Category: Blog

When you’re watching conventional TV the schedule broadcast it’s already prepared. This means that they get to decide when you go to bed, how much you’ll stay up late.

When you’ll wake up and what you’ll be entertained with during lunch.
On netflix it’s their job to keep you up and watching as much as possible, so, while you _feel_ in control, you really aren’t unless you’re stopping an episode midway so that you break the binge watching addiction.

Those are some of the reason why it’s hard keeping a schedule. The entire world around you wants to schedule your day, not only corporations, think individuals that create meetings for you without asking if you’re available, think customer support reps that call you when they want.

When feeling lost about how you use your time, think about for a second how much value and dedication you put into listening the first voice of the people that wanted to schedule your day: You.

Chances are, you didn’t put that voice into perspective. You didn’t value it, although you clearly should have, that’s why, next time, it might be worth remembering that when everything is pressing the most important voice to listen when it comes to scheduling your day, is the one and only voice you hear in your mind. You.

There is no shortage of pride, no shortage of ego.

We are invaded by people and apps that want to grab our attention, call out our instincts, make the jungle great again.

Everywhere I look I see people trying to save their face, their status, their position.

It’s clear to me than now, more than ever, we do need people with enough courage to show their vulnerability. To lead the way and show that another world is possible. That saving face, being attached to our pride, is not and won’t be, what will make our life and our world better.

Now, more than ever we need to do the opposite of what people taught us.

Because only by changing the behavior we can change the results.

A coworker works in the customer support branch of the company, she’s doing a good job and I think she’s great.

At the same time she’s not happy about her job. This shows up clearly in the way she interacts. Not because she’s rude with anyone, but at some level the people outside know this.

So I thought: What if I showed her what could be being in a branch like this in a more structured company? A company that takes the customer support part at heart?

I read the Basecamp levels of seniority in the customer support part, and I asked her to rate her job, based on these levels so that she could have an idea of her level and see what could become of her job.

She did it, and at the end I asked: Does that progression seems like something you’d like to do?
At which she replied “No”.

I totally get that. Being in the customer support requires a lot of gut, a lot of savoir fare, a lot of stress management. People do shout, people can be evil.
At the same time I realized that, for me, customer support is fantastic. Something I’d love to do more often.
Each job can be great or bad, wonderful or dreadful. 

It’s up to us and to our character to have it that way.

You face a tough situation. You realize that the person you love didn’t care that much about you. You realize it too late. 

What do you do?
We’ve been into similar conditions, yet we all reacted differently.

We might decide to embrace that darkness, jump onto it and be flooded by its dimension.
If so we might get a little depressed, we might not see the light.
This will be the result of our choice.

Not destiny, not evil, but us.

Because at the end of the day the person that did the all in into the darkness, that chose that path, that decided it was the right thing to do, was you.
There’s no one else to blame, even if the weight is unbearable.

At the end of the day, it’s up to us: We can always choose what to remember, what to live, what to engage with.
The good, or the bad things.