WAITING for sweet SUCCESS
Ever been in a position where your body wants to go one way and your instinct and intellect are urgently yanking you to safety in the other direction before you get in over your head, deep in the quagmire?
aaah being human. It is nothing short of war. Between the opposing forces of physical chemistry and the more evolved bright bits that KNOW that if you don't surrender you get to find Nirvana.. or at least get to have truly mindblowing um.. fun.
Wasn't joking about the Nirvana bit either:
The 4 Noble Truths of Buddhism (to real lifesize Buddhists please forgive my rough cut interpretation ) :
- There is suffering in the world – straight up, not pessimistic.
- There is a cause, & it is DESIRE (that gaping void).
- There is a way out of seemingly inevitable suffering – whew!
- Just follow Buddha's practical Eight Fold Path guide to success & you too can achieve enlightenment & freedom – Nirvana
[Little MARKETING aside: for all of us who think you can't be spiritual and a great salesman.. please cast your eyes over these four steps and see the elegance of a good sales pitch].
Giving in to what's easy or giving up on something that looks too hard is not the way to find glory in our human story. Because this is a blog on GENIUS.. I offer the paragon of stubborn determination whose genius for not giving in changed the course of history>> the marvellously curmugeonly Sir Winston Churchill
.."We shall never surrender.."
Such is the lesson of the marshmallow.
What?! Yes indeed, how the humble puffy marshmallow is a determinant of success:
Between 1968 and 1974 at Stanford University’s psychology department, Walter Mischel conducted some fascinating studies, with children and a few marshmallows.
They were groundbreaking and substantial in understanding the later success quotient differentiators in regard to delaying gratification.. in really young humans (4 to 5 yrs old). The difference was clear, between those little ones who just couldn’t bear it and had to wolf their marshmallows (instant gratification with smaller reward) or those kiddies who held on for more marshmallows after 15 / 20minutes (delayed gratification and HUGE reward).
The truly revealing results came years later in tracking the progress of these now grown-up marshmallow munchers.. and the effect on their IQ, attitude, confidence and success. Sure you can GUESS what the results were, but it's worth checking out this well-written follow-up from Time. It’s a good reminder that sometimes enduring a little discomfort can be oh so deliciously rewarding if you can stand the gaping void of desire.
what is your marshmallow?
- “The chief cause of failure and unhappiness is trading what we want most for what we want in the moment ”
or even better
"We should never confuse what makes us feel good, with what makes us great"
- Chin Ning Chu author of Thick Face Black Heart and mistress of sucking up your ego for strategic victory, she's one of the world's finest speakers on the Art of War, well worth paying attention to if you are doing biz with China.
Mandarin lessons anyone?
The dangers of CHEMISTRY
.. coming soon..
what to do if you find yourself in the throes of some chaotic chemistry with someone (yes, that very complicated sanity-threatening evolutionary quirk that ensures the continuation of the species)..
..and BTW: how the HELL could it be called “love” – we definitely are long overdue on a good word to linguistically ensnare this beast!
Beautiful Minds (warriors in the mind field)
This is why I think I am secretly romanced by science: I believe it is braver than the arts in many ways because scientific truths are never absolute. There is no karma to drive over any dogma. Scientists realise they are working on a tentative reality model that must follow Schopenhauer's progression of truth.. (so they HAVE to have a good sense of humour to cope)
"Every truth passes through three stages before it is recognised. First it is ridiculed, in the second it is violently opposed, in the third it is regarded as self evident"
So hail to those courageous souls of science who had the balls, the genius and the clarity to endure looking like a fool to crack open our minds a little more! RESPECT!
among my faves in no particular order.. Copernicus, Feynman, Einstein, Bohr, Sheldrake, Darwin, Newton, Galilei, Edison, Kepler, Bell, Curie, Tesla, Da Vinci, Hawking, Pagels, Greene, Diamond, Watson & Crick, McClintock, Avogadro, Pauling, Pasteur, Galton, Dawkins, Mendel, Planck, Ramachandran, Gould, Mandelbrot, Franklin
… from a fan.
If
(the images above are from a wonderful site The Foundation for a Better Life - not science related – but they also give deep respect to big lifers.. with stories to inspire you to live a legendary1 too)
The Theory of Everything.. ?
Being human is so exciting, scary, confounding, utterly paradoxical and bizarre. One thing we have at least figured out is that no ONE person will ever be the uber-genius who gets it all.. there is no elegant solution, no perfect clarity or eureka! moment to end all moments.
The brain-sparkingly scintillating mag New Scientist has a great intro to their report on the state of the Theory of Everything. [This is the theory that was Einstein's audacious endeavour to "read the mind of God" alternatively called Grand Unification or Unified Field Theory. He spent the last thirty years of his life, to no avail, ardently hunting the inch-long mathematical sentence that would explain all physical phenomena ..just to put it into some perspective].
“OK, so nobody expects it to actually explain everything. No genius is going to slap their forehead one day and say, “Oh yes, P equals Q squared minus Z. Now it’s all so clear – how the mind works, what happened to the dinosaurs, where socks disappear to…”
If like me you take a fancy to having your brain teased by classy well-formed thinking; even if you know it won’t be consummated with a satisfying solution to it all>> then I heartily recommend Brian Greene’s “The Elegant Universe” to titillate your synapses. It’s one of the most accessible ways of understanding how us humble humans can even CONTEMPLATE the Theory of Everything, the bravery of Einstein’s imagination and the zingy answer to it all that may be held by string theory.Yes, it’s a science book, but this is science to make you sigh. (I guess the caveat would be that you have at least a vague interest in what life exists beyond the confines of the TV guide, or that when I say “star” that Brad Pitt isn’t the first thing that comes to mind)
Astronomy and physics have shown us that we are infinitesimally teeny in the grand old universal oneness – in fact super-small & potentially insignificant not just in our own universe, but astronomers, string theorists and other quirky scientists of their ilk suggest there is strong evidence of a neighbourhood of multiple universes out there.
It’s all too big and too out of hand to comprehend anyway so why worry.. looking at life like a game with puzzle pieces to be put together all the while adventuring, eating wonderful food, laughing, conquering our fears, falling in love, building empires, creating, negotiating, trading, sharing stories of what we’ve discovered with one another. This is life.
If we don’t get uptight about the fact that what is “reality” or indeed TRUTH today, may not be same tomorrow.. we can really sit back and enjoy watching the science show. Let it unfold and be entertained as we discover more about ourselves and our ever expanding starry petrie-dish than I think we’ll ever be able to make good sense of. (But that whould never stop us from trying!).
“Not a shred of evidence exists in favor of the idea that life is serious” Brendan Gill
