One of the greatest gifts in life can be a persistent problem.

The type of problem that keeps surfacing regardless of the remedy or time horizon.

The type of problem that can make you tired of searching and even hopeless that you’ll ever find a lasting solution.

But if you look close enough…

They are the very reflection of who you are and even a window into the opportunity of who you can become.

Make your decisions based on probabilities not absolutes,

Your observations on changing events rather than static categorizations,

Your human judgment in terms of intention over personality,

And most importantly time as something to be actively created rather than passively consumed. 

Contrary to popular belief, I have a suspicion that self affirmation is a zero sum game.

It simply raises your ego. Affirmation is self referential and circular by its very nature. You strengthen the thought pattern through constant looping of the same or similar thought patterns – building a track of stories in your mind hoping that one day they will give you security once they turn into stone.

But what you find is that the rigidness of mind will only cause more pain.

The other path could be expansion…

Curiosity always brought me the most freedom in life.

In our struggle of daily problems, hopelessly trying to solve them – we reach and cry out for help. We default to mimicry as our first remedy. Asking for “support”, “guidance” and “wisdom”… From these parables, we try to then extract “lessons” and “takeaways” to copy and paste into our own lives.

It may help in the moment here and there but even after all the application – no matter how diligent the student – no matter how great the teacher – we always arrive at the same place – calling for help again with a new problem.

The cycle repeats.

We lose ourselves following the leader, attaching more and more concepts and rules rather than violently breaking them down and challenging them.

Our problems are always self referential. How we define, process and solve these problems create our day to day experience that builds towards our ultimate life outcome.

Why don’t we ever trust ourselves?

The only way you can ever arrive at some type of true and lasting change, is by understanding the essence of what actually needs to be changed.

Regret is an outward feeling directed towards the past – that we have in the present – of something we “should have done”.

Worry is an outward feeling directed towards the future – that we have in the present – of something that we fear “could happen”

Jealously is a feeling directed on to another person – that we have in the present – of something “we believe we deserve” to have over that person.

Doubt is a feeling directed inwardly – that we have in the present – that something may not go “our way”.

What is always constant is two things: The present moment and where attention is directed.

The industrial era was about efficiency.

How many widgets can the “machine” output each month, week, day and hour?

Inputs and outputs were closely linked together.

As a worker, the primary incentive was to “grind it out” and work as many hours as possible. There wasn’t necessarily a direct or immediate need for creativity but only efficiency.

With the rise of the knowledge economy, the discrepancy between inputs and outputs keeps rising. Instead of putting 1 hour of input in and getting 1 unit of reward out, you can make one decision that causes you to get a 10x 100x 1000x or a seemly infinite return.

‍That is because of leverage. The leverage of code and media.

This switches the concern from efficiency and productivity over to the quality of your judgement and the reach of your creativity.

‍So the job of a creative enterprise today is not to have creativity for the sake of creativity or to use creativity to win award.

But rather, creativity must be used to solve real world business problems in new and better ways.

To make better decisions with knowledge and to grow the enterprise with new ideas that work.

Creativity by its very nature is boundless and infinite.

As Bill Bernbach once said: “Creativity is the last unfair advantage we’re legally allowed to take over our competitors”

When you go to the Apple Store and they replace your headphones with no questions ask.

When you go to Costco and they return anything.

When you get free one day shipping with Amazon.

When you go to the local store and they know your name and standard order by heart.

These are investments that could have been placed elsewhere but was instead placed in a secret more fundamental place.

They made you feel like a human and they helped you solve your problems more deeply than a single ad ever could.

I use to have a tendency to look at the world as a way of extracting meaning.

Thinking that if I just had enough of all raw materials I would be able to form a functioning theory.

Some of the materials I held to be the most valuable were simply because they came from someone who was considered an authority at that time.

I wish I would have known that life isn’t about developing a theory so that it can be proved right or wrong.

Thinking that once it was proved right that I would finally be proved right.

It’s about noticing things and finding starting points.

After trying countless alternatives multiple times and different points in your life its easy to come to the conclusion of “I tried something like that before and it didn’t work – therefore I shouldn’t try this new thing.”

It sounds very rational and it feels right but it doesn’t capture the full picture.

It assumes a couple of things:

• That life is about perfection or in other words “doing the right thing”, that since it didn’t work that time it then assumes that it was the “wrong” thing to do
• This thinking is what David Deutsch would call “Bad Philosophy”, philosophy that is not only a bad explanation but prevents the growth of new knowledge and possibility.
• It fails to understand a deeper root of the problem – maybe all these things weren’t working not because the “thing was wrong” but maybe the way we approached it needed to change. Our explanation of definition of the problem was what actually needed to be approved (hence this post).

We all are quick to rush to tell ourselves a story of how we have done something before and that this for sure wont work this time, forgetting that growing is not limited by how many times we have tried something but is rather a cause for growth.

There is a difference between studying the game and being in the game.

Observing something changes the process.