personal purpose | The Fourth Revolution Blog

How to Manage Self-Doubt When in a Leadership Position

Following up on our post on ‘How Leadership is a Relationship‘ on how you can’t be a leader without a relationship with others, one of the quotes from Barry Posner’s talk was that “Leadership begins with belief in yourself“.

Now this made me think about the importance of self-confidence in leadership. There is an issue though – in my experience, it is difficult to reach a 100% self-confidence, but in any case at least a significant amount of self-confidence must be projected out to the team for leadership to work.

How can we manage self-doubt at the same time we need to project self-confidence? It might be one of hardest issues in leadership, in particular in situations where failure is quite possible (e.g. in a startup or during some experimental project).

Authenticity is, I believe, the solution. Authenticity with oneself (acknowledging one’s doubts), and authenticity with the team (acknowledging uncertainties). However it is always a difficult path to be sufficiently open while at the same time not be discouraging. The solutions lies in the quality of the personal relationship with the team, that can acknowledge difficulties.

What the Biggest Act of Love is

I loved Manal Ghosain’s post on The Biggest Act of Love. As she writes,

“The biggest act of love is to allow others to be who they are—fully and unconditionally“.

WOW – how true this is!

It is amazing when I searched the internet for an illustration for this post, how many quotes I found about being oneself and defending oneself against others’ influence – and how few quotes I found about allowing others to be themselves.

Still it is really what is the reflect of true love. It is true romantic love and it is true love to your children.

Allow them, encourage them to be themselves. Love them.

How to Properly Challenge Our Limits

Following on the argument of our previous posts ‘How Acknowledging our Limits is Source of Happiness, but Is That Enough?’ and ‘Why We Need to Challenge Our Limits for Full Happiness‘, while we need to acknowledge most of our limits to be happy, how should we proceed to challenge those limits?

Of course it is a mainstream view nowadays – and that I have quoted in this blog – that “Life Begins at the End of your Comfort Zone“. I fully concur with it, having several times jumped outside my comfort zone.

But should you jump outright? It can be dangerous to jump without a parachute – or at least without the minimum of precautions.

Hence here are some key rules which I believe need to be followed when attempting to reach beyond one’s limits – while still maintaining a sufficient degree of happiness now and in the future:

don’t test all your limits at the same time – narrow the challenge and continue to acknowledge the other limits,
before you depart, make sure that the journey will be enjoyable, do not just focus on the ultimate goal (the journey will necessarily be somewhat uncomfortable but at least make sure it will be fun and interesting!)
be flexible on where the journey will bring you – just choose the general direction, but remain flexible on the circumstances.

Yes, we need to challenge our limits, but let’s do that in a way that brings us satisfaction and builds happiness along the way.

By the way – when do you start?

Why We Need to Challenge Our Limits for Full Happiness

Following on the argument of our previous post ‘How Acknowledging our Limits is Source of Happiness, but Is That Enough?’ – we probably need to respect the limits placed on us in general, but to reach full happiness shouldn’t we at the same time challenge some of those limits ?

Or, as the saying goes, when we respect those limits, are we really happy – or just comfortable?

Staying in the limits set on us or set by us is a good way to be happy now but might give after a while a sour aftertaste of unexploited possibility.

Therefore I believe that it is still a necessity to achieve true happiness in the long term to challenge those limits we have acknowledged – and broaden our perspectives.

Lack of comfort is not necessarily related to unhappiness. The journey beyond our pre-set limits will not be comfortable but can lead to a higher level of happiness – during the journey and when it reaches a new limit.

However, this trespassing of our limits needs to be done in a proper way to maintain sufficient happiness, and that is what we will explore in the next post.

Why You Should Always Look Far Ahead

In life we need to look far away at our goals and intent to keep balance and keep our position with respect to our reference.

This summer I took some surf classes and I got some advice which I had already heard a number of times previously in other instances: to keep standing up, don’t look at your feet, but always look far ahead. Then you’ll get balance and direction.

It was the same when I was flying gliders close to the mountains: instead of looking whether your wingtip touches the cliff, look far ahead and you’ll find the right distance from the mountain.

I like this image because I think it is also applicable to life. We’re in life moving with some speed in a difficult environment, with obstacles around. We’re not static! And we need to keep balance. If we look to close, or if we look to what we think is the danger, we will lose balance and fall. We need to look far away to keep good references as to our actual situation.

Keep looking far, it is the secret for balance.

How to Avoid the Comfort Zone Fallacy

Continuing on the previous post ‘Why Avoid the Organizational Comfort Zone Retreat Fallacy‘, let us now consider stress and the tendency to retreat to our comfort zone on a personal level, in particular when we stretch out and we happen to encounter a storm.

Freaking out? Beware of the comfort zone fallacy!

Our comfort zone is a zone where we have been successful, possibly recognized. It is a zone where we think we are protected. Hence our tendency to try to revert to it when things go bad.

A common, personal example: I have been raised to think that salaried employment is a safe zone, whereas being on one’s own is a dangerous adventure. Thus when things go stormy I tend to think I should revert to salaried employment as soon as possible. I know that it is an obsolete concept, I observe around me that employees are no safer, but I still can’t help to have these thoughts – so much I was conditioned into this idea of the Industrial Age about being an employee.

We all need to have safe havens, where we feel supported. It is typically our family circle. It is not the same as our comfort zone; actually part of our families might not be overly supportive of some efforts we make to stretch out. Yet we can count on our safe haven. This should be the support we need to overcome the natural tendency to run back to our ‘comfort zone’ when things go bad.

The more I think about it, I think that if you’ve stretched sufficiently outside of your comfort zone, you should rather try to go even further. Because:

that is what will make a significant difference with 99% of the people who freak out and flee back to comfort,
that’s the moment to maintain the maximum flexibility and adaptability – not to enclose oneself in a closed, defensive location.

When the storm comes, create the difference. Leverage on your safe haven to stretch even more out of your comfort zone. Remain flexible, and find your way in the storm.

Why You Should Always Keep an Eye on the Context

As I was watching lately the film American Sniper I was struck by a quote. During training as a sniper the hero (Chris Kyle) is asked to close one eye to aim. He answers that he prefers to watch what’s happening around him instead of just focusing narrowly on a possible target.

Keep an eye on the target, but keep the other open on your surroundings! — Even if you are a sniper, keep an eye on the target, but keep the other open on your surroundings!

I think it is a great metaphor of the fact that we both need to focus our attention to be effective, and we still need to monitor continuously our surroundings to check what is happening. Because the most disruptive changes to our situation might come from places that we can’t even anticipate, and be very indirect consequences of far-away events.

This represents an important balance that we need in life, and it is not contradictory – although it requires some discipline. We can do both sequentially, not necessarily at the same time: maintain concentrated focus on what you want to achieve, which might be far away and tough to reach, and don’t forget to monitor sufficiently what is happening in the world around you.

Remember that the worst disasters were always the result of unexpected chains of events that started from places we thought were safe and stable. Don’t forget to monitor what happens around you!

What The Two Levels of Confidence Are

Following our previous post on ‘Why Showing Confidence is So Important‘, a key question for me is whether Confidence needs to be associated with a skill level of some sort, or can just be a general Confidence level.

I thus think there are two levels of confidence, and the second is much harder to achieve that the first:

First level: confidence achieved through a high mastery of a particular skill. The confidence level stems from a demonstrable capability that is quite higher than most can achieve
Second level: general confidence level, irrespective of a skill level. It can stem from a general confidence about life and that things will always turn for the better, or other sources such a religion. In any case, it comes from a much deeper belief.

I find that not so many people can reach the second level of confidence and it generally takes practice and exercise. Exercise your confidence to be able to use it more often and when you need it!

What Our Quests are Really About

“It is not the mountain we conquer, but ourselves” – Edmund Hillary. In every of our quests, external visible rewards or goals are not what is important. What we learn and how we grow is what is essential.

I remember being in a conference with a famous polar explorer just returning from several months isolated is the cold of Arctic in the context of an important scientific expedition. The question from the floor was: “what were you looking for, what were your objectives?“. The answer came with something like: “myself“. I was blown out!

We don’t need to be Edmund Hillary or this polar explorer to have real quests in our lives. And like them, we need to realize that we are looking for ourselves when we start such quests – and not so much for the achievements and the rewards. This gives quite a different perspective on things!

Search for yourself, and start your quest!

Why You Need to Kindle Your Internal Light

“People are like stained-glass windows. They sparkle and shine when the sun is out, but when the darkness sets in, their beauty is revealed only if there is a light from within” – Elizabeth Kübler-Ross.

I find this is a great quote that triggers a lot of thoughts and helps us put in perspective what happens in our lives. It is relatively easy to sparkle in society when we are recognized by our peers, through our social status and other external ways of being recognized.

But what about that little light within us? Will it shine in the shadows beyond our fears? When the everything that makes us sparkle in broad daylight is gone?

It is difficult to foster that small light and make it large. Only a few people manage to grow it so that it illuminates others. It requires a lot of work on ourselves and to create a real difference in the world.

Still at the end it is what matters.

Go right now to kindle your internal light!

Why Finding Meaning in our Life Becomes Harder

As the complexity and unpredictability of our world increases significantly, and has even been accelerating in the past few years, it becomes more difficult to find our life’s meaning and purpose.

How can we find our way in an ever larger labyrinth?

One of the reasons is the multiplication of choices that are offered to us – like excessively lengthy restaurant menus, choice kills the choice. As our freedom increases, it is naturally more difficult to fix ourselves on a single purpose.

One other reason is the unpredictability and the occurrence of freak events that change significantly the world around us: how can we steer a straight course over years and decades in this context?

This all happens at the same time where personal development has never been so popular, requiring everyone to find passion and purpose in life and follow those. As a result, our general level of stress increases dramatically, leading inevitably to serious societal problems.

The solution might be not to find one’s purpose in absolute among an infinity of choices, but to find our purpose close to what we do on a daily basis, which restricts the field of search. I will elaborate on this key ideas in a few future posts.

Some references from previous blog posts: What we can learn from complex systems to understand today’s world, Why, even in a Complex World, you Need to Head Towards your Purpose!

How Following Your Passion is a New Concept

Following on our previous post “Why Following Your Passion is not (Necessarily) the Solution“, I was inpired by the author Cal Newport to use Google Ngram viewer to look at the history of the concept. The result is self-explanatory!

follow_passion — Follow your passion is a very new concept that exploded recently

So, following your passion is an extremely modern concept (currently very trendy it seems) in particular when compared with some other related concepts such as life purpose, love work:

In summary we’ve been having life purpose for a century, we’ve been substantially loving work for even more than that, but we’ve only considered following our passion for two decades. Isn’t that strange? I guess we can all draw an interesting conclusion from this observation!

M	T	W	T	F	S	S
						1
2	3	4	5	6	7	8
9	10	11	12	13	14	15
16	17	18	19	20	21	22
23	24	25	26	27	28	29
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