Tag: self-improvement

Harsh

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The harshness of your ways is merely fear and pain.

Fear of something that might happen, of something that might repeat itself, of losing control, of being subject to judgement, of not meeting others’ expectations, of being hurt, of having to face the unknown.

Pain for something that has happened in your life, for not being able to reciprocate a feeling, for a scar that has not healed yet, for the too much effort you are putting in keeping things under your will, for the lack of rest and tranquillity.

If you find the courage to speak of fear and pain, you immediately take their power away. Your relationships will benefit from it greatly.

No cogs

Fabrizio1 Comment

When looking back at our career, all we see is often company names, titles and dates.

But in those periods, in those roles, at those organisations, we have done stuff. Often, a lot of stuff. And that is much more important than the rest.

If you invest time writing down what you have done at one company, it is likely you are going to identify two or three skills you had no idea how to word and present. Do this for all of your past experiences, and you’ll have a pretty good picture of what you are good at and what you like to do.

The following step is to build a story around that, a narrative that matches the characteristics of the market you are in and the needs of the company you want to be hired from.

If you do not want to be treated like a cog, step out of the machine and go find your way.

The metrics that fit

Fabrizio1 Comment

We obsess over the short term.

Will this title get me more clicks?

Will this project get me the promotion?

Will this topic be on the test?

Will this cover letter get me the job?

And perhaps we should spend more effort understanding if we are measuring the metrics that better fit. Is clicks what I really want? Is that promotions truly good for me? Am I in this for the piece of paper only? Do I just want a job?

If you don’t take a wider perspective, it’s going to be one chase after the other, one hustle after the other, one hack after the other. Of course you are exhausted.

Redesigning life

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If your life is designed in such a way that over time, consistently, you can’t:

  • take a number of days off to recover from a flu
  • take a number of days off to prevent the spreading of a disease
  • take one hour or two to recover from a bad headache or go for a walk
  • cancel a business trip
  • reschedule a meeting
  • go offline for a period of time without fearing something will be wrong when you are back
  • ignore an email or a call that comes out of your normal business hours

Then it is perhaps time to consider redesigning your life.

Motivation and method

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The outcome of the things you do is heavily determined by your motivation and by your method.

Motivation is what gives you the reason why, what makes you feel all ecstatic, what gives you the kick to get started. Motivation is powerful yet fragile, and very often it is dependent on the feedback we get from the environment around us. If people don’t like our work, if we do not get the reward we were expecting, if things do not work as intended, motivation fades and leaves us wondering why we got started in the first place.

Method, on the other hand, is unexciting. It is a system, a discipline, a practice to obtain what you set out to obtain. Method is not as powerful as motivation, it is more of a muscle that needs to be trained, over and over again. Yet it can become solid, and when it does, you can fall back on method when motivation falters. It becomes a given, a reason in itself, not something others need to acknowledge for it to exist.

Motivation and method do not often go hand in hand, and when they do they are unstoppable.