Tag: self-improvement

The price for perfect

FabrizioLeave a comment

If you are called up a stage unexpectedly, you do not have to be rehearsed and perfect. Olivia Colman gave a great example of that last night at the Academy Awards ceremony. Her acceptance speech is genuine, authentic, empathic. It leaves a mark.

The same is true for every time we expect to be called up. If we work towards perfection, if what we care about is ironing out all the kinks, if that becomes the focus of our job, chances are we are putting energy, care and effort on the wrong thing. And most of all, we lose in personality.

(For a great example of an official speech delivered in a far-from-perfect fashion, this keynote from 2015 by Elon Musk is as personal as it is inspiring).

Life is repetition

Fabrizio1 Comment

This year I have started taking Tai Chi lessons. There is one thing that I am particularly enjoying, and it is a thing that few years back I would have probably hated.

The lesson is usually 75 minutes, and between 65 and 70 minutes is dedicated to repeating parts you have learned previously. During this time, you do the moves over and over again, the teacher comes to you and tells you how to perfect them, and it is often a matter of moving the hand up a bit, or sliding the foot few centimeters to the side, or keeping the back slightly more straight. The remaining part of the lesson is about learning 1 or 2 new moves.

I find this is a great lesson in patience and working for the long term. There is no need to rush to the conclusion, you better focus on what you are doing and completely be in the moment while you transition from one move to the next. There is also absolutely no pressure in getting the moves right the first time, it is a given that you will have to try them hundreds, thousands of times before they are really yours.

Life is 99% repetition. We better be well aware of this, embrace it and live it fully. Perfect our moves until they come natural, so that we can also get better at enjoying the unexpected, unknown, exciting and inspiring 1%.

 

Busyness is laziness

Fabrizio7 Comments

As counter intuitive as it might sound, I find this Buddhist teaching very relevant to the World we live in today.

“I am busy” is a story we all tell ourselves and others, and it is a very convenient way to avoid facing what matters and the reality of everyday. We hide behind a wall of importance and hectic behaviour. And this is particularly serious, I believe, when “I am busy” is no longer a way to describe our current, temporary status, but a way to tell about who we are and how feel.

When you are too busy to honor your highest priorities – which are understanding your life, discovering your wisdom, and offering your heart – that is a sign that you’ve let something slip because of laziness.

Susan Piver, Start Here Now

Next time somebody is asking “how are you?”, avoid the “I am busy” trap and take a moment to reflect on how you actually feel and what is appropriate to share with the other (and how). That might start a very different conversation than the unsympathetic one we got used to. And it might also be a nice way to begin rethinking your priorities and what to dedicate time to from there on.

Putting into boxes

Fabrizio3 Comments

There’s a lot of power in categories. They help us make sense of the World around us, understand each other, feel safe in situations in which we normally would not, as well as feel unrest when we step into something that is listed in one category we are not comfortable with.

Yet we should never forget that categories are made up. They are not real, in the sense that they do not exist before we attach a meaning (both literal and figurative) to them.

This means mainly two things.

In approaching others, we should maintain our categories flexible. Both the ones in which we think we fit and the ones in which we think the other fits. We must be careful in taking all the background of a category with us when we enter a new situation. It might greatly limit our experience and not do the other justice.

And if we do not like the category in which we have been put, we should be aware that it  is possible to shift its meaning. Perhaps initially it will change for us only, and that would already be a great achievement. But if we are consistent enough with the new narrative and how we present it, if we gather a following, and if it sticks, in the long term, little by little, we might actually be successful at a much larger scale.

Nothing is fixed and forever, so let’s put categories back to their rightful place. Categories should work for us, they should not get us all worked up.

 

The worst thing that could happen

Fabrizio7 Comments

What is the worst thing that could happen?

I used to ask myself this question when I was younger, thinking of myself as a pessimist. Later on in life, I understood that it is actually a very stoic question to ask, and I have started sharing it also with people who seek my advice or are just kind enough to share their experience with me.

Fear should not stop us making the World a better place.

Most often, the difference between what we fear and what really is dangerous is immense. And so, what is the worst thing that could happen? is a great question to ask yourself when you start feeling some unrest in your body because you are in a situation that is not familiar to you. Or when you anticipate some crisis that might, or might not, come.

There are more things, Lucilius, likely to frighten us than there are to crush us; we suffer more often in imagination than in reality. I am not speaking with you in the Stoic strain but in my milder style. For it is our Stoic fashion to speak of all those things, which provoke cries and groans, as unimportant and beneath notice; but you and I must drop such great-sounding words, although, heaven knows, they are true enough. What I advise you to do is, not to be unhappy before the crisis comes; since it may be that the dangers before which you paled as if they were threatening you, will never come upon you; they certainly have not yet come.

Seneca, On Groundless Fear

Before the fear to speak up at the next meeting with senior managers stops you from sharing your idea or your concern, ask yourself what the worst thing that could happen is.

Before you avoid going to that place that you like, fearing to meet that unpleasant person, or to find yourself in an unpleasant situation, ask yourself what the worst thing that could happen is.

Before you surrender giving that speech, or sending that email, or making that call, or showing up, because sure, things could go wrong, ask yourself what the worst thing that could happen is.

When you give a shape, a smell, a contour, a name to what you fear, you will find you are unstoppable.