Who do you want to serve? That's a trap question. Instead, the question could be, “Who wants to be served?” There is a natural order to things and we can align ourselves to that order. There are audiences desperately wanting to pay someone to solve their problem, more so, they are looking for someone
The anatomy of commitment. There's desire and then, there's resolve. A lot of people have a desire to be healthy, but only a few have the resolve to not miss a workout, to eat healthier, to take care of themselves. Commitment means nothing until something is at stake whether it&
Listening to fear. Fear mostly tells us what not to do, what to avoid so that things remain the way they are. The problem with listening to fear is that it can become a habit. And that habit can make our health, our work and our relationships stagnate. On the contrary, building the
The dip is a good sign. It shows that we are on the right track and that all we need to do is to keep going. It's not pleasant. It never is. But once we embrace it, once we embrace the identity of being someone who can persist through the dip, we start looking
More, not less. More love, more happiness, more belonging, more compassion, more connection. We can choose to do more. The less can take care of itself.
"...so let the girl go." From Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert: “Who the hell do you think you are?” your darkest interior voices will demand. “It’s funny you should ask,” you can reply. “I’ll tell you who I am: I am a child of God, just like anyone else. I am a constituent
Unsolicited help is not generous. Everyone deserves the agency to do things their way and unsolicited help diminishes that agency. It is selfish to offer help without earning enrolment from the other person. And enrolment can't happen if there is no choice. For a "yes" to happen, "no" has
Getting out of the downward spiral. The downward spiral has a tendency of keeping going. In that space, every thought and action tend to make things worse than they are. The way to break out of the spiral is to pause, and allow ourselves to think and act from a different place, a place of possibility.
Status roles supersede everything. We think we are rational and take decisions based on our perceptions, values and choices. But, they are so strongly determined by the choices of those who we hold in high status. When status roles strike, everything else takes a backseat. We can rationalise anything.
Fear and forward motion. “Where your fear is, there is your task.” ~ Carl Jung As Steven Pressfield said in War of Art, we can navigate through our fear. What are we most afraid to do? What action step will move us forward in that direction? What stops us from taking that action step? What
All or nothing. There are games where there's no middle ground. You can fold or you can go all in. If you can't make peace with ending up with nothing, you can't complain about not getting the all.
Self-sabotage is a slippery slope. And it's path is tricky and complicated and confusing. And doesn’t necessarily lead anywhere. On the other hand, love can act as a compass and take us on the journey towards where we want to go. The slope, although, is uphill and it’s going to take
Make life interesting. Do what makes life interesting. Even if you do it for an hour a week. Do that. No matter what.
Where's your curiosity leading you, next? What's interesting to you, now? What's calling you? How can you make space for it? Maintaining the status quo is a busy job. Changing it requires intent.
Vulnerability is a gift. Vulnerability takes courage and it's not easy to embrace. But when we do the hard work of being vulnerable, we open doors not only for ourselves but also for those who we are vulnerable with. And vulnerability allows us to engage with possibility, to look beyond the downward
Catching the wind... ...is not a strategy, it's luck. And the work that you seek to do is too important to be left to luck. When you focus on what you can deliver and who you can serve, you gain the agency to fulfil your promise. However, when your promise involves
Taking a break. That's a tough one when you are your own boss. When you are working for someone else, you can ask for a break and you'd really hate it if you are denied that. But what if you are the one who is denying it? It'
No fires to fight. Sometimes, we get so used to fighting fires that we don't know what to do when there are no fires to put out anymore. One tendency, then, can be to look out for more fires to put out, and another (disastrous, to say the least) can be to
Self-inflicted wounds. During the trench warfare in WWI, it was a not-uncommon phenomenon for soldiers to take their rifles and literally shoot themselves in the foot. The troopers would claim that the shooting was accidental. They were hoping to get sent to the hospital and thus excused from duty. They did this
Keeping a check on rationalisation. The first principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool. ~ RICHARD P. FEYNMAN, Nobel Prize–winning physicist Rationalisation stops us from looking at the hard truth. It weaves a story that dilutes the reality and provides justification for whatever conundrum we are
Creating the conditions for... ...for whatever we desire. More conversations? Go to a cafe with a book and without your phone. People feel comfortable asking what you are reading and voilà... you have a conversation. More money? Figure out what people are already paying for and are not being served well. Build trust and
It's not about you. It's about the people you seek to serve. It's about the story they tell themselves and how engaging with your work resonates with that story. The more the creator gets away from their own heads and more into the heads and hearts of the people they
Doubling down. We hear a lot about diversification, about spreading it out, about not investing too much in one thing. But great work and great relationships happen when we double down on what we believe is right for us. We do this especially knowing that "it might not work" (as
On all the time. When you expect the brain to focus for hours on a stretch, it simply gives up. It will not put in the energy needed to do something tangible and make progress. Instead, it will distract us with stimuli whether it's email, social media or anything else. To get
The resolve to ship. Desire and intention are not enough. Until we have the resolve to ship, the resolve to change the status quo, resistance will keep stopping us from shipping. It will distract us with meaningless details and keep us entangled. But, once the resolve to ship is there, we are able to
