Most of us often suffer from destination disease; we believe changing our environment, status, position, or relationship would significantly change our lives. Although that is possible, it is not a given. If you move to a new city but don’t have an open mind and explore the opportunities in the new city, you will still be who you have always been because wherever you go, there you are. The new city would not magically change you without you deliberately changing. Nothing moves until you move; leadership is an inside-out job.
We all have a choice: get better or bitter, get the lesson or let the situation lessen you, get the message or stay stuck with the mess. It is not what happens to you; what matters is what you do with it; Turn your pain into gain, look in the mirror, not focus on the window, work on yourself and stop comparing yourself with others. Change happens from within not from the outside, you make up your mind how well any situation turns out by the story you tell yourself.
In his classic book, As a man thinketh, author Jame Allen asserted “A man only begins to be a man when he ceases to whine and revile, and commences to search for the hidden justice which regulates his life. And he adapts his mind to that regulating factor, he ceases to accuse others as the cause of his condition, and builds himself up in strong and noble thoughts; ceases to kick against circumstances, but begins to use them as aids to his more rapid progress, and as a means of the hidden powers and possibilities within himself.”
“The outer conditions of a person’s life will always be found to be harmoniously related to his inner state…Men do not attract that which they want, but that which they are.”― James Allen, As a Man Thinketh
American radio speaker and author Earl Nightingale asserted, “One hour per day of study in your chosen field is all it takes. One hour per day of study will put you at the top of your field within three years. Within five years, you’ll be a national authority. In seven years, you can be one of the best people in the world at what you do.” My personal development journey started when I heard these great words by Natingale, and it has changed my trajectory, outlook and worldview ever since. To change your life, you will have to change your mindset; we are the story we tell ourselves. Nothing moves until you move; to change outwardly, you will have to change inwardly. Leadership is an inside job.
“The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function. One should, for example, be able to see that things are hopeless and yet be determined to make them otherwise.”—F. Scott Fitzgerald
“To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.”― Ralph Waldo Emerson
If no one has reminded you of late, You are a king, queen, and royalty; you exemplify excellence and exude greatness. We all started life tabula rasa as a blank slate without any inbuilt mental construct, indoctrination, programming, imprinting and domestication. While growing up, we had wild dreams about what we could become and aspire to be. We answered the question, ” What do you want to be when you grow up? With much zeal, with answers ranging from pilot, engineer, doctor, astronaut, architect, etc. We answered the question based on what we saw around us, our family and friends’ job positions, media, religion, and counselling sessions.
I deactivated all my social accounts in February 2018, and it is by far one of the most challenging and exciting decisions I have ever made. I have a love-hate relationship with social media networks; they are one of the best innovations of the past 20+ years and one of the most incredible time-wasters of our time. Before deciding to leave social media, I dug deep into the literature on what social media does to us through overstimulation, self-comparison and inability to focus on what matters. I was influenced by authors like Cal Newport, Jaron Lanier, Adam Atler, and Nir Eyal.
Success is the peace of mind that is the direct result of self-satisfaction in knowing you did your best to become the best that you are capable of becoming. – Coach John Wooden
One of coach John Wooden’s favourite saying is this: “As long as you try your best, you are never a failure. That is, unless you blame others.” Coach Wooden defined success 1 as the peace of mind that is the direct result of self-satisfaction in knowing you did your best to become the best that you are capable of becoming.” Coach Wooden understands success having experienced it in his illustrustrious career and also understands what it means to wait before succeeding. He won ten NCAA national championships, seven of them in consecutive years, and had four undefeated seasons, including an 88-game winning streak. Before he achieved this remarkable feat, his team did not win a national championship for the first fourteen seasons.
Blessed is he who expects nothing, for he shall never be disappointed. – Alexander Pope
Expectation (n.), “state or condition of waiting or awaiting with confident anticipation,” from French expectation (14c.) or directly from Latin expectationem/exspectationem (nominative expectatio/exspectatio) “anticipation, an awaiting,” noun of action from past-participle stem of expectare/exspectare “await, look out for”.
We hold expectations as a form of attachment to specific outcomes. We have expectations of people while society, our parents, religion and acquaintances hold expectations on how we behave or coordinate ourselves. One of the keys to happiness that I have found most compelling is reducing your expectations of people. Humans will always be humans; they will show you their true colour; your job is not to tell them how to act; your job is to let to be who they want to be.
Panic (n.) 1 “sudden mass terror,” especially an exaggerated fright affecting a number of persons without visible cause or inspired by trifling cause or danger, from French panique (15c.), from Greek panikon, literally “pertaining to Pan,” the god of woods and fields, who was the source of mysterious sounds that caused contagious, groundless fear in herds and crowds, or people in lonely spots. Panic is a sudden state of fear which often leads to frantic anxiety and rapid thinking, prevents logical thinking, fight-or-flight reaction and leads to logical lapse.
The price of greatness is sacrifice and responsibility; it will be a dogfight; you will question your sanity some days and even want to panic as your funding is getting low and you are getting little or low traction. Keep pushing, don’t panic; you are closer than you think. When you panic, you can’t think straight, and you tend to think irrationally in this state, with rapid thinking and lapsed judgment; solving the real issue is challenging. On your path to the top, the going is going to get tough; it is going to get tough at some point; don’t panic because it is when it gets dark that you can see the light.
In the words of author and leadership expert John C Maxwell, Courageous leadership is developed when “Poise that is more unshakeable than panic.” He observed:
Courageous Leadership Simply Means I’ve Developed
Convictions that are stronger than my fears.
Vision that is clearer than my doubts.
Spiritual sensitivity that is louder than popular opinion.
Self-esteem that is deeper than self-protection.
Appreciation for discipline that is greater than my desire for leisure.
Dissatisfaction that is more forceful than the status quo.
Poise that is more unshakeable than panic.
Risk-taking that is stronger than safety seeking.
Right actions that are more robust than rationalization.
A desire to see potential reached more than to see people appeased.
One of the hallmarks of anxiety is rapid thinking 2. Because you are focusing on some issue so deeply and for so much time, you assume that you are also thinking through the issue thoroughly and arriving at the most likely conclusion. However, the opposite is happening.
You’re experiencing a logical lapse. You’re jumping to the worst-case scenario because you aren’t thinking clearly, and then you are engaging your fight-or-flight response because the worst-case scenario makes you feel threatened. This is why you obsess about that one, terrifying idea. Your body is responding as though it’s an immediate threat, and until you “defeat” or overcome it, your body will do its job, which is to keep you in defense mode, which is really a heightened state of awareness to the “enemy.”
When you experience a logical lapse, the climax becomes the conclusion. You imagine a situation, you figure that you would panic, and then because you’re scared, you never think through the rest of the scenario. You never think about how you’d get through it, what you’d do to respond, and how you’d eventually move on with your life afterwards. If you were able to do this, you wouldn’t be scared of it, because you wouldn’t think it had the power to “end” you.
When you experience a logical lapse, the climax becomes the conclusion. You imagine a situation, you figure that you would panic, and then because you’re scared, you never think through the rest of the scenario.
Author and editor-in-chief of Entrepreneur magazine, Jason Feifer 3, asserted that:
Change happens in four phases: First we panic, then we adapt, then we find a new normal, and then we reach “wouldn’t go back”—that moment when we have something so new and valuable that we say, “I wouldn’t want to go back to a time before I had this.” The most successful people move through these phases the smoothest.
Staying calm is tough when things are going hard and you can’t think of a way out of your situation. Think it through, leave it for a while, sleep over it, talk it over and keep taking steps that would take you closer to solving the problem. Nothing moves until you move, take action, and resolve to do your best in any situation. You can and will solve this issue; stay calm and don’t panic.
Everything in life comes down to how we handle those crucial seconds. 4 When psychological, physical, or emotional pressure redlines, your adrenal glands go haywire, and you are no longer in control. What separates a true savage from everybody else is the ability to regain control of their mind in that split second, despite the fact that all is still fucked!
That’s what people miss. Our lives aren’t built on hours, days, weeks, months, or years. Hell Week is 130 hours, but it’s not the hours that kill you. And it’s not the pain, the ex- haustion, or the cold. It is the 468,000 seconds that you must win. It only takes one of those motherfuckers—when it all becomes too much and you just can’t take it anymore—to bring you down.
Life, like Hell Week, is built on seconds that you must win, repeatedly.
Never quit when your pain and insecurity are at their peak. If you must retreat, quit when it’s easy, not when it’s hard. Control your thought process and get through the most difficult test first. That way, if you do bow out, you’ll know it wasn’t a reaction based on panic. Instead, you’ve made a conscious decision based on reason and had time to devise your plan B.
Respect is earned every day by waking up early, challenging yourself with new dreams or digging up old nightmares, and embracing the suck like you have nothing and have never done a damn thing in your life.
The average human lifespan is absurdly, terrifyingly, insultingly short. But that isn’t a reason for unremitting despair or for living in an anxiety-fueled panic about making the most of your limited time. It’s a cause for relief. You get to give up on something that was always impossible—the quest to become the optimized, infinitely capable, emotionally invincible, fully independent person you’re officially supposed to be. Then you get to roll up your sleeves and start work on what’s gloriously possible instead.
“Once you no longer need to convince yourself that the world isn’t filled with uncertainty and tragedy, you’re free to focus on doing what you can to help. And once you no longer need to convince yourself that you’ll do everything that needs doing, you’re free to focus on doing a few things that count.”
Meditation
Daily Calm with Tamara Levitt – Technique
It is important to keep our intention on developing our technique in practice rather than focusing on a particular outcome. It is easy to get focused on all type of goals that we’ve heard about or other people’s experiences. Each of us has a different mind or body, we have varied experiences and outcomes, and those experiences change from day to day, Month to month, year to year; therefore, we want to let go of our expectations because when we become fixed on particular results ; we lose our ability to practice with proper technique.
Hold patience and trust that your practice will work as it should for you in its own way, in its own time.
“How you climb a mountain is more important than reaching the top.” – Yvon Chouinard, founder of Patagonia
Daily Jay with Jay Shetty – Catch the Sunrise
Keep your face always toward the sunshine – and shadows will fall behind you. – Walt Whitman
All the Best in your quest to get Better. Don’t Settle: Live with Passion.
Ralph Waldo Emerson once said, “What you do speaks so loudly I cannot hear what you are saying.” The more I interact with people, the more I agree with the word of Emerson, and I have concluded that Love is Behaviour. Your behaviour is more important than what you say, as actions speak louder than words. You can call yourself a friend, but that would be determined during the trying times; you can say you are family, but we shall know the depth of your support during the trying times. One of the unintended consequences of grief is that it mostly re-orders your address book as people would show you their true character and colour.
Knowing trees, I understand the meaning of patience. Knowing grass, I can appreciate persistence. – Hal Borland
Patience (n.) 1 c. 1200, pacience, “quality of being willing to bear adversities, calm endurance of misfortune, suffering, etc.,” from Old French pacience “patience; sufferance, permission” (12c.) and directly from Latin patientia “the quality of suffering or enduring; submission,” also “indulgence, leniency; humility; submissiveness; submission to lust;” literally “quality of suffering.”
“Have patience with all things, but chiefly have patience with yourself. Do not lose courage in considering your own imperfections, but instantly start remedying them—every day begin the task anew.” – St. Francis de Sales
One of the most essential lessons I have learnt from running multiple marathons is the value of patience and seeing the end in mind. American author and speaker Joyce Meyer said, “Patience is not simply the ability to wait – it’s how we behave while we’re waiting.” We live in a fast-paced world where we want everything at the speed of thought; a webpage loading longer than 3 seconds is considered unacceptable, overnight success is the goal, methodical step-by-step execution is considered boring, waiting for your time is considered slow and delaying gratification is not the norm.
“Patience is not simply the ability to wait – it’s how we behave while we’re waiting.” – Joyce Meyer
A fact is something that is known to have happened or to exist, especially something for which proofexists, or about which there is information. The law of gravity states that whatever goes up must come down, that is a proven fact until someone proofs otherwise. If someone decides to disobey the present law of gravity by jumping from a 50-storey building unaided without support such as a parachute, they would become a casualty. Whenever we are dealing with other human beings, most of us operate from a place of emotion instead of the fact.
Pace is a rate of movement, especially in stepping, walking, activity, progress, growth, performance etc. One of the most important lessons that I have learnt from running multiple 26 miles marathons in the past decade is the value of pacing yourself. Every marathon course is different; you need a strategy to navigate the course, weather and other unforeseen circumstances. The marathon is a very egalitarian sport as everyone starts simultaneously, the rich, poor, skinny, big, learned, ignorant, etc. The difference between the winner and other participants is the pace at which they run, which is determined by their training volume, pacing, stamina and running strategy.
Joy (n.) 1 – “feeling of pleasure and delight;” c. 1300, “source of pleasure or happiness,” from Old French joie “pleasure, delight, erotic pleasure, bliss, joyfulness” (11c.), from Latin gaudia “expressions of pleasure; sensual delight,” plural of gaudium “joy, inward joy, gladness, delight; source of pleasure or delight,” from gaudere “rejoice,” from PIE root *gau- “to rejoice” (cognates: Greek gaio “I rejoice,” Middle Irish guaire “noble”).
We all want to be happy at some point in our life; all the striving and chasing is all geared toward what we think happiness means to us. Optimizing for joy means doing only things that are making rejoice, laugh, feel good about yourself, surrounding yourself with high-energy people, avoiding energy drainers and protecting your peace. One of the ways that I have tried to achieve what the French call “Joie de vivre” – cheerful enjoyment of life, is by partaking in a lot of activities that raise my spirit, give me joy and make me hopeful for a brighter tomorrow.
I spend at least one-sixth of my daily 24 hours doing activities that are optimized for joy such as exercising in the gym (basketball shooting, swimming, weight lifting, pickle ball, badminton), participating in outdoor activities such as lawn tennis, outdoor cycling and outdoor running. One of my favourite activities is to read a great book or listen to an audiobook. Life is full of ups and downs, the challenges keep coming as it is not a matter of if but when. Having coping mechanisms that are optimized for getting joyful has made the bad days not too bad and solving the issues has not been too harsh.
In the past 365 days, I have participated and finished eleven 42.2 KM marathons in nine cities. One of the questions I get asked after every marathon is: “What was your position?”. I usually answer with the “It is not about the finishing position” response. Most non-long-distance runners don’t seem to understand why anyone would leave their city of residence, fly to a new city to run a marathon and still not win anything or aspire to win anything. The reward is the journey of conquering the 26.6 miles distance and the numerous lessons to be learned by participating in the marathon,
Somedays will be more challenging than the rest, you will not want to get out of bed in the morning, and you will feel tired of all the challenges you are going through, but you have to keep showing up day in and day out. Success is not guaranteed, but struggles and pain are. Whatever would go wrong would eventually go wrong at the worst time expected time. No one has a pain-free life; the pain is temporary; no pain, no gain, no thorne, no throne, no gall, no glory. Adversity introduces a man to himself; you get orange juice if you squeeze an orange. Life is going to happen to you at some point: job loss, health scare, divorce, childhood trauma, depression, etc.
Decisive (adj.) 1, “having the quality or power of determining,” from Medieval Latin decisivus, from Latin decis-, past participle stem of decidere “to cut off; decide”. Meaning “marked by prompt determination” is from 1736. To achieve anything worthwhile in life, you must first decide what you want, stay committed to your goal and relentlessly execute by taking massive action daily. Scottish mountainer William Hutchison Murray put it best when he said in The Scottish Himalayan Expedition:
“Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of initiative and creation, there is one elementary truth the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then providence moves too.
All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one’s favour all manner of unforeseen incidents, meetings and material assistance which no man could have dreamed would have come his way. I have learned a deep respect for one of Goethe’s couplets: Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it. Begin it now.”
It is estimated that the average adults makes about 35,000 conscious decisions 2 daily while a child makes about 3,000 decisions daily (Sahakian & Labuzetta, 2013). According to researchers at Cornell University, we make on average 226.7 food decisions daily. (Wansink and Sobal, 2007). 3 Most of the decisions that we make is habitual and in autopilot, the key to getting things done is to make more deliberate and conscious decisions daily. Our decisions and choices on a daily basis determines the direction of our life. Good decisions leads to good habits & fewer regret, Bad decisions leads to bad habits and more regrets.
