When you stop looking at others as threats to your own success, they will automatically turn into a possibility to learn, into someone who can enable your next project, into people you can help in their own journey.
It is just a matter of perspective.
It is not so difficult to agree that change needs to happen. It is much more complex to agree on what change adds up to and act on it.
So, if you are an agent of change, there are two things to keep in mind.
First, small wins are wins nonetheless. You do not have to achieve everything at once, and even small changes in the right direction are something to be proud of. Building blocks that can support larger wins in the future.
Second, not giving up is part of the package. You might be tempted – you WILL be tempted – to give up once things do not look exactly how you had planned. That is precisely when you have to take a deep breath, buckle down, and reinforce the message around the need for change.
Keep going.
Sometimes it feels like banging your head against a wall. And sometimes it feels like that for most of the things that make up our days.
In these times, the importance of a practice cannot be overestimated. Getting back to doing, sitting down to deliver, adding a “+1” to whatever streak matters to you, can help immensely in keeping sane.
Practices can be developed in good times, and it is in difficult times that they save you.
What do you do when you forget to get back to a colleague, when the day ends without you returning that call, when the follow up you promised on that matter does not happen, when you postpone that conversation you were supposed to have?
The truth is, most of the time, we just go down a path that takes us further away from the right thing.
And so we avoid the colleague, we silence the phone, we build excuses around the promise, we postpone the conversation until it gets forgotten. We hide. We run from a mere oversight until it spirals into a complete failure. This is how much we hate admitting we did something wrong.
Of course, all of the process of hiding and running takes a lot of resources. Energy and time that will be better employed once we find the courage to say “my bad, let’s move on”.
How much more could you achieve if only you would learn to say “I am sorry”?
When you know yourself, the rest will follow. The opposite, unfortunately, is not true.
Getting to know your strenghts and your limits, what triggers you and what motivates you, what really matters and what you can let go. Having the capacity to adapt to your own mood, understanding that today it is simply not the day, that right now is the moment to push, that your getting mad yesteday is because of the lack of sleep. Not beating yourself up while still holding yourself accountable.
There is no better investment than the time you spend getting to know yourself.
You've got this 