Ho!
Hey there.
How’s it going today?
I’ve had a look at the roads of life for you. Checked the traffic reports and got a feel for the situations out there.
There are a lot of struggle buses sputtering along these days. All sorts of them with all kinds of passengers. I’ve been riding a few also.
I’m not here to tell you which stop is yours to get off at, or how to step off the bus and begin to drive your own pure-torque electric-vehicle to glory. What I would like to offer is another tool for your toolbox; another mental model to help seize each day.
Enough with the barely relatable metaphors (not really); here’s the topic:
“What’s the point? What difference would I make?”
This is a favourite phrase that we (humans) love to use to justify inaction when it applies to a grand scale – both at an intensely personal level and for the world at large.
The grand scale in our personal lives is the long term big picture of what we would like to do, what we’d like to achieve, where we would like to get to and above all, who we would like to be.
The grand scale for the world at large is thankfully becoming a more well-known, understood and hotter topic (wahey!) as time goes on; fuel shortages, resource shortages, supply chain issues, mass production of food, over-harvesting of all sorts, climate change, the world freezing, flooding and setting on fire, and generally an enormous sense of impending doom!
…
and breathe…we have some time…
All is not lost. Because for all (and more) of the anxiety-inducing and worrying points listed above for the world, the positive opposites can be made true, and achievable, by grappling the points above in our personal lives.
How do we change……anything?
The same way we got here:
A massive amount, of Small Achievable Steps, performed by every single person who exists all at the same time, over the span of their lives, and those lives around them.
(You may stop reading here, if you’ve suddenly “got it”! You may continue for entertainment purposes, or if you haven’t got there yet.)
Let me answer both questions at once, with another gold standard, full of sense, totally relatable analogy!
MONEY!
MONEEEEEEEYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY!
Right, here’s you:
yep.
And here’s you with your wallet:
That’s your wallet so empty it’s got moths flying out of it. Unsettling, but not unworkable.
Here’s what happens if you put one coin (a Pound, a Dollar etc) into your wallet:
A start.
Here’s what happens if you and your two closest friends all add one coin:
You’ve just tripled the amount, if you weren’t aware. Already a huge improvement. You could only improve it more if you had better drawn and more proportional friends.
Now, how does that wallet look if 10 people add to it? or 1000? or how about, 100,000?!
I tell you what, I’m being generous, the entire population (roughly) of the United Kingdom adds one coin to your wallet:
I cannot draw.
So all of a sudden, we can see the difference between one person making one action (which is great and has an effect), to an entire nation of millions of people making one action! Which wallet would you rather have?
And then let’s ask, “What does that wallet look like if the entirety of the current human population adds a coin?”
And then let’s wonder, “What if they all do that, and they all do that every. single. day?” That one we will dive into a bit below.
Imagine that the wallet is either your future self or the planet Earth, up to you. The coins are our daily actions and choices. And the fine looking folk in those pictures are actual real people, or you. When you start to make more, and more, and more daily deposits (actions, changes, decisions, tiny steps) into your wallet (life), they add up. Not immediately, but over a large time period. And when all of the people in the whole wide world ever, do the same, and keep doing so day by day, real change happens.
Because as always; short-term thinking/actions produce short-term results; long-term thinking/actions produce long-term results
Now we get to our new best friend…
Compound interest.
There is a very real and very powerful force called ‘Compound Interest’.
Everybody on Earth, paying in a coin (or many coins), every single day starts to stack up. It stacks up with such momentum that it starts to carry itself forwards with decreasing effort, and get’s bigger of it’s own accord.
Compound Interest has been written about in different ways, at different lengths, by those who have come before me, so go have a nosey for their work, but it boils down to this:
interest earned on your interest and your initial investment (principle).
Financially, it’s how you get rich slowly but surely, and it looks like this:
Years on the X-axis.
It’s a powerful financial model but it applies to nearly all aspects of life, including your own choices and habits. Continuing my questionable analogy, the ‘principle’ is your own coin, the ‘non-compounding’ is a bunch of people adding one coin one time only, and the ‘compound interest’ is every single person making actions every single day, one action on top of another. (Maybe. I think I’ve gone on too long with this analogy and it’s probably starting to break down).
Final thoughts, final steps.
If you have 7 to 8 billion coins in your wallet, first off you’ll need a new wallet. Mainly you’ll not likely be thinking, “I wonder how I’m going to fill up my wallet some more.” and probably be thinking, “that’s looking after itself, what’s next?”
That’s how future you could be thinking. That’s how future planet could be thinking. And that, my friend, is exactly what a difference you can make.
Not squatting 200kg from scratch tomorrow (work your way up). Not replacing all engines with miniaturised arc reactors (although if you can, please do). Not expecting to pick up a guitar for the first time in the morning to then play to a crowd of 80,000 in the evening. Not reforesting all land which is suitable for reforesting (although if that’s your jam, I thank you). But individually making the changes, actions and choices, which are in your control, every day, for your whole life – and being a part of the system as a whole to collaboratively work towards a better, not apart from it.
All that any of us have is right now. This present time. This second. This moment. This, this. this now. So the thing for you to do, is to realise that there is no “oh I’ll do it tomorrow”, or ‘putting it off for the future’
There’s is only now. So do the things that the person you want to be, does. Make the actions that make a change which creates the world you want to live in. Be the person you want to be.
I heard this quote this morning when in a session with Alexander James of Mindfulness Therapy, which went along the lines of,
Grass doesn’t try to grow, it just grows. -Deepak Chopra, grass aficionado.
Be like grass my friend.
Thanks for your time folks.
Be aware of your awareness!
-Franko
phew. That was a lot wasn’t it?! Well done for putting in the time to focus and read. And well done for your effort in absorbing it all! I have a tendency to waffle. I realise some people prefer toast, and those shorter posts will come! As always I’m game to hear your thoughts, your feedback, and the changes you’re amped up to start making!
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