“It is not death that a man should fear, but he should fear never beginning to live.”--Marcus Aurelius
I’ve been a small business owner and fitness professional for over 20 years and I’ve had plenty of experience when it comes to solving problems. I’ve also always had an obsession to learn about philosophy and history in order to try to bring more understanding to life and how the world actually works.
With that being said I wanted to take this opportunity in this podcast article to talk to you about some things you may have not considered, or have taken the time to think about when it comes to certain aspects of your own life.
To do this I first want to point to an amazing thing I witnessed years ago when I was kid. I remember my father taking myself and my brother on a fishing trip to lake Hartwell South Carolina early during one cool Summer morning.
On this trip we took a boat out onto the lake relatively early in the morning. I remember how calm the lake was as there was no other boat traffic and the wind was non-existent. The water was so placid that the boat glided across it with seemingly zero effort.
Once we got to our destination we dropped our fishing lines into the water and started to wait on something to bite. As I was sitting there in the boat I looked across the lake to the beach across from us. The trees stood tall on the land across the lake and sitting at the top of one of those trees was one of the biggest hawks I’ve ever seen in my life.
This bird of prey seemed to be looking at the water and as soon as I came to that assumption it launched itself from the tree branch and flew straight up into the air only to peak and turn its body to dive straight back down towards the water.
As it came swooping down towards the water it leveled up right at the last second just above the lake water and quickly snatched a fish right out of the water as if the thing was just sitting there waiting for the bird to take it. This happened so fast that I almost couldn’t believe what I just witnessed.
The Power Of Your Mind
So why was that hawk so capable of pulling off such a feat as snatching a fish right out of the water as easily as a kid could snatch a cookie from the cookie jar? Well aside from the ability of being able to fly and having talons as sharp as a samurai sword the other main factor is the hawk’s vision.
You see, a hawk has an eyesight that’s about 8 times greater than that of a human. This is because of the fovea in their eyes. The fovea is a small depression in the retina where visual acuity is the highest. Unlike humans, hawks have both a central and peripheral fovea. Humans only have a central fovea which limits more well rounded vision.
So why did I choose to tell you this story about the hawk?
Well as amazing as the hawk’s eyesight is when it comes to hunting, if we compare the hawk's mind to that of a human mind when fostering the abilities of creativity and planning it falls way short. Maybe I should make this comparison when referencing a critical thinking human mind, but I digress.
The larger point here is that as a human being you have an enormous advantage in life and in your ability to survive and thrive in society because you have a very powerful mind. As I say this you’re probably wondering exactly what am I getting at?
Well think about this in the simplest way. Human beings are the only species on this planet that have the ability to foster life while having equally as much ability to destroy the entire planet at the same time.
Human beings are capable of this because they are equipped with the ability to plan ahead and to think down range. Your human mind requires about two decades to fully develop and mature while during that time it is also gathering and storing data, as well as, the means to compartmentalize that data and apply it directly towards the ability of problem solving.
So if this is the case then why is it that some people are able to excel at life, to discern fact from fiction, and to become successful while others seemingly become stagnant and imprisoned by society rather than being a force of success and creativity within society?
Knowing that the brain possesses this kind of ability and power, why do you think so many people fail to harness its full potential? After all, in a relatively free society where a man or woman has the ability to choose from a variety of pursuits and a variety of resources why is it that so many people end up broke at the end of their lives, or seem to never get off the runway so that they can soar through the air like that hawk I mentioned in my story earlier?
Complacency Is A Death Trap
One of the most dangerous things a person can do is to fall into the trap of being complacent. Complacency has killed more dreams, more positive outcomes, and more opportunities than effort ever did.
The problem with modern day society is that most everyone in our population has been conditioned to think in a very narrow minded way. This is largely due to a combination of things ranging from the public education system to succumbing to the monotony of the death trap of life.
So what exactly do I mean by the death trap, and furthermore what do I specifically mean when I criticize the public education system?
I’ll start with the public education system, but I first want to ask you a few questions.
When you graduated from high school or college did you know how to file your taxes?
Even better, were you taught in school the art of negotiating deals to apply to everyday life scenarios such as when you might go to purchase a car, to buy or sell an item to your neighbor in a typical garage sale, or to use this skill in the event that you decided to start a small business?
I know I wasn’t taught any of these things in school and I think that it’s fair to question why such things are not taught. Don’t get me wrong I’m one of the biggest advocates for personal responsibility, but at the same time I don’t want to ignore and fail to point a finger at real societal obstacles that can serve to be more of a liability rather than an asset to our lives.
This is one of the biggest problems with the public education system, but there’s another issue as well. The other issue in my assessment goes hand in hand with what the Psychologist Carol Dweck points out in her theory of neuroplasticity which involves the brain’s ability to continue to form new connections long into adulthood.
According to Dweck this is why you can adopt what is known as a Growth Mindset at any point during your life, but the problem is in our society we’re not conditioned to know about this Growth Mindset.
As an example Dweck points out that when we tend to think about successful people we tend to associate the word talent when looking at someone like Thomas Edison. Granted Edison was a talented individual, but as Dweck points out an example like Thomas Edison wasn’t born possessing that talent, but rather nurtured that talent when overcoming the problem of working towards successfully lighting a light bulb. In this example Edison demonstrates his ability to nurture his Growth Mindset.
When difficult problems arise some people will continue to work on the problem until the problem is solved, whereas others will throw their hands up in frustration and walk away. Dweck points out that those that quickly give up on the problem believe they can’t solve the problem because they lack the intelligence to do so. This is what is known as having a Fixed Mindset.
In short, the Fixed Mindset individual basically believes that he or she is born with only possessing a certain level of intelligence and skill and that it can’t change or improve in their lifetime.
Dweck also points out that praising effort is much better than praising accomplishment as the praising of the effort of an individual engaged in a task will challenge and promote a Growth Mindset in that individual rather than the limiting Fixed Mindset.
So going back to my point regarding the death trap what exactly do I mean?
If you think about our society we’re conditioned to think very narrowly about our existence and what we’re capable of doing with our lives. I don’t know about you, but when I was growing up I remember the prevailing message in middle and high school being that both myself and my classmates were expected to make good grades so that we could then attend college to get a degree, so that we could then be capable of going out into the workforce to get a job.
This message is a prime example of a Fixed Mindset form of teaching. This sort of limiting message and reductionist thinking only perpetuates the societal trap of getting sucked into a monotonous repetitive existence. Furthermore it can very quickly lead to complacency which is the societal death trap.
Here’s a simple way of explaining what I’m talking about. Let’s adopt this model of thinking with teaching people to get good grades so they can then get a degree in order to graduate college and then ultimately are able to go out into the workforce to get a job working for someone else.
This form of reductionist thinking isn’t only horrible messaging, but it is dangerous. Everything I just pointed out in this message is literally designed to teach you and I how to go through life being completely dependent on other institutions and people for our very existence.
Now don’t misunderstand me there’s nothing wrong with getting a job working for someone else, or for getting an education for that matter. However, there are MANY more ways to acquire an education and a job rather than going to college and by having to have a degree from some college institution.
After all, these colleges and universities have apparently proven to be more of a liability and a scam than an asset with so many complaints coming from post graduates regarding the amount of student loan debt they’ve accumulated in trying to carry out this plan in their own lives.
Right away the complaint of this massively burdensome student loan debt should serve as a warning to these people that continue to go out into the public education system to take out these loans, yet they continue to follow a plan time and time again that has been proven to fail our society at large.
As I write this piece many post graduate millennials are currently moving back into their parent’s homes because of a terrible economy and a weak corporate job market.
Now you may state the obvious as I just mentioned and blame the job market and the economy and I would agree with you. However I would argue that the failure of these people to go out into the free market to create and grow something unique, with their generation being a major piece of our society, is the cause of there being a lack of economic opportunity for them in the first place.
One could also point to the failing policies of a societal collapse at large that many of these young voters have traditionally supported in the past 20 years. For the time being I won’t dive into this as I’ll allow that to be a topic for a different day, however many of the failed public policies that younger millennials have traditionally supported are in line directly with individuals who possess a Fixed Mindset rather than a Growth Mindset.
Humans fear reason, but they ought to fear stupidity-for reason can be hard, but stupidity can be fatal.--Wolfgang Goethe
Problem Solving
Most average men and women don’t tap into the full use of their mind’s potential despite living in a society where their potential can be richly fertilized.
Why is this?
It goes back to how we’ve been conditioned to think about our existence and what is expected of us instead of what we should look to expect from ourselves.
After all, have you considered all that you have available to you? Have you examined everything from your philosophy on life, your ambitions, and your views? Looking at these aspects of your personality do these align with a Growth Mindset, or a Fixed Mindset?
Robert Seashore once Chairman at The Department of Psychology at Northwestern University pointed out that successful people aren’t people without problems, but rather people that have just figured out how to efficiently solve their problems.
Having been a strength coach in the fitness industry now for over twenty years I’ve noticed the rapid decline in youth athletes, as well as adults in terms of their ability to simply be aware of their environment. Because of this they are unaware of the cause of their problems when said cause of their ailing problems should be more apparent to them.
This lack of awareness is something that I would attribute to the dumbed-down messaging of people to develop more of a reductionist line of thinking instead of a systems based line of thinking throughout a lifetime.
Because of this reductionist approach people fail to recognize the root cause of many of their everyday problems when working through their day to day environment.
As an everyday concrete example I’ll point to a common problem that is widely known in the fitness industry and should be a fairly simple issue to diagnose if someone understands their body and environment and has adopted a more systems approach to thinking which develops from having a Growth Mindset.
A few years ago I had an accountant call me on the phone not to discuss my taxes, but rather to talk to me about helping him to start a fitness training program. He was open to the prospect of me coaching him, but his enthusiasm was tempered because he had communicated to me that he had been dealing with chronic back pain for at least a year and wasn’t sure if he would be able to participate.
He was carrying a lot of frustration because he had spent the better part of the past year going to the doctor, treating his pain with NSAIDS, and remaining inactive. Keep in mind he communicated all of this to me before he ever stepped foot into the gym with me to help walk him through an assessment to help him identify any potential areas of needs.
Once I was able to look at him I asked him to stand with his feet together, to straighten his legs, and to bend at the waist to see if he was capable of touching his toes. As he attempted this he stopped with this hands above his knees.
Shocked at how stiff and immobile he was I asked him how he managed to tie his shoe laces every morning and he said that it was about a 10 minute ordeal because of his lack of mobility.
Well right away I knew what he should have known and that is that he didn’t have a back problem, but rather he had an immobility problem. After the diagnosis I worked with him for the next 30 minutes on stretching and mobilizing his hips and he was able to bend at the waist enough that he could at least touch his shins below his knees after this correction.
From here he told me he had about a 80% reduction of pain and could literally feel the ground beneath his feet much better which even improved his balance. I communicated to him that for the past year he had been treating the symptoms of the problem, BUT not the root cause of the problem itself.
Granted this was not some ancient secret that I showed him. I merely identified a problem that should have been obvious to him, but because of his lack of physical intelligence and having adopted a more fixed mindset regarding his back pain and environment he had set himself up to live with pain for over a year before he was able to resolve the issue in a single 30 minute training session with me.
To be clear I’m not using this as an example to openly give myself a pat on the back, or to insult this man for his ailment. I’m merely pointing out the unnecessary hardship and difficulty this man caused himself simply because he was unaware of his environment and lacked a Growth Mindset to enable him to solve the problem sooner.
The Wrap Up
At the end of the day I just want to expose you to the reality that you can foster and develop a Growth Mindset at any point in your life as long as you accept and work towards that end.
I hope you enjoyed today’s article podcast.
If so I really need your help to push this piece out to your friends, family, and coworkers.
In order for BOTH you and me to influence and strengthen our society we must not stay idle so please make sure you hit the subscribe and share buttons here below.
Spreading messages like this one is how we influence our culture and I need your help in order to do it.
Also listen to this episode here on…
If you like this podcast and the message please take a moment to give it a Five Star ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ rating on the Spotify platform.
Also to connect with me please make sure you join me here on Facebook and GETTR
Stay strong. Stay focused. Stay active.
Share this post