‘Find out for yourself what is true – create immediately an atmosphere of freedom so that you can live and find out for yourselves what is true, so that you are able to face the world with the ability to understand it and not just conform to it.’
Bruce Lee – Wisdom for daily living

Just recently I watched a video titled – ‘it’s all in the mind’ where an Ant is placed on a piece of paper where it then has a circle drawn around it. Once this is done, it appears that the ant is then unable to escape his imaginary prison.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0elycSPe0ew

This video is a good metaphor for the above quote and how I often feel about the Personal Development industry.

I have to admit when I first saw that video, like a lot of people I’d imagine, I thought wow that’s interesting.

However, most normal people walk away at this stage in the ignorant bliss that it’s just all in the mind and all will be well, or they are simply on to the next funny video, indifferent to the ants plight.

But for those who have consciously or unconsciously processed this information, what it often forgets to do is tell us the whole story. By that I mean, because it’s usually a heavily edited version of reality it manages to miss out very important bits of information, mainly for personal gain by targeting our predictable susceptibility to be easily influenced.

I’m odd I admit it. I’m a weirdo and over thinker at times when it comes to this stuff.

I actually stop and think about the ant.  What’s he thinking right now in that circle?

What’s he believing about that line?

How big does he think that line is, that an ant of his incredible capabilities, who can scale all sorts of rough terrain, can’t walk over it?

For a guy that can cover huge distances quicker than Usain bolt and lift more than Hafþór Björnsson the World’s Strongest Man, to not be able to cross this line intrigues me.

How long will he stay there? Will he die in the circle or risk taking a run at it eventually?

Will other ants come over to help him? Will they also be foxed by the black circle?

And I don’t stop there.

I spend several hours searching for ants to participate in my experiment, to find out a bit more of what’s going on here!

And there’s never an ant when you need one!

Eventually I found one on lone patrol and once I’d got my less than cooperative assistant, I gathered my pen and paper and released my mini Hercules onto the paper ready to imprison him inside the ring of ink steel.

Well, if he had moved any quicker that paper would have ignited!

Trying to draw a circle around him without decapitating him was near impossible.

As I got quicker at drawing around him, I managed to encircle him in the marketed ‘prison of his mind’ only for him to be totally oblivious to is bonds, running off the paper, over my hand, leaping off the side off the table onto the carpet – which would be like running over the cratered fields of The Somme and then under the dog.

Each time I caught him, I’d let him catch his breath while I would set up better ways to contain him.

Paper inside a baking tray to start with. If he supposedly can’t get over a pen line then the side of the baking tray will keep him contained for sure?

Hercules, at first, found the Jam jar he was in to be more interesting, so it took me some persuasion to get him to come out onto the paper, but when he eventually did, he was off like a shot and my circles where having no effect.

Neither was the equivalent 20ft wall of the side of the baking tray when he vaulted his way over the side to freedom!

This went on and on, placing the paper eventually in an empty aquarium, only to answer my initial question of how could a pen line stop and ant when they are such amazing athletes, because again he ran the equivalent of two football pitches in a sub 5 seconds, onto the vertical glass version of El Captain, which he also scaled quicker than Dan Osman the speed climber, and over the side, to claim what would be his prize of freedom and his return to his post in the garden. The test was over and Hercules had passed.

I couldn’t have asked for a better example of what works in theory, or worse still what we are sold as fact and which we buy into compared to how life really works out.

Ants it seems do not conform to Marketing bullshit just like we don’t.

The difference is Ants don’t watch You tube videos so have no idea how they are ‘supposed’ to behave.

The thing is it’s easy to say things don’t behave as they are meant to.

Or that Hercules the Ant was an outlier. (He wasn’t by the way, as I also had an opportunity to test this when I was in the garden recently making a canvas for a painting, when a nest of ants decided to investigate what was going on on their patch.

Like buses when you want an ant there’s none around, when you don’t the nest comes out!

So now on the back of the canvas there’s loads of circles in pencil, black pen, blue pen, red pen and permanent marker, just to eliminate the chance it was the type of pen I was using that was stopping the ants escaping. It wasn’t – Ants don’t give a shit about lines drawn in any type of pen it turns out!

But Hercules behaved exactly as he was meant to.

And if all we have to navigate life is the ‘Ant in a circle’ theory workshop that we have just been too –  that’s indecently making else someone rich, (and probably learnt from someone else who read the theory and ran a workshop rather than every actually trying it) then we are stuffed.

It’s not just limited –  it’s bollocks.

But the danger is we go away thinking it’s us that’s got something wrong when we do not conform to these false ideals.

When I explained my findings to my father, he gave a great example of someone who was sold hope, found it didn’t work, but was stuck in dogma.

Because he thought I actually wanted the ant to stay in the circle to prove it right he suggested I put Hercules the ant in the fridge to sedate him for a bit!

Then I could pull him out in his groggy stupor where he may well stay in the circle and prove the theory true!

What a croc of shit!

And fear not I did not put him in the fridge!

I was delighted. It’s what I wanted. I didn’t want to prove a theory – I wanted to find what actually works.

Saying it’s all in the mind and dismissing it, is like attempting to drown yourself after someone has said ‘once you’re dead its fine’.  This may be true but stick your head under water and see how long you stay there for – and as all the desperate thoughts come to mind of escape, just tell yourself is bollocks and it will be fine very shortly and just keep going! Good luck with that!

Our realities are in the mind, inside our ‘Tiny Skull kingdoms’ this is true.

But those realities are real to us and rarely conform to theorems.

Humans like Ants are perhaps predicable in one sense, but at the same time it’s important to realise we are all unique and how we interpret the world is often very different from what the books say or others profess is ‘the truth’.

Don’t believe the hype, because the hype has lots of people wanting to sell us the sequel!

Investigate what’s true for you.

By learning to interpret how we feel as individuals rather than an imagined collective, we can then formulate our own way to successfully navigate our way through our own virtual realities.

It may well be all in the mind, but so is everything else we encounter in our worlds.