Tag: self-improvement

You don’t know it

Fabrizio1 Comment

What should you learn next?

Should you double down on something you are already good at, trying to refine your expertise in that field?

Or should you try to fill a gap, working on something that you and people around you see as a weakness?

I have changed my opinion over time on this particular topic, and now I am more inclined to invest on further developing traits that are already strong. This might vary at different career stages, though.

One important thing to keep in mind should you decide to put effort in learning something you don’t know is the following.

You don’t know it.

Progress might be slow, you might hit a wall more than once, your motivation might falter. And when that happen, remember.

You don’t know it.

Be extremely kind with yourself, as beating yourself up for something you don’t know is like beating yourself up because you are not tall or your hair are not the type you desire.

You are learning something new: it’s going to be difficult, you have to give yourself time, it’s an opportunity not a matter of life and death.

By the way, you should never bet your career or your possibility to be hired in an important role on something you don’t know. It’s just not worth it.

Skills and opportunities

FabrizioLeave a comment

What is it that you are good at, and that you genuinely enjoy doing?

What type of companies would be interested in that?

Career and job seeking are areas in which past commitments do great damage. We get stuck looking at our worth through the lens of boxes everybody got used to look at: education, experience, field, language (for expats like myself).

Perhaps we put a lot into those boxes in the past, and therefore we are unwilling to let them go easily. And yet, years pass, things change, roles go by. We know something is not quite right, but as we have already invested so much into our path (and everybody is telling us that was, and still is, the right thing to do), we fail to veer from it.

What is it that you are good at, and that you genuinely enjoy doing?

What type of companies would be interested in that?

These two questions have the power to unlock change. Ask help to answer them. Those who have worked with you know what you are better at; those who have more knowledge of the job market know what opportunities might lie ahead.

The world is yours.

Past commitments

Fabrizio1 Comment

When you are on the wrong track, the wisest thing to do is to change course.

It’s complicated, because even if we often know when it is time, we fail to grasp clear reasons why and we fail to act. It’s that combination of past commitments and unconscious awareness that things are not working. It’s that place where projects and enteprises go to die.

When this surfaces, we should be brave enough to take the commitment out of the equation. Forget about the time we have put in, the energy, the money, the people we have brought onboard, the ones we would fail, the knowledge, the connections and relationships, the opportunities.

If we keep looking back, we won’t move forward.

You are right

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When you are in an argument, understand this: as long as the two sides stand firm in their respective positions, no progress is possible.

If you just keep repeating your view, even with different words and from a different perspective, even if in time that view gets substantiated by additional facts and events, even when you get to the point in which you raise the ante certain it’s going to be the final move, most likely nothing is going to happen. Except, the other part is probably going to be even more convinced you are wrong.

Get into every argument open enough to be able to say “you are right”. Accept that the person in front of you is not idiot, delusional and mean. At the very least, try to ask questions to understand what they care about, what’s their sets of values, how is it so that they see the world so differently from you.

And then, try to build on that. Find common ground, things both of you find important, see their arguments as an opportunity for you to learn something, thank them for raising your awareness on something you were totally blind to.

Should that really not be possible, change the narrative. Run from the argument, reach for a topic that is not so directly in contrast with the other’s point of view, focus on explaining what you want to achieve.

Staying in the argument would just be a waste of time.

A way to hide

FabrizioLeave a comment

For years, I have built a narrative for which everything that happened was done to me.

I had the feeling everyone and everything was against my legitimate pursuit of happiness and success, I was constantly complaining about any tiny little difficulty, I would break relationships because in front of my grandiose gestures the counterpart would not reciprocate.

Now I am lucky enough to see that was a convenient way to hide.

Hide from my responsibilities as human being, employee, partner and friend, and most of all hide from my feelings. If others and external circumstances were responsible for them, why should I bother investigating them further? The most reasonable thing to do would be to simply build a wall around myself and make it as impenetrable as possible.

We are powerless with respect to what is going to happen tomorrow, and yet we can have total control on the way we are going to face, absorb and narrativize it. That’s where we should spend most of our time: building this form of control.

To accuse others for one’s own misfortune is a sign of want of education. To accuse oneself shows that one’s education has begun. To accuse neither oneself nor others shows that one’s education is complete.

Epictetus