has totally inflamed our sensitivities to comparative worth. It's human to compare yourself to others. But only modern humans compare themselves to photo-shopped waifs on massive billboards…

… and to the centre half forward for North Melbourne, and to Richard Branson, and to the Dalia Lama….

And so we crave love because we want to know that we're ok. That we have a place within it all.

But love was never meant to carry this burden. Love was only ever meant to unite us in a hormone-driven dance of horny pants, and then transmute gently into a content shared-sense of companionship.

(That'll never be a pop song, but I think it's the reality of it.)

Asking anything more of love – and especially asking it to make you feel ok about yourself, is just asking too much.

You've got to find the right donkey for the right burdens.

How do we get back to the old ways of thinking about love? Do we want to?

How do we cultivate a greater sense of ‘team' in all our relationships?

How do we separate love from the need to feel ok about ourselves?

JG