Author: Andrea Grassi

My HR reference asked few days ago, “Ok, we gave you this new job title and job plan, but do you need something to do your job? How can we help”.

It clarified something I didn’t think of and it’s linked to the fact that we should strive to do job we’re not 100% perfect for.

Recently I read (I think about Simon Sinek) something along these lines: What’s the use of doing a job if you’re tick all the boxes? You won’t grow, because you’re doing something you’re already capable of.

That middle ground, the space that divide you from the requirements of a new job can be splitted into 2 main categories: Things you should learn, things you should be enabled for.

For the learn part, it’s straightforward, but at the same part it might be linked to the enabling thing. Because the company should give you the tools to reach the plan, the people, the money, the status, the documents, whatever it’s needed to accomplish your job.

Having a job title it’s useless unless we have a plan to grow into it and outgrow it. To do that enablement is something we need. Otherwise we’re still hoping for exceptional people to do an exceptional job, while leaving no trace behind so normal people won’t ever be able to do it.

And if that’s the case, you’re simply doing a job in hero mode without adding value in the long term.

Fate can be challenging. But what’s even more challenging is when we define our fate as a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Remember that time when you though “What a bad day, I now only need that X will happen and it’ll be the worst day ever”-

X _can_ happen. And unless you’ve added something quite unreal, is plausible that will happen.
That’s because you already know the odds and chances are we’re way above 40% chances of X happening.

What’s really happening here is that you are negatively reinforcing your expectation, and this will make the amount of sadness and overall mistrust way higher than usual.

You’re reinforcing a bad habit, a bad emotion, and overall, you want to play the victim.

“No I don’t do that often” might be a reply to this critic, but you know what? The thing is that you don’t do the opposite. If X doesn’t happen you don’t distrust everything you said. You simply consider it “at the last status”, so you maintain that overall sadness without amplifying it, which is quite different than going the opposite direction.

That’s the problem. We help too much the negative actions and emotions, and we do nothing for the positive ones unless they are casted upon us.
Yet, we have the chance to choose what to empower each and every day

That choice counts, a lot. Not only for us, but for the people around us.

We are always searching for happiness, but if we were to define happiness it would be quite hard.

Is it when you’re laughing? Is it when you’re smiling? Is it when you’re more than satisfied?

There’s no good or bad answer. Happiness, as many people would say, it’s not an end goal, it’s the travel itself. There is no finite moment when we can say “from now on I’ll be happy”. That is an instant in our lives.

If I had to answer, though, I’d search happiness in the slow, apparently boring and meaningless moments we live.
Those times when we’re not filled with tasks to do, things to achieve, goals to reach.

The times when you can focus on enjoying a moment, having a conversation, drinking with your family, taking a walk into the neighborhood with no goal set.
”The daily life, when life is not in the way”.
Those moments are the true beauty.

While I was writing this I also thought that an Haiku is also the perfect form of expressing this kind of beauty and that, maybe, they were just trying to answer the question themselves.
What is happiness?

2020. Covid Happened. We didn’t expect it.
With it everything changed. Our behavior, our distancing, our working, our friends.

We started seeing people differently. The world split into two main factions. But under that hood there was an even sadder truth.

I was reading a reddit topic on how quarantine changed for good and bad your life. Many people wrote in there, sharing their life experiences. It was full of life, of struggle, of fight and failures.

To me, covid allowed me to stay with my family and improve my overall fitness.
Being able to have so much more time for working out allowed me to improve a lot in areas I didn’t expect.

But my experience wasn’t the standard.
Many people stopped working out. Many people couldn’t keep up.

What did I do different? Nothing, that’s the truth.
What then made it possible for me to do something other couldn’t?

Well, what made impossible for them? This would be the question.
The answer? Depression.
I, too, couldn’t do many things.
Many people faked happiness.

The single moment of joy, the extreme playfulness, the going out with friends, allowed us to look away from our life, from the shadows we dive in.
Living in quarantine forced us to face them.
Not many were prepared, many failed, many others learned a lesson.

But all of us discovered that there was a little dark spot in our heart.
We didn’t have a clear name for it, we feared it and like a cancer we always hoped it wouldn’t happen to us.
Yet it was there all along.

Some have a darker spot, some a bigger one, some drowned into it, some drove through it, but we shared it all.
It’s our dark moment, the night when we think we can’t make it, the moment we say “It’s enough”.
The surrender, the failure, the acceptance that we can’t honestly do it.
Our dark spot, our depression was always there.

Quarantine uncovered it and we had to battle it.

When I look at all the failures in other people’s lives I don’t think I did better. I know for sure that I failed in other things.
We all tried to cover that black spot in the beginning. But it was strong.
In the end those failures are scars that tell a story of survival.

That’s what quarantine reminded us, that’s what it’s reminding still today.
To survive, in spite our dark spot.
In spite of the failures, of the hopelessness, in spite of the depression we all shared.

How can you make it easier for people to raise their voice? To stand up for what they believe?

Put them in a condition when they are not affected if they have something to say.
Otherwise you’ll always have enough power to control what they do or think.

If you’re the one in charge, you’ll likely think that you should always own the last words, but it’s not ok.

You can learn so much from the people around you. It’s only through humility you can accomplish more. And to do that you need to allow people to step up, to say what they believe.
People you trust, of course, but they shouldn’t be chained or worried about your reactions.
If they do, they’ll always avoid direct confrontation.

If you’re not allowing this kind of growth you should hope to have someone who’s vocal even if she has something to lose. Someone who’s near you that you can listen to.
Then, maybe, change can still happen.