There’s no app out there that does not have an active interest in keeping you in for a while longer, in having you buy for a while longer, in liking your content so you can create for a while longer.
It is a legitimate business practice and it is encouraged by our utter disregard for its negative consequences on our life.
We can’t control how others will react to us, but we can control how we behave in their presence. What and how we say and share things, how we respond to their requests, what we do when they tell something unexpected, how we are present and listen.
We over-stress about their reaction and pay little to no attention to how we can influence that. We play the part of the bystander when we actually are (one of) the main character(s).
It’s no guarantee that the other person’s will do what we hope for. But we will at least feel infinitely better.
If you constantly doubt what you do, people will start doubting you as well.
If you play down compliments all the time, people will stop complimenting you.
If you point at your flaws and the skills you lack, people will turn their heads in that direction as well.
The fact is, if you do all that to stay in the background, modesty is not a good strategy.
Try empowering others instead.
Idols are idols only from afar, because when you keep the distance, you only see the silhouette.
And I wonder what would happen if we would direct the respect we reserve for idols to people that are close and that we see fully instead.
Idols are idols and they always disappoint.
That’s no reason to be disappointed at life as a whole and stop doing what you are here to do.
Some people mistake performance with loyalty. It’s common in sport, for example, where players are good only for as long as they wear the right jersey. And it’s common in business, where employees get rewarded for tenure and compliance.
But while performance can be fluctuating over a period of time and in context, there is no correlation with loyalty.
One could actually argue that the capacity to be in different teams, to learn from different environments, to deliver under different circumstances, tends to increase and strengthen performance.
So, when mixing performance with loyalty, what we are really doing is judging the worth of our cause, of our principles, in a sense of our very own performance. It’s one of those cases where we let the decisions and opinions of others affect how we think we are doing.
And we should try to never let that happen.
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