Are you at the tip of the iceberg?

08 June 2009

You know that 90% of an iceberg lies underneath the surface of the water and the term “tip of the iceberg” is generally used on a problem of difficulty, meaning that the visible trouble is only a small manifestation of a much bigger issue.

So often the problems we face in life are only manifestations of a much larger problem, and often aren’t even related. What might take years of “soul searching” in order to find resolution might take an experienced life coach to ascertain with clever questioning and intuitive digging.

At least you’ve identified that there is an iceberg ahead, and not too late too, unlike the victims of the Titanic. This already gives you more of a head start than those people who simply go from one issue to another, crashing and burning each time, compounding their mistakes and making their lives miserable. As is said before, what you focus on, you will receive.

In almost the same manner, if you are gunning for some goal or objective, keep going. Too many people get started, reach the tip of the iceberg, feel that it isn’t going anywhere and then back off. If you’ve read Think and Grow Rich, you’ll know the second step to riches is persistence. Keep going.

In life, nothing starts off easy. If it did, everyone would be millionaires. Incidentally an interesting fact is that if you took all the money in the world and divided it equally amongst all the citizens of the world, everyone would be millionaires. Isn’t that something!

Back to the point, nothing starts off easy. It takes courage to continue, even in the face of criticism and negative chatter from friends and family. What you must know is that they comment only based on their model or reality. You are creating your own model, and in your model, you should strive for excellence all the time.

Today I was interviewed by a journalist doing a piece on teetotallers in the UK. It was an interesting experience and much of the questions came as expected. She found me because I organize a meetup group around the topic. In fact, probably the only social club which exists of this kind in London.

Anyways, I haven’t had a drink for several years now, through personal choice. What interests me about the British society and culture of drinking, is that people, everyday of their lives, give away their power of choice to the pressure of “having a drink”, not because they want to, but because they have to conform to.

Isn’t that a shame! I was driving along and saw an advert billboard yesterday marketing the new Stella Artois 4% beer. Isn’t it a sad state of affairs when the marketing of a beverage revolves around what percentage alcohol content there is in it? Surely if people in this nation were drinking because of the “sweet taste” of beer, it wouldn’t matter what alcohol was in the drink. That is merely a side effect of the brewing process, yet it has been made the leading actor in this saga.

I always ask only one question, if you are having even more fun without drinking alcohol, than you do with drinking alcohol, then do you really need to get drunk? So question is, what are you doing that makes your life fun?