No B.S Friday: It’s hard to be this awesome all the time.

I’ve been a bit of a scratchy old dog lately.

I don’t know what’s going on. Maybe I’m a bit under the weather. Maybe it’s just the relentless grind of lockdowns.

Whatever it is, I’ve been an unpleasant place to be.

(Yes I meant that. Back off grammar nazis.)

I mean, it’s not its usual laugh a minute fun being me. It usually is. I enjoy being me. I’m kind of hilarious. And kind of awesome.

I’m having a good time over here.

But lately, I’ve been a bit bitter. A bit scratchy.

Not so much on the outside mind you. I’m sure most people wouldn’t notice. I still know how to perform the usual social courtesies. I tip my hat to the ladies. I help old ladies across the street and into their dumpsters.

But inside of me – in my thoughts – I’m a bit scratchy.

For me it manifests as a sort of judgyness. Like, I saw a couple pushing a cheap pram along the road the other day, and I caught myself going “Pffft. Trailer trash.”

It was a horrible thing to think. And totally judgemental. I didn’t know those people at all. And they weren’t doing me any harm. I had absolutely no reason to lob a judgy bomb at them.

And I guess I caught myself because this isn’t a normal thought pattern for me. My thoughts don’t normally go to judgy places. They don’t normally go to other people at all.

So I tried to pull myself up by boot-straps. “C’mon Jon. Don’t be so judgmental. You’re better than that. You only judge others when you judge yourself, so practice a little self love so you can love others.”

Have we talked about this before? How judgement of others emerges out of the judgement we have of ourselves. Judgment is a projectile weapon. I’m sure we’ve talked about it.

But yeah, the theory goes that if you want to be more generous and loving with others, start by being more generous and loving with yourself.

But this kind of self talk didn’t work.

Why?

Because I was just tired.

When the organism gets tired it gets defensive. It knows it doesn’t have the energy to fend off a sabre-toothed tiger, and so it starts trying to anticipate threats and fend them off before they get too close.

The organism gets scratchy.

And the only reason why I’m mentally lashing out at people in my head is because my organism feels tired and it’s feeling defensive.

So all the self-love affirmations in the world wouldn’t have made a lick of difference because at the end of the day, I’d still be tired.

So this is my little reminder for the week.

Don’t try to solve for judgement and self-love without starting with energy and a feeling of abundance.

That’s the first step.

And just don’t be too hard on yourself if you’re not the most wonderful version of yourself you can be when you’re tired and run down.

It’s ok.

We’re all just doing the best we can.

Even those wonky-arse pram numnuts.

JG.

No B.S Friday: Most people think they need to solve two problems with one solution.

I’m thinking about making friendship bracelets out of leather and selling them at the markets (when they open up again.)

I’ve got a passion for it. I like working with my hands. I like the feel of the leather. I like interacting with happy people in a craft market context.

It’s a lifestyle choice really.

I told a friend of mine. Do you know what he said?

“Jon, that’s crazy. That is such a difficult way to make money. It will take up lots of your time. It’s impossible to scale. Chinese producers will monster your margins. The market is really fickle depending on the weather…”

“It will be incredibly difficult to turn that into a viable career.”

And he’s right. Deciding to become a professional friendship bracelet maker would be an incredibly difficult way to make a living.

And is that going to stop me?

Nup.

Why?

Because I’m made all ready. I’ve got a fortune behind me already. It doesn’t matter if I don’t sell a single bracelet. It’s not going to touch me.

I am completely free to follow my passion for bracelet making because I don’t have to make it work financially.

My money gives me freedom.

And there’s something I do that I know a lot of people don’t do when they’re starting out.

I separate my money and my mission.

I see them as two separate things.

When you look at what a good life is, it’s solving two problems. The first problem is how do I survive? How do I gather the resources I need to get by? I call this the money problem.

The second problem is how do I create a life that’s enjoyable to live? How do I find a way to live with meaning and purpose and joy?

I call this the mission problem.

Now, it’s important to recognise that these are two distinct problems.

Most people try to treat them as if they were a single problem.

I love baking cakes (mission problem), so I’ll set up a cake shop (money problem).

I love being fit and dancing (mission problem) so I’ll become a dance teacher (money problem).

I love helping people (mission problem) so I’ll become a therapist (money problem).

The trouble is that most mission solutions are terrible money solutions.

Like friendship bracelets. It’s a perfectly lovely solution to the mission problem. It’s a terrible solution to the money problem.

So what I would encourage everyone to do is to keep these problems separate in your mind – you need money and you need to have mission – but they don’t need the same solution.

And the reality is that if you find a way to solve the money problem for good – and this is what wealth is – a permanent solution to the money problem – then you are completely free to follow your passions.

And your passions can be whatever they want to be, without feeling the pressure to make money as well.

Keep your money and your mission separate.

Then you’ll be free.

JG.

No B.S Friday: I feel sorry for young people these days…

Ok, I’ve got some marriage advice for you.

No, I know you didn’t ask for it. But neither did that guy on the internet, and here we are.

I’m not sure why I feel qualified to dish out relationship advice now and then. I guess I am ‘successfully’ married – Connie and I are happily racking up the years. Most marriages don’t last as long as ours has these days.

So you know, don’t take wealth advice from someone who’s poor. Don’t take marriage advice from someone living alone in a flat above a shop.

And I also feel like it’s pretty obvious where I’m coming from. I’m not sitting in a mumu on top of a mountain pretending to be some mumu guru, with some dazzling insight into the ultimate nature of reality.

I’m a guy in a baseball cap and a Merc. It should be obvious what you’re getting.

And so here’s my advice.

Stick with it.

Just stick it out.

In a way I feel sorry for our younger generations. They just have so much choice. Total personalisation is the norm. Every app, every consumer good should be totally customisable. Of course you should choose the colour that matches your distinct personality (provided your distinct personality gels with one of these six pastels.)

We’re taught to cut the cloth to fit the man, change the good to fit the consumer. This is the way it works. If the things not working, the thing needs to change.

And this is great if you’re buying a phone, but not if you’re choosing a life partner.

And a life partner is a journey, it’s a road. It’s not a one-off consumer good.

Sometimes the road will lead through sunny vistas and pleasant breezes. Sometimes it will lead through shady bogs that skirt the sewage treatment plant.

That doesn’t mean the road is wrong. Maybe it just means ‘keep going’.

Because the instinct to ‘find the perfect thing’, when applied to a life partner, can have us chasing our tails looking for that “perfect” partner.

It can have us thinking the thing needs to change, when what needs to change is our relationship to the thing – our relationship.

And a relationship is something that builds over time. Every year you spend shopping around is a year you didn’t spend cultivating and building your relationship into something beautiful.

And I think everything is like this. Don’t spend your whole life shopping around for a career, when the more time you spend in a career the higher up the tree you go. Don’t spend your whole life shopping around for the right investment strategy, when time on the tools is the best way to learn how to get great results,  no matter what you choose.

Time is an incredible tool. Just ask old mate compound interest.

So that’s my advice to young people. Stick it out. There’s limits to that idea of course. But stick it out. Give it a crack. Put in the time.

Because time is the great creator of all things.

And you need it on your side.

JG.

No B.S Friday: This is why the Covid arguments make you nervous.

I was talking to a friend the other day, and she admitted that Covid was making her a nervous wreck. She was losing sleep over it.

And it wasn’t that she was worried about getting the virus, or worried that it might be a totalitarian power play dressed up as a virus.

No, what was stressing her out was how divided her community had become.

Her social and family circle (and I’m not talking about her Facebook feed which is even worse) had polarised.

People had set up in both camps. Pro-vax, anti-vax.

She was pro-vax herself – which is actually a funny way to say it. She’s not pro-vaccinations for the sake of it. She sees it as a really difficult choice that we have to make to avoid the worst affects of the pandemic. She’s not a cheerleader for Pfizer.

But she’s in that camp, and she’s now wondering if she can even be friends with the friends that have ended up on the other side of the fence.

And it’s not that she has anything against them. She does worry about creeping police powers too. But it just doesn’t seem like there’s room for conversation.

It’s a war and in any war you have to choose sides. Only Switzerland has the luxury of remaining neutral.

But as I said, we’re not talking semi-randoms on Facebook here. We’re talking about people that she’s known for 20 years.

And she lays in bed at night worry about it.

And I get it.

We’re a herd species. We instinctively gather into tribes for safety and connection and grooming. I don’t think lone-wolf humans really thrive that well.

And so we instinctively start to get very nervous if we’re cut off from our tribe. The tribe gives us our sense of safety in the world, and without it we feel a lot more insecure.

And when our tribe starts fighting – when we feel that those relationships we’ve spent 20 years cultivating might no longer be able to help keep us safe – it hits us deep in the nervous system.

It becomes very hard to relax.

(As I’m writing this, I’m wondering if there might be a gendered dimension to this. In times of danger, women invest in relationships, men invest in semi-automatic weapons. But I have learnt that I’m better off not talking about this kind of stuff.)

And from what I’ve witnessed, the Covid and Vax issue cuts across all sorts of political and social lines. I’ve seen nurses who are passionately anti-vax. I’ve seen mung-bean eating hippies posting selfies from the Vax clinic.

In a time like this, it’s hard to know where our tribe is.

And when we don’t know where our tribe is, like a monkey lost in the forest, we get anxious.

That’s what I reckon’s going on for a lot of people right now.

But I think it helps to name it. It helps to name and understand our anxiety.

And I think we can speak to it. Although this topic is a heated one, people are still fundamentally good and loving, no matter what they think, and through the mist of this confusion, our tribe’s still there.

And what to do?

Get off facebook. Stop looking at what people post in the heat of the moment.

Get on the phone and have a chat.

As always, the antidote is real, genuine connection.

Connection soothes the troubled monkey.

JG.

No B.S Friday: Do you think maybe no one’s got any idea what’s going on?

Imagine you were some evil villain and you wanted to introduce Covid into a city and get it to spread far and wide. How would you do it?

Maybe you would give it to a taxi driver, and get them to spend ten days driving people round the city while infectious.

That should do it right?

Only thing is, that’s exactly what happened in Cairns. A cabbie spent ten days driving people around the city while infectious.

And you know how many people he gave it to?

Zero.

What does that mean? What do we do with that?

I’ve got no idea. I’m not denying Covid is a thing. But one thing that does seem to be clear is that we still have very little idea about how Covid actually works and what we’re supposed to do with it.

Take lockdowns. Do they work? The answer to that seems to be probably, maybe.

There’s a thinker I follow – Mark Ford. He had this to say about lockdown in America:

Freedom is never free. There is always a cost. Sometimes it is paid in labor. Sometimes in risk. Sometimes in blood. I decided to check the data to see how my home state of Florida is doing compared to similarly large states that imposed (and still are imposing) severe sanctions.

Here are the scores so far:

Contracted COVID Cases (per 100,000)

• New York: 11,500
• New Jersey: 12,000
• California: 10,600
• Florida: 14,300

Deaths (per 100,000)

• New York: 278
• New Jersey: 300
• California: 165
• Florida: 190

What does that mean?

All three large-population states with the toughest lockdown requirements have done better than Florida, with about 30% fewer cases. But in terms of what really matters – deaths – New York and New Jersey did considerably worse than Florida with about 50% higher mortalities. California did somewhat better at 165/100,000 vs. 190/100,000 – about 16% less.

My prediction is that after all is said and done, including vaccinations, the difference in mortality between high-mandate and low-mandate states will be about the same.

That be my guess too. And it’s not to say that lockdowns don’t move the dial. It’s probably that they get trumped by other factors – like weather. (Any surprises that people aren’t catching a suped-up flu in sunny Cairns?)

But what can you do? We’re dealing with a complete unknown and so you’ve just got to do the best you can. Lockdowns, for now, are the best we can do.

I think it’s a bit like the way you have to tell kids that things are under control. When my kids where little, a 747 full of armed terrorists could have crashed through the bedroom window and I would have said, “It’s ok. I’ve got this. It’s under control.”

Because if I couldn’t project calm and confidence, they would have freaked out.

I think our governments face the same situation. People want to know that things are ok. That’s someone is in control. That someone has a handle on the situation.

That’s the role our governments are playing. “It’s ok. We’ve got this. Put a mask on. Don’t play on the play equipment.”

And I actually support that. That’s what society needs. Down the road, with the benefit of hindsight, we might learn that there might have been a better way to play things. But what can you do? You’ve got to do something.

That said, I do recognise that it’s easy for me from where I sit.

Covid and the lockdown has actually been very good for me. I’ve had one of my best years ever. Sure, it would be nice to be able to go to Europe and to be sunning my arse over there. It’d be nice to be playing on the play equipment.

But other than that, business is pretty good.

People can’t figure it out. They thought I was in the events space, and that I’d get slaughtered.

But I don’t sell events. I sell knowledge. Events are just the packaging. And I’ve found a new packaging provider.

But I know that I’m lucky. Covid has given us a three-speed economy.

Some businesses, like mine, are booming.

Some businesses are just kicking along like normal.

And some are getting hammered.

And so I can see that if I was in that last group – if my business was getting hammered – I might not be so philosophical about lockdowns and whether they do or don’t work.

But as always, wealth is freedom from the worst challenges of life. 

So hang in there guys. And if you’re in your 200^th-odd day of lockdown like me, maybe take the time to invest in your skills and invest in your wealth.

I promise you it’s worth it.

JG.