THE 20-80 PROBLEM
By Bill Cottringer


I have no idea if this is true or even remotely accurate, but I dreamed it vividly last night and sense the idea has potential for understanding and resolving the whole world’s main problem—a serious state of imbalance.

Consider the following likely possibilities. Eighty percent of what we are convinced is true in our minds really isn’t and yet we are willing to get maimed and killed over defending such untruth. After all, things are rarely as they first appear. Twenty percent of the world takes care of the remaining 80%. Eighty percent of what is communicated by the mass media is negative, compared to the remaining 20% positive stuff. Real fact: In America 20% of the people are the major supporters of the government, which supports the rest of the 80% population with tax money; probably much less than 20% control the world’s most important resources, but who is counting?

Nearly 80% of marriages fail. Less than 20% of the people are using their potential to thrive and make a difference in their own or other people’s lives; the rest are surviving lives of quiet desperation, just trying to make it to the finish line that keeps getting further away. The real sad bottom line is that less than 20% of the people understand 20% of their true power well enough to use it to help themselves and the rest of the world get back in balance. Most don’t even have a sense of imbalance and if they do, don’t think they can do anything about it.

Now it would seem to me that a smart person would be highly motivated to discover what needs to happen to restore some reasonable balance in a world gone mad with imbalance. But I suppose you have to see what is happening first. Along with understanding the reality that you have to experience both halves of life—good and bad—to know the difference well enough to know for sure which side of the equation you want to be on and how to get there.

Every long journey begins with one step. In this case our New Year’s resolution for 2007 should be to take that first step. What is the first step? Answer: Self-examination with honesty and openness. Are you trapped in a 20-80 out-of-balance life? Do you waste 80% of your time getting 20% of your results? Are you convinced that 80% of what you know is true and not open to other possibilities? Are you among the 20% who are thriving in life or the 80% who are struggling to tread water?

Are you among the 20% who are committed to helping the other 80% of the people get somewhere or are you in the 80% who are waiting for the help? Do you talk more than you listen? Do you take more than you give? Do you play more than you work or work more than you play? Do you treat your body more like a playground or a temple? Do you rebel against and resist natural laws and rules of life, work and society or do you let go, give in and follow them? Are you doing the right things in the right ways at the right time to get the right results or are you wasting your time doing all the wrong things in the wrong ways at the wrong time and getting all the wrong results?

Do you want to change everything first from outside-in or try to fit into what you are trying to change from the inside-out? Do you listen to your conscience or do you try to tell it what to think and do? Do you spend most of your time looking for good answers or better questions? Do you have conflicts between what your mind wants, what your heart feels or what your soul needs? Are you able to weather adversity with hope or do you give in too easily? Are you optimistic about negative events but pessimistic about positive ones? These are some good questions we all need to be asking.

Begin the journey to bring yourself and the rest of the world back in balance. Start by believing things could be better and you do have the power to help make it a better reality for the other 80%, to show them it can be done. Although war seems to be inevitable in the world, I am not willing to surrender to the truth of that reality. I have always had a war going on inside me between my head, heart and soul. And until I can use my own thinking, compassion and love to reconcile my own imbalances, I will continue to be held hostage of my own illusion of being in the 20% of the thrivers.

Oddly, I remember a conscious effort I made a long time ago to be unique and different from everyone else—in personality, thinking and acting. But all the things I learned in doing this didn’t make a connection with the mainstream and so it was rather useless information. What I wanted to do is to connect, belong and make a contribution. Of course the older I get, the more I find myself returning to the familiarity and comfort of the mainstream—getting in touch with the thoughts, feelings, problems, issues, needs and preferences of the 80%. And it is the desire to close that gap within myself that reflects a lesson worth listening to.

Everything we think, feel and do is our own unique attempt to close the gap between where we are and where we want to be. But you have to admit and acknowledge just how wide a gap you have created with your imagination, before you can restore balance in your own life and begin to help others do that too. What you may find is that the gap isn’t quite nearly a big as you think. But, the way life works is that you have to experience the negative side of life—fears, lies, unhappiness, being out-of-balance, failure, helplessness, conflict and discomfort—before you can appreciate the benefits of the joy, truth and honesty, happiness, balance, success, hopefulness, peace and comfort. It is the rain and the sunshine that produce rainbows.

So what is my 2007 New Year’s resolution? To continue my efforts to restore a healthy balance to a world gone mad with unhealthy imbalance. And the only way I can accomplish that is to continue working on closing the gap between the self-alienating uniqueness I imagined for myself long ago and the more single-mindedness of the mainstream that I know is the real place I want to be. This should be an interesting year! Your thoughts?

William Cottringer, Ph.D. is President of Puget Sound Security in Bellevue, WA. He is author of several books including You Can Have Your Cheese & Eat It Too and The Bow-Wow Secrets: How Dogs Live Simple Lives & People Don’t. Bill can be reached at bcottringer.pssp.net or (425) 454-5011 for comments and questions, especially in regards to this article.