Happy New Year 2023 everyone! Here I come with a controversial short one. New Year's resolutions are mostly useless.
Real winners know that numbered years and named days¹ are a social construct to dance with everyone, so to speak. Being mixed in everyone’s habits and mediocrity mindset, leads to an unrewarding, uneventful life. I cannot stress this enough.
A few weeks ago, I recommended a plumbing service to a friend, and he asked me if it was expensive. I told him these plumbers fixed my sink appropriately and that I selected them because of good public reviews.
Since we’ve already had this discussion before (the evergreen topic of how I don’t select products and services for their price tag), he asked me if I ever try to bargain with merchants. I replied that I never try to negotiate prices or ask for discounts. At first, I realised I operated like this many years ago, but I had to search my feelings about why that is. These are my findings.
Most self-explanations come from a guilt standpoint, whether you realise that or not. Did you do something wrong? And if you did, do you feel guilty? Was it ill-intentioned, or was it an honest mistake? Did you hear your gut advising something yet chose to ignore it? We’ve all been there. You needn’t worry.
Call me crazy, but sometimes I think life's timeline is a Git repository, and the different branches are Side Quests, which are (if we follow the analogy) enhancements of your central life. You can merge Side Quests into your Main Quest, integrating these improvements in a streamlined way.
Missing activities in your Main Quest may harm your later life if you keep playing the playbook of the path you're travelling to (e.g., not going to high school may hurt you if you try to enter the corporate world, but if you prefer to be an independent worker you may do well in life, given you genuinely put your heart at it).
If you’re an overthinker like me, you might think broadly about issues in your industry. Whether you’re an employee, contractor or entrepreneur, there’s always the opportunity to cause some or significant impact in your field.
This post is inspired by the Work on what matters blog post by Will Larson. Though this post only focuses on the impact part of influence, whether your impact is made visible or not, it is up to you to factor visibility in the kind of impact of your choosing. It also broadens the scope of influence in that it’s not just organizational change that you could be looking for.
It is long known in the self-help literature that mindset is the origin of our actions, in such a way that even if you repeated the same steps, these wouldn’t lead to precisely the same results because of the intent (the why, so to speak) is not the same. The origin of our expression is the mindset in any shape or form. So, it’s our most precious treasure, a treasure which cannot be stolen away from us, but it can be evolved or damaged if we allow other people that.
You may recognize in your life people that have helped you at a difficult time or situation, or you have someone in your life that you admire most because of their achievements. Whether you hired them as coaches or you were just observing them, if you think of it, you can learn something from everyone you meet in life.
What would you think if I told you that ignorance and knowledge are actually knitted together? While we don’t perceive knowledge and ignorance as to the same thing, knowledge and ignorance are basically the pieces that enable us to participate in the information exchange market.