“Ooooh,” I groaned, tilting my head slightly and letting my voice rise just a touch at the end of the sentence. “Your joints must be telling you something?” I was deliberately using what’s known in NLP (Neuro Linguistic Programming) and Ericksonian Hypnotic language as a selectional restriction violation. Her joints couldn’t actually talk to her,…
“He’s finished school,” his mum said matter-of-factly. “He needs a sick note so he can get his benefits.” I grew up thinking that if I put in the graft, I’d get the rewards I was due. That’s how the world worked, right? Effort equals outcome. Work hard, reap the benefits. And although this ethos of…
In the last few articles, I’ve spent some time describing the different groups that make up your society. I hope you can now see where you fit (or don’t fit) with a little bit more clarity. Maybe you’ve also got a feel for some of the problems you face being where you are. But let’s…
You’ve probably noticed something’s changed in the past decade or so. Maybe you’ve felt it at work, where you’re suddenly walking on eggshells around certain topics. Maybe you’ve seen it in your kids’ schools, where the curriculum can also focus on identity and the oppression of certain views rather than just learning. Maybe you’ve watched…
Before we move on, it’s worth taking a moment to look at how far you’ve actually come. We started by looking at you. How you think. How your thinking is shaped by biases you probably weren’t even aware of. How those biases quietly distort your decisions, keep you stuck in the same patterns, and make…
You don’t exist in a vacuum. You’re part of something bigger, whether you want to be or not. Society shapes you, your choices, your problems, your possibilities. Understanding how society works, understanding where you fit within it, understanding the forces acting on you, that’s not abstract academic stuff. It’s essential context for understanding why you’re…
This article leads us into looking at each generation in turn, so that we can understand those generations a bit better, so that we can see where we ourselves fit, and where we can use our skills from the generation we fall into to benefit us in society today. Let’s start with the oldest generation…
I was born in the 70s. In fact, anyone born after the mid-60s to the early 80s is said to be a member of my generation too. I am a member of Generation X. We are the non-Baby Boomers. If you simply look at the numbers, we’re also a minority. We’re the post-boom generation sandwiched…
Let’s move on to the Millennials, also known as Generation Y. Born from the early 1980s until before the turn of the century, they are achievers. They’re networked. They’re team-oriented. Yet the Millennials also live in a world that has moved even further away from the stability available to the generations before them. Millennials have…
I’m Generation X, but I was spending too long at work to have kids early enough for them to be Millennials. My kids, however, belong to Generation Z. Generation Z were born after the turn of the century. They’re post-9/11. They’ll inherit debt from the financial crisis. They’ll face global warming, and the transition from…