Tag: self-improvement

A story for your career

Fabrizio2 Comments

Owning the narrative to your career (and life) has a double positive effect.

First, you get to control how people look at your profile, see you professionally, and eventually what they hire you for. There are many marketing experts, MBAs, sales reps, customer success managers. When you differentiate from the bulk and stress what makes you unique, you make a statement. People will listen if you are consistent enough.

Second, it is a great way to remember what is good and tune down what is bad. Every role, every task, every project has ups and downs, risks and opportunities. If you frame what you did within a narrative that is your own, the good will naturally emerge, and it will serve an higher purpose. Your own.

Connection

Fabrizio3 Comments

We underestimate the importance of talking with somebody when things are bad.

We tend to close, fantasize, make assumptions, build on our own emotions, point fingers, second guess, and in general spiral down in a hole we can’t get ourselves out of.

There is always somebody to talk to. Sometimes that is your partner, a friend, your boss, the quiet colleague who barely talks in meetings, a mentor, a person you think highly of.

When things are bad, we need connection much more than a solution. And connection is all around us, we just need to be brave enough to reach out and start building it.

Silence

Fabrizio1 Comment

Silence makes us uncomfortable. Yet without silence there is no listening.

We spend entire conversations just waiting for out turn to speak, trying to cut the others short because our idea, our understanding, our experience is better, talking over each other, filling reflective pauses with jokes or irrelevant thoughts, getting annoyed because everyone is taking too long to get to the point. While indeed we should give silence more space.

Silence is a beautiful pause. It is thought, reflection, clarification. Sometimes, when talking to somebody and allowing for some silence to happen, you can see that something clicks, you can clearly grasp the moment they are getting an insight, a new perspective, a better way to approach the issue.

Learn how to be silent, and how to give others the space to be silent.

Talking is power only when we have something to say. And we often do not.

Opposition

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We often find meaning and identity in opposition.

Groups get stronger when they are attacked. Their members feel closer to each other when there is a stranger around, and they find agreement when the topic is a different group.

And the more we are weak, the more this happens with intensity and fervour. The less we know about ourselves, the more we seek in others.

It is only when we accept that every one, every group, every community has their strengths and weakness, their leaders and followers, their lights and shadows. It is only then, when we raise, that we can really find who we are, what we stand for, and where we call home.

The helper

Fabrizio2 Comments

You can’t fight fear.

You cannot pretend it is not there, you cannot walk past it, turn a blind eye to it, give it another name, a different guise, a more appealing shape.

You can’t run from it, outpace it, hide in the shadow of your strenghts and possessions. That is where fear will eventually find you.

You also can’t stop and stand in front of fear. You can’t circle around it, spiral inside of it, let fear feel you are close. That is what fear craves the most.

What you can do, then, is look fear in the eyes.

Get to know it well, hold its hand, and take it with you on your journey.

You can’t fight fear, because fear is not the enemy.

Fear is just the helper.

Let the globe, if nothing else, say this is true:
That even as we grieved, we grew.
That even as we hurt, we hoped.
That even as we tired, we tried.
That we’ll forever be tied together, victorious.
Not because we will never again know defeat, but because we will never again sow division.

Amanda Gorman, The Hill We Climb.