Three Big Ideas: On the Idol of Abstraction, Cognitive Dissonance, and, God’s Chastisement

Big Idea #1 From Me

In the Bible, we see how the children of Israel alternated between cycles of faith in God and cycles of rebellion and idolatry.

Instances where the Israelites lived in obedience coincided with peace on all sides, and abundance.

However, as soon as the Israelites got too comfortable and took their relationship with God for granted, famines, droughts, sieges, and outright wars became the order of the day.

Whenever I read these stories, I often wonder what was so special about these idols that provoked worship from the ancient Israelites.

But the more I think about this, the more I realize that perhaps there’s no big difference between me in 2020 and the Israelites back then.

If time travel was a practical possibility, I’d bet that the Israelites who lived thousands of years ago will also be flummoxed by the idols we have in this present age.

On one hand, they will probably be shocked by how we literally worship our phones by paying homage to it first thing in the mornings before we get out of bed, and worshipping it before we shut our eyes for the night.

But even more, they will be blown away by the altars we’ve erected to our ideas.

You see, in the wake of the scientific revolutions which began approximately 500 years ago, man’s capacity for abstraction has grown in leaps and bounds.

This means that man could think about physical objects in the form of ideas. For instance, a physical rock was now seen as something possessing “mass” and could produce “force” when made to move at a certain “acceleration”. With this power, man was able to start understanding the workings of the physical universe.

Ever the maverick, man sought to use this newly-found powers of abstraction to solve societal or economical problems exclusive of God. Sometimes, it had the potential to work. But more often than not, it gave us brutal dictatorships, depressions, and wars.

When you fall into the trap of using abstraction capabilities exclusive of God, what you’re saying in effect is, “As far as this economic/social problem is concerned, I know everything there is to know”

In other words, you’re imitating the devil by elevating your idea to the place of God – falling in love with it and worshipping it unabashedly.

I’d end with the following profound words from Makar Ivanovich Dolgoruky, one of the main characters in Fyodor Dostoevsky’s 19th-Century novel, The Raw Youth:

“A man cannot live without worshipping something; without worshipping, he cannot bear the burden of himself. And that goes for every man. So that if a man rejects God, he will have to worship an idol that may be made of wood, gold or ideas. So those who think they don’t need God are really just idol worshippers, and that’s what we should call them.”

Big Idea #2 From Research

In their 1959 classic paper, Cognitive consequences of forced compliance, Leon Festinger and James Carlsmith describe a study where they gave a set of students an incredibly boring task to do individually. At the end of the task, each participant was instructed to tell the next person how exciting and enjoyable the task was. In other words, they were told to lie. For their efforts, each student was paid – some a paltry amount, while others were paid enough money to go out on a date at a high-end restaurant.

At the end of the study, each participant were asked how much they had really enjoyed the original boring task.

Here’s where it gets interesting. Participants who were paid a little kept on telling the lie, while those who were paid a lot told the honest truth: They had detested the task and did not enjoy it.

This is counterintuitive because you’d expect those who were paid a lot to keep on lying to themselves, and vice versa.

Here’s what’s going on.

People experience some mental discomfort when they behave in ways that are not consistent with their values or beliefs. This state is referred to as cognitive dissonance. Since people generally have a tendency to minimize pain and maximize pleasure, they resort to all forms of rationalization and self-justification in order to enjoy the bliss that psychological consistency delivers.

The group of students that were paid a lot did not have to resolve whether the task was indeed boring or not. When given the permission to do so, they could be objective about how they really felt about task. On the other hand, the students who were paid a little had to struggle to find a consistency between what they did and what they told others about what they did. They were more liable to rationalize the joy in the task with thoughts such as ‘The experimenter told me to tell the others that this task is fun. Maybe it actually is and I haven’t figured it out yet.’

My key takeaway from this study is somewhat related to the concept of sunk costs which I have discussed before. What are the non-essentials in your life that you keep holding on to, even when you know there’s no light at the end of that path? What are the long-term relationships you are still holding on to, even when you realize that they are toxic to you? What are the bad habits you are still engaged in, even when you are aware that they could be the end of you? How long will you keep trying to resolve the conflict between your actions and your values? This is a conversation you need to have with yourself.

Big Idea #3 From the Bible

The common scripture used in explaining the chastisement of God is found in Hebrews 12:5-7,

“…My son, despise not thou the chastening of the Lord, nor faint when thou art rebuked of Him: For whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom He receiveth. If ye endure chastening, God dealeth with you as with sons; for what son is he whom the Father chasteneth not?”

In the course of studying this topic, I made an interesting discovery by the Holy Spirit. You know, in the original Greek in which the New Testament was written, the word translated ‘chastisement’, as used in Hebrews 12:5-7, literally means, ‘tutorage’, ‘education’, or ‘training’!

Wow! I wonder what this would do to many people’s theology.

So, we can see that ‘chastisement’ doesn’t even mean that God is busy inflicting you with pain, sickness, poverty and so on for the majority of your Christian walk!

Biblically, when God is chastising you, it simply means that He’s educating, tutoring and training you!

Isn’t that liberating?

You see, as a believer, you have the Holy Spirit of God residing right in your spirit man. Hence, you have access to the Mind of Christ at any given time (1 Corinthians 2:12, 16).

As a result, God doesn’t have to use external factors to communicate His Will to you. Rather, as a believer, He speaks to you in your heart.

Let me share a personal experience:

During my one-year mandatory Youth Service, I had an ‘intense discussion’ with a brother over a doctrinal matter. In the heat of the moment, I rudely told the brother that he was religious, but not spiritual. As soon as those words left my lips, I didn’t hear God’s audible voice rebuking me for yelling at that brother. Neither did God strike me with blindness or cause me to be sacked from my place of work.

Instead, I perceived in my heart that it wasn’t God’s Will for me to speak to my brother in the manner that I did. In fact, I was restless in my spirit until I apologized to the brother for the way I addressed him.

Would you believe it if I told you that the entire process was God chastising me?

Well, that was God chastising me – tutoring, training and teaching me to walk the way Jesus walked. It was easy for God to do this with me because I have His Spirit resident within me. This, of course, is also related to the fact that I had also been exposed to the Word of God, which “…is profitable…for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness” (2 Timothy 3:16).

As believers, the LORD is going to use His Word to chastise us. His Words are Spirit (John 6:63) and the Holy Spirit is committed to reminding us of God’s Word (John 16:13-15) when we are in danger of missing the mark!

It’s very liberating to realize that God would never chastise us with pain, sickness and poverty.

It’s even more liberating to know that God is madly in love with you and He’s ever ready to teach, train and tutor us on how to walk like Christ per time.

With this at the back of our minds, it makes perfect sense to heed the advice contained in Hebrews 12:5,

“…despise not thou the chastening of the Lord…”

God loves you and He wants you to manifest the life of Christ!

When you’re armed with that understanding, you can resist the lies of the devil; you can actively kick out sickness and lack out of your life; and most importantly, you have the right perspective about the chastening of the Lord – allowing it have its perfect work in you!

Three Big Ideas: On Polemics, Networked Net Worth, and a Kingdom of Kings

Big Idea #1 From Me

Several months ago, I was talking with my baby brother who told me he had taken a break from social media.

His reason?

The polemics and diatribes were becoming too toxic for his taste.

My brother is only 21 and he arrived at that conclusion on his own.

Prior to my conversation with him, I had been thinking about the same thing.

Why is there so much polarization on the internet?

In his 1994 book, Blood and Belonging: Journeys into New Nationalism, Canadian journalist, Michael Ignatieff made the following remarks about the conflicts in former Yugoslavia.

“Freud once argued that the smaller the real difference between two people, the larger it is bound to loom in their imagination. He called this effect the narcissism of minor differences. Its corollary must be that enemies need each other to remind themselves of who they really are. A Croat, thus is someone who is not a Serb. A Serb is someone who is not a Croat. Without hatred for the other, there would be no clearly defined national self to worship and adore.

One thing the internet and social media has done is to reduce the differences between people.

Nowadays, once you have a smart phone and internet connection, you share a single, unifying characteristic with billions of others: You become similar to others in that you now have access to people in ways that had never been possible in the world.

This is not necessarily a bad thing. For instance, the Arab Spring in the early 2010s and the more recent EndSARS movement have been successful in toppling autocratic governments and police brutality because of this very unifying characteristic.

However, mankind has long since learned to abuse his God-given capacity for imitation and worship.

As a result, there’s a fertile ground where Michael Ignatieff’s theory can grow unhindered.

Since the vast majority of people do not imitate God, they have no real sense of self.

This isn’t surprising because, as the Prophet Jeremiah concluded, it is not in man to know himself!

In a bid to cure this itch for self-identity in the midst of unprecedented similarity, man strives to look for anything that can serve as a distinguishing factor between him and others.

You know that itch. It’s the same thing that plays out when you try to decide on which brand of cereal you are going to buy. In this state, you ignore the similarities between the brands and only look for differences!

Hence my conclusion that every diatribe, polemic or polarizing take on the internet is the result of man’s desperate search for self-identification as he drowns in the sea of overwhelming similarity with others.

Big Idea #2 From Research

In their paper, Quantifying reputation and success in art, Samuel Frailberger and his colleagues analyzed the careers of 496,354 artists in terms of the prestige of where their art was exhibited. They wanted to find out what factor made it more likely for artists to have their work consistently exhibited at high-prestige institutions.

Their analyses revealed that the determining factor that separated the elite artists from others was neither their talent nor prolificacy, but the strength of their networks.

Artists with strong networks were almost five times more likely to have their works sold in comparison to artists with weak networks. Furthermore, the average maximum price of artists with strong networks was nearly $200,000, while that of the artists with weak networks was barely above $40,000. Finally, artists with strong networks were more likely to maintain their status as elites, as opposed to artists with weak networks who were more likely to quit their careers.

The lesson here is straightforward: Your network plays a big role in determining your net worth, especially in fields where everyone is equally talented and committed to excellence.

Big Idea #3 From the Bible

Genesis 14:1-5 describes a unique system of government that I found interesting, particularly because it is the first time such a system is mentioned in the Bible.

Prior to Genesis 14, people who founded cities and towns became the kings of those towns, while other inhabitants became their subjects.

However, the story in Genesis 14 describes a system of government where the subjects in a kingdom were also kings.

This is a corrupted archetype of God’s perfect system of government where, as believers, we have been called to be “a royal priesthood” and “kings and priests unto our God”.

In the perfect iteration of the system, each subject is a king and priest who is happy to exercise dominion in their particular domain of competence – even as they submit themselves to the authority of the King of kings.

In the imperfect form, however, the kings revolted against the leading king. This is a primordial example of how a system built solely on rationality will always crumble under its own weight in the long run. Without an acknowledgement of God, an imitation of his system is an experiment doomed to fail.

May the Lord give you understanding in these things.

Three Big Ideas: On Identity, Fundamental Attribution, and, Righteousness Accounts

Big Idea #1 From Me

If you want to change your life, changing your identity is often a good place to start.

But before you can understand how to change your identity, you need to understand 3 fundamental basics concerning identity.

First, you have multiple identities. A man can be a father, a son, a husband, an employer, a pastor, a spirit man and many more. The man possesses all these identities at the same time.

Second, your identity is not stable. Even though it appears to be stable, your perception of who you are, changes from time to time, based on the immediate context that you find yourself in. The same man that is an aggressive taskmaster as an employee at work becomes harmless, soft and emotional when playing with his newborn baby at home. It’s all in the context.

Thirdly, while identity is never stable because you have multiple identities at the same time, your desire to use your identity to make meaning of your life is always constant. This is why you would never act in a manner that is not consistent with your identity. If an action does not make sense to the identity that is on your mind at the moment, you would not follow through with it.

With that said, how can you change your identity to set yourself up for victory over sin and destructive habits?

The first step is to develop clarity about the new identity you desire to express constantly. For instance, as a believer, my identity is that I am born of the Spirit. As a result, I am a spirit too. What are my characteristics as one born of the Spirit? According to the Bible, it means that I am righteousholy, and wise. Alternatively, you may decide that you want to be a serial, best-selling author. What are the characteristics of best-selling authors? Well, for one, they make time to write in the mornings and/or evenings every day!

Once you have clarity about the identity you wish you express in your life, you need to find a way to make that identity stay stable in your mind. The way this is done is through constant consciousness. And here is the part where a lot of us fall short. You cannot merely wish, woo, or command your consciousness of a particular identity to jump on you. The truth is that people are sensitive to what their immediate context implies for their identities. That is why stability in identity only comes from repeatedly experiencing contexts that overall feel the same over time. As a believer, this is referred to as ‘renewing of your mind’ where you consistently expose your mind to as many different contexts for the new identity you seek to manifest. For instance, being wise in my spiritual identity might mean resisting the devil in one context, while also meaning fleeing fornication in another context. The same thing is applicable in the example of the person who wants to be a best-selling author. By choosing to write every morning, you’re showing that you’re consistent and disciplined, which might also mean that you work out every evening in one context, while also meaning that you would not check your mails until 12 noon.

Finally, you need to have an interpretation and plan for the difficulties that you would inevitably encounter. Learn to reframe difficulties as important milestones you need to pass to reinforce your identity. For instance, as a believer, trials and temptations are bound to arise. However, when I rename these temptations or trials as pathways to growth, I am more likely going to keep my mind on the identity of being born of the spirit. Similarly, for the person that wants to write a best-selling book, a time would come when it would become a bit difficult to stay consistent and disciplined. The individual that interprets these difficulties as a necessary path to greatness would ride over the waves of challenges and would arrive at his expected destination in the long run.

When you operate from an identity paradigm, the difficulties you experience become the path you need to take to arrive at the better you that desire. The truth is that while your identity influences your actions, your actions also have an effect on your identity. When you act in a way that aligns with your desired identity, you reinforce that identity; and when you act in a way that does not align with your identity, you’re dismissing the importance of that identity you desire.

Big Idea #2 From Research

In their classic 1984 paper, Current Issues in Attribution Theory and Research, John Harvey and Gifford Weary reviewed the reasons why, as humans, we are often guilty of grossly overestimating the power that our personalities have on many aspects of our lives.

Yet, when you think about it, you’d realize that in your day-to-day activities, your environment is arguably at least as important as your personality.

Your environment influences the kind of options you have for food. For instance, yams do not grow in the United States, and as a consequence, they do not eat pounded yam. Similarly, apples do not grow in Nigeria, making it impossible to eat apple pies over there.

The environment also plays a key role in the type of clothes you will wear, which will, in turn, affect your appearance. Take a moment and ponder on this: No matter how fanatic an individual is as a Christian, she will still put on a shawl if she happens to be in the deserts of the Middle East. Failure to do so will make her vulnerable to the dusty winds of that region.

When you reduce the idea of what one eats or wears to the barest concept, you’d find them for what they really are.

They are decisions that you make without actively thinking.

Why? Because the environment you are situated in determines the range of your choices.

My point is simple: If the environment can influence our decisions in the form of the food we eat, or the clothes we wear, why do we fail to see its impact on other aspects of our decision making?

It’s because we are all guilty of committing the Fundamental Attribution Error.

According to researchers, the fundamental attribution error is the tendency to underestimate environmental factors and overestimate the role of personality in determining all forms of behavior – including quality decision making.

And you see the result in our societies today:

People identify as depressed individuals, while totally ignoring the fact that they might be in a depressing physical or social environment.

There are discontented individuals and families all over the world who are neck-deep in debt but fail to see how the prevalent culture of materialism and immediate gratification has made them vulnerable to buying unnecessary things.

Your personality may affect the quality of your decisions, but your environment is the real game-changer. It will make or break you.

Big Idea #3 From Bible

Romans 4:20-22 says, “He staggered not at the promise of God through unbelief; but was strong in faith, giving glory to God; And being fully persuaded that, what He had promised, He was able also to perform. And therefore it was imputed unto him for righteousness”

The first thing we note is that Abraham did not waver at all concerning God’s promises for him. In his epistles to the early church, James explains that anyone who wavers is not walking in faith and as a result, such person cannot (that is, “is totally unable to”) receive anything from God.

Abraham refused to waver. Instead, he grew stronger as a result of his being empowered by faith. And how did Abraham get empowered by faith? He gave praise to God!!! Abraham arrived at a point where he was established and firmly rooted in his faith in God. He abounded and multiplied in that faith as a result of thanksgiving to God. Never underestimate the power of thanksgiving and praise, they go a long way in helping you release your faith in God.

Abraham was fully confident and assured that the same God who had promised him was also able and mighty enough to keep the Word that had been promised. In response, God declared Abraham to be a righteous man!!!

This is a very, very profound truth. If you can grasp it, this truth has the potential to change how you view God’s righteousness.

You see, it’s amazing how people can easily believe that God spoke the entire world into existence. In fact, we find it relatively easy to believe that God’s Word “became flesh and dwelt among us”.

Yet, when it comes to righteousness by faith, we find ourselves at our wit’s end.

All Abraham did was to believe God’s Word and God looked at Abraham and said, “YOU ARE A RIGHTEOUS MAN!!!”

Do you know what I consider to be the most amazing thing about this truth?

It is the promise itself!

According to the account of this story in Genesis, we realize that God’s promise to Abraham was a son. Not that Abraham would be saved or won’t go to hell!

And because Abraham believed with every fiber of his being, he was put in right standing with God as a man who had had righteousness ‘credited’ into his account.

If God could do this mightily for a man who believed God’s promise for a son, why do you still find it difficult to relate with the truth that God’s grace has saved you and you have received God’s righteousness by faith?

May the Lord grant you understanding in these things.

The Psychological Significance of the Bible Stories: David and Goliath

Stories in the Bible are compelling because they are packed with multiple layers of meaning. One reason for this is that the Bible stories describe reality on different levels at the same time. 

Christians are already familiar with how the Bible describes the realities of the spiritual realm. We are made aware of how we can either yield ourselves to the influence of God and angels in the kingdom of heaven or to the devil and demons in the kingdom of darkness. There’s no middle ground. He that is not with me is against me; and he that gathereth not with me scattereth abroad. In the David and Goliath story, David was victorious because he was under the influence of God’s Kingdom and Goliath lost because he wasn’t. It couldn’t be any simpler.

The same David and Goliath story describes the realities of an “objective”, physical realm. In a talk he did years ago, Malcolm Gladwell, the bestselling New York Times journalist, gave an account of the David and Goliath story from another perspective. According to Gladwell, Goliath had a medical condition known as acromegaly which is the result of the overproduction of growth hormones by the pituitary gland in the brain. People with acromegaly have enlarged body parts and may experience symptoms such as impaired vision and limited mobility. If he indeed had acromegaly with its attendant symptoms, Malcolm Gladwell argued that from the onset of the face-off with David, Goliath was doomed to suffer defeat. The lesson here is that physical advantages can spell your doom in another context. As the Yoruba people say, The hand of a child cannot reach the ceiling, the hand of an adult cannot enter a gourd. 

The Bible stories also describe the world of phenomena perceived from the viewpoint of subjective human consciousness and experience. Indeed, despite the conflict between science and religion, the Bible still remains the oldest psychological book. This post will be unpacking some of the psychological insights compressed into the David and Goliath story.

Whoever Controls the Frames, Holds the Power

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Let’s imagine a scenario with two men. The first man, Mr. A, is well-to-do and has 4 cars, while Mr. B has only 1 car. If you were to give both men an additional car each, which man will be happier? Studies have suggested that Mr. B will feel a greater amount of happiness than Mr. A. Similarly, if you were to take one car away each from both men, Mr. B will feel more pain than Mr. A.

But that leaves an important question: Why would both men feel a different degree of happiness (or sadness) when the same number of cars is given (or taken away) from them? The reason is fairly straightforward. Both men are in different initial states. In other words, they have different frames of reference. Mr. A already has 4 cars, so giving or taking away one car from his collections is not going to affect his happiness much. On the other hand, taking away one car from Mr. B is likely to be hurtful to him because that will mean that he no longer has a car. And when you give Mr. B a car, his happiness will be great because you have literally doubled the number of cars he has!

People’s behaviors in a particular context are dependent on the frames of reference that are active in that context. In the presence of food, a man who just arrived from a dinner date will behave very differently from a man who hasn’t had anything to eat in the past three days. Similarly, on a hot day, the individual who has been indoors all day will not drink as much water as the individual who just came back from a run. Frames of reference even change rapidly from moment to moment. That explains, for instance, why the first bite you take while eating a meal is more satisfying than subsequent bites. At each moment, you’re in a different place, psychologically speaking.

In the David and Goliath story, you find that Goliath held psychological power over the Israelites because he changed everyone’s frames of reference. Even though the Israelites were in the same physical place with the Philistine soldiers, the two armies were in different psychological spaces.

Under normal circumstances, opposing armies simply arranged themselves in position and fought. Every soldier knew his tactical and strategic roles, as well as what was expected of him. What constituted victory and defeat was clear and members of the opposing factions conducted themselves accordingly.

By changing the rules of engagement, Goliath redefined the criteria for victory and defeat. Rather than fight in a war where victory was determined by the military savviness of the warring armies, Goliath wanted man-on-man combat:

Choose a man for yourselves and have him come down to me. If he is able to fight with me and kill me, then we will become your servants; but if I prevail against him and kill him, then you shall become our servants and serve us.” Again the Philistine said, “I defy the battle lines of Israel this day; give me a man so that we may fight together.” 

The amazing part of this story is not just Goliath’s 9-foot frame or the sophistication of his weapons. Rather, it is the fact that he dictated the frames of reference for everyone on the battleground and everyone behaved as though they agreed – consciously or unconsciously. No one engaged according to the rules of combat they were already familiar with. Rather everyone, particularly the Israelites, were paralyzed into a state of passive compliance.

As an interesting comparison, when you place an animal in an unfamiliar space – before it starts to sniff around for threats and opportunities – it freezes in a state of inaction. This is the observation that informs the colloquial expression, “Looking like a deer caught in the headlights”. By controlling the frames of reference, Goliath took the Israelites to a place they were unfamiliar with. And when you are in a place you are unfamiliar with, you will look like a deer caught in the headlights. That’s why whoever controls the frames of reference in an interaction wields the power in that interaction.

Also worthy of note is how God inspired David to defeat Goliath by the same rules that the behemoth had laid out. Just as Goliath had changed the rules of combat and took the Israelite army into unknown territory, David also changed the frames for Goliath.

And the Philistine said to David, “Come to me, and I will give your flesh to the birds of the air and the beasts of the field!”

As Malcolm Gladwell noted in the talk referenced earlier, Goliath expected to engage in close combat with whoever came forward to fight for the honor of the Israelites. That had been the implicit terms of the frames of reference he had laid out for the battle.

Then David put his hand in his bag and took out a stone; and he slung it and struck the Philistine in his forehead, so that the stone sank into his forehead, and he fell on his face to the earth. So David prevailed over the Philistine with a sling and a stone, and struck the Philistine and killed him….

The last thing Goliath expected was to have a projectile hurled towards his forehead at speed from distance. Yet, that was exactly what happened as he embarked on a one-way trip to a psychological space foreign to him. The tables had turned and now, it was Goliath’s “deer-caught-in-the-headlights” moment from which he could never recover.

Error is Variation and You Need More in Your Life

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In a previous post, I talked about how the life of the average person in the 21st century is devoid of variation. Individuals who permit variation in their lives are more likely to encounter alternative histories with potentially life-changing outcomes. They are the ones likely to forge quality relationships at a networking event. They are the ones likely to come in contact with paradigm-shifting ideas that could revolutionize entire fields and industries.

When we think about David’s life leading up to the encounter with Goliath, we find that the kind of life he led afforded him the opportunity to incorporate variation into his day-to-day existence.

But David occasionally went and returned from Saul to feed his father’s sheep at Bethlehem

David occasionally left the routine, security, and predictability of the king’s palace to confront the unknown as a shepherd in the wilderness. As a result, David was exposed to more variability than he would never have encountered in a controlled environment like in the city. 

For instance, at some point, David would have had to care for numerous sheep who may have gotten injured or sick at unpredictable times. Despite this not happening every day, the occurrence of sickness or injury to sheep in a flock remained within the realm of possibilities. Because these events could not be predicted ahead of time, David must have developed the skills necessary for taking care of a sheep when it was sick or injured.

In the same vein, David was exposed to the uncertain weather elements as he discharged his duties in the wilderness. Since there were no meteorological devices at the time, David needed to be ready for the possibility of sudden weather changes. As soon as the first raindrops fell from the sky, David had to find a way to get himself and the sheep under the shelter. Again, weather changes are always a possibility, even if they do not happen all the time. Over time, David must have developed the skills for coordinating his father’s sheep in response to sudden changes in the elements.

Finally, David was more likely to encounter wild animals in the wilderness than within the protected walls of the city. Note that hungry predators do not announce their intentions in advance. Rather, they all show up without any prior warning. In response to the possibilities of attack, David must have developed self-defense skills to keep himself and the sheep safe as they roamed the wilderness.

Indeed, life is like a series of games with different rules running at the same time. The more wide-ranging your skills are, the higher your probabilities of winning a good number of these games. You are equipped with the wide-ranging skills necessary for winning only when you are willing to confront the unknown by incorporating variation in your life. 

Leaders are not Born, They are Shaped

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Humans have the ability to categorize things into groups based on their similarity. Broadly speaking, people that have the same physical features can be said to belong to the same racial group. Fluorine, Chlorine, and, Iodine, are all elements possessing overlapping chemical and physical properties. As a result, they are said to belong to the same chemical group. This tendency for categorization is not limited to just tangibles, such as physical appearances or chemical compositions, but also our experiences. Experiences that make us feel a particular way are perceived by the mind as belonging to the same category.

In his conversation with King Saul, notice how David lumped the dead lion, the dead bear and a still living Goliath into the same category:

But David said to Saul, “Your servant used to keep his father’s sheep, and when a lion or a bear came and took a lamb out of the flock, I went out after it and struck it, and delivered the lamb from its mouth; and when it arose against me, I caught it by its beard, and struck and killed it. Your servant has killed both lion and bear; and this uncircumcised Philistine will be like one of them, seeing he has defied the armies of the living God.” Moreover David said, “The Lord, who delivered me from the paw of the lion and from the paw of the bear, He will deliver me from the hand of this Philistine.”

David could not have been confident in his ability to defeat Goliath if he had not gotten the experience of defeating the lion and bear. Likewise, there was no way David would have defeated the violent beasts of prey if he had not been exposed to the possibility of such events in the wilderness. Indeed, the most dependable people in times of crisis are those who have habitually confronted the unknown with courage over time.

Many people desire victory over the Goliaths that rear up their ugly faces in their lives. Unfortunately, they cannot recall a single event where they confronted the unknown and emerged victorious. This is because they have no experiences in their histories that fall into that category of personal victories. All they have ever done is run away from the slightest scent of discomfort. As a result, such people will produce that famed “deer-caught-in-the-headlights” reaction when faced with uncertainty.

It has been said that leaders are not born, they are forged. Exceptional leaders are shaped into what they are, by the gradual, repeated exposure to various situations where the odds are stacked heavily against them. David did not just wake up overnight with the confidence to confront Goliath. On the contrary, that confidence had been shaped into him by the events that played out in the wilderness. The comparatively ‘smaller’ victories God gave David over the bear and the lion created experiences that could be categorized into his mind as the same thing. Consequently, as David faced Goliath, all he saw was another event waiting to be filed into his category of personal victories. And that’s exactly what played out.

How to be the Wisest One in the Room: Maps, Circles, and Axioms

In the beginning, all that existed was God – the peerless Personification of perfection, pulchritude and perception. At the appointed kairos time, God acted out the model for moving to a desired state of being from an undesired one. With the Logos, He pried out specific order out of multiple alternative histories combating for preeminence in a soup of potentialities. We call these multiple alternative histories chaos. Then, God looked at the order He had created and said it was good.

At all levels of existence – individual, familial, societal – people desire to be in a state of being that is an improvement on their current states, whatever that might be. For many people, however, this state remains in the realm of uncrystallized potential. Why? People have learned to tolerate the status quo and shy away from whatever better state there might be.

The wisest one in the room is the person who can move from an undesired current state to a more desired one. They follow God’s model by stepping into a situation, taming chaos, and extracting order from it. The wisest ones are those who can crystallize gestalts of meaning from the fogs of potential. This is not necessarily easy, as life’s complicated and there are billions of ways that issues and events can be arranged in your mind to make sense of them. Many of these arrangements will not make your life’s experiences any better, and some might even make matters worse – just ask the nihilists and rationalists! That said, there are also specific attitudes of perception that will put you in the right frame to dissolve chaos, while bringing you closer to that state God has prepared for you. Three of them are discussed in this article.

1. Be Humble Enough to Understand that Your Map is Not the Territory

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Your worldview is built on certain assumptions that may be very different from reality. For instance, sentences in English and many similar languages are in the form of actor-action. The unspoken assumption of such languages is that an act can never occur in the absence of an actor. Hence, we have sentences like “The rain is falling”, where the rain is an actor carrying out the action of falling. Contrast that with the Hopi language, where an action can occur without an actor acting anything out. When the Hopi speaker describes the phenomenon of rainfall, he simply says “Raining”. He is not concerned with what caused the rain to fall. Unlike his English-speaking counterpart, the underlying assumption of the Hopi speaker makes him focus on the meaning of an event, rather than on its cause!

Which language do you think has the upper hand in describing reality? The honest answer is that we do not know. English and Hopi are both valid languages that describe aspects of reality. None is better than the other. English prevents you from seeing the significance of a phenomenon, and Hopi may kill your curiosity about causal factors at the roots of that phenomenon. Yet, reality has both causes and meanings that extend beyond our perceptions. The wisest one in the room is humble enough to acknowledge that he may hold assumptions blinding him to certain aspects of reality.

When making a physical map, cartographers assume that critters, trees, rocks, electric poles and grasses are a constant occurrence wherever you go. As a result, these details are never depicted, despite being present in the territory that is being mapped. In the same way, as you navigate through life, your maps about the operations of the world are riddled with assumptions that pervert your perceptions from seeing reality.

Note that assumptions are not always all bad or useless. The world we live in is complex and events do not fall into neat categories. Hence, assumptions can be useful in helping the mind act more efficiently. The brain does this by lumping things that are similar into the same categories. This enables us to focus our attention and resources on the information that matters: threats and opportunities. Without assumptions, we’d all be in a state of action paralysis, as we’d have to expend mental effort determining whether every information is a threat or an opportunity – regardless of whether they are familiar or not.

In what Thomas Nagel, an American philosopher, called the View from Nowhere, there is an objective reality that describes the inherent nature of things. I prefer to call this the “View from God’s Perspective”. On its own, no human mind will ever see this objective View from Nowhere. This is because we all approach reality through our maps which have been shaped by our experiences in our pasts. The consequence is that when your girlfriend says, “Let’s be objective”, what she’s really seeking out is consensus by agreement, not objectivity! The same thing plays out in every kind of human interaction.

Understanding that the Map is not the Territory is a superpower that accomplishes two things: First, it makes you more humble. Solomon, the original philosopher-king, wrote, “Surely He [God] scorns the scornful, but gives grace to the humble”. Humility is coming to the realization that you really do not know everything, and all you know has been shaped by your own map. Those who choose to be the know-it-alls and sophisticates will inevitably encounter the humbling curveballs that life throws at them. The humble, on the other hand, “will inherit the earth”. As it were, the survival of the fittest is in reality the survival of the most humble. Secondly, when you recognize that the Map is not the Territory, you become more open-minded and understanding of others. You start to see that others do not know everything too. You begin to understand that their motivations and perceptions are only shaped by the maps with which they see the world.

Today, there are not many people who are willing to accept that the maps with which they see the world can be outdated or wrong. Such people are married to their maps and have formed an emotional bond with it. They will defend the rightness of their maps with every fiber of their being. On the other hand, those who will thrive in uncertain or novel terrains share one characteristic: They are all individuals who are humble enough and willing to accept that their maps may be wrong. As a result, they are better able to learn and adapt to new terrains and survive.

2. Know the Boundaries of your Circle of Competence. If you don’t have any, find one

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As a human being, you neither have the luxury of time nor resources to be the master of all domains. However, because people have different histories and past experiences, there are fields of endeavor where they can choose and learn to thrive in their element. The reason is fairly straightforward. People who are in their circle of competence have often already devoted sufficient time and effort in their pasts to be proficient in their domains. Problems arise for the individual that tries to compete in a domain where he has zero competence. Such persons end up being crushed into oblivion. It’s nothing personal, it’s just the way the world works. Therefore, a major task in your life is to identify that domain where your history and past experiences can give you a comparative advantage. It’s your responsibility to “[b]e fruitful and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it; have dominion…” in your domain of competence.

If you have not identified your domain of competence, here are a few useful recommendations:

First, you can hone into a specific fragment of a broad field and/or dig deep into the foundations upon which that fragment is built. Most people do not have the patience, resources, discipline, or time to commit to such depths. However, by applying yourself to this method, you can have a relatively easy path to creating your circle of competence. In the broad automobile industry, companies such as Lamborghini or Rolls Royce are not just in the business of manufacturing cars. Rather, they remain profitable by staying focused on a specific slice of the automobile market – those interested in luxury cars. Such is the impact of finding and sticking to your domain of competence.

Alternatively, you can explore the overlaps that exist between unrelated domains of endeavor. One of the reasons why life can be complicated is that events are more interconnected than humans acknowledge. These overlaps have been criminally under-investigated and there is a big demand for people who are willing to devote the time, resources and mental effort to identify associations between fields that appear to be unrelated. As an example, Norbert Wiener investigated the overlaps between mathematics, physiology, engineering and psychology to develop a whole new field of cybernetics and control theory.

Furthermore, you can create your circle of competence by reproducing ideas that are geographically or chronologically separated from you. For instance, there are certain commonplace ideas, goods and services in 3rd-world countries that are highly desirable in developed countries, and vice versa. The same thing plays out when you consider the differences between rural and urban areas. Another area that is commonly overlooked is the past. A common assumption among people living in an epoch is that their generation has an overall better quality of life than previous generations. This is not necessarily the case. In fact, it can be argued that there are areas of contemporary life that are worse than that of previous generations. Nonetheless, this kind of ‘chronological superiority’ makes people in a generation disregard beneficial ideas and innovations from the past. As in other cases, you can create your circle of competence by visiting the past and extracting ideas that can be of service to your generation. Stoicism is an idea from Ancient Greece that has received a new lease of life in the past 5 years. There are tons of similar ideas that are waiting to be unearthed.

The wisest one in the room is the individual who has identified his circle of competence. Whenever he’s faced with problems that fall within his domain, he rises up to the challenge and solves them. And when the problem is outside his reach, he is not afraid to defer them to others better suited to solve them. That probably explains the following tongue-in-cheek remark from the wisest king who ever lived: “Even a fool is counted wise when he holds his peace; When he shuts his lips, he is considered perceptive”. 

3. Learn the Power of First-Principles Thinking

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The complications that often arise in life are usually because our unknown unknowns exceed our known unknowns. In other words, the things we do not know we are ignorant of are more than the things we know we are ignorant of. To untangle these complications, we have to identify the assumptions upon which these issues are built. Some of the assumptions mapped onto an issue are a function of the individual’s personal history and experiences. Nevertheless, there are other assumptions that can remain central and true to an issue, regardless of the individual’s past experiences, gender, ethnicity, socioeconomic status or religion. These central assumptions are referred to as axioms. The more common name is “first principles”.

In a conversation with His disciples about the greatest in the kingdom of God, Jesus said, “Assuredly, I say to you, unless you are converted and become as little children, you will by no means enter the kingdom of heaven…” In other words, access to certain aspects of reality will be obscured from you until you are possessed with the spirit of a child. Consider, as an example, the curiosity of a child. Due to their inquisitive nature, children question answers till they arrive at a point where they are satisfied. When you give a child a meaningful answer, you’d better be prepared to go on a journey that’s at least 4 – 5 layers deep to satisfy them. This is because each of your answers will be met with the response, ‘Why?’. As children grow up, however, they learn to conflate childishness with childlikeness in the name of appearing mature. They stop asking ‘Why?’ A natural consequence of this is the propagation of dangerous narratives, ideas and ideologies as people no longer have a willingness to question anything. First-principles thinking is a return to this childlikeness.

Broadly speaking, the ability to engage in first principles thinking is useful in at least two ways.

First, it can be useful in helping you untangle complicated problems. A classic example of how first principles are used to resolve complicated issues can be found in the way the Allied forces handled the 1945 Nuremberg trials.

Prior to the end of World War 2, the extent of human rights violations perpetrated by Nazi Germans on Jews were not known. With victory secured for the Allied Forces (Britain, Soviet Russia, France, China and the US) after the surrender of the Nazi leaders in 1945, the horrors of life at the Nazi concentration camps became widely published. However, a complication came up. There were no international guidelines for trying war crimes on the scale of those perpetuated by Nazi Germany. Although everyone knew the Nazi leaders had sanctioned orders that left carnage and destruction in its wake, there were no laws that classified such actions as crimes. As a result, the Nazi leaders could defend their actions by claiming “…where no law is, there is no trangression. Furthermore, trying the German war criminals according to Soviet laws could potentially raise issues with the US or Britain. Trials based on US or British laws could also raise the same concerns among other members of the Allied Forces. 

To resolve this, members of the Nuremberg tribunal had to think in terms of first principles. They identified and agreed upon the fundamental assumptions a person must hold before he could sanction the execution of war crimes on a population group. Once this was settled, prosecuting the Nazi German leaders became more straightforward.

The second way that first-principles thinking can be useful is when you are interested in testing whether the maps with which you navigate through life are obsolete or incomplete. As we’ve already established, many people’s outlook on life is informed by the stories and narratives that have been passed on to them from other people in their lives. Because stories are very compelling, few people take the time to question the assumptions that power such narratives. Like a child clutching on to his toy, people learn to see the narratives as their own – refusing to part ways with them. In this state, anyone who doesn’t share the same narrative is seen as the enemy. It’s no wonder that we live in interesting times where people are divided along ideological lines. This is a dangerous place to be in. When one learns how to engage in first principles thinking, it becomes easy to identify and avoid narratives that are built on wrong foundations. Here’s the bitter truth: Unless people take the time to ask themselves the uncomfortable questions about the assumptions powering their ideologies or worldviews, we can expect a future of friction and division.

The wisest ones in the room are those are refuse to be distracted by irrelevancies obscuring the first-principles upon which an issue rests. They are the ones who are comfortable with asking ‘Why?’ until it hurts, and then some. These ones embrace their childlike curiosity and inquisitiveness for the purpose of getting to the roots of an issue. Because of their willingness to do this, they are rewarded with the lucidity that eludes the yes-men and echo chambers. They access raw wisdom and enter the kingdom of heaven – starting from here on earth!

Three Big Ideas: On Paper, Deliberate Practice, and, Consistency

Big Idea #1 From Me

In the days of old, paper was a scarce commodity because of the amount of sheer effort that went into producing it.

Back then, if you had access to paper, it was because you had something worth writing about. And because you didn’t want to waste paper, you had to give sufficient thought to whatever you were going to write.

This is one big reason a lot of classic books are very dense in meaning – paper was hard to come by and only the highest quality ideas and thoughts were ever transcribed. (If you are a Christian, this will make you appreciate the Bible more)

To be educated meant two things: (1) You could give considerable thought to your ideas before condensing them to words written on scarce paper. (2) You could also unpack the meanings in the dense words and expound upon these meanings in a way that the common man could grasp.

In fact, the root word for educate is the Latin word “educere” which describes the process of drawing one thing out of another. In other words, if you were not skilled at extracting actionable meaning from condensed words, you were not educated.

Today, the story is very different.

The abundance of paper, and later word processors, and now the internet, means that though more people can read and write, fewer and fewer people are educated in the original sense of the word. That explains why there is an abundance of low-quality information, ideas and books out there – particularly in the past 20 – 30 years.

The world is filled with mindless readers and writers who live like programmed robots executing the same poorly-written line of code. Very few people are giving considerable time to their thoughts before they dispense them into cyberspace. In any case, even fewer people are willing to use their heads for more than a hat rack. The vast majority of people are only interested in viral tweets and the latest scandal in town. 

Understand this: There is a whole realm of possibilities available to the ones who choose to break away from conformity to mediocrity and become educated. These are the people who understand that we’re in a battle of words, and only the ones who have a mastery of words will win.

Big Idea #2 From Research

In their classic 1993 article, The role of deliberate practice in the acquisition of expert performance, Anders Ericsson and his colleagues were interested in uncovering the factors that distinguished elite performers from the “just okay” performers.

In one of their studies which focused on violin players, Ericsson and his colleagues discovered two major differences between the elite violinists and the “just okay” violinists. 

First, the elite violinists saw practice very differently from the “just okay” violinists. For the “just okay” violinists, every opportunity they had to play the violin was considered practice. That means that if they were playing to relax, or playing for an audience, or playing songs they already knew by heart – all these were considered as practice. 

On the other hand, the elite violinists’ perception of practice was very different. They did not see playing for an audience, or playing in the “zone” as enough to improve their performance. Their approach was to spend a relatively short burst of time, say 60 – 90 minutes, on specific activities that improved their level of performance. The elites were not practicing merely for the fun of it. Neither were they repeating things they already knew. Rather, they were painfully concentrating on the weaker aspects of their performance, getting feedback, and using that feedback to improve their performance. They usually did not enjoy this form of practice, but went on with it because they knew it would make them better.

Second, the elite violin players slept more than the “just okay” group. This is something that athletes understand perfectly. Because of the constraints of the human body, one should not practice hard things indefinitely. Doing so will only increase the probabilities of injury and failure. After a burst of intensity, you need time to rest. In addition to helping you recover from your efforts, resting has been empirically shown to consolidate what you have learned into your memory. This makes it much easier to recall the new skill when the need arises.

My key takeaway is how this paper throws a wrench into the 10,000-hour rule popularized by Malcolm Gladwell in his book – Outliers. Incidentally, Gladwell got the idea of 10,000 hours of practice by reading Ericsson’s paper. What he left out from the book, however, was the type of practice you should be doing in those 10,000 hours. If you are staying in your comfort zone, simply repeating something you are already familiar with, you will never reach elite levels in your domain of expertise. On the other hand, if you spend just 30 minutes a day deliberately improving upon a specific weakness in your skillset, you could reach the top of your niche in no time.

Big Idea #3 From Bible

1 Peter 2:21 – 22 says, “For even hereunto were ye called: because Christ also suffered for us, leaving us an example, that ye should follow his steps:Who did no sin, neither was guile found in his mouth

In the personal development space, one of the traits touted for success in life is consistency. As a writer, you are encouraged to keep writing, day-in-day-out. If you are an athlete, you are told to show up for training everyday. If you are into sales, you must continue to market your products and services in order to make the breakthrough. 

While viewing consistency in this way is useful, there’s another side of consistency that is overlooked.

Jesus Christ is described as having no guile. This does not just imply that He always told the truth. It also means there was a union, or if you want – a consistency, between His thoughts, His beliefs and His words.

There is a reason we are drawn to authentic people. It’s not because they are paragons of virtue (although they may be). Neither is it because they are charismatic (although they may be). Rather, it is because we can listen to them and conclude, “I’m getting all of this person – nothing more, nothing less”. We weigh their words and find them void of guile and pretense.

I’ve come to realize something simple about life: When there is a consistency between your beliefs, your thoughts and your words, every sentence you speak is backed with conviction and power. It also follows that the greater the divide between your words and your beliefs, the weaker your position in life. Christians understand this principle when it comes to the place of prayer, but fail to apply it to other aspects of their lives.

This week, I encourage you to try this simple exercise: Before you say anything, ask yourself, “Do I really believe this?” Like most people, you may be shocked with how inconsistent the various parts of your essence really are.

The Zidane Effect, Kairos, and, Alternative Histories

In the dying minutes of the 2006 World Cup final match between France and Italy, Italian defender Marco Materazzi had grabbed at the shirt of French player, Zinedane Zidane.

Disgusted, Zidane told Materazzi, “If you want my shirt so much, I’d give it to you afterward”

Materazzi replied, “I’d prefer the whore that is your sister!”

That was all it took to set Zidane off.

He made the decision to butt the Italian defender Marco Materazzi in the chest, got himself sent off for violent conduct, and France went on to lose the match after a penalty shootout.

Here’s the million-dollar question: Would France have won if Zidane hadn’t gotten the red card?

We’ll get back to that. First, let’s lay the groundwork.

I. The 8th Wonder of the World

Albert Einstein, the 20th-century theoretical physicist known for his theory of relativity, is said to have quipped, “Compound interest is the 8th wonder of the world. He who understands it earns it; he who doesn’t pays it.” 

There are two things wrong with that quote. First, there’s no evidence that Albert Einstein ever said that. Einstein died in 1955 and the first appearance of that quote was in 1983. Two, there are 2 other forces in the physical universe that are infinitely more powerful than compound interest: They are Time and Probabilities.

A short, ancient Hebrew book, called the Qoheleth, introduces these two forces as the cause of every phenomenon you see on this side of eternity. 

“I returned and saw under the sun that the race is not to the swift nor the battle to the strong, neither is bread to the wise nor riches to men of intelligence and understanding nor favor to men of skill; but time and chance happen to them all.”

If you pause and reflect on this carefully, you’d realize that success is impossible without understanding and partnering with these 2 forces.

Unfortunately, in every human, there is a nagging desire to explain the causes of events without acknowledging the roles of probabilities (chance) and time.

When a person wins a race, humans say it’s because he’s fast

When an army wins the battle, we say, it’s because the army had superior military strategies

When a person accumulates wealth or obtains valuable outcomes in their lives, we say it’s because the person had certain traits that made such results more likely

Yet we conveniently forget the stories of people who were fast but still lost a race.

We forget about powerful armies that succumbed to smaller and weaker armies

We forget about the hardworking men and women who apply all the tricks in the success guru’s playbook but still end up struggling to make ends meet.

As it turns out, our perception of causality is fractured because we don’t understand probabilities and time. Living life with such a fractured perception of causality is like crossing a busy highway blindfolded – you may make it to the other side, in every sense of the phrase.

So, what’s the way out? You must understand probabilities and time. 

II. People Do Not Inherently Understand Probabilities

In 1979, Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky published a journal article titled, Prospect Theory: An Analysis of Decision Under Risk”.

One of the big ideas in the article is the manner in which people think about probabilities.

People do not think about the probability of an event, but rather the impact of that event. And this is reflected in their decision-making process.

For instance, assume I’m about to toss a coin.

If I asked you to choose between head and tails, you will probably pick one side at random. Why? Because you know that every coin has a 50% chance of giving you a Head and a 50% chance of giving you a Tail.

What if, before flipping the coin, I told you that I will give you $1000 if the outcome is Heads?

Most people will subconsciously weigh “Heads” more valuable than “Tails” – even though the probability of either option is still 50% each!

The same thing happens in other kinds of decision-making.

For instance, the probability of winning the lottery is very small, but the impact $1,000,000 can have on a person’s life is high. As a result, gamblers overestimate their chances of winning and continue to gamble. Similar patterns occur in the way people handle their health and finances. Below a particular age, the probability of developing high blood pressure, or experiencing a financial emergency is reasonably low. This time, most people underweigh or even ignore these probabilities and continue to make decisions that can have bad outcomes. By the time they realize the error of their ways, it’s often already too late.

But that’s only just the tip of the iceberg.

III. Probabilities Are Wider Than You Realize

Back to the million-dollar question: Would France have won the World Cup if Zidane hadn’t gotten the red card?

That is one of the several alternative histories we will never get to see. What we do know is that Zidane’s absence had an impact on the game’s final outcome.

The same thing plays out in your day-to-day individual decision-making.

Right before you commit to any decision, there are a ton of potential outcomes that are available to you. Before you choose a spouse, there are tons of potential spouses out there in the universe that can complement you. Before you choose a job, there are tons of potential jobs out there that can be a good fit for you. Before you invest your hard-earned money, there are multiple opportunities vying for your attention. However, once you choose, you will only experience the outcomes attached to your choice.

And what happens to the other alternative histories? They may or may not be available to you again at a later time. In the context of our football example, it took France another 12 years before the opportunity to win the World Cup presented itself again.

Many will not be that fortunate. Why? In addition to not thinking in terms of probabilities, very few people think about the alternative histories and the potential outcomes of these histories.

IV. Errors and Alternative Histories

The quality of your life is a function of the probabilities you are aware of at the point of decision making. These probabilities are not merely limited to the outcomes of your decisions, but also to the outcomes in your alternative histories.

But how can we access these alternative histories when we cannot see them?

The answer is something the writer of the Qoheleth understood:

“There is an evil I have seen under the sun, like an error which proceeds from the ruler—folly is set in many exalted places and in great dignity while the rich sit in humble places.”

To the laity, the word “error” implies a mistake – something that should not happen, or something that one must avoid at all costs.

On the other hand, to scientists, “error” has a second layer of meaning, which describes a variation/deviation from one’s expectations. That’s why you won’t see researchers freaking out when they see errors in their data. Sometimes, scientists, unlike laymen, are humble enough to acknowledge that their expectations may be built on faulty assumptions about reality. At other times, certain statistical tests WILL NOT even be valid unless there is some variation (i.e., ‘error’) in the observations. In other words, errors are desirable!

What determines your stake at the table of honor is neither your wisdom, nor your wealth, but how much error (variation) you permit in your life.

Take a moment to think about how the day-to-day existence of the average person in the 21st-century is devoid of deviation.

In the name of productivity and personal development, many people lead machine-like lives. They plan their day to the microsecond and leave little to no gap for anything else. Because of their ill-advised adherence to their tasks and to-do lists, these people rarely break routine. As a result, there is little room for them to experience potential outcomes from their alternative histories. You see the same thing play out in the deadbeat, who wakes up, eats, plays videogames all day, watches porn, and sleeps – only to repeat the cycle the next day. Like his type A counterpart, there is very little “error” in his life that could bring him in contact with life-changing outcomes in his alternative histories.

People who benefit from probabilities have consciously or unconsciously acknowledged its impact by embedding variability in their lives. This takes different forms. For instance, some read books outside their fields that expose them to cutting-edge knowledge which is often commonplace concepts in other fields. For others, it’s their willingness to do something as simple as talking with strangers. Over time, such people develop a wide network that often proves invaluable in the long run.

Understand this: Whenever you introduce variability in your routine, you are exposing yourself to more happy accidents from your alternative histories.

V. Understanding the Times

The language we speak heavily influences the way we think. Unfortunately, many modern languages, including English, do not do justice to the concept of “time”. This is why many people lack an understanding of the times. 

In Ancient Greek, there were two major words used to describe the concept of time.

The first word was “chronos” which implied the passage of time from morning to evening, day to day, month to month, or year to year. Chronos dealt with the quantity of time. The second word was “kairos” which described an opportune time where you needed to act with decisiveness. Kairos was qualitative and it varied from person to person. Your actions during kairos can affect the trajectory of your life.

Many people fail to understand the times because they cannot distinguish between chronos time and kairos time. Here are three reasons why this is so:

First, people put their emotions in the driving seat of their lives. It is easy for this to play out today because of the relationship people have with information abundance. On one hand, you have the news media bombarding your mind with violence, gore, and death. On the other hand, you have the noise from modern-day pharisees and influencers who profit from your attention on social media. Of course, you can never meet their standards. This is why a lot of people’s actions are reactive – only informed by the emotions of fear and anxiety. In this state, it is hard to distinguish between chronos and kairos time.

Second, people are not patient. This is where the Yoruba maxim, roughly translated, ‘Don’t run on another man’s clock’ rings true. Kairos time varies from individual to individual. By focusing on your neighbor’s journey, you will miss out on your kairos when it inevitably arrives. Refuse to allow impatience and resentment to build in your heart.  Here’s one more verse from the Qoheleth, “To everything there is a season, and a time for every matter or purpose under heaven”. When you are patient, life-changing opportunities will inevitably come your way. This is an immutable principle on this side of eternity.

Third, people do not know when to be decisive. Some people may appear to be models of patience, but deep down in their hearts, they are afraid of taking action. Kairos is like a portal that can give you access to alternative histories with life-changing outcomes. If, in the name of patience, you fold your arms and stay put, that portal of opportunity will be closed and you will remain at the same level.

VI. Tying it all Together

For the last time, let’s go back to the 2006 World Cup final between Italy and France.

We’re in the dying moments of the game with the scores tied at 1-1.

Both teams have an almost equal shot at winning the cup.

Now, Materazzi has just grabbed Zidane’s shirt, to which a disgusted Zidane has replied, “If you want my shirt so much, I’d give it to you afterwards”

Pause.

Materazzi understands that in the current timeline, Italy and France are equally matched. However, the Italian hardman is somehow aware that there is an alternative history where the Italian team has a higher probability of winning the World Cup.

The portals of kairos open up and Materazzi jumps in ‘heart first’.

“I’d prefer the whore that is your sister!”

In less than 30 minutes, an alternative history has played out and the Italian team is crowned World Champions.

And what about Zidane, one of the most skillful playmakers of his generation?

I bet he was wondering how differently everything could have played out if he had paid more attention to the 8th wonder of the physical universe – time and probabilities!

“I returned and saw under the sun that the race is not to the swift nor the battle to the strong, neither is bread to the wise nor riches to men of intelligence and understanding nor favor to men of skill; but time and chance happen to them all.”

Three Big Ideas: On Influencers, Whorf’s Hypothesis, and, Waiting

Big Idea #1 From Me

Paul Volcker, former Chairman of the US Federal Reserves, once said, ‘In a crisis the only asset you have is your credibility.’

By extension, this means as an influencer, you shouldn’t pull instructions out of thin air and advise the populace to act on that.

However, this is not the case in the area of public policy making.

Many policies are based upon the work of theorizers who really have nothing to lose in the event that things go wrong. If things go fine, they get the accolades and if things go wrong, they are still able to publish their theories in journal articles and opinion pieces of popular newspapers.

You see the same patterns play out in the online marketing and personal development space. As with the policy theorists, many people in this niche do not have anything to lose. If things go as planned, they get a testimonial out of you. And if things do not go as planned, you’d still have spent your $2599 on their courses.

Here’s a useful heuristic: Before you commit yourself to any individual’s advice, ask yourself, what does he have to lose if he is wrong?

Big Idea #2 From Research

In his now classic 1940 journal article, Science and linguistics, Benjamin Lee Whorf proposed the controversial position that the way we think about the world is influenced by our language.

As humans, we like to hold ourselves up as rational beings that have used the power of intellect to bring nature to its knees. We cite the examples of Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein – the great men of science whose elegant mathematical formulas form the foundations upon which our present understanding of the physical world is built.

Yet, we take for granted the role that the language they spoke played on the way they thought.

For instance, in English, sentences take the form of actor-action. So, we say, ‘The boy is running’ or ‘Lightning is striking’. In contrast, in Hopi, a language spoken by a Native Indian tribe in North America, sentences take the form of action duration. Therefore, instead of saying ‘The boy is running’, the Hopi people will say ‘Running’, and instead of saying ‘Lightning is striking’, they will simply say ‘Lightning’.

This slight distinction in language implies that to those who speak English, an action can never occur in isolation – there must always be an actor responsible for causing the action. In contrast, the Hopi are satisfied with actions without a cause.

The same event occurring in the world evokes a reaction in the observer that is dependent on the language he/she thinks in!

My key takeaway is perfectly articulated by following parable told by David Foster Wallace:

There are these two young fish swimming along, and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says, “Morning, boys, how’s the water?” And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes, “What the hell is water?”

Just like the two young fish who were unconscious of the role that water played in their existence, we all take for granted the roles that our language plays in how we think.

Big Idea #3 From the Bible

Genesis 18:8 says, ‘And he took butter, and milk, and the calf which he had dressed, and set it before them; and he stood by them under the tree, and they did eat.’

For context, Abraham had discerned that certain sojourneying men were not ordinary. So, he stopped them from their travels, had their feet clean and prepared a sumptuous meal for them.

Then, he waited.

Christians are often encouraged to wait upon the Lord. Unfortunately, many go about it the wrong way. For many, waiting is a passive process where you simply fold your arms and wait for events to unfold.

The image that Abraham presents us is a totally different depiction of the waiting process. For Abraham, waiting was similar to what a waiter in a high-end restaurant does to patrons.

The waiter does not passively fold his arms hoping to be of service when the occasion arises. Rather, the waiter is always on standby – waiting with an expectation to meet the patron’s needs.

That was the attitude Abraham had on that sunny day at the plains of Mamre. He didn’t just hurriedly serve the travellers a meal.

He also waited with the waiter’s expectation for the Word to drop.

Needless to say, that’s what happened moments later:

Genesis 18:10: ‘And he said, I will certainly return unto thee according to the time of life; and, lo, Sarah thy wife shall have a son…’

I don’t know what you are trusting God for in your life, but I want you to always remember this: Waiting, done right, is never passive.

May the LORD give you understanding in these things.

Three Big Ideas: On the Lion Tamer, Prospect Theory, and Length of Days

Big Idea #1 From Me

I recently read the interesting story of a 20th-century lion tamer named Clyde Beatty.

He lived in an age where many lion tamers of the time died in the line of duty.

Yet, Clyde Beatty lived till he was 62 years and when he died, it was from cancer, rather than from being mauled by a lion.

So, what did Beatty do differently? Well, it turns out that he was one of the first people to adopt the use of a chair and a whip in his lion taming act.

You see, when a lion tamer is performing his act, he always ensures that the chair is held in the lion’s face. This doesn’t only maintain a physical distance between the lion and the performer, it also confuses the lion. Why? Because it is focusing on all four legs of the chair at the same time, rather than on the tamer.

Many people today are just like the lion in the tamer’s act!

Just like the lion is immobilized by focusing on all legs of the chair at the same time, many people are immobilized into mediocrity because their attention is pulled in all different directions.

Understand this: The world out there is always waving a chair in your face every time. And as long as your eyes are on the legs of the chair, rather than the meal, you will continue to be locked in the cage of unfulfilled potential. 

Big Idea #2 From Research

“Prospect Theory: An Analysis of Decision Under Risk” by Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky is one of my favorite journal articles of all time. 

One of the ideas that stood out to me was the manner in which people think about probabilities, or the likelihood that something will happen.

People have a tendency of not thinking about the probability of an event, but rather the impact of that event. And this is reflected in their decision making process.

For instance, assume I’m about to toss a coin.

If I asked you to choose between head and tails, you will probably pick one side at random. Why? Because you know that every coin has a 50% chance of giving you a Head and a 50% chance of giving you a Tail.

What if, before flipping the coin, I told you that I will give you $1000 if the outcome is Heads?

Most people will subconsciously weigh “Heads” more valuable than “Tails” – even though the likelihood of either option is still 50% each!

This human tendency to subconsciously overweigh the likelihood of an outcome is the reason why people continue to gamble. The probability of winning the big payout is very, very small. But since the impact of winning is BIG, gamblers overweigh their chances and continue to gamble.

My key takeaway is simple. You might be thinking you don’t gamble, or engage in other socially unacceptable behaviors. But I want you to think about how you are handling your health or finances. Who knows, your preferences might just be revealing how you are underweighing your chances of experiencing the outcomes of unhealthy physical and fiscal behaviors.

Big Idea #3 From the Bible

Proverbs 3:1-2 says, ‘My son, forget not my law; but let thine heart keep my commandments: For length of days, and long life, and peace, shall they add to thee.’

‘Length of days’ and ‘long life’ are two concepts that took a while for me to differentiate.

People are more familiar with the concept of long life, which literally means growing to a full, old age before expiring.

Length of days, on the other hand, expresses a situation whereby the individual who understands its operation is able to milk from 1 day what others attain in a month, or a year!

I know this is not intuitive to the logical individual, but when you realize that (1) time is a property bound to the physical realm, and, (2) God is spirit – He transcends the physical, you will have no choice but to agree that partnership with the Father is the Ultimate productivity hack!

May the Lord give you understanding in these things. 

Three Big Ideas: On Inversion, Overconfidence, and Observing Patterns

Big Idea #1 From Me

Carl Jacobi was a 19th-century German mathematician that made a lot of profound contributions to the field of differential equations.

One thing that made this possible was Jacobi’s problem-solving approach.

He believed that when you invert already known facts in a particular discipline, you can reveal additional knowledge that was hitherto unknown.

That’s why, as a professor, Jacobi always encouraged the graduate students under him to always invert the known confines of the field and examine what they found there.

When this method is applied to everyday living, you’re equipped with an unrivaled clarity of thought.

For instance, instead of asking yourself, What do I need to do to make money?, you can ask, What do I need to do to lose money? Chances are doing this will open your eyes to areas of your life where you’re not being a good steward of money.

Instead of asking, What do I need to do to stay productive?, ask, What do I need to do to waste my day? Again, this exercise will help you identify the simple tweaks you can make to your day to boost your productivity.

Many times, humans are unidirectional in their thinking.

We like to think in a particular way because contrarian thinking takes effort.

As a result, we imagine that the elusive secret to success can be attained only by accumulating more knowledge and wealth.

Through inversion, you’d realize that most times, less is more.

Big Idea #2 From research

In a journal article titled, Overconfidence in Case-Study Judgements, Stuart Oskamp asked a group of doctors and students to provide correct answers to a series of questions about a real person nicknamed ‘Joseph Kidd’.

The information about Joseph Kidd was presented in 4 stages, with questions asked after each stage. In addition to providing correct answers, participants were also required to answer how confident they were about their answers.

Stage 1 contained brief demographic information about Kidd like age, gender and so on.

Stage 2 had information about Kidd’s childhood.

Stage 3 contained information about Kidd’s education.

Stage 4 had information on other activities that Kidd was involved in till he clocked 29 years.

In all, the participants were asked 25 questions about Kidd.

On average, no one (even the doctors) got up to 30% of the questions right.

Yet, in spite of the poor accuracy of their answers, the more information a participant had about Joseph Kidd, the more confident they were in their answers. And there was no difference between the doctors and the students!

My key takeaway is something I’ve nearly flogged to death.

More information doesn’t necessarily translate into better decision-making.

That’s why I’ve stressed countless times that you don’t need to know everything. You only need a revealed knowledge of what works and the wisdom to work it out.

Big Idea #3 From the Bible

1 Chronicles 28:12a, 19 says: “And the pattern of all that he had by the spirit…All this, said David, the LORD made me understand in writing by His hand upon me, even all the works of this pattern”

One thing I established in my book “Mastering the Art of Observation” is the fact that the unseen realm is the causal realm.

The blueprint for life in the physical realm is found in the unseen.

Even Genesis 1:1 attests to that.

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.

The action word “created” is in the past tense form, implying that everything was already finished in the beginning.

When you have an understanding of this, like David, you can simply align with patterns in the unseen realm and crystallize their physical analogs in the seen realm – irrespective of the uncertainties in the world system.

If there’s any prayer you should heartily pray this season, it’s this:

Father, open the eyes of my understanding to see the patterns for my life, destiny, and situation.

May the Lord give you understanding in these things.