Category: Change

How to Easily Improve Your Life: Associate with the Right People

Robin Sharma writes something which is continuously demonstrated by more and more studies (specifically on social networks): to improve your life, “associate with people who you want to be and live like“.

Robin Sharma quotes the work of a Darmouth professor, Nicholas Christakis who writes in his book ‘Connected: The Surprising Power of Our Social Networks and How They Shape Our Lives — How Your Friends’ Friends’ Friends Affect Everything You Feel, Think, and Do‘: “Social networks help us achieve what we could not achieve alone. One biological mechanism that makes behavior contagious may be the so-called mirror neuron system in the human brain. Our brains practice doing actions we merely observe in others.”

Associating with people that are what we want to become is the most effective way of changing. What about doing this more consciously?

 

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How Challenge and Teaching Combine in Self-Development

In ‘Ego is the Enemy‘, Ryan Holiday exposes a method for self-development called the plus, minus and equal. “The mixed martial arts pioneer and multi – title champion Frank Shamrock has a system he trains fighters in that he calls plus, minus, and equal. Each fighter, to become great needs to have someone better that they can learn from, someone lesser who they can teach , and someone equal that they can challenge themselves against”

I find this idea of combining challenge, teaching and training a great idea in self-development.

I have the experience of how enriching teaching can be as it forces to order one’s knowledge and deliver it in a consistent manner, enriched by the questions of the trainees.

At the same time, looking upwards to someone stronger as a challenge is a great way to improve (this can be for specific skills only, as I find it difficult with time to have a role model covering all the skills I aspire to).

And having a sparing partner to exchange ideas and train on a regular basis is great too.

So, when do you adopt the plus, minus and equal rule in your personal development?

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How Avoiding Failure is Much Easier Than Trying to be Successful

I found this sentence deep in a post by Valeria Maltoni, in a quote: “Avoiding failure is a heck of a lot easier than trying to be successful“. That’s quite a powerful and far-ranging statement! And the more I consider it the more powerful I find it.

People that seek to avoid failure at all cost won’t progress in life. It is only by embracing failure as a by-product of trying new things that progress can be achieved on a personal and professional level.

And there are quite many people that avoid failure as a way of life, embracing what appears to be the surest way in terms of employment of personal life.

Trying to be successful entails failure, and many failures. It is not a wish; in action this means getting a lot of hits.

Failure is messy, sometimes bloody. However it is the way to grow. Which one do you choose?

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How to Treat the Response to Disappointment As A Training Ground

Leo Babauta came up with the concept of ‘Beautiful Practice Ground: The Secret to Training Your Mind‘. I like it very much. The concept is to use those disappointment moments where we did not manage to do what we committed to, such as a new behavior or habit, as a learning moment.

“This habitual way of responding to difficulty is actually what’s standing in [our] way. Training the mind to respond differently in this exact kind of situation is probably the most important training [we] could do.”

“When you notice yourself having difficulty — someone is frustrating you, you are disappointed in yourself, you’re procrastinating on a hard task or habit you’re trying to form, you’re feeling resentful or criticizing yourself — start to recognize this as your Beautiful Practice Ground. And see it as a wonderful opportunity to practice.”

It is an exceptionally fruitful viewpoint to see our frustrations, stresses and guilt feelings as learning opportunities. Let’s pause, breathe and see what we can learn from it – and change our response from there.

When to you start identifying those new training grounds?

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How Important The Manner to Give Feedback Can Be

A large part of my work as a consultant is to give feedback to my clients, for example when doing reviews of the current way of working on a specific project. The intent must be to give feedback without hiding aspects which need to be improved, and at the same time giving it in a way that does not create defensiveness and rejection.

How NOT to give feedback

It would be absolutely counter-productive to give accurate feedback on issues, that will never be corrected because the message was dismissed.

This is absolutely essential and it is amazing how often this aspect is overlooked. As a consequence, when performing a review, we can spend a very substantial part of the allocated time (up to 30%) showing our conclusions and getting challenged by various levels of the organisation, modifying the manner in which to present our conclusions in a manner that is palatable to the organisation.

In reality, the process of giving feedback must be to generate a powerful conversation that allows the person or the organization on the receiving end to absorb and reword the conclusion in a manner that leads to its acceptance, and finally action.

The aim of a successful feedback is to generate the right conversation.

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How Ethnography Deciphers Consulting Intervention Success

In this excellent and en-lighting article (in French) ‘Working on the Client to Carry Out a Mission. Ethnography of an Experience in Strategic Consultancy‘, an ethnologist examines what makes consulting missions successful. To achieve his conclusions he was embedded with the team in a strategic consulting project.

According to him, success is achieved not only thanks to the data and analysis capability of the consultants, but mostly thanks to 3 key relationship processes:

  • enrol the client to become an active member of the team
  • create a community with the client by redefining the borders
  • manage the client internal politics by associating with some key actors

What I find interesting in this aspect is how he shows that relationship and emotional work is essential in the success of the consulting intervention. Although consultants are hired mainly on the basis of their knowledge and capability, this constitutes only a small part of what is required for success.

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How to Deal With Tearing Thoughts

I encourage you to read this beautiful post on Tearing Thoughts by Om Swami. It is a post about how to deal with those negative thoughts appearing out of blue and “running amok in our mind like an elephant gone wild razing our peace and calm in practically no time“.

Om Swami recipe for dealing with Tearing Thoughts

The good news is “Dropping a thought is a practice in meditation that can be learned and cultivated. Once you master it, all you have to is to hold a mini self-dialog and gently shift your attention on something positive.”

But further from practicing with dealing with such negative thoughts (which we can’t stop appearing, such is the workings of the mind), the key lesson here is also that “When we accept the cyclical nature of our life and thoughts, we ease up a bit. We start to realize that not everything in life can happen the way I want. Not all my dreams will come true. That universe has its own plans too. Once we get a handle on it, the rest is as easy as rocket science“. An Om Swami gives his personal recipe (refer to the image) to help keep tearing thoughts away. A great recipe for sure!

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How to Remain Open to Putting Our Beliefs in Question

In a beautiful post on Tearing Thoughts, Om Swami quotes a story about clinging too much to a falsehood. It ends with a deep learning: “The Buddha said, “Sometime, somewhere you take something to be the truth. But if you cling to it too strongly, then even when the truth comes in person and knocks on your door, you will not open it.”

Many people cling to beliefs that are false, or outdated. It gives them a sense of security. If they face a situation that clearly demonstrates how their belief is wrong, they can sometimes refuse to accept it. Or the change can be so tearing that it destroys the person.

Keeping one’s mind open requires quite a different mindset. It requires to remain open to the fact that one’s beliefs are just a working assumption that appears to prove right in the majority of cases encountered so far in on’s life . It is the core of the scientific approach (a theory is right until it is proven wrong), even if even in that remit, it can take a change of generation to get new theories mainstream. This position is more difficult to adopt but then provides a lot of value as it diminishes pain greatly.

Remain open to the fact that your beliefs are just working assumptions.

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How Younger Generations Are Becoming More Perfectionist

According to this excellent Quartz post ‘Millennials are more perfectionist than other generations, but it’s not their fault‘, multiple studies show that younger generation become increasingly perfectionists.

This increase of perfectionism appears to happen mostly in social-driven perfectionism (no doubt driven by social networks and the need to look perfect in them). “The explosion of personal branding rituals—the posting of selfies and status updates announcing new relationships, strong grades, or promotions—exposes everyone to idealized versions of their peers, making college students feel that others are racing ahead, closing in on the perfect life.”

It would seem also that the increasing pressure from parents for academic success would be another factor.

While this is certainly to be taken into account in organisations, we need to recognise imperfection is a deep source of value. Unconventional people have more value than ever in a world where they can broadcast. In the new world more than in the previous Industrial Age, it is those people that will escape the perfectionist syndrome that will succeed.

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How to Embrace Things That Might Not Work

Following up on Seth Godin’s four elements of ‘What Makes an Entrepreneur Different‘, it is interesting to elaborate on the fourth element: “Embracing (instead of running from) the work of doing things that might not work“.

As an entrepreneur and junior business angel, I have now had this experience repeatedly. Things that looked like great ideas and that turn out to be utter failures almost leading to bankruptcy. Things that looked like great opportunities and finally just purred away with little or now growth. And a very few things that often looked mundane but finally delivered the most value.

Still somehow I am still keen to try new things. How come?

I guess there are two elements to it:

  • Curiosity. I have always been curious and willing to explore many different fields.
  • Resilience. I have learned that it is possible to try many things without dying (financially or socially). It is even possible to highlight the fact that I have tried something and failed. And now I don’t care too much, because the things that worked kind of excuse and finance what does not.

Stay curious. Become resilient in trying new things – and understand most won’t work.

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What Makes an Entrepreneur Different

The description of Entrepreneurship given by Seth Godin in his post ‘The four elements of entrepreneurship‘ hit a nerve with me.

Basically Seth states that Entrepreneurship is a choice and that there are only 4 elements of entrepreneurship. According to him the rest can be hired:

  1. “Making decisions.
  2. Investing in activities and assets that aren’t a sure thing.
  3. Persuading others to support a mission with a non-guaranteed outcome.
  4. Embracing (instead of running from) the work of doing things that might not work (this one is the most amorphous, the most difficult to pin down and thus the juiciest)”

The interesting thing is that each element taken individually does not make much of an entrepreneur (for example, element 2 can also characterise a stock trader, who is generally not so much an entrepreneur). It is the (rare) combination of those four characteristics that make up the entrepreneur. An definitely, the fourth element is the hardest to apprehend.

Based on these elements, how much of an entrepreneur are you?

[illustration by Gapingvoid]

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How We Need to Audit the Key Algorithms That Drive our Lives

As an example of our previous post ‘How Algorithms Can Become Weapons of Math Destruction‘, New York City has decided to audit the key algorithms used by the city to decide on their resource allocation.

The issue is described in detail in the post ‘New York City Wants to Audit the Powerful Algorithms That Control Our Lives‘. A task force will be created that “will audit the city’s algorithms for disproportionate impacts on different communities and come up with ways to inform the public on the role of automation“.

The issue of accountability is central; as algorithms take decisions that have huge impact on people’s lives (school admission, access to social services, whether to be kept in jail), we need to come up with a way to reinstate a sufficient dose of accountability in the decisions and how the codes are being developed.

This is a first globally and this initiative will certainly spread rapidly.

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