Tag: Philip Dodson

‘Why’ power

Posted on by philipdodson

OK here we go another 750Words, it’s day 7 and I’ve showed up everyday. I have already written 4,600 in six days, that’s about a tenth of a book.

The compound effect is already kicking in, a small step every single day makes things happen. If someone had said to me last Monday that I had to find time to write 5,200 words in a week, I would have laughed. My Uni dissertation was 10,000 words and that took me an age. Well, I have written half that in a week, in less than 4 hours in total. Mind you as a student I had a slightly different focus!!

I now feel it is getting easier each day to do. I am sure there will be days, when the novelty has worn off, that I will find some days when it’s more like a chore. But I have noticed that the most successful people do the hard work whatever.

That’s one of the biggest learning curves I have had, is that life is full of repetitive and mundane things, that simply have to be done. What happens a good deal of the time is just as the momentum is going, we give up.

Then we realise that was a mistake and we have to start over again. Each time you stop and start, it becomes harder to get going again. It’s like a car, the hard work is accelerating to a ‘cruising’ speed. Or going for a run, the first part is hard, but once you are in your rhythm, it’s easy to keep going.

Life is like that, it’s the starting that is hard and the over-thinking of things is where the procrastination creeps in and the voice in our head starts to convince us it’s OK to not do something.

We become experts at creating excuses not to do something, instead of stopping the talking and just getting on with the doing.

Then we find, that once we get going it is not so bad, in fact it really is 10 X easier than we anticipated.

However, life isn’t a short-sprint either and many of us are guilty of starting, getting some momentum going, then seeing some results and relaxing.

Then we start to find the ‘doing’ a little repetitive and mundane. We give up, we see the initial success. But what happens then is that we realise that stopping leads to things not going the way we wanted.

Then we remember the hard part of starting and we go off again telling ourselves that it’s hard work etc. and we’ve find it even harder to start again.

So the key thing is to start quickly, not allowing too much over-thinking, then do the ‘doing’ by small steps that you build upon. The momentum will build better if you increase things over time, a step at a time.

No good charging off on a sprint at the start of a long race, it’s just not sustainable.

The one missing element however in all of this, often the reason successful people plough on through the hard graft, is your ‘why’ power.

I always thought that anything was possible through sheer determination alone. While this is true in the short-term and in extreme situations in life, longer term you need something far stronger. Will power runs out for all of us without the ‘why’ power.

Your ‘why’ power is obviously unique to you and what drives one person, will not be the same as the other. So we all have to search inside ourselves and work it out.

It could be family, recognition etc. etc., and it will be tied directly to your values.

Values are the corner stone of everything in our lives. If you haven’t yet worked out what they are, then I really recommend doing so. So few people bother to work out what they are and write them down. Even fewer live their lives by them.

Whenever we comprise our values, we will feel uncomfortable and that won’t go away all the time that remains the case. We will not be happy if our values are compromised over a long period of time. We can accommodate others values with people we love and trust.

The core values that we hold, will determine our ‘why’ power. Our ‘why’ power has to be strong enough to overcome the obstacles and curve balls that life will throw at us. Your values are the stone of life and therefore the reason we go on and on with our dreams, often against all the odds, is that the ‘why’ power is totally aligned with the core values we hold.

What does collaboration really mean for the world?

Posted on by philipdodson

What does collaboration really mean for the world?

I think that we would all agree that with 7 billion of us on the planet and with limited/dwindling resources, something has to change.

The problem at the moment is, we have not yet reached that critical tipping point, where necessity forces change on those who are most resisting it. We need to have shortages of fuel, food, water etc on big scale.

The reason it needs to get to this almost anarchic position is, that the old school system doesn’t want change. It likes the old scarcity, fear based world that it controls. It likes hoarding all the knowledge and it definitely does not like sharing.

The top 1% globally that controls all the wealth and power likes the status quo exactly as it is.

However the collaborative or sharing economy has the potential to give the world a complete ‘software’ upgrade, where we can move from ‘old school bollocks’ 3.8 to a brand new operating system, which is completely focused on sharing. Thus avoid having to wait for a total catastrophe.

The benefits of this for the human race are enormous, it is a chance to start implementing the solutions that can save our world. The world is on ‘fire’ and you’re not going to put it out by pouring the odd bucket or two of water on it, which is the mainly what the governments of the world do. In fact many of them actually help the ‘fire’ to spread by pouring ‘petrol’ on the ‘fire’ not water.

Most of the worlds problems could be solved and be solved by many of the new technologies that are or could be developed if enough resources were allocated to them.

One example could be hydrogen cars or other alternative fuels coupled with driver-less cars that are shared in a community. Why do we all need to own our own car and use up massive amounts of the world’s precious resources. Why because the old school world needs you to buy oil.

We can already share car journeys with platforms such as Bla Bla Car. We can recycle our furniture with Furniture Re-Use Network, we can get people going our way to delivery things via Nimber. However at the moment this sharing economy is in it’s infancy and this what needs to change and fast. The momentum needs to be accelerated.

That’s why collaboration is so important, so time banks like Echo (Economy of Hours) can grow and replace the need for money in the way in which we use it today.

We need that knowledge that the old school system keeps, in order to maintain it’s power and control over us. We need to start sharing ideas and collaborating with others to improve those ideas in order to improve them and unlock that huge latent potential that exists among the 7 billion souls that inhabit this planet.

It’s time to stop all this small minded nations and petty party politics, we need to start thinking about the world as the human race, for many reasons, and we need to get people leading who are not shackled by the dogma of a political agenda that’s based on self-preservation.

Sharing is the only way that we can change the fact, that the 85 most wealthiest people have as much wealth as the 3.5 billion poorest. I defy anyone to give me a rational argument that’s right and good for the future of the human race.

Sharing and collaborating is the only way to get the message across, that once we reach a level whereby we have food, shelter, and enough ‘creature comforts’ in life that we don’t need to carry on hoarding and accumulating wealth and resources.

I am not suggesting that we all have to live in a shed eating worms, but we all know that we reach a level where adding more material things is an indulgence.

So the time has come to work with each other, help each, give and not do it just get money. Do it to help your community, to help others succeed and to collectively work to replace the old school OS that is now so riddled with bugs and viruses, that it is beyond repair.

I am not suggesting that we have Robin Hood style approach where we take from the rich and give to the poor. It is the responsibility of everyone of us to take ownership of this and do our bit the bring about change. We can bring about that change by collaborating and sharing. This is the way to bypass the old system and create new communities that are not driven by profit and endless accumulation resources for a very, very select few.

Essentially we need to collaborate or die.