Tag: self-improvement

A walk

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More and more, I find that taking a walk in the middle of the day is helping me to recharge, refocus, and gives me space to explore new ideas. Often those ideas are the ones I stick to later in the day, the ones that get me unstuck.

Give it a try.

Walking occupies us just enough to help us stop thinking about whatever it is we were working on, but not too much as to prevent mind-wandering. It’s the perfect gateway into the subconscious mind and for stimulating creative insight that can help us overcome mental gridlock.

Brad Stulberg, Steve Magness – Peak Performance

What do I want?

Fabrizio1 Comment

To find out what you actually want, your purpose, the reason why you wake up every day, you have to ask yourself the question multiple time.

Because the first time you give an answer to “what do I want?”, that usually has to do with an immediate need. A job. A promotion. A partner. A house. You might get that, and then get tired very easily very soon, as it’s not what you are really after.

What do I want?

A job.

What do I want?

A job in marketing.

What do I want?

A job in marketing that gives me the possibility to share my experience and knowledge.

What do I want?

A job in marketing where I can lead a team to be able to share my experience and knowledge.

What do I want?

A job in marketing where I can lead a team to be able to share my experience and knowledge, and that will also allow me to spend enough time with my family.

What do I want?

A job as marketing lead, in a country where I can have a good work-life balance.

What do I want?

A job as marketing lead in Finland.

What do I want?

I want to build and lead the best Marketing team in the Nordics and together change the way marketing and communication are perceived and delivered.

It’s a long way to get to what you want, but it’s purpose what you are seeking, not the quick resolution to a pain you might be feeling momentarily. Keep asking the question until you get there.

Personal development

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If you want your people to develop, participate in trainings, attend events related to their field, network with peers and exchange ideas, just give them a clear budget (time and money) and some broad rules. Then let them choose how to go about it, approve by default and sponsor sessions to share their learnings with the rest of the team.

If you don’t want that instead, give them a process to follow, some paperwork to do and managerial discretion.

Or even better, tell them their development is not at the top of your agenda.

What we’d like

Fabrizio1 Comment

How would you like others to treat you?

If you are having a bad day, and still need to go out to buy some groceries. You just grab the first clothes you can find and don’t worry about your hair. What would you like others to say?

If you are having a tough period, and at work you can only do the bare minimum. You avoid coffee breaks as you do not want to talk to anybody, you delay your lunch break to grab a quick bite by yourself. How would you like others to talk about you?

If you are not answering that message because it would mean you finally need to have that difficult conversation you have postponed for so long. What would you like others to call you?

The next time we reach for an easy judgement, let’s keep in mind what we’d like others to do when it’s our turn.

Two attributes of stories

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We are much more likely to show empathy to people who are not regularly in our life.

That’s because our partners, colleagues, bosses, friends, acquaintances, parents, kids at some point become characters in the stories we build. Stories that have two interesting attributes.

First, they are unnecessarily brutal in representing our situation. We make our stories worst than the reality is, partly because we need to motivate our ambition, partly to excuse our feelings, partly as a byproduct of the laziness of our brain. What is negative sticks, and so we are never happy, never achieved, never quite there yet.

Second, they establish an escape to our responsibilities by assigning over proportioned weight to the context in which we live. A huge part of this context are the people with whom we spend most of our time. And so, our negative status is often because of what others do, how they treat us, the opportunities they miss to recognize us, the time they suck out of our days. Why should we show empathy to those who are keeping us down? To those who always have it their way?

Stories are brutal, and they solidify over time.

Yet, they are still stories. And as such, it is in our power to change them when we realize they are roadblocks on our path.