The Beatles and Bill Gates would have never made it doing a ‘4 hour’ work week,

……. How do you reconcile two great books which seem to say two totally opposite things? In the book Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell proves his explanation that the Beatles and Bill Gates’ fame and fortune was a result of at least 10,000 hours practice. And at the same time Tim Ferris promotes success in life with his book entitled the ‘4 hour work’ week?

Could I get my 10.000 hours in this way? I wish.

So if 10,000 hours breaks down into 5 years at 40 hours work per week then a 4 hour work week would equate to 50 years AND . . .
Bill Gates and The Beatles would never have made it until they reached their sixties.

How does that compute?  
In the beginning it didn’t. 

Women and Korean planes crash; I bet you can’t guess the connection either.

. I love Malcolm Gladwell and his book ‘Outliers’. It all started with reading the investigations into why the Korean pilots crashed so many planes. You can imagine that they wanted to know . . . It was the black box AND a linguist that solved the mystery in a most unexpected way.

No crash here in NZ and I now know why it is not likely to happen either!

“The premise of Outliers is to have us think about the world differently and by digging down deeper to come up with another set of explanations that can have a profound effect on how we see and do things.

Hearing him say this is music to my ears!
I too am absolutely fascinated by finding new explanations that can make such a difference.

So what was it in the story in Outliers about Korean plane crashes that blew me away and showed me the extent of how this explanation can make to difference to us women. 

Bullying thoughts, who would have thought . . .

I am fascinated by thoughts. Sure why wouldn’t I be; they can make or break my world. If people keep saying that it’s their thoughts that determine how they feel then I’d better pay close attention here. Keeping an eye on their contribution to me, so to speak.    Humm, so what IS the contribution level of my thoughts, overall that is? Since I’ve been paying attention to them I must say that I am NOT impressed.

Bullying water, or just the tide coming in fast.

I particularly noticed that I have a lot of nasty thoughts about me popping up in my head.
They come out of nowhere, uninvited, making a lot of noise and they certainly do not contribute very much.
Instead they do the opposite; they disturb, they distract and they deceive.
They are like bullies; unpleasant and uncomfortable.

One thing I didn’t do at my own peril.

For most of my life I handled major events in a very casual manner. As a consequence I rarely look back on these major events as a fantastic memory.  And of course, now I have regrets.  If I’d known back then just how crucial completions and celebrations were, I would not have thrown rituals and ceremonies out with the bathwater.   But I did, as they reminded me too much of religion.

I am so pleased we insisted on doing the birthday cake ritual in Vietnam, my daughter and me.

If only I would have embraced ceremonies and rituals earlier in life, I am sure that I would have enjoyed my wedding day a whole lot more. Instead I wished it to be over quickly.
All the attention embarrassed me and I had no idea how to fully make the most of this experience. 

I would have allowed myself to experience the births of my daughters in a totally different way.  I kept it all very low key and I missed out on celebrating the wonder of it all.

I could have had said a proper goodbye to my mum when she was dying. My visit to her would have been full of wonderful moments to treasure. Instead I pretended nothing was going on and I never said how much I loved her. 

What you’ve never been told and should have.

. Appearances, appearances, they can be so deceiving. Don’t let your life only be guided by what you see. Wallace D Wattles, the man I’ve quoted before, is very keen on this. He is adamant that you should not be distracted by what you see.  As you can tell by now, I love this man’s thinking and if you can get this, it is a very powerful way to live your life.

Using the low tide to pick tuatuas.

I understand it like this. 
Life happens, it goes up and it goes down, it has good times and bad times however we normally spend a lot of our lives being stuck, very stuck or living in fear by only concentrating on the bad and down times.