Wanzology

 
Hey, happy Wednesday. It's WANZOLOGY!! Yes, I made that up right off the top of my head. I do that. This is your host, The Wanz, and yes, it's another week of WANZOLOGY reading from #THEBOOKOFWANZ which I remind you, you can get at your local Amazon website. Anyway, just, uh, go to Amazon and search for #THEBOOKOFWANZ, all one word, And you'll be taken to a site that has a picture of a nice, wonderful cover and your opportunity to purchase will be available.

So, I hope you're doing well. Um, life is pretty challenging for everybody all the time. Today's #THEBOOKOFWANZ chapter is quite pertinent. The chapter IS ONE NEVER KNOWS WHAT THE FUTURE HOLDS. SO BE READY FOR BOTH SIDES OF THE COIN. Quote, a child is born with no state of mind, blind to the ways of mankind, God is smiling on him, but he's frowning too, because only God knows what you'll go through. Unquote. Grandmaster Flash, The Message.

Ever tried to predict the future? How often were you right? How often are you right? There are so many things that we should do as humans to protect ourselves from and against the future. Some of us exercise, eat, stop smoking or whatever, all in an effort to protect ourselves from some of the bad things that can happen to us. What if that level of prudence was given to our emotional and mental wellbeing?
What if we mentally prepared ourselves for each and every right or wrong answer, every good or bad choice? If you could take into consideration how many decisions you make in five minutes, not big ones, mind you, but all those little decisions, the idea of mental preparation can get big.

My experience in practicing mental preparedness has been an interesting one. The good of it has been that I make fewer bad choices and don't get too hurt over bad outcomes. The bad of it is, I worry more. Worry is almost as useless an action as guilt. Sweating yourself over something you can't control is the worst. So focus on the one thing you can control, YOU. And be ready for the future because it's always coming.

Hmm. Yeah. In the theme song for this podcast, Get Lucky, in the middle, there's a There's a few lines that I, I love to refer to when I'm feeling less than:

“Chances will keep comin, sure as the sunrise every day.
You can choose to sit and watch them pass, or grab what's yours to take.
So have faith.”

You gotta have faith that you're gonna be around for the next decision. The next choice. You can't really predict what the future is going to be, but you sure as hell know what the present is. If you're paying attention, if you're paying attention, you know exactly where you are in whatever process you're trying to exercise. Let's say you're taking a shower. It has a beginning, a middle, and an end. But in between, there's all these little steps. Some of you will wash your hair first, then put in conditioner, then wash your body. Some of you will wash your body or use a loofah and a body gel or a bar of soap. Some of you need to use one or the other, trust me. The point is that you're making all these choices right on the fly. In the moment that you're in, is the water hot enough yet?

Is it too hot? You have to adjust. Did you forget to put a towel out? Did you forget to replenish the soap? Need a bar or a gel? Being human is not easy. There are always choices to be made. So, if you can't predict the future, how do you prepare for it? It's a good question, but it's got a simple answer. It's just not always that easy. Every moment that comes to you is a moment that comes to you, and each moment that comes to you is an opportunity to make a better choice. See, because if you notice, you've taken more than one shower in your life, but every single one of them has been different in some way, shape, or form. Maybe you used to shower in the morning, and sometimes you shower at night before bed.
Maybe the opposite. Maybe you shower in the middle of the day because you were working out in the yard, or building something, or worked out. Either way, shower is a great thing. Example of number one, a process, and number two, how detailed you can make a process. Detailed in the sense that there's all sorts of choices. I mean, do you start at the bottom and work your way to the top? Do you start at the top, work your way to the bottom? Do you start in the middle and go both ways? I mean, everybody does it different, right? How you do it is up to you. And maybe sometimes, unconsciously, you do it different every time. What would happen if you started keeping track of how you go about taking a shower? What would you learn? What would you learn about control? What would you learn about choice? What would you learn about your-self? It's a fair question.

See, I've already done this little mind experiment, and it's very interesting. Once I get past the whole, is the water temperature right? When I get past that part, then it's a matter of, what do I want to do first?
Do I want to soap up? Do I want to just relax in the warm water? Hot water. Choice. The blessing and the curse. It's always there. But now let's make it a little more complicated. You've already taken your shower. You've already gotten yourself ready and now you're going out. You're leaving the fine confines of your abode. Going somewhere to do something and you're wondering, What's going to happen? Is it a new something you're going to do? Is it something that you've done all the time? Are you doing it alone with somebody? Is it a new somebody? Or is it an old friend? You don't know what's going to happen. Five minutes after you listen to this episode of the podcast, you don't know what's going to happen. You'll have a better idea four minutes and fifty seconds later. After you're done listening and since no one can tell the future, what's the depth of possibility for you going to be? Is it wide and deep or is it short and shallow? You get to choose. Is it an internal choice that you're going to make? Is it an external choice?
Is it an action or just a thought? This is the thing that if you think on it too long, you might hurt your head a little bit because even I don't know. I just know that it's a process that everyone goes through, and it's one of the things that makes us more similar than we are different. Everybody has to go through this little exercise of, “What am I going to do next?” How am I going to do it? When am I going to do it? Alone or with other people? Is it for work or is it for play? What, what is it? It depends, right? And there are so many ‘its’, aren't there?

Life is complicated, people. Life is extremely complicated. When you really, really start looking at it on a moment-by-moment basis, take the last half an hour before you started listening to this. You were doing something. Don't know what, but I'll bet you were doing something. What was it? And how many choices did you have to make exactly 30 minutes from the beginning? Now, how many choices and things will you be doing 30 minutes from…now? Both sides of the coin, past, future. Be ready.

Be ready because the past side of the coin is already done, right? So that means you can't really go back and change anything. In fact, really has nothing to do with it. You can't go back and change anything. You can't change what you ate yesterday. You can't change what the weather was day before yesterday. You can't change what you said earlier, but what you can do is go back over with a fine-tooth comb all those things that you did and keep what you can use. What's that? ‘That’ is it. What you can use is something, something that worked, something that served you well. You had a good outcome from a decision. File those away and pretty soon good choices will outnumber you’re not so good choices and everything in between. When you can remember them and come up against a similar situation, hopefully you'll remember what you did the last time. What you did, what you said, how you felt, and you'll choose something different so that you'll have a different outcome. That is what makes life exciting. It's really boring taking a shower. At a certain age, you've done it the majority of your life. So how do you take something that's like so mundane and make it interesting? Well You pick it apart, which to me means every moment that you're in there, you're thinking about what am I doing right now? What am I doing right now? What about now? Am I using a washcloth or loofah? Arms? Hands? Palm? What…what are you doing? How are you doing it? Is there enough soap? Do you need more?

See what I mean? It's complicated. Fairly. But you've done it enough times that you already know. You don't even think about it anymore. What's going to be really funny is the next time you take a shower and you think of this episode of the podcast. It'll blow your mind, baby. It'll blow your mind. Trust me.

Maybe it won't. I mean, your results are going to vary. Everybody's results vary. But, with one species of human being on the planet, I like the chance that you're going to have the same experience, or something relatively close, that I had. Which is stunned and amazed that you can get through two or three minutes, making all of those choices in two or three minutes. And when you start expanding the time period, man, it could be quite impressive for you. You could have, you could have a track record of excellence when it comes to making choices. Because you're always doing it, even when you don't think you are. Because you're pretty much doing something else a lot of the time that you make a decision. That's the way humans work.

Someone told me the other day that to multitask is impossible for human beings. Because they can only concentrate on one task at a time. I kind of don't believe that. And the reason is because, as a performer, I know how to multitask. When I'm on stage, there are lots of things going on. Not only am I trying very hard not to stand still, but while I'm doing it there's breathing involved, which luckily I don't have to control. And then there's words to say, in the right order, in rhythm, on pitch. And then there's things to do with hands and eyes. Facial gestures. There is all sorts of things going on when a performer performs.
Don't believe me? Whip up your favorite YouTube video that's a live performance and watch closely. Watch closely. Because everything is happening all at once for the performer. And believe me, they are multitasking. The only difference between what they're doing and what you do is the environment they're in.

The space that they're occupying is different from yours. Being on stage is A lot like being anywhere with other humans.

As, uh, Rush so adequately put it, actually, it's Shakespeare:

“All the world's indeed a stage, and we are merely players.
Performers and portrayers,
Each another's audience outside the gilded cage.”

Think about that for a while. Maybe even Google what that means. I'd love to know what you think about it. I'd love to know what you think about that phrase, “Each another's audience outside the gilded cage.”

Maybe send me an email and tell me what you think. Can you do that? Send me an email with “one never knows” as the subject. Tell me what that phrase means. “Each another's audience outside the gilded cage.” What does that mean to you? Email Wanz at The Wanz dot com. I would love to collect them and then maybe that's another episode. How others live their life. And the choices they make. Yeah. Send me an email with “One Never Knows” in the subject and email it to Wanz at The Wanz dot com.

We are getting down to the end of #THEBOOKOFWANZ, and then it's gonna get really fun, cause I have absolutely no idea what I'm gonna do next. But I'm pretty sure I'm gonna decide. I know I'm that capable, and so are you. Remember, one never knows what the future holds, so be ready for both sides of the coin.

Alright, until next Wednesday, I will bid you adieu!