Out of the crisis

As a person in a position of power (a parent, a manager, a politician) your role in a moment of crisis is to inspire tranquillity.

That’s how others around you can continue to think clearly and help everyone out of the crisis.

It starts with you

Nobody is going to knock at your door and choose you.

Not because you are unworthy, simply because we are all busy, we are all self-absorbed, we are all overwhelmed.

Everything that is good starts with you. It will have to start with you.

Disappear

It is often so that things don’t just disappear.

They might move a little bit farther.

They might step away from the sun.

They might hide behind a bigger thing.

They might chase you for a while.

They might try on a new outfit.

But they will still be there and you will meet them again.

The only thing you can do is to train yourself to live with them, treat them as part of the landscape, learn to give them the appropriate perspective.

There’s nothing else.

Thing done well

If you want a thing done well, do it yourself.

But it would be more accurate to say: if you do a thing yourself, you’ll probably consider it well done.

Because you are the only judge. You set the standard, you choose what “well” means.

Of course, that’s not practical and it does not scale. And so, at some point, you will have to work with others, who will bring a different perspective on what “well” is.

If you are open, that’s a way to progress and figure out that what you thought of as “well” was actually just “good enough”.

If you are closed, on the other hand, you will probably go on doing “good enough”, until it becomes obsolete.

Who thinks what

There’s what you think you are. And that’s where you should invest most of your time. Understanding what you stand for, figuring out what you like, setting your own boundaries, and managing your triggers. You have full control on this.

There’s what others think you are. And that’s something you can’t do much about. Because others will always use their past, their experiences, their fears, their dreams, their thoughts, their values, their versions of the world to process what you are doing. You just can’t change that.

And there’s what you think others think you are. And that’s dangerous. That’s when we give up figuring ourselves out and instead use others to highlight everything we don’t like about us – our body, our mind, our traits, our personality, our behavior. You are giving up control doing that.