Wary of Force

A lot of people work best under pressure. When they have to. When they are in a corner. I am the opposite. I don’t like myself in a corner under time pressure when I become very task orientated. When the goal is victory at all costs. There are two cornerstone biblical stories I don’t identify with at all. The first is the binding and sacrifice of Isaac by Abraham because “God wills it”. The ultimate loss of perspective and parking of a moral compass. When obedience trumps consequences. Pure play child abuse. The second is the story of Job. Where God and Satan have a bet of whether Satan can turn Job against God by making his life awful. The ultimate abuse of the gift of unconditional love. I avoid corners. I would rather internalise the discipline required and chip away every day than be forced into situations without time and space. The day before an exam, I want to be off to the movies to clear my head. If a client suddenly changes their requirements the evening before a meeting, I would rather be fresh than pull an all-nighter. Presence requires time and space. Be wary of forced actions and decisions.

"The Sacrifice of Isaac" Caravaggio

Best Practice

One of my favourite essays to regularly reread is Scott Alexander’s “I can tolerate anything except the outgroup”. It reminds me of how some of our biggest fights are with the people we most agree with. Because we care so much about the same issues. We understand the same nuance that other people don’t even see. An advantage of being a Global Citizen is the natural social experiment that goes on. We get to see Best Practice at play in a variety of contexts. Our issues, but not our issues. What if we changed this aspect? What if we keep that aspect the same? A strong temptation in any research is to provide Public Relations and Legal Arguments for pre-existing beliefs. Numbers and words to pad our gut feel. Looking far from home is often an easier way to unpack issues that are too close to see. Then, like Bruce Lee, we can take what is useful, discard what is not, and add what is uniquely our own.

Too Close

Force

If I had to pick only one rule for making sustainably successful investment decisions, it would be 'Never be a forced buyer or seller'. Although we create false deadlines and emergencies to inspire action, these are seldom truly genuine if you dig deep. The ability to create space is essential for perspective. Perspective is essential to make decisions that take into account as much information as possible. It widens the frame from false do or die binary options. It gives space to include things that can't be counted. Things that can't be summarised. Things that can't be explained. The best decisions are tiny nudges made with patience, care, and humility. Tiny adds up. Don't force it.

Sharing Stories

'All advice is autobiographical'. We can only see the world from the perspective of the life we have lived. When we act, no matter how much homework we have done first, our conviction that we are right will always be partially based on overconfidence. The world isn't made up of clear choices between one and zero. The fuzziness, uncertainty and creativity allows us to make decisions rather than being stuck. The stories we tell ourselves help us act. When we share our learning, we are sharing our story. It won't be the same story for the listener. If the advice is a good story, perhaps they will assimilate some of the characters and plot twists.

Perspektief

Ek het gister terug van Suid Afrika na Engeland gekom. Ek het in 2008 na London verskuif om naby my nuwe niggie te woon, en om die groot wereld te sien. Ek was baie gelukkig om vir a maatskappy met Suid Afrikaanse wortels te werk. My werk het ook my dikwels terug huis toe geneem. Met social media, het ek ook naby my vriende gevoel. Ek het baie van my vriende meer dikwels gesien omdat ek so ver weg gewoon het. Wanneer ek in Kaapstad, Jozi of Durbs was, het hulle poging gemaak om my te sien. Wanneer ek daar gewoon het, het mense gedink dat daar altyd 'nog 'n kansie' sal wees.

Die ding wat het verander is my vergelykings. Ons se wereld is opgemaak van wat ons sien. Omdat ek in London woon, sien ek ander dinge. Dit maak die dinge in Suid Afrika anders lyk. Daar is ook armoed in London, maar dit lyk anders. Om een te sien, dan op 'n vliegtuig te klim, en dan 'n ander te sien maak beide anders lyk. Ek dink perspektief is baie kragtig. Dit is maklik om net in ons eie borrels te woon. Om nou end dan net na die mense buite ons borrels te loer. Maar onse woon in 'n wereld met 7.4 miljard mense, en elke een van hulle is belangrik. Net net vir julle eie voordeel. Vir ons voordeel. 

Probleme het soortgelyke smaake. As ons vir ander mense omgee, maak dit onse eie wereld beter. 

Ek smaak Perspektief soos Jam, en ek smaak Jam baie.

Direct Translation from (bad) Afrikaans to English using Google Translate (without Editing)

Yesterday I returned from South Africa came to England. I moved to London in 2008 to live near my new niece, and to see the big world. I was very happy to work for a company with South African roots. My work often took home me. With social media, I felt close to my friends. I have many of my friends have seen more often because I have so far lived. When I was in Cape Town, Jozi or Durbs, they made effort to see me. When I lived there, people thought that there always has to be a lull in the fishing.

The thing that has changed is my comparisons. We say the world is made up of what we see. Because I live in London, I saw other things. It does things in South Africa look different. There are also armoed in London, but it looks different. To see one, then to board a plane, and then to see another make both look different. I think perspective is very powerful. It's easy to just live in our own bubbles. For now end then glanced at the people outside our bubble. But our lives in a world with 7.4 billion people, and each of them is important. Just only for your own benefit. For our benefit.

Problems similar smaake. If we care about other people, making it our own world better.

I taste perspective as Jam, and I taste Jam lot.

Space Makes Time

I am not sympathetic to the response, 'I don't have time'. We all have time. 24 hours in a day. We choose between various options. 'I am choosing something else' is more accurate. Buddhists say that if you are twice as busy, you should meditate twice as long. What is very important is managing your energy and your perspective. Quite often, the thing that gets our time is the thing that shouts the loudest. Adding space to your day allows you to consciously make the choice of how to spend your time. Space makes time.

My grandfather's homemade language clocks

Making Time

Two Hundred

Chatting to my host, I asked about what people living in Langa were typically able to earn, and how much it cost to live. There are a lot of people out of work. From the 2011 Census, Langa has a population of just over 52,000. Just 60% of those aged 15-64 were employed. A household on average consists of 3 people and 72% of these households have a monthly income of R3,200 or less. Three people living off $215 a month. That is less than £50 per person per month. This is consistent with what I was told. Many jobs will pay around R100 to R200 a day. I can't wrap my mind around that. These people end up trying to work 7 days a week (if they can) in pure survival mode.

Source: 2011 Cape Town Suburb Census - Langa

One of my pet peeves is the amount of air time the '1%' meme gets. A lot of people believe that half the ills of the world are because of the rich people. Not a lot of people think they are the rich people. Part of this is relativity. Hillary Clinton probably doesn't feel rich because she likely personally knows the large majority of people who are wealthier than her family. To be part of the 'Global Top 1%', you only have to earn an income of $32,000 (R475,000/ £22,000). Less, if you have some savings.

One of the most inspirational people I have met dedicates his time to 'helping people who help themselves'. The idea being that there are lots of difficult problems in the world, but the easiest ones to solve are where there is already resilience. Already passion. Already desire. The filtering process to choose which problems to focus on becomes a little like digging a path for water to flow. You just tweak the landscape, but you don't have to fight gravity.

I think we would do a lot of good redirecting our toughest questions inwards. People don't take criticism well. We all get defensive. We all have issues that are important to us, and reasons why we are too busy to focus on other people's issues. We still seem to find time to moan about others. I think that time would be better spent listening to people. Seeing people.

The more I think about the idea of happiness, the more important I think community is. It is just not okay that we constantly look at people doing 'better' than us. For inspiration. For annoyance. For benchmarks. For pitchfork targets.

Most of the people I know have no reason to moan. Life is tough, and there are non-financial sources of difficulty. Relationship struggles. Fitness struggles. Diet struggles. Meaning struggles. Time struggles. The irony is that this is a type of poverty. The learning that could happen by forming relationships with people with different types of poverty could make us all stronger.

When it comes to resilience, a big part of the Top 1% live in Langa. 

More Than Everything

Contradictory things are sometimes true. Preferences aren't always consistent. What we want is fuzzy. The Pale Blue Dot picture of earth was taken from more than 4 billion miles away. All we have done in less than a pixel. What we do doesn't matter. And yet, what we do is the only thing that matters. 

'All of human history has happened on that tiny pixel' Carl Sagan

The ability to take what you do very seriously, while at the same time having perspective seems contradictory. I am at my very worst when I am desperate. From a logical perspective, you never want to be desperate. If you can't walk away from something, there is nothing you won't give to have it. Not because it is worth more than everything else. Nothing is ever worth more than everything else. But logic stops when you are desperate. You don't sit back and in a calm fashion figure out what everything is worth to you, what you prefer, and make a choice.

The heart of addiction. Momentary desperation which halts the ability to walk away. An intoxication that destroys your ability to value anything else. Nothing, however true, however important, is worth sucking all your energy away. Holding back allows you to give more. Allowing time, allows you to give more. Laughing. Listening. Relaxing. Space, allows you to give more.

Nothing matters more than everything. Which is why everything matters.

Purpose, Process and Perspective (with Rob)

Rob Grave is a great friend I met at university. We had a chat...

Trev: 

A few years back I was lazying on the couch when my curly haired house buddy kept coming back from a run. I had recently moved to London and so had been using the excuse of finding something indoors to do to keep active. Rob wasn't one for excuses and so would head out whatever the weather. It was harder to carry on plopping on the couch when his royal buzzy energiness came back so obviously feeling good. I didn't overcome my aversion to the cold, but I did sign up at the yoga centre down the road. A life changing decision.

Rob:

A great decision indeed. To acknowledge something equally positive from you during that time - it didn't escape my attention how much reading you did, and how your thirst for knowledge was unquenchable. Is there any similarity between yoga, running, and reading? For me, these all generate joy in a person for a number of reasons. At their simplest, they are something to do and can drive away boredom (a deep fear of mine). But look harder and they all serve to fulfil multiple goals, including fitness, friendship, and learning. I think working towards a purpose is a key to happiness.

Trev:

Purpose is important, along with process. The end and the means. My reading habit actually came shortly before the yoga started, so perhaps there was a connection. My late twenties were a challenging time. I had realised how dependent everything I thought was on luck of the draw. Where I was born. Who I came across. Reading was a way of taking more of an active part in choosing the paths. The head, the heart, and the body are not separate. If you aren't fit, you don't think straight and you don't feel great. And relationships suffer.

Rob:

We are very lucky. Here we are working on the last block of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, and at this very moment there is a refugee crisis on the front page, with people struggling for safety, food and shelter. Can our theme of the head, heart and body connection, be expanded to a connection between ourselves and other people? The system is probably bigger than we think. In the same way that improving fitness can improve our mood and mind, I think that any development to the less "lucky" parts of the system could, like a rising tide, uplift the whole.

Lucky

Trev:

It is probably the single biggest take away from the time I have spent studying 'happiness and learning' - Perspective. Most of the people I know are already happy. We have niggles we are working on, but we always will. Widening the lense has an incredible ability to deepen the meaning. There are billions of people living in extreme, absolute poverty. People pushed out of their homes by war. Realising that working on their happiness is working on our happiness is very similar to realising that just sitting on a couch reading is going to solidify you into a blob. Even if the book is amazing. You have to get up and move.

Rob:

Spot on. The action, the "doing", that's what this is all about. A realisation on this came to me during a recent daydream around the Homo Naledi discovery. My thoughts were that in our primitive selves, the person who worked the hardest or the smartest was the one who got access to water, was safe at night, hunted or grew the best food, and basically survived and continued the species. In my head, I could equate modern day work to our primitive survival efforts, and it made me feel very positive about going to work as a deep connection to the species.

Trev:

The world we knew also wasn't abstract. Water, Safety, Food, Warmth are all very tangible, visceral, in your face measures of happiness that require immediate attention. As we move up Maslow's hierarchy we get to more fuzzy, relative measures of happiness. It becomes more a case of comparing how we use our time to the other ways we could have. In the mean time, we also disconnect from those at the bottom still building the base of their pyramid. Those moments of connection, to the species, to the environment, make me worry less about the relative happiness of my particular bundle of bones. The question becomes what to do about it.

Rob:

So now we're getting to a point where we agree that doing something, like running or yoga (the process) is good and builds happiness. We're also agreed that connecting with and improving the lot of those around us is also good. This leads me to the difficult conclusion that the ultimate purpose is therefore to be a social worker? Didn't the Dalai Lama once simply put that, "The Purpose of life is to help others". This jars with the capitalist inside me that wants to become rich and famous. What am I missing? How can the two goals become one?

Trev:

Social Workers are real champions. We sit debating the finer aspects but with aligned goals. The harder stuff can't be solved with cheque books or philosophy. Even wealthy places with a strong pyramid base have beggars and mental health challenges. Those are hard problems requiring all of us to work on our emotional intelligence. When ideas clash, the one that matters to us more ends up winning. Then we make up reasons to justify it. I think the only way to not 'miss stuff' is to build in time to step back. To get perspective. Must be why the Dalai Lama lives in the mountains.

Rob:

I think you've just established a third reason why running and yoga are so good at building joy. It's because they often provide a moment of calm when the noise of the day is forgotten and some perspective can be gained. And funnily enough, the closer to nature you do any of these activities, the better this perspective gets which is why people have yoga retreats in the Alps, and do trail runs here on table mountain. Purpose, process and perspective. These runs are punctuation marks in the essay of life which help to give it meaning.

Table Mountain Perspective

Guest Post by Rob Grave

• Smile and Go Seek

Outstoried Stories

If you have ever had the privilege of popping over to the opposite side of the world, you will have felt the joys of jet lag. The body being forced to adjust quickly to a rhythm it doesn't recognise. You don't need a long haul flight or to be surrounded by people who give nicknames to everything to understand this. Most people who work Monday to Friday enter a similar sort of rhythm. My big city rhythm involved getting up early enough to avoid a sardine can commute, and working till things calmed down to leave. I would get home just in time for an 8pm Yoga class, grab something light to eat afterwards and soon be off in dreamland. Next morning I would lock and reload. Every now and then there was the good old feeling of Groundhog day. Getting ready in the morning can blur into a series of toothpaste being squeezed onto a toothbrush that really should be replaced. 

Time for toothbrush to go?

We can get into colliding rhythms with people doing different things. Interpersonal jetlag. When you are sitting in a coffee shop all relaxed and the couple next to you are tearing 51 shades of violet out of each other, it can be tough to hum along to Jack Johnson. I think it is part of our fight or flight tendency that we adjust to the rhythm of most discontent. We look for fires to put out if they are around us before we relax.

One form of adjusting rhythms is the debrief. When I have seen something that grates me the wrong way, I feel the urge to tell someone. When I have had a bad day. When I have had a good day. By telling someone, the rhythm spreads and we aren't facing things alone. We can then move on. When people are working, this adjustment often takes the form of a 'post work debrief'. An answer to the question, 'how was your day?'.

If you, like me, have ever had a family member, friend, housemate or romantic partner who was a medic - your debriefs may be more tentative. I fast learnt that my problems never involved someone dying. My stories could always be outstoried. The advantage of perspective.

Once we are into a rhythm, once groundhog day sets in, it is easy to forget that there is a whole different world out there. South Africans, for example, may look at foreigners in the country and think they came believing the grass was greener on the other side only to get a horrible surprise. Umm, no. Do some wiki-walking about the wars in the Congo which didn't get much press. Read 'A Man of Good Hope' about one of the Somali refugees who made his way to Cape Town before the Xenophobic attacks. The grass is greener. What drives someone to uproot and search for hope? Not realising your story can be outstoried is not a uniquely South African issue. We all tend to focus on our local problems and look after 'our own'.

As a lighter example, I enjoy going to Conferences even though the presentations are normally mostly awful. They help pull me out of whatever I am focussing on and connect with other people doing other things. I enjoy watching those YouTube clips showing how small the earth is relative to other planets. How 100,000 years on earth is a relatively short blip in the story of life on earth.

Rhythm helps us focus. Disruption gives perspective.

Into the Mountains (Chris Du Toit)

I was working very closely with Chris when the story he shares here happened. We both headed into the mountains around the same time. Although mine was just for 4 weeks and his was for 2 years! I was safe and sound on a yoga mat, while he was clinging to ropes and testing the limits of survival. Either way there is something about mountains that manages to put things in perspective.

Chris was already a chilled, level headed man but life can put us to the test, and all we can do is choose how to respond. All I know is if I ever get stuck in the middle of nowhere, there is just one man I would send an SOS to.

Trev on the left, Chris on the right, surrounded by white

Into the Mountains
by Chris Du Toit

I started working at a large serious corporate straight after university, whilst studying towards qualification as an actuary. By 25 I had qualified and was moving up in the ranks, and before I knew it I was doing a large serious job at the large serious corporate. I was married by 26 to the girl I loved, life could not have been better really.

I was about to find out that there is nothing like a major life event to put your priorities into perspective. By 28 I was divorced and all at sea. When you do not have other people to be responsible for the playing field changes. Things and experiences that you never thought were in reach suddenly become a reality. But actually following through on your dreams is a different story.

All my life I had spent time in the mountains either hiking, kloofing or rock climbing. I had read famous books about expeditions to high peaks and far away places. Now here I was, entrenched in a fantastic career, but with something nagging me. The high mountains were calling. I found a school that teaches mountain guiding and signed up for a 2-year course that would take me to Alaska, Patagonia and Spain. I quit my job, sold everything that I had and got on a plane alone with 3 bags full of gear to meet up with my fellow guides on the other side of the world.

The next 12 months were some of the best of my life. I saw places and experienced things that not many people will ever have the chance to do. Near death crevasse falls and middle of the night digging in snowstorms shows you what you are really capable of, and how little you actually need to survive in life.

When I decided to take this sabbatical my friends and colleagues were mostly supportive, and my father just asked me once: “Are you sure about this?” But there were also naysayers who could not understand my decision. “Look at what you are giving up…” “You will never get back on the same career path…”

My message to everyone who has a dream to give up their corporate job and life and follow their passion, even if it is just for a short time, is DO IT. I was lucky enough to have the circumstances to come back and start over relatively easily, but even if you don’t, I cannot recommend a sabbatical like this enough. It gives you new perspective and new energy and prolongs your career in the long term. And who knows what doors will be opened along the way? What’s the downside? Not much in my opinion.

Although I am back at the grindstone behind a desk, I can always go back to the snowy places, big skies and emptiness, even if it is just in my mind.

Empty Chairs

I asked a buddy to write a guest post the other day and he said he would leave the navel gazing to me. He is working in South Sudan where things are not looking particularly optimistic. I may talk a big game repeating scenes from Braveheart and Gladiator but it is guys like Guy who get on with helping out on the front lines. I asked him if there was a book I could read to get to understand the issues more. He said he doesn't know much about that, but 'I do know landmines and unexploded ordnances'. I do feel particularly lucky that I am able to pontificate about happiness from the comfort of various coffee shops around the world. While I may think the first response to someone who is less than happy is 'Are you exercising?', that does assume they are not afraid of not making it to the end of the day alive.

Today's global coffee shop is Beat Street Cafe in Christchurch. New Zealand is far from the troubles of a South Sudan. The people are friendly. You feel very safe. They love rugby. They aren't going to spoil the party by beating South Africa in the cricket semi-final. Basically, Kiwis are sweet as. Even then, stuff does go wrong. Wandering the city on my first night here was sobering. Over the course of 2010-2012 the city was struck by a number of earthquakes. Christchurch is one of four cities in the world where the CBD is designed as a square of four avenues with complementing city squares and surrounding parklands. The other three of the same design are Philadelphia, Savannah and Adelaide. Over 1000 buildings in the CBD, between those four avenues, were destroyed following the earthquakes. 185 people died. There is a powerful temporary art sculpture with a white chair for each of those lost.

185 empty chairs commemorate those lost in the 2011 earthquake

Every now and then we can be pulled out of navel gazing with a slap to the face. Someone we love can be torn from us by disease, our entire city can be shaken or one of the good guys might not get to the unexploded landmine before we do. Ideally we don't need these traumatic events to shake us into consciousness. A certain amount of pondering is needed to think about what and who matters to you, but then you need to get on with it.

Parthenon Perspective

After a holiday with a twist (a 4 day Yoga retreat), I headed to Athens for a U2 concert. The next day I spent wandering around the city. There is nothing quite like the Parthenon for a bit of perspective. Whatever your worries are, they seem a little less important. It doesn't have to be looking at really old buildings, or even hearing of the discovery of hundreds of earth-like planets, it can simply be taking your niece to the park, or a friend having their first child.

There are lots of things that let you take a deep breath, and refocus. The shortness of my life in the context of life on earth, or the size of my body relative to the vastness of space doesn't make me feel insignificant. Instead it should be like the French and their small portions of food... there is just a little, so savour it.

A combination of perspective, and not worrying too much with realising how incredible it is that you are right here, right now and the mindfulness to enjoy it.

Exciting times.