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NO BS Friday: Fear your way to freedom

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The great American President, Franklin D Roosevelt said “The only thing to fear is fear itself.”

The great American President, Franklin D Roosevelt said “The only thing to fear is fear itself.”

Obviously he’d never been to Australia otherwise he wouldn't have said that…

“The only thing to fear is fear itself and bloody great red-back spiders hiding under the toilet seat”… but the point still holds.

Fear guides us way more than it should.

It holds us in patterns, in dull and comfortable careers, in uninspiring relationships, in bland and boring pursuits, way more than it should.

At least the fear of a redback spider will get you off your arse and running for the nearest tree.

This other, nameless fear – a fear that has no specific name or target – just locks us up. It stops us from moving.

And so we stay stuck in boring lives, long after we’ve outgrown them.

The antivenom is confidence.

You need to learn how to back yourself.

I’m lucky. I’ve always been too stupid to doubt myself.

And so whenever I was challenged to try something new – to turn my back on the comfortable life I’d made for myself – take a gamble on a totally new career direction, I did it.

In my mind, even if things went wrong, even if it was a disaster, I would manage. I’d fall back on my wit or charm and somehow, I’d get by. I’d be alright.

And it was this confidence that allowed me to conquer that nameless fear, and keep myself moving.

But I don’t know anything you don’t.

I’m sure you have the same resources that I do.

I’m sure you have the same charisma, wit, cunning good-looks – whatever it is you need to get you through.

Maybe you’ve just never been tested..

But back yourself. You are capable of more than you can dream of.

And the only thing holding you back

Is fear.

Use it to move you forward…rather than hold you back.

Fear is good, if you know how to manipulate it.

Fear you way to success and wealth is what I want for you.

– JG

No B.S. Friday: Three things you need to be grateful for right now

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Some little birds let me know that I was being ungrateful. This is what they taught me.

Would you like to be a bird?

It’d be alright, wouldn’t it? Being a bird, doing bird things. Hanging out with your birdy mates.

That’s what I was thinking the other day. I was sitting in my courtyard watching some little birds flit about in the garden.

“Look at them. They don’t have a care in the world,” I thought. “So jealous.”

And that point I had to acknowledge I was in a particular frame of mind. I’d been mulling over a couple of headaches and chores I needed to get sorted. Nothing too hectic, but nothing too fun either.

And in that space, the idea of being a little brown bird pissing about in my hedge was pretty appealing.

But the more I sat and the more I thought about it, the more I realised that I would totally not want to be a little brown bird, and that even for all the hardships associated with being human, being human is pretty awesome.

I really should be more grateful.

And if there’s one thing you’ve learnt from these blogs… (Actually if there’s only one thing you’ve learned, what are you doing? Stop reading. Go outside and hit the hedge bro.) But if there’s one thing you’ve learnt I hope that it’s that gratitude is not something that comes. It’s something we create.

Gratitude is like good health. It organically occurs when we put everything in place (like exercise and right diet etc.), but if we don’t put these things in place then it won’t happen.

That’s how gratitude works. If we’re not training ourselves to be awake to the awesome, and if we’re not training ourselves to celebrate the awesome when it comes, then we won’t be grateful.

Gratitude is a conscious practice.

So in that spirit, for my own practice, I decided to sit down and write out three reasons why being human is awesome and being a bird sucks.

Reason One: Leisure is sweet

Now it might look like being a bird is a pretty cruisy affair. It’s hard to see that they’re under much pressure to achieve much with their days.

Me, there’s an unusual noise coming from my rear tires, so I need to go and get that checked out. And then my wife’s birthday is coming up so I’ve got to think of a gift that is perfectly thoughtful without being overly contrived. And I’ve got this sense that our procurement systems at work could be better optimised, so I need to look into that at some point…

Uggh. So many headaches. Who wouldn’t be a bird?

But I think if you actually look at it, birds are pretty busy. There’s not a lot of idle time in a bird’s life.

And the same was true of humanity until pretty recently. The amount of free time and leisure we currently enjoy actually took a lot of engineering. It’s the result of a lot of factors working together to provide us with surround sound cinema’s and alfresco dining and entertainment quarters.

We lounge about and drink coffee on the shoulders of giants.

So humans are different. For the great majority of organisms on earth, they are slaves to their biological needs. If they have energy to spend then they spend it on eating, mating or nurturing the conditions that are conducive to eating and mating.

Like the birds and their singing. That might sound like a leisure activity, because we’ve made it into one, but for birds it actually serves particular purposes.

I actually transliterated some of the bird song in my garden and punched into Google Translate. This is what they were singing:

Oi you other birds.
Fek off,fek off, this is my shrub. These are my berries.
Fek offfek off, if you come around here I’ll go ya in the face.
Fek off.

Oi you lady-birds,
Come here, come here.
I’ve made a sweet-arse nest,
and my genes are conducive to successful reproduction.
Come here, come here. You know you want some.
You know you wantsooooome .

Bird poetics is actually quite under-developed.

But me, my poetic sensibilities are quite well developed actually, even though it’s not something I given much time to. And I’ve got so much surplus energy that I’ve actually got to come up with contrived ways to burn energy – like beating up a bag full of sand – otherwise I’d get fat and die.

The human capacity for leisure – and to be fair we are probably still talking about the west here. I guess I am talking about luxuries that many people in the developing world still aren’t able to enjoy – but that said, the human capacity for leisure is unprecedented in that natural kingdom.

There are activities you can engage in – activities that have absolutely no point other than the pleasure they provide. In the context of the million-year history of life on earth, this is unique.

And it’s something to be very grateful for.

Reason Two: Wonder is fun

I didn’t set out with the intention to just trash-talk little birds here, but how much is really going on in those little heads of theirs?

Are they pondering the mysteries of the cosmos? Are they getting tangled in the nuances of moral philosophy? Have any of them renounced a life of seeds and berries in pursuit of truth and meaning and liberating all of birdkind from the wheel of karma?

No, I don’t think so.

And that’s no moral failing on their part. I just don’t think they have the cognitive hardware to start approaching these kinds of questions.

But before we get all high and mighty and opposable- thumbsy , I think it’s important to remember that there’s some pretty hard limits on our cognitive hardware as well.

Just as maths is beyond the ken of birds, there have got to be things beyond the ken of human understanding. Most things probably.

And so we’ve been wanking on about philosophy and the good life for centuries, but where has it got us? Nowhere really. We don’t even have a coherent picture of the things we can see, let alone the great mysteries that are beyond the limits of our perception.

But… it’s been fun.

There’s a unique delight in being deliciously baffled. In feeling your mind get in the ring and dance around with things that it will never understand.

(What’s ‘outside’ the universe?)

It’s fun. It’s a leisure activity. And the name of that leisure activity is ‘wonder’.

Wonder is what happens when you get a sense of a mystery that you will never perceive.

It’s a beautiful thing.

And I think it might be a uniquely human experience.

Reason Three: Authorship is sexy

Imagine you were born as a bird. What life paths are available to you?

Within the limits of your biology, it doesn’t look like you have a lot of room to move.

You might choose to be an aggressive bird. Or you might choose to be a cooperative bird. You might decide that you’re going to stop chasing insects and focus on seeds.

But really, you’re probably not ‘choosing’ anything at all. You’re probably just following the behavioural coding in your DNA.

Now imagine a child born today. What life paths are available to them?

Well, at this point in history, there is a dizzying array of life paths on offer. They could do anything.

They could be a lawyer. Or they could be a marine biologist. Or they could be a ballerina. Or they could be a civil rights activist.

And they could live in Australia, or Austria or Antarctica. They could live in the city or the bush or on renovated bus touring through Siberia.

Heck, these days, we’re not even bound by our physiology. If I decided I wanted to spend a decade as a woman to see what it was like, that’s is medically available to me now.

There is an immense amount of choice on offer to people these days.

And that sets up a new game – a game where you get to follow your own truth, and become the author of your own life.

A game where you get to experiment. Where you get to taste life’s fruits and decide for yourself which ones you really like.

And it’s a game where you get to learn about yourself. You get to learn what you like and what you don’t like, and what life-calling really excites your spirit.

And it’s a game where you get to set the course. You get to choose your path and follow your own journey. You get to decide what it is you want and how you are going to achieve it.

What a fabulous game that is.

Of course some people are more free than others. But if you’re in Australia, with enough resources to read this on your phone, them I’m talking to you.

Being human is the opportunity to be the author of something completely wonderful.

How good is that?

Oh! I forgot one!

There’s three reasons that I’m very grateful to be human. Today, I am extremely grateful to be Jon Giaan, a human, alive at the most amazing and expansive time in history.

I give thanks.

And I don’t want to rub it in the bird’s faces or anything, but how good is it to also be at the top of the food chain? Can you imagine navigating the commute to work, always worried that something might be about to eat you?

How stressful would that be?

So yeah, nah , I don’t want to be a bird.

I’ll stick to being human thanks.

… until I master it.


– Jon Giaan

NO B.S. Friday: Power Challenge #2: Know Your Pain

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Your opportunity to win an iPad and make a full-power start to the year. Challenge #2 – Knowing Your Pain 

Wow, 326 responses to Challenge #1 and counting… If you don’t know what I’m talking about, check your email inbox or click this link. 

Let’s move on to Challenge #2 (Participate – Movement creates momentum). 

There’s a story where I come from of a master craftsman who kept his old apprentice’s apron in the attic.  

Every night he would go up to the attic and connect with the apron, as a way of remembering how far he’d come, and the road that he was still on.  

In a way, I think we are all escaping from something 

I mean, you don’t set out to overhaul your life if everything is perfect, right? You’re not here for the entertaining way I confuse ancient wisdom and footy coaching clichés. You are here because you want something more.  

But our mistake is to hide our pain from others and from ourselves.  

We pretend like everything is more or less sorted. We’re here just for a bit of spit and polish. Just to put the finishing touches on a life that is pretty much complete.  

And we can’t admit that our life is on fire – that it’s coming apart at the seams and taking on water.  

Maybe it’s pride. Maybe we think it’s polite to keep our suffering to ourselves.  

But whatever the case, there is an opportunity missed here.  

The human, in its pain response, is incredibly energised. Of course it is. You might struggle to get up off the couch, but if the house was on fire, you’d break land-speed records getting out the door.  

So if we muffle our pain, we muffle our pain response – and that deadens us, makes us less energised.  

So this is your simple challenge for today: Connect with your pain. Connect with your discomfort.  

Give yourself two minutes (that’s all it’ going to take), and just free-form it. Don’t think about your answer. Just write.  

Leave a short comment below:  

  • What in your life right now just isn’t working.  
  • What just doesn’t fit?  
  • What pisses you off?  
  • What would you leave behind in 2019 if you could? 

Go! 

Ok, be aware that you are sharing this with random people on the internets, so maybe don’t go into the specifics. Don’t name names.  

But spend time with the part of you that is uncomfortable. The part that wants to move – that wants to move forward.  

Despite what the happy-clappy success gurus say, it is a pain that should be central to our daily drive.  

So this is your challenge for today. Comment below.

And if you missed your challenge #1, here it is again. 326 people took the time to share, so the buzz is real. Check out what they’re responses were, plus add yours! 

Remember, everyone who completes the Power Challenge goes into the prize draw to win at the end of the month. 

Power on. 

JG 

P.S. – As a bonus, share this with someone who you think resonates with the pain you are pointing to. Say, “Hey, this wanker Jon asked me to do this. But I thought you might resonate with this. Is this how you would say it?” Copy and paste. 

P.P.S. Still reading? Good. Now time to take two minutes and do the work. Here are the questions again. Don’t think, just write. There are no right or wrong answers. 

  • What in your life right now just isn’t working.  
  • What just doesn’t fit?  
  • What pisses you off?  
  • What would you leave behind in 2019 if you could? 

Post your answers here.

NO B.S.FRIDAY: Such is Life…

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Why do we love bushrangers so much? Are we all just bushrangers too busy with our day jobs?

November 11th was Remembrance Day, but I also noticed it’s the 138th anniversary of Ned Kelly’s death. They hanged our most famous bushranger on November 11, 1880.

I feel like we must be due for another round of bushranger romanticism. Seems to come around every 30 years or so. I mean, it’s been 15 years since the last Ned Kelly movie.

(Update: they’re in the process of making one right now. There you go.)

But why do we love bushrangers so much?

Kelly has more brand recognition than any Australian has ever had, including Don Bradman, well over a century after his death.

And Kelly’s life was hard. He was born into a poor family, took a lot of knocks along the way, before finally going to the gallows at the tender age of 25. Not a lot to envy there.

But we collectively get starry-eyed, and imagine ourselves in an iron suit, both guns blazing.

(Or is that just me?)

Bushrangers were a product of that time, and our romanticism has as much to do with that period in Australian history as it does with them.

I mean, if Ned Kelly were alive today, he’d probably end up on Today Tonight, with a camera man chasing him through the streets of Melbourne. Clank, clank, clank. “Mr Kelly. We just want to ask you a few questions.”

No one is getting misty eyed about car thieves in tracky-daks and sneakers these days.

But still there is something in the archetype of the bushranger that calls to our spirit.

To me, I think the key selling point of brand bush-ranger is ‘rebelliousness’. That’s what elevates them from the muck of humanity’s dregs, into the rarefied air of cultural hero.

But what does that say about us?

Why do we love and celebrate the rebellious? The rule breakers? The trouble makers?

Do we secretly long to cast ourselves in that light – break the rules, trash the law, kick down the doors and leave our name in bullets in the wall?

Are we all just bushrangers, too busy with our day jobs to cause anybody any trouble?

Yes. Yes we are.

The world is repressive. It crushes our freedom, our unique spirits, our playful, child-like natures. It’s just how it is. As we get older, we find the adult world with all its rules and regulations has us all bound up in a straight-jacket.

The question becomes how do we respond?

Do we suffer in silence, taking a photo-copy of our bottoms when the boss isn’t looking in an impotent act of defiance?

(Brian, I know it’s you. Just stop it, ok. It’s unhygienic.)

Or do we go totally off the hook, become a renegade, dying in a rain of bullets and glory?

That’s sexier, but still pretty sad in the end.

Or do we find another way? A third way? Do we find a way to push back the prison walls of the world, and find a way to live on our own terms, with our own money, with our own drive and our own autonomy?

Do we find a way to keep expanding the sphere of our own freedom?

This has been one of the central missions in my life in recent years. Finding that freedom.

Sure, that’s partly about money. Money can buy you many freedoms in life – the freedom to travel, the freedom to follow your own interest, freedom from the stresses of a hand-to-mouth existence.

But it’s also about making it part of my life goals – finding a career that let’s me set my own hours and schedule. Living somewhere that gives me easy access to the things I love doing. Putting energy into my relationships so they are supporting me, rather than holding me back.

But ultimately, it starts with recognising that we are all living in Ned Kelly realities – realities where the system is not set up to maximise our freedom and fulfilment.

This is the first step.

The fight then and must come second.

Such is life.

JG

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 B.S. FRIDAY: Shock! House prices to fall 80%!

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I show you how the media industry actually works, so you can stop yourself from being sucked into their shenanigans.

80%?!?! That got your attention, right? All eyes on me.

(Look at me, look at me, look at me, Kimmy.)

This is exactly how the media industry works. Attention is the most valuable commodity there is. And there are all sorts of tricks out there to suck you in.

But I’m going to break it down, so you know exactly how it works, and how you can protect yourself from it.

But hang on… So that just a joke then – about house prices falling 80%?

Nah. That could totally happen. All it would take is for the Earth’s magnetic poles to reverse (it’s happened before, it will happen again!), unleashing a cataclysm of earthquakes, tidal waves and volcanoes.

Then, just as what’s left of humanity is picking up the pieces, bam, deadly Ebola virus outbreak.

In that scenario, I predict Australian house prices would fall 80%, perhaps even 85%.

Someone put me on the telly.

Ok, how are you feeling right now? Probably a little annoyed right? You read the title, wanted to find out more, and then realised that Jon was on another of his benders.

(Why wife calls it “Margarita Madness”).

I’ve taken time out of your busy day, and wasted it with some inane ramblings.

Just like 60 minutes did.

Last Sunday, Chanel 9's 60 Minutes program, did a terrifying piece on Australia’s looming house price crash. In it, they suggested house prices were about to fall a massive 40%, and they made it sound like that is what a lot of smart and important people were expecting.

Only they weren’t. The 40% figure came from Dr Martin North – a bonafide data nerd. He’s actually pretty good – I’ve used some of his statistics in this blog before.

The thing was, that wasn’t what North was actually saying was going to happen. What he actually said is that there was an outside chance that house prices could fall that much, If (and it’s a big IF) there was some kind of re-run of the global financial crisis.

Thing is though, 60 Minutes chose to edit all that out. You had to actually go to his blog (and how many people did that?) to get the complete picture:

… It is not my central scenario. My best call would be in the region of 15-20% from top, over 2-3 years, but with some risk of a worse outcome. Nine chose not to cover these alternatives, though I went through each in the recording…

So yeah, if there was another GFC, it’s conceivable house prices could fall 40% (for a time). And if the magnetic poles reverse, it’s conceivable house prices could fall 80%.

So what’s going on here?

Partly this is about that old saying that “good news never made a paper sell,” but it’s more than that.

As some one who works at the coal face of marketing, there’s some tried and tested marketing strategies at work here, and 60 Minutes gave us a text-book case in execution.

The term you need to know is ‘disturbance marketing’.

This is the idea that before you can sell someone anything, you need to get their attention.

Trouble is, getting someone’s attention is hard. People just tend to put their heads down and go about their lives, generally trying to ignore the gazillion sales pitches they get on any given day.

And so, as a marketer, one of your key challenges is to jolt them out of this slumber. You need to find a way to break up their routine so they actually start paying attention. You need to disturb them.

And so the prospect of a 40% fall in house prices, or that fact that “Australia’s debt bomb is about to explode”, would be very ‘disturbing’.

Job done. You have our attention.

The key thing that follows then is an emotional hook. You’ve stopped us in our tracks. You now need to grab us by the heart strings and hold our attention.

And to that end, 60 Minutes trotted out three ‘victims’ of the coming housing crash.

All three were struggling to make their mortgage repayments (OMG, imagine if that was us!). One was sick, one was unemployed, and one had just seen their interest only loans rolled over to principal and interest.

Now at this point, it all just struck me as pretty strange. I mean take the sick bloke and the unemployed bloke. Should it come as any surprise that they’re struggling to meet their mortgage repayments?

I mean, imagine the headline: “Shock: Man with no income struggles to pay his mortgage”.

It’s hardly news right?

And then there’s the guy who was just about to retire, but then the bank rolled the loans on his portfolio of investment properties over to principal and interest.

That’s right, he had a “portfolio” of investment properties. They didn’t say how many, but it looked like a few.

Also, he had to have known it was coming. All interest only loans roll over at some point (usually after 3 or 5 years). So it was hardly a shock that he had to start paying more.

“Shock: Banks make man follow payment schedule outlined in his mortgage application”.

But I’m looking at these three stories, and I’m wondering what they’ve got to do with anything.

But they’re not there as evidence. They’re there purely to make you go, OMG, imagine if that was me. Imagine if I was in those shoes.

You have my complete and undivided attention.

And at that point, your prospect is primed for your sales pitch. But hang on, 60 Minutes doesn’t have a sales pitch..? Oh, but that’s right. Their sponsors do.

Roll commercials.

And this is how the media industry works.

So long story short, 60 Minutes is scaring the good folks of Australia, because that’s how they sell advertising air time.

It is regrettable that such a trusted institution is playing this game, but that’s just how it is, and how it’s always been.

You might also wonder if 60 Minutes is the hard hitting news force it used to be.

Because what followed the housing story?

A story about a woman who worries that the people who said they would clone her dead dog for her, just went out and bought one from the pet shop.

Just saying.

JG

NO B.S. FRIDAY: Longer days, happy body

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The solstice teaches me a lot about that part of me that feels fear.

So we’re over the hump of the year. Thank fudge.

Last week the year turned, and from here on, the days start getting longer again.

There’s something about this idea that gives me a deep, full-bodied sense of relief.

But when I think about it, I realise that it’s a bit strange. Because I know the coldest days are still ahead of us.

So in terms of what has the most impact on my lived reality, surely I’d care more about heat than light, right? I’ve got Mediterranean blood in my veins. The cold freaks me out.

But we don’t celebrate the end of the cold months the way that we celebrate the solstice.

And throughout history and across cultures, the solstices are the key marker points of the year.

I think at a primal level it’s a real test of faith – to watch the days get shorter and shorter and just trust that the trajectory is going to change. That it will bottom out at some point and turn the corner.

In my rational mind, I’m like, of course the days will start getting longer again. That’s how it’s rolled for millions of years. This year’s not going to be any different.

But that’s a logical process. At a sub-logical level, at a primal body level, I think I’m watching the days get shorter and colder and I’m freaking out.

What if it doesn’t stop? What if it just keeps going like this? What if the sun disappears completely and we all just freeze?

And then the days turn and my body is like, Oh thank fudge for that. Whoa. We really dodged a bullet there.

And my rational mind is like, ‘what are you talking about? That’s what happens every year.’

And my primal body is like,

“I have no idea what you’re talking about. I’m a child of the moment. I don’t even know what you mean when you go on about abstract concepts like ‘year’ or ‘cycle’.”

“I really don’t get why you have to be so difficult. The seasons move in cycles. It’s not that hard.”

“Whatever. Hey, are you hungry. Let’s go get some souvlaki.”

“You know we’re on a diet.”

“Oh, again with these abstract concepts!”

Do you get what I mean when I rave on about these inner conversations? What I’m saying is that the primal body, the emotional body, lives in the moment. It only knows what the senses tell it, and it operates on the patterns it has learnt.

As the days get shorter, it’s going to start to feel fear.

So how do you teach the primal body?

It has to move in it. It has to embody the lesson, over and over, until it becomes part of its patterning.

And what does this embodying class-room look like?

Ritual.

Rituals are embodied practices that seek to make a habit of a desired state.

And so I think the ancient rituals celebrating the solstice were our ancestors way of training their bodies to understand the seasons and cycles of the earth.

You do this movement at this time of year. Climb Mt. Olympus. Make an offering. Light a lamp. Do this dance. Walk back down.

Repeat, year after year.

In this way, the physical, emotional body is brought into alignment with the seasons. It comes to understand them in a way that the rational mind finds so easy that it doesn’t even have to think about it, but does in a much shallower way.

I think you’ll understand what I’m saying if you’ve ever had to talk a child out of their fears.

“No, there’s no monster under the bed. There’s no such thing as monsters. There’s so much crap under your bed that unless that monster’s the size of a hamster, it couldn’t even fit.”

“Stop with these abstract concepts, Dad. It’s not helping. My body feels afraid.”

This is something to pay attention to if you want to get the most out of your self. If you want to take your self on grand missions, dive into epic projects, take daring gambles.

There is part of you that will feel afraid, and you won’t be able to talk it down.

But that part of you is a child of the moment. Wrap it in a cuddle, let it take a few deep, long breaths, give it mental space to think about peaceful thoughts or nothing at all…

… and it will come round.

JG

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.

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

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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

NO B.S. FRIDAY: Bachar Houli is the future of Australia

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I’m still on a high after Richmond’s win, and I don’t want to go on about it, but it really was profound.

Last week I was talking about Dusty Martin and the Tiger's vulnerability practice and what a watershed moment that was for Aussie culture.

But there are a lot of amazing stories in the overarching epic of the Tigers’ victory.

Another one is Bachar Houli.

In case you’re not an AFL fanatic, Bachar Houli is one of the Richmond Tigers key players. He’s also first practicing Muslim in the AFL.

There have been other players from Muslim backgrounds in the AFL, but he is the first practicing Muslim – he had to get permission to break his Ramadan fast to participate in the draft round.

Given the age we’re living in, Houli’s religion is not insignificant.

Now I’ve read a few pieces which go something like, see Muslims can like footy. Therefore we can all get along.

It’s a bit silly.

I don’t think Houli’s participation in the AFL changes much in the scheme of things. I think you’re underestimating people prejudices if you think one player in the AFL can convince them to give them up, and come and join hands around the fire.

The truth is that society’s attitudes generally change as the old attitudes go with their owners to the grave.

So I don’t think Houli playing in the AFL is going to be an agent of change. That’s got the causality backwards. Rather, I think it says we’re doing something right.

I also think it’s wrong to paint ‘integration’ as relationship between an outsider and a static entity, say between a Muslim like Houli, and a static Australian society.

The way I see it, Australia is not a destination, but a journey. Australia society is not a fixed set of preferences (vegemite over jelly and peanut butter), but the values that drive our collective journey.

Of course, when we get into trying to define what Australian values are, we get into pretty hotly contested ground.

But it doesn’t need to be that way.

And the truth is, when I see a young man like Houli, I can empathise. I grew up Greek in 70s and 80s Australia. I had a last name that the white kids couldn’t pronounce.

The young kids find it hard to believe these days, but we used to cop it. And it really wasn’t that long ago.

And people used to wonder back then if the wogs “really shared our Australian values.”

“Look! Their food has all this “flavour” and the men can dance.”

And before us, it was the Irish.

And now these days, you can’t even imagine the fabric of Australian society without the Mediterranean and Irish threads running through it. And you look back in time and think, what were people even worried about? It’s hard to understand.

But the ‘integration’ (and I kinda hate that word) of Greek and Irish peoples into Australia has been a success.

Why?

Because we were allowed to participate. We were given a go. I still love soccer and love Greek food, but there’s no point looking at such superficial measures of connection.

Rather, I have a dream to make something of my life, a willingness to do the hard yards, and to help out where needed.

To me, this is all Australia is. This is the journey that we are on, together.

And so I can get why people worry about Muslim people “integrating” with Australian society. They are strong in their culture and it has some marked differences.

But I am strong in my culture too, and my heritage still defines who I am.

And so I would say, don’t worry about any of this. Don’t worry about whether people are bringing pork sausages to the BBQ or not. It doesn’t matter.

Worry about whether they are part of the shared journey.

And in large part, that is simply about being confident in Australian culture. It really is awesome. Just trust that if someone has the ability to participate in it, see it for themselves, enjoy the freedoms and the quality of life that comes with it, then they will make it their own.

They’ll go on to play footy at the highest level and tear it up.

You let that be the choice. Either you take part in the shared Australian journey to making your life your own, or off you go and join ISIS. Up to you bro.

If you don’t think people will choose the Australian journey over some fundamentalist journey of whatever stripe, then you probably have a pretty negative view of what Australian culture has to offer.

I don’t. I reckon Aussie culture has a lot to offer an individual.

So for me, the real issue here is access.

The offer only works if everyone has the opportunities that I did.

It’s why all those crony-capitalists make me so angry – and the rich folk who go out of the way to make things harder for the poor.

You’re rich. Great. Good for you. No need to be a dick about it.

Australian culture will thrive, and be a beacon to the world, so long as everyone has an opportunity.

Deny people the opportunity, and they will turn their back on society. They will stop being part of the journey and actively seek to undermine it – whether that means joining neo-nazis or ISIS.

But for now, that’s not what’s happening. Houli chose the Australian journey and living out his destiny through the AFL.

For today, at least, we’re doing something right.

What do you reckon Houli represents?