No B.S Friday: Don’t’ be afraid of frustration.  

“How’s it going Jon?” 

“Oh, I’m feeling very frustrated.” 

“Oh, I’m sorry to hear that.” 

“Don’t be. It’s great.” 

This is a conversation I made up in my head to make a point. And that point is that frustration is great, and its proof that your motivational mechanism is working as it’s supposed to.    

Let me explain.  

So first up, imagine you have a greyhound in the starting box, and you want him to chase the little rabbit thing round the track. He’s had no training and has never even seen a rabbit.  

You open the gate and not much happens. He trots out, and looks around for food.  

So how do you motivate him? 

Well, broadly speaking, there are two ways.  

The first is through fear. While he’s in the box you whip him and beat him until he’s in trembling in fear.  

(Again, this is just happening in our heads. I’m not condoning this.) 

Once you open the gate, he’ll rush out, running for his life.  

Fear is a powerful motivator. 

But it’s not the only one.  

The second method is through desire. You take a rabbit carcass and wave it around in front of his nose. He starts to get excited. He starts to want it.  

But you don’t let him have it. You keep waving it around in front of his face until he is mad with desire.  

He is frustrated that he can’t have the object of his desire. He’s madly frustrated. All of his systems are turned on. He can’t keep his feet on the ground.  

Having stoked his frustration, you step back and open the gate, and once he sets eyes on that little rabbit thing, all of that energy transforms in to forward motion, and off he shoots.  

So that’s how I think it works. I obviously have no idea how to train greyhounds, but I think you see the point I’m making about how desire and frustration work.  

Desire on its own isn’t enough. If all the greyhound has is a mild preference to have the rabbit than not, then it’s not going to run very fast.  

You need to fan the flames of desire. You do that with frustration.  

When we are close to the object of our desires, but not close enough to grab them, our systems become very energised. We get excited. We get focused. We get driven.   

And drive, focus, excitement, energy – who doesn’t want these things? 

So that’s why I say that if you’re feeling frustrated, that’s probably a good thing.  

It’s good because your motivational system is set to desire, not fear.  

That’s a good thing.  

And it’s good because your desire is building inside you, and so is your energy, excitement and drive.  

These are the key ingredients of change.  

So frustration tells me that you’re on the right track.  

So don’t fight it. Don’t smother it. Don’t hate it. Don’t try to hide it.  

Let yourself be frustrated.  

It’s just how desire-based motivation works.  

JG. 

No B.S Friday: Is this really how humans evolved?

What doesn’t kill you forces you to evolve complex adaptive behaviours.

There’s a theory I read the other day about how humans evolved. (I know, seems to be a new one each week.)

The idea is that once upon a time we lived in the forest. We were tree-dwellers. We ate fruit and berries and all the abundant things that a forest has to offer.

But we weren’t alone. We had a competitor. Maybe it was another monkey-thing – like an angry proto-monkey. Maybe it was something else. Maybe it was dragons.

Anyway, the idea is that we were in competition for resources with this other species…

… and we LOST!

Yep. The poor old proto-humans lost and were forced out of the trees and down to the savannah where things were much less cruisy. There weren’t any nuts and berries down there. Just a lot of grass.

But this changed the trajectory of our evolution. This new, resource-poor environment forced us to adapt.

As a result, new qualities emerged. We had to develop tools to help us become more efficient foragers. We developed fire to keep ourselves warm. And because hunting the large beasts on the savannah required group-coordination, we developed language.

And this last one was really the game-changer. The development of complex language put us on an exponential growth path. We were able to coordinate huge numbers of ourselves. We were able to preserve and pass on more and more complex knowledge across generations.

As a result, we became the apex species we are today. The master and commander of every corner of earth. The pinnacle of sophistication and virtue.

So suck it proto-monkeys! Suck it! Who’s laughing now, hey?

The thing I love about this story (and look, who knows how true it all is. I wasn’t there. I don’t know) but the thing I love about this story is that this epic tale of

success – this monstrous victory we’ve achieved over every other species on earth – was born out of failure.

We were competing against the proto-monkeys, and we lost.

It reminds me that greatness is never a one-way street. No one just advances calmly and steadily towards their destiny. It’s a battle every inch of the way.

And often, having a tough competitor who sits you on your arse is totally necessary for you to become the person you were supposed to be. You need to be challenged. You need to be forced to come up with new ways of doing things, to find new inner-resources, or to just become a stronger, tougher version of yourself.

We all need an enemy. We all need someone or something that fights us every inch of the way. Who gives us nothing for free. Who will happily banish us to the grassy wastes and make cocktails of our tears.

This is how you get tough. This is how the human was made.

So ask yourself then, what is challenging you right now? What is the angry proto-monkey in your life right now?

How is it asking you to grow?

And how could you be a little more grateful to have such a sparring partner?

JG.

No B.S Friday: You need to make friends with your shame.

“It’s easy for you Jon, you’ve got no shame.”

Yeah, I can see how it looks like that. It is true that I’ve achieved a lot in this life because I didn’t let shame put me off, as much as it put off others around me.

I cut my teeth in direct marketing. You have to have thick skin.

But I wouldn’t say I’ve got no shame.

So here’s a bunch of thoughts about not letting shame hold you back.

First, let’s identify the problem. Shame is good. We talk about shame like it’s some glitch in the psyche – that it serves no useful purpose.

That’s not true. It does. Shame is the engine of social cohesion. It’s a sensory organ. It’s the mechanism for gauging whether you are ‘fitting in’ with everyone around you.

Humans are a pack animal. In the old evolutionary days, if you were ostracised from the group, you didn’t last long. You starved or were eaten.

So we evolved a sense to make sure that we didn’t get ostracised. That’s shame.

Of course, like most basic instincts, it struggles to deal with the modern world. Shame used to be in relation to 20-30 individuals who were a lot like you. Not it’s in relation to 5 billion people on TikTok.

But the point is, shame is good. It helps you get along with people. If you really had ‘no’ shame, you’d be a sociopath and not much fun to be around.

So make friends with your shame.

But most of us don’t do that. It’s such a powerful feeling that we develop a range of strategies for avoiding it.

Either we build protective masks that stop people from seeing the ‘real’ us. If they can’t see us – through whatever façade we’ve chosen to put up, or whatever dark sunglasses we’re hiding behind – then we can’t feel real shame.

Or we develop strategies for supressing it. We clench up and pretend it isn’t there. We bury and smother it and never let it into our awareness.

Or we escape into anger. We ride off on our motorbike, flipping the whole world the bird. “Screw you! You don’t get to tell me how to live.”

That might sound like it’s productive, but it’s not. You’re escaping one feeling by running to another, without dealing with the cause. It will be waiting for you when you come back. You can’t stay angry forever.

What I think is a better way of dealing with it – and this has been my strategy – is to just accept that shame is part of job.

I am visible to the world. I can be seen. Some people might be judging me for whatever reason. I feel shame.

That's not a nice feeling. It’s not comfortable. But if I sit with it for a bit, it’s also not that bad. It’s not going to kill me.

For me, it’s kinda like a cold shower. It’s not nice. It’d be much better if it was warm. But it’s also not ‘that’ bad.

And in time, you just learn to live with it. It’s just part of the experience of being alive – like sitting in traffic or doing your tax.

And so when people say I have ‘no shame’. It’s not true. I have shame. I just don’t let it deflect me from my course. I don’t let it stop me from doing what I want to do. And I don’t let it drive me into anger or avoidance.

I still feel shame.

And in fact, being able to feel shame – actually feel it – is kind of the point.

I’m not sure you can really unlock your power without it.

JG.

No B.S Friday: If you get angry, you’re working with faith.

This quote is not what you think it’s about:

It comes from Bertrand Russell – probably the greatest philosopher of the 20^th Century. His advice? Be wary of arguments that make you angry:

“If an opinion contrary to your own makes you angry, that is a sign that you are subconsciously aware of having no good reason for thinking as you do.

If someone maintains that two and two are five, or that Iceland is on the equator, you feel pity rather than anger, unless you know so little of arithmetic or geography that his opinion shakes your own contrary conviction. The most savage controversies are those about matters as to which there is no good evidence either way…

So whenever you find yourself getting angry about a difference of opinion, be on your guard; you will probably find, on examination, that your belief is going beyond what the evidence warrants.”

This is good advice in general. We don’t get angry when a stranger says something we know to be quantifiably false. We just don’t care.

I mean, I know some people make a hobby out of arguing with people on the internet, but this is a form of narcissistic madness. That’s a quantifiable fact.

But I think Russell was talking about statements like, “Socialism is good.” “Barbie is woke propaganda.” “Americans don’t know how to cook meat.”

These things can never be proved definitively one way or the other. Lonely people will be arguing about it on the internet til the end of time.

But what if we look at some of the things that have flicked my buttons in the past?

“You don’t do enough around the house.”

“You don’t do enough to help out with the kids.”

“You care more about football than you do about how I look in this dress.”

These are statements that have flicked my buttons. The drew out an angry response. I felt compelled to defend myself and argue the point.

But why?

Precisely because I was operating out of belief. Not fact. Was I doing enough around the house? Maybe. I “believed” I was.

But I didn’t have any proof. I didn’t even know how to establish proof.

And so because I hadn’t don the work in thinking about the issue objectively, setting myself some quantifiable targets, I let the issue become a disagreement on faith.

And anger is the natural response when our faith is challenged.

But if, instead, I had set myself a target of 20 hours of domestic chores a week, and I had done those hours, then I would have no need to get angry.

I would know the truth of the matter, and faith wouldn’t even come in to it.

Anyway, reading this quote recently, it did make me wonder if a big reason why we have heated arguments at home or at work is because we’ve let the issue become a matter of faith.

If we can remove faith from the story, we can take the emotional heat out of it.

Follow me for more cutting-edge relationship advice.

JG.

No B.S Friday: It’s a crazy world we’re living in.

This is nuts.

What is?

This. (Vague hand-wave at the everything.)

This really is ridiculous. We are on a massive molten ball of rock, living out our days on the thin crust at the outer, hurtling through space.

Nuts.

We are a billion years into a melodrama called evolution, genuinely wondering if funding might get cut and this could be the last season.

(Won’t miss all of the characters, to be honest.)

Nuts.

And at any moment you could just stop being a thing. A plane might fall on you, a refrigerator might explode, or there might just be a temporary glitch in one of your organs, that the coroner puts down to “just one of those things.”

We spend 80-odd years of our lives constantly just moments away from death. And everyone we love could be taken from us at any moment too. Our civilisation could collapse. Our nation could be invaded. Our soccer team could go bankrupt or be relegated into a lower division.

Disaster is always imminent because we know it is inevitable. The one certainty in life is that nothing lasts for ever… or even that long. Even the sun itself has a shelf life.

And despite all this death and destruction hanging over our heads, we have to argue with the neighbour about whether the gardenias are in keeping with the character of the neighbourhood.

The entire universe is rotting to pieces, and we spend our days tangled up in petty fears and jealousies and fretting about whether we’re comfortable enough.

We are house-cats hissing at each other over the comfy seat while the DC-9 we’re on goes down in flames.

Just. Nuts.

Life, as an experience, is just too big and crazy for the human mind to comprehend.

And so we just don’t. We don’t stop to think. We don’t pause to reflect if the petty squabble we’re in is the best use of our time here. We avoid meditating on the immensity of the universe. We don’t find ways to incorporate our inevitable death into our daily lives.

It’s just too hard.

Because if we really were to hold everything in perspective – the immensity of the universe, the fragility of life, we would find ourselves untethered and out of control.

We would realise that we are strapped into a roller coaster, hurtling along at a million miles an hour with absolutely nothing we can do about it.

That’s terrifying.

But it’s also incredibly exciting. The best thing about life is that we are strapped into a roller coaster, hurtling along at a million miles an hour with absolutely nothing we can do about it.

Whee.

We would realise that all our clinging – all our fearful fretting – was a complete waste of time. There is nothing we can do.

And if we could let go of that, then suddenly we would be free. Untethered, but free.

Free to just enjoy the crazy ride.

But our consciousness is locked into an organism that just struggles to hold perspective.

Just. Nuts.

JG.

No B.S Friday: We always forget about the other side of the coin.

Ok, so I reckon that there are two roads available to you if you want to call something into your life – like wealth or more happiness or whatever.

The first is to go “blockage-busting”. We go and get all Mario and Luigi and get into our plumbing to see why things aren’t flowing.

Why aren’t I wealthy? Well, I had abusive parents so I don’t value myself, and so I don’t expect others to value me either.

Or, “I’ve been conditioned to believe that money is evil.”

Or, “I’m afraid to test my own potential, so I cling to excuses I can hide behind, like never having the money to do what I wanted to do.”

Or, “The bloke on the $100 note looks like my Father.”

Once we discover what these blockages are (and there’s a lot of work just to get this far), then we can start trying to break them down. We can get our hands dirty with affirmations, visualisations, past-life regression therapies, ketamine microdosing clinics in LA, whatever.

If we can deconstruct these blockages, replace them with positive beliefs, things start flowing again. The pipes open up. Money comes.

This method works, but man, I’m getting tired just thinking about.

Is there an alternative?

I would say a better way to start is to drop in and connect with the part of you that wants to be wealthy (or you know, whatever.)

You have parts that don’t want to be wealthy, sure. You don’t need to change that. All you need to know is that within you, there is a part of you that wants to be wealthy.

So drop in and connect with that. Why do you want to be wealthy?

“So I can help my friends and family.”

“So I can achieve beautiful things.”

“Because I am a better and more loving person when I am financially secure.”

Whatever it is, align yourself with that part of you that wants to be wealthy. Align your energies there.

Feel now how you are not in opposition any more. You are not fighting against something. Rather, you are siding with something – in collaboration.

Align yourself with the part of you that wants to be wealthy. Give it energy. Drop in with it everyday. Connect with what you will achieve and do with the money. Give yourself a taste for the joy and happiness that it entails.

In time, and with relatively little (but consistent!) effort, it will become a force to be reckoned with.

It will start to shape your life.

You will still have blockages, just as you will still have a part of you that doesn’t want to be wealthy.

But your life changes simply by changing the power relationship between these two competing forces.

The point I want to make is that both strategies work. Both strategies are necessary.

But we put too much focus on working with our resistances, and not enough focus on alignment. And working with alignment, in my opinion, is quicker and you get more bang for your buck.

Not only that, it’s more fun. It’s more fun to dream about how you’re going to spend all this money than it is trying to make space in your heart for your great grandmother’s tears as some hippy smudges your chakras with patchouli.

So have a think about it. From where I stand, alignment is better than resistance.

JG.

No B.S Friday: You have to be open to receive.

“I think you’re stuck in hunter mode.”

“What are you talking about Jon?”

<Standard preamble about how I’m not a psychologist and just a guy who’s happy to have opinions about stuff and has never let being massively underqualified stop him from doing anything.>

“Well, think of it this way.

“Imagine you’re a caveman out hunting. You’ve got your snare set, and there’s a baby mammoth walking towards it. If this goes well, you’ll eat for the first time in a week, and eat well.

“You’re incredibly focused.

“At that moment a pretty cave-girl comes along and gives you a kiss on the cheek.

“You’re very annoyed. You bat her hand away. You might throw a rock at her.

“And it’s not that there was anything wrong with the kiss you received. In the right context, it would be a beautiful and nourishing thing to receive.

“But it wasn’t the right context. You were in hunter mode. Not in receiving affection mode.

“But the important thing to note here is that you set the context. You decide for yourself whether you’re in hunter mode or receiving mode.

“And what I think happens in the modern world is that we get stuck in hunter mode.

“In the old old days, hunter mode had a clear ending. You caught the baby mammoth, walked back into camp and announced, ‘I am ready for kisses now. Cave-ladies…’

“And so people probably moved fluidly between hunting mode and receiving mode.

“But modern life is not like that. There’s always more hunting to do. Always something else to do on the to do list.

“And so we don’t naturally switch ourselves out of hunting mode. We get stuck there.

“But if we’re stuck in hunting mode, then that means we’re unavailable to receive. If someone offers us affection or beauty or nourishing experiences, we bat their hand away and throw rocks at them.

“And that’s a problem because if we get stuck in hunting mode for too long – if we go without nourishment and affection for too long – life starts to lose its juice. It stops being fun. We forget how to smile. Everything feels kinda pointless. (Because hunting is something you do to make life possible. Hunting itself is not life.)

“And the other thing that happens is that we look for ways to draw enjoyment out of the hunting experience. Hunting has its own reward systems – meeting challenges, the thrill of the chase or the thrill of danger – these things are all programmed to feel rewarding.

“And so we get into adventure sports, or we watch sports, or we watch tense movies with high drama, or we hit the pub and go on a bender.

“We seek adventure, but never turn to nourishment.

“And so if you’re saying to me that you’re feeling completely drained and you don’t feel like there’s a point to life, that says to me that there might be a problem with how you nourish and energise yourself.

“And that might mean you’re stuck in hunter mode, and not switching over to receiving mode.

“And unfortunately, that’s on you now. You have to consciously make that choice to make the switch. You have to practice receiving – smelling flowers, cuddles from your children, a kiss from your pretty cave girl.

“You have to make a discipline of it.

“Otherwise the juice of life dries up. And then what’s the point?”

JG.

No B.S Friday: What I’m thinking about this Easter

So Easter has come around quickly and bopped us on the nose. Almost time to start making plans for Christmas.

But the themes for this week are resurrection, rebirth and renewal.

I was thinking about this the other day. I was walking around my neighbourhood, and I could hear some kids playing on a trampoline over the fence. There might have been water-balloons or something. I couldn’t see.

Anyway, I could hear them laughing. But it was a particular kind of laughing. It was wild and untamed. It was laced with thrill. It almost came off as unhinged.

But it was a laugh I could remember. Like you had just landed a water balloon right in your buddy’s face, but now there was one heading straight at you.

And I thought, I haven’t laughed like that in a long, long time.

That’s why I’m bringing everyone into to the office on Sunday for a waterballoon skirmish.

No, but it did make me think, whatever happened to that boy I used to be? Whatever happened to that kid who threw himself into things full tilt until he was screaming with delight or terror or both?

What happened to him?

Somewhere along the way he became domesticated.

And it’s not just about how our energies change as we get older. I know there’s no way I could spend two hours straight on a trampoline anymore. So that experience isn’t really available to me.

But there isn’t any activity or thing that makes me laugh in such a wild and uninhibited way anymore.

The best you can get out of me, is a sort of knowing world-weary chuckle. Like, “Ha ha, yes, that is an amusing way to remember that the world is flaming turd on God’s doorstep.”

And it got me thinking, that we often tend to think about rebirth in the personal journey as a sort of evolution. The most common metaphor is a caterpillar

turning into a butterfly. You go in ugly and broken and poor, and you emerge beautiful, glorious and rich.

It’s a complete transformation.

But what we don’t talk about is the resurrection of those versions of ourselves that we used to be.

And they do die for a reason. Spending three hours every afternoon on a trampoline was never going to be a sustainable lifestyle choice. At some point, I had to grow up, and do the chores and make the money.

But that child doesn’t have to stay buried.

It can be brought back to life. And I kind of think that once we have moved through that serious phase of life – where you are learning how to live with responsibility – that after that we have a duty to bring those care-free joyous parts of ourselves back to life.

And it’s not something new. It’s something old. It’s something we used to be. It’s something we always have been. It’s something we still are.

But until we make space for it and until we give it permission, it’s going to stay buried.

Time to say yes to that playful and silly version of yourself. Let the sunlight in. Let the child have air.

We’ve been serious for far too long.

JG.