After you ask that, here are nine more issues to think about:
It is easy to go “lifeless” after an argument.
It’s like watching a “shield” go up.
Unfortunately, even though we protect ourselves from the outside, we “keep” what is inside.
Instead of resolving that emotion, it festers, building energy. From here, it can take control without us even “knowing” it.
Instead of going lifeless, take a breath, and engage.
Don’t vent.
Venting is bad advice because it starts with a premise of our emotions being outside of ourselves. As if your emotions should “be seen but not heard.”
When someone tells you to go away and stops listening to you, do you stop acknowledging them?
No, usually, you plot your revenge.
Our emotions are the same way. They are a part of us. They aren’t invaders.
As such, I pose a different strategy here: acknowledge.
Take a moment and breathe. Your anger isn’t going anywhere, although once accepted, it will give you room to think.
Remember, venting is a treadmill.
I love to read.
In the few years, I’ve come into contact with close to 200 books.
No, that doesn’t mean read (I am not a robot). It means that I need bookshelves :-).
Books are physical objects. They take up space. If you aren’t careful, they can take over your residence.
That jibes against my minimalist tendencies.
So I’ve developed a system to keep my books relevant and help me prioritize:
This simple system forces me to prioritize and is an exercise to build the skill of prioritization.
Research takes a long time.
It’s tedious. Sometimes, it leaves you disconnected. When you tell other people you’re studying, they assume it’s for a homework assignment or school.
That isn’t it. Those reasons are cold and static.
You do research because you want to get closer to “your flame.”
Some people contextualize your “flame” as passion, purpose, mission, etc. It’s what drives you to do the work that no one asked you to do.
Like all things in nature, it’s complex. Getting to the “flame” is hard to tackle. It’s hard to understand.
However, that’s self-awareness, and it’s one of the tenets for leadership. (sign up for my newsletter :-])
One of the tricks of self-awareness is some of the characteristics exist outside yourself. Context matters. It is part of that path to get to your flame.
One of the heuristics I use to understand how important context, which helps you determine the flame:
Is studying the tape time-intensive – yes! That’s why “no” is important.
This college football dynasty spends all its time on the tape. They make the College Football Playoffs (that’s the best four teams out of 108) every year.
If I went to your office and asked about the biggest fears around there, what answers would I get?
Would it be the same answers you would get?
How about these questions:
These are questions that give you an idea of someone’s worldview. If you are looking to lead, set tone, and create, it’s a great place to start.
Note – you don’t need to be someone’s boss to ask these. Let’s get this out the way: boss does not equal leadership 🙂
Intelligence in the 21st century is tactical removal, not addition.
You have to get comfortable with just taking what you need.
Discard the rest.
Rigor isn’t easy.
Rigor is required for taste and impact.
When we fail someone personally, our internal narrative switches into guilt mode.
“We didn’t “show up” so now it’s time to beat ourselves.”
Secretly, though, this feels good. Nothing feels better than a guilt trip. You get to show the world just how sorry you are through self-inflicted punishment.
And before you tell me that someone else made you guilty, you have agency here. You make the final decision.
It feels right to punish ourselves because it creates a story someone else can follow. A narrative is nice when you give a stump speech, not so nice when you create false stories that give your ego a hiding place. It lets you give yourself points to show the world that you care.
It’s nonsense, because no one is keeping score.
It is a complex way to hide, nothing more.
Perfection is a siren call.
We hear the fantastic song of perfectionism as soon as we start a project.
The sweet song is good because we see a new project as a slice of our identity. The song leads us to believe that any imperfection is a mark on us.
The song also prompts us to believe that once we hit that fabled “perfection,” any and every accolade we can think of is on the way. We just have to make sure it’s perfect.
Perfection is a siren call.
Remember the sirens? In Greek mythology, they lead sailors to their death.
The siren call of perfection is doing the same thing to our creativity. It lulls us into the hope for perfection; each moment we strive for perfection results in the atrophying of our creativity.
Don’t let your creativity die, because like the sirens, perfectionism doesn’t exist.
Resist their call so your next project can live.
People around you (trusted advisors, mentors, bosses) tend to know more about you than you think:
They know little about:
They are our mistakes, and it is our future.
We hide our decisions from others. We are afraid of our mistakes in the past swallowing up the potential of the future.
“They remember our last mistakes, why even tell them?”
It might sting, and there is something useful in hearing your old mistakes from time to time. You miss out on context by not telling them. The hints to your past are a roadmap to errors in your future.
Like the Romans who left a slave to say the emperor “you are only a man” after a triumph, sometimes it’s good to get a little dose of someone else’s perception.
They see mistakes you haven’t, and the hints to your past are often a roadmap to errors in your future.
Even if it hurts, the beautiful thing about the future is that is in our hands.
Most people aren’t out to get you.
If you open yourself up, you’ll find that people are often out to lift you.
From the desk of Adam Thomas 