Five thoughts, ideas, insights, or quotes to power up your mind to think differently and creatively about life and who we are. Put all previous thinking away and open up a brand new world of the Supermind. YOUR SuperMind.
This week – Addictions.
Since the turn of this Century the number of people caught up in some addiction or other has been rising steeply. And not just the previous well know types such as drugs, smoking, and alcohol. This modern era has spawned fresh ones such as social media and gambling addictions have become rife. Addictions are harming millions of lives and so SMS has to look into this epidemic.
1. Pace of addiction keeping up with pace of life?
You know it, I know it. The sheer speed of life has ramped up to crazy levels in the last few decades. We work longer hours than ever before and have to travel further to that job. Even though COVID helped people work from home more, their busy domestic lives have crashed into heavy working schedules. Add to that the whole FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) mindset driven by social media, we feel the need to go everywhere to drink up everything life has to offer because, well, everyone else seems to be. How on Earth do we deal with all that energy sapping, mind draining lifestyle? We drink, take drugs, smoke, and are on our mobiles every few minutes So…
Is the ridiculous pace of life the source of the new pace of addictions?
2. Addicted to something.
There is a well known idiom that says we are all addicted to something. That it’s part of our emotional structure. All it takes is for a trauma or crisis or extended intensity for a switch in that structure to flip for some and they focus on something that helps mask the pain or pressures. This dilutes their ability to deal with their issue in a manageable way. As a result any bad or stressful day sees them turn to the bottle, the pill, the slot machines, or the promiscuity. Its simply a normal genetic reaction out of control. Or is it?
Are we approaching addiction the wrong way as a natural part of us?
3. Less about the pain, more about the pleasure.
Like above, traditional thinking is that addictions originate from a painful event or unceasing difficulties, The chosen addiction offers a route or escape from the inner or outer struggle. So smoking 40 a day or taking cocaine quells the pain enough (or completely) it has to be repeated. And if that alleviates the tension/hurt enough it needs to be repeated, sometimes multiple times a day, to keep the awful emotions at bay. But, here’s the rub. Now the situation has switched…
Addiction then is more about the pleasure feeling than the pain smothering,
4. Addictions we now function with.
We have all most likely heard of the functional alcoholic. The large drinker who has a high dependency on alcohol but can still function reasonably in life. Yes they drink most days but they hold down a job, manage their money, keep their house clean, and so on. In short, they are not out of control on the stuff. What we are now seeing is the so called ‘accepted and less harmful’ addictions that also are functional ones – using mobile phones and social media all day or accessing online betting sites. Behaviours that are not abnornal but their over use has moved into the addictive scale.
Are we developing functional addictions that are almost accepted by society?
5. Looking for an instant fix.
The modern world is fast paced…and most things are available at the click of a button, In an instant you can buy a car, book an exotic vacation, get tickets for a concert, or order your weekly shop. And almost in the snap of your fingers the tickets, car delivery date, groceries have turned up. The modern mindset has become embedded like this – what I call Internet Attitude. I want it, I want it now, and I want it with me quickly. That’s why with everything available, people can become addicted so easily. They are always a click or two of a button away from what they are desperate to have.
We can get it in an instant and get addicted to it just as quickly.
Ok, that’s another SuperMind Saturday done. Thank you for being here for the SuperMind time. Keep thinking about these. We need more minds thinking about this issue and the others issue on SuperMind Saturdays. Why? Because it’s needed. Because the world requires new thoughts and ideas. Perhaps YOURS!!
See you next time for more super thinking.
Photo Attributions – free to use under Pixabay Content License by Anestiev and TFWF2020.
Five thoughts, ideas, insights, or quotes to power up your mind to think differently and creatively about life and who we are. Put all previous thinking away and open up a brand new world of the Supermind. YOUR SuperMind.
This week – Equality.
The world is not the place it used to be since the turn of the Century. Humanity is now looking at, questioning, and repairing how things have been in our history. This is to ensure a fairer future. Equality is at the forefront of this revolution in behaviours, standards, fairness, and society norms. But trying to right the wrongs has itself stirred up a hot bed of issues. This means SMS has to take a look and ask some questions perhaps others are not. Or won’t.
1. Where to start?
Yes, straight into the fray. Many will shout that it is obvious….but is it? The first clear equality is for human rights for everyone. Rights to be who you are and not punished or penalised for it. However there are other well voiced inequalities that also require some improvement or wide range change. There is the equality of gender, of skin colour and race, of religious faith, of sexuality as the largest areas that demand attention. All groups have a justifiable right to more fairness. But society has always struggled with mass change like this. It works best through a gradual altering of how we live.
So where do we start with mass equality? What is the starting point to ensure the equality is here to stay?
2. A Human list?
Equality seems a simple premise. In reality though, equality can be hard to define in some areas but very clear in others. Added to this is that various people and groups seeking equality themselves aren’t in agreement about how that equality should look. There’s our challenge. We believe equality to be right but how it should work in practice has not been defined in some set parameters. It would help if we had a specific list of all areas that equality should be made to exist in and applied to.
Should we have a list of human needs that all equality has to be measured by?
3. Is equality reality?
Now the controversial question. Life is not fair. What one person gets, another doesn’t. Some seem born lucky. Others less so. That’s how life works. We all attempt to make life fairer, but it’s never going to end up that way. Maybe equality reflects that. We are attempting today to make society more equal on many levels. From legislation to attitudes equality has become a vital part of everyday life. But we never be able to make life entirely equal because it, well, it is life.
At what point do we reach before we decide equality can never be full reality?
4. Are our foundations wrong?
Equality is how we should live. It helps preserve and progress life. But, we live and are ruled by another method. A method that makes creating extended uniformity more and more difficult. Money. Over the last few decades capitalism has spread across the Earth. This drives division. Those who had, have now got more. Those that had less have struggled to keep that. More people are fighting this than they are equality as it effects everyone.
Is the modern love and need for money harming the need for equality?
5. Will we DO equality?
The famous Hollywood actor Will Rogers observed, ‘We will never have true civilization until we have learned to recognize the rights of others’. Compared to the past we now recognize more rights for each other than we have ever done. But, recognizing is only the first step. The real step is to physically DO something about this. Apologies for the past help but won’t go far at providing real rights today and the future.
What is the main step or action we need to do to ensure we live in a more equal world?
Ok, that’s another SuperMind Saturday done. Thank you for being here for the SuperMind time. Keep thinking about these. We need more minds thinking about this issue and the others issue on SuperMind Saturdays. Why? Because it’s needed. Because the world requires new thoughts and ideas. Perhaps YOURS!!
See you next time for more super thinking.
Photo attributions – free to use under Pixabay Content License by MrWashingt0n and Simp1e123
Five thoughts, ideas, insights, or quotes to power up your mind to think differently and creatively about life and who we are. Put all previous thinking away and open up a brand new world of the Supermind. YOUR SuperMind.
This week – Capitalism.
Since the 1950’s Capitalism has been the means by which most societies function and run. This is where private operators create and manufacture products, goods, and services that are then offered for sale in free markets with the price eventually decided by supply and demand. After World War 2 it was seen as the shiny new concept that would guarantee a better standard of living for all and greater financial freedom for the majority.
Yet, here we are a matter of only a few decades later and millions around the world are suffering from this very same system that was meant to alter their life for the better. And that means SuperMind Saturday has to turn its thinking onto the subject.
1. Who has really won?
Capitalism sold itself as the way everyday people could improve their life. If they ‘bought’ into the system – produce, purchase, profit, produce more, purchase more and so on – they, and all of us, would end up winners. But the end result today is more everyday working people and families in debt and struggling. Winners once have become losers now despite following the capitalistic way. Which leads us to the stark question that must be faced.
Who has really won from Capitalism? And who will keep winning if we continue to follow it?
2. Capital end game.
The design of any system is to achieve a goal. Some goals are included in the overall plan. They are part of the structure of the system so that the overall targeted result occurs more efficiently or readily. So, bear that in mind whenever you are told about ‘the system’ you may get involved with or brought into. Now, let’s look at capitalism. Yes, it’s about a wider range of production that is freely available. This is part of the structure as mentioned above. But what is the end game? Where is it all leading?
Is Capitalism merely for the few to have more capital? Is that its real end game?
3. Done to debt?
There is a well known phrase which says, credit where credit is due. In real terms this means credit given to those that have worked and earnt it. But in finance circles it has become credit where credit is available. This change in ready made credit has been what has driven all of the extensive consuming in the last few decades. But that credit for those who have less earnt it has only added to spiralling debt as people purchase to keep up with others (I have looked at debt separately in SuperMind Saturday). Truth is we’ve been done to death financially and become drowned in debt.
Has Capitalism just been an excuse to increase debt? And who do we all owe to and pulls the strings?
4. Technological threats.
We are all well aware of the growing use of technology. Technology has been expanding in almost every area of our lives. It’s promoted as being helpful to us; giving us more time away from tasks and duties so that we can live more and enjoy it. But……if technology is replacing what we did, it means we don’t do it anymore. And those tasks we don’t do are jobs and employment. From technology to AI, what people did high-tech is taking over from humans. Capitalism is funding and leading this. Less people to pay and support, less administration and costs. What does that REALLY lead to? More profits and even more money!
Has technology become the reverse threat to us under Capitalism?
5. What ‘Ism’ would work?
Capitalism has been the widest ‘ism’ in use for modern life. It has taken over the others that existed at various times in history and in various parts of the world. There has been socialism where everything is in collective ownership and puts social welfare for all as the priority rather than private profits for some. Of course there has been communism too. This promotes a classless state with common ownership (usually by rulers) and resources distributed to meet need. Plus, at the other end of the spectrum we’ve seen fascism and idealism to name but two. But, we are in a mess and need something soon before it all collapses. To the end…
What ‘Ism’ should we now adopt? What hasn’t been tried or what new idea could there be?
Ok, that’s another SuperMind Saturday done. Thank you for being here for the SuperMind time. Keep thinking about these. We need more minds thinking about this issue and the others issue on SuperMind Saturdays. Why? Because it’s needed. Because the world requires new thoughts and ideas. Perhaps YOURS!!
That is the common belief. That success comes from being incredibly clever, highly talented, and immensely creative. Or you must be truly innovative, an ahead of the curve inventor, or plain genius.
In other words success comes from special people doing or forming something special. Special, ground breaking, or through some life long dedication that finally bore fruit decades later.
This may sound familiar (unless you are a young TikToker or YouTuber who believes it can all come overnight viral style).
But, it’s a myth.
True success is equally likely, if not more expected, from those who stick to the extra simple others have never ever considered.
Because simple often turns out to be superb!
Small but successful.
The very best ideas often stem from basic need.
Someone has a problem so sets up something simple to help that ends us being very lucrative.
It’s 2005 and British student Alex Tew was trying to find a way to help fund his studies. He was beginning a 3 year business management course at the University of Nottingham. Concerned that after graduating his student loan repayments would cripple his finances for a good many years to come, he needed to create some ongoing income. One evening while looking at a computer screen and seeing the many pixels in its resolution, he had a brainwave.
He decided to set up a simple basic homepage with a million pixels and sell each pixel to businesses for $1 each (he chose US Dollars as there were far more business organisations in the States). For their $1 the business could add their logo and a hyperlink so when a viewer to the site hovered over it they could click into that organisations website.
With set up costs of only $50 the site went live in August 2005. Word of mouth soon spread and Tew decided to send out a press release when he made his first $1000 which the BBC picked up followed by technology site The Register. Within a month sales were over $250,000, and by New Year’s Eve 1,000,000 pixels had been sold.
From one simple idea looking at a tiny dot on a computer screen.
Scramble for Success.
Scrambling eggs was one on the first cooking skills we learnt in the past.
A simple task our parents taught us to help us start to make our own food. But, that simplicity seems to have disappeared.
On YouTube today over 17 million people have viewed a simple video on how to scramble eggs. Add to that nearly 6 million have watched a video on how to change a flat tyre on a car. And 3 million needed a video to be able to change a lightbulb.
Surrounded by every type of technology available, the modern mind is incapable of everything simple.
And that is where all the amazing opportunities exist in the world. We can’t do simple, so we seek out those who can or those that see the simple and turn it into something we need, want, or crave. And the simplest of all…is play.
When Joan Anderson went back to her native Australia in the late 1950’s she saw young children playing with wooden hoops made from left over barrels they spun round their waist. It reminded her of Hula girls from Hawaii and decided to make a version and called it the Hula Hoop. She thought it could be a perfect toy for kids everyone could afford. She took the idea back to the USA and used plastic instead of wood to keep costs low and for safety and to make them lightweight and easy to use.
The product flew off the shelves and in America alone it sold in excess of 25 million hoops in the first two months with sales of over $45 million. To this day they are still on sale and as of 2023 more than 21 million hoops were still being sold each year.
One massively lucrative product developed by one simple case of watching children play.
It’s all simple, and it’s all out there!
Simply Look.
The best ideas respond to our lives.
They match what we need, what makes our life less difficult, or support how we live. Try and find someone who would walk your dogs, look after your garden, clean your house, or do your ironing twenty years ago and you’d be hard pushed.
As life changes all manner of ideas for services and products spring up to match that change. It has always been this way. With life now fast changing at a pace even MORE ideas will be required as society evolves in this technological age.
With a growing reliance on technology we have taken our eye off simplicity even though we will never replace its presence in our lives. Which is why millions want to know how to scramble eggs or pump up a tyre or even how to find the trip switch after a power cut**.
If you keep your eyes open everywhere you go, in the end simple will leap out at you.
The glaring gaps that haven’t been filled by an idea or concept because we’re moving so fast no-one else has spotted it. It won’t happen overnight but slowly and surely, what’s missing will appear. What most people don’t have that you have worked out you can create or offer.
Spotted it in the size of a dot on a computer screen or children playing with makeshift plaything.
Make the shift yourself, look for simple and simple may bring you major success!
**1.4 million watched a video on YouTube to able to do this!
Five thoughts, ideas, insights, or quotes to power up your mind to think differently and creatively about life and who we are. Put all previous thinking away and open up a brand new world of the Supermind. YOUR SuperMind.
This week – Gambling.
Having a little flutter is a popular pastime. Many of us like a little bet now and again for fun or for extra pleasure watching the big game on TV. That’s innocent enjoyment. But, it’s a habit that’s gone from an excited buzz if you might win a few pounds, to an out of control habit that’s costing thousands. Betting has become all out gambling, and it’s spreading like wildfire. Time for SMS to get to the heart of things.
1. Is Winning Addictive?
When we have a bet it’s fun. But, it also adds a decided thrill especially if it looks like we are going to win. When we start we play for low amounts so win or lose, it’s still enjoyable. However, as we learn and do better we up the ante waging more amounts to win more money. Everyone blames gambling as an activity for this. But, what if gambling merely reflects a human trait that is the real culprit powering the show? Winning and feeling like a winner.
Is the emotion of winning the real addiction we are caught by?
2. Online off the scale.
At the start of this century if you wanted a wager you had to find a bookmakers. You couldn’t just have an urge to place a bet and be able to do so in an instant like today. Betting previously meant a) you really wanted a bet on a team/horse you fancied and b) you had to walk or drive to a local bookmaker. It wasn’t just an easy action. It took some effort. Therefore, only the true follower of a sport tended to bet. Roll onto the Internet era. Now any adult at any time of day can bet on almost anything very quickly. It’s too easy and too available.
Is the real gambling problem the internet itself?
3. More pressure, more fun needed.
Globally, life is now very pressured for most of us. We have to work harder then ever at higher costs than ever just to struggle to maintain our past standards of living. It feels very stressful and worrying and life seems a constant day after day battle for many to make ends meet. This equates to burnout, mental overload, health issues, and financial difficulties. With all that hanging over us we feel like we are losing. We need to connect to something that makes us feel like we can be winning again. Something that’s fun and not fear.
Is the growth in gambling merely a response to the sheer pressures in life these days?
4. Keep it real, keep it rationed.
It is hard to deny that gambling is rather out of control for a growing number of people. Whether it’s due to the online availability or to escape the pressures of life as noted above, whatever the exact reasons, gambling issues have surged. If you want to be place a bet, spin a slot machine, or purchase scratch cards and lotteries, there’s nothing you can’t gamble on 24 hours a day. With plenty becoming addicted, they have lost the skill to keep in control. Maybe then it’s time for controls to help out. Time to restrict online betting to no more than an hour a day or some membership programme to limit betting elsewhere to agreed limits.
Should gambling be rationed in nationally monitored schemes?
5. Gambling with other people’s lives.
I’m going to finish today with a simple wisdom disguised as a joke from the famous late British comedian, Tommy Cooper, He said, ‘Gambling has brought our family together. We had to move to a smaller house’. When gambling gets out of control it’s not just the person losing the money, everyone in their lives can become the losers too. Their family and loved ones – bills not paid, debts rolled up, no money for proper food or for clothes, no holidays etc and friends – never see them due to being almost bankrupt, can’t afford to go out. And add to this, changed behaviour such as becoming more aggressive, distant, forgetful. The present is a mess, the future bears not even thinking about…
When we gamble too much, we gamble with the lives of those closest to us too.
Ok, that’s another SuperMind Saturday done. Thank you for being here for the SuperMind time. Keep thinking about these. We need more minds thinking about this issue and the others issue on SuperMind Saturdays. Why? Because it’s needed. Because the world requires new thoughts and ideas. Ones from people like you. Let’s bring our SuperMinds together!
See you next time for more super thinking.
Photo attribution – free to use under Piaxaby Content License bymetalboy and pixelheart.
In the past you would most likely be on your own. There may have been others dotted around the world, perhaps even some who lived near you, but you had no real way of contacting them, never mind knowing where they were.
Beliefs used to be lodged just in our own minds.
And that’s where they stayed, doing little harm, appearing now and again, with a little flurry of activity by yourself. But, it was just some personal viewpoint. An unusual, maybe weird, but still plausible belief you had.
No-one got hot under the collar, life went on.
Then….along came the internet.
And all manner of beliefs exploded into life.
This thinking is alien to me.
Our beliefs used to be pretty harmless.
You went to the pub and some fella would tell you after a few pints that the moon landing was faked. Or maybe it was that Elvis was still alive. Hey, even you might have thrown in that aliens lived among us and the Royal Family were all from another planet.
You shared your stranger beliefs and went home to bed.
Not so today. Where you previously lived in a world of one, belief wise, now you can search for and connect to a whole community of others that know where Elvis lives and that Prince William is from Venus.
This tells your mind that what you believe IS true. Other people all round the world have the same view so clearly it is an unchallengeable fact. This cements further into your mind helped by accessing this online community of self believers every day further fixing in that conviction.
The trouble is, this is generally the law of averages at work.
You only need a group of 30 people and, on average, you will find someone with the same birthday as you. Go online and on social media with a few billion users, there will be those that think like you think.
It’s less meaning, and just more mathematical.
Firm your foundations.
Our beliefs are the very bedrock of our lives.
They are the foundation of how we live life, behave, communicate and connect, and think. No-one exists without this foundation. It’s your operating manual for your whole existence.
As it’s that crucial to everything you are and experience, you have to base this foundation on solid ground. On beliefs and thinking that can be backed up and strong to hold all things up for you. Otherwise it’s akin to building a skyscraper on sand. It (your beliefs and life) can collapse around you.
This can include incorrect negative beliefs about yourself (no-one likes me, I am ugly etc) as well as the Universe is a hologram or the Bible contains secret codes when the second coming will occur.
Wilder thoughts may feel good, but you can’t form a good life from them.
Thinking the Loch Ness monster is real is lovely, but it most likely won’t pay the bills, find a life long partner, and develop a career path that will serve you. Don’t get me wrong; believing that is your freedom and go fill your boots. It just won’t do anything supportive for your life.
And that’s what thoughts and beliefs are meant to do.
Celebrity or nobody? Naughty or nice?
Beliefs can help us, or hold us back.
It’s not just the weird and wacky that do that. It’s our own personal set of hang ups that achieve that every single day. The ones that go round our head and drive our actions and decisions. Like mice on a wheel.
Some hold us back – we truly think we’re never going to be successful, never meant to find a proper partner, that the world is against us and others along those lines. Ones that confirm in our head that we are a nobody overall.
Others elevate us – we consider we are going to be a star, or are an important person, someone who expects to be treated as royalty, and one others want to be around and look for. Ones that prove, also in our head, that we are a celebrity.
Truth is, many of us struggle to find that middle mental ground.
The balanced centred that knows, for example, that we have great potential and are as worthy as anyone else. With it that we deserve as good a life as possible and can be successful in our own way but not arrogant or self important with it.
This equates to the title of this post – everything really IS in our mind. Whether we are good or bad, happy or sad, saint or sinner, talented or completely unskilled.
From Nessie to NASA, being a born loser or winner, it’s what we believe in our head.
Believe better, but believe real.
Beliefs feel real.
The more we repeat them, the more they become absolute truth to us.
Neural pathways are built in the mind, like superhighways full of fast cars, that transmit hyper quick reactions due their regular use. This means no other thinking can interrupt those thoughts at those rocket like speeds.
Therefore they are the ones that hit the awareness and keep hitting it and filling it up. Making them THE beliefs that are authentic to you.
So whether you believe you are destined to always be dumped by a partner, or that UFO’s are everywhere and a government conspiracy, it will become your dominant thinking.
But, these don’t progress your life.
They don’t do anything expansive, productive, and helpful to you. You need to test them by taking them on. Did Elvis REALLY serve you down the chip shop? Are you ACTUALLY always being ignored for promotion? And is it true that you, as much as anyone, will never have money in your lifetime?
Get the answers to where your mind isn’t improving your life and you will discover one massive truth.
That what you believe really IS in your mind.
Then you can change it and change your life for something better!
