7 Thoughts Worthy of Following-Up in 2017
I’ve spent one week sitting on this post and was still thinking to put it off, until I came across two conversations over the course of this week. One started heavy, with the question “What’s next?”, and the other with slightly lighter “Many founders start their business while they were in their mid 20s”. Those conversations pushed me to finish this post and publish it today.
It was one day into 2017. People I know had begun asking each others what their resolutions would be even before Christmas. Some had very specific answers “I want to change job”, “I wanna lose those extra weight” or a simple “I might wanna get married soon”. Well, thanks goodness that some others still hadn’t really though about it — how Schadenfreude I was!
However, it caused me to spend some time thinking about what I thought would be good addition for those who have set their resolutions in motion, and as starting point for those who haven’t planned one.
Here it goes!
A. Thinking of making new year resolutions? (and a bit sad of last years’ missed achievements?)
You are not alone. While those showcased by the media are admirable, they are not the common. Not everyone is on that top 0.xxx% of the population. Breathe. Don’t be depressed or jealous.
It doesn’t mean that we should not create our own resolution for 2017 though, but I think we need to understand that resolution means nothing if we create a list just for the sake of having one.
She says, “Listen Laura, everything I do, every minute I spend, is my choice.” And rather than say, “I don’t have time to do x, y or z,” she’d say, “I don’t do x, y or z because it’s not a priority.”
— Laura Vanderkam, in How to Gain Control of Your Free Time
That bulls**t that we don’t have enough time, that something came up leaving us no time and / or choice, made no sense. As Lauran Vanderkam — a time management expert — puts it, “We don’t build the lives we want by saving time. We build the lives we want, and then time saves itself.” Laura illustrated how a super busy woman made time available when her basement was flooded with water from her broken water heater. So, why can’t we find time to what really matters to us, right?
To create meaningful resolutions, these are 2 exercises I think would be useful:
- The extreme “Create an eulogy for yourself to be read on your funeral.” A milder variant is to write a letter to yourself — meant to read on the New Year’s Eve of 2018 — about those amazing achievements you have made in 2017.
- Fall in love with systems. In my conversation today with an ex-colleague, I was made aware that I approach my life ‘bottom-to-top’ while he is the one with a ‘top-to-bottom’. Whichever our approach is, James Clear suggests that goals are good for planning your progress and systems are good for actually making progress. Have some goals, and then focus on the systems.
So, think about what we really want out of our life, however distant or near it may be. And start making those priorities.
Note: Resolutions doesn’t need to be material!
B. Thinking of disconnecting from the social media? and from work?
Don’t even think about it — just do it, if it means more time for ourselves and things that matter to us. This video from The School of Life explains why it is so hard to live in the present.
This post in LinkedIn “From the Ritz to a Padded Cell: A Workaholic’s Lesson on Love and Loss” shows us that work — for most of us who do not deal with life-and-death situation — does not necessarily be the sole focus of our lives. If not even work should be our sole focus, why do we let ourselves attached to social media? Un-attaching ourselves from social media is surely one way to live in the present. As Dr. Cal Newport suggests, social media is an entertainment, designed to be as addictive as possible.
So, proceed with caution!
C. Thinking of being nice?
The School of Life suggests that the reason we don’t really want to be nice is because our memory of niceness has been suppressed by a culture that makes us feel unintelligent for lending niceness or approval.
Opposed to the view that being nice means being weak or unsuccessful, boring, moneyless and unsexy, being truly nice requires being kind at heart. It breeds trust, companionship, cooperation, safe haven, among many others, that actually prove that we can be nice and successful, nice and exciting, nice and wealthy, and nice and sexy.
In this TED Talk, Adam Grant shared that the nice, givers are actually among the best performers. It’s just that the preconceived notion that being nice means being unable to thrive has caused organisations to view human as mere resources to be depleted, be it consciously or unconsciously.
As a test, check out what your connections in LinkedIn are talking about, and you’ll realise that niceness has no place in our workplace. Or, does it?
D. Thinking of standing up for others, and for ourselves?
Standing up for ourselves and for others might seem like two different actions, but it requires one same principle, which is to be courageous.
Being courageous is a challenge many of us have, for the following reasons:
- Our bad inner voices, growing from our exposures to bad experiences, tells us that we are not worthy. Thus, our opinions matter not.
- We simply do not care about others. We must live, but not necessarily the same for other people — which might or might not stem from our view of being nice meaning being weak.
In the movie “A Wish for Christmas”, after being treated unfairly and being silent many times, Sara was gifted with courage for 48 hours. She gained the courage to speak up, for herself and for others. Soon, she realized that courage is something we could give ourselves.
The ingredient that differentiates between standing up for ourselves and for others, you ask? Empathy. Empathy is the essential ingredient in love, compassion, and meaningful communication. It requires us to:
- Do something different. Something we’ve seen others do, but we’ve never tried.
- Be open and listen. Really listen to what others say and try to understand their emotional state and needs. Be there! Not in our clouds of ‘what-to-say-next’ or our prejudice.
- Be curious. Not ignorant.
- Do something good. Commit to help someone in need and see our commitment through.
E. Thinking of Doing Regular Self-Introspection — but, without beating ourselves up?
It can be hard not to inflict harms to ourselves and others when we don’t have an accurate handle of our sufferings. Our stream of consciousness contains a reservoirs of muddled hints about our woes, which need to be gathered and decoded for us to avoid hurting ourselves and others.
In this interesting poster, James Altucher suggests that when we label our thoughts, we can steer ourselves away from not-useful and leave more space for useful thought.
That being said, I would like to suggest that we improvise by naming what our thought is, seeing it as it is, but not thinking that we are only what we think at the moment — this video shows why we shouldn’t always trust our feelings. And that we are more than our achievement. We are more than our actions. We are more than our mistakes.
F. Thinking of being a better listener?
Listen, or your tongue will keep you deaf.
— Native North American proverb
Being a good listener is one of the most important and enchanting life skills anyone can have. While most people will agree to it, being a good listener is difficult for some, if not most people.
One case suggesting that listening is important is mentioned in Ron Friedman, Ph.D.’s The Best Place to Work. In 1994, a team of medical researchers began investigating: Why do patients sue their doctors? To the question “Why are you suing?”, one theme was mentioned by nearly 3/4 of all plaintiffs: they tended to believe that their physicians didn’t understand them. They felt ignored, devalued, and even deserted. Those who brought up their concerns were met with condescension.
What good listeners do:
- They encourage us to elaborate further
- They urge clarification with the ambition to getting to underlying issues
- They don’t moralize
- They separate disagreement from criticism
G. Thinking of finding a fulfilling work? or fulfilment in general?
Many people spend most of their waking hours at work or thinking about work. In the dim chill of a Monday morning in January, the prospect of another year at a job that fails to satisfy can be daunting, if not downright depressing.
— Kevin Granville, NYTimes
As this post on nytimes.com suggests, the best time to retune your career is probably right now, in January, be it planning to ask for a pay raise, look for a new job, or simply be happy at work.
Let me add to the NYTimes post, some key points in finding fulfilling work we’ve been craving for so long, as suggested by Roman Krznaric, in his How to Find Fulfilling Work.
- Scrap away the ancient ‘grin and bear it’ mentality. Work might not always have to be only means to an end, a ‘day job’ only to pay the bills.
- Understand the sources of our confusion and fears about leaving our old jobs behind us. Are we concerned about the ‘sunk costs’ — resources we have spent so far in our education and work? Or, do we have no clue on what makes us tick?
- The three essential ingredients making our work fulfilling are meaning, flow, and freedom.
- Reject the myth that there is a single perfect job waiting for us. Instead, identify our ‘multiple selves’
- Act first, reflect later. Sometimes, we need to take a leap of faith and the courage to try out new things which may or may not work for us.
All being said, maybe we just need to disconnect for a while and to recharge :)
What are your resolutions in 2017? What will you add to this list that might be of interest of others?
This post is also available on my LinkedIn Post. Do connect with me!
