Implementation Gaps
From Thinking Politically by Jean Blondel (London: Penguin, 1976), pp.22:
Laws may be introduced to change behaviour, but this is never achieved immediately. It always takes at least some time for elites and the public to adjust to the law. It is therefore not realistic to assume that laws will be implemented from the very moment they are introduced.
In the last post, I advised that people in positions of power should resist the urge to become tyrants to others. And no, we are not defining the word tyrant today. Anyway, I think the same applies to the individual – don't be your own tyrant. Imagine yourself as the CEO of your own life, because, in a way, you direct and administer the affairs of you life. As the CEO, you are in charge of setting the strategy for what your future should look like, allocating resources (time, energy, and attention), setting up processes to keep you resilient and agile in the face of adversity, managing success and increasing production/output. It also includes figuring out the things that bring you joy and doubling down on them, while avoiding those that make you gloomy and unwilling to do life. Being human is a full-time job; it’s a 24/7 gig, friends. You have to figure out how to get the best out of your employee (still you of course) to ensure the company is performing optimally or even exceeding market expectations. If you adopt a tyrannical approach, then your employees will only work from a place of fear since there are scared that you don’t spare the rod even during times when you should. I don’t know about other people, but there were times when I knew I’d get punished by my parents for something I was going to do, but I’d go ahead and do it anyway. Why? It was because the pleasure I would derive from the specific activity outweighed whatever punishment they could dish out. No matter how they raised the level of the punishment, the more I did the thing they didn’t approve of. Jesus! Imagine my karma when I do have kids. It’s just the same, because employees eventually start misbehaving which inevitably ends up sabotaging the company. If you think about it, what is the use of working together in sync to bring about a positive outcome for the company? The boss not only berates the team but also fails to acknowledge our contributions to the company's success, anyway. It just means you are not giving yourself a pat on the back for all your own efforts. 🍟
Once the company is not in sync, it will keep self-sabotaging since different departments within the organisation may have conflicting goals or agendas. A tyrant has tunnel vision of an outcome they want without a willingness to take information gathered from reality that could be useful in adjusting their strategy. When the boss stops listening, employees stop giving feedback and secretly hope the boss fails. Just think about how the brain, mind, and body does this kind of gymnastics everyday while still managing demands from others. While trying to implement changes, one has to be willing to take feedback from the environment and adjust accordingly. The problem is that people, including myself, often want to quit cold turkey or see instant results. In reality, results compound; at first, they start slowly, so subtly that they can be imperceptible for months or even years. Ask people who have tried to quit any habit they've had for years cold turkey, and see what the failure rates are. I tried to quit soda cold turkey, but every time I tried I ended up craving it more, which eventually made me go get several bottles of it to overcompensate. I finally figured how suboptimal my approach was and instead went “let’s reduce soda by 10% monthly while replacing that 10% with sparkling water.” It turns out my brain was just craving the pshh sound of an opened soda bottle. Compared to last year or even the 1st quarter of this year, I have managed to reduce my soda consumption by probably 70%. What I learnt is that a tolerance for mistakes is a huge factor in whether one enjoys peace of mind or not. I am aware that certain professions have different tolerance levels for mistakes. You can’t expect the level of intolerance for error in the aviation, space or medical industry in your own personal life. It’s just not healthy or sustainable. Life is messier, it can’t always be quantified. There are many variables at play in your life at any given moment. Even in those mistake intolerant industries, when things go south, they take a stock of the things that went wrong, ask why and try to mitigate that in the future. If anything, they use the information to tweak future performance efforts. While others use that same information to beat themselves up. 🥂
The question then is, how do you treat yourself when you slip back into the very habit you are trying to quit? Do you speak to yourself with kindness or do you berate yourself? It's how you treat yourself that would determine if you would see the change through. I’ll hazard a guess that one of the culprits is the relentless desire to get it right on the first few attempts. It’s almost as if our self-worth hinges on that. The usual drill is this: you quit a ‘bad habit’ for a while and then one day you stumble. Instead of going, “it’s OK, these things happen. It's part of the process,” we sometimes self-bash and then relapse so hard because we think there’s no redemption. It’s not news, the body or mind is going to put up some resistance to avoid the changes you want to adopt. The body/mind has been a certain type way for a while, now, all of a sudden, you are asking it to try to be or become something else. Don’t be surprised when it doesn’t fall in line immediately. In other news, just because you can’t get a read on your progress, doesn’t mean that you’re not on the right track. It just means there are a bunch of hurdles for you to jump before you get to the finish line. I know it’s reassuring when people tell us that we are improving in certain spheres of our lives, but eventually one would need to figure out how to sense that themselves. With bodybuilding for instance, you can tell over time since it shows externally. With school, you can tell because you get to graduate and get a certificate as proof. But that’s often not the case with internal self-work. Now that I think about it, maybe I should compliment friends more so they know that even though they don’t notice, we notice their efforts at becoming. More often than not, the newsletter is me advising me. Anytime you see the word ‘you’, it’s mostly me talking to me. 🎁
In a previous post, I mentioned that I might mess around and start another newsletter that would strictly be focused on the Iliad. The book just keeps calling out to me. Well, I finally created it a few hours ago and will be running both newsletters weekly. As I said, I don’t know what the outcome of doing that will be but I have a nagging feeling that it will birth something interesting. It won’t be easy running both but I keep affirming the words from scripture: “I can do all things through him who gives me strength.” I initially didn’t want to title it Iliad.substack.com because people might discover it and I am not some literature professor who knows what they are doing. But I named it that anyway. As usual, I'll write about my thoughts on passages that stand out for me. If you're interested, I can send you a copy of the book (thrifted, of course) or a PDF/mobi/ePub version, so you can read along with me. 🦄
Thanks for reading. If there's anything you'd like to chat about, or if you have any questions, feel free to shoot me an email. I'd love to hear from you. :)