Joy comes from doing something you would do independently of the outcome.
Success – i.e., the outcome – comes from sticking with that something for long enough.
Simple, not easy.
Tag: resolutions
Blessings
Mistakes are a blessing.
If you have the patience to acknowledge them, accept them, analyse them, and discuss them, they are the easiest and surest way to become better at what you are trying to do.
Tension
We live in the tension between a version of us we despise and a version of us we would like to become.
And we also live in the tension between our failures, which we see so vividly, and other people’s successes, which we fantasise a lot about.
When we get going, we often reach for the positive extreme. We are at our best and we aim to emulate those who have succeeded before. We know we can. Then we meet criticism, bad weather, rejection, difficulties of various kind, and we fall to the negative extreme. We are suddenly incapable to complete the most trivial task, unworthy of anybody’s attention, care, empathy.
Most reality, though, happens in the middle. And that’s also where we can anchor to achieve real and incremental progress.
It’s when we embrace the version of us we are today and the work we are doing today – neither bad nor good – that we get rid of the tension and we can start enjoying the journey.
Too serious
Don’t take yourself too seriously. Make sure you have enough space to even make fun of your failures, your fears, your weaknesses.
We are wired to spot the threatening, the bad, the negative. But for most of us, in our modern world, that is very often overreaction. Bombing a presentation, missing a quarter’s goals, getting rejected is not going to be defining our own persona.
Unless you let it.
Goals
Give people goals that:
- matter for the achievement of a more generic business goal;
- they can impact with their own actions;
- they can easily track and report on;
- are clearly communicated and consistent across time.
It does not end here, but this is a fantastic place to start from when managing a team.
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