Category: Blog

There’s a reason why change is hard.

Real change goes to the roots, it requires being in the midst of the war, it requires responsibility.

Real change doesn’t start with what you did wrong, but what I did wrong, what I could do better.

Real change is not pointing fingers to others, it’s an understanding that the real change cannot be prosecuted by outsourcing the problems, no. We are the problem and as such we should look first at what we did wrong.

Real change is hard because it behaves like a chain of command. Even if the lower soldier in command has made an error, it’s the higher chain that should be considered responsible.

Until you accept this, until you put yourself in the midst of the battle, under the lights of judgement and with the understanding that the first thing to change is you, until this you won’t have a real change, only a fake one.

It might last a while, but it won’t last forever.

When you know someone for a long time chances are you have some kind of prejudice, some kind of automatic storytelling that’s happening in every interaction. That’s why communicating becomes harder each time, because you need to take off a layer for each year, for each unresolved issue, for each word you kept inside.

I was listening to the Tim Ferris Show and there was this woman that said something very interesting, two things stayed with me after the podcast.

First: We might have a promotion, a new job, but if we’re not prepared, if we don’t have all the skill set, we might not be a good fit. And that’s fine.

Second: “I am good at doing what I do, just not here”. It was a phrase along these lines, but the concept is the same. Being “Bad” at something doesn’t equate being bad entirely.

Focus on work that matters to you, works that stimulates you, don’t be afraid to back off.

I remember when my grandpa died. I got the news through a call phone from my mom, I was in car, heading to work in a client’s office.

Just like many other examples my grandpa died after a glimpse of perfect recovery from an illness. He died few weeks later, when nobody would’ve expected it.

Those where the times when “Where the hell is matt” was still a thing, and what he did to me that video was to inspire hope, a boundless hope that humanity might still be united under one ideal of love. So utopian and so beautiful. The songs for those videos are all made from the same 4 chords, in similar sequences.

Those chords are what I’d call “pop emotional chords”. They touch something deep within you.

That day I listened over and over that song, trying to keep in my mind that yes: this death shall not be useless. I will make the best of my time, I will be the best person I can.

What I wanted was to mark that day, to be a lead for my grandpa, to make him proud of who I would become.

I remember that after a few days from the death my eyes stop on a book. It was the last book my grandpa read, I hand it to him and retrieve it before his death.

He told me he loved that book. I said to myself that I’d read it, as a token to my grandpa, but I never did.

It occurred to me many times, yet I never even tried to open the book or to take it off the shelf.
Good intentions do not always become a reality, they are just lying thoughts, idealistic ideas of our minds. They can become a reality, they have the power to do it, but we do not always allow it to happen.

At the same time we do not become bad people if we don’t succeed in our good intentions. I still try to be the best person I can, I fail almost daily, but I try almost daily. And though it can’t be considered a success worldwide I know for sure that this is what a good intention into action is.

I will read that book one day, but for now that is part of the idealistic thoughts that come through my mind and I accept that I’m no worst than yesterday, but no better than tomorrow.

From time to time we feel we are doomed to fail, that chances are above and beyond us. That we won’t stand a chance.

In those times it might even happen that all happens in the way we wouldn’t expect nor desire, we feel hopeless.

Yet, after years we survive. We can survive losing eyesight, we can survive losing an arm. There are people like Alex Zanardi that can reinvent themselves after losing the legs. Something that, for many people seems incredible.

But it’s not. It’s real. The difference is that some people do not surrender to chance, they accept it and embrace it. The see the breaking change, the disaster, as part of their lives from there on. It’s not a one day thing. It takes months, years maybe, to eventually come to the conclusion that your life from now on won’t be so bad.

And it all revolves around our identity. How much do we want to keep it fixed like it was before the change?
We can’t save that image, in fact we are so tied to it that only the people that find a way to unbound themselves really succeed.

Everything heals, in a way or another, but from that to be happy, to be productive, to be effective, you need to let go.