I love how this article by Brad Stulberg sums up many of my thoughts and beliefs around practice and awareness.
The relationship between self-discipline and self-compassion is reciprocal. One feeds the other and we need to find a way to keep them in balance.
It’s the only way to avoid getting stuck.
It’s the only way to do meaningful work.
If there is only one thing you are going to dedicate more time to in the future, make it be listening.
Do not rush to tell your piece, learn to sit still with your assumptions and conclusions, give others the space to come up with their own version, accept that silence is not you giving power away.
Listen. Truly listen. To understand. To help the other understand.
It is the greatest gift of all.
When failure knocks at your door, you have to greet it, invite it in, make it feel comfortable, and eventually ask it to move in. Failure needs to be absorbed, somehow, in order for the learnings to become a part of you, to make you better, to prevent it from happening again.
If you deny failure, on the other hand, it will not simply go away. Soon enough it will spread, and your problem will become a problem for the neighbors, for the neighborhood, for the culture, for the village. It will transform into an existential threat. It will just be everywhere, always noticeable, never hidden, a memento of your own incapacity to accept.
Failure is not the end of the world. Pretending not to see it might just be it.
At the end of the day, all you can control is what you do. And all you can do is to behave in such a way that aligns with your core values, with what you want to achieve, with everything that matters.
Of course, this is something you have to figure out. The sooner, the better. It requires time, trial and error, failure, commitment. But once you are there, once you know what will make you sleep well in the night, just stick with it. Forget about the rest, forget about the others, and most importantly forget about the outcome.
Just stick with it.
You can protect your name, your reputation, your prestige. Or you can build it.
Rarely you can do both at the same time.
Protecting is about public relations, networking, promising, giving speeches. It is a reactive game. It is about ensuring that what you do determines who you are, how others see you. It is trying to control the outcome, that you can’t really control.
Building is about doing. It is a proactive game. It is about ensuring that who you are determines what you do, day after day. It is fully mastering the input, that you can always control.
Choose carefully.
You've got this 