Feeling successful Even the most well-accomplished people can feel defeated. Why should someone feel so even after winning? It could be because(1) The price they paid to win in one area may be too high at the expense of other areas of life(2) They won but not on their terms(3) They had hoped to experience …
Feeling successful | Charisma | Unsolicited advice Read More »
Step away Recently, my struggle to finish the ThoughtLetter made me realize the importance of stepping away. I was trying hard to write and re-write the same thing in different ways but it did not help until I forced myself to take a short break and move from my desk to do something. Mental pause …
Step away | Allow don’t try | Relationship with failure Read More »
Inner state Ambition is the outcome you want to achieve while aspiration is the kind of person you hope to become. However, there is another dimension to consider in your pursuits. It is the inner state you want to be in while you are pursuing your goals. They are your thoughts, emotions, or mental states. …
Inner state | Managing win and loss | Peter Principle Read More »
FOPO We are living in FOPO: fear of other people’s opinions. It is evident in my recent interactions, both at the professional and personal levels, where people attribute why they do or do not do certain things. As I reflected, I realized it comes from a deep sense of insecurity about the loss of love …
FOPO | Patience in the ‘when’ | Step out of yourself Read More »
Spirit of true competition Federer and Nadal are fiercely competitive. However, Federer and Nadal are also good friends off-court. In a zero-sum game like tennis, such a relationship seems like a paradox. What makes it feasible is their spirit for true competition. They value the challenge from their opponent, which brings out their best effort …
Spirit of true competition | Pay it forward | Nurturing leaders Read More »
Create your situation You delivered a great presentation that wowed the client and you are now under tremendous pressure to repeat the same performance. The pressure to deliver brilliantly each time can be huge and overwhelming. One way to deal with it is to focus outward. Instead of attributing the outcome entirely to your abilities, …
Create your situation | Suffering in silence | Away from the rat race Read More »
Enjoyment as criteria More than half of our lives are filled with chasing goals. We usually make SMART goals and evaluate our activities against the performance criteria. We often ask ourselves ‘Did I give my best?’ for everything we do, without knowing what best means in some cases. Then one fine day we realize that …
Enjoyment as criteria | Midnight rule | On his blindness Read More »
Tribute to Daniel Kahneman Behavioral Science is no more about biases and nudges. It has evolved beyond these frames into the multi-disciplinary domain. The field got its prominence because of a few thought leaders like Daniel Kahneman who made behavioral science more visible to the larger world outside academics. Through his work, he proposed to …
Tribute to Daniel Kahneman | Beliefs about power | Contrast makes ordinary special Read More »
Hard thinking In my younger days, hard work was seen as a golden virtue. Many stories and narratives celebrated the hardworking chap who toiled to become successful. As I grew up I realized hard work was not the key to being successful. It was the hard thinking that gave people their edge. It is not …
Hard thinking | Challenging customs | Brain plasticity Read More »
Defining productivity Living on a farm can shift our perspectives about how we define work. As I watched the people carry about their work caring for their livestock, cleaning the pens, I wondered how they define their productivity. Working on the farm is hard work with a lot of uncertainties and constraints. Yet, Farmers seemed …
Defining productivity | Tribute to Wordsworth | Exhaustion and default Read More »
