Have you have heard that people nowadays live a LOT longer than people 200 years ago?

It’s not true.

The statistic that most people quote includes infant mortality, against which we’ve made giant strides over the last 200 years. If you were to take that out of the formula, you’d find that people who lived beyond infancy 200 years ago lived almost as long as people today.

Averages can be very deceptive.

Take one hundred people born in 1776. Let’s say that 20 of them died in childbirth; not uncommon then. Let’s say the other 80 lived to 77 years old, about today’s life expectancy.

Now, do the math. You’ll find that the AVERAGE life expectancy would be 61… even though everyone who lived past childbirth got to 77!

The point is, we’re constantly hearing things that sound plausible on the surface, but if we apply just the slightest amount of critical thinking, we find that many of our assumptions are wrong.

Examples of this are all around us. One dog year is NOT seven human years. Feeding a cold and starving a fever DOESN’T help you get better faster. And your past DOESN’T equal your future!

So, enough with the assumptions! Let’s start taking charge of our minds and our destinies. Let’s do it with the benefit of critical thinking and a willingness to go beyond the obvious, which may be completely wrong!

How can you make your next ten, twenty, or fifty years better than the previous ones? What can you learn? What can you change? What assumptions can you blast, and in the debris of that blast find something valuable?

Just wondering.

BTW, the discipline to look beyond what you assume is true, about yourself and the world, is not a simple one. It usually requires help. That’s why great leaders and thinkers have coaches and mentors. We need someone to help us see our own blindspots. Otherwise, we tend to exhaust ourselves swimming around in circles. Contact me if you want to discuss coaching to break free of your self limiting beliefs and perceptions. I’m here for you!