Inversion for Wizards

How to turn obstacles upside down

"The mind adapts and converts to its purposes the obstacle to our acting. The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way."

Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 5.20.

"The test of first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposing ideas in mind simultaneously and still retain the ability to function. One should, for example, be able to see that things are hopeless yet be determined to make them otherwise"

F. Scott Fitzgerald

A key strategy to self improvement is to turn dread into drive by leveraging fear against action. Our real desires are always surrounded by fear, fear happens the moment the status quo is threatened, and if we are not threatening the status quo, then we are not moving forward but accepting comfort. As a wizard, comfort and safety is not something to be accepted, it is an alarm bell. You must take the fear of not doing something and make it more powerful than the fear of doing something. As magicians, we can use magic to maintain the status quo, to magic our way through a shitty job or relationship, but to grow and expand we need to face what we fear.

This concept of facing what we fear arises from the ancient stoic principle of Premeditatio Malorum. The Stoics would imagine what it would be like to lose their job and become homeless or to suffer an injury and become paralyzed or to have their reputation ruined and lose their status in society. 

The Stoics believed that by imagining the worst-case scenario ahead of time, they could overcome their fears of negative experiences and make better plans to prevent them. While most people focused on achieving success, the Stoics also considered how they would manage failure. What would things look like if everything went wrong tomorrow? And what does this tell us about how we should prepare today?

It is not enough to think about difficult problems one way. You need to think about them forward and backward. Inversion often forces you to uncover hidden beliefs about the problem you are trying to solve. 

This leads me nicely into the next model I want to look at, Inversion is a tool that allows you to identify and remove obstacles. Instead of thinking forward towards a goal or achievement, Inversion is thinking backward, and identifying the obstacles so we can navigate them. This has neat and useful implications for magic, and is a practical way of leveling up your spell craft, by determining targets much more specifically. After all, avoiding stupidity is far easier than seeking brilliance.

Therefore instead of aiming directly for your goal, think deeply about what you want to avoid, and see what options are left over. Instead of thinking about what you want to achieve with a positive outcome, ask yourself the following question:-

"How might you achieve a terrible outcome?"

and let that guide your decision-making and enchantment targets.

So for example

The simple goal of “I want to be wealthy” can be inverted to "I don't want to be poor"

So by eliminating the behaviors guaranteed to erode wealth, you can achieve your goal of becoming wealthy.

For any task or project, you could ask "How might I achieve a terrible outcome!" and let the answers to this question guide your decision-making. Using the simple reframing of turning problems into challenges, we raise ourselves to a challenge but are often defeated by problems.

Introducing Force Field Analysis

Kurt Lewin’s force field analysis is an excellent tool for Magicians to have in their portfolio.

Here is a typical example of an analysis used in the corporate world.

It balances from the left forces pushing towards something, moving with energy, and on the right the forces pushing against it, or restraining.

The aim then is to maximize the left, whilst minimizing the right. 

I have seen differing ways that FFA analysis can be used, some are impractical for wizards. What I have found through practise to be most effective is the simple rule of only focusing on one side at a time. 

Either Strengthen by focusing on one thing that pushes over, and put all your resources and effort behind it (with no diffusion) for rapid change. Or weaken by focusing on three things, or obstacles and reduce them to produce slower gradual change.

The aim of the process is to maximise a single force or remove resistance to that force.

So let me give you an example of how to make this work for magicians, especially when crafting a macro enchantment. 

First some steps to build the FFA

1. Identify the problem

2. Define objective

3. Identify the forces that support change towards objective

4. Identify forces that impede change 

5. Strategise a solution

Here is one I quickly knocked up for fitness :-

SQ is Status quo, this is generated by asking How things are right now? and answering this as honestly as possible without delusion. “Reading yourself to filth” as Gordon would say.

W2B is where you want to be, what is the goal you are aiming for?

This is where inversion comes in, when you have a map of where you are going, you can start to work backwards and identify where you need to put your magic to obtain the best results. Obviously not just your magic, but mundane action as well.

The aim is to come up with 5-10 things moving with you, try to account for as many variables as possible and then list 5-10 things moving against you. They don’t need to line up or anything, just create the list.

On the left are the forces working in the right direction, that I can lean into. On the right are the resistant forces or obstacles.

For my magic, I can either maximise one thing on the left hand side and go ham for rapid change. Or work on three of the resisting forces on the right hand for slower gradual change.

The Change Model

Once we have the lists, depending on which side of the line we are working on we will need a different degree of force to work towards the goal. The status quo is the equilibrium, which is what we want to break past and get beyond, so we either strengthen the left or weaken the Right. We then apply effort to the correct forces to move in the direction of growth.

Strengthen = Focus on one thing that pushes over, and put all your resources and effort behind it (with no diffusion) for rapid change

Weaken = Focus on three things, this is slower gradual change.

To summarise:-

Inversion is a powerful tool to improve your thinking because it helps you identify and remove obstacles to success. The root of inversion is “invert,” which means to upend or turn upside down. As a thinking tool, it means approaching a situation from the opposite end of the natural starting point. Most of us tend to think one way about a problem: forward. Inversion allows us to flip the problem around and think backward. Sometimes it’s good to start at the beginning, but it can be more useful to start at the end.