Sometimes when people are smiling and happy they are really silently suffering on the inside. 15%+ of depressed individuals put on their happy face (see the below article). They call it “smiling depression.”
Support others by allowing them to be real and authentic instead of feeling pressured to put on a brave face, be positive and be in a good mood.
Learn to create a psychological safe environment where people can be where they are currently at emotionally. Otherwise you are creating a culture of impression making where people are acting to fit in. That’s toxic and kills morale and performance.
Curiosity, learning and personal development are undervalued qualities. Someone who values learning over their lifetime recognizes that you can learn something from everyone you meet.
Seek best practices from those that mastered the craft or skill.
Learning wisdom can come from any person, anywhere and at anytime. You just have to be willing and open to take it in.
Many business leaders, managers, and owners want to come up with business breakthroughs that will propel them to new career heights and/or help them their business. I want to discuss today how the greatest people of our time use creativity to create more breakthroughs.
The secret of creativity is that it is combinatorial – made up of a combination of things. Nothing is entirely original. Everything builds on what came before.
We create by taking existing pieces of inspiration, knowledge, skill, and insight that we gather over the course of our lives and recombining them into incredible new creations.
Let me explain with this story about Picasso.
Picasso is sitting in the park working on several paintings. A woman walks by, recognizes him, and begs with him to draw her portrait. He’s in a good mood, so he agrees. A few minutes later, he gives her a portrait. The lady is elated, she cries out about how this masterpiece captures the very essence of her soul and character. She is enamored with its beauty. She asks how much she owes him, “$5,000.” said Picasso. The woman is taken aback, shocked, upset and asks how that’s even possible given it only took him 5 minutes. Picasso looks up and, without missing a beat, says: “No, madam, it took me my whole life.”
“The idea that in order for us to truly create and contribute to the world, we have to be able to connect countless dots, to cross-pollinate ideas from a wealth of disciplines, to combine and recombine these pieces to build” new solutions, processes and more.
Think about it like legos. “The more of these building blocks we have, and the more diverse their shapes and colors, the more interesting our castles will become. Because if we only have one color and one shape, it greatly limits how much we can create, even within our one area of expertise.”
Your success, failures, fulfillment and more is based on what you do every day and the diversity of your experiences (people, education, ideas, etc.). It’s not a linear process like school. It’s piecing together a lifetime of concepts, ideas, experiences, beliefs, values, and relationships and creating something new. h
Truth & beliefs are two separate things. Leaders & managers OFTEN get them mixed up and it’s crushes their career because they argue them because they need to be right (or they are closed off from other possibilities). Here is why your beliefs aren’t truth (and goes to epidemic level of poor self awareness).
Truth is 1+1=2. That’s a fact. Belief is true to you, but a belief isn’t necessarily true to me. It’s an opinion (& emotional not logical) even though is may feel or seem to be the truth (such as a particular strategy, process or way of thinking).
If you and I are sitting at a table eating dinner we can both point to the table and say, “Yeah, that’s a table.” How do I know that? Because you’re experiencing it and I’m experiencing it. That’s the truth. We look up at the sky that’s the truth. But you telling me that best TV show is Game of Thrones, that’s not true. That’s just your belief.
I challenge people constantly on what’s true and what’s not true. And then are you willing to give up your old beliefs and accept new ones.
If not, you’ll get stuck (& limit your growth), alienate people, underperform, and find yourself in some very difficult situations that you could have avoided.
1) You can only master a few things. You’ll feel like a novice most of the time. Why? Because in today’s world, you are required to do things the first time more than ever before.
2) Everyone who is advancing suffers from imposter syndrome (100% of the 1000 leaders I’ve interviewed said they have it. You will too).
3) Confidence-Competence loop. You have to break it. Otherwise you’ll always feel like your not enough.
What should you do:
1) Education, empathy, and self-compassion. If business was easy everyone would be successful. They aren’t. It’s ongoing challenging situation. You are never done learning.
2) Focus more on your strengths than what you lack
3) Develop yourself in self-awareness, relationships, leadership, management and managing/engaging with others
4) Realize failure is a part of the success process. You only fail if you stop.
5) Manage your emotions and emotional landscape. We are all emotional. Ignoring this hurts you and everyone you interact with (live and digitally).
Facing fear is how you move past it. Ignoring it isn’t. What you resist will persist. It won’t go away. In fact, it will get worse.
Taking action and using uncertainty as your friend will help you move through fear much more quickly. You won’t ever be fearless, but can manage fear much, much better!
