I’ve just read the first couple of chapters of Duncan Bannatyne’s autobiography, and he tells a story there that reveals much about the roots and foundation of success.

When he was a kid, Bannatyne’s family were very poor. There was scarcely enough money for food and clothing, let alone luxuries. So when the young Duncan wanted a bike, it was little surprise that there was no money available to buy one.

Undeterred, he resolved to get a paper round and buy one himself. But when he went into his local newsagent to ask for a job, the lady owner took one look at the scruffy urchin in front of her, and told him there was no work. Duncan suspected this wasn’t true ~ that the owner was put off by his appearance ~ but rather than argue, he did something that not one in a thousand others would.

He set about knocking on doors in the area where he lived, and asked householders whether they would like a newspaper delivered. Over the course of a day or two, he built up a list of around 100 new customers, and then went back to the newsagent with a ready-made round. What could she say? She had to give him a job, and he got his bike.

Despite showing such great entrepreneurial flare, Bannatyne now says this represented his first big mistake in business. That list of 100 new customers was valuable, and he should have sold it to the newsagent, rather than giving it away in exchange for a job!

No matter. What he did showed astonishing enterprise at such a young age.

Reading about that got me thinking about my own childhood. We weren’t well-off either ~ not quite as poverty-stricken as the Bannatynes, but there was certainly no money available for ‘fun stuff’ aside from Christmas and birthdays. So between the ages of about nine and 13, I earned most of my own money on the golf course ~ not by playing golf, but by selling second-hand balls to the players.

Now you might think this is a mundane activity with not much to be learned, but take it from me, many of the elements necessary for success in any business, were present in that early enterprise. I learned about stock, sourcing, pricing, marketing, wholesaling, profit margins, discounts, special offers, negotiation, customer relations, up-selling, win-win deals…and a whole lot more.

Of course I didn’t attach those labels to what I was doing at the time. I was just trying to find and flog as many balls as I could, for as much money as I could get. But when I look back, many of the things I now take to be common knowledge were grounded in that seemingly simple enterprise. Much of what I’ve done subsequently, is just the same stuff, scaled up and adapted.

And I’d have never learned any of that stuff if we’d been ‘comfortable’ and I didn’t need the money.

When I was young, there were times when I bemoaned the fact that I wasn’t born ‘into money’. Watching my own children take advantage of opportunities that I didn’t even realise existed as a child, has given me cause to wonder what it would have been like too. But I now realise that I’d have missed out on so many experiences as well…

And what I’d have gained on the swings, I’d have almost certainly lost on the roundabouts.

I think that’s the same for all of us – irrespective of our backgrounds. Where we start out is important but it’s just that, a starting point. What’s far more important is how we use the positive aspects of where we start out, to get to where we ultimately want to be.

 John Harrison

PUBLISHERS NOTICE

Hello.     

Are you worried you’re going ot have to “work until you drop”?

Are you tired of working all day, every day to make someone else rich  when it’s YOU who should be the one becoming wealthy?       

Ian once shared that grief, but now he never has to worry about money  again…

Here’s a PROVEN way to make enough money to retire on as soon as you want, never work again and enjoy a fabulous income for life.

And it’s not like you even have to quit your job if you don’t want. You can  keep your regular paycheque coming in if you’d like while you follow the specific steps of this blueprint in your spare time.

Let us show you everything about this when you click the link below:

www.streetwisenews.com/wizard 

Best Wishes  

John Harrison 

I’ve just received a fantastic piece of news. Next week, I’m playing centre forward for Manchester United in a Premiership game. Now I never thought it would come off. I’m the wrong side of 50, not particularly fit and I’ve got two left feet. But I didn’t let that stand in my way. You see, I’ve taken my inspiration from the nation’s schoolchildren.  

Let me explain…  

Last year, a record 107,000 of them requested, and were granted special help in their GCSE and A level examinations. That’s more than double the number in 2005. These children have been given more time, the use of computers and other aids, in an attempt to help them counteract a whole host of physical and emotional problems including learning disabilities.  

I’m not really sure where the line is drawn between someone with learning disabilities, and someone who simply isn’t suited to academic examinations (or ‘duggies’ as they used to be known in my school). But it does seem from the figures, that some parents are increasingly using the system to gain an advantage for their children. We all have differing natural abilities, and I’m sceptical about the logic of discriminating in favour of children who are simply not as academically gifted as others.  

When I was at school, I was embarrassingly poor at art. Still am. If there’s an artist’s equivalent of dyslexia, then I almost certainly have it. I’m not exaggerating. My ability in that area has never developed beyond that of a five-year-old. But it never occurred to me (or anyone else) that I should be given special help in examinations. It was just accepted by everyone that I was crap at it – and would be better employed doing something else. And what’s wrong with that?  

Pretending that everyone is somehow the same, and should be given special assistance if they appear to be at a disadvantage just seems ridiculous. It flies in the face of the whole natural order of things which dictates that each of us ends up, on the whole, doing pretty much what we’re best suited to do. It sends us down avenues to which we are ill-suited, and diverts us from others in which we might thrive.   

Anyway, enough about that. You’re probably wondering how I came to be playing for Manchester United on Saturday…   

Well I got myself a trial, and told them I had physical learning disabilities. They were very sympathetic and arranged for the goalkeeper to wear a blindfold and the centre half to have his ankles tied together. They even gave me a little trampoline to use at set pieces. It was brilliant. I scored a hattrick, and now I’m in the team on Saturday.   

We’re playing Tottenham . It’ll be fine. Paul Pogba is a bit peed off at being left out, but it’s only fair…isn’t it?  

 John Harrison

PUBLISHERS NOTICE 

Hello.     

Are you worried you’re going ot have to “work until you drop”?

Are you tired of working all day, every day to make someone else rich  when it’s YOU who should be the one becoming wealthy?
                                   

Ian once shared that grief, but now he never has to worry about money  again…

Here’s a PROVEN way to make enough money to retire on as soon as you want, never work again and enjoy a fabulous income for life.

And it’s not like you even have to quit your job if you don’t want. You can  keep your regular paycheque coming in if you’d like while you follow the specific steps of this blueprint in your spare time.

Let us show you everything about this when you click the link below:

www.streetwisenews.com/wizard 

Best Wishes  

John Harrison 

For the first dozen or so years that I held a driving licence, I owned nothing but wrecks. I was 30 years old before I paid more than £350 for a car. And I became well-known for the cosmetic appearance of my cars. If someone was having trouble explaining who I was, they’d say something like:

“You know who I mean…drives that white Beetle with the exhaust hanging off that looks like it’s been peppered with a shotgun.”

And immediately a connection would be made…

“I know him…” they’d say, “used to have that bright purple Cortina with the bumpers missing.”

So imagine how exciting it was for me when my boss at the time let me drive his brand new Jaguar XJ6. Several things struck me about the car, compared to what I’d been used to. All the doors opened for a start. So there was no need for the passenger to risk a nasty internal injury scrambling over the gear stick. And all the panels were the same colour. There was nothing on the car that had previously been part of another car that had died or crashed into a lamppost…

And the really exciting thing was that it had a computer. Now this was the first time, I’d seen a computer thar measured fuel consumption – not just average fuel consumption, but ‘instant’ fuel consumption at any one moment in time.

I was shocked by what it told me…

You see, I had a rough idea what the average fuel consumption for that car would be, but what I didn’t realise at all, until then, was what really burned up the petrol like there was no tomorrow. In my simple brain, I’d equated high consumption with ‘going fast’, but that wasn’t it at all. No, what really caused the fuel needle to lurch to the left was acceleration, changing from one speed to another.

Once you got up to speed, maintaining it was a comparatively frugal exercise. But getting there in the first place…that took a lot of energy.

I should have known this of course. Firstly because I’d endured Mr Turner’s painstaking explanation of Newton’s laws of motion in O Level Physics; and secondly, because I had a fair amount of experience of the energy required to push-start a vehicle. I think this is something young people miss out on today. It’s probably becoming a dying skill.

Getting the thing moving is the hard bit. Once it’s underway and up to speed, the burning in your thighs and lungs subsides a bit, and you’re cruising. It takes a lot less energy to maintain the momentum, that it does to build it.

I’m sure you can see where this is heading…

When I was trying to get various projects and businesses off the ground in the early days, it was a bit of a struggle. I’d look at other people operating in the same field and they didn’t seem to be struggling like I was. It seemed easy for them. And yet when I analysed what they were doing, I just couldn’t work out what they had that I didn’t. It’s only with the benefit of hindsight that it became clear.

What they had was momentum.

Whilst I was in an intense ‘acceleration’ period, and hence using an awful lot of energy, they had reached cruising speed and the energy requirements for them were not so great. They were running along with the car already moving, while I was trying to get it away from the mark.

I think this explains why so many people get disheartened and give up in the early stages of a business or money-making project. I hear from people on a regular basis who are not progressing as quickly as they’d like. They see others, seemingly making great strides in an effortless manner, and think they must be missing a vital ingredient ~ one of the secret keys to success.

In truth, all they’re really missing is some momentum. The good news is that anyone can build it – in time. The bad news is that you can’t ‘magic’ it up.

Here’s the thing though ~ once you’ve built momentum, the effort-reward relationship is reversed. Whilst you’re building it, you put more in than you get out. Once you’re maintaining it, you get more out than you put in. The sad thing is that the great majority of people give up before the transition – disillusioned and confused – just at the point that the wheels are about to really start turning.

If any of this is relevant to your situation right now, a spot of objective analysis is needed. Is there really anything wrong with your business – or is it just a case of waiting for the momentum to take hold. Only you can know for sure.

 John Harrison

PUBLISHERS NOTICE

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Best Wishes 

John Harrison 

I’ve recently come off the phone with Geoff Thompson (who wrote the Foreword to one of my books), and he told me the fascinating story of how he came to win his BAFTA Award.

Geoff had written a number of books and was keen to get into film, but just couldn’t get any interest. He’d knocked on all the right doors and gone down all the right channels – all to no avail. For whatever reason, he just couldn’t get started.

Anyway, his books were selling well and so he was on a signing tour of bookshops around the country. At one of these signings, he was approached by a young man – not yet out of his teens – who said he was hoping to get into journalism. Geoff gave him some advice and the young man asked whether he could have an interview for an article thar he hoped to sell to a magazine.

Now at this time Geoff was really busy with the tour, but he kept the young man’s details, and when he was visiting a town nearby a few weeks later, invited him over for an hour. The young man stayed for most of the day and in between getting information for the interview, pumped Geoff for more help and advice which he freely gave. No reward was given, and none was asked for.

I’m not sure whether that article ever saw the light of day, but here’s what did happen…

It turned out that the young man’s sister was a film producer. When she heard about Geoff, she contacted him to see whether she could make a documentary about his life. Geoff agreed and she got to know him – and to hear about his other work.

It was then that she asked him if he would like to make a short film. Geoff agreed, and set about creating something. The film was called Bouncer, and was nominated for a BAFTA. That led to another short film, ‘Brown Paper Bag’, which won the best short film award at the BAFTAs. 
 

And it all came about because he took the time to help someone out, with no immediate promise or chance of recompense or reward. This was definitely a case of sending the elevator back down and Geoff got his reward in a totally unexpected way.

To make a big success in anything, you have to get out of the employee mindset – the one that demands a fair day’s pay for a fair day’s work (the one that is constantly trying to match effort put in with rewards received). You have to move away from demanding an immediate return for your efforts, and refusing to do ‘something for nothing’.

You have to move towards a more holistic lifetime approach that says effort and reward are rarely in sync ~ that big rewards will come from the most unlikely sources ~ and conversely blood sweat and tears will often leave you empty-handed.

Geoff’s reward did indeed come from a very unlikely source. Big rewards have come from unlikely sources for me too ~ and it can be the same for you as well. But only if you open yourself up to the possibility…

And that can only happen when you stop analysing everything you do for its capacity to deliver instant gratification and recompense, and start doing things because they just seem like the right things to do.

 John Harrison

PUBLISHERS NOTICE 

“HE JUST WON £1,460 IN
TWO DAYS!” 

  Dear Streetwise Customer, 

 “OMG, Ludlow 3:45…two horses to back. Bott N Brown WON at 25/1 !!! Average odds taken on Betfair exchange 80/1. I backed for £12 winning me £960. Can you please thank Bill for me.”

G.B – 6th February 2020

    “Many thanks. Thursday OMG Newcastle 5:30. Special Lady WON 50/1. Won £500. “

G B – 7th February 2020  

 A couple of weeks ago we wrote to you about The Hermes Strategy, a unique approach to horse
racing created by Bill Burrows. I’ve reproduced word for word, two emails I received this week from
one of our customers who tried the strategy for the first time just a few days ago. 

He just won £1,460 in two days! 

Needless to say, he’s pleased!  

 Now we don’t get 80-1 and 50-1 winners every day (although it looks like we do at the moment!) but because this strategy looks at the whole thing from a VERY unusual angle, long odds winners come along pretty regularly alongside more mundane wins.

It all adds up to a great second income for anyone able to spend 7-10 minutes a day putting the strategy to work

For full details, take a look HERE 

You could very easily be up and running and copying Bill within a few hours of reading about this. Everything you need is at your fingertips.         

Best Wishes  

John Harrison 

www.streetwisenews.com/hermes

This is probably not going to come as a big shock to you, but there’s not a lot happening on a Monday night in Rotherham. Which is why I found myself heading up the M1 to see Tommy Steele (No, you’re wrong…he’s still alive) in Doctor Dolittle at the Leeds Grand. 

I can heartily recommend both the show and the theatre ~ a fantastic characterful venue, and a great family production. Tommy Steele is excellent, but you do have cause to wonder (or at least I do) what motivates someone like him to be spending a freezing cold March evening in Leeds. 

He must be the living embodiment of what I’ve been banging on about for ages…when you find what you’re really meant to do for a living, you’d rather be doing it than just about anything else. And you’ll continue doing it long after the financial need has passed. Not that I have any insider knowledge on Mr Steele’s financial situation, you understand!

Anyway, I gather the show was great. It gets my recommendation. 

What doesn’t get my recommendation though, is the coach we travelled in. Now normally, there’s no way you’d get me on a coach. But it was a trip organised by my daughter’s school, and she wanted us to go on the coach. So we did. It’s only a 50-minute journey. How bad could it be? Hmmm… 

What I didn’t know until I got on, was that this was no ordinary coach. It was one specifically designed for transporting small humans…kids. I didn’t even know they made such things, so I learned something there. Anyway, all the seats were child-sized, and although I’m not what you’d call large ~ now how can I put this politely?… 

I found that I’d got a lot more arse than seat. 

Naturally, I moaned and grumbled all the way there, and most of the way back. It was so uncomfortable. And then I realised something ~ this must be how it is for grossly overweight people all the time. But you just don’t realise until you’ve experienced it. If you want to understand something completely, being told about it or reading about it is no substitute for experiencing it first-hand. 

Method actors know this of course, which is why when they’re preparing for a part, they often put themselves in the position of the person they’re about to portray. They know that it’s not enough to learn about the person, they have to actually feel like them. It’s only then that true understanding comes. 

And it’s exactly the same in the
tawdry business of selling stuff… 

Some of most compelling sales messages I’ve created have come because I’ve been able to completely empathise with the potential customers for the product or service. You see, I’ve been in exactly their position. I’ve felt what they’ve felt. I’ve had the same pain, the same doubts, the same anxieties, the same goals ~ the same everything… 

And when you’ve done that, it makes it so much easier to craft a message that will appeal. The reason is simple: if it appeals to you, it will appeal to them. 

If you’ve only heard, or read about, the problem your product or service solves, second-hand, you’re detached from the emotion. And it’s the emotion that sells. The closer you can get to experiencing the raw emotional appeal of your offering (or the problem it solves) at first-hand, the more powerful will be your sales message. 

It’s not method acting…it’s method marketing! 

Before this trip, if I’d been asked to write an advertisement for a diet product, I would have focussed exclusively on the health and cosmetic benefits. The problems of living in a world built for people half your size wouldn’t really have occurred to me, and even if it had, I don’t think I’d have thought it very important… 

Now I know better…and I have the
painful buttocks to prove it.  

 John Harrison

PUBLISHERS NOTICE 

 FINALLY REVEALING  IAN’S
“INCOME FOR LIFE”
SECRET!

  Hello.
    

      Are you worried you’re going ot have to “work until you drop“?

      Are you tired of working all day, every day to make someone else rich when it’s YOU who should be the one becoming wealthy?

     Ian once shared that grief, but now he never has to worry about money again…

      Here’s a PROVEN way to make enough money to retire on as soon as you want, never work again and enjoy a fabulous income for life.

     And it’s not like you even have to quit your job if you don’t want. You can keep your regular paycheque coming in if you’d like while you follow the specific steps of this
  blueprint in your spare time.

     Let us show you everything about this when you click the link below:

          www.streetwisenews.com/wizard

Best Wishes

John Harrison 

In 2007, ‘music-to-slit-your-wrists-to’ exponents, Radiohead, carried out a massive marketing experiment. They released their latest album via Internet download – but with a twist… 

Buyers were invited to pay as much or as little as they liked for the album. They were asked to pay what they thought it was worth. 

There seems to be a fair amount of controversy over the results, but the best estimate I can come up with is that about 1.2 million people downloaded the album, 62% paid nothing at all, and the average price paid was around $6. 

Given that their product cost was virtually nothing (although there would have been administrative costs) and they didn’t have to share the money with distributors, record companies or retailers, that surely must go down as a big success…Even though only 38% of customers paid anything at all. 

Fast forward to last week, and I heard about another marketing experiment along similar lines – but with a very different outcome. 

A restaurant in London attempted pretty much the same thing. There were no prices on the menu, and diners were invited to pay what they thought the meal was worth. Customers hated the whole concept, and spent the entire meal worrying about how much they should pay. They were fearful of paying too little, and looking mean ~ or too much, and looking stupid. Nobody wanted to go back. 

This is a classic case of taking a marketing idea from one environment and dumping it in another, without thinking through how the new environment will impact on the effectiveness of the technique. It’s worth looking at the two factors that turned a winner into a loser here: 

1.  Proximity. With a music download, the transaction
     is remote. There’s no human interaction, and hence no
     embarrassment factor. If buyers had to hand over the
     money to a band member (as they do to a restaurant
     employee), the result would have been very different. 

2.  Costs. With the music download, there are no cost
     implications to attracting freeloaders and skinflint
     customers. In a restaurant, the implications are serious
     because there’s considerable product and service costs to
     cover. If Radiohead were committed to delivering a
     tangible product (rather than a virtual one) they’d have
     been in serious trouble.

I’ve made this sort of mistake on many occasions. A marketing idea has worked brilliantly, and so I’ve blindly used it with another product or market, without giving enough thought to why it actually worked in the original situation. And it’s bombed. 

When I’ve looked at the situation retrospectively, it’s usually been obvious that the idea worked in the first situation because of factors that weren’t present in the second. This could easily have been foreseen by anyone humble enough to realise that they don’t know everything, and patient enough to sit down and think everything through carefully first. But it’s me we’re talking about here… 

Neither patient nor humble – but very good at making mistakes. It’s not a great skill. 

 John Harrison

PUBLISHERS NOTICE 

 FINALLY REVEALING  IAN’S
“INCOME FOR LIFE”
SECRET!

  Hello.
    

      Are you worried you’re going ot have to “work until you drop“?

      Are you tired of working all day, every day to make someone else rich when it’s 
  YOU who should be the one becoming wealthy?

     Ian once shared that grief, but now he never has to worry about money again…

      Here’s a PROVEN way to make enough money to retire on as soon as you
  want, never work again and enjoy a fabulous income for life.

     And it’s not like you even have to quit your job if you don’t want. You can keep your
  regular paycheque coming in if you’d like while you follow the specific steps of this
  blueprint in your spare time.

     Let us show you everything about this when you click the link below:

          www.streetwisenews.com/wizard

Best Wishes

John Harrison 

I spent an hour yesterday afternoon with an audiologist who sells hearing aids… 

And before you ask ~ no the hearing aid wasn’t for me. As my wife will confirm, I hear exactly what I want to hear. 

Anyway, I asked him about the difference between the mid-priced units he sold, and the top of the range, which were about 40% more expensive. He said that the differences weren’t huge ~ a few bells and whistles (actually that’s a terrible analogy…the last thing you want on a hearing aid is a whistle!) which most people wouldn’t need or use… 

So a lot more money for not much more benefit. 

And yet these units sold very well. 

Most products are affected by the phenomenon of diminishing returns as the price goes up beyond a certain point. Cars are an excellent example of this. The manufacturers create a standard car, and then offer more expensive variations on the theme, which offer some additional benefits, but the increase in price is far in excess of the increase in benefits. 

I own such a car. It’s a Porsche 996 GT2, and when it was new, it cost about 70% more than the standard 996. It goes faster, and looks better, but to the untrained eye, it’s not that different from the standard product. In fact, in some respects it’s worse, because it has no back seats and many creature comforts have been removed, to save weight. Oh and they appear to have done away with the suspension. And yet, the original buyers happily paid over £40,000 extra for the car. 

Now, before you think I’ve taken leave of my senses, I bought the car second-hand when it had depreciated to a point much closer to the current price of the standard car, and it’s actually now depreciating far less because of its exclusivity. But that wasn’t what influenced the original buyer. Like all buyers of premium-priced, top of the range products they purchased for one of a number of reasons:

1.  They have plenty of money and always have to have ‘the best’.

2.  They were prepared to ‘overpay’ for the unique benefit of the product.

3.  They crave exclusivity ~ to own something that very few people have ~ and are prepared to pay for the privilege.

When you think about most of the things you spend money on, there’s usually the opportunity to buy a premium-priced product ~ one which is better than the original, but probably not better value for money.

Consumer durables, furniture, clothes, food, holidays…just about everything. 

And here’s what’s interesting for you and me… 

No matter what product or service you sell, there is probably a hardcore of your customers who would pay considerably more for a ‘better’ version of the same product or service…and they’ll be prepared to pay far more than the enhancements cost to create. 

If you’re not currently doing anything to serve that latent demand, you’re missing a big profit opportunity. What’s more, you’re leaving yourself wide open to competitors jumping in and taking the cream off the top of your market. 

 John Harrison

PUBLISHERS NOTICE 

This Will Make You Money, Guaranteed 

Hello,

I know, I know – It’s very big claim in that subject line.

But this really is one of the few extra income ideas where I genuinely believe you can use the word ‘Guaranteed’!

Look, I don’t want to beat about the bush with this.

I’ve had many years experience with these types of systems and this is one I can strongly recommend.

Take a look today: 

www.streetwisenews.com/variant6  

Best Wishes

John Harrison 

If I asked you to name the most successful author of the millennium so far, I think you might come up with writers like J K Rowling, Tom Clancy, Dan Brown and John Grisham, but I doubt you’d come up with the right answer. And yet he’s a man whose had more bestsellers over the past five years, than all those four – combined! 

His name is James Patterson, and it’s ‘own up to ignorance time’ for me, because I’d never even heard of him until yesterday. Which is a bit worrying because he sells over £60 million worth of books a year. I must pay more attention. 

Anyway, what’s interesting is how he does it, because it carries with it, some invaluable insight for anyone who wants to make a great deal of money – no matter what the field. 

Unlike most other authors, Patterson doesn’t stick to one genre. He creates books that he thinks people will buy, irrespective of the genre. So he starts with the market, and then creates products to fit. Very few authors do this, and not enough business people do it either. They fall in love with a product rather than a market. This is a big mistake. A so-so product put into the right market will always make more money than a fantastic one put into the wrong one. 

Patterson doesn’t write books he likes, or even ones he would want to read himself. He creates books that the maximum number of people will want to buy. 

Once he’s identified a ‘hot’ market, he knows that output is going to be critical to capitalising on the opportunity. So rather than operate like most authors who agonise over every word for years, he employs a team of co-writers who work to his brief and produce the first drafts. This enables him to work fast ~ getting up to six books a year out on the market. So he never has all his eggs in one basket at any one time – and he has plenty of baskets. 

That’s another valuable lesson no matter what business you’re in. If you insist on doing everything yourself, it’s very difficult to fully capitalise on an opportunity, or indeed to create multiple revenue streams. There simply aren’t enough hours in the day. 

James Patterson is an author, but he’s clearly very much an entrepreneur too. I’m not in a position to comment on his ability as a writer, but my guess is that there are many others out there of equal talent who are struggling to make a living – let alone raking in sales of over £60 million a year. The difference is that he finds out what the market wants, gives it to them in volume, milks it for all it’s worth ~ and then is adaptable enough to move on to the next ‘big thing’ when a new opportunity presents itself. 

When you take that approach, almost any idiot can make money… 

And I should know! 

 John Harrison

I watched a fascinating programme about longevity on BBC2 the other evening. It featured societies where people tend to live much longer than the average. There was a lot of interesting stuff to come out of it, but what the researchers have found in Japan, has wider implications than for health and longevity. 

In the Okinawa islands, the population routinely expect to live ~ and be healthy ~ well into their nineties. The reasons aren’t totally clear, but it’s thought to be something to do with the traditional soya protein-based diet, and the fact that the people there tend to eat very little by western standards. 

Now here’s what’s interesting… 

The fact that the people thrive on that diet and lifestyle is down to their heredity ~ what their ancestors have experienced and endured throughout the centuries. Their bodies have geared up, and adapted, to thrive on it. If you or I were to take up the same regime, we wouldn’t necessarily get the same results though. 

This is borne out by what happens when the young Okinawa leave the islands and live in the city. When they move to a more western-based lifestyle, not only do they lose all the benefits of their heredity, but they actually fare worse than their contemporaries, who have been brought up in that environment. Their life expectancy actually falls below the average. 

They have evolved to thrive in a completely different environment. Their heredity offers no benefits in the new environment, but massive ones in their natural one. 

I’m sure this is a phenomenon which stretches way beyond the health and longevity arena. We all have skills, attributes and predispositions, and if we’re not getting the results and outcomes we want, it could because we’re applying them in the wrong environment. 

A Formula One car is awe-inspiring on a track, but wouldn’t get you out of your own street in the real world. A 50cc scooter would be totally useless on a motorway, but would get you around the centre of London better than anything else. 

Average natural abilities, applied in the right environment are far better, and more effective, than outstanding abilities applied in the wrong one. 

So are you applying your innate and acquired strengths in the right environment, or are you the proverbial fish out of water…or the Okinawan living on fast food? 

If you’ve ever felt you’ve not achieved as much as you deserve, the answer could lay here. 

 John Harrison

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