Category: Personal Choice

How to Tweak Our Inner Story to Create Personal Change

Following up on our previous post ‘How to Use Stories To Create Change‘, let’s apply the same principle to internal change, focusing on our inner story.

We all have inner stories we like to tell ourselves. Sometimes these are rosy stories presenting events from a way that protects us or puts a positive spin to what happens to us; sometimes they are stories that relate to the identity we’d like to have. Inner stories are very emotionally loaded.

If we want to change, we need to change our inner stories first. By changing our inner stories we change our inner chatter and we change how we respond to events. We might even change our sense of identity. If we try to change without changing our inner stories, we will fail.

Change your inner stories to achieve real, lasting personal change.

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How to Get Respect is to Give Respect

Robin Sharma writes “The finest way to get respect is to give respect“.

In my view, respect is an essential component of relationship and I find it necessary to maintain as much as possible respect for people we relate to, irrespective of the circumstance. It is not easy all the time and I do not succeed all the time, but that’s the objective.

Being respected in another issue. It can’t be an objective in all cases because some people are too happy abusing you. Definitely however, to get respect most of the time, the best is to be respectful of others all the time.

How much respect do you give to everyone you relate to, irrespective of their “level”?

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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 to Tackle the Risk of Alternative Augmented Realities

Following up from our post ‘How Videos can now be Faked Easily And What It Means‘ and The Atlantic paper ‘The Era of Fake Video Begins‘ (or the reality ends), fake videos increasingly point towards an alternative augmented reality that will increasingly surround us – and we won’t quite need special glasses to be immersed in it.

The Atlantic paints a gloomy picture: “If the hype around VR eventually pans out, then, like the personal computer or social media, it will grow into a massive industry, intent on addicting consumers for the sake of its own profit, and possibly dominated by just one or two exceptionally powerful companies.”

“Designers of VR have described some consumers as having such strong emotional responses to a terrifying experience that they rip off those chunky goggles to escape. Studies have already shown how VR can be used to influence the behavior of users after they return to the physical world, making them either more or less inclined to altruistic behaviors.” Still, it is useful to understand this might be a possible future and respond to it.

Will be prefer to be immersed in a not so rosy reality or flee to a virtual reality that might be more perfect but make us lose sense of what’s real?

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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 Respond to Entrepreneurial Failure or Disillusion

As noted in a previous post ‘What Makes an Entrepreneur Different‘, embracing the work of doing things that might not work is an essential trait of the entrepreneur. That’s nice, but how should we respond when failure happens? When associates scream at each other seeing their investment disappear?

Failure does happen in the life an entrepreneur because we try things and statistically they won’t all work. And often at these occasions, the nice agreement with partners and shareholders suddenly becomes tense and difficult. It then requires a lot of emotional work to keep steady through the management of the tough moment.

Now that I have had some of these, I have decided to stick to some principles to drive my conduct in those moments. They are not applicable to everyone, but they are aligned with my values:

  • Anticipate failure to keep some reserves even when things don’t work. This means always accounting for the worst case, and making sure you react before all resources are exhausted to keep some margin for the response
  • Put people first. Find solutions for employees to keep their payroll running, even if that means for them doing other things than was planned. It helps being involved in a few other ventures to find some opportunities for them. If needed, find solutions outside through your network
  • Show commitment to finding a solution. Fleeing from the scene as an investor is not the solution. It might take years to recover from a business attempt that fails, but that is always possible. The priority is to stabilize the situation, so as to be able to assess it, learn from it, change what needs to be changed.
  • Demonstrate your commitment to the people and to stabilization if needed by putting in more money or buying out fleeing investors
  • Looking for a providential investor is not the solution. You will be in a weak negotiation position, who would invest in a failed venture, and you have other things to do (this does not apply, of course, to situations where the activity works but the start-up is short of cash runway).

There is always good learning and good stuff to learn from a failing company, and ways to recover by changing things. I believe it is important in any case to show a responsible behavior as an interested investor in particular to the people in the team who have often worked intensely during months.

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How Ego Kills Creativity and Talent

Quoted in the excellent book ‘Ego is the Enemy‘ by Ryan Holiday: “The performance artist Marina Abramovi? puts it directly : “ If you start believing in your greatness , it is the death of your creativity ””

Ego kills creativity and talent. It’s a well known fact however we still witness too many situations that demonstrate the truth of this assertion.

It is difficult to stay cold headed when one finds success. We tend to believe we are special, and this is the beginning of the end.

Maybe it is worth remembering that success is as much the result of luck than the result of talent and creativity. And talent can be improved through sheer work; luck can be improved too in a certain measure, but it takes other skills. Ego will kill luck that is often based on good relationships with people; and it will also kill talent because one will not put any more the work in. So, let’s try to avoid ego even when we are successful!

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How to Deal with Both Luck- and Skill-Driven Situations

In this excellent post ‘The Difference Between Luck and Skill’, Valeria Maltoni explains how there are situations that are driven by skill, and other by luck; and that it is important to understand what is driving the situation to take the right behavior.

First, our brain is not geared to distinguish luck from skill. “Our nature throws a wrench in our ability to distinguish luck from skill. The problem is that we naturally embrace stories and shy away from statistics.” We need some analysis to understand what is at stake and it may not be easy. As a result, we overestimate the importance of skill and underestimate the situations that depend on luck.

Then, “In The Success Equation, Michael Mauboussin says that when skill is predominant in a field, the best course of action is to engage in deliberate practice with feedback and coaching; while when luck is predominant, he advises not to worry over results, because we have little or no control over them. Instead we should just focus on getting our process right to succeed long term.” (which means, get ready for the opportunity that will present itself one day or the other). Thus we need to behave markedly differently whether skill or luck drives what we are trying to achieve.

It gets complicated, of course, by “The paradox of skill — In fields where skill is more important to the outcome, luck’s role in determining the ultimate outcome increases. While in fields where luck plays a larger role in the outcome, skill is also very important but difficult to ascertain without a large enough sample set.”

So, is your project luck or skill-driven? Adapt your behavior in consequence!

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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 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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What Mindful Courage Actually Is

Getting outside of our comfort zone and getting scared requires courage. In that context I very much like Nelson Mandela’s quote: “I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it. The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear.”

This idea is far reaching, because it puts courage in a new light. Courage is not irresponsibility. Real courage requires to understand the risks and taking them by overcoming our fear.

Not so many people are really courageous in this mindful sense. Most people are at best unconscious of risk.

When we are mindfully courageous we do push our boundaries while being mindful of what we are doing, why people around us might be reacting like they do and how we need to respond when unexpected things happen.

Learn to be mindfully courageous!

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How To Make Bold Moves More Frequently

Pamela Slim in her post ‘One bold move‘ advocates making bold moves more often, because while they may fail, they may also release unexpected power and advance our projects.

Her post contains several examples including personal examples of the possibilities offered by bold moves.

It is true that shyness and social conventions prevents us from considering the bold moves that would be so easy to take. The fear of rejection also participates to this avoidance.

Still, not only as Richard Branson says, “if you don’t do bold moves, the world doesn’t move forward“. If you don’t make bold moves, you won’t move forward. It’s all about courage and making them. And we’ll survive anyway, so why not make those bold moves?

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