Understand that your heroes are human, too, and that they must have compromised on some aspects of their personality to reach the heights you consider valuable.
As humans they are, they are not perfect. They must not be perfect. Everyone has finite time and energy, so they have refocused that energy into their craft, likely sacrificing growth in other areas.
We have to be self-aware of our language because the words we utter end up being a reflection (as well as a reinforcement) of our beliefs. Language is the great window of our mindset, for both looking inwards and projecting outwards.
The other day, I talked to an aspiring entrepreneur friend, but later in the conversation, we started talking about removing the focus on unimportant stuff. He mentioned that we should focus on landing a managerial role in BigCo. It got me thinking, "That’s a Freudian slip of his true beliefs."
A while ago, I read an excellent article from Paul Graham called Keep Your Identity Small, and from a while ago, I wanted to expand on that.
Let's start by stating that Identity is a core component of your life. Your Mindset is what makes or breaks your life. How you decide to interpret things, as well as how you choose to act on them, composes the "ruleset" of your Mindset, your default programming, so to speak. It is the origin of your Personality.
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.