Deon Barnard

The last few months of blogging and Facebook debates have been a real roller coaster ride. The responses have ranged from amorphous confusion, to intellectually challenging, to patronising evasion, to ranting hate speech – the sum total of which is rather eye opening.

It never ceases to amaze me how emotional people get about something they didn’t invent and have no responsibility to defend, as though saying something like: “The creation myth is far less likely to have occurred than the possibility of biogenesis followed by evolution through natural selection” could be interpreted to mean: “You’re really stupid and your character is seriously flawed!!” Of course there are people who fit that description, but those traits can be found in Theists, Agnostics and Atheists alike. When I propose an idea, I am simply hoping to get some rational response with underlying reasons for why people agree or disagree – quite simple really… one would think.

I am particularly fascinated by people who say, “I’m not religious – I just love God”, or the Charismatic favourite, “It’s not about religion – it’s about relationship” – a relationship that results in weekly temple attendance, weekly bible studies, prophetic-intercessory-worship meetings, daily devotionals, blessing of homes, religious marriage-baptism-funeral ceremonies… how stupid of me to call it a religion! “Of course, anyone else that does any of that stuff is certainly religious – what we do is relationship because our God is actually real” – ah, I must have missed that very crucial piece of the puzzle…!

So in the spirit of calling apples, apples, and to settle the debate about whether or not what you’re doing is religious…

1. YOU MAY BE A RELIGIOUS FANATIC IF
   
   1. You think God cares what banners or objects you hang in your church auditorium.
   2. You thing God cares if you understand how the Trinity works.
   3. You think God favours your church above everyone else’s.
   4. You would kill for God if you really believed he was telling you to do so.
   5. You think there’s a lake of fire somewhere in the universe called ‘Hell’ where most people (except those in your church) will be spending an eternity in spirit form crying in agony and gnashing their teeth!
   6. You think there’s a calm and white place in the universe called ‘Heaven’ where God sits on a chair (possibly tired from standing) and you’ll be going there in spirit form when you die to be very blissful and sing a lot about how great God is for saving you and a few others.
   7. You believe that God has a prescribed way for people to dress and live and love and cohabitate and have sex – and it’s your way.
   8. You believe that no one should ever dare question the existence of your God or the reasons why you believe because doing so would result in a great smiting upon that individual by God, and if God’s not quick off the mark you’ll be happy to do it for him.
   9. You believe that the best way to live is by faith and not intellect. If you can believe something without evidence, it is bound to be more real than believing any silly evidence that may be presented. After all, it’s those Atheists and Scientists (spawn of Satan) that are always asking why, why, why?!!?!!?
   10. You know how to deal with sceptics on Facebook… just ignore everything they’re saying and respond with something that will move their heart like, “It’s not about religion brother, it’s about relationship”, or, “what happened to you my brother? God still loves you”, or, “I’m praying for you”. That’ll show em!!
   11. You only watch God TV, only read books from CUM bookstore and have Hillsongs playing on your radio 24 hours per day – either to keep the demons away or more probably to make sure you don’t hear or see anything that might shake your immovable faith…
   12. You feel guilty when you don’t wake up in time to get to church on Sunday.
   13. You’ve been trying to ’save’ your husband for 10 years but he’s somehow always happier than you are.
   14. You can’t speak to non-Christians because… well… you just can’t.

    

2. YOU MAY BE A RELIGIOUS FANATIC IF you actually believe any of the following:
   
   1. That every living species of animal made its way, in pairs, to Noah’s house, and survived the journey – then somehow fitted onto a large boat and survived several weeks at sea – then left the boat and moved out into the world, previously flooded, and survived long enough to have offspring – and that every marsupial found their way (across the ocean) to Australia, not stopping anywhere along the way to inhabit any other part of the world, however no other animal decided to take that journey – and that the world’s population started from scratch again after the flood even though we know that Egypt was already in its 5^th dynasty (at least) at this time, not to mention the Minoans or Ancient Greeks or Chinese…
   2. That an all knowing, all powerful, all good, all loving God
      1. Created the devil.
      2. Licensed Joshua to perform genocidal exterminations of every living man, woman and child of at least 7 people groups.
      3. Allowed Solomon to have 1000 wives but sends modern day polygamists to hell.
      4. Destroyed two whole cities because of their sexual choices, not to mention turn an innocent woman into salt for the abominable crime of looking around.
      5. Was responsible for more killing, smiting, punishment, judgment, censorship and changing of rules than any of the most evil dictators of history, if the bible is to be believed…
      6. Answers your prayers about: your football team winning; which job to take; getting that new car; or how to forgive some poor sod who doesn’t know they did anything wrong – but can’t feed a dying child in the Sudan; or save a drowning child in Haiti; or heal a friend with AIDS – quite selective really.
   3. That the end of the world is coming soon and that all the conflict happening in Israel and the Middle East is all just God preparing to return to finally judge all the evildoers so that the good guys can get on with living forever in Heaven – and if there’s anything you can do to make it all happen a little quicker you’ll be delighted to help out. After all, who cares about all the Arabs and Muslims dying and suffering, it’s all part of God’s loving and generous plan for mankind who he made in his image.

It strikes me that it’s pretty hard to be religious and NOT be a fanatic! All the rules (of all religions) require faith-based obedience. The only way to keep from becoming a suicide bomber is to hang onto the ‘good’ bits of your religion and flatly ignore the embarrassing, illogical, insane parts.

Looking forward to your responses!

The point of this article is to highlight how billions of otherwise rational people gamble on insane odds in the area of their religious ‘faith’. Many religious people tell me that Atheists are making the gamble, because if they (Christians for instance) are wrong they ‘lose nothing’, but if we (Atheists) are wrong we ‘go to Hell’. I was a Christian, the convicted deeply sure kind – missionary, pastor – the works. I can tell every Christian that if they’re wrong (and I know they are), not only do they lose an incredible amount in terms of wasted time and personal resources, but they are accountable to humanity for terrible atrocities and ubiquitous control and manipulation of populations. If Atheists are wrong they bring a strong argument to a ‘loving God’ that they had no reason to believe and surely would not be punished for eternity for being reasonable. Let’s talk about that ‘reason’ not to believe…

Because this article is about probability and reasonable evidence I will use a casino metaphor. We’ll call it the ‘Casino Argument’. All over the world hundreds of thousands of people play slot machines at casinos. I don’t personally play because the probabilities of winning are so remote that I’d have a better chance of coming across that money by working hard, which is also more enjoyable to me than sitting on a stool and pressing a button for hours on end. Nevertheless, people keep doing it. They ‘believe’ they have a chance of winning because they have evidence that others have won – i.e. it is possible. There may be a one in a million chance of winning – insanely improbable odds – but those odds are backed by the fact that real people actually do win. We can get their addresses and verify their winnings with a bank statement or casino records. We have tangible evidence that million-dollar-winners actually exist in the world.

Now let’s say there was absolutely no evidence that anybody ever won at a particular casino. For years there was never an officially announced winner and the casino had no records of such a thing ever happening. No winner was ever published in a newspaper or announced on the TV. No-one had ever SEEN a winner. Would people keep going to that casino with one-in-a-million odds against them and no knowledge of their ever having been a winner? Probably not. A rational person, even a rational gambler, would find a casino where there was some evidence to back his faith in the machine.

But what if rumors started to circulate that a guy called ‘Moses’ (a popular South African name) had won a million dollars, but that he chose to keep it a secret and forbade the newspapers from publishing the story, and the casino conveniently ‘lost’ the records. On top of that Moses had no surname and no-one knew where he lived or how to find him. Would the ‘Moses Myth’ add weight to their belief in a win? For some it would, but for most it would make more sense to go to a casino where real people, rather than myths, won real money from time to time.

Now back to religion. The average human is not entirely stupid in my view – if I thought they were I wouldn’t bother writing these articles. On the contrary I see people making logical decisions every day. When people make decisions about moving home or personal finances or career plans etc. they use logic and reason. They weigh up the facts and go for the option that makes more logical sense. At times two options have the same weight and then they either go with feeling or preference or seek advice from someone who might tip the scales one way or another.

Why is religion exempt from this rational approach? Why do we believe ‘Moses Myths’ when there is an overwhelming amount of evidence to the contrary? Why do we hold onto something with insane odds when the odds presented by science and reason are almost undeniable? I think the reasons are similar to that of another great illogicality – love. They say love is blind and it usually is. Millions of people fall out of love every day and yet when they fall in love again they forget all the lessons learned from the previous round of insanity. Why? Because it feels good! Because we don’t want to be alone. Because we want to be acceptable and accepted. Because we need someone else to give us a reason.

Just because the benefits of feeling in love doesn’t make a ‘happily ever after’ true – so the benefits of religion (feeling good; communal acceptance; people to do things with during the week; feeling right or justified; something to stand for; etc.) don’t make the myth true. While religious people harp on about the ‘good’ that religions do for the world, they refuse to recognize how pervasively sinister the whole thing is, and more importantly, how they personally contribute to the insanity of war, death, bondage, manipulation and mind control from the warmth and safety of their prayer meetings, worship sessions and church family fêtes.

Many religious people will get personally offended by this article because, in their minds, religion, or certainly their own religion, is above reproach, question or analysis – it is simply true and requires no reasonable evidence! I do have hope however that some rational religious people, if that is in fact possible, will respond with probabilities and evidence to back up their belief and follow the rules of rational discussion they would use for any other topic.

There’s a cheesy but true cliché that goes, “If you don’t believe in yourself, nobody else will”. I have spent my entire life overcoming my inadequacies with self belief. Growing up as a child I had really bad acne – the kind that had other kids making jokes about the first moon on the man. I also had rounded shoulders from a scoliosis of the spine, snowy dandruff, no detectable biceps and I really sucked at ball sports like soccer, cricket and rugby, which had me aimlessly running around the field, missing passes and goals. I was always delighted when I got a glancing touch on the ball – even if I was just an obstacle in the way of a cannon-like boot from a team mate.

Despite all this I believed in myself – not in a spiritual, ‘God is on my side’ kind of way, but rather in a mathematical probability kind of way – the kind of way that had me reasoning that if I tried enough things I would finally find something I could do ‘better than average’. I ‘evolved’ through a process not too dissimilar to Darwin’s ‘Natural Selection’ whereby I gave up on the things I was clearly destined to fail at and applied more energy to the things I showed some promise for. In this process of elimination which probably started in about grade 4, I tried my hand at everything! I tried every track and field event that existed and found that although I sprinted about as fast as a giraffe running on well oiled ice, my long legs were a great advantage for hurdles, high jump, the 1500m run and the 3000m walking race for which I won a few Johannesburg boys records. I tried my hand at tumbling, ballet, choir, debating, drama, speech, rugby, soccer, cricket, chess, math & science contests, art contest and other activities – many of which I suffered humiliating failure at.

During this time of trial and error, and several embarrassing blunders I’d rather not remember, I was also finding myself, and realizing that my set of skills was unique, and that I didn’t need to be like anyone else or impress anyone else with something I was never going to be impressive with. I started to get a sense of my strengths and weaknesses and realized that I would have to use the weapons at my disposal to achieve success in my own life and not try and shoot with someone else’s gun. Today I consult… and train… and speak… and design… and cook and hundreds of other things because I still try everything in my quest to uncover all the hidden weapons in my arsenal. For everything I find I’m good at, there are five other things I suck at first – but if I don’t try I’ll never know.

I know that many people reading this article allow low self esteem to railroad their success and discovery. For you every failure is just another ’sign’ to give up and throw in the towel. Some people are looking for anything that will back up their opinion that they’re a failure. In my journey I have learned a few things about life I’d like to share in simple terms – I hope something speaks to you:

• If you don’t believe in yourself – no one else will – really!!!
• Most people give up just before they’re about to break through.
• Everyone is the best in the world at something.
• You can do anything – you just haven’t learned how yet.
• It’s OK to have enemies. If everyone likes you, something’s wrong.
• Help other people become great and your success will follow.
• Don’t EVER be scared to ask questions. Pretending to be clever is really dumb.
• Don’t rate your successes and failures by other people’s standards. You have to live your life – not them!
• Don’t tolerate people talking down to you or dismissing your potential. Stand up for yourself.
• Don’t live other people’s dreams – live your own.
• Don’t get freaked out when people tease or ridicule you about your inadequacies, it’s just their own self hatred manifesting. Don’t ever tease other people in this way – you’re poisoning yourself.
• Try everything once before you say you can’t or that you don’t ‘like’ it.
• Understand your limitations. Maximize your strengths.
• When you fail, get over it!!! Get up, and get going again.

The Christian Bible has a scripture that goes, “You shall know the truth, and the truth will set you free”.

I find it ironic that this scripture is often wielded in defense of that religion or simply to make them feel justified about their ‘rightness’ – as though the random use of clichés makes anything you say more accurate or truthful… after all ‘All roads lead to Rome’ so… well I’m not sure but it makes me sound clever so I’ll go with it. That said, I have to admit that I love the statement from an Atheistic perspective – and I agree that as we start reasoning, thinking and enquiring, we do find the truth and we finally become free.

Free from what? Freedom suggests that we are enslaved to something in the first place – imprisoned – bound. Christians think they are free? What are they free from? – Apparently sin and eternal damnation. Let’s put aside for a minute the fact that most Christians disagree on which activities/thoughts/actions are “sins” and which are not, or that most Christians believe we’re born ’sinful’ whether we like it or not, despite never having ’sinned’ before birth. And let’s not even start looking at the absurd improbability of a place called Hell, let alone the fact that nobody can agree about what it looks like or who’s going there… What really is far more difficult for me to swallow is that Christians actually believe they have the monopoly on all things right and wrong – good and bad. A frequent response to my blogs and Facbook updates is, “How would we know what right and wrong is without religion?” Let’s take the set of ‘rules’ that are most commonly agreed upon – the Ten Commandments. Are you honestly trying to tell me you think the Israelites didn’t know that murder was ‘bad’ before they got the tablets from Moses? Do we think that without Christians preaching every Sunday the whole of humanity would go off on a murderous, raping, stealing spree of carnage and destruction? Have we forgotten that religion is so often the cause of this type of behavior and not the cure?

In exchange for promises of heaven and praising God forever (another absurd concept), we give up our freedom: Freedom to challenge nonsensical doctrines; Freedom to think private thoughts without being though-policed; Freedom to decide how we want to have sex; Freedom to do what we want on a Sunday; Freedom to consider the evidence and come to our own conclusions; Freedom to read what we want – hear what we want – watch what we want. Whatever truth Christians claim to ‘know’, it has not set them free at all – it has replaced real freedom with false promises, mind control and subservience. When I look at the Christian church, I don’t see freedom – I see millions of victims and a handful of opportunists who feed off the system. Don’t even get me started with the other religions. Religion has convinced billions of people that the life they live on earth is meaningless and arbitrary compared to the eternity they will spend in their respective ‘Heavens’ – so instead of recognizing the mind blowing significance of these 70 or so years and living life fully, they spend their time ‘denying’ the world and ‘preparing’ for the end – yet another absurd concept. Why would God punish or reward you for a gazillion years of eternity based on the decisions you made in 30 years on planet Earth? Who comes up with this stuff?!

If I have 70 years to live I’m going to live it as a free man! I will not be dictated to by the ever changing whims of religious groupings or fantastical myths. I will dedicate my life to making the world a great place for my kids and their kids – because that’s what I would have wanted my forefathers to do for me. I will resist all attempts to coerce me into relinquishing my free will for promises of life after death in a place that cannot be proven, tested or found. I will neither blame God, nor the Devil for any consequence of my own decision or any random event of nature. I will decide who I have sex with and how. I will decide what I look at, listen to, taste or touch. I will not allow my life and actions be reduced to a list of ‘rights’ and ‘wrongs’ to be judged by the self righteous. I will oppose mind control and oppression wherever I see it. This is freedom! Can you handle it?

“Success is 99 percent failure” – Soichiro Honda (Founder of Honda Motor Company).

We have all failed. We will all fail. These are undeniable truths. Most of your successes have come from how you’ve handled your failures. There are people who…

• fail and then believe they are ‘failures’ – triggering a cycle of failure in their lives.
• have suffered from some big failures and have thrown in the towel. They’re tired and have lost all hope for future success.
• deny their failures and shift the blame. These people never succeed because they never learn or grow.
• are scared of failing and so never try anything daring, anything risky, and anything big in their lives – just in case they fail in the attempt.
• believe it is a sin to fail. They have been trained to perform at all times and meet the expectations of someone else. This devolves into points 1 and 3 above.

Being scared of failure is about as clever as being afraid that you might be hit by a crashing plane on the way to work. If we keep thinking about it we’ll never leave home. In the case of the plane we push aside the fear by considering the how miniscule the probability is of that ever happening. In the case of failure we need to develop a sense of self esteem and adaptability. So what if I fail? I’ll try again, or I’ll try something else, or I’ll use the failure as a catalyst for a new plan of action.

I remember my first ever assembly as head boy. It was my role to assemble the 1000 or so students in the quadrangle and go through a list of general announcements while the teachers filed in from their morning staff meeting. I had my new flashy blazer on and a few natural stage-fright jitters. I took a deep breath and strode boldly onto stage to take my place behind the microphone at the podium. Just as my long clumsy legs approached the ’spotlight’, my size 12 feet swept up the microphone cable and in an instant I was falling like a giant redwood among the ruins of podium, mic and cables. In that instant I had to decide what to do with my failure. Would I lie there like a rabbit in the headlights or would I get up and acknowledge that I hadn’t made a great start to my year and get on with what had to be done. I got up and joined in the applause and laughter I was receiving from the crowd – told a joke – and carried on with the announcements. I had many failures that year, but in the end I think my season as head prefect was a successful one.

Anyone who claims never to have failed is either delusional or Superman, and even Superman fails a whole bunch in the new era of comics. So what do you do when you fail? Here are some suggestions for getting over failure and moving on to success:

• Assess the situation honestly. Ask yourself why you failed. Consider which of the reasons for your failure had to do with poor decisions and which were out of your control. Be honest. Ask the opinion of someone you trust to give you perspective.
• Learn from your mistakes! If you made a poor decision – acknowledge it – and decide how you might have done it better if you could do it again.
• Don’t wallow! There is no benefit in telling yourself what a loser you are, or sitting in a dark room drowning in misery and self pity. This attitude is a failure in itself! Get up. Call a friend. Talk about it. Get it out of your system. Move on!!
• Consider who you are. You are not the sum of your failures. You are so much more! You have talents, skills, passions, dreams, gifts and attributes that are unique in the world – in fact I believe that everyone is the best in the world at something – you may just need to find out what it is.
• Get back on the horse! Leave the past where it belongs and dare to try something else. Most great achievers suffered massive failures before they discovered their success.
• Put things in perspective. Many people think they have failed because they have been conditioned to see certain things as failures that are not. For example, a man is retrenched and finds himself unable to pay the bills for a few months. Is this failure? Not at all! He hardly needs to feel ‘guilty’ about circumstances out of his control. It can become failure if he gives up hope, sleeps all day and stops looking for new opportunities – but that’s a different story.
• Plan. To get over your failures you need to plan and strategize. What’s your next step? Write it down. Discuss it with a friend. Draw pictures. Make phone calls. Send emails. Get organized.

We might not always have direct control over our successes, but we certainly have control over how we handle our failures. When you fail – and you will most certainly fail at something – exercise your will and look to your success.

In the spirit of reason, logic, communication and rationality, I am going to suggest a few reasons why people so often don’t make sense, and what they can do about their sense-less-ness. I refer to the way people engage in conversations, debates, critiques and other interactions with people where they’re trying to say something, but in fact say something else – or even worse, are trying to say something that really has nothing to do with the topic or context of the conversation.

There are several root causes for the dreaded disease of sense-less-ness:

• People don’t listen. Many people have the insanely annoying habit of listening only for gaps in the conversation so that they can continue to spew forth their out-of-context agenda at any cost. These people have no idea what anyone is talking about because they’re not engaged for the purpose of discovery or learning anything, but rather to give… and give… generously from their never-depleting resource of knowledge and oracle-like opinions. There are others in this category who simply don’t have time to both listen AND speak, so they err on the side of speaking. And then there are others still who can’t listen to you if they don’t like you – so the more offended they get, the less they hear anything you may have to say. You will never make sense until you learn to listen.
• People don’t understand or care about the rules of rational argument. This is my personal favorite! I can still handle someone who may not understand that they have broken three rules of logic in one sentence because they simply don’t have a clue what logic is or how to use it, but when someone who understands logic, insists on being illogical, for manipulative and bullying effect, I tend to lose my sense of humor. The following are NOT reasonable or logical arguments:
  • “Because I say so!”
  • “It must be true because I read it in a book”
  • “I’m fond of carrots. Some cakes have carrots in them – so I love cakes”
  • “Zulus are taxi drivers”

  It’s one thing for someone to get their argument muddled up in the heat of verbal dialogue – not everyone thinks quick on their feet – but there’s no excuse for sending an illogical email or letter which you’ve had time to think through and double check with a colleague for instance. Logic takes practice, and I have a strong conviction that all children should be taught logic and rational debating skills at school in their language classes, especially because so many kids drop mathematics as a subject in grade 10.

• People are dominated by their right or left brain. Not all systematic and logical people (left brained) make sense – mainly because they often lack in the emotional and people skills department. Often discussions only make sense in the context of both feeling (right brain) and fact (left brain). For instance, an emotional wife says something like “My whole world is crashing around me!!” Her left brained husband says “Don’t talk rubbish!” Of course, from a purely logical point of view he is correct in his assessment that his wife may be overstating the case, but he’s not connecting with the emotional truth that she feels as though she’s about to be crushed by a heavy weight. Her statement makes more ’sense’ than his in the context of what is being discussed. Equally, an entirely right brained person might take every conversation down a rabbit hole of fantasy and feeling and ignore all rules of logic. To be truly good at problem solving you need to develop both sides of your brain and also learn to be in tune with irony and sarcasm, as most people don’t usually ‘literally’ say what they mean.
• People don’t know the difference between healthy debate and emotional warfare. All points of view that can be argued or defended are merely that – points of view. There are multitudes of people who simply cannot discuss some topics without getting ‘personally offended’, as though the topic defined them, and any disagreement is perceived as an attack on their character. Here are examples of points of view that have such people lashing back with personal attacks and irrationality:
  • “I don’t think God exists”
  • “Marriage is irrelevant today”
  • “Pornography can be healthy”
  • “Women should have the right to have an abortion”
  • “There’s nothing wrong with being gay – people have the right to have sex with anyone they like”
  • “George bush was correct to invade Iraq”
  • “The bible is not God’s word. It was written by men”

  These are the sorts of topics that cause people to switch off, stop listening and shut down – and they shouldn’t be! It’s 2010 – time to grow up and stop living in the dark ages of cultural and religious censorship.

So what can one do when they discover the early symptoms of sense-less-ness in their lives? Pray… Only kidding! Read – grow your paradigms and vocabulary which are tools for rational discussion. Learn about the language of logic (Philosophy 101). Listen! Listen to hear and understand – not to respond – then your responses will make sense. Grow your general knowledge and sense of the world. Practice – engage in debates on hot topics with people you trust and feel safe with, this will help you practice the techniques of reasonable and rational debate. And finally – don’t take everything personally – have fun talking to people, even when they disagree with you… no wait – ESPECIALLY when they disagree with you!

The ‘Zeitgeist’ of doing business is rapidly changing in the world. Gone are the days when boards of directors could make autocratic decisions for their own gain at the expense of people or the environment. As people are waking up (finally) to the fact that life is precious,and to their own sense of self worth, and right to an opinion, businesses are starting to realize that they don’t exist for the benefit of their bosses, but for all the role players involved, which include lowly tea ladies and even the Earth itself. This paradigm shift is taking the focus off making money only and moving us to a more human, right-brained and caring approach to the way we do people – and it’s about time too!!

There are still a few dinosaurs out there in business who think that barking out three word commands to their employees is a valid communication technique. There are still a handful of emotional infants who are bewildered when an employee stands up to their bullying, and simply can’t imagine what gives this rebel the idea that they might be “equal” to their own high and mighty self. There are still an outpost of colonial rednecks in business who see people as a necessary inconvenience in the ultimate goal of raping the system and every resource available to further their personal ambitions of wealth and popularity. These are the people who don’t read articles like this one. These managers, and even a few intelligent and approachable types, see team building as a complete waste of time and money. “Why would I want to spend precious Rands or Dollars to take my staff away just to have fun? What good is a little temporary motivation? First show me the math that demonstrates how this will positively impact my bottom line! I don’t do games!!”

This is a very shortsighted and ill-informed view of things. If you’re left brained about the whole thing, here is some people math to help you along:

• People + Resources = Income Potential
• Positive People + Effective Resources = Greater Income Potential
• No Team Building + no Communication + no Motivation = Negative People
• Negative People = strikes, go slows, time wasting grievances and reduced Income Potential
• Team Building + Communication + Motivation = Positive People
• Positive People = Energy & Enthusiasm & Ownership = Greater Income Potential

The numbers seem quite clear to me – if you want to increase your income, get with the program, after all, it is 2010 and people actually matter these days!

So what is team building? Many people that have a negative view of the concept have developed this outlook on adventure team building events like river rafting or wall climbing. The problem with these events is that they often promote competition and being ‘better’ than everyone on your team, resulting in one or two ’superpeople’ loving the event (because they ‘win’) while the losers feel left out and useless – and there ends up being more animosity back at work than there was before. Now don’t get me wrong – I’m one of those people who loves to compete and do crazy things and would personally enjoy such events – but not because they build teams – rather because they’re fun and a great stress relief for people like me. So let’s call these traditional ‘team building’ events… stress relief sessions. To build a team you need to inject the kind of dynamics that get people thinking, talking, playing and laughing together. Once you’ve achieved this you can move onto getting them to ‘work’ together. Here are some key ingredients for an event that actually builds teams:

1. Start by building the individual. Raise self esteem and self worth. I use three specific activities to achieve this: The Dream Walk, Personality Power and Wheel of Life depending on the time available. All of these are done in a conference room and require no physical prowess or competitiveness – instead they leave the delegates feeling uplifted, motivated and open to whatever else may be on the program.
2. Create opportunities that force people to share without interruption and listen without interrupting. For this I use a commercially available board game called ‘The Ungame’ and other activities like ‘Walk Talks’ and ‘Kneecap Sessions’.
3. Do right brained activities! We spend so much time in left brained environments that many of us have a shriveled nut for a right brain. Right brained activities are things that involve color, creativity, music, dance etc. My Hero Game activity has people sitting around assembling and painting figurines. At first people are tentative about such exercises but once they get started they don’t want to stop because they’re healing and growing and it feels great!
4. Do physical activities that don’t prevent the average person from getting involved in a meaningful way. My favorite team building game is team Frisbee which gets the team dynamic going and everyone can get involved. Team volleyball with an enormous lightweight plastic ball is also fun. There are hundreds of clever ways to get people playing together in a way that is not overly competitive, so stay away from having winners and losers – more especially individual losers – rather have 20 people on a team all ‘losing’ together.
5. Energy and Fun!!!! Don’t get an accountant to run your team building event – rather make sure your facilitator has an inspirational quality about them or you’re going to have a lot of rolling of eyes and huffing in frustration from your group. Also make sure the facilitator doesn’t come across as ‘cheesy’ or ‘cliché’ in the way they bring things across. Use variety to keep things alive.
6. Get people doing unexpected things together like making pizza in teams from raw ingredients or solving puzzles together.
7. Give people homework – a personal goal, or something they have to do as a team over the following days and weeks. This will ensure that the energy of the event continues to have positive effect in people’s lives once it is over.

Team building works. Regular team building works even better. But best of all is Team Building followed up by interested managers who care for, and communicate with, and motivate their people every day. Feel free to contact me for some ideas for your team building event.

We all have vivid memories of certain movies we watched as children. These movies moved us – provoked us – scared us – amazed us! In many ways these movies shaped us, and gave us clues about what we wanted to do when we grew up and what our tastes were. I quickly fell in love with the fantasy genre and all things wizard, sword and warrior – although cinema technology in those days couldn’t always do justice to the ideas. I remember finding ‘Westerns’ boring, but ‘Eastern’ kung fu movies were awesome!! So here are a few movies that had an enormous impact on me growing up. Many of these I have watched well over twenty times and I still consider them some of the best movies ever made. If you missed any of these movies, do yourself a favour and track them down and give them a watch.

Enter the Dragon – Robert Clouse (1973… of course I didn’t watch it then!)

Bruce Lee kicking ass in his own special way! Every time I saw a Bruce Lee movie I became a raving kung fu master for a few hours and practiced my technique on my sister.

Pete’s Dragon – Don Chaffey (1977)

One of Disney’s first full length features with real actors interacting with animated characters. The dragon was seriously cool and cute.

Wizards – Ralph Bakshi (1977)

This movie blew my mind!! It’s a seriously weird and dark futuristic fantasy with strange animation, negative photo effects and a fascinating story. A must see!

Superman (the movie) – Richard Donner (1978)

The one that started them all! Christopher Reeves will always be the only Superman to me. I’ve wanted to be superman ever since. I used to love collecting the superman stickers off the Pepsi bottles.

The Dark Crystal – Jim Henson (1982)

One of my top 5 movies of all time. An epic fantasy adventure done entirely with puppets and robotics (not muppets). The story was fantastic and the production was ahead of its time.

Tron – Steven Lisberger (1982)

The first sci-fi I really enjoyed. People get sucked into the ‘internet’ and end up fighting sentient viruses that look like badly dressed people with killer frizbees… OK, so you need to see it to understand it. This had some ‘Matrix’ concepts long before the Matrix.

The NeverEnding Story – Wolfgang Petersen (1984)

Who didn’t love this movie?! A classic fantasy tale with one of the most memorable theme songs ever (after Rocky’s “Eye of the Tiger”).

Labyrinth – Jim Henson (1986)

OK, so Jim Henson rules!! Another masterpiece with puppets and actors in the form of David Bowie and (sigh) Jennifer Connelly in her first major role. This also has my favourite soundtrack ever – performed by David Bowie.

Willow – Ron Howard (1988)

Anyone who knows me knows how much I love this movie, starring Val Kilmer in one of his best performances ever, this movie has everything: love potions-action-adventure-wizards-swords-comedy-short people-even shorter people-trolls… you name it.

Please send your list and share your memories!

I have received a couple of requests to do an article about success. Is success dependant on hard work or is it all just chance? I spent some time thinking through these concepts and have developed a three colour theory on success. Firstly, we need to be on the same page with our use of the terms ‘Success’, ‘Hard Work’ and ‘Luck’ – all three of these terms have a huge number of applications and meanings. For the purpose of this article, here are the definitions:

Success = Achieving a personal goal to do, have or be something

Hard work = Application of personal energy, effort and time in the sense that it requires some degree of personal sacrifice or exertion.

Luck = Chance or random coincidence outside of your direct personal control, or if you insist – an act of God.

The definition of success here is the critical factor. Bashir, who asked me this question, used the following example: two people with similar backgrounds, with the same education and of the same cultural and language grouping are employed at the same time in a large company. After 5 years one of them has a middle management position and earns double the salary of the other who is still in a clerical position ‘at the bottom of the ladder’. What made the one more successful than the other?

My immediate question to Bashir is, “Who are we assuming to be the more ’successful’ of the two?” to which Bashir might reply, “Huh? The first of course! The one with the position and the money!!” And that’s exactly the problem with how we see success. If our personal goal is to make a million dollars, we tend to rate the success of everyone around us by that same goal, i.e. Carol hasn’t made a million dollars so she’s not as successful as Bruce. But according to my definition of “Achieving a personal goal”, Carol may be entirely successful at her goal of ironing the laundry for the day, and in Bashir’s example, the middle manager is only ’successful’ in the context of a personal goal that goes something like, “I want to be a manager and earn double my current income in the next five years”. For all we know, the clerical guy might be more successful if his personal goal was to have a simple 8 to 5 job with low responsibility and no take home work so that he could spend more time enjoying his wife and kids.

As you can see, answering the question ‘Is success hard work or luck?’ has a lot to do with what someone is trying to be successful AT. I propose that luck and hard work play different roles depending on the context of success. The rules change depending on what we’re talking about in the same way that Newtonian physics doesn’t seem to apply at a molecular level, for which we use a different set of rules which we call Quantum physics.

I propose three ‘contexts’ for success: The Red Zone, The Blue Zone, and the Twilight Zone.

In the Red Zone our success is entirely dependent on us doing something about it. Unless a bolt of lightning escapes the twilight zone to thwart our attempts at success, we will achieve our goal through at least some sweat and effort. Of course the whole notion of working ’smarter not harder’ can also apply here, but nevertheless, work is required. Examples of achieving Red Zone success are:

• Having a clean home. The dishes aren’t going to wash themselves no matter how lucky you are or how much God loves you.
• Becoming a novelist. You’re going to have to write a book to achieve this, there’s no getting around it.

In the Blue Zone our success is not entirely up to us, but it’s not entirely out of our influence either. In this zone our own efforts tend to improve our probability for success even if they don’t ensure it. Examples include:

• Recovering after a car accident injury. Our own desire to recover and subsequent interventions (hard work) will have a positive effect on the success of our recovery but we cannot determine the ultimate specifics of our recovery. There may be unknown neural or spinal complications outside of our control which have countering effects, thereby ‘lowering’ our chances of success.
• Getting employed. You can go to a job interview and say all the right things and wear the right clothes, but someone else decides if you’re the right candidate for the job. Performing well at the interview will ‘increase your chances’ for success but not guarantee your position.
• Winning the lotto. Even though the probabilities are almost entirely against this, success still requires human intervention in the form of buying a ticket. This is very close to Twilight zone success but still in the blue zone.

In the Twilight zone our success has (seemingly) nothing to do with our own efforts at all. At first glance it would seem that this type of success is entirely random or accidental. Examples include:

• Inheriting a fortune. You didn’t ask for it – you didn’t work for it – you just got born in the right place at the right time.
• Sudden death. You’re Donald Trump about to complete your latest hotel venture and your helicopter crashes to the ground or you’re struck by lightning. Not your choice, but you have to live with it… or die with it in this case.
• You get ‘found’ by a talent scout. There are millions of really beautiful girls in the world but some talent agent travels to Morocco and finds a village girl who he takes back to the US and turns into the world’s next big supermodel. Her beautiful friend is still collecting water from a dusty desert well. Hard work? I think not.

There are any number of theories that attempt to ‘explain’ the results of the twilight zone including God, a universal ‘force’, fate, karma, etc. but for the purposes of this article we will leave these ideas alone, except to agree that things happen to us that we don’t control.

These zones could be represented with two circles, the Red and Twilight zones, intersecting at the blue zone as in the diagram below:

Any personal goal or ambition we have will fall into one of these ‘zones’. Understanding which zone the goal is ‘in’ is important for understanding why we regularly fail or succeed in achieving those goals. For example, someone who constantly feels like a ‘failure’ in their job searching because they have a misplaced belief that they don’t need to ‘do’ anything except ‘wait on God’ might find themselves wondering why they never succeed. Job hunting is a Blue zone activity which becomes more inevitable the more effort/energy is applied to the search. Then again someone might spend days and days doing a rain dance in the Sahara in dry season and wonder why their ‘efforts’ are not being rewarded, i.e. attempting to increase twilight zone success. I will write more on these ideas in future articles.

I want to focus here on the Blue zone – an area that is not unlike a strategic war game, where regular good tactics usually overcome the ups and downs of bad dice rolling. My sense (untested at this point) is that some people are more skilled at understanding the probabilities at play in their success and the ingredients required for managing those probabilities and improving their chances at success. So let’s consider Bashir’s question about the middle manager and the clerk. I will assume that the two people in question had a similar personal goal – to get promoted in the company and earn lots of money – one succeeded and the other ‘failed’. This goal is clearly a Blue zone goal: their success, although not entirely in their own hands, will be influenced by various factors (I’ll use the term ingredients) including attitude, communication skills, work hours, problem solving and other personal sacrifices or efforts by the individuals involved.

Here are some of the ingredients I believe increase the probability of success:

• Perseverance: Often the probabilities increase simply because, in time, the competition moves out or moves on, leaving you in a better position to “fill the gap”. Giving up too soon negates this principle.
• Knowledge: This increases your ability to apply your efforts wisely and play a more tactical war game. Reading and practice are critical here.
• Resources: It goes without saying that many probability reducers go away when you throw a little money at them.
• Self belief: Low self esteem is sure to lower your chances at success. Self belief influences every thought and action of your life.
• Courage: The ability to suppress terror and take action despite fear of loss, rejection, humiliation, conflict etc. is a key ingredient for success.
• Relationships: Developing a strong network of allies will weigh the dice in your favour.
• Communication: You’re more likely to attract the resources and people you need for success if you have good communication skills. People also take you more seriously.

These are just a few ingredients for improving your odds in the Blue zone. Of course all the luck in the world won’t help you if you throw double 1’s, or a bolt of lightning leaves the twilight zone and zaps you, but because we have no control over these mishaps of luck it makes sense to apply your efforts to improving your odds until success becomes inevitable.

My good friend Basil suggested that the Blue zone is where the good stuff happens – the creative stuff – the innovations. I agree with him. I think we’ve all been zapped by a few unexpected ‘acts of god’ in our lives, and when that happens we tend to be scared of going too close to the twilight zone and prefer to scuttle around in the Red zone where things are entirely predictable and ‘risk free’. You may find that your ‘impossible dreams’ are not so improbable when you start applying some of the ingredients I have suggested. Remember, to win the lotto you have to buy a ticket – and although I don’t respect gambling because of the insane odds, I think some of the so called ‘risks’ we’re so afraid to take have very respectable odds when it’s all broken down.

Please send your comments. I’m especially interested to hear what you think are the factors that influence the odds in the Blue zone.

I always find it amusing when I hear people use the phrase ‘There’s nothing worse than…’ when I can usually think of 10 things worse than what they’re suggesting in an instant, for instance: sardine milkshakes. This led me to thinking, what are those things for which I myself might use the phrase ‘There’s nothing worse than…’ and the following came to mind:

1.    People who simply don’t pitch when they’ve made a commitment to attend something. They don’t call, they don’t apologize and they don’t care who they let down.

2.    People who are determined to be fashionably late for everything. If a show starts at 6PM they start getting ready to leave at 6PM. The first half an hour of any event is clearly an unimportant formality that does not require the dignity of their presence.

3.    Parents who call their children ‘Christian’ or ‘Muslim’ or ‘Hindu’. As though any child of age 5 or 7 or even 11 could conceivably contemplate all their options and make a rational, informed decision about their religious views while being brought up to fear and distrust any point of view other than that of their parents. This type of religious brainwashing and morbid indoctrination by parents should be outlawed in society as a crime against freedom of thought and human rights.

4.     Back pain! It really sucks.

5.    Dentists. Who are these creatures in white robes that insist on drilling against nerves that lead straight behind your eyes into your brain with such explosions of acute pain that your nightmares pale in comparison. On top of that they insist that you lie on the most uncomfortably designed horizontal chair known to man, for an hour, with intense light shining in your eyes, after which you need a chiropractor to sort out your spine. Your jaw and lips are tugged at and extended to the extent that you have bruises and a strange clicking in your jaw the first time you try and eat anything. It brings back a line from the musical score of little shop of horrors: ‘You’ll be a dentist. You have a talent for causing things pain! Son, be a dentist. People will pay you to be inhumane!’

6.    Poor customer service. I think particularly of those receptionists who can’t even be bothered to hold eye contact as they bark out one word answers to your questions and make it very clear that you’re wasting their valuable Tetris time.

7.    Tasteless cooking. Turning dull, tasteless food into something worth eating often takes nothing more than a suggestion of an imagination, a sprinkle of herbs, or a dash of soy sauce. I cannot understand why people settle for the mundane in this area of our lives that consumes so much of our time and which has the power to add such joy and adventure to each day.

8.    Teasing repartee and hurtful banter. I often sit in amazement as I watch one or two of my friends or guests pick up on a few vulnerabilities in someone in the group and then spend the rest of the evening honing in on those weaknesses with great jest and laughter and seemingly not able to stop themselves until the victim is utterly exhausted or brought to tears. The fact that these wolves see this as some kind of social victory is even more bewildering. Of course, these same people have no ability to withstand even a portion of what they dish out and ultimately show themselves to be the cowardly schoolyard bullies that they are.

9.    Grand prix. Sorry I just don’t get it. Hour after hour of cars going round in circles. I have similar feelings about cricket and golf which are, in my view, just male excuses for spending less time with the family.

I’d love to hear some of your ‘There’s nothing worse than’ ideas.