All tagged Personal Growth and Development
The thing about transformative technologies is that they expose where value is - or isn’t - being generated.
As a result, they accelerate the shift towards value ‘maximization’. In other words, those tasks that technology should deliver, it will, and those high value tasks that humans should focus on, they will.
So much of my youth was spent constructing who I wanted to be, my sense of self. With that came the confidence to do the things I needed to do, in order to be what I defined as successful.
But with it also came a series of behaviors (facades? Personas? ) that were designed to protect me from getting hurt, personally or professionally. I was conscious that…
One of my (many) shortcomings when it comes to cooking is that I follow recipes to a tee.
Yes, I appreciate that that can be a positive and it is - in the sense that the resulting dish will be exactly to specification. It will taste and (for the most part) look exactly as the recipe author intended.
It's that time when we start planning our resolutions for the New Year. At the same time, there's also a sense of concern inherent in some of us - the sense that we're not really going to keep at it, given our past behaviors, so what's the point?
As I discuss in today's episode, we should do it anyway, because our false starts in the past provide the education and fuel for us to be successful in the future.
Social media provides us with a very specific idea of what "the" life is. There's no shortage of influencers who showcase how glamorous their everyday life is.
But before we get caught up, it's worth understanding that what we see is what we're shown, as I discuss in today's episode.
Bill Gates said that he once believed that, if someone had a high IQ, they could be good at everything. He doesn't anymore, and that's a key idea to come to terms with if you want to build a great enterprise.
Because great teams and achievements are, as I discuss in today's episode, built on the back of diverse capabilities and people.
Like it or not, mistakes are par for the course.
As much as we’d like a perfect innings, there really isn’t any such thing.
That’s a function of the variability inherent in our environment. Our colleagues will not always act predictably. Competitors don’t always behave the way we’d like them to.
When we listen to songs, they come fully formed - perfect entities in and of themselves. But the fact is that the really great ones can evolve and change over time, because they're driven by something deeper, more meaningful.
That, as I discuss in today's episode, is not that different from us and our lives.
Our past has a tremendous bearing on where we are today. That's a fact. But if we are to have ambition, if we're to move forward, we need to let it go.
And that begins, as I discuss in today's episode, with us. We need to adjust our mindset to be one of self-control and empowerment. It's begins with us.
When we lose an opportunity (a sale, a promotion, a job offer, etc.), it’s normal - and OK - to feel down, especially if it was something we really wanted. After all, if we’ve really given it everything we had, we’ve made a commitment (emotional and otherwise) which, ultimately, has not been rewarded.
So, we take the lumps.
When those we work or live with are going through challenges, large or small, we’ll often have this desire to solve their problems for them. We want to do what we can to make things easier for them and ensure they remain happy and sailing along smoothly.
This is, of course, completely understandable…
Our lives and ideas and perceptions are made up of all of our collective experiences, pieced together in different ways, sometimes elegantly, often not.
As such, how we view ourselves is, in many ways, an aggregation of these stories. It's important, then, that we focus on and interpret these stories carefully, as I discuss in today's episode.
We’re at that time of year when young adults emerge from college, armed with their degrees and ready to enter the working world. For most, this is their first real job and they’re both excited and nervous.
In addition, they’re also entering the workforce right in the midst of all the debates about work from home (WFH) has some real benefits but also poses real challenges for the new entrant.
So, if you’ve read the popular press recently, you’ll have heard about this practice called “quiet quitting” which seems to have entered our vernacular and become a bit of a thing among some folks.
The idea behind it, if you weren’t aware, was not that an employee leaves their job, rather that they limit what they do to only what is strictly in their job description.
It took me a while to understand that the idea of "learning" was not a one and done concept but an enduring, long lasting one.
There are a number of reasons for this as I discuss in today's episode and my key message or takeaway is that, while we've made progress over the years, the path is continuous - so long as we shift how we think about it.
We tend to think of successful people as alternate beings - people who come to their work with a mindset that is always on, always without doubt. In other words, not like the rest of us mortals.
The truth, in my view, is different. Successsful people are more like the rest of us than we think. There's just one intentional difference, as I discuss on today's episode.
I know it’s a cliché to say this but we learn far more from our mistakes than we do from our successes.
The reasons are obvious, of course. Through our mistakes, we gain practical experience in what not to do - and it’s this experience that generates knowledge that is seared into our subconscious, often painfully so.
I think too many of us have this perspective that knowledge must be ‘absolute’ and expertise in a given field must be ‘complete’ in its nature.
What I mean by that is we believe being good at something and being able to speak to that expertise requires total command over that field. No questions, no doubts. Complete mastery.
Experience is a great educator. Over time, it teaches us and provides us with a reasoned view of life and all that makes us who we are.
However, as I discuss in today's episode, this isn't an automatic process. It's one that requires a strong sense of perspective, as well as the right mindset.
Trevor Noah once referred to our culture as our operating system, one that we're rarely even aware of.
That's an apt explanation of the role and value of culture. It's something that can make us - but just as equally, it can break us.
