Podcast: Play in new window | Download
What is the real meaning of little hinges swing big doors? What glorious thing can it mean to you and your entrepreneurial aspirations?
Without understanding that life is a collection of interactive systems, without understanding the seesaw principle, without being able to create, manage, and tweak systems. your life will work as it has always worked. just barely…
And given the percentage of people who went to school because they had to, and studied for grades, you probably have no idea how and why a seesaw works the way it works. ugh. (not surprisingly the number here is 99%)
99% of humanity has no idea what I am talking about. and their life is disappointing to them.
The difference between the 99% and the 1% is what we’ll be talking about in this article.
What the 1% doesn’t know, doesn’t have, doesn’t honor.
You may or may not be able to raise yourself to the level of the 1%, but you’ll move from wherever you are to a lot higher in income, a lot higher life satisfaction, etc. depending on how well you employ this principle. a concept you probably have never thought of as it could apply to YOUR life.
You are smart, right? Well, no, you aren’t.
Unless your life shows that you are smart, let’s consider that you may be smart, but your actions aren’t.
This will be THE missing piece of the BIG puzzle. for most…
…I first started to sense that there is a puzzle piece there,
- when I borrowed billionaire Charlie Munger’s book list.
- And then I got a pdf from Pete Williams, the Richard Branson of Australia, the 7 levers of doubling your business in just seven weeks…
- and then Pete Willams book, Cadence.
…From that point on I saw everything through that filter…
Little hinges swing big doors.
- I watched Frank Kern’s short videos, some 20 of them so far.
- I listened to Robert Plank’s webinars with new ears.
- OK, I read every email my newest guru writes, I subscribe to his newsletter, and I seem to be turning, imperceptibly, in the direction of success myself…
- I’ve started to teach differently, to look at what I am doing to help you to become the best version of yourself…
- If you have to work too hard,
- if you don’t have time,
- and you don’t feel well,
- if you feel that your life is empty…
The missing piece, what’s missing, is probably the same in all those complaints…
One of the things that cause this ever widening gap between what you could do (smart) and what you actually do (your results) is a missing piece of the puzzle. More often a how word, than a what word… by the way.
What puzzle? you ask. The puzzle of life. The puzzle of producing results… big results, in reality.
There is a distinction called system or system’s thinking. I first heard about it in a book I bought: Work the System…
Systems can be found everywhere, in nature, in our bodies, in our political system, in economy, in money, in manufacturing, in writing a book… everywhere. Global warming, if NOT looked through a system, results in actions that worsen it instead of slowing it down. Really… There is Global Warming, and there is no effective action that I know of… ugh. I am glad I am old and childless…
Most scientists, most politicians, most people don’t even consider that they are part of a system, and what they deal with are systems. Their linear approach, their lack of seeing the system is what makes humans likened to cancer…
Cancer behaves like it is independent of the system it invades… and it destroys it, and with the system, itself.
Each system can also be viewed as a collection of seesaw systems in relation to each element of the larger system… In my example of health, if you eat more of something, you tip the balance of nutrients, and you’ll be deficient in the another nutrient…
For example, I make several hot drinks for myself during the day. Why? I like hot drinks. My hot drinks system cycles through many of my allowed foods, peanut butter, A2 milk butter, coffee, goat cheese, hemp butter. One drink of each, more of butter and goat cheese… But the more hot drinks I consume, the less solid food my body can use… and ultimately I create an imbalance… Sigh… such is the nature of reality.
The same is with snacking. You may snack on handful of seeds and nuts… all on your eating list… but you create an imbalance… and your health number goes down. Bummer, eh?
Or flavored drinks and your cell hydration… Grrr.
A client of mine is very fond of seeds and nuts. He eats them by the handful… and he finds his health number plummet. He shows a lack of knowledge of systems… We have discussed this since… But the discussion didn’t cause any change in behavior, or a change in his health number. Only actions cause change.
I know you know the word, but knowing the word doesn’t mean you have the distinction, doesn’t mean that you EVER look through that distinction. Only when you do, the word becomes part of your accurate vocabulary I measure in your Starting Point Measurements.
Your actions tell me the truth, not your words. Your results tell me what you ‘are’, not your words.
So what is a system?
A system is interconnected elements. Each can be individually tweaked, each can be individually optimal or sub-optimal.
Anywhere and everywhere. I just coached a student on his collage: the pictures of a new reality collage, or any collage create a system… and the system is either going to produce a good result or a bad result… depending on what the whole system is capable, given the parts.
Your results are always the results of the system: It’s the SYSTEM, stupid!
Let’s take a system: your body. Let’s measure the result: your health number. Anything from zero (dead) to 100%.
How many interconnected elements play a part in your health?
In my health consulting I pay attention, I measure
the obvious:
- your allowed food list
- your missing nutrients (your 90 essential nutrients)
and the not so obvious
- your water = your cell hydration
- the eating style (this is the when to eat and how to eat)
- variety
- acidity,
- leptins
- intolerances, allergies, etc.
I measure your health measurements… organs, hormonal glands, and also what makes you not so well, not so vibrant, so sluggish, emotionally unstable, etc… What aspect… It IS an interconnected system
One of my clients decided that he knew better
One of my clients decided that he knew better, and changed every element of that list, how it applied to him, and dug himself in a hole where his health number dropped to 3%, he smelled bad, and he became weak and tired.
I sent him to a medical doctor for examination: I don’t want to deal with undisciplined clients, and his symptoms sounded like he developed an actual illness.
His results came back telling that his blood had too much iron, and his hemoglobin was low. Hemoglobin is what carries oxygen to every part of the body. If it is low: you are weak.
Blood is a system inside a system. Iron up, hemoglobin down… always playing the see-saw game.
The doctors were deciding that he had hemochromatosis, a genetic imbalance, where you have to donate a pint or two blood out every month or so, so your body can live.
But what they didn’t consider, because they never consider nutrition, these Western Medicine doctors, what my client eats and what he doesn’t. What supplements he takes.
They don’t, but I do.
So I gave him a brand spanking new food-list, that I muscletested, and it is all vegetables. Not a hint of animal food.
Because what he had been doing is eating only animals, double portions, feeling always hungry.
Another system in your body is the digestive system.
Each system, even if it is part of a bigger system, has its own see-saw, protein metabolism, for example, needs stomach acid to be acidic… Above a certain age your stomach acid becomes weak… certain blood types’ stomach acid is genetically weak, (that’s me). If you eat too much protein, or hard to digest protein, like beef, the acid your stomach produces may not be strong enough to digest it… so it will ROT in your bowels undigested, poisoning you. Causing you to have bumpy skin, pimples, bad breath, etc.
Same is if you eat meat with carbohydrates… like pasta, potatoes, bread… your stomach needs to be acidic for the meat, alkaline for the pasta… you are screwed… and I can see it on your face… No energy for life… all energy goes to digesting… and all energy is often not enough to fully digest the slop you shovel into your mouth.
Indigestion
Indigestion, by the way, masquerades as hunger, so this willfully independent client ate more because of the indigestion, worsening further his condition. His eating style said: eat only when you have a full-on appetite, the body’s signal that it is ready to digest new food. Happens only once or twice a day… Not three, four, five times… ugh
Doctors are not taught to ask these questions, to look at the what, the how, the when, so they have no idea what causes the imbalance and the illness. They treat the symptom, causing even more imbalance.
Unless you bring systems thinking to your health, you’ll have poor health.
When I measure people’s starting point measurements, I measure their health number. I have found only one person who had higher than 10% measure. She had a 12%. Dr Joel Wallach has 30% for health number. My ex friend and chiropractor: 20%.
The health number, the number itself is part of a system… and your system has a certain age… so my 50% health number, given that I am 73 years old, and you are 40 with 10% health number: these numbers may mean that you will beat me at running.
You and your doctors weren’t taught, weren’t taught to look, or maybe aren’t able look at your health as a system… your digestion is a system within a system, your circulation is a system within a system. Even your teeth, your sense of taste or smell or hearing, is a system.
It is not easy… Seeing a system is a capacity. If you don’t look, if you have a narrow cone of vision, if you don’t understand digestion, for example, you can’t see the system… Humanity would be dead if this were innate… No. the capacity is there, but inactive in the DNA.
You don’t know that you are ignorant, do you?
Here is another area where not thinking in systems is costly, maybe even deadly: business.
Whether you are the owner of a business, whether you are a freelancer, an Uber driver, an employee, a homemaker, you are always in business.
Every business is a system.
Every business has at least 7 hinges, small hinges, that swing big doors…
…the doors are the business results: the business’s profitability, how much time you have left after fulfilling the business’s needs, how much fun you have doing it.
Your life is a system… with smaller systems within the system
Self-actualization is a system…
My methodology is to help you build a system that serves all of your life, your wealth, your health, your relationships, and your fulfillment/growth on the highest possible level, given what you have going for you.
We sometimes call this ‘spinning many plates’…
It’s most obvious in that context of spinning plates, why the whole outcome, your wealth, your health, your relationships and your fulfillment suffer: you drop some plates.
If you are inconsistent, prone to urges, prone to ‘I want to do what I want to do when I want to do it’ childish behavior, you will never be able to operate your life as a system, and you won’t grow.
Can’t.
Your past performance in life is an indicator… sorry to break it to you.
Your starting point measurements, what your past performance has ‘bought’, earned you tells the story.
I’ll look, sometimes, for the lowest hanging fruit. The low hanging fruit is the easiest hinge/lever to handle and get big initial results in any system.
But the most important lever is not part of the system, it is the context of the system: what gives you juice in life.
- Life is a discovery, and adventure, says one of my students
- Life is to be the one who lets the spirit fly… say I.
- I also say: Life is bringing the divine to everything
- Either everybody counts, or nobody counts, says Harry Bosch
All my heroes have ‘a’ juice, an organizing principle, in their lives. Sometimes you need to do work to dig it out, but it’s there.
White Fang, Howard Roark, Socrates…
The juice, the organizing principle is what makes life worth living.
And the system that allows you to live life powerfully. All those plates I ask you to spin…
The biggest missing is that you may spin some plates in some area, but the moment you get to another area of life, you drop all those plates. I measure this also in the Starting Point Measurements… It’s measure #32… Most people can’t even keep two ideas alive at the same time. That is, also, a capacity.
You live a fragmented life… a life that isn’t going to amount to much.
No organizing principle = no seamless life.
Plates dropped, plates crashing signal a life crashing. A sad sound.
In the What’s Missing workshop you’ll see what you are doing, who you are being… and may be able to find something, a small hinge that swings big doors… and adjust yourself and your life to utilize it.
Then you come again… because no single change solves any big issues… and find another hinge, and then another hinge.
This is what I used to do, by the way. I attended or lead this workshop myself… and each time I could see another small hinge… little by little this is how I grew myself from miserable wretch to rarely miserable, productive, proactive, maybe even likable person.
Sign up to attend the workshops
