I was listening to a podcast recently by a man called Rich Roll, who interests me greatly. the subject was all-around how ‘life events’ do or do NOT affect your behaviour and life experience. His central thesis was that they don’t if you don’t allow them to. Many many people blame some event in the past on their relative paralysis re shaping their existence, failing to recognise that an extreme event often catalyses change and that making changes is, in all honesty, the only way any one individual can move forward in life.
Now I do not want to offend anyone here so it could be I am wholly wrong. One of my chat up lines as younger man was ‘I am deeply scarred by my cat getting run over by a milk float’. It gained me a certain amount of sympathy I seem to remember but most people could not give a stuff what has happened to anyone else in their life so my best personal advice regarding this subject is Yes deal with what happened. If you were wronged then so be it but instead of lining up all the terrible repercussions the event could be blamed for instead line up the good things that have happened as a consequence and get on with your life. Being a slave to some historical event is, considering the universe, a complete waste of time and energy. Oh and it stops you making good choices.
My life as a child as I have reported was unhappy. May parents were not suited to each other. I was abused at school. Not sexually abused but such was the way of the day I was smacked and beaten. Often for no other good reason that I was highly talented and ‘needed taking down a peg or two’. The teachers who would celebrate my acting talent to the visiting town mayor or some school inspector would arrange to have me publicly thrashed as the result of some minor misdemeanour. The whole idea was that the child in question would break down and cry and in doing so have their will broken I suppose. I never ever cried despite the back of my legs being mercilessly thrashed and I would always look the perpetrator of the crime fully in the eyes. Horrible yes. I could blame this outrageous behaviour and the deep shame and sadness it provoked in me and yes the anger too. Yes of course I could but I chose to take from it a will never to have any one do me down unfairly. I have always stuck up for the under dog and I don’t give in easily either. When things got difficult at work, and they did, I would turn on the ‘determination button’ face the adversity and guess what I normally came through. No surprise then that in my sixties I managed to drag my ageing body around Ironman courses and in doing so give myself some of the best memories of my life. Turn adversity into positivity I think is the message.
For some reason as a younger man I attracted all sorts of men who became advisors. I won’t describe them now but out of gratitude I will list them. Tiger Smith, John Gwilliam, George Robinson, Harry Hoatsen, Brian Norman, Bill Howard, Mike Reader, Roy Keeble, John Wolfenden. Amongst this lot was Monty’s right hand man at Alamein, The Captain of Wales Rugby Team and another who was British Lion no less. This is not a full list either and maybe it explains my relative success in life as I was always open to advise. My Dad had found it nearly impossible to give me any.
The main message remarkably that ALL of these people gave me was almost EXACTLY the same. “Take responsibility for your own actions, never blame others and if the going in life becomes uncomfortable or not what you planned never ever just carry on hoping something will come right.” Change it. !!
I can recall exact conversations on this subject with all these people. It is how I left Liverpool, how I changed jobs, how I decided that having met a wonderful woman I would do everything in my power to create a wonderful life for her. If that included taking risks then so be it. But what exactly are risks?.
I used to work with a man who ran the ‘Risk desk’ at UBS New York. he was American and a boffin who had copious degrees with a mathematic bias. His role was to plan for ‘unforeseen events’. On good days in the stock.-market he would tuck away options in non correlating assets. To explain he might buy ‘out of the money’ call options on gold when the market was roaring and no-one wanted gold. Every day he would spend a relatively small amount of money on ‘some unlikely event’. Now guess what happened when the ‘wheels came off ‘ and the market crashed or maybe had a sudden meteoric rise all these assets he had accumulated would obviously appreciate massively. The inevitable losses on the front line trading books that occurred courtesy of an unforeseen event, would be offset by this activity. I was fascinated by the man and he loved giving me talks on his skills-no one else was interested. I remember him once telling me that in the unlikely event I wanted to cross a busy motorway it would, contrary to my obvious assumptions, be a low risk thing to do. You would be really on your guard and your decision to cross would wait for a decent gap in the traffic and you would probably wear some bright clothing or wave a flag. As such the actual chance of being hit by a car was very low. Now contrast that with the risk riding a bike down the road or, I may add, crossing Sidmouth High Street.
If you are still with me and ‘get this’ you will see that most people see risk to be high when in fact it isn’t and vice versa. Flying on a plane (by far the safest way of getting about) makes people nervous you but don’t hear people saying I’m afraid of cars being driven badly do you? I could go on but in The Stock Exchange for instance if you wait until The BBC chooses to record a major move-Stockmarket crash on this or that news or Markets reach record highs driven by this or that-and then do the opposite to what is happening- buy shares or sell the ones you have-you will make an absolute shed load of money. Just think about that, it is so simple and so true it is almost alarming.
Likewise if a company ‘head hunts’ you and you like the people who are offering your job and you have done all the right homework, how is it a big risk to go somewhere where you are ‘wanted’ ?Because they will have researched your skills and will appreciate your potential. The move will allow you can reinvent yourself and get rid of those bad habits you know you have, we all have. It is this ‘risk aversion’ coupled with ‘events that happened in the past’ that are the bane of many peoples life in my opinion. It is why people are not fulfilled, why they feel dissatisfied and frustrated and why so many people do things that make no sense at all in order to deal with their frustration.
Depression is, in my experience, caused by internalising anger directed at some experience or person you have encountered in life. Internalising that anger is a very destructive force. The best thing in my opinion is to recognise that the reason you feel bad is probably not some chemical imbalance in your cortex but more likely a totally reasonable response to something bad, it may well have come out of wholly good intentions by the way. Yes look at it, take responsibility for your own actions then change something. You will be delighted you do I am sure. I moved to London from Liverpool, I changed jobs many times, I moved houses, I took risks in many peoples eye’s but were they really risks?. Liz and I have bought and done up countless houses. ‘That is a big risk’ some would say ‘I would not take that on’. But guess what waving a paint brush or stylishly furnishing a house allows others to see the potential and frankly that usually presents a profit. Was moving to the USA a risk, of course it wasn’t as it gave me a CV that would open many doors apart from the life style experiences it granted me. Was buying shares when the market was in meltdown over Corona virus a risk. Many if not most ‘experts’ thought it was at the time but The BBC persuaded me via its ‘bulletin of gloom’ that careful selection of ‘great companies’ at ‘give away prices’ was a once in a decade experience. I will not go on.
The point I am trying to make is simply this. Everything that happens in anyone’s life is down to them and the choices they make. Don’t make choices and nothing interesting happens. This may sound arrogant but look at some of your friends who ever you are, if not your self. The ‘watchers’ in life make no choices -they let life go by. A choice to them may be a TV programme or a meal but that is it. ‘The do-ers’ ‘the risk takers’ they are the ones in the ‘Arena of life and as the saying goes- ‘better to fail greatly etc….” Not being arrogant here but please do think about it.
Do not under any circumstances blame others for your own errors or mistakes in life. If things are not going the way you planned or wished them own up to the mistake. Maybe apologise if you have caused offence and you are to blame but then DO SOMETHING. Make a change and don’t tell your self that the risk is too big because it almost certainly is completely the opposite to what you think. Just maybe the change you make will uncover experience and joys that you hardly knew existed. That has been my experience anyway.
Looking at my subscriber list, those I know anyway, may take exception to this piece. ‘It’s alright for you’ might summarise their thoughts. If I offend you sorry but heh consider my words anyway because maybe its not too late just maybe there is something out there you are dyeing to try and the fear of it being ‘too risky’ is holding you back. Just maybe that perceived risk is the wrong way round.
Good luck.
Tales of a Life Well Lived 