The sheepish choice. It's always there for the taking. And it's a slippery slope leading to more of them. Rather, we can start today by choosing the courageous one instead. It might work. It might not. Only one of these leads to possibility.
Getting to the highway. Getting on track and staying on track are two significantly different challenges. Sometimes, the track is already there. You have been there earlier. You have some idea. Sometimes, you have to find the track. Sometimes, you might even need to create it. Getting on track is challenging, for sure. That’
Trusting yourself. There is hardly any advantage in doubting yourself. It doesn’t make things better. Neither for you, nor for the ones you are engaging with. Rather, doubting oneself can be a bit selfish as we want others to do the hard work of making us trust ourselves.
The gift of (giving yourself) feedback. Seth Godin rightly says, "feedback is a gift". Feedback allows us to reflect and learn and do better the next time. When we are giving feedback to others, we are conscious of how we deliver it. We know that if we are too harsh or too critical, not
A project with multiple objectives. A project with multiple objectives is difficult (rather, almost impossible) to be effective. The word effective in itself requires that we have one objective for which we are striving. We can have multiple projects, each with a specific objective, but having a single project with multiple objectives is trying to
The secret of life. Excerpt From The Art of Possibility by Rosamund Stone Zander & Ben Zander: Ben Zander: A few weeks into the first year of the giving the A experiment, I asked the class how it had felt to them to start the semester off with an A, before they had had
Is it a memory? Sometimes we tend to remember something and we start to laugh, irrespective of where we are sitting at the moment. If someone asks what happened, we find it normal to say, "Oh! I just remembered something (funny)." Many times though, the memories that come up are not funny.
One-off events. A lot of one-off events take a lot of attention because of proximity and the fear of missing out. However, in the long run, they don't matter much. What they can do though is derail our long term process and interrupt the compounding. We can make some space
When you have a strategy. You can see what's aligned with it and what's not. You can find it easier to say no to things. You can know where the track is and how you can get back on it. Building a strategy is a skill. And we can learn the
The calculating self is always on. Well, almost always. Sometimes, we are able to show up as the central self. But the calculating self is always there, lurking behind the scene, looking for signs that can allow it to take over. Instead of trying to get rid of the calculating self (which isn't going
Two types of actions. There are certain things that give results in a single action. You eat a pizza and you feel the taste and the sensation. Rather multiple repetitions might take away the pleasure. On the other hand, there are things that either give pain or don’t do much in a single
The cost of context switching. In a day, you may switch the context 5 times or even 10 times and still be able to get maybe 2-3 meaningful things done. The technology though makes it more likely that we switch context sometimes even hundreds of times a day. There is a cost to context switching
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Staying on track. The challenge is not how to do something out of the ordinary in order to achieve our goals. The challenge is to stay on track. The challenge is to say no, to not get distracted by short-term ups and downs, to not interrupt the compounding. The outcomes and the reps
Staying with the tension. When we are faced with tension, it's tempting to want to relieve it and to get back to a state of comfort. The option to do that is always there in front of us. But, if we do that, nothing happens. Things go back to the way they
Apart from the voice. Apart from the critical voice inside our head that amplifies everything (at least everything bad), it might be that nothing else or no one else is trying to intentionally hurt us. If there is, then it's a very good idea to try and get away from that place
The tyranny of "should". On one hand, the voice of "should" stops us from seeing the way things are and on the other, it creates guilt and blame that stop us from making things better. If we are able to let go, we might be able to see the things that we
Getting into the ring. You can't become a better boxer if you don't get into the boxing ring. It doesn't matter how much you practice outside the ring. Same for swimming. You can't become good at swimming without getting into the water. The challenge with our
It's all invented. An excerpt From The Art of Possibility: A simple way to practice it’s all invented is to ask yourself this question: What assumption am I making, That I’m not aware I’m making, That gives me what I see? And when you have an answer to that question,
One scary thing at a time. It might be possible for us to tackle one scary thing at a time. But trying to tackle two at the same time might be asking for too much. Sometimes, the motivation is there to help us work through those struggles. But, mostly, it's a better idea to
Carrot or stick? For the carrot to work, we need to have the trust that we will get the carrot if we do the deed. Without that, it won't be a motivating force, no matter what carrot is dangled in front of us. On the other hand, the avoidance of stick
The deer in the headlights. The driver doesn't set out to hurt a deer. He's just trying to get to his destination. The deer, too, wasn't planning to run into a car. It was simply on its path, maybe looking for food or trying to find its way back
Some recommended podcasts and books. 1. Book - The Pathways to Possibility by Rosamund Stone Zander - I don't know of any other book that is as transformational as this one is. It's a deep dive. It will ask for courage. And it has the power to change you fundamentally, for
And then magically... Many times, we start a project, sometimes a YouTube channel, a podcast, or maybe a newsletter, with the intention of making it big or at least to be able to pay our bills. The few success stories that everyone sees make us hope that we can win the lottery too.
