Facing the truth about what you are doing is the only way to avoid predictable — and often nasty — consequences
Conservatism may be the chosen political stance of many people in business, but it’s a poor way to create a better future. If you want to build a stronger business, a better and more satisfying career, or a more satisfying life, you won’t do it by sticking with the way you think and act today; nor by looking only to the immediate future.
The current orthodoxy is to deal primarily with the short-term and focus on the results for the next quarter; but we’re already seeing the nasty consequences of that throughout the financial sector of the economy. A conservative mindset is not your friend if you want to thrive in a world of constant change; especially not if you want your life to change in significant way. The major drawback to a short-term, conservative, risk-averse mindset is not that it’s wrong, but that it’s static.
Cause and effect 101
It’s amazing how little attention people pay to the processes of cause and effect. Causes produce effects; same causes produce same effects. There’s an old saying that the best definition of insanity is doing something again and again, while expecting the outcome to change. If there’s any link between an action and a corresponding result, repeating the action is extremely likely to repeat the result.
When the connection is positive and short-term — so people see a certain action quickly produces an outcome they like — they seem fully aware of the link and follow it consciously. But when the outcome is negative and occurs some time in the future — behaving in a certain way is very likely to lead to unpleasant long-term consequences — they seem to find the link harder to grasp, especially if the action is pleasant or comforting in the short term.
Facing up to the truth
Smoking provides a good example of how people ignore reality to focus instead on what they would like reality to be.
The negative consequences of smoking are well known and factual. Yet millions still smoke. Logically, being aware of the health consequences of smoking should make any sane person give it up, if they smoke already; or refuse to start an addictive habit they are very likely to regret.
It doesn’t happen like that. Instead, people admit to the insanity of smoking, then go on doing it. The reason has to be that the pleasure is real and here today, while the threat seems more theoretical and far off in the future, if it ever happens at all. Many smokers admit the danger, then quickly point to someone they know, or have heard of, who smoked heavily all his or her life and lived to be 90. You could equally logically point to someone who smoked for a week and contracted lung cancer. When you’re dealing with probabilities, any single instance is statistically irrelevant.
The thinking, habits, consequences equation
What has this to do with business life, work and self-development? The answer can be expressed in a simple equation: Old Habits + Old Thinking + Short-term Viewpoint = Predictable Consequences.
If you stick with habits and thoughts that are comfortable and undemanding, and don’t look much further ahead that next month or next quarter, expecting any different outcome from what you’ve experienced up till now is so illogical it can be described as form of insanity.
Changing slowly
To produce slow, measured change you could try changing one, or perhaps two, of the terms in front of the equals sign. For example: Old Habits + Old Thinking + Longer-term Viewpoint = Potential for Different Consequences.
I say “potential” because those old habits and thinking will hold much of your life in place until the longer-term viewpoint starts — very slowly — to change them. The same would be true if you changed the habits, but kept your current ways of thinking and short-term outlook. There would be some change, but your old-style, short-term thinking would keep pulling you back towards the way you’ve always reacted to events until now.
Speeding up changes
To make major changes, you must change habits and thinking and viewpoint at the same time: New Habits + New Thinking + Longer-term Viewpoint = New Consequences.
If you do that, the laws of cause and effect will ensure fresh outcomes and paths through life. When people have some life-changing experience, they often describe it as having turned their lives upside down. They can’t even think as they did before; nor can they bring themselves to fall back on their old habits or see the world in the old way.
That’s how you can create your life-changing experiences. Open your mind to new thoughts, lengthen and broaden your outlook and try new ways of behaving. You can definitely expect different results to come about if you do that.
To change externals, change inside first
When you choose to alter your life in this way, inner change precedes outer change. You change yourself in the way you choose and new consequences arise as a result. When outer change forces inner change on you, it’s nearly always due to some traumatic life event.
That’s what happens when you stay fat, dumb and happy until the universe forces you to make a major course correction. It’s likely to be painful. Wouldn’t it be better to choose change than be compelled to experience it through an unexpected and life-altering trauma?
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