Asking ourselves difficult questions is difficult. If we think the answers may hurt us, make us feel vulnerable, or critical of ourselves, we tend to self-protect by pulling away from inquiry. We don’t want to find out that yes, it was our fault that the project failed; yes, we didn’t say the right thing; yes, we embarrassed ourselves.
Difficult questions and radical honesty Read More »
That nasty little voice that tells you that you can’t. That doubts you and criticises you. That tells you you’re not good enough. And how dare you believe in yourself. That nags you and puts you down.
Don’t buy into the inner critic Read More »
The “hack” there is no hack. The “hack” is there’s a hack fallacy. A perpetual pressure to be more, do more, never miss out on anything, never experience a dull moment. The “hack” is realising we’ve been hacked into rat-racing a hack fallacy.
Problems recur for two main reasons: either because we’ve been ignoring them, or because the solutions were not effective. In either case it’s our inability to be with the friction that problems create that causes recurring problems.
Recurring patterns Read More »
Failing doesn’t mean you’re a failure.
We are often slow to rebound from failure because we spend hours, days, weeks judging ourselves for our mistakes. We get stuck in downwards spiral of self-blame, and the pothole becomes an abyss.
Failure is an opportunity Read More »
Goals are a means to becoming a different person. And changing who we are is a means to altering our present-moment experience of life.
Questions for setting better priorities Read More »
My biggest learning of 2024, the most challenging and painful year of my life, is that the more I widened my capacity to actually experience what I was experiencing, the more my baseline of joy and happiness increased. Whenever I felt fear, hurt, anxiety, any unwelcome emotion, instead of distracting myself from it, I went
Biggest lesson of 2024 Read More »
Our ability to hold ambivalence is one of the key characteristics of emotional intelligence. Our sentiments are rarely 100% one way or the other. An experience can evoke both joy and sadness within us. An upcoming change could be both exciting and frightening. We can feel simultaneously compelled and repelled by someone or something.
Ambivalence is a measure of emotional intelligence Read More »
Emotions are like little children. Spontaneous, frivolous, disarming. And just like children, they sometimes want to put on a costume, whether eccentric, flamboyant or mismatching, bring on a performance, and have our full attention. Instinctively, we draw back and try to suppress feeling into unpleasant emotions and states—pain, boredom, loneliness, shame, guilt, fear, anxiety, hopelessness.
Emotions are like little children Read More »
A lot of the marketing advice for entrepreneurs, creatives and businesses is to niche down and create a very clearly defined and narrow offering, for a very clearly defined and narrow audience. This makes sense in many ways. Consistency builds results. Having a distinguishable definition, as an entrepreneur or business, helps people know who you
Box yourself within your own box Read More »