Category: self-help

Kindness

Fabrizio1 Comment

Kindness starts from understanding that we are not alone.

That despite our uniqueness, the pain we feel, the challenges we face, the preoccupations that keep our mind busy are common.

That what we are going through is the reflection of what our neighbour has lived for the past six months.

That the person who does not reply to our message is not having a better day.

That it is difficult for our partner to figure us out, just as it is difficult for us to figure them out.

Kindness is an act directed at ourselves first.

Kindness is for every day of the year.

Merry Christmas!

P.S.: I have not read many books this year, but one I enjoyed is Storynomics, by Robert McKee and Thomas Gerace. I am giving away 5 Kindle copies of the book, to the first 5 people who leave a comment to this post and share one thing they got from my blog.

You stay

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When you are in a bad mood, your productivity goes down. The quality of your work is not as good as usual, even getting started feels painful. You are cranky, you put negative narratives first, you fail to appreciate what good there is.

Being in a bad mood also poisons everything around you. And most importantly, it makes people in your life be in a bad mood to.

There is no remedy to being in a bad mood. It just happens.

The only sensible thing to do is put all the residual resources into breaking the direct link between the mood and yourself. Indeed, often when you are in a bad mood, you look at yourself as a bad person too. That’s dangerous.

Moods come and go. You stay, often improved. If you can appreciate this difference more, nothing will stop you.

To meet an emotion is first to acknowledge it and then to feel it enough to get the message it carries. The feeling carries the message but it isn’t the message, and we won’t get the message without feeling at least some of the emotion. The message, of course, is very likely to be a form of emerging self-knowledge.

Dan Oestreich, How To Meet A Strong Emotion

After failure

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As we are nearing the start of a new year, and many of us will sit down and reflect on what new habits can be added to their lives, remember just one thing: what you do after you fail will determine your success.

Establishing a new habit takes time and effort, at some point you will most likely fail. For one day, for two days, for ten days.

Whether or not you can appreciate the work you have put in before the failure, whether or not you can remind yourself you are in this for the long term, whether or not you can pick the habit up again. That is going to be the measure of your success.

Always see the 61.

Wandering

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We are typically busy when we do not know where we are headed.

And I am not talking about the type of busy that involves doing work, but rather the type that makes our head hurt, that keeps us awake at night, that makes us nervous and anxious, that flattens everything into a state of urgency, that leaves us moving from one thing to the next.

This type of busy that is wandering.

Having a purpose will not allow you to be busy. You perfectly know what matters and what does not, what will take you closer and what will delay your arrival, what is an investment of resources and what is a drain.

Lack of direction, not lack of time, is the problem. We all have twenty-four hour days.

Zig Ziglar

Not particularly good

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How is it that when we feel out of place we go on a crusade to show the world we actually belong?

When someone points at one of our flaws, we insist in denying it. When someone shows us a mistake we have made, we immediately think they are wrong. When facing the fallacy of our argument, we go to great lengths to distort reality and adapt it to what we are saying. When in a role that has never suited us, we try to play the part up until the damage is just too big.

We spend a great deal of energy trying to be what we are not, to protect things we normally do not care about, to convince ourselves and others of something.

We should rather just accept that we are not particularly good at most things.

And move on.