Category: Personal Choice

How to Define Personal or Organizational Success

Michelle Obama is often quoted to have said: “Success isn’t about how much money you make, it’s about the difference you make in people’s lives.”?

This is quite a powerful quote with, I find, a very deep meaning.

And this approach is both applicable to individuals and to organisations.

The foremost aspect is that what is important is to make difference in other peoples’ lives and not just in one’s own. Making this difference can be direct but also indirect for example through setting an example or an inspiration for others to follow.

An truly, at the end of the day, that’s what is important in one’s life.

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How To Decide on the True Importance of a Decision

We take multiple decisions daily. Some small, some really important. How can we discriminate? It is quite simple actually – those that are important are those that have significant consequences. And often, long term consequences.

Reviewing the potential consequences of a decision is a good way to weight their importance and the amount of time and effort that needs to be spent taking the decision. It is an excellent way to discriminate where to put the emphasis.

Unfortunately we all encounter in our lives people that get that priority in reverse. They spend huge amount of time and effort agonizing over decisions that have very little consequences. And then, maybe out of exhaustion, they don’t consider properly those really important decisions.

Think first about the consequences of the decision you are about to make. Depending on those consequences, allocate the right effort to the decision.

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How face-to-face social interaction leads to a longer life

In this excellent Washington Post blog ‘Prioritizing these three things will improve your life — and maybe even save it‘, a point is made that “Smoking, drinking, exercise and even heart problems are not predictors of a person’s longevity — a person’s close relationships and social integration were.”

Too bad for social networks and digital freaks, “It’s not enough to text or email. The actual health benefits of socializing are only achieved through in-person contact “Face-to-face contact releases a whole cascade of neurotransmitters and, like a vaccine, they protect you now in the present and well into the future,” [psychologist Susan Pinker] said“.

“Face-to-face contact releases a whole cascade of neurotransmitters and, like a vaccine, they protect you now in the present and well into the future. And it doesn’t even have to be long, close interactions to have an immediate effect. Making eye contact, shaking someone’s hand, giving someone a high-five lowers your cortisone levels and releases dopamine, making you less stressed and giving you a little high”

Well let’s give this computer or phone a short break and have a little face-to-face interaction, shouldn’t we?

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How ‘What To Do Next’ Has Become The Key Question

Seth Godin in his post ‘What to do next‘ explains how this has become the key question nowadays. Still we should not forget to enjoy the present moment!

what_next“What next used to be a question answered by your boss or your clients.

With so many opportunities and so many constraints, successfully picking what to do next is your moment of highest leverage. It deserves more time and attention than most people give it.”

I tend to agree with this analysis – people do not spend enough time deciding to change themselves and their environment, and would prefer continuity. At the same time we also need to spend enough time enjoying the present moment and not always wondering what’s next. This balance is difficult to establish at the right level.

Maybe being more in the present moment will give clues about what to change next. What about your next?

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How Facebook Makes Us Feel Bad

There is no doubt that social networks like Facebook become addictions because of the feelings they generate. The unfortunate thing is that it appears now proven that they make us feel bad, as explained in this serious Harvard Business Review paper ‘A New, More Rigorous Study Confirms: The More You Use Facebook, the Worse You Feel‘.

The study was using statistics and does not explain what could be the probable cause of this conclusion. However personally I have a suspect, described in our post ‘Why Who We Are Is Not What We Post‘: what we see from other people on social networks is much more positive than real life (whereas in real life interaction, we get the full version or at least something closer thanks to the entire context).

Definite conclusion: keep those real life interactions running so that we do not believe all what our online network tells us… and let’s keep our positivity!

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How Greatness Brings With It the Seeds of Destruction

Robin Sharma wrote about Marcus Aurelius’s quote “After fame is oblivion“: “What I’ve learned as I deconstruct empires of geography, creativity, productivity and prosperity that have fallen is this: the very fact of greatness brings with it the danger of destruction.”

Clay foot of fallen colossus
Clay foot of fallen colossus

It is amazing how that is often true. It might be linked to a feeling of superiority and being invincible; or from the fact that people or organizations simply take advantage of the benefits of their position without striving anymore for improvement.

It happens often and is actually quite good news for upcoming competitors, and it participates to the renewal of successful people and organizations. Some rare successful individuals and organizations are able to keep the fire and the restlessness to continue to improve.

When we are successful in some area, this is a choice to be made. And it needs to be conscious.

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How To Deal With The Illusion of Permanence

While we would like to believe our environment is stable and permanent, reality is more that it is impermanent. Suddenly our conditions may change sometimes drastically.

impermanence
Japanese gardens are there to remind us of impermanence

In a beautiful post ‘Impermanence‘, Om Swami expands on the struggle with impermanence and the suffering it sometimes creates.

“Sometimes, I wonder why are we so averse to adversities? Anything that doesn’t fall in line with our expectations from life, we label it suffering. […] The real problem is with the unrealistic nature of our expectations; the greatest being our desire that anything good in our life should stay as it is.”

An incident can be our awakening to impermanence. “That’s all you need sometimes, just one incident to awaken you. Just one wake up call to help you see what this samsara truly is – irrational and impermanent. Such a life transforming incident then changes your perspective forever. Your old tendencies still come and haunt you, but the awakened you handles life differently.”

We should lean into change in particular if there is nothing we can do about it and understand that it is the way the world goes. Just remind yourself that nothing is permanent. What we do with it is our choice.

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How Important It Is to Exercise Writing Regularly

For some reasons related to being busy on other things I did not write so much during a while in the past few months (blog posts or books or white papers), and the amazing thing is that I found it very difficult to start writing again. And then with some practice writing became easy again!

It was not writers’ block or anything like that. It was just that I found a strong resistance to start writing. I always found something more urgent to do. I found it difficult to concentrate on writing words together. It was like I was a beginner trying to piece together some sentences.

This all goes to show how much writing is a muscle that needs exercising regularly. And with exercise and regular writing it is possible to have substantial production that will improve over time.

Lesson learnt – I will keep exercising my writing muscle regularly and not let it weaken too much in the future!

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How We Can Evolve To Be A Totally Different Person

Traditionally many psychological and personality tests assume that their result won’t change dramatically over a life time. New research shows that it is a misconception: during our lifetime we will change significantly and dramatically. Read the Quartz article You’re a completely different person at 14 and 77, the longest-running personality study ever has found.

The famous Myers-Briggs personality test

I have observed that the results of personality tests tend to be quite stable over 3 to 5 years periods and this is quite a common observations. However people do evolve, have different experiences, and what these studies show is that over a lifetime (50+ years) our preferences are not any more correlated with those we had initially.

“The longer the interval between two assessments of personality, the weaker the relationship between the two tends to be,” the researchers write. “Our results suggest that, when the interval is increased to as much as 63 years, there is hardly any relationship at all.”

This is great news because it demonstrates that we can change ourselves if we want to, and that there does not seem to be any limit in our capability to completely overhaul ourselves.

So, ready for change?

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Why We Need to Move Forward Always, and Never Stop

I love this quote from humorist commentator Will Rogers: “Even if you’re on the right track, you’ll get run over if you just sit there“.

right-trackThis recommendation for always continuing to move along in the right direction is compelling. Remaining static actually creates the possibility of becoming obsolete with regard to the rest of the world; it also creates the possibility of self regression by lack of evolution. If we stop, it is a kind of small death.

I believe what is meant here is not necessarily to always try to move forward at great strides; sometimes, we need to resupply and move slower, but what is important is to move forward at all times.

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How Data Privacy Issues Are Mutiplied by the Internet of Things

Data is at the core of the business model of the internet. Our private, personal data actually. And, as Cory Doctorow writes in one of his usual well-researched rants, ‘The Privacy Wars Are About to Get a Whole Lot Worse‘. The reason is the emergence of the Internet of Things.

billboard-spyingThe Internet of Things (IoT) started already with the smartphones. Because we will progressively be surrounded with sensors that will measure many things and even listen to what is being said or done, our privacy will be even more exposed than now.

“The returns from data-acquisition have been de­clining for years. […] Diminishing returns can be masked by more aggressive collection. If Facebook can’t figure out how to justify its ad ratecard based on the data it knows about you, it can just plot ways to find out a lot more about you and buoy up that price.”

We probably underestimate already the license we give to our smartphone and its apps to use various channels of data recovery. As Cory Doctorow underlines, no-one really bothers to read the long license agreements, and anyway what can you do if you disagree? We can’t go negotiate one particular section with Google or Facebook, can we?

Cory Doctorow’s point is that one day, on some particular issue, a judge may grant significant compensation because of the indirect usage of personal data. However this day is far away. AT the same time this privacy issue is currently slowing down the spread of IoT and its convenience. A solution must be found.

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How to Create New Lasting Habits

One thing that goes in the way of creating new different habits is certainly the way we look upon ourselves. If we want to change a habit that is aligned with our sense of identity, or the identity we want to project outside, we will fail.

Identity-Based-Habits“The key to building lasting habits is focusing on creating a new identity first. Your current behaviors are simply a reflection of your current identity. What you do now is a mirror image of the type of person you believe that you are (either consciously or subconsciously). To change your behavior for good, you need to start believing new things about yourself.” writes James Clear in his post ‘Identity-Based Habits: How to Actually Stick to Your Goals This Year’.

I would add, not only starting to believe new things about oneself, but projecting them and publishing them too, which will make the case much stronger for change.

Reflect on your identity and check whether there is not something there that impedes changing some habits?

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