Have you ever planned for something and you stubbornly wanted that to be it? Plans are a starting point, just as a degree is only the beginning of life-long learning. Plans often lead to stronger ideas and more elaborated processes. It often is that a plan that we hatch and we think of as a masterpiece unleashes our potential. Our potential is unlimited and change is intrinsic to life. So plan today, review tomorrow and then implement it.
Are you still thinking of what you have to do? Fantasizing? Wishing that you will wake up one day and find not only that the work is done, but that you did it without any effort and you are able to take pride in it? This is what a dream assassin looks like. Without action dreams fade away into the memory land, but not before impacting our self-esteem and joy of living.
If you spend most of your time ‘planning’ and ‘researching’ without getting your hands dirty, know that these are all excuses. Roll up your sleeves, follow leads, fail, get back on track. Succeed. You’re 20% left to succeed.
Hey you!
You might have noticed the lack of a daily post yesterday. I took a step back to rethink the structure of the blog and the way you get your daily dose of self-growth and life learning, if you will, from this space.
After some thought on how to maximise the value that this blog brings, my proposal to you is to share one-paragraph food for thought type of post every day, sometimes raw, undigested ideas, that might bring a different perspective into your life.
We’ll start the new regiment tomorrow, on a Friday, because Friday is just as good of a day as any other day of the week. To balance out the brief content I’ll put my energy and focus on one detailed, well-documented blog piece a week which will be addressing topics that have proven to be of interest over the past six months.
I’m always keen to hear from you – what interests you, what topic you’d like to nitpick if you had the time? Is there any research you wish you’d be able to stay on top of? Let me know in the comment section.
Stay well.
We find relief in thinking that who we are is a sum of circumstances that led to our birth and to our upbringing. The place we were born in, the family we were raised by, access to education and opportunities. Yet times and times again people around us prove quite the contrary: against comfortable upbringing, who had challenges in life have better chances to succeed.
Life as an adult or an independent human being boils down to one thing: can we manage ourselves without being told or expected to do something? Having initiative and intention leads the road to growth. If we’re collecting degrees that say what we should be able to do, but we don’t quite feel capable of doing it without constant validation, we have failed.
Putting our trust in others to tell us who we are at every point in life, from junior employee to CEO means that we can’t manage our life. People who lacked what society labels as direction in life through a comfortable upbringing learn early in life that we can grow our own skills and no one can take away our learning experience away from us.
‘We can only learn from our mistakes’
If that was true, how come we can easily repeat not only the mistakes that we know other people have made, but – let’s face it, our own mistakes.
With the same principle in mind, we should be able to learn from different sources rather than through putting ourselves at risk unconsciously. I came across an YouTuber reaction to their videos from 10 years ago. There was no harsh criticism and I admired that, but when the 10 years younger self said ‘I’m so busy with school, I don’t have time to do more videos’, looking back they actually remembered people making fun of the videos at school. This allowed my own fear of failure to surface – all the ‘I’m not good enough’, ‘Why would anyone appreciate my work’. The little voice that whispers insecurities in a scripted loop.
Hearing another person’s experience about facing their own fears taught me more about pain and pleasure, the balance between what we perceive and what we allow others to project on us than any self-growth book. It sometimes takes unexpected triggers to help us address our fears and these triggers don’t always have to come from our lived experience.
Listen. There’s more going on than it meets the eye.
What do we hear when someone tells us that we need to work more on something or that we didn’t get it just right on this occasion? If our blood starts boiling, if we get angry or we feel belittled, it might be the case that what we hear is that we are not good enough.
Being good enough is not a feeling that someone can give us, not forever. It takes self-work and it has nothing to do with what people project on us. When we receive criticism meant to help us grow but instead we let it land in the wrong place, provoking pain, we narrow the limitations within which we exist.
Feedback can only serve us if we allow it. In order to outgrow it, we need to consider it at an intellectual level. Feelings aside, what can we do to improve? Then regardless of the place of love or negativity where it came from, we shine and sprint forward into expansion. Life is growth, but sometimes the flat learning curve needs a bit of a push. It’s up to us to move upwards.
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