March 29, 2012

Ingrained Habit or Being Too Comfortable?

You are age twenty five. Finally, you found a job you think you can stay on for 40 years till you retire at age 65. A few years down, someone introduce you to a 2 to 3 year plan to early retirement. What would you do? Would you: as a Type A person, Say, no thanks? Type B, At least investigate? Type C, Unconditionally try out the 2 to 3 year plan while still working with your 40 year plan to retirement?

If for whatever reason you bypass this opportunity - what would be the cause? Is it out of habit to say no or you are too comfortable with your life? Forty years is a long time to wait to find out the outcome. If on the day you retire, you discover you have not saved enough to comfortably retire, what then? Continue working?

It is unfortunate old habits are hard to beat. Societal and cultural conditioning are so ingrained that we become stifled. Take a circus elephant as an example. From birth, circus elephants are conditioned to walk in circles from being tethered to a pole. Each time the elephant extends the rope tied to its leg, the tug restrains it from continuing. As the elephant grows into an adult elephant, it definitely has the strength to pull the pole with it....but being conditioned from birth it feels restraint. In real life, an elephant in a Barnum and Bailey Circus fire was burnt to death as it could not escape from being tethered to a pole. It could have easily broken free but the conditioning from birth was too ingrained for it to break out.

Another example of comfort that stifles is the frog. In lab experiments, a frog was put in a jar filled with cool water. The water was heated very slowly. You would think the frog would jump out of the jar as soon as it gets warm but alas, the frog adapts and by the time it boils, it is too late. The frog gets cook as the water boils.

These 2 examples are a clear warnings to us about being complacent, allowing ourselves to be conditioned into  stiff necks preventing us from changing and adapting to new economic realities and conditions.

If you are a type C person, congratulations! you are on your way to complete freedom "untethered" to a company or employer. The open sky is your office!

If you are type B, congratulations, at least you have an open mind to investigate. You investigation may lead you to become a type C. There is plenty of hope.

If you are a type A person, what can I say? But I will leave you with final example. A flea can jump between 3 and 6 feet. Put a flea in a jar and it would jump out freeing itself. But if you put on a lid, the flea will jump but gets nowhere because of the lid. After awhile, the flea has "learned" and conditioned itself not to jump because of the barrier above. Now when you remove the lid, the flea will remain in the jar and rot in there.

Be hungry.and free yourself from your own imaginary tether....you are neither too young or too old to be tethered by being close minded!

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