A “unique, scientific view of personal development.”
“Hilarious!”
“… a great book. Thoroughly recommend.”
Did you have a chuckle when you first learned
Newton’s Laws of Motion?
Well, maybe it’s time!
Excerpt from the Preface
Are you curious?
I am, by nature, curious. People often point to me in the street and say, “Isn’t he curious?”
That was actually a joke, a pun, based on the fact that the word “curious” has two meanings.
It means, “desiring to know stuff” (That’s me) and also “strange or odd” (No comment).
Curious, that…
… and herein lies our first exploration into what things mean and what we think things mean, what others think they mean and what they used to mean.
If you are wondering what Personal Development has to do with Rocket Science, then you are, by definition, curious. Curiosity is a good thing.
The dictionary definition of curiosity is: A desire to know or learn.
This is a good thing. It shows that we are not so arrogant as to assert that we already know everything, or that what we do know is all that matters. We realize that our universe expands beyond our own present experience and knowledge, and we want to be a part of that universe.
Ah, he said “universe”. Rocket Science?
The second definition of curiosity is: A desire to know about people or things that do not concern one; nosiness.
This is not necessarily a good thing. Here, the desire to expand our universe includes expanding into somebody else’s universe, without their knowledge or consent. I wouldn’t assert emphatically that this is not a good thing, but as social beings we might want to consider another person’s universe before we expand into it.
Another definition of curiosity is: something arousing interest because of novelty or strangeness. In other words, strange or interesting, making others curious about them.
If you wore a flowerpot for a hat, people might comment that you are a curious person. They do not mean to imply that you want to expand your universe, rather that you have expanded theirs by making them curious, at least curious enough to wonder about it immediately after the encounter.
You want to be a curious person, desiring to know or learn. You don’t so much want to be a curious, nosey person, meddling in other people’s universes. You also don’t want to be a curious person who is strange or odd. Or maybe you do.
The opposite of being curious is being incurious. The definition of that is: Lacking intellectual inquisitiveness or natural curiosity; uninterested.
You definitely don’t want to be that.
Incurious people respond to curious people and ask, “What do you want to know for?” or “Who cares?” or “Go away. I’m watching TV.”
Incurious people call upon what they consider to be the First Law of Curiosity: “Curiosity killed the cat.”
What they fail to realise is that this Law actually has two parts: “Curiosity killed the cat. Satisfaction brought him back.” This was the full quote circa 1912. Interestingly, the original saying, as cited by no less than Shakespeare himself (Much Ado about Nothing) was that care killed the cat. Care, in that context, did not mean nurturing, but worrying.
Worrying about stuff, or being overly concerned about finding out stuff, could be hazardous to your health. Curiosity can drive one crazy, but finding the answer is absolutely life-restoring! You’ve felt that, haven’t you? That “aha!” light-bulb-moment that completely turns the page on frustration and sets before you that invigorating rush of satisfaction!
Take that, o incurious one!!
In fact, one person famous for his wisdom – King Solomon – had this to say about curiosity in Proverbs chapter 25 verse 2: The glory of God is to conceal a matter; but the glory of kings is to search it out.
In other words, God created a treasure hunt for his creation. He would hide the mysteries of the universe in the ground, in the sky, in the oceans, and in the mind. This was not to keep them hidden, but to stimulate people’s curiosity. Curious people exhibit the glory of kings!
Now that you know it’s okay to be curious, let’s ask a couple of questions…
What is Rocket Science, and What is Personal Development?
In most contexts, you will hear what rocket science isn’t, rather than what it is.
“TV remotes aren’t rocket science, you know.”
“Showing appreciation isn’t rocket science.”
“Organising your fridge isn’t rocket science.”
… and so on.
So, if you add up everything that rocket science is not, then subtract it from everything, then you will be left with a definition of what it is.
Or will you?
“It’s not rocket science” means that it’s not difficult to understand, implying that rocket science is difficult to understand, unless of course you’re a rocket scientist, in which case rocket science is not rocket science.
Although I am not a rocket scientist, I have learned some physics and chemistry at university, and have taught high school science for many years, so I know more than some about the underlying principles of rocket science. I know, for example, that some aspects of rocket science are not that difficult to understand, which means of course that some aspects of rocket science are not, by definition, rocket science.
Let’s approach it this way: Rocket Science is the Science that relates to Rockets and how they work, or how to get them to work so they don’t become an expensive catastrophe or the plot for a disaster movie.
The word “science” comes from Latin. It means “to know”. From the same Latin root word, we get conscience, prescience, and omniscience, all of which you can look up if you like.
“Rocket” is a type of lettuce, and has nothing to do with Rocket Science, and is really quite disgusting (in my opinion). Its origin as a word is of course Latin, and the meaning is connected with caterpillars and hedgehogs, which enhance a salad more palatably than this kind of lettuce. Again, my opinion.
The other type of rocket is a sort of self-propelled tube. How to get them propelled and how to make them go where you want them to rather than crashing prematurely back to Earth is what this field of knowledge is all about – Rocket Science.
There you have Rocket Science. Let’s define Personal Development.
Personal Development is herein defined as the development, or growth, of a person.
Personal = person (which, presumably, you are).
Development = growth, which is natural in persons, which you are.
Personal Development, Order and Chaos
Now that we’ve cleared that up, I will add that Personal Development is an area of life that is not rocket science, but it is so poorly understood that it may as well be. It is the development of your life, but development can be ordered and controlled, with an endpoint in mind, or it can be haphazard and uncontrolled, with nothing more in mind than what takes your attention at a given moment.
Ordered, or haphazard.
Here’s a fun activity for you to do. No, strike that. It’s a serious experiment for you to perform (We’re learning to be Rocket Scientists now, remember?)
I know we haven’t even started Chapter 1 yet, but I thought now would be a good time to introduce the idea of fun activities experiments, because we’re going to be doing a lot of this in the chapters ahead.
If you haven’t acquired your highly scientific apparatuses apparati stuff or your lab coat yet, this is one of those experiments you can do in your mind with reasonable success. It’s called a thought experiment, and you’d be in good company – Einstein did a lot of experiments in his mind because he was either too lazy or just not prepared to travel at the speed of light, but for this experiment we won’t need to travel at the speed of light (I hear you say, “Just so long as it’s faster than we’re going now!” Okay, I get the hint).
For this experiment, pour out a bag of letter tiles (with a letter on one side and blank on the other side) onto the table (or the table of your mind). Select thirteen of them at random, turn them face up and – without looking at the actual letters – place them in a single row (The thought experiment does not take as long).
Now, without changing the order of the tiles, position them so that the letters are right way up from where you are sitting (or thinking).
Are there any recognizable words? Can you read the sequence of letters as an intelligible sentence? Does it look like Shakespeare to you?
Put the tiles back with the rest, turn all of the tiles face up, then find and arrange the tiles to spell out ROCKET SCIENCE
Was that difficult? No, it was not rocket science, but it just happened to spell ROCKET SCIENCE.
You could have at least one of the following reactions:
You could say, “Wow! That was amazing. It spells ROCKET SCIENCE!” I hope you don’t, though. It really wasn’t the point, or that amazing.
Or, you could say, “Hmmm…” (being the pensive type that you are), “In both cases, I selected the exact same number of tiles. With a very little effort, I could arrange them to spell complete gibberish. With a very little more effort, I could get ROCKET SCIENCE.”
The amount of effort was small, to find order from chaos. The amount of intelligence required was not huge – certainly well within your own limits. You knew from the beginning what the end goal was, and you set out with purpose to accomplish it.
Your life is just like that. You can either let chaos determine your outcome, or with just a little more effort you can write your own goals. Notice a couple of key points here:
- It helps if you can spell. That’s probably pretty profound in this metaphor of life, but play with that later if you like.
- Your choice of words that you want to spell is pretty well unlimited. Okay, if you’re using tiles with a finite number of each letter, there may be some limitations, but you get the point. Every word in your vocabulary and then some may be spelled out by the same letters available to you. Have fun – spell out words that will really give you joy!
A Connection
There are lots of other things we can discuss, but for now, let’s focus on Rocket Science and Personal Development. Why does this author (That’s me, by the way – Scientists always refer to themselves impersonally, and we’re being scientific here, remember?) – Why does this author connect those two ideas together? How does Rocket Science relate to Personal Development?
Let me tell you a story.
It’s about a little boy jumping from the roof frame of a house under construction in a Sydney suburb, into a pile of sand approximately three times his body length below. There are other, slightly older but not more responsible children, practicing similar shenanigans in this veritable playground for unsupervised juveniles. The year: 1964 (or thereabouts). It must have been a weekend, or else some hammer wielding tanned builder would have chased them home or to some other danger zone.
The little boy looks at the pile of sand below, and tries more or less successfully to hide his fear from his older brother and neighbourhood friends. He cannot climb down – he has come too far, and the last thing he needs (in his mind) is to be accused of being a baby – which he’s most certainly not! He’s 7 (or thereabouts)! As he looks down and calculates height, acceleration due to gravity, wind speed and what-not, the ground beckons to him while at the same time seeming to move away. Finally, he swallows hard and resists closing his eyes, and takes the leap.
He lands more or less safely in the pile of sand, which looks a lot bigger and safer from down here than up on the roof level. In his subsequent dreams, however, that would visit him in the years to come, he only fully recalls the feeling he sensed when looking down at the ground below. The terror, the inability to turn back, and then that moment of falling. As this little boy grows, the dreams change the backdrop and scene, but tell the same story. Looking down a tall building, a cliff, a bridge…
You know, I can make my conscious awareness pause for a moment, and pull out those images of who I was then. Do you have pictures like that from decades (and decades) ago?
Were these incidents part of the formation of my fears and attitudes? Do they account for or contribute to my present fear (I call it “respect”) of heights?
Perhaps.
Our stories make us who we are. If they’re good stories, they might make us happy and fulfilled. If they’re bad or scary stories, what then? Can we stop them from making us anxious or afraid?
This is personal development. It’s how we develop personally. Its study is how we learn to be aware of how our experiences and circumstances spell out the chaotic, misspelled or beautiful words, and how those words are arranged into meaningless ramblings or profound sentences that tell our personal tale.
Most people let the letter tiles fall where they may, and become convinced that the gibberish spelled out is the story of their life. With a little bit of effort, people who are aware can take those tiles and write a great story.
The laws of nature that govern our personal development are quite simple once we know they are actual laws of nature. What looks like a random pile of letter tiles can make a lot of sense, if we have an awareness of vocabulary, spelling, and basic grammar.
It’s really not rocket science.
Predictable Rules
Now, back to Rocket Science. To many people, this is the epitome of complexity, something we’re pretty sure is beyond our reach and something we’re pretty sure we never took in school.
In actual fact, science is an established and well-understood system of behaviours by natural things. Drop a ball from the top of the Leaning Tower of Pisa, as Galileo did, and it will fall at a predictable speed, no matter whether it is made of brass or steel or stone. Even a hammer and feather will fall at the same, predictable speed, provided we account for the resistance of air, which Rocket Scientist David Scott did on the Moon in 1971.
Everyone on the Apollo 15 mission knew that would happen, because they were Rocket Scientists and it really wasn’t Rocket Science.
When you do something, something happens according to often predictable rules. That’s not Rocket Science. And yet, many of the things that happen to us in life follow the same Scientific rules as those that enable rockets to fly.
I listened to speakers go on about how Personal Development is not Rocket Science, and then they talked about the principle of Inertia (requiring a force to make something move, stop or change direction). They also talked about the principle of Action and Reaction – some actually called this principle by name: Newton’s Third Law of Motion!
Here is the key: These principles are exactly those that make rockets fly. Ergo, they are Rocket Science.
This book is written to show that Personal Development is not Rocket Science, that Rocket Science is not Rocket Science, and that Personal Development is Rocket Science.So strap yourself in, start the count down, and blast off into the space between your ears!
Life in Metaphors
Shoot for the stars! Your future is in your hands!
Metaphors paint pictures of things we want to describe, using familiar images and colours. Yes, the last sentence is a metaphor.
There are many ways we can represent life. I chose Newton’s Laws of Motion because Motion and Emotion are wonderful reflections of each other, and I believe that the more we understand the concept of motion, the better we can see how we can apply it to life, success, and happiness.
In this book, it is not my intention to pretend to explain the actual scientific nature of Personal Development, how the mind works, or how our thinking affects our behaviour or our success in life. There are plenty of books that attempt that, and many of these invoke Science, Alchemy, Psychology and even Spiritualism as if they were much the same thing.
My intention is to use basic, down-to-Earth scientific principles as metaphors for Life. Yes, these principles do share many characteristics with our thinking, behaviour, emotions, and success, so let’s have fun with them!
Corrections
Errors in the First Edition
There were some printing / editorial errors in this original edition of the book. Gaps appeared because equations in the original Word document did not show in the version to be printed. These we fixed pretty quickly. A few small typos escaped correction for the current print version. Missing text or corrected errors are shown highlighted.
What’s Inside
Is this a book about Rocket Science or Personal Development?
To be honest, this is a book about Personal Development. It’s about how you change (i.e. develop) your way of thinking so that you are more confident, more self-aware, and ultimately more successful in life.
Why does the book relate Personal Development to Rocket Science?
Well, because “Rocket Science” is the catch-phrase for anything that is complex and difficult, and Personal Development is not that. On the other hand, real Rocket Science is the understanding of how to get something moving from where you would prefer not to stay to where you want to be. Personal Development is definitely that.
The table of Contents for the book shows my approach: Instead of talking about Personal Development and grabbing an example or illustration from Science, I talk about Science in a simplified form, and relate it to Personal Development. So, it’s a book about Personal Development disguised as a book about Rocket Science.
You’d be surprised how much Human Nature is reflected in the basic Laws of Science! Well… maybe not. After all, Human Nature was also created according to fixed laws and principles.
My primary goal for this book, however, is to entertain. There is a lot of truth that can be hidden in humour, and my hope is that readers will have as much fun reading this book as I did writing it.
Outline
The Table of Contents gives the chapter titles. What follows is a brief description of what each chapter covers.
READ ON! (Then buy the book.)
The Preface
Personal Development is, in part, where we learn the rules of the Game of Life. The rules are simple – they’re not rocket science – but most of us either never learn them or spend our lives learning and applying the wrong rules.
Click the Penny to see a Thought.
than getting bigger.
We can have all of the ingredients to a rich, fulfilling life. It’s how we put them together that either makes sense or causes chaos.
Watch a short video
about this metaphor.
A key ingredient is curiosity, so don’t be afraid to ask questions.
to ask questions
of understanding
Part 1: Fundamental and Derived Quantities
Click to see an excerpt from this part of the book.
You cannot grow and develop unless you know how to measure your growth and development. For Physics, we measure distances, time and mass, so we take a look at these quantities and compare them to how we think and how we feel.
Distance / Displacement
From where we are to where we want to be. Is that the distance we want to go?
Strictly speaking, it’s the displacement, but we always go a distance, not necessarily the displacement. The distance is often far more interesting, but always keep your eye on the displacement, wherein lurk dangers.
Our goals are fixed in our mind. The way there might be a long and winding road, with detours and distractions. Enjoy them, but remember why you’re taking the journey.
Mass / Weight
The burdens we bear can be massive, but they don’t have to be weighty. Rocket Science tells us that, and I show how Newton deals with the issue.
Newton was an expert on Gravity, ever since the Apple fell on his head… or did it? Never mind, his Gravitational Equation happens to give some pretty good insights into how we can deal with whatever is depressing us (in the Gravitational sense of the word).
Time
Don’t we all love stories about Time Travel? They kid us into thinking that we can, or at least pretend we can, have some control over time.
Guess what? We can’t. That doesn’t mean it’s against us by nature. It just means it is incredibly predictable and reliable. It’s up to us to use it wisely.
If your flight takes a little longer than you planned, do you accept the arrival with grace, happy to have reached your destination? Or, do you get off the plane mid-flight because time’s up?
being flexible with your time,
not letting it master you.
Speed/Velocity
This is our first “Derived Quantity” because it is derived from two other quantities: Distance and Time.
We all want to progress a certain distance, or displacement. How long does it have to take? That is the time factor, and together they make our speed.
Do both distance and time have the same importance? Ask the hare and the tortoise.
but his downfall was his haste,
not his speed.
but his downfall was his haste,
not his speed.
Acceleration
Acceleration is all about change and growth. Understanding acceleration will allow us to understand about force and action.
Acceleration is incorrectly equated with getting faster. It might be, but there is more to it than that. It can also include changing your destination, which is what many of us hope to do once we see where we’re headed.
Part 2: Newton’s Laws of Motion
Click to see an excerpt from this part of the book.
We all want to overcome inertia and get traction with our action. We want to generate enough thrust to launch our thinking to higher levels.
The same principles that explain and account for movement of objects are analogous to those that explain and account for the movement of your mental state.
The Laws of Motion therefore can be applied to the Laws of Emotion and the Laws of Motivation by analogy.
First Law
Newton’s First Law of Motion is known as the Law of Inertia.
Everybody resists change. Newton said it.
“Inertia” is often cited when people don’t want to get up and go, but it applies just as much to people who have got up and gone, and don’t know how to stop…
… or avoid the cliff just ahead.
Second Law
The First Law of Motion tells us we resist change. The Second Law of Motion tells us how much.
Once we know how much Force it takes to get moving (or stop moving), we can work out the cost and start saving!
Newton’s Second Law also helps us to negotiate the aisles with our shopping trolley or cart.
Say, is this really Rocket Science?
Third Law
Click to see an excerpt from this part of the book.
The Third Law is what Rocket Science is all about. Thrust. The Action that causes Reaction.
If you thought that actions and reactions were all about reward, karma, or punishment, then you really need to read this section carefully. Newton’s Laws are Laws, not Shoulds or Maybes.
Oh. This law also explains why we can walk, and how we can prevent our wheels from spinning.
Part 3: Blast Off!… Now What?
Newton’s laws of motion describe how we can generate Action to cause a successful Reaction.
The Reaction should result in the kind of Thrust that will elevate you to new heights…
What can possibly go wrong?
We need to be prepared for all contingencies, and even be prepared for the amazing view from above!
It’s not the end of your story.
Sabotage!
No matter how good your rocket is or how well prepared you are to fly it, there is always somebody who doesn’t want you to succeed in your mission.
Saboteurs don’t always wear saboteur uniforms. They might be cleverly disguised as work colleagues, friends, or family. Keep a watchful eye, and always look behind you, and yes…
Saboteurs might be aware of their destructive mission, or they might actually think they really are there to help you.
Look for the signs… but don’t be paranoid.
in the mirror!
Avoiding the Wobbles
Balance allow us to control our movement. That means we need to find our centre of balance, or centre of gravity.
With simple shapes, this is relatively easy. With complex shapes and structures, it might be more beneficial to recognize the signs of unbalance and be able to make adjustments.
We all have different centres of gravity, so we ought to learn where our balance lies, just so we don’t go into a spin.
to apply in a given area.
Apply that much. Not more.
How’s the View?
Click to see an excerpt from this part of the book.
“Hey! I can see my house!”
The goal of personal development is to attain new levels of success, in whatever area we deem important. The view from a lofty place can be quite spectacular – who would want to get back to ground-level?
From great heights, you gain greater perspective, yet at the same time you can become more detached from where you were.
Astronauts tend to be profoundly and permanently affected. What will you see there? What will you become?
