Letter to offspring

I thought I would throw this up as a post in case anyone out there in internet land wanted a break from fake news and/or felt like ripping some if it off.

My not so small people are heading out into the big wide world, so I thought it would be useful to pass on stuff I have learnt, so it shortcuts for them the time it took for this to sink into my consciousness (years and years!).


Dear offspring

I’ve learnt a bit of stuff given my time on this planet, some of it useful (don’t ski fast in flat light) and probably quite a bit not so. So, I think it is worthwhile reflecting on the useful and passing these pearls of wisdom on to you.

With our burgeoning to do lists, busy schedules, and overflowing email inboxes, not to mention all those social media feeds that steal time from us, the opportunity to reflect is usually buried at the bottom of this pile.

I have taken it from the bottom to put it where it deserves to be. I'm sure most of my generation think about this stuff from time to time, and maybe have the odd discussion about it, but I find writing it down makes it much more meaningful and possibly useful.

A quote I love, which is stupidly obvious but oft ignored is, “you strengthen what you practice” (this applies to both good stuff and bad stuff). And by taking the time to write this, review it, and edit it, I get to practice this reflection.

Self-awareness
This is a concept that I did not really fully understand or appreciate the importance of until my mid 40’s when I went on an emotional intelligence course. As preparation for it, I had to complete a survey on how I saw myself across a whole range of dimensions. My staff and peers also answered the same questions on how they saw me. I thought there would be some reasonable alignment, but in some areas,  there were some marked differences between how they interpreted my behaviours, and how I assumed I was coming across. It was quite an eye opener.

What this taught me is that assumption can be a very misleading mistress. It is very easy to just see the world through your own lens. We all do it because we imagine that the way we perceive things is normal.

This I find this is kinda weird, as we will readily acknowledge how different people can be, yet we naturally presume many of them think similarly to us!

The brain is lazy, so in order not to have to think hard about things, it often takes shortcuts. Stereotyping is a big one. And we all do it way more than we think.

Just remember that most other people don’t see things exactly the way you do. And if you are sure that they do, then time get out of your bubble!

Fix: Always put yourself in other’s shoes. Examine things from multiple perspectives. And a simple one is to simply ask for their understanding of an issue. I have been surprised how often when I thought everyone was on the same page on a matter, but when checking on common understanding, I find that they have differing (but entirely reasonable) perspectives on it. So I’m a shit awful mind reader, and have to regularly remind myself of this.

Here is a useful online assessment that shows what character traits are most important to you: https://www.viacharacter.org/www/Character-Strengths-Survey


Critical thinking
I am deeply disappointed that this is not a topic that is taught in school. With so much opinion dressed up as fact, fake news, clickbait, and pseudoscience flying around, the ability to distil fact from bollocks is becoming increasingly more important.

Fix: Be forever curious to dig deeper, always question what you are presented with, so you can be more confident it is actually what it appears to be. Don’t be just another lemming racing off the cliff of bollocks believing the latest trending topic. Continue to ask why. And this can be fun, as thinking about something more deeply usually makes it more interesting, plus you get the bonus of often uncovering insights that may have sailed right on by.


Learning
Never. Stop. Learning. Ever.
And if you not learning, you’re going get bored real quick, as well as probably doing a crap job. Adopt a growth mindset, which is believing that your limits are not set, and continual learning can grow your capabilities.

Fix: Be forever curious, like that child you once were. The older we get the more we know, and so the less questions we tend to ask. I believe this is a mild form of arrogance, as there is so much more to know in the world than we can ever fit in our little heads. Plus, the world is such an interesting place. Curiosity leads to discovery. And who doesn’t like to discover new things?


Cognitive Biases
As humans, we are riddled with biases. Most of which we are unaware of when we display them (despite us often knowing they exist). Trusting your gut feel can be a myth. Your gut is just all your biases rolled together.

Our biases have a heavy influence on how we form opinion and make decisions. They can cause big blind spots. History is cluttered with examples poor decision making as a result of people being unaware of their biases.

Fix: Learn about biases. Work out which ones you display most strongly (this also essential for building good self-awareness). It is fascinating stuff. And by doing so this will put you ahead of 99% of the population. There heaps of them, check out this list to see them all.  Confirm feelings with facts before making important decisions.

Check yourself when you notice something and then draw a conclusion from it, because correlation does not always mean causation.

For example; I notice you appear grumpy. I imagine you are: angry with me/ tired/ feeling unwell/ feeling stressed/ had your car run into/ had mother-in-law decide to stay another week.

So we can draw any number of conclusions from the one observation. See how wide of the mark you could potentially be? Yet human nature is to pick one and believe that is the case.

This is the type of situation where your confirmation bias comes to play. You choose the (imagined) answer that best supports a prior belief, ie, ‘they never much liked me, so they must be angry with me’.


Develop interests
I disagree with the ‘find your passion’ type of statements. It is pretty utopic and not something that most young people can relate to as far as making career choices. And the passion that can fund your existence is not patiently sitting just around the corner waiting to be discovered.

Do stuff that you find interesting. Explore. You don’t know what you don’t know. And through that exploration you will be able to develop and refine what interests you. Then just maybe, that interest could grow into a passion.


Goal setting and planning
Dream, scheme, plan, plot. This is very aligned with developing interests and continual learning. The future is an exciting place and you have more control over it than you realise. When you have an idea of what you would like to achieve, the path towards it will reveal itself. And it rarely turns out to be a straight one.

Having goals is great and these give us purpose and reasons for doing stuff. But always remember the journey to the goal is the important part, not the goal in itself. It is better to focus on the steps to the goal rather than the end point, as the goal is only a moment in time and also, you may decide to change it.


Habit forming
Changing behaviours is hard. For new behaviours to last beyond their honeymoon period, they need to become habit. One of the best ways I have found when faced with a choice where you know you shouldn’t, but you do it anyway, or conversely you know you should, but you don’t, is this:

Stop and ask what your future self would say about the choice you are about to make. And if your future self has a firm view, listen to them, as they are way wiser than your present self.

Always remember, you strengthen what you practice. So this stuff gets easier over time and turns into habit.


Worry and anxiety
We are biologically wired to worry. Do not ever worry about worrying, as it is a condition that comes with being human, so is a natural behaviour (as there may be a lion in the bush wanting you for dinner).

Fix: When your mind starts to worry about something you have two options; change the situation to eliminate the reason for worry, or if you have no ability to change the situation, stop worrying as it is not a productive use of all your glorious cognitive capacity.

A useful tactic in when you start to worry about stuff you have little control over is; you thank your mind for bringing this to your attention (acknowledging this it what it is wired to do) and then return to the present, because you know it is only a thought and that your mind does not control you.

This can be easier said than done, but remember, you strengthen what you practice.


Being grateful
You won the lottery. You are middle class and living in one of the world’s most beautiful countries. Being a NZer puts you inside the top 10 countries on a global scale of wealth. Whenever you feel like you are doing it tough, just remember that you have good health, great friends, running water that you can drink, electricity, and a good education - from which you can do damn well almost anything you like with - if you want it enough.


Response control
This is a simple piece of advice that we all intuitively know but tend to ignore when we need it. That is, you often cannot control what happens to you, but you can always control how you respond to a situation.

We have choices. For example, when shit happens we can choose to get grumpy, angry, assign blame (on yourself or on others), bury our heads in the sand etc, or we can choose to laugh at it, learn from it, seek opportunity within it, own it, accept it, and move on.

Which approach will give you a happier life?


Relationships
Nurture your relationships and always look to building new ones. Don’t be that person who stays in their own tight clique with a bunch of clones. Diversity gives perspective and interest, plus it gets you out of your echo chamber. As the saying goes, ‘birds of a feather flock together, but can become fucking one eyed and narrow minded’.


Comfort Zone
Don’t live in it all the time. It is easy to do but makes your life less interesting and you a little dull with it. Push yourself outside it on a regular basis. Try new shit just for the hell of it. Feed your curiosity muscle - this is definitely a case of use it or lose it.  You strengthen what you practice. If something scares you just a little, that is a good thing. Give it a crack. The next time it will be easier. And then you can step it up. That is how we progress.

Always be able to have an answer to the question “What have I done lately that scared me?”

Here endeth the lesson.
I hope that you will agree with some of this sentiment and it shortcuts the long road that I took to discover these truths.

The reason I have not emailed this to you, is that paper to me is a more permanent record and a little more tangible than words on a computer screen.

My wish is that you will read this many times over the years. Perhaps even add to it. Some of this stuff takes a while to sink in far enough for you to want to practice.

If nothing else, remember that life is simple. It is people that try to make it complicated. The evidence from many studies on happiness and longevity is clear: to have a long and fulfilled life, you only need to keep learning, remain active, eat healthily, and stay connected.