Category: self-help

Ready

FabrizioLeave a comment

When a crisis hits, the human tendency is to focus on the crisis itself. Finding ways to mitigate it, get past it, sometimes leverage it.

But if you have a system, a strategy, a story you have built throughout the years, the focus should not be on the crisis. How does the system/strategy/story changes? What can you keep, what do you have to put on hold, what will you add? What can you do today that serves it and how will the crisis enhance all of this?

When you take this longer term approach, you’ll be ready to go once the crisis is over (instead of depleted of energy). It takes time, and it’s worth it.

The only way

FabrizioLeave a comment

If you want to be successful, wake up at 4 am every day.

But actually, 4.30am is THE right time if you want to get more done.

Want to feel empowered? 5am is the time for you.

Try 6am if you want a healthy business.

Or you can go with 7am, as long as you are mindful it can ruin your health.

If you think about it, 10am is a perfectly good time too!

And since that’s the case, why not try to extend that until noon?

We are all busy trying to replicate what others do, and not quite as much actually doing our own thing. Find your way. It is the only way.

Contradictions and implications

Fabrizio1 Comment

Not succeeding does not necessarily mean failing.

Not being right does not necessarily mean being wrong.

Not being good does not necessarily mean being bad.

Not agreeing with something does not necessarily mean opposing it.

We use categories to make sense of the world, yet categories are not dichotomies. If anything, their meaning is much better understood with a Greimas square.

Be aware of contradictions and implications, not only of contraries, when you are trying to understand what’s going on.

Hiding

FabrizioLeave a comment

When we attempt to second guess people behaviour. When we want to figure out why somebody is acting in a certain way. When we do read the room to understand who likes us and who does not. When we catch a phrase, a movement, a gaze and we interpret it as a judgement on what we are doing or who we are. In all these cases, we put ourselves at the center, as if everything would gravitate around us.

When somebody needs a comforting word. When there’s need of a new perspective, a new approach, a new idea. When we have not heard from a person for a long time, and we miss them. When it’s time to jump on a stage and make a difference. In all these cases, we diminish ourselves, as if there’s nothing our unimportant self can do to change things.

We continuosly move from one extreme to the other, and it’s just hiding.

Above yourself

Fabrizio1 Comment

Being a parent is not so much about raising your kids as it is about rising above yourself.

Kids do not comply, they rarely listen, and when they do it’s mainly to make sure they remember what you said when they can use it against you. And so, trying to make them fit, to make them adjust, to change them is not only futile. It is counterproductive.

The only way you can be a decent parent is by looking within yourself and get a hang of all the things that stand in the way.

If there’s a behaviour that makes you go mad and shout, flag it and work on it. If there are some things you really like to do with your kids, and some things you really don’t like to do with them, notice that soon, and be anyway prepared to yield more often than not. If there are some days in which you’d just like to be left alone, first forget about it, then make sure you can be aware of that, so that you will express it with words rather than with shitty reactions. If there are occasions where you screwed up, say so, and also say you are sorry.

You are the only one who can change this.

P.S.: this is certainly valid also when you are not in a parenting situation.