Date: 29.06.2022

Let the score take care of itself.

When playing a game of some sort. Or when you're competing in some sort of sport.

Will focusing on the scoreboard help you defeat your opponent? Or, a better alternative will be to focus on what you can do, to change the score in your favor?

Of course, it's the latter.

Fixating on the goal won't help much. It's a much wiser idea to focus on the processes, on the systems, on what you can do, that can lead to a win.

Strangely - or not - we focus on the former.

The simplest example is with a condition unattainable to millions - a person's weight.

We want to get fit. But we don't permanently adopt the lifestyle of fit people.

Our focus on the goal makes us do diets and buy weight loss pills. Things good for reaching a goal. But inadequate if we want to become truly healthy people.

See, it's not about the goals. It's about the person you want to become.

A goal-oriented mentality might lead to a better weight. But this will be only temporary.

A system-oriented mentality, in contrast. Will make you a healthier person for life.

I explore this idea further in one of my latest posts: 

Systems vs Goals: Why You Need Systems, Not Goals

Let me know what you think by replying to this email.

• Teaching to Transgress by bell hooks: Learning can help you survive in the world. You can get a job. You can do OK. But aren’t we interested in more than surviving? Bell hooks wanted more for her students. She wanted them to thrive. That’s why she positioned herself as a learner in the class. This was an important differentiation.

Full text for members only.

Interesting books I recently added to my reading list (and hopefully will read at some point):

• Passages: Predictable Crises of Adult Life by Gail Sheehy: A book about the various phases of life leading up to the midlife crisis. According to the author, when we are young adults, we usually rush into choosing a role so that we can "get on" with life. However, if we don't choose wisely. We'll probably repress an important part of ourselves.
• The Knowing-Doing Gap: How Smart Companies Turn Knowledge into Action by Jeffrey Pfeffer: The basic premise of this book is quite simple: We essentially know what to do, we just don't do it often enough. The Knowing-Doing Gap is mainly aimed at business owners. But I think that pretty much everyone can benefit from the book.

Gloria Jean Watkins (bell hooks)

Gloria Jean Watkins, better known for her pen name bell hooks, was an American scholar and activist. During her lifetime she published 40 books where she expressed her views on some of the most important topics of our time: race, gender, class, feminism, and education.

Her desire to inspire positive change is clearly sensible directly from her pen name. Ms. Watkins put "bell hooks" in lower case both to honor her great-grandmother and to convey an important concept - she wanted people to focus more on the ideas she was sharing, not so much on her personal qualities.

Big Idea: Expressing Freedom of Speech

Having freedom of speech and expressing your right of free speech are two different concepts.

Too often, we are either afraid to express our thoughts. Or we are taught that what we're saying doesn't matter. These beliefs usually form in the classroom. Where teachers instill in students the idea that they have nothing valuable to say. When this is deeply integrated into the still-developing brain of the child. They not only leave their ideas unexplored. But they also can't take themselves seriously.

Hooks argued that to progress, we need two things: Thinking critically and openly expressing our thoughts. 

Positive change and good ideas are born when explored. And the first step is always to start sharing.

From my desk:

• The Secret To Making Good Habits Stick: Identity-Based Habits: "Struggling to implement good habits into your life? Do this: Instead of focusing on what you want to achieve. Focus on who you want to be as a person. That’s the underlying concept of the term identity-based habits."

From around the web:

• Travel Is No Cure for the Mind: "Travel is the answer much of us look to when we feel the automation of life. The routine of waking up, getting ready, going to work, eating the same lunch, sitting in meetings, getting off work, going home, eating dinner, relaxing, going to sleep, and then doing it all over again can feel like a never-ending road that is housed within the confines of a mundane box."
• How to read: A great process on how to approach reading a book if you want to remember more from the books you read.

Arrival Fallacy

In our money-driven world, we often imagine that we'll be happy as soon as we get that promotion, own a new car, move to a new house, get X number of followers on social media... 

What we fail to predict is that even when we do end up having all of these things. Eternal happiness is not unlocked. We are still extraordinarily unsatisfied.

The arrival fallacy means that arriving at a certain destination - a place where you have what you always wanted - rarely makes us as happy as we'd expect.

Yes, we'll probably savor a dose of delight, but the sensation is quickly replaced by another set of thoughts. A void in our minds opens, puzzled by questions like: "Why I'm not phenomenally happy?" and "OK, now what?"

This type of thinking never leads to lasting satisfaction. It only leads to more wants. Hence, more dissatisfaction.

So if reaching our goals won't make us happy, what should we strive for?

Enjoying now!

Don't wait for the future to be happy. Find happiness in what you already have.

And for departure, here's a surprisingly useful quote that can help you get past a plateau state:

"Be brave enough to suck at something new!"

Not entirely sure who said it. But why he/she said it, is more important.

Too often, the problem we face is not that we don't want to make a positive change. We're simply afraid. Terrified that others will spot our incompetence. Comment on our unoriginality.

But the path forward is always the same - no matter what you're doing. Reaching a state of good work is always paved by bad work.

You don't have to be good at drawing, you just have to be careless of what others think about your drawing.

Or at least unoffended.

Feedback is good to get better. But to start, you need courage. Not critics.

Regards,

Ivaylo Durmonski

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