Out of battery. If your phone runs out of battery, you won't expect it to charge itself on its own. You plug it into an external source of energy to make it work again. Our motivation, persistence and discipline also run out of battery every now and then. Just like the
Ship one thing. It's tempting to want to plan everything first, have everything in place, know everything in advance. But when we are engaging with possibility, when we are looking to lead, when we are initiating, this becomes a good place to hide. Leadership is about taking initiative, and initiative requires
What's it for? These shoes, are they for running or training in the gym? This notebook, is it for mathematics or english? This hour, is it for income or vocation? The more we are clear about what's it for, the more effective we become.
One thing at a time. Yes, everything is linked to everything else. Of course. But, we can't do everything at once. We can only do one thing at a time. What's the next thing you can do? One thing at a time. One day at a time. As Seth Godin says,
Getting to action. Send a message. Post a blog. Do a push-up. Eat a healthy meal. Say hello to someone new. Action moves us forward. What’s the next action in your project?
Gaining back agency. Resistance takes our agency away. It uses its cunning to keep us trapped in distractions and displacement activities. The more time we spend there, the more difficult it becomes for us to gain back our agency. Agency requires intention. It requires us to decide what we are working on and
The cost of doubt. Doubting yourself. Doubting others. Doubting how things will pan out. Doubting others’ intentions. Doubt is expensive. It takes a lot but gives little. Trust, instead.
Trust your self. It makes things easier. Allow yourself to make mistakes. Make non-optimum decisions and move forward. This takes away all the useless wrestling with resistance and self-doubt that drains us of our energy. That wrestling doesn’t help. All it does is that it stops us from taking decisions and moving
Make more mistakes. Err on the side of more, rather than less. Write more bad blogs. Initiate more conversations that don’t bring what you sought from them. Go to more places that might not work for you. When we are okay with being wrong, we are much more likely to sometimes be
Absence of hygiene factors. In this scene from the movie, Angels & Demons, Tom Hanks and his friend are stuck in a room in the Vatican where the oxygen supply is cut-off. In the absence of sufficient oxygen, we can see that the only thing in front of them is survival. Neither the characters,
I will still write. I might feel like I have nothing to say. I might feel like everything I might say has been said before, has become boring, is not good enough. But, I still have the capability to write. And so I will. And I know that if I keep writing, it would
Beyond ambiguity. Ambiguity stands in the way between where we are and where we want to be. It stops us from moving forward. It requires tremendous emotional energy to be able to navigate through the ambiguity and reach one complete action step. But if we are able to do that, then the
Engaging with a "no". From The Art of Possibility by Rosamund Stone Zander & Ben Zander “A “no” can so often dampen our fire in the world of the downward spiral. It can seem like a permanent, implacable barrier that presents us with limited choices: to attack, to manipulate our way around it, or
Getting back agency Eat slightly less than usual. Workout slightly more than usual. Spend slightly less than usual. Earn slightly more than usual. Initiate slightly more than usual.
Mixing income and passion. As freelancers, it's tempting to want that the world pay us to do what interests us, that feeds our passion. But, the world isn't interested our passion. They pay to get their problems solved. If you help solve enough problems for people who are willing to
Possibility lies beyond the known. And to go beyond the known, we need to let go of the known. If we are not ready to reinvent the known, possibility ceases to exist.
Proximity and goals. What change do you seek in your life? What actions will help you move towards that change? What stops you from taking those actions? Our brain is wired to pay attention to things that are in immediate proximity. It is not wired to ignore the current stimuli and refocus on
Engaging with possibility. Creating something new. Doing something new. Meeting someone new. Going somewhere new. Trying something new. How can you engage with possibility today?
What advice would you give to your friend... ...if they were going through what you are going through. Empathy is hard. Self-empathy is harder.
Get the next one in. When you miss a workout, get the next one in. Don't try to make up for the one you missed. That's a trap.
Breaking the block. Ice is made of the same material as water but it is not water. It does not flow. The difficulty arises when we expect ice to behave like water. We can either break it with force or sit long enough with it for it to melt. But if we do
In the absence of crisis. Shipping when there is no crisis, no deadline, no hell breaking loose. It's a skill that’s worth learning.
Yin and yang. The dance of the good and the bad will go on. How can you remember the amateur when you are a pro? How can you remember the pro when you are an amateur?
The smartness trap. At some point, the only thing left to do is to take action. And in that moment, the moment when action might lead to change, it always feels smarter to wait, to explore the other options, to do anything but what needs to be done. In that moment, taking action
Trust yourself. It's a skill to choose trusting ourselves over doubting ourselves. It's a skill we can learn through practice. It's a skill that can help in building all other skills.
