From Where You Are

We need a process to develop the necessary skills and knowledge. That is getting easier. There are a lot of Massively Open Online Courses (MOOCs). You can get the information online. There is Wikipedia, Udemy, Coursera, and a world of online resources for you to gain skills and knowledge. But you need to know what you need to know. A list of skills and resources that are required and remunerated. The process of learning becomes lifelong and iterative. Changing as needs, supply, and demand change. 

We need to constantly set aside time for development. In professional terms, this is called Continued Professional Development (CPD) and you are required to evidence your annual learning. Effectively keeping a Journal. Whether it is through a book, an experience, or an actual course where you need a certification. 

You need a map. To understand what the problem is that you want to solve, and then you need to figure out how you can solve it. You need is a container for problem. Containers created by barriers to entry or exit. Barriers to entry are things like formal qualifications, evidence and proof that you can do a specific type of job. It might be a very well-defined job. If it is an old profession like law, accounting or medicine. Something that a group of people have created a formal framework for around a specific set of problems. 

There are also generic skills. Any job is going to need you to have excellent communication skills. The ability to understand problems and explain them to others. To gather and process information to make decisions based on the story that emerges. Skills like time management, being reliable, and being able to do administration are essential. Simple tasks like paperwork, being able to read information, process it, and keep it in an orderly fashion so that you're able to find it again quickly. Without being a specialist, you will need an understanding of project and diary management, and the ability to write clearly. Writing well, so that information is carried across clearly. Networking is incredibly important. The human skills of social, emotional, and cultural intelligence. Understanding people and understanding how they make their decisions. 

To make money, you need to find decision-makers with money and help them. Understand their world and what it is they are concerned about. What it is they want. To do that, be curious. Genuinely interested in what is going on. 

Different jobs take these skills and attitudes to different levels, but they are generic skills that will make you better placed to be able to solve problems. 

Being curious and reading and learning about the world will put you in a position to note the different options that are available. To find case studies and best practices, by reading what other people have done and what options are open. People that are on similar paths can act as mentors. You can then map the path of skills development for yourself. Gain an understanding of the various barriers that stop you from being able to solve something. Solve the problem of overcoming them. You can look at job adverts, and see the skills and knowledge required. On LinkedIn, you can look at the public profile of people doing the type of work you want to do. Do you really need to go to university, or can you pick the skills up elsewhere? 

Can you just start a business and solve the problem? How do you find clients? There is a lot of done in the open if you pay attention. You want to be very aware of the environment that you are in. Who are the suppliers that you are going to have to work with? We live in a much more connected world. The information is out there on social media. Paying attention and understand what it is that stops you from solving the problems you identify. That might be regulation. It might be expensive to pay for the insurance (e.g. professional indemnity insurance). You might need software. There might be capital that you need in order to solve specific problems. What are the challenges to get around? 

Not everyone has Capital. Not everyone has access to the containers in which the problems can be solved. You need to create a map of how to go about being in the right position. You also need to be able to distinguish between good ideas and good business ideas. To develop a filter to choose which problems to focus on.

Authagraph World Map

Finding the Answers

When we are at school, we see the same people every day by default. If you get to go to university, you can make great friends with more of your own discretion, but we start dividing up as we specialize. The people that we spend time with are other people that we work with. We end up living very different lives. 

Genghis Khan was a controversial “successful” historical figure, but his life was not that different from his warriors’ lives. He still lived in a Ger and spent most of his life as a nomad moving with his with his own forces. Now the people in control lead very different lives from other people in institutions, particularly the bigger the organisation gets. As we get more specialised, we stop having a common vocabulary of things we can talk about. 

To parse what you hear, you need to find someone whose life resonates with yours. Whose choices resonate with yours. We can give each other some generic guidance, but most advices advice is to a younger version of yourself. Austin Kleon says all advice is autobiographical. A chance to revise your story. I enjoy revising my story. Going back in the past and reviewing the decisions that I've made. 

It helps me understand the decisions that I am making now. To understand the work that I need to do to change the way that I make decisions. Like everyone, I am not always aware of all the decisions that I am making. Some of them are made automatically. I believe in Free Will. I just think it is hard. The impact of decisions compounds and restricts the freedom of future decisions without dramatically pressing the restart button. For the most part it is easier to let the random, complex, ambiguous World make decisions for us. That way we don’t have to take responsibility if things go wrong. Planning comes with the price tag that there is no one to blame. That can be a scary or lonely place. 

Once you have case studies, you have people who are one page ahead of you. A lot of the studying we did at school was through peers. We taught each other. I learnt much of what I needed to know for exams on the phone with David or Kyle. That is often a better way to learn. ”The curse of Knowledge” is that people forget what it feels like not to know. As something becomes natural and embodied, our consciousness shifts elsewhere. We forget that it was hard to learn to walk. 

Professor Dorrington was frustratedly trying to teach my class the concept of “Exposed to Risk”. There was a room full of 40 or so maths loving try-hards and none of us could get it. He could not explain this concept to us. We were all absolutely confused. In hindsight, it seems like a simple concept to me now. And for him, it was a simple concept then. We are exposed to various risks and Actuaries try figure out the probability of that happening by looking at what has happened. It is two numbers. The one is how many times the thing happened. The other is how many people it could have happened to. But as the thing happens, the people it could have happened to shrinks. Or maybe new people join. So every time the thing happens, you need to know how many people were “exposed to risk”. 

It is often easier to find someone who has just grasped the concept. They didn't understand it a short time ago, and now they understand it. They remember the path. Those are the people who can help you. 

To make money, you need things that you can count. Price acts like traffic lights. It is a signal that indicates if there are enough people providing a solution. If not, we need to shift some resources there. A high price shows what we pay a lot of money to people to do. If we have a lot of people willing to do this, then the price goes down. 

In order to solve problems, you need skills and knowledge. Those tend to be specialized. We don’t have the capacity to do everything, which creates a barrier to us solving any problem that needs solving. The world is more complicated, and we are not all farmers anymore.

We don't all live in similar Gers

Sorting Roles

Acceptance is difficult. I have always been a bit of a “try hard”. That was what we called people at school who were constantly doing something. The implication being that you are trying to impress the teachers. Like the idea of a “Teachers Pet” or “Brown Nosing”. 

The world is structured towards encouraging activity, and the conspicuous things that we can see. We look for cause and effect, so that we can control our environment. The assumption being that we are the reason for things, and knowledge will allow us to act with dependable outcomes. By acting, we further our goals. Which seems logical, and Cartesian. We think, therefore we are. Think then do. Try. 

Through Josh Waitzkin, and his book “The Art of Learning”, I was introduced to the idea of Wu Wei, which means action through inaction. You start by seeing things as they are, rather than living in our minds. Rather than living in how we want things to be. See then nudge. A less anxious way of engaging with the chaos. 

To really gain an understanding of the world, you need a pinch of salt for the way you think things work. Understanding that can be quite frustrating when things do not respond the way you thought they would. When we are children, we are much more willing to let things play out. We enjoy being surprised. It delights us when things are interesting. Rather than the joy of a fascinated two-year old, we can be enraged. 

Ken Robinson pointed out that almost all children believe they can draw when they are 5 years old. You learn your way out of creativity. By the age of 15, someone has convinced most of us we cannot draw. Our creativity is bounded by the belief that we need to be sorted by conspicuous, immediate, competency. We stop learning as we create a story about who we are, and how we control the world. We specialize to get recognition for how we are special. We tell stories so that we can categorise and create boxes in which we can find comfort. A safe space we understand. That allows us to ignore the world that is not the way we want. 

These worlds we understand are less confusing. We prefer doing things where there is a script. The stories we tell ourselves become stories we recognise. When somebody clashes with that, it is difficult. Accepting this confusion, accepting that the world is to complex, ambiguous, and random is a challenge. But from a point of acceptance, you can start to see how things work. Without trying hard. 

We can start to get an understanding by looking at how our story connects to the story of others. As people, we can pay attention to the past and to others. We can look at case studies and see how other people operate. We can learn through the people we meet. This is why a lot of privilege comes from from the bubble that you're born into. The conversations you are exposed to. The mentors. The questions that you are asked. The possibilities that seem possible because you have seen them in someone who seems vaguely like you, becomes the set of options you recognize. And that can feel unfair. 

A lot of what we are doing is unpacking things like past prejudice, and pre-determined roles. Historically, many people were born into roles. There was someone who could tell them what their path was. The options are opening up, there are fewer people who can tell us what that path is. There are fewer people to walk with us. There are lots of options. Lots of places to go. We start going off on our own. We live more isolated lives where people don't necessarily know our story anymore. Don’t want to know. When you are growing up, your parents are there to guide you. They are interested in your story. But once you leave home, you start making your own way in the world. And because we have so many paths, even the people who knew us well when we were younger massively diverged from where we are now. We might not make time or space for each other in the new lives. When we are at school, we see the same people every day by default. If you get to go to university, you can make great friends with more of your own discretion, but we start dividing up as we specialize. The people that we spend time with are other people that we work with. We end up living very different lives.

Sorting and Type Setting

Creating a Muse

Create cycles of learning. Repeated periods of trial and error where you act and then reflect. If in each of those cycles, there is a little bit of space building, that space will compound. It is not about predicting the future. It is about the ability to adapt, adjust, and accommodate futures. Capital, skills, knowledge, relationships, and capacity. Your buffer becomes an engine, your engine becomes a muse. Your muse sets you free. 

This form of success/freedom has nothing to do with anybody else. It is your story. It is your capacity to connect to other people. Rather than being weighed, measured, and judged, relative to them. 

Stilling the waves of money anxiety starts with understanding your relationship with money. With the stories you tell yourself, and the daily practice you create around that. How you wake up. What you choose to do. How you choose to think. What new information you expose yourself to. What areas of embodiment you are exploring. The movement, you are creating. The flexibility, you are creating. The strength, you are creating. The control you have over how you move. Your autonomy. Your transitions. 

Understand the situation that you are in, and the situation you want to be in. Understand the path, and the required skills and knowledge. That starts with paying attention to where you are, reflecting on it, and seeing what your choices are. In a way that you are fully present and able to grapple with that with a sparkle in your eye. To see a point in subtle change. To celebrate marginal progress that adds up. That powers small achievable steps every day. 

The world can get us down, but I am a glass-half-full person. In all this chaos, the world is full of rich seeding grounds for curiosity. That is the point of all of it. Find a way to get some excitement about what you do, and go create meaning. That comes through relationships, connection, and other people. Building. Building over time, and setting yourself up to be able to move autonomously in the direction you choose.

Finding a source for Creativity

Anxious by Comparison

When you are looking for the commitment required for long-term endurance, the path is through complex relationship building. Understanding money is relatively easy by comparison. There are significantly more interesting ways of releasing flavour, that we do not seek out because it requires work. Work that is profoundly rewarding, but asks a lot of us. Asks us to be better. In a way that is not relative to other people. That neither excludes others, nor creates bubbles of comforting success. A deeper sense of better. Through grappling, struggling, and engaging. It is beautifully difficult. You must want that beauty. 

I suspect most of us default to the path of least resistance. Responding to confidence in a complicated world. We are all so confused, that if someone looks confident, it is enticing to say, “I’ll just do what they told me to do.” Freedom of movement requires strength and flexibility built consciously and actively, rather than the passive following of instruction. 

Find comfort within discomfort. That does not mean pushing through pain. With yoga and stretching, to progress, you do not need to hurt yourself. You can learn within limits. You can learn by understanding the boundaries, and doing the work inside of that. Playing, and moving around, in your areas of slight discomfort. Be curious about transitions that are not smooth. 

A lot of meditative work can be done through movement and dancing. Being aware of, “Ooo, this bit there is tight. I am going to move my shoulder more. I am a bit stiff in my lower back, I am going to do some moving there.” It is about understanding where you carry your tension. You can go for a run. A swim. Lift your arms over your head. Pick something up. Reach for something. Our minds learn in the way our body does. Through an embodied use-it-or-loose-it process of leaning into areas of discomfort (without hurting yourself) and building endurance and resilience. Through consistent engagement. 

One of those areas is trying to understand our communal obsession with comparison with other people. 

Relativity is one of the biggest obstacles to mental health. When we wish we were in the position of someone else, and judge ourselves through others. When you hear about good fortune of people you know, and it does not make you feel good. When you go visit friends or family in bigger houses, or when you go on holiday, and are constantly aware of the things you do not have. Window shopping into other lives. We only have a small peak. We never see the full picture. We cannot understand their full story. We only see the conspicuous. We do not see the trade-offs. We do not see the challenges. We glimpse a single angle snapshot of another life path. 

Letting go of that idea is vital to be able to fully focus our energy on whatever our bits of the puzzle are. Whatever our choices are. Whatever our position is. That is not accepting your role in life. It is letting go of the idea that people are better or worse. 

Pause before you look at people who are richer than you to learn about money. If you want to create a buffer for the noise. If you want space to breathe, then the best place to look is how you spend money. How could you live on half of what you spend? The best place to learn is from people who are living on half of what you are. The key to stilling the waves of money anxiety is the relationship between income and expenses. The ins and outs, and the balance between the two. 

Someone who is earning a lot of money, but spending even more, will be progressively getting more into debt. Making it increasingly hard to reduce their expenses. Becoming accustomed to a lifestyle they can not afford. Even if their income is growing, they are not on the path to financial freedom. They are going to be stressed, and full of money anxiety. Whereas someone who is earning half of what you do, can offer you lessons on how to gradually build up a buffer.

a single photo doesn't tell the whole story

Sugar High

We are forced to do some work to understand politics, in much the same way that we must understand money. Politics can be frustrating when it is about darkness. About hiding information and installing hierarchy. I do not like people being bullied, and I do not like people being told what to do without their enthusiastic consent. 

Money making boils down to solving problems. If you genuinely want to create compounding momentum, you must repeatedly make yourself redundant. To confidently do that, you need a sense of ownership. To feel part of a solving container. Otherwise, once you have a solution, why ask you again? There are 8 Billion people on the planet. As Warren Buffett says, “You don’t have to swing at every pitch.” BUT... I refuse to be someone’s pitch. 

The other more cynical path is to make yourself irreplaceable. Create problems only you can (pretend to) solve. 

I do not like that path. I like the path of genuine and honest problem solving. That requires trust, ownership, and inclusion in the containers we build. A strong enough commitment in a relationship to share the truth. One of the reasons we do not talk about what we earn, our real weaknesses, and what we do not know, is it can solidify internal waves of anxiety about inadequacy. It is hard to ask for vulnerability in a world that punishes it in favour of conspicuous overconfidence. 

Which means there is a level of darkness about what opportunities are available. Which clogs up realistic paths of skill and knowledge development, and leaves solvable problems scabbing our eyes closed. 

You are not the problem. The problem is the problem. Treating people like pitches, turns them into problems. 

One of the most important lessons in the world of money is that “Price is not Value”. 

We half wish that it was, because of a love for scorecards and a way of measuring progress. If you can measure something, you can control it. People partly love big salaries because it is a conspicuous sign that you are making it in the world. Unfortunately, all a big salary means is that there is an undersupply of the thing that you are providing. Or there are significant barriers to entry. Or there is a lack of transparency. There is a container that creates the ability to earn more, but it is not value. There are lots of valuable things that are abundant. A high price is just an indication of scarcity. 

Not everything that counts can be counted and contained. Not all good ideas are good business ideas. Not all good business ideas are good ideas. 

The challenge we face with politics is that we want it. The most political people I know use phrases like “leave your ego at the door”, and ask “how do we get rid of the politics?” without a hint of irony. The darkness from lack of transparency protects our interests and vulnerabilities. We like positioning ourselves against other people, if we come out on top. We like the sense of superiority. We like getting better. We like progress. We like being incentivised. We like action. We like feeling like we are doing something right, and moving forward. 

We create these hierarchies as a way of making sense of the world. As a way of feeling like we are moving. Feeling a sense of life. It is an easy option to measure the world. Money is like salt, fat, and sugar for the taste buds. It is not subtle flavouring.

Craving Incentives

Giving it Meaning

“The best I can wish you is a little misfortune” 

We learn the most when things go wrong. When there is pain as you look back in your past, learn to sit with sadness and reflect on it. Then let it go. Melancholy is a great source of creativity. “Life is going to want to shit on you. Let it. Use it.” 

There are things you cannot change. That is the path you are on. I do not like the idea of living with regret, but I do like meditating on my past. Thinking about my stories, and putting that in the context of other people. 

Stories and money as a form of communication. Reflections on stories change as we change. Part of my story is Apartheid in South Africa. I refuse to let go of History. Because it is such an important source of understanding. We carry all this knowledge with us. Some written, some aural, some in the way we dance, the way we make our art, and the way we build community. 

Part of being human is this beautiful, deep, painful, glorious, connection to everything. The future, the past, and other people’s now. That source of understanding gives us a powerful view of the why of why we make our decisions. I believe that life does not have meaning. We give it meaning. We create meaning. Books like Victor Frankl’s “Man’s Search for Meaning” and David Duncan’s “The River Why”. See what your values are. See what is important to you. Then create a bolder life. 

Positive ambition should start with reflection on what drives you. What are your cornerstone stories? What is your narrative? How do you become the editor of your life? Being able to take a slight step back from what is going on, and say, “That character? Not so much. I am going to change that. The plot was leading to this point, but actually it could lead here if you think about it differently.” There are all sorts of techniques to have a sense of autonomy resonate through your story. That starts with understanding what your drivers are. 

There is obviously politics. It is not just about you. No one is separate from the rest of the world. You want your values system to reflect how you operate with other people. Everything we do is about relationships. It is about connection to other people. It does not matter what your job is, most of the dynamic will boil down to how you interact with other people. Emotional Intelligence, Social Intelligence, and Cultural Intelligence become vital. You get smart people who are clueless about how to engage with other humans. They are not going to make money. Money is made by solving problems for people. Who you know, networks, and trust are important because money is a story. 

We do not have full knowledge of other people’s stories. It helps to build an environment that supports repeated interaction. Connected stories. The hardest part of making money is building a relationship with decision makers with money. Finding clients. A decision maker will do the hard work of deciding they trust you enough to give you money. That is emotional work. They do not need to do that initial heavy lifting again if trust is maintained. Build deep relationships. Superficial relationships will leave you constantly searching for new clients. If you are serving them once, but then maybe they never want to see you again, because you have not acted with integrity, and they regret their initial decision. 

Even after money has changed hands, consent has a memory. Informed consent has hope for the future. When things do not work out, that affects the story of the relationship. If you do not act in a way where someone is still happy with the decision once the money has swapped bank accounts, you are going to struggle. One mental tool is to think how you would act in a world with full transparency, zero transaction costs, and perfect replicability. Where if you could do something, someone else would be able to do it immediately afterwards. Why would the person still deal with you? That is all about relationships and trust. 

The world is complicated, ambiguous, and uncertain. People will want to deal with you because you become an extension of them as a decision-maker. They give money to you because you are them, in the way that you become a part of their problem solving. You become a part of their container.

In Conversation with Yourself

In decision making, and planning, the challenge is dealing with ambition, success, and visions of the future. It can become overwhelming. We all end up having imposter syndrome, judging ourselves based on criteria set by others. It comes down to managing expectations. 

If you give generously, you typically receive back. Give generously without expectation. When the world disappoints us, that is when we start judging ourselves harshly. Waves that bother us most are dealing with our own demons. Shadows to work on. When someone gets angry at you, it is often not you. It is their own projections. It is their struggle crying out. If someone is being harsh on you, you can imagine that they are probably incredibly harsh on themselves in their head. 

We are so deep soaked in this idea of ambition, that we all end up beating ourselves up. Feeling like we are a bit of a failure. We project that on others. When you are struggling with other people thinking maybe you are not good enough, they are probably struggling with the same thing. Because we think in categories, we divide people into good enough and not good enough. 

Meritocracy in its historical context, was compared to hereditary privilege. When people used to be born into wealth. Who someone’s parents were, determined their predefined role in life. Caste systems or Feudal systems were ways of categorising people. 

Now we have companies as containers and that is how we make sense. We want social mobility. We want people to be able to choose their own stars. That creates a lot of ambition. We are trying to unpack the unintended consequences of some of the stories we use to coordinate and cooperate. Many of these stories run deep. Unwinding the mess requires micro-ambition, because they are so deeply connected to things we care about. 

Free Will is possible. But, It is hard. You must do the work. If you want to make good decisions, understand how you make decisions. Narrative Therapy is brought to life in the TV Series “Westworld”. We all have cornerstone events, drivers, and coding that determines how we respond to complexity, ambiguity, and randomness. The more aware you are of who the character you are playing is, the more conscious you can be of what perceptions, habits, and scripts need editing. It will not just happen. We embody our impression of ourselves deep beneath the surface. We seldom change through weekend epiphanies. Monday morning always arrives. Change must be sustainable. 

Understanding yourself requires going deep into the stories we forget on the surface. You must dig, and ask questions, tracing back like a detective. Why do you respond in the way you do? Why is that important to you? What are you trying to prove? Who are you trying to prove it to? Do you really want to prove it? 

Tacit knowledge means you are best placed to make your decisions. This is true. But interrogate the process. Look back into your history and understand your context. Even though you are best placed to make your decisions, you need to be in conversation with yourself. Learning, unlearning, and with constant feedback. Pause for reflection. Pause for understanding and gaining knowledge into yourself and why you made the choices that you did. Do they reflect what truly matters to you? 

Try and understand the way that you think. Why things matter to you. We all have different value sets, and you want to know what those values are. What the trade-offs are. Quite often a decision is neither good nor bad, it is just a case of different weightings. Everything has consequences. 

In Ursula Le Guin’s Earthsea, the main character is Ged. In that universe, power is gained by being able to see, and name, something’s essence. By acknowledging what something truly is, the wizard has the power to change it. The arch of the story is Ged’s battle against the most powerful evil wizard that has ever lived. A shadow. When he discovers the shadows name, he realises it is his own. Our deep shadows are part of understanding who we are. Understanding your decision making, is finding out what your story is. 

People will say “Don’t carry your history with you”, “let it go”, “live in the now”. I am not one of those people. I live in my history. I am always curious about why I think the way I do, and what built that up. I know there is path dependence. I know that because of various events, my life could have gone another way. As I get older and new things happen to me, it changes my memory. I like reflecting on memories repeatedly, and saying, “Okay, well now I see things differently.” You are having a conversation with your past self to understand how your values have evolved.