The Miracle Posting

We search the Internet because we're looking for solutions to our problems. We find an interesting blog posting, somewhat thought-provoking, that we really enjoy reading. Our day continues normally and when it's over we fall asleep, still concerned about our situation. While asleep a miracle occurs. The underlying issues creating our problems resolve themselves. The problems will begin to go away once we wake-up; but there's still one thing wrong. We're asleep and have no idea the miracle started by the blog posting has happened.


How do we find out about the miracle the next day? What could we do differently that would show us indicators? What would those indicators be and what could we do to nurture and speed them along?

 These are the questions asked by Solution Focused Brief Therapy (SFBT) practitioners, a practice commonly used to help those struggling with personal issues that has equal value in an entrepreneur's life. The Active Investor doesn't get a free pass. That investment in our own business or professional career comes with significant problems along with the freedom and financial benefits. It's our business. How do we wake-up in the morning and deal with it?

Frequently the best answers are not in the language of the problem. They are hard to see because you have to look in non-problem places to find them. That's a lot of places, so we need to narrow this down! We do that by looking in solution places instead. That is, try to imagine finding an answer that is already out there. What would that look like?

Sometimes, simply a solution-based way of looking at things brings sudden, dramatic insights. Other times, it doesn't. Now what? 

Badness comes in degrees. Some days have moments that are much better than others. What happens that allows those better moments? How can we capture more of them? The solution begins to unfold itself for us incrementally as we learn how to do this. The trick is to be looking for it.

Could each of us have a miracle bog posting somewhere? Perhaps.  Maybe for someone it's this one. Tomorrow morning, how would I know if a miracle has happened?

Photo Credit: angelofsweetbitter

A Disease of Choice

Image via Wikipedia

If we focus enough on the potential of contracting a certain disease, we will increase our chances of actually getting it to the point where we are actually sick. What if that were a good thing?

House M.D. is a television show about an obnoxious doctor who ingeniously cures patients with exotic conditions in spite of his offensive manners. In one episode his staff was impressed with the positive attitude of one of their patients, who in spite of having a condition they couldn't cure was always kind and caring. This was a personal challenge to House who begins his relationship with the patient by trying to make the patient react badly. That never happens and a frustrated House suddenly considers the possibility that maybe this patient isn't upbeat and positive in spite of his disease, maybe he's that way because of the disease. This insight leads to a diagnosis and cure. The episode ends with the cured patient still being kind and caring, which was something of an annoyance to the lead character.

We believe many of our short-comings may be the result of medical conditions. For example, Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) makes it difficult (perhaps impossible) for sufferers to focus and therefore succeed in areas that require study. This is  serious condition that should be treated and not ignored.

Now if something exists, then it's possible that its opposite also exits. What would a life be like if we could also suffer from an opposite brain condition, Inattention Deficit Disorder, IDD? The symptoms would be an inability to be thoughtless and distracted which would require the sufferer to live a life of complete awareness. That would be a great disease! If we were obsessively worried about contracting it, we might actually get it! To obsessively worry, one would continually imagine what life would be like with a medical inability to suffer from your perceived short-comings.

Every personal investment has its elements of self-doubt and reservation. These can control and derail us from our purpose in life. What if we had a medical condition that made it impossible for this to happen to us? What if we had the insights, confidence, and courage we need because of a medical condition that just made us that way? If we have a purpose in life, isn't it reasonable to be able to contract it?

While suffering appears to be an unavoidable consequence of living, there is both productive and unproductive suffering. Why not choose the former?

Return On Investment

An enterprise starts with the hope of a return on its investment. For a start-up, this is often envisioned on a spreadsheet, with the initial revenues being smaller than the initial expenses creating losses; however, the revenues increasing by some percentage and over time they outpace expenses to generate an attractive return on investment (ROI). While that is the typical story on paper; it's not reflected in the reality around us.

The World Population graph seems to show a linear growth like the one described in the above plan with some event happening in the late 1800's to suddenly make it change. Any idea what that historic event might have been?

If you haven't read the paper folding post, this may make a more sense if you do that. The graph shows natural, exponential growth. If we would change the time scale to end a century earlier, the curve would look the same, only the historic event would now appear to be in the late 1700's.  End another century earlier, and the momentous event still moves back with the new scaling.

There was no event that changed the World population growth rate. Population growth is an example of growth from feedback and this graph is what that curve will always looks like. Small victories in the beginning, remaining small for far longer than our linear minds can imagine, then accumulating faster than linear thinking can grasp.

The two mistakes we can make are to believe the smaller growth rate is failure or to not accept the higher growth rate as success and invest in necessary infrastructure to keep the feedback going. It takes a faith that the returns will really happen to avoid either downfall. Of course this growth doesn't go on forever. There are always limits to growth; however, some are just in our linear minds.

During the Beatles's era, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, who may have been the subject of their song Fool on the Hill, challenged his followers with the claim that if the square root of 1% of a population practices Transcendental Meditation (TM), crime in the area would decrease. In 1993, TM followers came to Washington DC during a record heat wave (which correlates to increased crime) to create such a critical number. Crime decreased for the period of the experiment. After its conclusion, it increased again.

This is not unique to TM. The story has been repeated in countless endeavors where fools have believed in continuing to repeat something powerful and gentle until the feedback effects can finally be observed; or until their return on investment is finally realized. We live in a faithful (systematic) universe; just not a linear one.

Image credit: mattlemmon

On The Edge of Space and Time

Using the image on the left as a guide, image a metal plate with a hole in the center that is being heated. We know that heating metal causes it to expand , so the arrows indicate how the plate will expand. The question is what will happen to the hole? Will the forces applied cause it to get bigger or smaller?

Please take a moment to to quickly decide on one of the following positions before reading further:

1) The hole will get bigger
2) The hole will get smaller
3) I'm just not sure

Let's ask the same question in a different manner. Suppose there is a bolt stuck in a metal hole. If the metal is heated, will that loosen the bolt and make it easier to remove? Yes or No?

Generally, looking at the arrows in the diagram causes confusion. They all appear to be pushing against the diameter of the hole in a way that should make it smaller. Yet that just doesn't feel like a right answer and Position 3, being not sure, is a typical first reaction. Asking essentially the same question without the "helpful" diagram is much easier to answer. Even the mechanically challenged, like myself, imagine the bolt getting looser as the metal heats. The correct answer, which we all intuitively know, is heating the metal plate will cause all dimensions to increase, including the hole's.

Why is it difficult for most of us to quickly see what we know as obvious in that problem? This is really an illustration of two principles. The first is we tend to make decisions using an "Anchor and Adjust" strategy. In this case, the misleading illustration was put first to set it as a mental "Anchor". Then when we try to answer by Adjusting from that image, we run into difficulty because of the apparent shrinking effect of the arrows. Anchor and Adjust is very powerful and will be described further in future postings. The other principle is that even though we know this is an expanding universe, we are easily suckered into acting as if it were shrinkable.

The general acceptance of Hubble's Law and The Big Bang Theory has spread the knowledge that the universe must continue to expand; however, we tend to think of that as something only related to astronomy. Each of us are on the very edge of the space-time continuum and each passing moment of our lives moves our edge further outward. A popular metaphor is to imagine an ant on a balloon. Our ant's "space" (along with all the other ants) in space-time must expand as the balloon of the universe inflates (expands). We are all always in a place of expansion. The universe has no other way of acting. No matter how it appears, it's just not shrinkable.

The Active Investor, a business owner or professional, initially believes in an expanding universe. Time and circumstances wear on us all and we all eventually face "arrows" that indicate we were wrong about the universe. If that conclusion just doesn't feel right, there is every good reason to believe it's just so much junk science obscuring the truth. A suitable path out of the circumstance is to take gentle yet powerful actions that do feel right and to repeat them until feelings coincide with situation.

This blog is written to inspire good feeling thoughts that lead to actions. They will manifest themselves if we seek them. They have to. It's our part in the expansion of our edge of the universe.

Sellers Remorse - The Greatest Exit Ever Told

This diagram summarizes many Exit Planning strategies. We've all experienced the fact that nothing goes on forever. There are limits to growth. This is due to the effect of Balancing loops as explained in System Dynamics. The diagram shows business growth leveling off as some limit to a resource is ultimately reached.

The optimal time for a business owner to move to their next challenge is before that happens. It's the "X" on the chart marked "Time to Exit." From this earlier position a Potential Growth possibility exits. A new ownership will change parameters and frequently delay the Balancing forces that result in the Actual Growth curve. The big issue at this point in time is that it feels like selling now is too soon. This is strange; but that's the wrong feeling you may get at the right time.

We can never know the future and can never know the exact time selling our business will yield the optimal result. What we can know is when it's time to move on to the next thing in our life, in spite of financially-based feelings.

The timing of the Easter story is striking when seen as an Exit. The crucifixion Christians celebrate on Easter is preceded by Palm Sunday. This day celebrates the triumphant entry of Jesus into Jerusalem, by all political and social standards the peak of His ministry to date.

Imagine the feelings that might have been experienced by Jesus and His followers as He Exits at this point. Everything seems to be going so well! Yet His mission is completing and He knows this is the right time. Unlike every other Jewish Prophet or King before Him, death will not limit the growth of His ministry. Defeating death will enable the greatest growth cycle of all history.

In the Garden of Gethsemane it may have felt to everyone like leaving too soon. That's not always a bad thing; it can be what the right timing feels like.

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Spring

February is the beginning of Spring here in North Texas. My grandfather would have been plowing fields in Chilton to plant winter wheat. I'm over at Foreman's Hardware getting ready for another growing season and I feel like Tim, the Tool-man, Taylor, enjoying that unique feeling of being a traditional hard goods store. It's great to be here in the Spring!

We can't see the growth that's happening beneath our feet; but we can believe in it. In nature, we've seen it happen every year, so that's the basis of our faith in the coming growing season. 

Not everyone is a Spring person. Spring people love the feeling of possibility. They can work in their yard, or work on their business, without having to see instant results. Their immediate payoff is in their imagination. They can see how good the yard is going to look or how successful the business initiative will become. When you talk to them, they can't resist telling you how great it all will become. It's a happy conversation as you get carried by their enthusiasm.

In business, Spring exists all year long. Dr. Jeffery Lant popularized the "Rule of Seven" which tells us the first six contacts with a prospect are for awareness. Only after 7 or more do we see results. The email autoresponder industry suggests the following:

2% of sales are made on the 1st contact,

3% of sales are made on the 2nd contact,

5% of sales are made on the 3rd contact,

10% of sales are made on the 4th contact,

80% of sales are made on the 5th - 12th contact.

Both views are about a growing-only season we're going to experience.

To really enjoy a business, we first learn to see and enjoy the possibilities during it's Spring.