Tag Archives: Inspiration

How a few weeks of vacation can turn into greater long-term happiness & focus

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For many of us, August is a time for some rest, time to cast off.

How about making good use of those few weeks? How can we use our break in order to benefit the most and return to our daily work re-energised, happier and able to connect better and more wisely?

IMG_1728 Here, I want to focus on a few things that can stimulate our thinking and increase our focus (and happiness) once we’re back to our daily work after the break:

  • Think “people”, not “activities” or “things”: as we spend time to re-assess what we do and how we do it, the summer break gives us a wonderful opportunity to re-think our lives in terms of “people“, not “things”. It’s not what we do that matters the most. Rather, it’s whose needs we address, who we do what we do with. “It’s Not the How or the What but the Who“, as Claudio Fernández-Aráoz’s most recent book summarises so well.
  • Re-think our connections and make a list of people that inspire us the most: I often enjoy discussing with my guests about this and ask them: “How many people have you known, in your life?”. Answers to that vary from “A few dozen” to the bravest, who dare say “Maybe a thousand?” Reality, though, is a lot more. Most of us highly underestimate the value of relationship and connection. Someone living their life in professional services, since their mid thirties, is more likely to have known, in the broadest sense of the meaning, between four and in some cases as many as ten thousand people (think about all the people we’ve known during our school life, then the university, then our colleagues at work…). CEOs of large companies have known several tens of thousands of people. We live a life of overexposure to connecting, not the opposite. Hence, we need to sharpen the focus:“How many, of those thousand people, are those I like, those who can inspire me, those I find satisfaction in connecting with?” Let’s write those few names (10 to 20) down, on a piece of paper, in a moment of rest.
  • Act on this list and those people, connect with them, let them know they inspire us (and we care): that much smaller and more precious list is a starting point for greater focus (and happiness) in our daily life.  I want these people to know they are on my list. These are people I want to connect with regularly, people whose advice and inspiration I want and need to seek regularly, as soon as the break ends if not now. The few weeks of our summer break can thus open up an entirely new element, which we’ve kept unconscious for so long.

People, not what we do, will make us happy. If these few weeks of vacation help us realise this, they can highly increase our long-term happiness and improve self-awareness for many years to come.

 

 

Tommaso Arenare

www.twitter.com/tommaso_arenare

A quick thought on People and Purpose

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A great  piece, by @TonySchwartz, about “What Gets You Up in the Morning?”, focuses on building our life full of “purpose”. It asks a challenging open question, with a comment:

So why are you doing what you’re doing? Few of us have ever been encouraged to ask that question. Why not make it the new mantra in your life – a question to which you return, over and over, as a compass for making better choices.

“What makes our life full of purpose?” is as good an open question as we can get.

People, not what we do, is my answer. Better, “Invest in connecting with people we like”, is my answer.

The following are just three steps in a journey towards relationships that are most likely to bear fruit:

1. connecting through someone we trust: a good starting point is when we connect with someone through someone else we trust and who likes them. If this is the case, this opens up the possibility of building a new and fruitful relationship which will give excellent results and satisfaction over time;

2. listening to others effectively: this requires us to be able to listen to our counterpart, leaving proper room for them to express their needs and feeling. This is lot more difficult than in the previous case. Our ability to listen can be practised and trained but it requires time, effort and willingness. Not least, we are exposed to the risk of making significant mistakes;

3. listening to ourselves effectively: the whole thing boils down, in the end, to a more general, and much more difficult point: learning how to listen to ourselves and understanding whom we like.

What we need is self-awareness, the ability to look deeply inside ourselves. Identifying fears, emotions, what and whom we love, what and whom we like and what and whom we don’t. This can only be earned individually, through our own introspective work over time.

Tommaso Arenare

Three steps in our journey towards building fruitful relationships

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In her thought-provoking “For a Career that Lasts, Build Real Relationships” Harvard Business Review post, Whitney Johnson made the following comment (emphasis is mine):

As we connect and collaborate, give and take, we are evolving, emerging stronger and more capable. … as we invest in connecting, … we’ll be reminded that people are not only a precious commodity, they are a renewable resource.

I favour the concept of “Invest in connecting” strongly. #ConnectingWisely has been one of my favourite Twitter hashtags for long now. How do we select, amongst the thousand people we’ve known in our life, those that we like, those who can inspire us, those we find satisfaction in connecting with?

I had already written about writing those few names (10 to 20) down, in a moment of rest.
Whitney posted a stimulating reply to this point of view and a question to her Twitter audience:

This is about the very concept of identifying people we like and being open to the fact that everyone we meet might turn into a fruitful relationship, as long as we pay attention in choosing.

The following are just three steps in a journey towards relationships that are most likely to bear fruit:

  • connecting through someone we trust: a good starting point is when we connect with someone through someone else we trust and who likes them. People may ask to see me as they seek advice, or want to share advice, as well as thoughts and opportunities, as a result of someone else we trust who addressed them to me. In other words, someone else has acted as indirect builder of a bridge of trust towards us. Most often, this gives more than a reasonable chance that the relationship of trust we enjoy with that former person can easily be transferred to the latter person. If this is the case, this opens up the possibility of building a new and fruitful relationship which will give excellent results and satisfaction over time;
  • listening to others effectively: alternatively, we might have good feelings about people we’ve met, for what they have said, for what we have listened from them. This is more difficult, as there is no bridge-building of trust. Moreover, this requires us to be able to listen to our counterpart, leaving proper room for them to express their needs and feeling. This is lot more difficult than in the previous case. Our ability to listen can be practised and trained but it requires time, effort and willingness. Not least, we are exposed to the risk of making significant mistakes;
  • listening to ourselves effectively: the whole thing boils down, in the end, to a more general, and much more difficult point: learning how to listen to ourselves and understanding whom we like. What we need is self-awareness, the ability to look deeply inside ourselves, even before than into the other person. Identifying fears, emotions, what and whom we love, what and whom we like and what and whom we don’t. This can only be earned individually, through our own introspective work over time.

In all cases, cultivating and building fruitful relationships requires a combination of leveraging on existing trust, as well as on the ability to listen to others, and finally, but most importantly, the ability of listening to ourselves and to whom makes us happy.

Tommaso Arenare

My next move, through Black Swans and Obliquity

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What do you think I can do next? What “career move” do you recommend? How can I land that fantastic CEO job at company (or bank) XYZ?

Again, those are some of the questions I am faced with daily.

As simple as they are, they cannot be answered seriously.

Let’s see how we can take a different angle, open up a different perspective, by combining a few separate thoughts: that of a “Black Swan“, that of “Obliquity“, and that of a “much smaller, yet more precious list” I have discussed separately.

Black Swans (…) are large-scale unpredictable and irregular events of massive consequence—unpredicted by a certain observer.

Nassim N. Taleb, “Antifragile, Things that Gain from Disorder, Prologue, 2012.

Black Swans can be negative as well as thy can be positive. Limiting the exposure to negative Black Swans and increasing our exposure to positive Black Swans is the challenge, then.

John Kay describes obliquity as follows:

If you want to go in one direction, the best route may involve going in another. This is the concept of ‘obliquity’: paradoxical as it sounds, many goals are more likely to be achieved when pursued indirectly. Whether overcoming geographical obstacles, winning decisive battles or meeting sales targets, history shows us that oblique approaches are the most successful, especially in difficult terrain.

Obliquity implies that future opportunities can best be pursued indirectly. Black Swans imply that the only safe thing we know about our next move is that we don’t know what it is going to be.

Remember, though, that people, not what we do, will make us happy. Finding people we like, people who inspire, is therefore as unpredictable and as uncertain as the combination of Black Swans and Obliquity. Yet, finding and nurturing relationships will give us pleasure, stimulate our thinking, open up endless possibilities.

Hence, that “much smaller and more precious list“, our path to connecting wisely, is our way forward. The wiser we are in connecting with people we like, the more will we be exposed to positive (and oblique) Black Swans. That person we like, whom we regularly talk to, seek advice and inspiration from, at a given, unexpected moment will come out with that fantastic thought, with that inspiring question, which will lead to our next opportunity, perhaps to our next job.

There’s no predictable limit to the power of relationship, the power of connecting wisely.

Tommaso Arenare

www.twitter.com/tommaso_arenare

A much smaller, yet more precious list

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In his thought-provoking HBR post, “Turn Your Career into a Work of Art“, Gianpiero Petriglieri sets the tone for real progress in how we all look at a radical re-thinking of what we would call “career”:

Whose life am I living? I’m sure you ask yourself that kind of question from time to time. What am I really good at? What is the purpose of my work? These are not new questions. Sooner or later, we all seek answers to them… Not only when we are struggling, but, paradoxically, when we are succeeding.

The challenge, then, is to find an “identity workspace“, where what you do “resonates with an audience”.

Audience is people. Again, what we do is important, that’s clear. More important, though, is for and with whom we do what we do, whose needs we address through what we do. This opens up an entirely new element, which we’ve kept unconscious for so long.

People, not what we do, will make us happy.

Finding people we like, finding our “audience”, people who inspire. Nurturing relationships which give us pleasure, stimulate our thinking…

All of this requires the ability to connect, and to do so in a wise manner, through careful selection. Selection is choice. Choosing who we like requires thinking, open thinking.

When I face people who come to discuss similar matters with me, I often ask a simple question: “How many people have you known, in your life?”. Answers to that vary from “A few dozen” to the bravest, who dare say “Maybe a thousand?”

Reality, though, is a lot more. Most of us highly underestimate the value of relationship and connection.

Someone living their life in professional services, since their mid thirties, is more likely to have known, in the broadest sense of the meaning, between four and in some cases as many as ten thousand people (think about all the people you’ve known during your school life, then the university, then your colleagues at work…).

We live a life of overexposure to connecting, not the opposite.

Hence, an important next steps towards a world of connecting wisely is that of sharpening the focus: “How many, of those thousand people, are those I like, those who can inspire me, those I find satisfaction in connecting with?” 

Let’s write those few names (10 to 20) down, in a moment of rest.

That much smaller and more precious list is a starting point for connecting wisely, a good base for building our audience, these are people I want to connect with regularly, people whose advice I want and need to seek regularly.

I want these people to know they are on my list.

Tommaso Arenare

www.twitter.com/tommaso_arenare