Willing the Body

Ken Robinson was a phenomenal communicator. He talked about the disconnect between the world of practice and the world of theories. Lamenting how academics can sit in universities, detach themselves and look at how the world should work from an ethical perspective, or values perspective, or a meta “how are we thinking about thinking” perspective. They can go really deep to the edge of human understanding. They don’t always have a lifeline back to where people are actually living. 

We have a wealth of knowledge that is hidden because we are not good at communicating with each other. When we are living separately from the world. We have people who are so busy, they don’t have time to think deeply. They are trying to be constructive, and so don’t have time to deconstruct. There is no time for finding holes, dangers, and unintended consequences. 

He talks of academics being disembodied, and seeing their body as a device that gets their head from meeting to meeting. The East has a more healthy relationship with the body. Yoga, for me, has also been about exploring embodied learning. At a later stage, I also started doing Five Rhythms dancing, which is part of a growing movement culture. An exploration of where knowledge sits at the subconscious level. 

In “The Happiness Hypothesis”, Jonathan Haidt uses the metaphor of an elephant and a rider. The real strength sits in the habits, scripts, loops, and behaviours that go on without thinking. Our rider may pull the strings, but the elephant must be willing. That requires a mind and body that talk.

The Why of Learning

Ged from the Earthsea Quartet, is one of my favourite fictional characters. In that world, you gain magical powers over objects and lifeforms by knowing their true names. His training is an extended period of study in a tower away from the noise. Then embodying that knowledge, so he doesn’t just know the names superficially. He sees them, recognises them, remembers them, and can use them as automatically as breathing properly. 

In David Copperfield, Charles Dicken’s character also finds a key to financial security through wrestling hard with something deeply complex and confusing until it comes naturally. In this case – Shorthand. This is a symbolic writing method that lets you take verbatim notes but write quickly enough to keep up (before there were keyboards and recordings). 

I have been plugging away at languages and the Rubik’s cube, as a tool for memory work. You can learn how to solve a Rubik’s cube in a few minutes (to solve) in an hour (to learn). To get faster, you need to put time and practice in. 

For a Rubik’s cube... why? You are not going to make money out of it. You would need to have another reason. With Languages, there is a payback as an entry ticket to other cultures and world views. To be able to connect to people in the way they are most relaxed. 

Yet... normally it would require a real push for motivation to get through the obstacles. Perhaps moving to a place where that language dominates. Perhaps a loved one. 

The why of learning is the key to deep soaking. I know why I spent time learning the Rubik’s cube. It is hard to explain or justify to others. You don't need to explain your why to yourself, but it needs to soak deep enough to overcome attempts to shift your attention away.

Every Day

One of the GMB Fitness trainers, João, often trains in his jeans and slippers. This is because he likes wearing jeans and slippers, and his intention in training is to be able to move easily. So he wears what he wants to move in. 

Another technique he talks about is simple repetition, until the movement comes naturally. Which seems like stating the obvious, but sometimes we repeat till first success rather than till smooth and dependable rewiring has taken hold. We scratch the surface and move on before knowledge is embodied. 

Which is why failure and difficulty can be powerful learning techniques, because they force you to slow down. 

Spaced Repetition is an idea Gabriel Wyner (of Fluent Forever) pushes for language learning, and memory work more generally. You stretch out the periods of repetition till you are just about to forget. You gradually increase those periods. Until it becomes a part of what you deeply know. 

When we change behaviours, the key element is sustainability. Particularly for things like long term wealth creation and compounding. 

For upside, it is the behaviours that you do every day, rather than what you do on any given day, that matter. For downside, yes... you can do a lot of damage in a short time. Creation needs time. Sustainable is possible forever.

Chew On

Cooking is a great example of “sources of joy” where some very simple processes are things people “can’t do”. Have you made mashed potatoes? Fried an egg? Made a pancake? 

Until you have done something, it can be intimidating. We all find very different things intimidating, because every living human is incompetent in some way. 

There are amazing meals that are not difficult to make. Even World Class chefs will do the same. If the ingredients are plentiful, then the price will be low. Price is not value. A high price simply indicates scarcity. 

Often we are monotongue in the same way as we are monolingual. We eat a constrained diet because we haven’t built up our food vocabulary. 

Soups are really easy. Stock and one vegetable will even do it, and let you build up your vocabulary with gentle pairings and exploration. 

I have a funny relationship with fruit for some reason. Something about the texture, but pop it in a (smooth) jam or a smoothy and I am good to go. 

You can gently unwind embedded behaviours with time and coaxing. Learning is about deep soaking. At school, we write the test and forget. Real learning is embodied through repetition. Where it becomes part of your taste buds and habits. 

Narrative Therapy is the idea of understanding your cornerstone events, drivers, and scripts that you repeat. Then being your own detached editor. Tweaking the words and stories the voices in your head chew on.

Then you Build

Wealth building is not wealth extraction. It is not a negative competition. Yes, you are engaged with people in a way where you push each other, and challenge each other, but there is no need for schadenfreude and benefitting only if others do badly. 

We can gradually let go of that and have the genuine intention to solve rather than perpetuate problems while drawing rent from them. There is the temptation to have easy containers where the only competitive advantages are fake. 

Real mastery and resilience can cope with, and thrive under, openness and transparency. A really good business idea can be judged through the filter of how it would work in a world with full transparency, zero transaction costs, and perfect replicability. 

If someone knows what you are doing, they could do it too. Real competitive advantage comes from embodied knowledge. You can tell someone what you do and how you do it... and they still won’t be able to, or won’t want to, because it isn’t what makes them tick. You have a relationship with them, and that is something they will keep coming back for. 

The way you see the world can change, and adjust. We can go deep into different areas. Make different choices. 

My goal has always been to develop a resilient world view. One where there is nothing that everything relies on. Where changing one thing doesn’t bring everything else down. Where you hold each part lovingly, but you are not so attached to it that it defines the whole reality. 

Then you build. Choose. Go.

Building doesn't have to leave a hole

Will of the Elephants

Agreements are made by getting to know elephants. In Jonathan Haidt’s analogy, the conscious choices we make are the riders, and normally when they pull left, the elephant goes left. The riders think they are in control because the choices are followed, but in reality the elephants want to go left. 

One day, when the elephants go right despite the pull... we don’t even admit the lack of control. We make excuses. We defend. We rationalise. We change the story. The power team of a public relations officer and defence lawyer explain away our behaviour. Like after a difficult relationship, or being fired, or other traumas... we have inbuilt coping mechanisms to make sense of the world. To believe in cause and effect. To believe we have control. The real intelligence is in our habits. 

The real communication is in our complicated and intimate relationships. Full of noise and deep soaked. This means epiphanies are not enough. You cannot just decide to change direction against the will of the elephants. You have to put in the hard work of retraining.

Soaking Deep

We don’t necessarily have to understand our engagement with the world. Yoga talks of three states of consciousness. The three semi-circles you see in the Om symbol. 

The knowledge that is going on in our heads. The embodied knowledge that has soaked so deep, that it is part of our behaviours and habits (which we may or may not even be aware of). The free-flowing knowledge that is in our dream state... our state of processing and connecting and imagining. Our hallucinating walk around the way we experience the world. Where symbols and moments blur. 

Revealed preference is when the combination of our three states leads us to act in a way that may be different from what we say we want. You might say you like little local coffee shops that are different. Then buy your fix at Starbucks. You might say you like independent bookstores. Then buy your books online. 

As creatures, our behaviours are not always consistent with what we say we want. This opens us to manipulation if the way things are framed can change our decisions. The same information with a different story can lead us down a different path. This raises the importance of being able to pause, step back, and reflect on the choices we are making. 

Actions have consequences. Consequences compound. Connecting to each other and soaking deep into future options.

Om Symbol

Unlearning and Embodying

Josh Waitzkin talks about different stages of taking on what we know in “The Art of Learning”. The Tim Ferris approach, as described in "the 4-Hour Workweek", focuses on the initial stages where you can pick up skills incredibly fast with a set of hacks. You don’t need to know everything to get pretty good. You don’t need to understand the why, just the how. To get to the top 100 in the world is completely different from the journey from 10th in the world to being the best there is. 

For the mastery Waitzkin focuses on, you get to the point where what nudges you forward is unlearning and embodying. In the fast initial stages, you pick up bad habits. Useful rules of thumb that mix in what works with things that don’t. Our sense of cause and effect reinforces hows that seem to work better than what we did before. Success stops us from learning. We only unpack failure. Then hubris and projected confidence kick in where people who are relatively good start defending themselves and their approach. Behaviours are deeply embedded, and letting go feels like stepping back from the success that has been hard-won. 

How do you tweak without destroying everything? How do you work out the niggles in a system that works in ways you value, while being stuck in ways that hold you back?

The Art of Learning

The Unseen

My oldest brother is very dangerous over short distances. Like Gimli in the Lord of the Rings. My middle brother is more like Legolas, preferring long distances and floating seemingly effortlessly over obstacles surviving on leaf-wrapped Lembas bread. Thousands of years of thoughts hidden in a head we don’t have access to. People have different approaches to life, and we must be aware of that. 

Some knowledge is conspicuous and conscious. Some knowledge is embodied and relational. Our decisions are constructed by contrasts, what is present, and what is absent. What you see is not all there is. 

Debt is the best example of that. There is good debt and bad debt. If you don’t know the difference, you should probably avoid debt altogether. Bad debt is the opposite of capital. Once spent, it produces nothing but still needs to be fed. It takes on a life of its own and sucks on the life of those who are still living. You can pay back significantly more than initially borrowed as you start paying interest on interest. Strangled by debt traps. Even those living conspicuously “successful” lives may be digging deeper holes with each breath. 

The process of stilling the waves of money anxiety, through building a buffer, then building capital (an engine), often starts with dealing with the unseen.

Point of Focus

There are consequences to the numbers we use. Yogis will argue it is only possible to think of one thing at a time. Multi-tasking is what the body does. The mind can only hold one idea. Then embody it through repetition. 

Our attention might jump around a lot, but it can’t be focused on more than one point. Which is why meditation is often the practice of thinking about your breathing. Breathing is a safe anchor to refocus on. 

In stark contrast, if you simplify everything down to a single number for return, and a single number for risk, dividing the one by the other to be your point of focus, you are going to make some poor decisions that ignore long-term consequences. 

If you make the underlying assumption that opportunities to recycle your high return decisions into high returning alternatives is going to remain a possibility. If what you are consuming is less than what you are creating, then that is sustainable. Then you can do it forever. 

If you aren’t considering the unintended consequences of your choices, and what lies outside the numbers, and outside your plan, then you are going to run out of breath when the air disappears.

Trataka - Meditation on a flame

Deeply Applied

We carry on. Through reflection we can think about what short cuts we put in place to make our decisions. We can not avoid short cuts. Short cuts allow us to relax and act. Reflection is hard, slow, and taxing. We do not always want to be reflecting. Reflection allows us to embody our decision-making. 

You don’t have to think about how to walk. This means walking can be a small part of much more complex actions. If you get hurt and need rehabilitation, then you do need to think about walking. Slowly rebuilding to the point where it is automatic again. Acting freely. Acting intuitively. 

Magnus Carlsen at his best, plays chess like Roger Federer at his best. Trusting their bodies. Trusting their decisions. It seems magical and is beautiful to watch. Yogis call this Siddhis. When mastery seems supernatural. It is dangerous to be that brilliant, because the ego lurks. In the sense that you are godlike and above anyone else and in control... which is an invitation for a fall.

The real mastery comes with cycles of lightly held, deeply applied, reflection. 

Embodied Knowledge

Doing well in exams is not just about knowing the information in a I-can-google-it way. The first time I wrote open-book exams (when you can take the answers in with you!) was when I did a diploma in financial planning. The exams were spread over four days, and while I had prepared, I was not as bullet-proof as I liked to be because I assumed I could look up answers. I got through day one with very little “margin for safety” and a heightened sense of respect. Having the books is not sufficient. Knowing you can look, knowing where to look, and knowing, are three very different levels of knowledge. Beyond exams, making money is often about taking complexity and being able to articulate a very clear, instantly recognisable, ask and offer. Delivering a punchy two-mark answer in the 30 seconds allocated. Not spending 5 minutes finding the answer. That is embodied knowledge. That demonstrates having engaged with the body of work, so deeply that you know the path to the stuff that matters. Real competitive advantages are open-books. Those with mastery have engaged so deeply they don’t need to hide. The answers are simple, and available, but require you to do the work.  

The Gutenberg Bible

One of the first books to be printed with a printing press

Sacrificing Awareness

Developing cars that can drive autonomously requires multiple sources of awareness. When we drive, we somehow manage with one set of eyes and ears. We have a brutal internal system of awareness, triage, focus, and context switching. Yogis would argue it is only possible to focus on one thing at a time. The challenge is just that we are wired to take on an incredibly complex world. This means once a habit is engrained, we embody the knowledge. We let it go and move on. This means we are not always aware of ourselves. We often make decisions in isolation. Even when something is important to us, it isn’t necessarily present in our head. We might forget what we enjoy. We might forget what is important to us. We focus on what is in front of us and how we feel at that moment. When we are making decisions, it is not always in the context of everything that is important to us. This is both a strength and a weakness. We can “handle” the chaos that autonomous vehicles are still trying to conquer... plus more. But that handling can sacrifice awareness. 

Autopilot

Broad Framing

Every day we are presented with choices. We have a set of eyes and ears, a nose, a tongue, a whole body of touch sensitive skin, a mind, and thousands of relationships. We are aware. We absorb information. We are conscious. We act. But we cannot keep everything in mind when we do. What we experience soaks deep. Influencing the embodied way in which some choices become automatic. Memories, beliefs, arguments, loved ones, goals and desires disappear from our peripheral vision. Still, we choose. In “Thinking, Fast and Slow”, Daniel Kahneman uses 'Narrow Framing' to describe the way we tend to see each decision in isolation. They become life defining in our mind. 'Broad Framing' incorporates the context of all the other decisions. 'If you need to take care of something, the worrying will make you less rather than more effective' says Tyler Cowen. Broadening the frame gives things their proper place and stills the waves of worry.

"The Frame" Frida Kahlo

Comfort within Discomfort

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.

Twist and Breathe

Arriving in France

“If you want to learn a language, you have to give it life”, explains Gabriel Wyner of Fluent Forever. When I was playing poker, my friends and I would have endless analogies of life situations and starting hands. We called Ace-King, Anna Kournikova (looks good, never wins). I am more convinced that both Wealth Creation and Prejudice are like languages. You can’t just dive into a conversation about Money or Race in the same way as you can’t just land in France and speak French. You have to build up a vocabulary. To do that, you have to train your mouth to say the words. To do that, you have to train your ear to hear the words. Everything we hear, see, say, and think is deeply connected. So deeply, we aren’t even conscious of why we think what we think. Even though we are good at adding defences or explanations to justify. Giving life is a slow process of paying attention, absorbing, and gradually reconstructing your reality in a richer way. That starts by relaxing your automatic responses. Noting them, but letting them pass. Creating space to explore rather than debate. Space to give life.

First trip to France (1999)

Mont-Aux-Sources

Unlearning is so hard because most of the things we are really good at soak to the bone. They become as natural as breathing or walking. When impassioned, the words that spring from us come out fully formed as if by magic. Magic that crosses generations when words get planted in us in years we don’t even recall. Because we hadn’t built the palace of relevance in which to store things we care about. The information that controls most of our decision making is internalised. Embodied. We don’t have to think about it. When challenged, we add our intentions or justifications after the event. No one wants to be the bad guy, so the default voices in our heads are the PR officer and the Defence Attorney, “I am not a bad person, my intentions were good. The unintended consequences are not my responsibility. It is not my fault. I am not to blame.” Guilt and blame are an obstacle to learning. Without learning, there is no endurance, resilience, or creativity. Without learning, there is only repetition.

Source of the Tugela River

Longue Durée

I still consider myself monolingual even though I have a childlike grasp of a few other languages. I believe you learn languages through embodiment. For the last few months, I have been following the Fluent Forever method of training my ear, tongue, and facial muscles to do French. It is a physical process. Deep soaking. The reason History matters is that much of the way we respond to the world is deep soaked. We don’t just wake up and decide who to be. A new French word I have learnt is “longue durée”. Long Duration. Giving priority to long term historical structures over the short term time frame that is the domain of the chronicler or journalist. I can’t wake up and decide English isn’t my mother tongue. If you want to understand me, you need to get to know me. Personally. But I would be fooling no one if I said my history didn’t matter. If I want to change, that is where I am changing from.

"American Progress" by John Gast

Growth Rings

If you want to learn about learning, it depends which angle you are coming from. If you want the low hanging fruit, Tim Ferriss is your man. Author of “The 4-Hour Workweek”, he is all about hacking life to its bare essentials through self-experimentation. Finding entry points. Planting seeds. Variety and quantity unafraid of mistakes. Often the barriers to good enough to get 80% of the juice are quite superficial. If you want mastery, learning is about unlearning. Then Josh Waitzkin’s “The Art of Learning” is my bible. Stripping back. Finding out what is unnecessary. Simplifying. He calls it “making smaller circles”. Embodying knowledge requires autumns and winters. Periods of difficulty that show us what really matters. That allow the essential qualities to add another ring to mark another period survived. An essential part of endurance is the experience of having endured.

Into the Space

In her book “Sweat your Prayers”, Gabrielle Roth tells the story of an Indian cab driver who was asked how he survived the chaos of big City traffic. “I move into the space”. More Time and Space often feels like the one thing that is unobtainable, and yet we all have the same amount. Part of it is the big wet blanket of Success. Proving ourselves. Fighting for recognition. For justification. For excuses. For worth. The Mental Health work I am doing at the moment is outside of that world. I spend time running, twisting my Rubik’s cube, twirling on the Dance Floor, learning languages, and doing Tony Buzan style “Memory Work” (using the senses to create a filing system to help pay more attention). None of this seems “productive”. Gabrielle Roth points out that it takes a lot of discipline to be a free spirit. The space is there. But you do need to do the work to build a practice that lets you see it.