La crise, quelle crise ?

  • Day 470 – The struggle

    Day 470Some days are better than others. Some days, you struggle on that idea, you stumble upon this concept, you are not clear, ideas are blurred. One of those days. It’s what Steven Pressfield, the author of the War of Art, calls resistance. Resistance is my struggle, the little devil that spoils my effort, the nasty little voice that says you will not be able to do it.

    You get rid of the struggle IMHO in two steps:

    1. Acknowledging the struggle is real. Because it is, if you struggle do not ignore it or do not bang your head on your table, fighting the struggle with its own power, it will only reinforce it. The struggle’s power increase with your energy to fight it.
    2. Ignoring it by acting. Do not fight the struggle, change the action. The struggle will die by itself and next time or a further time, it will disappear like magic.

    Everybody has the capacity to win over our own struggles, doing it with sheer force will result in energy drain. We have to be smarter, and we can!

  • Day 469 – The most powerful word for productivity

    Day 469It’s one of the shortest word in many languages and what I consider the most powerful. It’s one that will allow to unleash the best ever productivity and stay focus. It’s one my kids prefer when asking them to do something. And yet, it’s one we fear to pronounce sometimes to avoid the discussion. It’s the word No!

    • Do say No to people who want to overload you with stuff they can’t do
    • Do say No to tasks you have no bandwidth to execute well
    • Do say No to events that do not fit into your goals or interests

    We have just one life to be great, do not let outside forces draw you away from delivering your greatness, learn to say No, with a smile!

  • Day 468 – What if…?

    I like this question, with an ellipsis, what if…? What if people were nice? What if the earth was turning west? What if plastic was entirely forbidden? And so on. When you are stuck on a problem, what-if allows the mind to wander in places it would not normally go to. It’s said Einstein discovered relativity while seeing himself riding a photon. Whether it’s true or not is irrelevant, what matters is the question he asked, what if I was riding a photon?

    Progress is only made possible by the virtues of chance, necessity or intelligence. A what-if question allows all dimensions to play together to find rather spectacular answers. Human imagination knows no limit, tap into it, it’s one of those resource you cannot deplete!

  • Day 467 – Growth or decline?

    We hear from time to time proponents of economic decline to stop environment and development challenges. But what if human beings had only hope to barely survive and stop growing, personally, socially, economically, and spiritually? It would be the beginning of a steady decline that will eventually lead to death. Humans need to grow, we have the intelligence to grow holistically, it’s a matter of choice and conviction. The best is yet to come!

  • Day 466 – Change

    Day 466So much have been written on change, and this article, entitled Why We Stay In Crappy Situations (And How To Get Out Of Them), by its simplicity I think struck a chord. I particularly liked the following sentence in the solution part: « We must be willing to surrender what we are for what we can become. » You cannot grow into a butterfly if you do not abandon your chrysalides.

    As Robin Sharma rightly says: Change is tough at the beginning, messy in the middle and gorgeous in the end.

    Keep the end in sight and run for change! And do not listen to naysayers that keep repeating that worse is coming! Run!

  • Day 465 – What will be your 5 wins today ?

    Day 465This morning, my tweet feed contained this little message from Robin Sharma: What will be your 5 wins today?     And the picture on the tweet was the one I put on the right of this post. This is just so simple and so powerful. Every day, all of us do little things, win little victories, and contribute to a better world, most of the time without noticing. This post reminds us to notice. When we become intentional, we increase our footprint. When we become intentional, we notice and other notice too, even if they do not say it (but this is another story). So what are your 5 intentions of the day that will be your 5 wins today? Let me share mine to help you:

    • My daily running routine is generally around 5 to 6 kilometers. I felt for a while that I needed a little more, so today, I left 15 minutes sooner and did 8 kilometers. I feel great! – 8:00 AM – WIN 1, won!
    • I generally postpone the writing of this daily blog post to later in the day, when I have a gap, but it generates some stress, so today, my win was to write it before 8:30 AM, and here it is (I scheduled it for later though) – 8:26AM WIN 2, won
    • I booked time to prepare for two important meetings I have today so I can get more impactful and contribute more during those. Win in preparation. UPDATE – 11:35 AM, WIN 3, won!
    • I set the goal of cleaning my due tasks. There are not much, 4, but it will require some work without being disturbed. Time blocked in my calendar. Win ahead. UPDATE – 12:04 PM, WIN 4, won!
    • I will review my personal task list for the week-end before I leave on holiday in 10 days, so I am sure nothing will have been forgotten so I can benefit fully from my holiday with my wife and elder son. Beautiful win in sight. UPDATE – 10:18PM, WIN 5, won!

    Voilà, this is not that hard. It took me 5 minutes. And I have a powerful blog post and a fantastic day ahead. Thank you Monsieur Sharma, once again you rock!

  • Day 464 – Extremes are always dangerous

    Whether it’s called Ukip in Great Britain, Tea Party in the US, Front National in France or many other extremist parties across the world, they are all dangerous, because rooted on the hatred of others. I have said and written multiple times that diversity is a richness. By reducing their views to their own nation and wanting to close it to external influences, they refuse to see how the world has positively grown over the last centuries and particularly since WW2.

    These days, I am fascinated by the fact that a rich culture like the German one during the Weimar Republic had turn into a racist and hatred one under the leadership of Hitler, in a matter of years. Yes, there was the great crisis of 1929, the humiliation of the Versailles Treaty, but moving from a rich and diverse culture and diving into such a dark one is fascinating.

    I do not have a definitive view nor answer on this transformation, but it shows that things can go fast and can go unoticed for a certain period of time. I think that the « war » between the Le Pen father and daughter is the proof that those parties are rooted in denial of what happened a hundred years ago. Those parties cannot solve a country issue, they can only transform light into darkness because they close the door to world realities. Voilà, devil hides in the details and solutions are never in extremes.

  • Day 463 – What you should focus on…

    No comment.

    Day 463

    Source : https://twitter.com/JongeGeesten/status/585494879763099650

  • Day 462 – When to pull the plug?

    Day 462Success is the result of many failures. Many stories have been told around successes and failures. One salient point is generally about persistence. But persistence is a two-edge sword. Persisting while you know you’ll get through the hurdles is good and necessary. However persisting beyond the point of complete failure is mad. How many businesses have persisted and bankrupted their owners and investors? Probably too many.

    It’s interesting to discuss with professional traders and derive some learning. Successful traders are cold-blood human beings. They can weather storms, and we know there are violent storms in the stock exchange, but more than anybody else, they know when to get rid of a losing position> they will cut their losses before it’s too deep, for a simple reason: it’s better to lose one arm than both! But how do they do it? They follow a simple rule: they set a target and fire the action when the target is reached. There’s no emotion, just action!

    The same should happen with any project you pursue! Set a limit, persist until you reach it and if you reach it, pull the plug! It may happen you never reach your limit so you may persist until you reach success. But the lesson here is to avoid being stupid in face of adversity. In each and every project, there is risk. Risk ties to our fears and fear is an emotion you need to go beyond. With a limit, you do not kill the risk nor the fear, you inoculate the emotion. It’s like a vaccine: you may catch the disease, but it will not be deadly! So to answer the question I asked in the title is fairly simple: set a limit and pull the plug when you reach it!

  • Day 461 – Debt

    Day 461Debt is the price we pay to live in a modern world. Stop allowing a state to go into debt and most of our infrastructure will stop being maintained, large scale projects will not exist due to lack of funding. Debt can be good and debt can be bad, like most things in life by the way. However, with the various issues around debt in lots of countries and economies across the world, we may need to rethink progress. The world has grown so fast in the last century, so our debt. We will leave an almost dead planet to our kids and a debt they will make years to repay.

    Although I am not a macro economist, not an economist, I keep thinking of debt has good and bad, depending on whether it’s generating wealth or not. I could had to this its neutrality to the environment. In other word, a wealth generating debt that is taxing our environment is bad and so is a non-wealth generating debt that is neutral or positive to our environment. Although we can question the latter in terms of wealth, since if it’s positive to the environment, then it’s generating a certain form of wealth.

    Look at your debts. Get rid of those that are making other wealthy and keep those that are making yourself wealthy!