Category: book

Shit happens, a choice you made caused a hell of consequences.
You’re panicking, you don’t know what to do. A client calls you angry because something isn’t working.

What do you do?
Fear will tell you to fix the issue fast, to let the pain disappear as fast as possible so that you can go back to your old self.

It’s easy. Just patch until the pain is gone. 
That’s fear recipe for fixing things. Patch until it’s gone.

Now take a deep breath.
Another deep breath.
Fear will always “kindly” ask you to fix things the easy and fast way. Fear primary concern is to be safe, but life isn’t a safe boat. Storms happen. Shipwreck happens and you can’t patch holes in the ship forever.
Sometimes the best way is to pause your travel, land on a safe shore and fix that damn ship you’re on.
One question that always helped me in this kind of “My life depends on it, everything is gonna blow up in seconds” moments was
“What would I do if I had no fear?”

Which doesn’t translate to be fearless or stupid. It means “if I remove the fears that I have now, that little voices, and start as if those don’t exist or are false, what decision would I make?”

Fear will always guide you through short term decisions. 
Heart and mind through long term.

Go for the long walk, build a ship that will last a lifetime.

Kindness is often underrated and overrated.

Overrated because you might be fooled into thinking that it can solve every problem in the world, but no, it won’t happen.
You might do your best to be kind, do have empathy with someone and he or she might still treat you bad.

But it’s also underrated because we forget how much power kindness has.
There is this famous saying “Be kind; Everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle”. That is true in a specific sense.
When you face someone that is angry at you he might not be really angry because you did something wrong. 
As in the aforementioned example, people can still react bad even when you did your best, so why this happens?

It happens because there’s a story we tell in our minds. Seth Godin, author and bestseller, clears this up by saying that it’s our internal narrative that defines what we do, how we react and so on.

He’s right. It’s that little voice in our head and the sum of all the events that produces the angriness.
A person shouting at you because you didn’t finish the work on time might do it not because he/she hates you, but because maybe he bet on that finish line, there was money/status at stake, he made promises to people that couldn’t keep.
The fact that the project wasn’t delivered on time might not be a problem on many cases, but in _that_ one it was a problem because there was too much at stake.

Or maybe he’s shouting because, thanks to this delay, he will receive a paycut, or simply because his personal status will change in the eyes of the bosses, making him look less effective.

Who know what’s the story of the person you’ve got in front. We all don’t know.
Sometimes we’re lucky enough to meet people that share this story openly, this way we know what they’re coming from and how to help them.
Other times we’re left with them shouting at us.

In all cases, be kind. Don’t be the one shouting.
Because, on the other hand, there are people who did their best and still failed.
Edison failed 10.000 times before finding one idea that worked, we’re not different. We fail.

I suppose you did fail too, right? How you felt when everything went wrong? Bad right? Maybe you deserved it, maybe not. But what if the people around you didn’t blame you too much, what if they treat you like a human and not like a stupid dog?

Maybe you would have found easier to stand up again and start doing your best work, again.

There was this online course for wantepreneurs that tried to teach you how to get out of the comfort zone.

To do that, one exercise was to go into a bar, ask for something that was relatively cheap (a small drink, whatever) and then asking for a discount.

We don’t usually do this, right? And it’s extremely unsettling, but whatever the outcome you’ll find that, if you do it, nothing bad happens.

It’s not that they kill you (unless you live in a really bad neighborhood) and even if they refuse to give you the discount, everything is ok.

This is the key takeaway from exiting the comfort zone: Nothing really happens. There is no downside, there is no catastrophe, no disaster. Life continues as it should.

I was in the waiting room of our doctor and there was this man in his fourthies that kept talking. At first he tried to help the old women that were trying to get their medicines from the doctor, in other cases he was trying to work like a policeman in the middle of the traffict, directing people to where they would go.

To some extent, he was great. But he was too much. He did too much. It was like if he couldn’t stand the silence, as if silence itself was unbearable.

The beauty of this happened when he answered a phone call from, I suppose, his wife.
The mask fell off. He didn’t obviously become a monster, but it became clear the difference. The words he said to his wife were natural, they felt natural, while his help in the waiting room felt a little bit fake. During the call he used some f_ words and he showed lots of different sides of his personalities (caring, but also aggressive without being excessive) that couldn’t emerge on the fake “I can help you all” guy he was trying to mimic.

But why did he felt fake?
Three reasons.

One: Why do it? What would he gain from it?

This is the standard question in our mind and it happens whenever someone helps us deliberately, with no interest.

There is always an interest, and if so, better to always show it beforehand “I’m doing because of this (explain it in honest words), and I don’t mind helping you along the way”.

This helps people know why you’re doing it and makes you trustworthy, while on the other hand if you push your kindness too far, well, it might come as fake.

Two: Vulnerability.
I pose a great value on vulnerability. It’s a powerful element in our lives and can help us both in work and personal life.

While he was trying to do the one man show the guy didn’t have any vulnerability whatsoever. He didn’t show his weaknesses but simply tried to be perfect and guess what? We, humans, are imperfect as hell. We’re always a work in progress and there is no exception.
That’s why he become surprisingly nice when he answered the phone call, he instantly become real.

Three: Words have a weight.

James Altucher, writer, once said (I’m paraphrasing) that he tries to don’t exceed the limit of 1000 words per day. Not in writing, but in talking.

Why? Imaging that words have a weight, but not a weight on the single word you say but a total weight. Like 50kg per day.

So, if you say 100 words in a day each word would wait 50kg/100=0,5kg.

The more words you say, the less each word weights and this mean that everything you say become less and less important.
You might think of this as a new age thing but it’s not. Words do weight. And they can also lose weight if you don’t consider them valuable.

How? Think about your friend that promises you to come visit your house each time you see him, but in the end he doesn’t do it.

If he comes to you and say to you “Oh, we should definitely have dinner some times”, would you believe him? Of course not.
Each time he made a promise and didn’t keep it his words lost weight, they lost value and now they are worthless.
You should respect your words, value them, and consider them a great good that you should use sparingly, because the more you learn how, and when, to use them, the more you’ll be able to do.

It’s amazing how we all need some reminders from time to time of what it’s “the path”, the way to follow, the goal.

Often we find ourselves trapped in work situations where we would like to improve an efficient process, yet we feel we don’t have the power to influence that process. No matter what, our advices don’t get through.

Why is that? There are many reasons, but how could we change it?
I was listening to this wonderful interview of Jocko Willing, author of “Extreme Ownership”, and he reminded me a couple of things I knew back then that are still useful today.

First and foremost: if you want to change a process, a part of the company, whatever: Earn the right to speak.
Be impeccable, follow the rules, be the absolute best, do your best work.
You must become the example to follow, the perfect employee not in the sense of pleasing the bosses, but in the sense of quality of work, of results, all of them.

Second: If you have a problem you want to be fixed be sure to give a solution.
Keep in mind though that the solution is not enough. The solutions should be feasable, applicable, it should be something within reach.
And if possible: You should be sure that the solution will work.
How? Test it before, try it, find ways to use the method beforehand so that you can confidently say that it’ll work.

Third: Once you earned the right to speak and have a solution, now it’s all about timing.
As humans there are times we are more inclined to listening and understanding. Such times are influenced by how many things we have in our mind, what are our priorities and so on. Try to find a good moment when the boss or whoever can fully listen to you with no distraction. It could be a meeting or a coffe break, you name it.

Fourth: Give the solution with humility.
Not fake humility, real humility.
If you can’t be true, then it’s useless. Humility is key to this because nobody wants an asshole or a “I know everything” guy. Be humble, propose, be honest. Try to frame the solution from their point of view, listing benefits and risk. 
Don’t hide risks, but be sure to explain what will come if there’s a benefit.

Fifth: If it fails, start from 0 again and do better.