“Game-Changer” Personal and Professional Growth Lessons I’ve Learned So Far
I’ve often read interesting articles where the author lists lessons “they wish they had learned earlier”. I started getting interested in personal and professional growth after some “Soft Skills” I attended at the Digital Academy Liguria. Then I started reading articles and books to delve deeper into this topic.
Even though I’m only 21 years old when I write this article, I want to share with you the most important lessons, in my opinion, that I’ve learned so far, explaining how I learned the lesson and which advantage can give to us.
1. Create Relationships With Others. Don’t Isolate Yourself
“The business of business is relationships; the business of life is human connection”
- Robin S. Sharma
An aspect that I’ve underestimated is the importance of relationships with colleagues and others in general. I’m an introvert and reserved person and since little age I struggled to interact with others to create relationships proactively, so I ignored this aspect for too much time. I realized the importance of creating connections with others when I started at the Digital Academy Liguria, and this became even more evident when I began working.
How did I learn this?
In both situations, I began participating in conversations by listening a lot. Inevitably someone comes up with a direct question to me or with a topic that I know, and when I had the chance I start speaking.
The second step was taking part to simple activities like a lunch or a walk during the break-time. These types of activities allow us to create a stronger connection with the others and to meet better our colleagues or new friends.
The third step was to be directly (or indirectly) consistent. When I realized that I “draw” my comfort zone, I also understood that I needed to consolidate it by maintaining certain habits with my colleagues. For instance, at my workplace, some colleagues and I decided to have lunch and take walks together on certain days of the week, or chat during coffee breaks; simple and small habits for big results.
The power of this lesson
In brief:
Creating relationships allows to you to create a new comfort zone where you don’t have it
Changes seem bad because we are leaving our comfort zone, something we know for something unknown, new. In my opinion and based on a personal experience, I think that the main element of this lack of “comfort” is generated by being in an unfamiliar place without knowing someone, without being part of a social group in other words. For this reason, I believe that building relationships with new people in the right way, is a very powerful skill that can make us more adaptable to changes. Engaging with others can help us feel more comfortable, be more sincere and less likely to suffer others judgement.
2. Don’t Fear Other People Judgement. Explain Your Ideas!
“While one person hesitates because he feels inferior, the other is busy making mistakes and becoming superior”
- Henry C. Link
Too many times I’ve kept my ideas and my point of view for myself, because “What if I say something wrong?”, “What people will think of me?”, “Surely I will figure out as someone who doesn’t know what he’s talking about”. I know, it’s not easy to ignore this feeling. First I had to overcome the fear of speaking in public and then, I realized that being secure, believing and defending what we’re saying will do the most of the job. There is always time to change our minds and learn new things, but before we have to pass through confrontation, and there’s no confrontation if we don’t believe in what we’re saying.
How did I learn this?
I’ve overcome this fear and learned the lesson in two ways. Reading, or better, studying taking some notes, a book called “Public Speaking and Influencing Men in Business” by Dale Carnegie and then using this theoretical knowledge during the public speaking lessons I attended at the Academy. As said in the book, the first time I struggled to make the speech exercise in front of my course class, but at the end, when I saw that it wasn’t bad at all and that a lot of people came to congratulate and give me some advice, I entered the virtuous cycle taking more self-confidence. I started to enjoy presenting, I became more secure, my mindset changed and after some speeches (I’ve also made at the company where I started working during the second year of Academy), I realized something: In every situation, I realized that no one was focused on the things that scared me the most. Even if I made a mistake, no one remembered; they remembered the presentation in its big picture.
The power of this lesson
As hinted in Dale Carnegie’s book that I mentioned before:
Speaking confidently without fearing others’ judgement will make us appear confident and capable of influencing our audience
It’s a well-known fact that great leaders, not only in politics but also in companies, play a key role in influencing people with their speeches. They made it look easy, but how? The key is to focus on our thoughts and not worry about what others might think about us or what we’re saying. If you’re lucky enough to meet intelligent people with experience in speaking, the best thing that could happen to you is to receive real feedback from them. Or “Compliments-Critique-Compliments” as I prefer to say (the so-called “Feedback Sandwich Method”). This way, you’ll start to see criticism from a different perspective, and you’ll understand that these criticisms are not that bad.
3. Criticism Are Not That Bad
“There is no such thing as constructive criticism”
- Dale Carnegie
I am a perfectionist and as such I want to do things in the perfectly, but we know, perfection doesn’t exist for us human beings; we can get closer to perfection but we’re never going to reach it. Today I’ve almost “resolved” completely this aspect of my personality, trying to do things in the best way rather than striving for perfection. But why was I, and still am, so interested in doing everything as best as I can? It was because I was afraid to offer a low result, and consequently to be criticized (something I was not used to). But fortunately, some experiences came in my help to taught me that real criticism are not bad as I initially thought.
How did I learn this?
I learned it by experience and by reading a book called “Resolve Conflicts in your Life” (always by Dale Carnegie). I realized that criticism (real criticism, I mean) are not bad if seen from the right point of view. These are not insults to our skills but opportunities to grow and have a confrontation with someone who knows more than us on the topic. Here’s a practical example that happened to me: During my exam preparation at the Academy, the teacher asked everyone to practice for the last test, presenting a project in front of the others course members. When I ended my presentation, the teacher was very glad, but it was a friend of mine that pulled out some criticism. He was more experienced in speaking, so I listened to him and took note. I applied his advice in the following practices and during the exam. Indeed, I must say that the last presentation, at the exam, was better than every other practice I made before receiving these criticism.
The power of this lesson
Remember this:
Compliments make us glad and are always well accepted, but criticism are the ones that make us stronger and allow us to improve.
People who believe to know always more than everyone else will not make any progress. This is my opinion and something that I noticed and that I notice in everyday life. So, accept the doubt, receive feedback and feel free to give feedback to others, but remember: be sincere and kind with others.
4. Be Kind and Interested With Others
“When you help others feel important, you help yourself feel important too”
- David J. Schwartz
Has it ever happened to you that someone became interested in your work, your sport, a hobby you talked about, etc. ? If yes, you will surely know how it feels. You feel important or you consider important whatever you’re doing. But did you ever consider being in the opposite position? To be the one interested? I can assure you that the conversation and our self-image change completely.
How did I learn this?
I can’t identify a precise situation where “I learned this”, because unconsciously I often did it. I can say that I read about it, and also learned it theoretically, in another book by Dale Carnegie called “Life is short, make it great!”. After that, I started noticing people’s reactions when I had the chance to show honest and sincere interest in something that mattered to them, like their work or a goal they had achieved, for instance. It’s true, everyone becomes enthusiastic and glad about what they’re saying/doing, but not less, I feel better too when I see that people, with a little motivation and curiosity, showing love and passion for what they do.
The power of this lesson
Being well-liked by others give us an incredible power:
We automatically earn others sympathy and respect; everyone will enjoy talking to an important person who recognize another important person, like us
But it’s not over yet. Showing genuine interest in someone else activities, can push us to do better, to learn from their example and strive to get the best from everyone we meet.
5. Be Organized and Precise
“If you ain’t getting ready, you’re getting ready to not do well“
- Benjamin Franklin
Possibly the most important, and one of the first skills I’ve learned since I was a kid. Being organized helped me in every aspect of my “career”, from school to the Academy, to the work. This skill and mindset (yes, I like to think that being organized is a mindset) has made the difference in every professional environment where I worked, independently from my role and my tasks.
How did I learn this?
Becoming organized and precise is more like a journey. Well, that’s how I see it. It’s not like, you wake up one morning and “Ok, from today I’m organized” or “That incredible book taught me an outstanding technique to be more organized, so now am I”. Being organized, precise, and productive is not the same for everyone, it is something you can’t see, until you have done it; each one of us has our own method, focus and reason to be organized; this topic is a little bit more complex compared with other skills.
If you haven’t read “How I improve my Productivity” you have to know that I started learning to be organized when I was eight, when my mum taught me how to organize school homework through check-lists. Obviously, through the years, I started trying new techniques, learning not only how to list my “To-Do’s” but also how to prioritize them and how to manage time better.
After my academic career, I use my knowledge to modify my organization in order to make it more suitable for the work environment. So, if I had to answer the paragraph question, I would say: “Through education, curiosity, experience and a lot of proactivity in my work and outside, with personal projects. Always ready to learn something new and improve what I already know and do”.
The power of this lesson
I think this lesson is self-explanatory, but from a personal (work) experience I can say:
When you present yourself secure, sociable but most of all organized, trust me, you will not pass unnoticed
Being organized is something that I always take for granted, I considered everyone “organized-by-default” but it isn’t. This not only means being noticed talking about professional life, but also being more productive and a little bit less stressed in everyday personal life. Having all your activities scheduled means you have a plan. This plan allows you to live and focus on one day at the time.
6. Focus on One Day at a Time
“Live neither in the past nor in the future, but let each day absorb all your interest, energy and enthusiasm. The best preparation for tomorrow is to live today superbly well.”
- Sir William Osler
This apparently trivial lesson was a “game-changer” for me. As I said in the previous paragraph, I usually tend to be organized but this wasn’t enough to make me less anxious. I admit that since elementary-school I have been very anxious and stressed about almost everything. Mostly about changes and future events. This flaw also accompanied me through the middle school and the first high-school years, until I started realizing (very slowly I have to admit) that being stressed for the future was completely useless, if not only to make a damage to myself. However, this awareness was not enough, I realized that being stressed that way wasn’t good for me, but I really didn’t know how to solve it.
How did I learn this?
Do you really want to know how? Through experience, two books, and most importantly by realizing that the most of the things I worried about never happened, or if they did, it was because I let them happen. I didn’t control what I could. For example, I felt stressed before a test, and my thoughts were something like: “Maybe my preparation is not quite good enough. Here you go, now I don’t feel either too well” and then guess what? The result was mediocre. A lot of preparation for this result.
After the third high-school year I realized that these mediocre performances showed up because I was anxious, and being anxious wasn’t good. I started becoming conscious of that and “forcing” me to not worry about these futile things; “It is what it is”.
Positive results started coming, so I decided to delve deeper in this topic reading two books: the first one is about a larger topic that also includes stress and anxiety, called “Emotional Intelligence” by Daniel Goleman, while the second one, which is more focused on this topic, called “How to stop worrying and start living” by Dale Carnegie. I learned a lot by these books, but if I have to summarize what I’ve learned from both I would say:
Worrying in advance about something that hasn’t happened yet “is like paying a debt we don’t owe” (as Mark Twain said); that’s why it is important to organize our activities also at a one month distance if we like, but it is essential to live day-by-day.
In addition, my first thought “it is what it is” wasn’t completely right. Stress in reality is not that bad, it could be a resource. The complete lack of stress makes us demotivated and unlikely to reach our goal, so we need to learn how to “dose” stress in order to embrace the right attitude. However, it is very important to be ready for the so-called “worst case”, to avoid a hard blow in case of failure, but above all, to make us understand the real importance of that event. Being stressed for a test is not the same for an important meeting with the company boss, which is not the same for being in a trench in war.
I know, this last sentence sounds moralistic, but my goal is to make you understand that through this mechanism (the “worst case” definition) is possible to “tune” our stress level.
The power of this lesson
If we apply the lesson learned in previous paragraph I can confidently say:
Being organized and living day-by-day is maybe the most powerful combination that could exist. You control your activities, but most importantly you control yourself, your stress level and your way to act when you face difficulties
Without doubt the best method to control stress. But what about the stress we need to cut out? For this I have another suggestion.
7. “Mens Sana in Corpore Sano”. Do a Lot of Sport!
“Mens sana in corpore sano”
- Juvenal
It may seem not related to the previous “lessons”, but doing a lot of physical activity is the first step (and I think the best one) to start in the personal growth journey and to disconnect from everyday activities and thoughts.
How did I learn this?
Since I was 5 years old my parents encouraged me to do some sport. As my mother used to say, and still says today: “I don’t care what, just do some sport”. She’s right, it’s good. I’ve started playing football, but with years I tried a lot of sports. During summer camps, I also played basketball, ping pong, archery and tennis, which became my favourite sport. Here I learned how to count on me, taking compliments and criticism for the results. This environment bring out my temper for the very first time, changed my attitude and taught me to give always the 101% in everything I do, through competition. Of course friends helped too. My best friend is a passionate of physical activity, with him I use to do other sports such as running, hiking, climbing and swimming.
The power of this lesson
Doing physical activity has several advantages, but to summarize the power of it, I would say:
When you enter the virtuous cycle of physical activity, “you found gold”. You have a method to: relieve stress, take care of your body and mind, to increase motivation, setting and achieving goals, and to learn discipline simultaneously.
Exactly. Doing physical activity allows you to get all this in exchange of “sweat and effort”. Through sport I’ve learned also to face failures, difficulties but also how to solve them and how to succeed. I haven’t to sell it to you but consider doing sport if you don’t. It’s like mountain hiking: at first it is difficult, but when you’re on the top you appreciate every single effort you made because you’ve made it.
You don’t have to compete with others to experience this feeling. It’s just “Past You” VS “Present You”.
8. Look to Yourself. You’re Not in a Competition!
“It’s not about winning. It’s about finishing.”
- Jim Redmond (Derek Redmond’s father)
Often I forget that I’m not in a competition. For a long time, I compared my result with the other ones, feeling sometimes inadequate or not good enough. I understand, when we are in a contest, regardless of whether one is in sport, work, or any field one desires, it’s a common mistake to look at others performance and then act by. A mistake that I made frequently also during high-school, a place where it is very easy to misunderstand our work’s mark for “our value as person”. Don’t we even talk about when it starts the confrontation with others. If we don’t have in our mind that life is not a competition and neither the first nor the last is going to receive a medal, it will be very easy to develop a bad mindset that will feed self-doubt and a low self-confidence. All this can be avoided by focusing on ourselves, on our work and sometimes have a break to give a look to the ones that are better than us and learn.
How did I learn this?
Believe me or not, after what I said to you, I admit that I learned this lesson right in high-school. During the second year my physics professor imparted me maybe one of the most useful lessons I’ve ever learned. I was very bad in physics, and one day I was complaining with a friend of mine that a lot of people were able to get good grades using tricks and cheats, while me, who wants to get good grades with hard work, struggled to get the sufficiency. He eared me and said: “Do you think that I don’t know that there is someone who gets good grades cheating? These things always exist and always will exist. Do you want any advice? Don’t look at others. Look to yourself, because you’re blaming them, but they’re not responsible for your grades, you are. Trust me, it will also help you outside school”. At that time I didn’t realize how important and precious that lesson was. I started to dislike that professor.
It takes me one year to realize and start acting this way. I began to understand the power of his words, and indeed I start getting good results, despite nothing had really changed around me.
The power of this lesson
The real power of this lesson can be seen only after understanding it. I’m a passionate of hiking and to explain it more practically I like to use this analogy:
When you walk along a mountain path, you look where you’re going and not to the ones who are almost to the top. You give a look to the landscape, to the distance you’ve made and also to the ones almost on the top, only during breaks, not while you’re walking.
If we’re learning and consequently we’re weaker than others, we can’t blame them for it. I’d like to see self-focus as hiking. I never start walking on a mountain path with the idea that I have to arrive as soon as possible on the top. I embrace the difficulty of that walk and enjoy the walk. If you’re able to do the same for everything else you’re surely going to see the result.
Conclusion
Well, that was a long one! I hope these lessons will be helpful to you as they were to me. I consider myself lucky, because in every situation I had the chance to learn something by meeting people who taught me directly or by suggesting a book or other material to understand on my own.
For this reason, thinking of everyone that hasn’t had this luck, for the love of writing and for the ideal of “knowledge sharing”, in which I completely believe, that I decided to share this article.
As always, if you have any remark, question or if you want to share something you’ve learned in the comments, I would be more than glad.
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