One year of writing in 10 minutes of reading
The best of my 2017
“We write to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospect.” ― Anaïs Nin
I published my first Medium article on July 2nd, 2015. At that time, all I wanted was to see if I could find joy and purpose in publishing articles and stories, sharing my thoughts, experiences, and ideas.
In fact, I used to love writing… 15–20 years ago.
What happened then? I often say: “Life took over”. The reality is that, consciously or not, I gave priority to other activities. Some of which were inevitable (studies, work…) whilst some other were — with the eyes of today and the purpose that keeps unfolding in my life — questionable.
Fact is, I’ve completely quit writing essays and stories for about 15 years.
I’m not the person of regrets though, as I believe everything has a reason to be as it is. So all I can do now is keep writing and learning, unlearning, relearning in the process.
Last year my articles collected above 12,000 views, a number which I could have never imagined when I began writing on medium in mid-2015.
I want to continue having the courage to press that “submit to publication” button, to tell my stories and be open to feedback, comments, and — why not — help and inspiration, from my readers.
I wrote this summary to encourage you to read some of my best articles from 2017. But if you don’t have time for that, at least you have a collection of my main thoughts, ideas, and lessons from 2017.
And some bonus “behind the curtain” stories.
Enjoy!
January
I started my 2017 with The Ego’s Curriculum Vitae, the only satire piece I’ve written so far. Certainly not my most profound writing. Nevertheless, it had been picked by medium to feature on the “Editor’s pick” page. Yeah!
One year later, I see the “ego” a bit differently. Ego is not the bad-ass as the CV I’ve written for it would suggest. Yes, it’s responsible for most of the suffering and misery of this world. Many times, he indeed deserves the job title of “Continuous Insanity Manager” I’ve attributed to him.
However, the ego is what gets things done in this world. There is a good reason why it developed. Unfortunately, it expanded way beyond its original purpose.
Mindfulness and self-consciousness are claiming their space in our lives. Let the ego be the problem-solving device it’s meant to be, not the sole captain of the ship of our consciousness.
February.
20 Shades of Freedom is a collection of my definitions of Freedom. I love this piece. My favorite is:
Freedom is releasing the world from the burden of meeting your expectations.
March
In March I wrote two stories about leadership.
Leading in your Strength Zone is a reminder of the importance of understanding and nurturing your strengths. Too often we focus on incremental improvements on our weaknesses or we let our thoughts linger on them. But it’s only by extensively exercising our most developed skills that we can contribute the most to our own well being and to the collective good.
Here’s my favorite quote of this piece:
Creativity and breakthroughs stem from our strengths and from the amount of time we can individually and collectively spend in the activities in which we flow and thrive.
Perfectionism isn’t that fancy anymore is an invite to be kinder to ourselves and acknowledge that the strive for perfection many of us impose on yourselves is a burden rather than quality. It’s good to remember that…
None of the people that love you, care for you or even simply respect you have the expectation for you to be perfect.
April
Learning as a habit: who are your teachers? is inspired by a question I was asked during a panel discussion that made me reflect on how we tend to think that we can learn only from a restricted group of enlightened or so-called “successful” people. I believe, however, that:
You can learn from any human being. From any situation. From any interaction. Even from your feelings and emotions.
And when you cannot find out what the lesson is, then the lesson is acceptance.
Someone’s got to be the damned hero is a reflection on the healing experience of apologizing while not getting stuck into the trap of guilt. It requires both courage, to make the step towards others, and compassion, to forgive ourselves.
In this sense, I suggest using “sense of responsibility” instead of “guilt” as a verbiage for us to deal with the mistakes towards others that we acknowledge and wish to repair. In particular:
Our sense of responsibility is healthy when we use it as a conscious tool to recreate a temporarily disrupted balance between our values and our behaviors. Apologizing is one way to act on it. It attempts to re-establish that balance.
May/June
May was the month of the wedding of a great friend of mine.
I wrote a speech for my best friend’s wedding… but I couldn’t deliver it. is a testimony to a 30-year friendship. It’s also a reflection on how the ability of “not taking life too seriously” is a skill that few can master. A skill that can make life a much more enjoyable journey.
Fun fact: a few weeks after the article was published, stats were showing that the story was consistently and inexplicably getting a 40–60 views a week (and this keeps happening as we speak). I realized the vast majority of these views come from Google searches: it looks like if you google “best friend wedding speech” the article would often pop-up in the top 20 results.
July
Our skills are a gift. And service is their purpose is a story of self-discovery.
Thanks to the feedback by the publication’s editor on the draft of the article, I learned how to review my own drafts with a mindset of “cutting the clutter”, in other words removing anything that doesn’t add value to the story or to the message. I still have a lot to learn, but I consider this a little milestone on my path as a writer… one I’m very grateful for.
Anyway, in this writing I share my path towards the realization that:
There’s no more fulfilling purpose than dedicating our skills and strengths to others, in one way or another
And there’s one more story from behind the curtain of this article.
This writing hasn’t collected many views. But it looks like, its purpose wasn’t necessarily to reach many. It was to reach one person.
Someone who has been very important in my life and I deeply care of still today, all of a sudden wrote me:
I wish I met you first now, rather than 15 years ago, I guess. You have been so much to me. And then probably even too much. For some reason that both of us couldn’t really understand. Maybe here I found a key.
I had felt disappointed by how much she had been disconnected from me in the previous 4 years. I couldn’t really understand why. I felt this story healed our connection.
I shed a few tears when I read that message and the ones that followed.
Pure magic.
Please avoid nasty words as “shit” is a reflection on a feedback I’ve received at a Toastmaster speech.
Many times, I’ve asked myself if there was anything like „good” and „bad” feedback. I came to the “zen-ish” conclusion that “feedback is feedback”. There’s no point of calling it good or bad.
What makes a difference is what you do with it.
An unexpected number of responses came through.
Although the main motif of this story was about the importance of feedback in general and how to respond to it, the comments I’ve received reinforced my point around the relevance of the words we use and how important is to be mindful about our language.
Sometimes one single word or statement can poison an entire speech or dialogue, therefore becoming a hinder for you to deliver your message or sustain a constructive conversation.
August
In The rare trait that Highly Inspirational Leaders have in common, I’m sharing a personal story. It’s about a colleague of mine who, in challenging circumstances, reacted in a way I didn’t expect. With consideration, compassion, and support. He didn’t become defensive. Instead, he said: “I have your back”. My final thought was:
What about promoting a culture that leads us to have each other’s back, no matter the job title or the hierarchy?
September
I’ve been particularly active in September. Inspiration at work. Indeed I always enjoy the transition from summer to fall. It has something mystique.
Storytelling is still the most effective way to teach and coach. Here’s why is by far my most viewed article of 2017, now counting more than 3.7K views.
Interestingly enough, my most viewed article in 2016 was about storytelling too. And this is because:
Storytelling is the glue of human connections.
Indeed, If I have to pick my top lesson last year, it’s about the connecting and healing power of Storytelling.
Not by accident, I wrote two short stories in September: The Outlier and The Dragonfly Effect. Simple, perhaps trivial situations that make me reflect on bigger lessons.
In the latter, I share the experience of having missed the opportunity of enjoying for few seconds the presence of a beautiful being, a dragonfly, simply because I wanted to take a picture of it.
How often these days we feel the urge to “catch the instant” with the cameras of our phones. However, this way we lose the ability to be truly present and immersed in the experience itself.
I had the idea of The Art of balancing Waiting and Action in the parking lot for 2 years. This thought had been bugging me for a while: the experiences that we associate to the verb ‘waiting’ have a generally negative connotation. This generates subtle consequences on the way we perceive situations that seemingly require us to stay idle or ‘do nothing’.
The main highlights of this article are:
- We can be thankful that certain beautiful things require time to happen, manifest, or to be constructed. Because the joy is in the journey itself.
I’m talking about things we’re planning or working on, with a clear outcome.
Waiting is what makes us eventually savor the outcomes of our efforts.
- We can use “waiting time” creatively, for example by writing down notes on our diary (paper or digital), being kind with strangers, starting a conversation with people around us or thinking of anything that we want to create. Simply put, in our minds, we can do anything we want… there’s no need to linger on the negativity of “gosh, I gotta stand up here waiting!”
Don’t wait. Create.
October
The “I am responsible” Manifesto is my message to the people I connect with, but also the ones I love and I care of, on what they can expect from me. In a way, it’s as well a reminder to myself of what my values are and the behaviors I want to display.
It’s my commitment to both myself and others. I wanted to have it out there.
December
It’s time to drop the verb “fight” from our language stems from an idea I’ve had in mind for long. I’ve certainly been overly provocative in the title: of course, I didn’t mean we should entirely get rid of this word.
My point is that we use this metaphor too often. I argue that there’s no need to use so extensively the “fight” narrative to express our desires to achieve something meaningful or to fix problems or address issues.
I’ve learned quite a lot from the feedback I’ve received on this article. Although I believe that changing our language in mindful ways can be a powerful device to change our perception of the world as well as our connections, I learned that what really matters is the inner narrative associated to the words that we use: if I can live the “fight” motif as a boost of positive energy as opposed to a negative and fearful inner state, then it can serve well my purpose.
Anyway, as far as I’m concerned, whenever it makes more sense to me, I choose “dancing” instead of “fighting”.
Thank You!
2017 was an amazing year for me, for many reasons and on many levels.
I’m grateful for all the opportunities and all the amazing people I interacted with, to different degrees.
So many lessons. So many connections. So much humanity.
Words have power. We must choose them wisely.
Thanks to all the ones that have read my stories and for the continuous encouragement and support I’ve received from many of you.
Now one month in 2018 has already gone.
And the highlight of my year has already happened.
Now it’s time to enjoy the ride.
Vale
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