I was recently writing about how boring people can be when they are only interested in what they are interested in, and are unwilling to take an interest in the interests of others. If that makes sense. However, this presents in other ways, where for example, a lot of people say that they aren't interested in economics, finance, investing, so tune out - but this doesn't mean it doesn't affect them.
Ignoring a housefire, doesn't stop you from burning in one.
I actually find it interesting how people are willing to ignore aspects of the environment that have such a large impact on their lives. Quite often, in a relationship, one person is more interested in some aspects than the other, and when it comes to finance, it is often men who are more active than women. It is not that women ignore the need for money, but they are generally less proactive in the investment side of it, even though they are also generally better at saving money.
This is just a generalized example of course, but I feel that culture has been shifting us away from having to take care of ourselves, and rely on services instead. It probably wasn't that long ago that a person had to be relatively well-rounded in knowledge and skill in order to navigate the needs of their lives, but now, we have narrowed ourselves professionally, and will pick and choose our experiences based on our preferences, not our needs.
What do you need today?
Or tomorrow. And while needs are often just wants, the question I am really asking is, what are you doing about satisfying your needs? We are all impacted by the environments in which we live, influenced by events in our life, even if they are outside of our control. Yet, if we aren't interested enough to understand what is happening in our world, what is affecting us, we become unable to manage it adequately, let alone make informed decisions on a pathway forward.
The other day, I was talking with a client about his career path and where he wants to be. The exercise I gave him was to work out what were thetakss and skill needs of his current job, and where his strengths and weaknesses lay. Then, workout the tasks and skill needs of his next desired position, and where there were gaps. Then, do the same for the logical step after, even if that might not be too clear yet. This way, he would be able to identify the gaps he has, and where he should be spending his attention to improve.
What he discovered, was pretty obvious.
His gaps were the things he wasn't interested in, areas that he had almost on purpose neglected to develop. Yet, he could also see that if he was to go down the path he wanted to go, and utilize the skills he has to a greater potential, he would have to spend some time getting the "undesirables" up to at least a passing grade. He recognized that if he didn't do this, essentially, the path he wanted to take was never going to be open to him.
In many ways, this is like how a lot of people behave with money, where while they aren't interested in managing it, they are interested in having it. However, because they don't put in the effort to learn about the mechanics of it and build skills with managing and investing it, the pathway to financial security that they are looking for, is closed off to them.
It might be boring to learn about things we aren't interesting, but it is probably less painful than not learning and being affected by the same things, having them impact on us and take opportunity away from our lives. It is more comfortable to do what we want and far more fun, but at some point, we are likely to feel the roadblocks in front of us, and maybe even have enough Prescence to acknowledge that a lot of our suffering, a lot of our missed potential, is self-inflicted.
We probably don't do it on purpose of course, it is just that we are primed to maximize what we enjoy now, over the things that we don't, even if it is going to cost us down the track in the future. We act on defaults, we act on programming and conditioning, and we react to our environment. Things happen to us, and because we didn't instigate them, we feel that it isn't our fault, that we have no say in the outcomes, but, is it true, or did we just ignore the opportunity to learn a little more, because it was easier to do so?
When we look back at our lives, it is the big events that stand out in our memory as the influencing factors. But for the most part, the biggest impacts are made in the daily grind, the meta of our lives that feels so natural, comfortable, even though it is missing key components that we will need, to level up, and get to that next position.
Whatever that might be.
Taraz
[ Gen1: Hive ]
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