The Law Of 204,400 Hours

Malcolm Gladwell talks about the theory of 10,000 hours in his new book called Outliers.

“That the most successful people in a field tend to be those who met a certain threshold of intelligence or talent, and then practiced their skills for at 10,000 hours before attaining success.  He applies this recipe to hockey players, computer scientists, musicians, and others and finds it to be a consistent guide to predicting the most successful.” This summary of the law of 10,000 hours is offered by Law School Innovation.

In one of my financial planner coaching calls last week, I joked with a client that the fear based ego mind is extremely dedicated, always there, except when one is sleeping so I am told, especially in this economy, to its addiction to negative beliefs and negative emotions and it is dedicated to constantly finding out as much as it can about what is wrong about what is right and what is right about what is wrong.

Consider that our emotional development takes place by the time that we are 5 years old.

Emotional Development means the development of a full range of emotions from sad to happy to angry, and learning to deal with them appropriately. This helps build self-esteem and leads to such deeper qualities as sympathy, caring, resiliency, assertiveness and empathy and the ability to rise to life’s challenges. This explanation of Emotional Development is offered by Invest In Kids.

Consider again that the fear based ego mind is not operating while we are sleeping and that most people’s emotional development is incomplete so this would mean that the fear based ego mind is operating in some shape, form or portion for as much as 16 hours a day interfering with our values and the positive beliefs and positive feelings that flow into our vision, business plan and goals.

So if you are 40 years old and if your emotional development isn’t fully completed by the time your are 5 years old, your fear based ego mind has had as much as 35 years of practice multiplied by 365 days per year multiplied by 16 hours a day which equals 204,400 hours.

So even if you dedicated 10,000 hours to some form of positive practice over the past 35 years, your fear based ego mind has been at it for 95% of the time.

We wonder why we have a difficult time coping with our emotions in this economy.

What is your practice to stay positive in this economy?

My theory may seem absurd to you … no more absurd that the fear based negative beliefs and negative emotions that are griping the planet and sucking us into Gloomageddon.