Category: self-help

Patterns

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I have a tendency to get tired of things quickly.

Not that it’s always been my own choice to leave a job, yet this tendency has reflected on my professional experience so far.

For a while, I have thought that the next role, the next company, the next boss, the next team would be the “breakthrough”, the one that would stick with me and keep me motivated for long. Of course, it never was.

And so, I had to start asking some difficult questions.

What do I want? What is important to me? What would make me stick around? Why is it so that I get tired of jobs so quickly? Is there a problem with commitment? Is there a problem with purpose? Is there a problem with focus? If the choice would completely be in my power, what things would I make happen to call it a success?

When you identify a pattern and you have troubles understanding it, the absolute best thing you can do is to turn within and ask yourself some questions. It’s never the job, the people, the colleague, the managers, the roles, the tasks, the offices. Almost never, at least, and it’s a much safer bet to look at yourself in the mirror to see what you can do about it.

Not a choice

Fabrizio1 Comment

Somebody once told me: “If you don’t tell me you don’t like it, you are the one losing, as I will go on doing it.”

A key takeaway from this article about radical candor, is that it’s not really a choice.

You might refrain from delivering criticism because of kindness, or because you don’t like being criticized in the first place, or perhaps the timing is not right, as everybody is in a hurry, and you’ll get back to it later, when the situation is calmer.

In the meantime people develop habits, that gets consolidated and more difficult to notice and adjust. You get frustrated, nurture a negative narrative about the other person, figure out ways to live with it and postpone the confrontation.

Until it all breaks down. If only..

Time and potential are wasted by not being candid in the first place.

Influence

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Influence has a bad reputation.

We think of influence as something that is done to people, to us. We do not like the idea of having our thoughts magically changed, and so we do not like those who try to change them nor the act itself. To be fair, influence has been used by people to impose their view on others for quite some time, so no wonder we get defensive any time someone even just mentions the word.

What if, instead, influence would be an act of empathy?

If you really want to change someone’s mind on a moral or political matter, you’ll need to see things from that person’s angle as well as your own. And if you do truly see it the other person’s way – deeply and intuitively – you might even find your own mind opening in response.

Jonathan Haidt, The Rigtheous Mind

Two enemies

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There are two major factors that go against doing.

The first one is perfection. It’s a myth, something everybody aims for and nobody ever achieves. It is the resistance of having all your ducks in a row, and it delays delivering until a day that will never come.

The second one is analysis paralysis. At any time, we have access to a whole lot more information than what we need to make things happen, and this is unsettling to most. For every piece that tells you to do something, there is one that tells you to do the opposite, and so we lose focus, get distracted and, once again, delay delivery.

Habit and practice are the antidotes.

We have lost

FabrizioLeave a comment

It’s not for us to judge what others do.

There are systems in place for that, and as individuals and human beings, we should not feel entitled to decide if other people’s behaviour is right or wrong.

Today we are given the illusion that we have this right, that it is necessary for us to let everybody know what we think about this or that event.

We have lost the capability to use others’ actions for self-reflection (and betterment), and we just cherry pick facts and happenings that confirm to ourselves and the world we are already better, smarter, braver, fairer.

We have lost the empathy to understand others behave like they do not because they are mean, devious, malicious, but just because they are facing our very same challenges, trying to make sense of a life that does not help them in the effort.

We have lost the courage necessary to look within ourselves first, to sit in front of a mirror and think about who we are and who we are not, the things we like and we want more of, the things we dislike and we want less of, and we drown in a continuous flow of superficial interactions that end up being shouts in the dark.

We have lost, and we are losing every day the sense of perspective, of what is important, of why should I care, or what is my role in all this.

We have lost, but we can take all of this back. It’s a choice we make every day.