Book launch - I explain why I wrote it

This is a special episode where I explain why I wrote this book and what my hopes for it are. I explain why it is so difficult to transition into adulthood and why we struggle to make sense of this period in our lives. This podcast will be interesting to parents as well as young adults going out into the world on their own for the first time.

It talks about how we transition knowledge from the past and update it into the future and how we need to work out what the basic foundations of right and wrong are about.

You can get the book here: HTTP://getbook.at/IAMSHOKUNIN

Transcript

Hello, good morning. I'm very excited today because I'm able to announce that my new book called How to be a good human has been published. It's on Amazon worldwide and It's available now Through the Kindle store.  I think I've managed to successfully get a web link on my Facebook page, and on the blurb below this podcast which means that if you click on it, it will take you to the book in whatever Amazon website, you shop in worldwide. 

Okay, so today I wanted to talk a little bit about the book, and about what I was trying to achieve with the book, why I wrote it and talk about some of the motivations behind it. I want to talk a bit about what i hope the book will be able to achieve. 

Initially, the book was an idea that my son gave to me a number of years ago. And as usual, as a Father, talking to their son. I was wittering on one day about whatever was relevant and going through my mind at the time. 

Sometimes you're not really conscious that you're teaching your children something you're just having a conversation you're explaining how it was for you in your day and how it might be different for them going forward, and things to think about and, you know, ways that you can maybe approach a situation that would be beneficial to them. 

All of this of course is, as you know, fairly unconscious as a parent, you don't really sit down. One day with a PowerPoint presentation and decide what messages, you're going to send to your children you tend to do these things in a fairly informal setting such as when your child is interested or asks a question or when an opportunity arises. So really, when you teach your child. Or you give them information. It's done in a fairly undisciplined and unstructured way. And I think we all hope that if we're with our children for long enough, over 18 years or so we will impart enough information and knowledge to them that they can be successful.

You know, we can pass on our knowledge of things that went wrong for us, in the hope that they won't make the same mistakes that we did, we can pass on anecdotes that we get from other people who have been successful that we think that maybe we didn't have the opportunity to try but, might be useful for your children to try If they ever come across a situation like that. So, really, education or passing on information to children is done through a number of methods, Firstly, through informal conversations with them and secondly, you know they they are watching you all the time and what you do and how you react to situations. They are listening to the conversations you have with your wife and your wider family and they interpret things from those conversations. So, if you come back for example from the office one day and you are absolutely furious with the way that you've been treated by your boss and you're calling him all the names under the sun. You are effectively teaching your child to behave in that way, they will think that that it is normal to call your boss every name under the sun and they think it's normal for you to get angry when someone treats you in a certain way. These are lessons that sometimes we're not conscious of teaching our children. So, we have to be quite careful. You know you have to think about what we say in front of our children and what they have heard us say. This is why, very often, when children get to a certain age, between about 16 through to the early late 20s when they are becoming independent adults they have all this information that they've gathered from their childhood, through their parents, their teachers, all the sources of information they have had access to or been exposed to, and they have to try and make sense of that. They have to find some way of integrating that into themselves in a way that is comfortable for them, because of course they have their own personality as well. So even though they may have been taught to react in a certain way in certain situations from the way their mother and their father have acted and behaved and thought for 18 years of their life that may not sit comfortably for them. So they may simply not be that sort of person they may not share the same character as their father or mother. 

So they now have an inherent conflict setup between some of the information they've been told whilst growing up about “what to think and how to behave” And the things that they now feel are what they want to be as a character. So this is why, as young people there can be a lot of distress in this growing up process while they become independent free thinking adults. Becoming an independent and sovereign individual requires a process of conflict and the distress that comes with it by having to work through all this stuff. 

Another way of looking at it is they're coming into contact with the real world for the first time as an independent individual and they're having to make their own decisions. So, you know, how do you make your own decisions, I mean,  you've heard, for example, in the past that behaving in a certain way, in a certain situation is the correct way to do and you know exactly how do you do that. You might think back to a situation where your father described how he dealt with a situation and you think well I'll try that and you start bumbling through trying to emulate what you'd heard but realised very quickly that your father didn't give you the full context of the situation, didn't explain how it worked or how to do it properly. Perhaps didn't even explain it truthfully to you in the first place because he was embarrassed that he'd cocked it up himself. So, you know, the truth is your father probably told you some semblance of truth, and then a lot of half truths around about how he managed it. And, you know, perhaps embellished it to the point where actually it was complete fiction, in some cases> All of this you find out as you Bumble through and lose control of the situation. In the end all this does is make you realise that everything isn’t quite as simple as you were told, and that things don’t tend to work out as they were described in the past and you start to realise you've got this questioning process going on in your head saying ‘well, you know if this was wrong how much else is wrong and now how much more careful do I need to be going forward and what are the principles at work here, Why did that fail?

So you can see immediately that it starts to get very confusing and very complex very quickly. And this is one of the reasons why, young adults struggle. Why young men and women or just young people in general, struggle, because they have to make sense of this mess which is the past and work out which bits to keep and how  to make sense in the “now”. 

What we used to do in the past, because that's really what your parents are teaching you, and what you have to do in the new world which you're going into, which of course your parents, pretty much no know thing about, are two separate things, they are a bridge from the old to the new that every young adult needs to build for themselves. 

So there's a bridge to be made. And in the middle of that bridge there's also that process of trying to define “who” you are, and trying to find and define yourself. So you put all that together and really you’ve got a pretty stressful situation and pretty stressful few years while you try to make sense of it all and make up your mind about it all. 

So, this book was written in an attempt to overcome some of that inherent complexity, some of that distress, if you like of growing up, because we've known for 1000s of years. What good behaviours look like, We pretty much know what they are we have got them nailed down pretty accurately. We know what, ethical, moral, or good behaviour looks like. we know what correct thinking looks like ,we know these things, but they're not necessarily things that your parents would sit down and talk to you about. Some aspects of it, they will, you know, for example, telling the truth, that is something that every parent teaches their children. It's absolutely fundamental because you can't parent effectively If your child is untruthful, because you never really know what is happening if your child lies to you continuously and children will lie, they learn to do it very early on as a survival technique. At 2-3 years old they start to tell what are called primary lies to try and cover up things they have done, like putting their finger in the middle of a perfectly baked sponge or denying they ate the icing whilst covered from head to foot in icing. At about 4 they realise that these lies aren’t very good so they start to make them a bit more plausible as they take into consideration the parent listening these are called secondary lies and about 7-8 they start telling tertiary lies where they understand the context of the lie and the audience. 

As a parent it’s really important to try and get your child to be honest with you, so you start to teach them that there are no negative repercussions for telling the truth and that honesty is the best policy. Well that’s the theory anyway -  I know a lot  parents that don’t teach that lesson, so that’s another reason I wrote a chapter of truthfulness in the book.

So that's one of the first lessons we teach. So there are elements of good behaviour that we teach people. But there are also lots of elements that we don't. We sort of leave those ambiguous. Sometimes we have those conversations sometimes we don't. But we don't always explain them adequately and we don't explain why we need to behave and think in those ways.Very often, some of the lessons that we give our children we give to them when they're very young. And as they get older, certainly in my case, you feel sometimes that you might be patronising an 18 or 20 year old if you start to talk to them about what loyalty means or what courage means because you think well by this stage they must know know all of this stuff. 

Well, as you well know, that’s not necessarily the case, we all interpret information differently as we get older. So as we progress through life we generally take on more information. We have more data available to us. So our understanding of situations becomes more complex more nuanced. Now, if you then revisit a simple topic. Take for example, courage, - it might have been when you were seven, courage, was having the courage to stand up in front of all your classmates and read a poem at school one day. That could have been the entirety of your understanding of what courage meant in that age. Perhaps when you're 18 or 19 or 20, and you're playing rugby or some sport. Courage might then get redefined as the courage to tackle someone and to do something that might get you hurt. So, it then becomes slightly different it's slightly more nuanced it's not just about mastering your fear and standing up in front of an audience, it's actually connected to physical safety. So all of a sudden you've got one example where it's mental safety or perception of mental safety and the other one, it's now physical safety. And then, later on in life You have a boss who is doing the wrong thing or treating someone badly or going to make a mistake, and you need to correct that. And then all of a sudden you suddenly realise that courage can be defined as the potential loss of something. You know, you could lose your job you could lose your credibility you could lose your promotional aspects. So, again, now, courage, has developed from mental to physical to financial and conceptual and you have a greater level of understanding of that subject. So what I'm saying here is that throughout your life you will revisit these foundation blocks which are in this book and they will mean different things to you at different times in your life. 

Now the reason why the book was written as it was, which is a series of chapters on a certain topic, and why the book is - Some would say simple, you know I could probably write an individual book on every chapter in the book, but the reality is,  that would be me trying to describe to you as a reader, every potential understanding that you could have about that topic -and I would fail. I would fail for the simple reason that it's inconceivable for me to think about every possible situation whereby you as a reader in your life would come across a situation where I would be able to think of, you know, the correct understanding that you would need for that moment in time for that topic, it’s simply not possible. And it's also one of the reasons why books that try to do that are fundamentally boring. Because you just have to go on and on and on and on about the situation and all the possible ramifications and all the possible situations. And to be honest, you know, you just, you lose the will to live. If you read that sort of book. So, the book is written in a way where it gives you just enough information. It gives you the fundamental concept - the principle at large. Now what will happen is over the years, you will read this book or you'll come back to it or you'll think about it. And there will be certain moments and times when a chapter in that book means something to you. And I don't know what that meaning will be, that will depend on you, that will depend on your situation. And you will get another insight as a result of rereading the book. And over time, you'll start to understand that each one of these separate chapters are actually integrated, they're all part of a whole, they all link, together they all support each other, they are foundations on a thinking process, and a behavioural process which allow you to be successful in the way that you live your life. But that complexity is unique to you, that understanding, and that integration of the whole book is a process that will happen with you throughout your life with each one of those chapters. At distinct points in time when it's relevant to you. And the only thing you really need to do is to reflect at those moments of time about what it means and how you're going to adapt your behaviour, or what that topic might mean to you at that particular moment in time. And gradually, your life, and the foundations of this book will become integrated. And this is why the concept of Shokunin is at the heart of this book - because it's a continuous journey about perfecting yourself, perfecting the way that you integrate yourself with the world around you, how you integrate your thinking and your understanding of the world. And also, how you too are able to pass on that information to your children. So, it's about how you take what you've learned from your parents and your process of growing up, what you learned about becoming a young independent person, and integrating that knowledge and what you learned and continue to learn going forward, about how to live a good life and be a good human and how you pass that information on to the next generation. 

Now we are living through a remarkable time. You know we've had a couple of 100 years of industrial revolution, where the world went from really a fairly primitive world, not integrated not global without any form of mass manufacturing really, where people were inherently poor, most of the time, fairly poorly educated, had poor health, and it didn't live very long. And, you know, I would say by today's standards had a fairly miserable life. In 200 years we've managed to expand as a race of people beyond the limits of the planet. We have the highest standard of living and safety, that we've ever achieved as a race of people on this planet. We have access to more knowledge and more resources than we've ever had. And this was on account of the Industrial Revolution. 

Now, what we are going through in the space of 20 years is probably 100 years worth of change as we pivot and move from an industrial revolution and industrial base and industrial economy to a digital economy. And that speed of change is absolutely phenomenal and it's it's very easy for us all to lose our way to lose the foundations of what living a good life is all about and what being good is all about. 

We're getting so much information, so many different points of views, it’s just inherently complex and confusing sometimes. If you're not able to process all that information. And you're not able or you're unwilling or you don't have the time or you're just confused or it's difficult or you're finding it difficult to assimilate all this information - well this book is written as a foundation block to help you it's a straightforward book. It's a bit like having a conversation with your dad, or someone that you know and respect and love and think yep he's a sensible sort of chap. He's going to give me some good advice here. It could be a conversation you're having down the pub or in a bar over a few beers it's that sort of style that’s not complex it’s not intellectual. It's just straightforward, good quality information, which, you know, I can't even lay claim to. It's the way I live my life. But I learned this from my parents I learned this from going to Church as a kid. I learned this from reading ancient texts. I learnt this from people that I respect who are honest, well respected people in this world. I pulled all this information together and integrated it into my life, and I did it at quite an early age. And as a result, I've had what I think has been reasonably successful life. I've had everything that I've wanted, I've done virtually everything that I've wanted to, and I've done it in a way which you know I haven't harmed anyone. And I really think that, I've I have led an honest, good life. And I've seen the benefits of behaving in this way. And this is one of the reasons why I wrote the book, because I want you also to benefit from my experience. 

Now hopefully I've managed to isolate the bits that are useful to you. There is some information from the past which just isn't relevant going forward and there is some information from the past which is universal, which will never change. The problem is that in todays society there are so many new ideas And there will be people that will try to make you change the way you should think about things, they will use new technologies and ways of doing things to justify new behaviours or ways of thinking some of these comments will be wrong headed. Some will be Very very wrong. but hopefully this book will allow you to differentiate what from right from wrong and make up your own mind about these things. 

So I'm very happy that the book is out now - it’s called How to be a good hu(man) by Andrew Wilson and it’s available on Amazon worldwide. I'm promoting it. I should probably promote it all the time so it's constantly available on Kindle unlimited. It's available for download at all the major stores. Please, take some time, buy a copy. It's an easy read. And I think and hope it will be helpful and useful to you in your life. I'd really like to hear your views on it as well so write your reviews. Write to me as well as IAMSHOKUNIN@gmail.com. Let me know what you think. If you think there are any other topics that you'd be interested in me maybe writing about or talking about then send an email. Go on the Facebook web page, send me a WhatsApp, contact me let me know because your feedback is about the situations that you're going through now, and I may or may not have covered those adequately in the book. And, you know, one of the things I'd like to do with a book is continuously update it. So every year maybe add a few more chapters on things or subjects that you've thought about that you think are relevant and I can include. So that's it for now. Thank you for listening. It's been an absolute pleasure talking to you as always and I do hope you enjoy the book. Take care. Bye.