Tag: empowerment

Luck

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Luck is a major factor in all types of success, and the failure to recognize this simple fact is a major factor in all later collapses.

Some people, at some point, start thinking that success is owed and inevitable.

They are perhaps very talented people, or people who put a lot of work and long hours into shaping something, or even incredibly creative people who have managed to change the rules in their industry, or again natural and charismatic leaders that suck others into their visions.

But should all this be a determining factor, there would be millions of billionaires and thousands of unicors and decacorns. And the best thing would be that once gotten there, there they would stay forever. They would own the recipe, after all.

Success is all of the things above, and yet it is mainly a series of unprecedented and unrepeatable circumstances that lined up to provide somebody or a group of people with an opportunity. If you are there, you most likely do not know how you got there, and you better not get too comfortable.

Appreciate the luck you have had, make it worth it (not only for yourself, ESPECIALLY not for yourself), and build resilience for when the moment will come for you to step out of the spotlight.

How are you going to know?

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When you cut with a knife, more often than not, you are not risking anything as long as you are cutting something that is familiar and that does not require a particular effort.

Most problems start when you hit a spot that you cannot cut with your normal moves. You turn the knife up and down, apply more pressure, your motion loses fluidity, you get more tired as the difficult spots increase.

That’s when the risk of getting cut is higher, and that’s when you most need to be present and alert.

The same is valid for our lives, both personal and professional. You need to have routines you can relax in, in order to be ready when it’s needed.

If you dedicate your attention to everything and everybody in the same measure, if you consider all the opportunities equally appealing and worth your time, if that particular feeling you feel when something is important is there all the time.

How are you going to know?

Give and receive

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It’s easy for most of us to complain about what other people do, the way they treat us, the things they say, sometimes even the thoughts they might have as they interact with us.

But are we as ready to say “thank you!” whenever they do something we actually like?

We shape the behaviour of those around us, and if complaints and criticism is all we give, whether we do that explicitly or not, why should we expect anything different in return?

Change in mind and body

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Change is difficult, of course. But there are two separate challenges that one faces when asking for change.

The first one is psychological. It’s the most common and evident one. It’s the resistance of the mind. We like comfort, we like things the way they’ve always been, we don’t know what we might get into by changing. Perhaps we also recognize that circumstances are not great, and yet we cling to them, as the unknown is scarier than an imperfect known.

The second one is behavioural. This is more subtle. It’s the resistance of the body. We have embraced change on a theoretical level, and yet we keep falling back to old habits, to old frameworks, to old practices. We know we need change, and we are struggling either because nobody has shown us how to change or because nobody is holding us accountable for the little daily things that are needed to fully shift.

Both challenges need to be considered, and one might only be halfway through when everybody nods to their ideas and says: “this is great, exactly what we need!”.

Futile

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You know a person that advocates for recycling, and while driving she uses her phone.

One of your friends works for a non-profit organization, and every time she goes grocery shopping she is happy to pay €0,20 for a plastic bag.

Your boss is a great coach and mentor, and never misses an occasion to express her support for military intervention in the latest geopolitical confrontation.

A colleague of your partner always cracks hilarious jokes when she is over for dinner, and without fail she ends up getting drunk and forgetting huge chunks of the evening.

The CEO of that company that is creating a lot of jobs and who’s paying its fair share of taxes is only motivated by being on the first page of the newspaper and buying the latest model of sportscar.

As we are more and more prone to separate the world into “good” and “bad”, we are forced to pick one slice of someone’s life and let it creep all over their behaviour, motives, reputation, and identity.

“Good” and “Bad” are convenient, but living is much more than that.

If we are not exposed to all the aspects of someone’s life, then putting people into boxes is just a futile activity. And we are never exposed to all the aspects of someone’s life.