The Tooth Fairy

In Change, Insight

(If you still believe in the tooth fairy then look away now)

 

There are plenty of common myth-understandings that over time have innocently built up and without asking otherwise, most people just accept they’re true.

We just assume, that’s how it is – after all – if it were true, then it’d be common knowledge and we’d all be doing it, wouldn’t we?

(Have you ever seen the film ‘The Man in the White Suit?’)

Like many children, I was taught about the tooth fairy and when a tooth fell out amazingly a 3d piece (it was prior to decimalisation!) would arrive under my pillow.  And like many children I’m sure, I did consider maximising my income by dislodging many of my teeth!

And then there was a point it started to not make sense to me, and then I discovered the tooth fairy was my Dad!

Some of the things you haven’t probably been told include – and yes, they all very simply exist:

Some years ago, people believed (for many centuries) that diseases came from bad smells.  Or that the world was flat.

Even though at the time there was compelling evidence to the contrary.

Even on my MBA programme, I was taught some financial models that the teachers knew were incorrect.  Although they did teach the correct version a couple of years later, when they thought we were ready for it!  They just innocently accepted this was how it was and this is how it was done.

We tend to look for complexity, when in my experience and the areas that I work in it’s simplicty that’s the key to achieving consistently transformational results.

For me, if something seems ever-increasingly complicated and isn’t consistently true, then that’s a good pointer I’m heading in the wrong direction, and it gently points me in the direction of simplicity.

So be curious.  Be really curious.

What myth-understandings exist in your life?

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