Everyone wants the truth.
We often say we can’t tell what’s true and what isn’t.
I say we can absolutely see the truth, but we’re way too close to it that it makes us blind.
In his superb book, ‘Rebel Ideas’, Matthew Syed narrates the true story of English football’s quest for answers. In 2016 a specialist team was gathered to analyse why one of the most successful nations in the game in England, with all its mega money and skilful players, the very founders of the sport, had not won a major trophy for 50 years.
That team though were only made up of one knowledgeable ex-international football player and pundit. The others were a founder of high-tech start ups, an Olympic administrator, the former head coach of the England Rugby squad, a top level cycling coach, and a female commander at the Royal Ministry Academy Sandhurst. Why then, when they were meeting to study and find an answer to such a huge problem in the national game, did they have only one (no longer playing) football expert?
Simple. The view was if you brought in other managers and football stars, they would provide the ruling FA with the same issues and awarenesses that the current manager and staff were already aware of as they were party to it week in, week out. There would be nothing new.
These football aces were far too close to the situation that they would not have the necessary perspective to work out where the shortcomings were. They would not be able to see the wood for the trees. Or the goal from the corner flag (Ok, bit cheeky that one).
It’s often obvious.
The truth is often in plain sight. It’s like the tale of the Emperor’s New Clothes where the crowd could ‘see’ he was wearing no garments but they would not truly recognise it even though it was right in front of them. It took an innocent young boy onlooker to identify what was glaringly obvious once he spoke up.
The background to the sad crash of Korean Airlines flight 801 in 1997 and the loss of 229 on board is another example. The plane has descended below the minimum safe altitude in mountainous terrain as the captain believed he was nearer the airport than he actually was with devastating consequences. Black box tapes show that neither the first officer nor flight engineer questioned the captain until six seconds before impact. Far too late to make a difference.
The investigation found that they considered the captain had been aware of the wrong height and would make corrections that he didn’t. The other insight was that Korean society made it offensive for subordinates to challenge a high ranked person despite the truth again be right in front of their eyes so they delayed until their own doom was upon them.
And so it goes with all of us. We can quite clearly see the truth most of the time but as we don’t step back enough from it or let others guide us to what we may be missing in our blind spot, we plough on making the same mistakes, errors, or missed opportunities. Or simply don’t smell the roses.
In the movie, ‘A Few Good Men’, Jack Nicholson’s character Colonel Jessep rages in court, ‘You can’t handle the truth’.
I believe we can handle it but as we’re far to close to it that we simply aren’t able to realise it’s right there in front of our eyes. Our own Emperor’s New Clothes.
Maybe it’s time we honestly looked!
Five thoughts, ideas, insights, or quotes to power up your mind to think differently and creatively about life and the future. Put all previous thinking away and open up a brand new world of the supermind.
This week – news.
If there is one place the majority of the world first turns to every day, it’s the news. It’s their ‘go to’ in search of understanding how life is and what events are occurring around the world and the people that go with them. But, in doing so they are exposing themselves to increasing amounts of negativity and shaded presentations of life. Therefore, this week I want to look at news and put our SuperMinds to good use on its presence.
- News was designed to inform us of the current affairs of the day. But that has clearly morphed into world politics, celebrity gossip, sports highlight stories, and even now opinion of what might happen next on a whole range of topics. News has changed. So, that begs the question for us all to consider. What IS, and should only be, news?
- Radical thoughts – news programmes are a dark space often fear filled featuring the worst in the world. They negatively impact people’s minds. News programmes should therefore be limited to 10 minutes only on mainstream channels permitted to share just the headlines. Any other news (such as rolling news channels) is behind age protected premium pay walls.
- Social media is the main source of fake news, of people sharing stories in an instant that they haven’t checked are true at all. This leads to misinformation gathering pace and soon the truth is buried under an avalanche of made up lies and propaganda. How would you change this so news could not be shared by individuals and only official media outlets and broadcasters?
- Quote from American writer, Peter McWilliams – ‘The news media are, for the most part, the bringers of bad news’. How would you force/compel/ensure that the media share as much good news as they do poor news?
- Many people actually watch news all day. In essence, it has become an addiction. How can we measure the harmful effects of news on people so that their lives and society itself doesn’t suffer?
That’s Supermind Saturday for this week. Keep asking yourself these through the week to open up more of your mind to evolve its untapped power. Consider more, reflect more, think more, activate your connection to your personal mind more. Let them super sink in and Super Think!
See you next time for more super thinking.
If you were a millionaire and you lost it all, I wonder how you would feel?
Most likely you’d be devastated, in pieces, thinking your life is over, broken…..and the usual expected emotional and mental responses.
Yet, in fact, most millionaires who did lose their wealth, went straight back out and got it again…..and often got more than before. Where the everyday person would be in a hole struggling to make ends me, our rich friends would be re-engaged at filling up their bank account once more.
How on Earth can they do that when the majority of people would crumble if they lost the few thousand pounds they had saved up?
It comes down to the old adage that typifies a SuperMInd approach. If, for arguments sake, every adult over the age of 18 in the world was given a million pounds, dollars, euros etc, within a few years all the money would be back in the hands of the wealthy who had it before. Not because the average man or woman on the street went on a spending spree and blew the lot. NOPE! Nor would it be because the rich have a big network of other rich pals and moguls who look after each other and their elite contacts who will assist them with a leg up up funding some investments for them in the meantime. Er, NO!
They would win it all back due to one internal human trait.
You Better Believe It.
That trait is plain and simple CONFIDENCE.
Their own personal inner belief system reminds them that if they have earned it once, they can most certainly claim it again. Everyday folk would decide that they were meant to have the millions as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity and now its gone it will never come back. Not so millionaire minds who have already built up their self confidence. To them it’s proof that if it can be achieved once, it can be achieved repeatedly.
You could call it the Millionaire Mindset. I prefer super self confidence in a) money being everywhere so it’s not in short supply and b) they possess the mental certainty in themselves to bring it back into their lives.
Those two are their anchors through all times. From day 1 start again moment, past volatile financial peaks and troughs, and in through to big bank bucks back where they belong with them. Yes, they plan and work, and keep at it and sometimes have to take risks most would never entertain. But it’s all underpinned by their confidence that they have what it takes to welcome the wealth right back to them.
So when you see a story of man/woman who made good and then lost every single penny but came back to be financially wealthier than ever, now you know. They knew, they never stopped. Confidence was, and remains, their true currency.
And it all comes down to a few special words.
You Gotta Believe!
Five thoughts, ideas, insights, or quotes to power up your mind to think differently and creatively about life and the future. Put all previous thinking away and open up a brand new world of the supermind.
This week – power.
Your super 5 about questions or points around power for your mind to play with. Let go, be free….stretch your mind.
For millenia humankind have waged war, played political games, and pursued ideological strategies all in the name and quest for power. And even at the smallest level people seek power in their office, or sports club, community, and their own lives. So let’s look at, and think about, this magnetic control that often human beings so badly want.
- This week I’m starting with a quote and a personal question for you. ‘The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don’t have any’, so said American author, Alice Walker. My question to you then is, ‘What power do you most keep giving away because you don’t believe you actually have it (and you clearly do)?
- Maybe you have been to the cinema recently and watched some Superheroes up on the big screen. Gifted souls with special enhanced powers beyond other humans that they employ to bring about a better world. So, I’m getting tough on your here as I’m going to the flip side of the first question above, ‘What is your real, living superpower that you use every single day out in the world that you don’t realise is that incredible’? And once you accept that you have it, how can you develop it further for your good and the good of others?
- Observation – those that seek power do so to be able to control others, to serve their ego, to be omnipotent and unanswerable to the least amount of others, and to have full choice but less consequence. Power seekers are very unhappy at who they are and there lies the fundamental truth at deciding who we should give power to.
- The greatest power today on Planet Earth lies with a small number of world leaders and business moguls. This elite group of the few decide for the many. They decide most for everyone. It seems they have been amassing fast accelerating amount of total power decade after decade. How can we stop the march of power into the hands of only a handful of people?
- Up to this point I’ve spoken about power as a ruling force, But, there is another power. Power as energy to heat and run our homes and transport, businesses, and countries. We have moved away from fossil fuels to achieve this but now rely heavily on a few nations to supply our power. And that reliance has proved costly and under threat when those nations are involved in disputes with us. Big question coming – how can we use NEW power in our country (the one you live in) so we have full control and access of it that will provide energy to everyone there i.e. how we can have our own power over our power?
That’s Supermind Saturday for this week. Keep asking yourself these through the week to open up more of your mind to evolve its untapped power (deliberate pun this time!). Consider more, reflect more, think more, activate your connection to your personal mind more. Let them super sink in and Super Think!
See you next time for more super thinking.
Mankind gets things very right. And spectacularly wrong.
Modern thinking at the turn of the last Century was that humans would struggle to ever fly. Even Wilbur Wright himself of the famous Wright brothers who pioneered the first airplane flight once said, ‘Man will not fly for 50 years’.
Edward Jenner, who discovered the first vaccine for smallpox was castigated as blasphemous by the ruling religious fraternity as trying to be God. Jonas Hanway was thrown insults and pelted with stones when he began using the umbrella he imported on the streets of London in the 1750’s. More recently when Steve Jobs launched the ground breaking Apple iMac in the mid 80’s it was dubbed ‘a toy’ by the tech media.
But we also get it wrong in reverse. Badly wrong.
In 1941 US President Roosevelt championed the development of the Atomic bomb because American intelligence informed him the Nazis were working on one to use against Allied forces. By having an equal threat the belief was that with such potential joint weaponry, peace would be more likely to be negotiated first as a deterrent. But only four years later it was dropped twice on Japan taking the lives of over 160,000 people.
Further developments over the following decades led to the creation of the nuclear bomb and the whole 1980’s lay under the very real threat of it been detonated as the East and West wagered a mind game war. The view that bombs themselves would lead to peace, only ever led to greater and greater loss of life and even the path to the very end of the world itself.
We live in Artificial Intelligence times.
And so we come to the latest and greatest tool forged by the minds of man that has been designed to make our lives better, easier, more productive, healthier, beneficial, and, of course, wealthier. Artificial Intelligence.
Will it?
Well mankind perhaps yet again has fallen into it’s own mental trap. A much repeated one as proven in history. This trap is to lean to one side of the right/wrong or good/bad equation. To perceive how we will gain without fully considering what we may use. A.I. ,as it’s now become known as, has some impressive impacts but, truth is, it’s only been available to the public for a matter of a few years and what that may result in is less contemplated (or not contemplated at all) than what marvellous results it’s currently showcasing. It’s all along the lines of a few accidents and the odd death just like the bomb makers determined is less critical than say the mega benefits of driverless cars no matter what clues they point to.
Decide before the ride.
The big truth is mankind is too quick to decide. On both sides of the spectrum. Our rush to push forwards eagerly wins over our go steady to be ready side. We simply need to learn by our accelerated surge to meaning (dismissing or championing our inventions too soon) and instead really think about not just what we create, but how that creation could evolve. What we build is not the problem here, it’s what the mind sees it as that is. And only as!
This is not some Cybernet type wisdom from The Terminator film story. In fact I will merely finish with the phrase of golden wisdom uttered by Jeff Goldblum’s character Ian Malcolm in Jurassic Park, ‘Scientists were so preoccupied about whether they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should’.
And stopping to think is what mankind doesn’t do best.
I wonder if Artificial Intelligence has worked that out yet?
