Personal Development: It's Not Rocket Science, but It Is: Newton's Laws of Motion for the Mind

By Greg Simon

This is a book about Personal Development disguised as a book about Newton's Laws of Motion.
What is the connection between the two? Well, Personal Development aims to lift our thinking, our confidence and our expectations to new levels. Newton's Laws of Motion are behind the Physics of Rocket Science, and Rocket Science aims to lift things like rockets to new levels.
Thrust, gravitational forces, inertia, balance and many other scientific principles are behind the physics of Rocket Science that are taught in high school, mostly forgotten by students because they don't seem to have importance in their lives. Interestingly, these very principles are represented metaphorically in books on personal development and success.
While other books on personal development may discuss how the mind works using principles from science, this book takes the reader through the science first, and uses practical examples of how the mind works to illustrate these principles.
Real equations and formulae are used, but that doesn't mean that this is a science text book. It is just a disguise, remember? This is really just a lighthearted adventure into science that includes anecdotes, humour, diversions and even trivia about words and phrases to amuse budding Rocket Scientists as they discover how to apply mental and emotional thrust to their dreams and aspirations. The aim is to challenge, motivate and educate, and if the reader learns something about Rocket Science in the process, then that's not a bad thing, is it?
The first main section of the book reviews fundamental quantities and units, managing to find interesting, funny, and sometimes profound parallels with how we think and feel. Newton's Universal Gravitation Equation might look complicated, but it has a surprising amount to say about how we can handle the weight of the world on our shoulders. Vector quantities might be a burden for Science students in school, but they can help adults set and reach their goals.
The second main section looks at Newton's three Laws of Motion, in order. The laws are treated faithfully and scientifically, not mis-quoted or mis-used as they tend to be in many other books on Personal Development. As such, their true parallels with real life are more relevant and more useful.
Rocket Science – at least as represented by Newton's Laws of Motion – is not really that difficult to understand. Neither is Personal Development. The two, however, are more closely linked than many people think.
Therefore, this book is written to show that Personal Development is not Rocket Science, that Rocket Science is not Rocket Science, and that Personal Development is actually Rocket Science.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: May 1, 2023
• ISBN: 9781667894515

Book preview

BK90076352.jpg

© 2023 Greg Simon

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

Print ISBN: 978-1-66789-450-8

eBook ISBN: 978-1-66789-451-5

Table of Contents

Preface

Part 1 – Fundamental and Derived Quantities

1: Introduction to the Fundamental Quantities

2: Distance/Displacement

3: Mass/Weight

4: Time

5: Speed/Velocity

6: Acceleration

Part 2 – Newton’s Laws of Motion

7: Newton’s First Law of Motion

8: Newton’s Second Law of Motion

9: Newton’s Third Law of Motion

Part 3 –Blast Off!... Now What?

10: Sabotage!

11: Avoiding the Wobbles

12: How’s the View?

Postface: Final Thoughts…

Preface

Once upon a time in England, there was a young man. He was not particularly poor but neither was he particularly wealthy. He was not educated but he was not unskilled. When he was neither young nor particularly old, he met a woman and fell in love.

They married. He was thirty-six and she was a blossoming twenty. Though of modest means, he could afford to keep her, and she could afford to be kept.

This romantic tale took place in the early 1640s: long before Charles Dickens wrote his romantic novels, and even before Jane Austen wrote hers.

The young marrieds moved to the tiny hamlet of Woolsthorpe, to the north of London. They didn’t go by car or train, because there were no cars or trains at that time.

The young wife, Hannah, conceived very soon after, and was due to give birth around the end of the year.

Alas, the father never saw the birth of their child. He died three months before Hannah Newton (nee Ayscough) gave birth to their son. Hannah named the child Isaac, after her late husband. The infant child was sickly and weak, not expected to live beyond his first day of life.

But live he did, from illness to years of turbulence and rejection that scarred his young life.

A couple of years after the death of her husband and birth of her son, the young widow Hannah married Reverend Barnabas Smith. The two of them moved to start a new family, leaving the three-year-old Isaac in the care of Hannah’s mother, Margery Ayscough.

When Isaac was just ten years old, Barnabas died, and Isaac returned to live with his mother. He also met his two half-sisters and half-brother for the first time.

Some years later, Isaac’s mother decided that Isaac should manage her property, but he was no farmer, nor property manager. He could not focus on the practical aspects of his responsibility, and would rather sit up a tree with a good book. Consequently, Isaac was sent away again, this time to grammar school in Grantham, further to the north.

From Grantham, he progressed to Trinity College in Cambridge, and then to Cambridge University. Isaac Newton, now in his twenties, was swept up by a revolutionary scientific way of thinking. He experimented with optics and worked on new methods of Mathematics.

***

At last, I hear you say! He had found his calling and passion! He found acceptance after years of being rejected and sent away. He became rich and famous, because we’ve all heard of him, and the curtain falls to a happy ending, right?

Well, not really. At least, not obviously.

***

In 1665, disaster hit the country.

The Great Plague of London swept first the capital city, and then threatened the outlying towns. Cambridge University was forced to close, and Isaac had to go back to the family home, his work unfinished.

His experiments and university work were put on hold, but his brain just would not stop.

Isaac studied and contemplated his work while at home, often wandering around the orchard on the farm. It was there that he idly observed an apple falling from a tree, and asked himself, Why should that apple always descend perpendicularly to the ground? Why should it not go sideways, or upwards, but constantly to the Earth’s centre?

This question inspired Isaac Newton to come up with his law of universal gravitation, and the world was forever changed.

***

Jumping ahead in the story, in 1687 Isaac Newton first published this principle of gravitation. It says that every object in the universe is attracted to every other object with a force that is directly proportional to the product of their masses and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them.

Did you get that? (You are taking notes, aren’t you?) Let’s rephrase it a little:

Every object in the universe is attracted to every other object.

Everything is pretty much under the influence of everything else.

That’s a Scientific Principle! The first one of this book: Everything influences everything.

The rest of the principle just says how much.

Newton stated this law of universal gravitation, along with his three laws of motion, in a book he wrote: Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica (That’s Latin, not bad spelling). It was a best seller!

Here is a take-home point of this story:

Isaac was brilliant. He was rejected and sent away by his step-father. He was deemed a lousy farm manager by his mother and sent away to college. His studies were interrupted by a killer plague!

His gift of curiosity about a falling apple changed the world.

Are you curious?

I am, by nature, curious. People often point to me in the street and say, Isn’t he curious?

That was actually a joke, a pun, based on the fact that the word curious has two meanings.

It means, desiring to know stuff (That’s me) and also strange or odd (No comment).

Curious, that…

… and herein lies our first exploration into what things mean and what we think things mean, what others think they mean and what they used to mean.

If you are wondering what Personal Development has to do with Rocket Science, then you are, by definition, curious. Curiosity is a good thing.

The dictionary definition of curiosity is: A desire to know or learn.

This is a good thing. It shows that we are not so arrogant as to assert that we already know everything, or that what we do know is all that matters. We realize that our universe expands beyond our own present experience and knowledge, and we want to be a part of that universe.

Ah, he said universe. Rocket Science?

We’ll get to that.

The second definition of curiosity is: A desire to know about people or things that do not concern one; nosiness.

This is not necessarily a good thing. Here, the desire to expand our universe includes expanding into somebody else’s universe, without their knowledge or consent. I wouldn’t assert emphatically that this is not a good thing, but as social beings we might want to consider another person’s universe before we expand into it.

Another definition of curiosity is: something arousing interest because of novelty or strangeness. In other words, strange or interesting, making others curious about them.

If you wore a flowerpot for a hat, people might comment that you are a curious person. They do not mean to imply that you want to expand your universe, rather that you have expanded theirs by making them curious, at least curious enough to wonder about it immediately after the encounter.

You want to be a curious person, desiring to know or learn. You don’t so much want to be a curious, nosey person, meddling in other people’s universes. You also don’t want to be a curious person who is strange or odd. Or maybe you do.

The opposite of being curious is being incurious. The definition of that is: Lacking intellectual inquisitiveness or natural curiosity; uninterested.

You definitely don’t want to be that.

Incurious people respond to curious people and ask, What do you want to know for? or Who cares? or Go away. I’m watching TV.

Incurious people call upon what they consider to be the First Law of Curiosity: Curiosity killed the cat.

What they fail to realise is that this Law actually has two parts: Curiosity killed the cat. Satisfaction brought him back. This was the full quote circa 1912. Interestingly, the original saying, as cited by no less than Shakespeare himself (Much Ado about Nothing) was that care killed the cat. Care, in that context, did not mean nurturing, but worrying.

Worrying about stuff, or being overly concerned about finding out stuff, could be hazardous to your health. Curiosity can drive one crazy, but finding the answer is absolutely life-restoring! You’ve felt that, haven’t you? That aha! light-bulb-moment that completely turns the page on frustration and sets before you that invigorating rush of satisfaction!

Take that, o incurious one!!

In fact, one person famous for his wisdom – King Solomon – had this to say about curiosity in Proverbs chapter 25 verse 2: The glory of God is to conceal a matter; but the glory of kings is to search it out.

In other words, God created a treasure hunt for his creation. He would hide the mysteries of the universe in the ground, in the sky, in the oceans, and in the mind. This was not to keep them hidden, but to stimulate people’s curiosity. Curious people exhibit the glory of kings!

Now that you know it’s okay to be curious, let’s ask a couple of questions…

What is Rocket Science, and What is Personal Development?

In most contexts, you will hear what rocket science isn’t, rather than what it is.

TV remotes aren’t rocket science, you know.

Showing appreciation isn’t rocket science.

Organising your fridge isn’t rocket science.

… and so on.

So, if you add up everything that rocket science is not, then subtract it from everything, then you will be left with a definition of what it is.

Or will you?

It’s not rocket science means that it’s not difficult to understand, implying that rocket science is difficult to understand, unless of course you’re a rocket scientist, in which case rocket science is not rocket science.

Although I am not a rocket scientist, I have learned some physics and chemistry at university, and have taught high school science for many years, so I know more than some about the underlying principles of rocket science. I know, for example, that some aspects of rocket science are not that difficult to understand, which means of course that some aspects of rocket science are not, by definition, rocket science.

Let’s approach it this way: Rocket Science is the Science that relates to Rockets and how they work, or how to get them to work so they don’t become an expensive catastrophe or the plot for a disaster movie.

The word science comes from Latin. It means to know. From the same Latin root word, we get conscience, prescience, and omniscience, all of which you can look up if you like.

Rocket is a type of lettuce, and has nothing to do with Rocket Science, and is really quite disgusting (in my opinion). Its origin as a word is of course Latin, and the meaning is connected with caterpillars and hedgehogs, which enhance a salad more palatably than this kind of lettuce. Again, my opinion.

The other type of rocket is a sort of self-propelled tube. How to get them propelled and how to make them go where you want them to rather than crashing prematurely back to Earth is what this field of knowledge is all about – Rocket Science.

There you have Rocket Science. Let’s define Personal Development.

Personal Development is herein defined as the development, or growth, of a person.

Personal = person (which, presumably, you are).

Development = growth, which is natural in persons, which you are.

Personal Development, Order and Chaos

Now that we’ve cleared that up, I will add that Personal Development is an area of life that is not rocket science, but it is so poorly understood that it may as well be. It is the development of your life, but development can be ordered and controlled, with an endpoint in mind, or it can be haphazard and uncontrolled, with nothing more in mind than what takes your attention at a given moment.

Ordered, or haphazard.

Here’s a fun activity for you to do. No, strike that. It’s a serious experiment for you to perform (We’re learning to be Rocket Scientists now, remember?)

I know we haven’t even started Chapter 1 yet, but I thought now would be a good time to introduce the idea of fun activities experiments, because we’re going to be doing a lot of this in the chapters ahead.

If you haven’t acquired your highly scientific apparatuses apparati stuff or your lab coat yet, this is one of those experiments you can do in your mind with reasonable success. It’s called a thought experiment, and you’d be in good company – Einstein did a lot of experiments in his mind because he was either too lazy or just not prepared to travel at the speed of light, but for this experiment we won’t need to travel at the speed of light (I hear you say, Just so long as it’s faster than we’re going now! Okay, I get the hint).

For this experiment, pour out a bag of letter tiles (with a letter on one side and blank on the other side) onto the table (or the table of your mind). Select thirteen of them at random, turn them face up and – without looking at the actual letters – place them in a single row (The thought experiment does not take as long).

Now, without changing the order of the tiles, position them so that the letters are right way up from where you are sitting (or thinking).

Are there any recognizable words? Can you read the sequence of letters as an intelligible sentence? Does it look like Shakespeare to you?

Put the tiles back with the rest, turn all of the tiles face up, then find and arrange the tiles to spell out ROCKET SCIENCE

Was that difficult? No, it was not rocket science, but it just happened to spell ROCKET SCIENCE.

You could have at least one of the following reactions:

You could say, Wow! That was amazing. It spells ROCKET SCIENCE! I hope you don’t, though. It really wasn’t the point, or that amazing.

Or, you could say, Hmmm… (being the pensive type that you are), In both cases, I selected the exact same number of tiles. With a very little effort, I could arrange them to spell complete gibberish. With a very little more effort, I could get ROCKET SCIENCE.

The amount of effort was small, to find order from chaos. The amount of intelligence required was not huge – certainly well within your own limits. You knew from the beginning what the end goal was, and you set out with purpose to accomplish it.

Your life is just like that. You can either let chaos determine your outcome, or with just a little more effort you can write your own goals. Notice a couple of key points here:

It helps if you can spell. That’s probably pretty profound in this metaphor of life, but play with that later if you like.

Your choice of words that you want to spell is pretty well unlimited. Okay, if you’re using tiles with a finite number of each letter, there may be some limitations, but you get the point. Every word in your vocabulary and then some may be spelled out by the same letters available to you. Have fun – spell out words that will really give you joy!

A Connection

There are lots of other things we can discuss, but for now, let’s focus on Rocket Science and Personal Development. Why does this author (That’s me, by the way – Scientists always refer to themselves impersonally, and we’re being scientific here, remember?) – Why does this author connect those two ideas together? How does Rocket Science relate to Personal Development?

Let me tell you a story.

It’s about a little boy jumping from the roof frame of a house under construction in a Sydney suburb, into a pile of sand approximately three times his body length below. There are other, slightly older but not more responsible children, practicing similar shenanigans in this veritable playground for unsupervised juveniles. The year: 1964 (or thereabouts). It must have been a weekend, or else some hammer wielding tanned builder would have chased them home or to some other danger zone.

The little boy looks at the pile of sand below, and tries more or less successfully to hide his fear from his older brother and neighbourhood friends. He cannot climb down – he has come too far, and the last thing he needs (in his mind) is to be accused of being a baby – which he’s most certainly not! He’s 7 (or thereabouts)! As he looks down and calculates height, acceleration due to gravity, wind speed and what-not, the ground beckons to him while at the same time seeming to move away. Finally, he swallows hard and resists closing his eyes, and takes the leap.

He lands more or less safely in the pile of sand, which looks a lot bigger and safer from down here than up on the roof level. In his subsequent dreams, however, that would visit him in the years to come, he only fully recalls the feeling he sensed when looking down at the ground below. The terror, the inability to turn back, and then that moment of falling. As this little boy grows, the dreams change the backdrop and scene, but tell the same story. Looking down a tall building, a cliff, a bridge…

You know, I can make my conscious awareness pause for a moment, and pull out those images of who I was then. Do you have pictures like that from decades (and decades) ago?

Were these incidents part of the formation of my fears and attitudes? Do they account for or contribute to my present fear (I call it respect) of heights?

Perhaps.

Our stories make us who we are. If they’re good stories, they might make us happy and fulfilled. If they’re bad or scary stories, what then? Can we stop them from making us anxious or afraid?

This is personal development. It’s how we develop personally. Its study is how we learn to be aware of how our experiences and circumstances spell out the chaotic, misspelled or beautiful words, and how those words are arranged into meaningless ramblings or profound sentences that tell our personal tale.

Most people let the letter tiles fall where they may, and become convinced that the gibberish spelled out is the story of their life. With a little bit of effort, people who are aware can take those tiles and write a great story.

The laws of nature that govern our personal development are quite simple once we know they are actual laws of nature. What looks like a random pile of letter tiles can make a lot of sense, if we have an awareness of vocabulary, spelling, and basic grammar.

It’s really not rocket science.

Predictable Rules

Now, back to Rocket Science. To many people, this is the epitome of complexity, something we’re pretty sure is beyond our reach and something we’re pretty sure we never took in school.

In actual fact, science is an established and well-understood system of behaviours by natural things. Drop a ball from the top of the Leaning