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December 2006 Newsletter: The search
for the ultimate question - and the answer
Dr David Simon has an interesting take on what it means to be alive. "Life is an
interesting game" he says. "We don’t remember choosing to play, the rules are
rarely consciously communicated to us, and we don’t know when it will be over.
Recognizing these challenges, we have a couple of choices. We can spend our time
lamenting the unreasonable uncertainty of it all, or we can play with abandon...
We are the sum total of the choices we make in life."
What would it take for you to play the game of life with more abandon? Would it
really help you to know what it is all about, or could you make "not knowing"
part of the joy of it all?
According to The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (the great comic invention of
Douglas Adams), researchers from a pan-dimensional, hyper-intelligent race of
beings construct the second greatest computer in all of time and space, Deep
Thought, to calculate the Ultimate Answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything.
After seven and a half million years of pondering the question, Deep Thought
provides the answer: "forty-two." "Forty-two!" yelled Loonquawl. "Is that all
you've got to show for seven and a half million years' work?"
"I checked it very thoroughly," said the computer, "and that quite definitely is
the answer. I think the problem, to be quite honest with you, is that you've
never actually known what the question is."
The search for the Ultimate Question
Deep Thought informs the researchers that it would design a second and greater
computer, incorporating living beings as part of its computational matrix, to
tell them what the question is. That computer, called Earth, was so big that it
was often mistaken for a planet. The researchers themselves took the apparent
form of mice to run the program. But the ultimate question was lost, five
minutes before it was to have been produced, due to the Vogons' demolition of
the Earth, supposedly to build a hyperspace bypass. Later in the series, it is
revealed that the Vogons had been hired to destroy the Earth by a consortium of
philosophers and psychiatrists who feared for the loss of their jobs when the
meaning of life became common knowledge.
Anthony Robbins, the iconic US self-improvement guru, argues that we think in
questions and therefore the quality of our lives is largely determined by the
quality of questions we ask ourselves and others. You want a better life...
you'd better start asking better questions. Remember JFK's inaugural address to
the American people. "Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can
do for your country", he said. He also asked the nations of the world to join
together to fight what he called the "common enemies of man: tyranny, poverty,
disease, and war itself." Many consider these to be
great questions from a great leader.
Here's a question you have heard before. "Is your cup half-full, or half-empty?"
Optimists (according to folklore) see their cups as half-full, pessimists as
half-empty. Scientists, specialising in objectivity, measure the volume of water,
compare it with the capacity of the glass, and declare the glass to be half-full
(engineers, applied scientists, will agree but focus on the excess capacity and
complain about the waste of resources if the situation persists). For objective
truth we have to go with the scientists - the glass is indeed half-full, but
philosophers and artists should take heart from the capacity still available to
hold more.
Cultures limit and shape your questions. You may believe that you are free to
ask any question you choose, and that's true, but many of us are held captive
seemingly by our backgrounds. I grew up in the south Yorkshire coal mining
region of England in the 1950s and 60s. I was about 12 yrs old when the Beatles
first hit the radio and 15 at the launch of Radio 1 (in the so-called "Summer of
Love"). It is literally true that people of my age remember their childhoods in
black and white (film and TV were black & white in those days) and can remember
the world seemingly bursting into colour around 1962 with the arrival of the
Sunday paper colour supplements (colour TV didn't arrive in the UK until
Wimbledon 1967). What happened in the early 60s? The overarching cultural
question of the time reached a tipping point and shifted from "why" to "why not"
- resulting in an explosion of free thinking that created an enormous wave of
social, political, technological
and personal change across the western world. Forty years later and the rest of
the world is still playing catch-up.
One more thing, and then the answer
A hot idea in business coaching right now is the notion of "personal branding",
declaring what you stand for, and we'll do a newsletter on this in the spring.
In a nutshell the idea is to know yourself, accept yourself and express yourself
as the quickest and surest way to personal success. It's a simple idea but not
one we always find easy and working with a coach can help.
A useful concept in NLP, meta-programs (ref Kate's "Neuro-linguistic Programming
for Dummies"), segregates people in a whole series of ways to create models of
our individual thinking. Thinking that people habitually do differently includes:
half-full and half-empty, big picture then detail or the other around, value
most what others think or what self thinks, and so on. These are deeply
ingrained thinking habits and it is useful to know what they are in order to
work with the grain in personal change and performance improvement. It is an
important part of self-knowledge.
For now ask yourself and write down your answers to this question: "what do I
want?" Keep asking it until you have 6-10 answers. What you have written is not
so important for this exercise (although it may be massively important to you so
keep your list) so much as the thought process that got you to your list. How
did it go for you? Did you write down a few obvious material things before
thinking more deeply about what would make you happy? Did you immediately go for
non-material things like love and happiness? Do your wants involve others,
children, partners, and so on? In constructing your list did you find yourself
first thinking of things that you don't want (don't want to be ill, poor,
ridiculed, centre of attention, etc). These are all clues to the ways your
meta-programs operate, and your list can be easily transferred into goals for
achievement by the application of the
planning and goal-setting tools you will find in Chapter 3 of
Building
Confidence for Dummies. Remember, how you think determines how you frame your
questions, and therefore how you experience the answers life gives you.
Last words on the subject
Douglas Adams had a genius, comic vision that helps us to appreciate the wonder
and mystery of life. It can be fun and helpful sometimes to think of yourself as
a critical, intelligent and unique piece of the ultimate computer called Earth
that has been programmed and primed to work out the important questions and
answers of meaning for the entire universe. The very first programmable computer
ever built (mechanical at the time, not electronic) was called by its designer "The
Difference Engine". What a sensational metaphor for life on earth.
Always remember that your life is a process you experience as a journey and not
a destination. The spiritual path encourages you to engage with enthusiasm and
detachment: enthusiasm for the choices you are making at this moment; detachment
from any particular outcome. Be enthusiastic, get involved, give things your
best shot and when things don't work out the way you thought they would try
another way. It's a great philosophy to love by. It's the ultimate success
formula.
Have a great December and Christmas. We'll write again in the new Year.
Best wishes
Kate and Brinley
brinley.platts@btinternet.com
rinley@yourmostconfidentself.com
This
Confidence newsletter is sent each month to subscribers of
www.yourmostconfidentself.com from Kate Burton and Brinley Platts,
the authors of "Building
Confidence for Dummies" and creators of the Your Most Confident Self
website.
Building Confidence for Dummies by Kate Burton
and Brinley Platts
Neuro-Linguistic Programming for Dummies by
Romilla Ready and Kate Burton
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