Impactful ideas that challenge my thinking. I hope they'll challenge yours too.
Impactful ideas that challenge my thinking. I hope they'll challenge yours too.
When faced with the task of writing, many of us are quick to admit, "I have a wealth of ideas, but I struggle to find the right words to express them," or "I'm well-versed in my subject, but I can't organise my thoughts in a clear and interesting way." If you resonate with this, you've come to the right place. My consistent writing journey over the past two years has taught me that writing isn't as enigmatic as it seems. In reality, it's about mastering certain skills, many of which you already possess. Don't misunderstand me; writing is indeed challenging, but it's not unique in that regard. Many aspects of life are difficult, yet we learn to navigate them proficiently.I believe the primary obstacle with writing is our tendency to fixate on the end product of writing, neglecting the actual process of writing. This issue is further compounded by the widespread belief that writing ability is an innate talent, which can serve as a significant deterrent.My perspective on writing transformed after reading "Thinking On Paper" by V.A. Howard, PhD, and J.H. Barton, M.A. Their book introduced me to three key propositions about writing that have significantly demystified the process for me. These insights have not only helped me understand writing better, but also paved the way for me to hone my writing skills for a variety of practical purposes.Three propositions about writingIn the following sections, I will delve into these three propositions: Writing as meaning-making, writing as a staged performance, and writing as a tool for understanding. These concepts have been instrumental in my journey towards mastering the art of writing.Writing is meaning-makingAt its core, writing is an act of thinking. It's a process where the writer creates meaning using words, and the reader, in turn, uses those words to reconstruct that meaning. Let's delve deeper into this concept.It's crucial to understand that written communication is rarely perfect and seldom complete. When we write, we strive to create meaning with words, and readers attempt to use those words to recreate that meaning. However, words, even among speakers of the same language, don't always convey the full meaning. Our understanding is limited by our grasp of language, which is influenced by many factors, including context. For instance, the phrase "stand up" might seem straightforward, but its meaning can shift dramatically depending on the context. It could mean physically rising to your feet or metaphorically standing up against oppression. If the context isn't adequately conveyed in the writing, the intended meaning may not be fully transmitted. There's no guarantee that you'll be able to fully articulate your meaning or that your reader will fully comprehend it. The potential for success or failure exists on both ends.This realization leads us to an important conclusion: the primary goal of writing is not communication, but meaning-making. We use words to translate our innate understanding into tangible meaning on a page. This perspective is liberating for two main reasons. First, it means that everyone can—and indeed should—write freely and often, without the pressure of intending to share our work with others. The act of writing serves to articulate our thoughts, giving them structure and clarity. Second, it relieves us of the pressure to produce perfect or complete writing. Our writing is merely a snapshot of our current understanding, representing our best attempt at creating meaning from that understanding. Initially, the goal isn't to communicate our ideas as clearly as possible, but to transfer our thoughts from our minds to the page.This understanding underscores the importance of writing as a tool for personal growth and learning. Whether or not you intend to publish your work, writing can help you clarify your thoughts, structure your ideas, and learn to articulate them clearly and concisely for maximum impact. It's a process of self-discovery and self-improvement, a journey that evolves with each word you put down on paper.Writing is a staged performanceConsider this scenario: if you were asked to chat with a friend at home about a topic that interests you for five minutes every week, you'd likely accomplish this with ease. Each week, you might have new insights to share or fresh perspectives on previous discussions. Now, imagine the same task, but instead of conversing with a friend, you're speaking with Oprah on her live TV show. Suddenly, the task seems daunting, and you become hypercritical of your words. The task becomes challenging, even though speaking is second nature to us and we know what we want to say. The difference lies in the awareness of an audience, particularly one that intimidates us. Writing follows a similar pattern.As a writer, the moment you become conscious of a potential audience (including your future self), writing transforms into a staged performance. However, it's crucial not to view it as a performance until you're ready for it to be. Initially, writing should be a private activity, a means of articulating your thoughts on paper. The shift to performance mode occurs when you step back to analyze your work, scrutinizing its sound and the clarity of its message. Writing, therefore, involves two distinct stages: free-flowing, uninhibited articulation, and critical revision of initial thoughts. We oscillate between these two states of mind—the struggle to articulate and the struggle to communicate. However, it's essential to keep these stages separate; attempting to do both simultaneously will probably be counterproductive.This understanding is liberating because it allows me to switch off my "audience awareness" during the early stages of writing and focus solely on my thoughts and ideas—the discovery phase. This stage encourages full exploration, speculation, intuition, and imagination. When the time is right, I transition into "communication mode," focusing on critiquing and reshaping my work for presentation. This separation is vital because the processes of discovery and criticism often disrupt each other. They have divergent objectives and require different mental attitudes. Notably, criticism, with its ruthless penchant for rejection, stands in stark contrast to the exploratory nature of discovery.Writing is a tool for understanding The primary aim of writing, much like reading, is to understand. It's only after gaining this understanding that we can share it with readers. In this context, writing serves as a tool for thinking. Once our thoughts are penned down, we have the opportunity to critically evaluate them and compare them with ideas from other sources, leading to a more robust and balanced understanding of the subject. Therefore, even if your private notes may seem unintelligible to others (or even to your future self), their value as thoughtful explorations should not be underestimated.This perspective encourages us not to shy away from writing that may never see the light of publication. These seemingly throwaway writings play a crucial role in enhancing our understanding and serve as the foundation for successful writing.This is not to downplay the importance of writing that communicates effectively. Instead, it underscores the idea that the act of writing itself can pave the way to producing content that communicates well. After all, editing requires a text to refine.“Putting articulation before communication also reminds us that whether thinking silently, aloud, or in writing, we do not so much send our thoughts in pursuit of words as use words to pursue our thoughts. Later, by revising the words that first snared our thoughts, we may succeed in capturing the understanding of others.” — V.A. Howard, PhD and J.H. Barton, M.A, Thinking On Paper: Refine, Express and Actually Generate Ideas by Understanding the Processes of the MindWriting is thinkingAs I continue to develop in my writing journey, I've come to appreciate the profound interconnectedness of writing and cognitive processes. Writing, in essence, is an externalized form of thinking. It's a tool that allows us to articulate our thoughts, provide them with structure, and clarify them, regardless of whether we intend to share them publicly or not.Once our thoughts are penned down, we can easily compare them with ideas from other sources, bypassing the limitations of our memory. This process fosters a deeper and more robust understanding of the subject at hand. It's only after this stage that we should consider writing as a performance, critiquing our work with the intention of presenting it to an audience.The ability to articulate thoughts clearly and effectively is a potent tool. As Jordan Peterson says, “If you can think and speak and write, you are absolutely deadly. Nothing can get in your way.” Moreover, the ability to formulate coherent arguments and present them effectively can pave the way to success. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit justreflections.bhekani.com
Today's piece was inspired by (and borrows from) Erik Davtyan's insightful medium post. His is specifically for Software Engineers so I figured I'd expand it for a more general audience. Without further ado, let's go. In the realm of career advice, we often encounter a ton of tips and tricks on how to land the perfect job. But what if we flipped the script? What if, instead, we explored the art of not getting a job? In this guide, I'll give you nine easy strategies that can lead you down the path of perpetual unemployment. So, whether you're looking to maintain your blissful unemployment or you're an oddball who actually wants a job, this guide will provide you with a fresh perspective. Remember, sometimes knowing what not to do is just as important as knowing what to do. The Art of ProcrastinationWhy rush to send out CVs when there's an entire world of procrastination to explore? Procrastination is often misunderstood and maligned, but it can be an intriguing journey of leisure and pleasure. It's not just about delaying tasks; it's about immersing yourself in activities that provide immediate gratification and pleasure.So put away that CV and try diving into the depths of the internet, where an ocean of knowledge and entertainment awaits. You could spend hours, even days, exploring fascinating articles, engaging in online debates, or getting lost in the labyrinth of social media. The internet is a treasure trove of information and amusement that can keep you occupied indefinitely.If that's not your jam, you could binge-watch your favourite shows, an activity that has become a cultural phenomenon in the age of streaming services. TV series can offer an escape from reality and a chance to immerse yourself in different worlds. Why focus on your own boring life when you could spend hours, even days, following the more exciting lives of your favourite characters, experiencing their triumphs, tragedies, and transformations?So, who needs a job when you can embrace a different way of life, one that values leisure and pleasure over productivity and efficiency? So, put away that CV and embrace the art of procrastination.The Mystery of the Generic CVWhen you finally decide to break away from the blissful world of procrastination and update your CV, it's important to remember one key rule: keep it as generic as possible. After all, who doesn't love a good mystery? You learnt that from the TV show, remember? Instead of tailoring your resume to highlight your unique skills, experiences, and achievements, aim for ambiguity. This will perfectly optimise you for perpetual unemployment. Don't list specific technical skills or soft skills. Stick to vague, generic terms that don't provide any specific information about your skills and experiences. Phrases like "hard worker", "detail-oriented", “problem-solver”, “strong communication skills”, or “results-driven” are perfect. These are meaningless fluff on a CV. They give absolutely no indication of what you're actually good at, leaving potential employers guessing. Make it a point not to provide examples of tasks where these skills were displayed, that might make you attractive. We don't want that. In the experience section, simply list your job titles and the dates you held them, but leave out any details about what you actually did in those roles. This will ensure that employers are left scratching their heads, trying to figure out what you actually bring to the table.Remember, the goal here is to create a resume that is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma. Employers love a good puzzle, right? And if they can't figure out what you're good at, they can't hire you. It's a win-win situation! So, embrace the mystery of the generic CV, and watch as the job offers don't roll in.The Non-Interview TechniqueIf you did your best on the last point but by some unfortunate twist of fate, you find yourself scheduled for an interview, it's time to deploy the Non-Interview Technique. This strategy is all about being as unprepared as possible to ensure you maintain your blissful state of unemployment.First, don't research the company. By not knowing anything about the company, you'll effectively communicate your fabulous lack of interest and commitment, which is sure to send the right signal.Second, don't let interview prep interfere with your regular online debates and doom-scrolling. You want to maintain the mystery and get surprised by all the questions during the interview and wing it. Rambling, off-topic, or nonsensical answers are sure to leave your interviewer scratching their head.Third, punctuality is overrated. Arrive late. This not only shows a lack of respect for the interviewer's time but also suggests you're not particularly interested in the job.Finally, a yawn or two during the interview can be a powerful tool in your arsenal. If you're feeling particularly daring, consider checking your watch or phone frequently during the interview to really drive home your lack of engagement.The Non-Interview Technique is all about showing that you'd really rather be somewhere else and that there are other things that are more important to you than this interview. By following these steps, you're sure to leave your interviewer with a strong impression. The Loner LifestyleWho needs connections when you've got solitude? If you interact with people too much you might uncover opportunities and get your foot in the door. You don't want that. Embrace the hermit lifestyle and avoid networking opportunities like the plague.Industry events are a no-go. These gatherings are typically filled with professionals in your field who are eager to exchange business cards, share insights, and discuss potential job opportunities. So, steer clear of industry conferences, seminars, and networking events. Instead, enjoy the comfort of your own home, far away from the hustle and bustle of the professional world.Social media interactions should be kept to a minimum. To maintain your unemployment streak, it's best to avoid platforms like LinkedIn and Twitter or, at the very least, avoid any professional interactions on them. Stick to vibes.Remember, the fewer people who know you don't have a job, the fewer people there are to ruin your unemployment streak with job offers.Choose the tranquillity of unemployment over the chaos of job hunting. Forget about networking and start enjoying the peace and quiet of solitude. After all, who needs connections when you've got the comfort of your own company?The Art of Giving UpIn the rare case that you pass the first interview in some miraculous way, it's important to master the Art of Giving Up. This is not about a lack of capability or potential, but rather a strategic move to maintain your blissful state of unemployment.During the interview process, there are often several stages designed to assess your skills and suitability for the role. This could include a technical interview, a take-home task, or a series of problem-solving exercises. These stages are typically designed to challenge you, to push you out of your comfort zone, and to see how you perform under pressure. You don't want that. You prefer the comfort zone and the warm embrace of the familiar.So, don't hesitate to throw in the towel. If you ever feel stuck, give up. Don't try to work through the problem, don't ask for clarification, and definitely don't attempt to come up with a solution. Simply throw your hands up and admit defeat. This will not only end the interview process quickly but also leave a lasting impression of your commitment to unemployment.Don't waste your precious free time. After all, they're not paying you for this time, right? And let's be honest, the actual job pay was probably going to be too low, anyway. Make up an excuse and abandon it. You could say you didn't understand the task, you didn't have time to complete it, or simply that you didn't feel like doing it.The Art of Giving Up is all about choosing ease over effort, surrender over struggle. It's about recognizing when to step back and let go, rather than pushing forward and fighting on. So that you can return to your own super-interesting, stress-free life. Who needs the stress of a job when you can enjoy the tranquillity of unemployment?The Leisure LifeWork is work, and leisure is leisure. They're two distinct aspects of life, and in our quest for perpetual unemployment, it's important to keep them separate. Your work is a job, a means to an end. It isn't a hobby, a passion, or a pastime. It's something you do to earn a living, not something you do for fun or fulfilment. So, when you're not working, it's crucial to use your free time for activities that don't improve your professional skills.Daydreaming about the future is a leisurely activity that requires little effort but offers a lot of enjoyment. It allows you to imagine different possibilities, explore various scenarios, and even plan your ideal life, all without the constraints of reality. Couple this with inaction and you have the perfect combo to burn away those extra hours.Remember, you're going to work a lot in your future career anyway, so why bother now? Don't even try to contribute to your industry or take on extra tasks. You shouldn't do work for other people for free. If you're in a team, just use what the others have done and never contribute. This not only saves you effort but also ensures you don't stand out or attract attention, which might lead to job offers.The Art of Ignoring FeedbackIn our pursuit of the blissful state of unemployment, we must master the Art of Ignoring Feedback, a strategy that promotes stagnation over growth and comfort over change.Whether it's constructive criticism from a potential employer or well-intentioned advice from a friend, feedback might provide insights into our strengths and weaknesses, offering a roadmap for personal and professional development, so we're going to ignore it. After all, who needs growth and improvement when you can remain blissfully stagnant?Ignoring feedback is not just about dismissing others' opinions. It's about embracing a mindset of complacency, about choosing comfort over challenge. It's about rejecting the opportunity to learn and grow, and instead, maintaining the status quo. It's about keeping those blinders on, focusing on the present, and ignoring the possibilities of the future.So, the next time you receive feedback, whether it's a critique of your resume, a suggestion for improving your interview skills, or advice on job-hunting strategies, be sure to ignore it. Dismiss it, forget it, and move on. The Joy of UnreliabilityIn our goal of a life of unemployment, it's crucial to cultivate a reputation for unreliability. This counterintuitive strategy is all about embracing inconsistency and unpredictability, traits that are typically frowned upon in the professional world but are key to maintaining your blissful state of unemployment.First, make a habit of showing up late. Whether it's for an interview, a meeting, or a casual catch-up, tardiness is a surefire way to communicate your lack of respect for other people's time. It sends a clear message that you're not committed or serious, traits that employers typically love to avoid.Second, in the world of work, deadlines are sacred. They ensure projects move forward and that everyone is on the same page. But in our quest for unemployment, we're going to disregard them. By consistently missing deadlines, we will demonstrate a lack of responsibility and a disregard for the importance of time management, further solidifying our reputation for unreliability.Third, forgetting about commitments is the cherry on top of your unreliability cake. Whether it's a promise to send an email, a commitment to complete a task, or an agreement to meet at a certain time, forget it. That is a sure way to show your lack of reliability. It suggests that you're disorganized and untrustworthy, traits that are sure to deter potential employers.The Art of UnprofessionalismFinally, if you really want to nail in your blissful unemployment, master the Art of Unprofessionalism. This strategy is all about rejecting the norms and expectations of the professional world and embracing a more casual, carefree approach.Let's talk about attire. In the professional world, how you dress can say a lot about you. It can communicate respect, seriousness, and commitment. So, instead of dressing appropriately for interviews or meetings, opt for casual, inappropriate attire. Think flip-flops for a corporate interview, a t-shirt for a formal event, or even pyjamas for a video call. Next, language is a powerful tool. In professional settings, always use slang, colloquialisms, and casual phrases in your interactions. This will not only show a lack of professionalism, but also suggest a lack of respect for the formalities of the business world.So there you have it, my foolproof guide on how to never get a job. Follow these tips, and you'll be on the fast track to a lifetime of blissful unemployment. But remember, if you're one of those oddballs who actually wants to get a job, you might want to do the exact opposite of everything I've just suggested. Happy job hunting, or not! This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit justreflections.bhekani.com
Art is a curious thing.Have you ever wondered why people continue to flock to art exhibitions, lining up just to catch a glimpse of artworks like the Mona Lisa, which they've seen many times in books or online? It's the same reason we love to rewatch our favorite movies or reread cherished books. It's not that the artwork, film, or book changes, but rather our interaction with it does.Consider this: "There is one peculiarity that real works of art possess in common. At each fresh reading, one notices some change in them, as if the sap of life ran in their leaves, and with skies and plants, they had the power to alter their shape and color from season to season."These profound words by Virginia Woolf encapsulate why art holds such a deep, revered place in my heart. Art has the power to evolve with us.Art, much like life itself, is dynamic, alive, and constantly evolving. Each time we stand before a painting like the Mona Lisa, we don't just see the same old enigmatic smile. The artwork mirrors our own evolving experiences, perspectives, and understanding. It draws us into a reflective dialogue. Like a mirror, it reflects our own gaze back at us, intertwined with our growing life experiences. The Mona Lisa of today might feel different from the Mona Lisa of last year because we are different.This continuous exchange between the observer and the art, the reader and the text, is what makes each encounter an exhilarating, fresh experience, no matter how many times it is revisited. Why is this important? Because art in all its forms—whether literature, visual, or performance art—invites us to a conversation. A conversation not just with the artist's work, but also with ourselves. It aids in our understanding of self and the world. It's a means of mapping our own evolution as individuals.Take, for instance, my personal experience with George Orwell's Animal Farm. As a child, I found the story immensely intriguing. The thought of animals running a farm and the vivid imagery it evoked made it an enjoyable read. But as I've grown older, my appreciation for the book has taken on new depth. It isn't merely about the animals and their escapades for me anymore. It's about the complex nuances of life, politics, and the human condition—elements that I was oblivious to as a child. The words of the book haven't changed, but my understanding of them has. This shift in perspective is a testament to my own growth and transformation over the years.Engaging with art isn't just about appreciating aesthetics or getting lost in an interesting narrative. It's about chronicling our journey and our growth as individuals. Our favorite art form becomes a canvas that bears the imprint of our growing consciousness and our maturing understanding of life.And in that sense, every brushstroke we add through our experiences makes it an ongoing self-portrait, a living biography of our lives. Each interaction with a cherished piece of art is a new chapter in that biography. It's a tangible reflection of how we have matured and changed as people, making the art itself feel fresh each time.The Bible is the ultimate embodiment of living art. Each of its verses seems to pulsate with a potent vitality, its teachings ever-evolving to adapt to our shifting life circumstances. Just like the changing seasons, the Bible mirrors our growth and evolution, echoing our deepening understanding of life.Contemplating a passage like Psalm 23, year after year, is essentially an exercise in spiritual autobiography. It's like assembling a living testament of our journey, recording the progression of our spiritual comprehension.But there is yet another purpose I believe it serves. God is a being of infinite complexity, unfathomable depth, and unimaginable breadth. His vastness is so great that there isn't a single human construct that could fully encapsulate His entire essence. However, in His divine wisdom, God has crafted an exquisite solution to the dilemma of making Himself accessible to us—one that leverages the dynamic, living nature of art. His chosen medium? The written word.At its core, the Bible is the most exquisite work of God's artistry. It is a canvas onto which He has depicted His infinite complexity in a way that we, fallible humans, can begin to comprehend. It establishes a resilient bond between the divine and the human, forging new connections each day. It remains accessible and enlightening whether you're a humble commoner or an acclaimed scholar. The Bible is more than just a book; it is the grand narrative of God's boundless love for humanity. It is a flowing wellspring of wisdom, chronicling our unique journey with the divine. By engaging with it, we enter into a conversation with the divine, one that develops and deepens as we do.The significance of engaging repeatedly with art goes beyond mere repetition; it serves a crucial purpose in the journey of every individual. By immersing ourselves in art on multiple occasions, we open doors to gaining a deeper understanding of ourselves and comprehending our own evolution. Through the transformative power of art, we can explore the depths of our emotions, thoughts, and experiences, ultimately leading to greater self-awareness and personal growth.In line with this, I want to emphasize the importance of reading the Bible, regardless of one's religious affiliations. The Bible stands as a remarkable testament to the power of art in fostering self-understanding. It holds a unique position as the most influential artistic work in human history, transcending cultural and religious boundaries. Within its pages, profound narratives, teachings, and reflections are woven together, offering insightful perspectives into the human condition. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit justreflections.bhekani.com
This weekend, I went to a movie with my wife and some friends. We arrived a little early and, having secured our tickets, we decided to wait in the lobby. As we waited, a discussion started about an upcoming film I'm eagerly anticipating: Spiderman: Across the Spiderverse. If you know me, you're aware that I can become quite passionate when discussing movies like this. We were all talking animatedly about the excitement of seeing a black Spiderman again, when my wife, intrigued by our enthusiasm, wanted to know what film had us so thrilled. I promptly searched for it on Google and handed my phone to her. Her reaction is the reason for this rant article. She exclaimed, “Agh! Kanti ngoPopayi”, meaning “Agh, it's a cartoon!”She was prepared to dismiss it outright the moment she realized it was animated. This is how many people react to animation. The story, characters, and art can far surpass any other movie, but people are put off simply because there are no live actors involved.Animation deserves better!There's this prevailing notion that animated movies or TV shows are just for children. A glaring example of this misconception occurred during the 2022 Academy Awards. And no, I don't mean the infamous incident with Will Smith and Chris Rock. Other noteworthy things happened that night, you know. The award for the best-animated picture was presented by three people: Lily James, Halle Bailey, and Naomi Scott. They all share a commonality—they've each played Disney Princesses in live-action remakes of Disney classics. Lily James played Cinderella, Naomi Scott played Jasmine in Aladdin, and Hailey is set to portray Ariel in the upcoming Little Mermaid. But what grabbed my attention was not their shared history, but their shared words:“All these characters hold such a special place in our hearts. Because animated films make up some of our most formative movie experiences as kids. So many kids watch these movies, so many kids watch these movies over and over … and over and over and over again. I see some parents out there know exactly what we're talking about…”This speech infuriated animation enthusiasts everywhere.Animation is rarely recognized as high art or “cinema,” even at a platform as esteemed as the Oscars. One would expect more enlightenment here. Unironically, the presenters were not part of the original animated movies, but the live-action remakes. Animation is consistently overlooked and underrated. For many, it's merely cartoons, “ngoPopayi,” child's play. To those who harbour such thoughts, I challenge you to watch this analysis of the Leap of Faith scene from Spiderman: Into the Spiderverse and tell me if you still believe this is only kids' stuff.I'm not really waiting to hear your opinion on this, of course, because this is a multi-award-winning masterpiece of a movie. Not convinced? Here's another one; an analysis of Arcane: Still sceptical? Perhaps an hour-long video essay on the subject could sway your opinion.Seriously though, these are some amazingly skillfully done analyses. Check them out. And I agree with Mason one hundred per cent: “I have always considered animation to be the purest form of filmmaking. With complete and total control over every single frame put on screen, animators can transport you to worlds unimaginable, captivate you with fantastical and whimsical characters that defy the very laws of reality, show you jaw dropping acts of gravity defying action and absolutely devastate your heart with one carefully drawn facial expression. Whether they are layered on a film cell, digitally painted, painstakingly photographed or 3D rendered, these films, shorts or television series can reach the highest level of adoration and praise from the public just as anything made in live action. And they have.”Last year, Invincible, one of the year's finest shows, slipped under the radar until it presented one of the best season finales in television history. Give "Invincible season finale" a Google, and you'll see the internet is ablaze with praise. Interestingly, it aired concurrently with Falcon and the Winter Soldier, another superhero show that, despite being part of Marvel's much-anticipated Phase Four, fell flat. Yet, audiences seemed more inclined to watch the live-action series over the so-called "cartoon."Now, I can understand why people would think animation is just for kids. Numerous animated shows target a young audience, and many of us consumed these shows primarily in our childhood. However, categorizing a film like Up alongside Dora the Explorer simply because they share the same medium is fundamentally flawed. This comparison is akin to equating Ridley Scott's Alien with Sesame Street on the basis they both employ puppets. It's a simplistic, surface-level judgment that overlooks the nuances of each work.What many miss is the intentional choice behind using animation as a medium for storytelling. Certain narratives cannot be fully conveyed or appreciated in any other form. Animation unlocks potential that is often unattainable in live-action unless one has the budget of Avatar. Animation can recreate the comic book-like aesthetic in a film such as Spiderman: Into the Spiderverse. It can also employ super realistic caricature as seen in Soul to delve into the complex journey of finding life's purpose. (I'm not even sure the phrase “super realistic caricature” makes sense, but animation made that possible.) Consider the epic narrative of The Prince of Egypt. Would it have been feasible to capture the grandeur of Moses' story in a live-action format?On a side note, I have a deep appreciation for the fantastical genre. Creators of fantasy and science fiction showcase an exceptional degree of creativity. Beyond crafting a compelling narrative, they must build an entire world, often complete with its own unique history, culture, and politics. The world becomes a character in its own right, adding depth to the narrative. This is where animation shines; it allows for a seamless integration of reality and fantasy, thereby elevating the creative potential of these already rich genres.Animation's public perception is somewhat skewed by the fact that many mainstream animated shows for adults are largely comedies. I honour the genius of The Simpsons, Futurama, Rick and Morty, and Family Guy, but understand that their humour doesn't resonate with everyone. Hence, I was thrilled by Invincible and Arcane. These mainstream animated shows, focusing on drama and action, brought a breath of fresh air to adult streaming platforms. DreamWorks has created several mature films, like Kung Fu Panda and Megamind, but they still incorporate whimsical elements and shy away from being wholly mature films.The timing of the pandemic also provided a unique advantage for Arcane and Invincible to shine. They not only delivered but also held their own against non-animated counterparts. During my viewing of both Invincible and Arcane, there were moments when I had to pause, astounded at the masterpieces unfolding before my eyes. It's unfortunate that Disney and Pixar films typically garner most of the spotlight for animation. While I hold nothing against these powerhouses, their association with childhood viewing often leads people to pigeonhole all their productions as children's content.Let me wrap this up with this quote from Alberto Mielgo, director of The Windshield Wiper: “Animation is an art that includes every single art that you can imagine. Animation for adults is a fact, it's happening, let's call it cinema!”I honestly want to give a huge shout-out to the animators and artists behind these shows and movies. Most of them are faceless and nameless to the audience, but they are the ones putting in hours and hours to create these masterpieces. If this article has stirred your interest in exploring the rich world of animated shows, allow me to suggest a few recommendations:* Arcane* Spiderman: Into the Spiderverse* Soul* Love, Death, Robots* Invincible* Marvel's What If* Moana* Encanto* Megamind* Rango* Puss in Boots: The Last Wish* Anomalisa And here are some bangers that we wouldn't have if it wasn't for animation: In fact, this article has got me hyped. I think I'll go rewatch Akira now. Rant over. Okay, thanks, bye. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit justreflections.bhekani.com
You all probably know by now that I'm super passionate about relationships and understanding people. There's just something about diving into the minds of others, learning about their likes, dislikes, dreams, and everything in between that just hooks me. And when it comes to the connections we forge with others, like friendships and romantic relationships, my curiosity just skyrockets.As an introvert, I feel like I have this special superpower in observing and listening to people. You know, just hanging out in the background, soaking up all those little nuances that others might overlook in the heat of a conversation. It's like peeling back the layers of an onion and discovering more and more about what makes people tick.So today, let's chat about love – or more specifically, the end of it. I want to dive into that tricky territory of knowing when to call it quits and break up, or when to keep fighting for the relationship.Navigating the wild ride that is love, with all its ups, downs, and unexpected detours, can be quite the adventure. One of the toughest parts of being in a relationship is figuring out when to keep fighting for it or when it's time to gracefully bow out. In this article, I'll dig into the intricacies of relationships, discussing a few crucial points that'll help you determine whether your love is worth salvaging or if it's time to move on. Keeping these key factors in mind will empower you to make a decision that's in line with your well-being and personal growth.Whether your relationship is on the rocks or things are going fantastic, these are useful tools to have in your toolbox. So strap in, and let's go!1. Identify the Real Problem and Communicate Effectively.All relationships come with their fair share of highs and lows, but it's essential to dive deeper when conflicts pop up. It's all too easy to get swept up in minor disagreements while overlooking the bigger issues at play. To truly grasp what's causing friction in your relationship, take a moment to step back and pinpoint the root of the problem. Reflect on any patterns or recurring themes in your arguments. Could it be that unresolved past issues, insecurities, excommunicated expectations, or unfulfilled emotional needs are feeding the conflict?Once you've gained a clear insight into what's lurking beneath the surface, it's time to bring it up with your partner. Practising healthy communication is paramount for resolving disputes and keeping your connection solid. Focus on the matter at hand, steer clear of personal attacks, and don't fall into the trap of tallying past mistakes. This will sound a little corny, but it works; use “I” statements to share your feelings and experiences without casting blame. For instance, opt for “I feel overwhelmed when we argue about finances” instead of “You always stress me out about money.” By tackling the conversation with empathy and respect, you lay the groundwork for an open and honest dialogue that can pave the way to resolution.2. Distinguish between Preferences and Core Values.Navigating conflicts in your relationship can be quite the challenge, but it's essential to determine whether the disagreements stem from preferences or core values. Conflicts of preference, such as how to spend your leisure time, which brand of toothpaste to purchase, or even deciding where to dine out, can often be resolved through negotiation and compromise. After all, as Dr John Gottman, a renowned psychologist and relationship researcher, explains in his book “What Predicts Divorce? The Relationship Between Marital Processes and Marital Outcomes,” around 69% of relationship conflicts are perpetual, meaning they are rooted in fundamental differences in personality or lifestyle needs. You'll never solve them, but you need to learn to live with them.However, conflicts of core values, like your beliefs about marriage, religion, politics, or raising children, may be insurmountable. These differences can create significant friction in your relationship if left unaddressed, and they often require a higher level of reflection and self-awareness. Couples who share similar values and beliefs have a higher likelihood of long-term success.It's crucial to discern where you can be flexible and where you must hold your ground. If you discover your core values clash, it may signal that the relationship isn't the right fit, despite the love and affection you feel for one another. As you and your partner work through conflicts, it's essential to communicate openly and honestly, respect one another's boundaries, and remain committed to finding common ground. This process of compromise and collaboration can strengthen your bond and help you create a more harmonious, fulfilling partnership.3. Set Boundaries and Enforce them.Establishing healthy boundaries is a vital component of any successful relationship. Esther Perel in the book “Mating in Captivity: Reconciling the Erotic and the Domestic” notes that, “Boundaries are a way to take care of ourselves. They're like a safety net. Without them, we may be taken advantage of, used, or exploited.” This sentiment is echoed by John Gottman, who writes, “The ability to set boundaries is one of the most critical skills we can learn for preserving our physical and emotional health.”It's important to communicate your boundaries clearly and be willing to enforce them. If your partner repeatedly violates your boundaries or fails to respect your needs and concerns, it may be time to reassess the relationship.I understand that breaking up is never easy, but it's important to be objective and make the tough decision to end a relationship if necessary. Sometimes we need to move on from relationships that are not good for us, in order to create space for new relationships that will be more supportive, nurturing, and growth-promoting. 4. Seek Outside Help and PerspectivesIn the process of making a decision about whether to stay in a relationship or end it, it's challenging to maintain the perspective. Naturally, it's personal for you. Seeking the opinions of trusted friends, family members, or a professional counsellor can provide a valuable outside perspective. But remember that while friends, family, and counsellors may help you see what you can't, they don't have to live with the consequences of your decision; you do. So, ultimately, the decision must be made by you, as everyone's opinion may be subjective.In addition to seeking outside perspectives, fostering a culture of open communication with your partner is crucial for evaluating the relationship. John Gottman says, "Marriage is a conversation ... and all the conversations you have in a marriage are connected to each other." I think all relationships are the same. Engage in conversations with your partner about the relationship and its future, and be open to exploring alternative solutions together. This may involve attending couples' therapy, exploring new ways to connect emotionally, or addressing individual issues that are affecting the relationship.Seeking outside perspectives and fostering open communication can help you gain the insights to evaluate whether your relationship is worth saving.Maintaining a healthy and lasting relationship is a continuous process that requires effort and dedication from both partners. As relationships grow over time, it's essential to prioritize quality time together and find ways to keep the spark alive. Relationships require maintenance, and that's not a bad thing. We maintain our cars, our homes, and our jobs. Why wouldn't we maintain something as important as our relationships?One way to maintain a strong connection is by engaging in shared hobbies or activities. Research shows that couples who participate in new and exciting activities together experience a surge of dopamine, a neurotransmitter associated with pleasure and reward. This surge of dopamine can create a sense of excitement and adventure, which can help keep the relationship fresh and exciting.Finally, to maintain a strong and lasting relationship, it's crucial to prioritize emotional connection and continue nurturing the bond between you and your partner. This may involve expressing gratitude and support, regularly checking in on each other's feelings, and weathering life's ups and downs together. As Esther Perel states, "The quality of our relationships determines the quality of our lives. It's the single most important investment we can make." By investing time and effort into your emotional connection, you can create a safe and supportive environment that strengthens your bond and sets the foundation for a lasting partnership. However, it's important to remember that if the relationship no longer aligns with your well-being and personal growth, making the hard decision to break up may be necessary for everyone's sake. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit justreflections.bhekani.com
In early 2022, I was introduced to the captivating world of storytelling through a TED talk by Matthew Dicks. His mesmerizing presence led me to explore his work further and eventually discover his book, Storyworthy. It was there that I first learned about The Moth, a storytelling platform that showcases ordinary people sharing extraordinary stories. The Moth's powerful ability to forge connections and provoke deep reflection on our own lives resonated with me.This past Sabbath, I was immersed in a simple yet profound experience that echoed the power of storytelling and the beauty of human connection. Our community of friends in London had gathered for what is quickly becoming a cherished tradition: 'dombolo ministries.' Inspired by 'Jollof Ministries,' an event hosted by friends we met at Parkside Community Church in Reading, dombolo ministries is a potluck-style gathering where we share dishes from our respective home countries and connect with one another through our life stories.Yesterday's gathering stood out as it was larger than our first and featured dedicated time for sharing personal stories. As we listened to each other's experiences, I was struck by the uncanny similarities between our individual journeys. Despite our different backgrounds, we had all faced similar struggles, victories, and divine interventions. This realization led me to three powerful insights.First, we are all far more alike than we realize. We often feel alone in our struggles and believe that life is singling us out, while others seem to glide through unscathed. However, as we shared our stories, it became clear that each of us had faced similar challenges and triumphs. Life presents hardships and breakthroughs to all of us.Second, storytelling is an incredibly powerful tool for revealing our shared humanity. As we connected through our shared experiences, we discovered that we were not alone, and our lives were intertwined in ways we never could have imagined. Storytelling also inspires more stories. Initially, some people were hesitant to share, but as others opened up, everyone began to see themselves in those stories and felt encouraged to contribute their own. By the end of the day, our problem was an abundance of stories, not a scarcity.Third, storytelling has the power to overcome divisiveness. When we approach complex issues through personal narratives, we create a space for common ground and genuine listening. Stories break down barriers, establish connections, and shift the focus to similarities rather than differences.As we reluctantly parted ways, I couldn't help but feel a sense of warmth and belonging. We had come together as a community and discovered our shared humanity through the power of storytelling. This realization strengthened and comforted me, especially considering that we, as a group of millennials, were able to be fully present and engaged without the distraction of technology. People pretty much forgot their phones the whole afternoon. Looking ahead, I am excited to see how dombolo ministries will evolve in the coming months and years. Having experienced loneliness in London, especially during the pandemic, I am grateful for this safe haven that protects us from isolation. The magic of dombolo ministries lies not just in the amazing food we share, but in the connections we're forging and the stories we tell. It's a safe space where we can be vulnerable, authentic, and truly understand our shared humanity, which brings us closer and empowers us to support each other through life's challenges and celebrate each other's successes.If you have never experienced something like this, I encourage you to find your community or create your own 'pasta' or 'sushi' ministries. Something to be a safe space for connection, vulnerability, and storytelling. In doing so, you will discover the power of our shared humanity and the incredible bonds that form when we come together to share our lives with one another.Allow me to conclude with this: The term "Ubudlelwano" in my language, Ndebele, refers to a relationship, fellowship, or connection between people. It signifies the bond and interaction that individuals share with one another, emphasizing the importance of social connections and unity within a community. Interestingly, this term is derived from the word "Ukudla," which means food. Thus, a loose direct translation of "ubudlewano" is eating together. Eating together fosters relationships, fellowship, and connection. My ancestors demonstrated remarkable wisdom when they crafted the language. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit justreflections.bhekani.com
As we grow closer to our partners, we might expect that having tough conversations becomes easier, but unfortunately, the opposite is often true. The longer we're together, the more guarded we become. We fear each other's judgement and become less open, making assumptions about each other, and finding it harder to discuss important topics. Interestingly, many of us were more open when we started dating than we are later in the relationship when we get married, creating a big paradox. You'd think that greater intimacy comes for free with more time together.Part of the reason for this is that when we first meet people, there's a wide range of possibilities of who they could be. We're open to the possibility that they could be anyone, with all their likes and desires bundled in, seeing them as expansive and mysterious. But as we get to know them and build a life together, our perspective narrows, and we start to define them by their roles, like mother, husband, teacher, or lawyer. Seeing less of this big, broad person shapes how we interact with them. Suddenly, the mystery that once fascinated us disappears, and they become completely defined in our eyes. Even someone with the most fascinating spouse in the world could become jaded because they're so well-defined, and the mystery is gone.So, how do we open up again? How can we discuss things that over time are labelled as "you should know this" or assumed to be obvious? Is there a way to reignite that sense of wonder and mystery between two people who think they know everything about each other?Here are four aids that can rekindle that lost mystery and turn you into giddy, impetuous teenagers again, constantly curious and continually excited about love.Pay yourself first.When we become more familiar, we stop giving each other the best of ourselves.There's a principle in personal finance commonly summarised as “pay yourself first.” This is the concept that when you get paid, prioritise your personal financial growth by paying into your savings first. This is contrary to the common practice where people will pay everyone else like the rent to the landlord, the utilities providers, the grocery store for food etc. before they pay themselves. Often there's little to nothing left for savings after that. What's that got to do with relationships?When it comes to our time and attention, most of us treat our relationships the way we treat our personal finances. We give our most important relationship what's left of our time and attention, and often there isn't much left. We go out in the morning and as we meet colleagues and clients and friends, we're super animated, well-dressed, engaged and attentive. By the time we get home, we're spent and we just bring the leftovers. So at home, we throw on those “home clothes” and undo our hair. We talk very little, only to check on how the day was and coordinate the logistics. Did you pick up the kids on time? Remember, there's a recital tomorrow. Were the groceries delivered? Did the dry cleaning people come to pick up the clothes?Think about how much our relationships would change if we reversed the script and gave our partners the best of ourselves. If you're a morning person, you wake up early and take a walk with them in the morning when your mind's at its peak and you're the most alert and attentive and curious. You don't need to search long to find research that shows that couples who have regular rituals together are happier and stay together longer. It could be anything; every Thursday at 6 pm we have a gaming night at home. Every Tuesday, we will both leave our offices and have lunch together, and every month we spend a night away from home. Whatever makes sense in your particular context. The key is that no matter what's going on in our lives; we have a dedicated time that is ours where we check in with each other. A time that says we matter and everything else is secondary, then you'll have a better shot at maintaining long-term intimacy.Communication is not enough.I first heard this on this tweet and it stuck with me. One of the highly hailed pieces of relationship advice is that communication is everything. Communication isn't everything. There is such a thing as over-relying on communication. Over-relying on communication can show up as outsourcing the work of really getting to know your partner to them communicating it to you. Expecting them to tell you exactly who they are and what's going in their minds and line that up perfectly with their behaviour is trying to take a shortcut to put in the work of getting to know someone. Sure, they can try, but some things are much harder to put into words than they are to observe. This is worse because most times we don't even know all the things about ourselves that external observers can pick up easily. We can only be as honest with each other as we are with ourselves and often, we need an honest, loving partner to help us be honest with ourselves. We can't outsource the work of really seeing someone. Communication is only one tool that helps in getting to know someone. Another significant portion of it is just living life with them and being observant and paying attention. We can't expect a person to translate to us in words all the complexities and nuances that come together to make them who they are. We learn about people by interacting with them, living with them, doing things with them, going through various experiences with them and paying attention. No amount of talking and communication will teach you as much about a person as just simply living life with them will.Listen with your partner to other people having tough conversations.Listening to other people having tough conversations is a sort of mirror to see yourselves through. It gives you some vocabulary and a pivot to start the same conversation about yourselves. When you have a third entity that you're both observing, it allows you to explore a subject with your partner through the thing you've just watched or listened to. Then you can ask questions relevant to you in relation to it. Things like; have you ever felt that kind of pressure? Is this something you would be interested in trying? Do you have those fantasies? Is that what you feel with me at times? Have you ever faked with me? Is this something you've also experienced? Have you ever wanted to try that for us?This is much easier than out of the blue saying, “You know what? I was thinking that maybe one day we could try this.” If you listen to something together, it places what would have been impossible in the set of permitted conversations we can have as a couple. As I write this, the mini-series Scenes From a Marriage keeps popping into my mind. It's an amazing show that will really get you thinking about some tough things. And if you really want to dial it up a notch, there's this amazing app that my wife and I have been enjoying. It's called Paired (iOS App Store and Google Play Store), and the concept is simple but brilliant; you join it with your partner and every day it asks you a question about something related to relationships. You won't see your partner's answer until you give your own. The questions are about many subjects and it's great for getting the discussion going with your partner about subjects that may sometimes be hard to bring up directly.Listening to people who have had tough conversations before can help you learn the right approach. You can learn how to approach the conversation, how to listen actively, and how to validate your partner's feelings.Create a space where you can be your romantic selves to each other.Creating a space where you can be your romantic selves to each other can be a powerful way to keep the intimacy in your relationship alive. This can be a separate email address, a discord server, a telegram group, or whatever works for you. The only requirement is that it shouldn't be mixed in with your regular interactions. In this space, you're not talking about the mundane things in life, but focusing on your romantic relationship. Send songs, jokes, pictures, and sweet thoughts to each other to keep the spark alive. This will cause a connection that goes beyond an obligation and still keeps the same passion as when you first began. It creates that erotic space where you see each other as lovers, not just life partners.Romantic spaces can also be physical spaces. Create a space in your home that is dedicated to romance. This could be a cosy corner with comfortable chairs and soft lighting or a bedroom that is designed with relaxation and intimacy in mind. By creating a physical space you both like that is dedicated to your relationship, you'll be more likely to prioritize intimacy and make time for each other.If you shed the notion that you have a full understanding of your partner, you will find that they are actually very mysterious and elusive and that there are many things about them that can be explored and uncovered if you take the time to be curious. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit justreflections.bhekani.com
One of my friends had their birthday this week and that got me thinking about one of my favourite subjects lately; adult friendships. This coincided with me listening to a really insightful compilation of ideas about adult friendships on Blinkist called Finding and Nurturing Adult Friendships. So while my mind's on this, let's talk about friendships. Psychologist Marisa Franco, author of “Platonic: How the Science of Attachment Can Help You Make—and Keep—Friends”, gave a Ted Talk in which she made a point that really stuck with me: The thing that's particularly difficult about adult friendships is that, unlike in childhood, it doesn't happen organically. It takes effort. We're not used to this because our entire friendship paradigm is modelled around how we did it as kids. When you're an adult, there are no occasions that create organic communities for you, you have to make that happen yourself by prioritising it. When you were a child, you had to go to school every day, and many things at school would force you to interact with other people, from group projects to sports and everything in between. As an adult, you can live completely disconnected from others. Sure many of us have to go to work, but you don't have to talk to anyone at work and even if you do there's no incentive or obligation to befriend anyone. Since I've already shared a great guide and book on how to make and nurture friendships, I want to close the loop with the guide to losing all your friends. Then, equipped with all the knowledge, you'll be better at making your own choices. What if you were tired of all the friendships you have and you want to know how to lose friends instead? But you want to be so clinical about it that people choose to leave you of their own accord. The following is a non-exhaustive guide to driving everyone away. Sidenote: With it being the end of February when most of us are falling off our new year's resolutions, I don't want to give you yet another difficult thing to do. Unlike many other how-to guides out there, you'll find that you have to put very little effort into being good at many of these points. In fact, you're probably already quite proficient at some of them. Anyway, here's how to make everyone you know and love slowly drift away from you. 1 Talk only about yourself. The first thing you need to do is develop a strong tendency to steer any conversation back to the topic of yourself. This shouldn't be too difficult, you have lots of topics to choose from; what do you have going on in your life? Your dreams and aspirations? What are you excited about? What's something terrible that happened to you last week? Why waste any time talking about anything else when you have all this about yourself you can talk to people about? Get used to the idea of getting into monologues about yourself. If you're really proficient, you'll even master the art of steering every discussion topic to eventually be about you. Now that will really make talking to you an agonising experience. If the other person is not talking about you, then don't pay attention to what they are saying. Use that time to think about the next thing you'll say about yourself. If you're listening do it only to spot cues where you can jump in with an interesting segue to the time when the same thing happened to you. When your friend is telling you about something going on in their life? Never miss the opportunity to bring up a relatable situation that happened to you and focus on that. Don't ask them questions either—unless they're about you. Always be the one who answers questions. Do not, under any circumstances, give people the impression that you are interested in them or what they have going on.2 Spill the tea on other people. I know, I know. You obviously can't talk about yourself the whole time, even you won't enjoy that. So take breaks from it by talking about mutual friends and acquaintances. Not in the way you talk about yourself though. No! That would ruin your progress. When you talk about other people, be sure to focus only on their most negative qualities. Never miss a chance to voice your dissatisfaction and disapproval of their behaviour, their life choices, their fashion sense, etc. you get the idea. When you know something wrong that someone did, spill the tea, even if it's none of your business. The key here is to make it clear to everyone that you're not someone who roots for people who don't deserve it, according to your standard. Then make sure to set that standard impossibly high. Bonus points if you can do this while clarifying that you're highlighting their negatives because you want to see them do and be better. You want to be known as someone who's critical and generally disapproving of the people around you and you aren't afraid to voice it. 3 Don't be helpful. Never extend your hand to help another person. Don't waste your time lending a hand to those in need. Your own problems should always take precedence, and you should avoid contributing to your community of friends at all costs. Make sure to dodge any responsibility or labour, and let others do the heavy lifting while you take the credit. Keep your talents to yourself and never share them with others. Imagine you're at a party and the music suddenly stops because there's something wrong with the computer. As the resident computer expert, everyone turns to you for help. Don't be a hero - refuse their pleas and watch the party spiral into chaos. After all, you're not a plaything to be used and abused by those around you.4 Be a pessimistIf you want to be the life of the party, make sure to bring your dark cloud of pessimism with you. It's the perfect accessory to make everyone around you feel like they're drowning in a sea of negativity.When your friend is telling you about their promotion, don't celebrate with them. Instead, remind them that there's always a chance they'll get fired. When your sister is excited about her new haircut, make sure to tell her how much better she looked before. And when your co-worker presents a new idea, shoot it down immediately and tell them all the ways it could fail.Pessimism is like a gift that keeps on giving. It's the ultimate buzzkill that ensures that everyone around you is constantly reminded of all the things that could go wrong. So the next time you're at a party, be sure to remind everyone that the world is a terrible place, and there's no hope for humanity.And don't forget to add a healthy dose of complaining to your pessimism. Nothing says "I'm a joy to be around" like constantly whining about the temperature, the traffic, and the sorry state of your back.Always find something to complain about. Call yourself a realist, even though in reality you're a pessimist. 5 Be closed-minded Be confident in your beliefs and don't be swayed by others' opinions.Now that you have a strong dose of pessimism, assume that whatever information you have at the present moment is the gold standard. It's better than whatever anyone else has been told. If someone tries to share their perspective on life with you, be default against it, even before you know what it is. It's not what you think, so it's probably wrong. Whenever it turns out that you were right about something, make sure to make everyone know that you were right and they were wrong and they should listen to you next time. Assume that because you read it in a book or heard it on the news, then it must be true. Never create a space for dialogue. Don't talk about the nuances of a situation, but stay fixated on the negatives. Don't let anyone influence you. Hold on with an iron grip on whatever you believe in right now and guard it with your life. 6 Forget humility - you're the best, and everyone should know it.Maintain a constant facade that you are blameless and perfect. Refuse to acknowledge any potential shortcomings or mistakes, and instead focus solely on promoting your own virtues and talents. Allow your ego to consume you and bask in the glory of your own greatness.Never look at a situation objectively and be blissfully unaware of your flaws. If you do find some flaws, hide them at all costs. You can't let anyone realise that you're not the most perfect human being. A great way to demonstrate to people that they can never get close to you is to never show any kind of weakness or vulnerability. This will help you to not be relatable whatsoever, again a perfect human being. Then after that, all you have to do to keep it up, with reference to point number one, is to always build yourself up and talk very highly about yourself. And be very snappy and defensive immediately when anyone calls your perfection into question. Remember, modesty is overrated. Confidence is key, and you are the shining example of perfection that everyone should aspire to be.Just as important as maintaining the perfection of your character is maintaining the perfection of your work. If you made something it's the exemplar. If anyone criticises it, they're wrong! No matter how valid or constructive their criticism is, if it's directed at you it's wrong. You're the one who criticises. 7 Be flakyDon't be someone that people can rely on. Keep people guessing about whether you'll show up or not. A great way to develop this reputation is to always say yes when people invite you to things and reassure them you'll be there, then cancel at the last minute possible. It is important that you're seen as someone who is always busy or overwhelmed and who is constantly plagued by unexpected obligations. So always have an excuse handy. You want to be the guy that always has something that comes up at the last second. Bonus points for the most creative excuses. If you keep this up long enough, people will call you less and less until eventually, they leave you alone. You'll grow distant from them—you're not a pleasant person to be around anyway—and eventually, you won't have any friends. Perfect! 8 Taking initiative is overrated.Now that no one calls you anymore, we need to tie up the final loose end. Always wait around for people to come up with plans and things to invite you to. Never come up with your own ideas, never have your own things going on and never invite anyone to anything. Since you're already a pretty unpleasant human and a bad friend, no one's going to invite you to anything anyway. Couple this with number seven well enough and people will eventually get the impression that you don't want to spend time with them and they will move on to other people. If you were just tired of having a thriving social life and you wanted everyone to just leave you alone and slowly drift away for the rest of your life. Then at this point my friend, you're at the top of the mountain!If you want more ideas on how to be miserable, check out Randy J. Paterson's book “How To Be Miserable: 40 Strategies You Already Use” and Joey Schweitzer's YouTube channel where most of these ideas were derived. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit justreflections.bhekani.com
In the past, I've often avoided confrontational situations because of my introverted nature. The thought of confrontation makes me anxious, and I just want the conflict to be over as soon as possible. This often leads me to make concessions I shouldn't make and ultimately not stand up for what I believe in. I realize that avoiding discomfort at the moment only sets me up for even greater discomfort later on. So I have five resolutions this year. Here's the first one: I will not shy away from tough conversations. When necessary, I will approach confrontation and tough conversations head-on. I will be resilient, disciplined, and focused and provide that strength to others.Have you been in a situation where you needed to have a difficult conversation, but just couldn't bring yourself to do it? Whether it's a conversation with a family member, friend, or colleague, we've all been there. The fear of conflict and the unknown outcome can hold us back from having conversations that could change everything.But what if I told you that one conversation could be the key to ending a long-standing feud, building new connections, or advancing your career? That's right, sometimes all it takes is one conversation to make an enormous impact on our lives.And it's not just individuals who struggle with confrontational conversations, teams can also suffer when a difficult but important issue goes unaddressed. Tensions rise, trust decreases, and collaboration can grind to a halt. As part of teams that perform crucial functions, such as surgeries, running schools, or managing people's pensions, we can't afford to avoid tough conversations.That's why I've decided to face my fear of confrontational conversations and learn all I can about how to have them effectively. And, in this article, I'll share what I've learnt with you.We'll explore the importance of having tough conversations and discuss practical tips and strategies for navigating tough conversations with grace and empathy. So let's jump in and learn how to lead those conversations that could change everything.First, why is this important?Confrontation is an opportunity for growthFacing difficult conversations head-on allows for a safer space in our relationships to grow and helps improve our communication skills. It allows us to live a more authentic life. We should choose to view confrontational situations as opportunities for growth, both personally and in relationships with others. Helping us to be more resilient, disciplined, and focused, and providing that strength to others. While confrontational situations can be difficult, facing them head-on can teach us to communicate more effectively and find the right words to express ourselves without escalating the situation. Empowering othersEmbracing responsibility and facing confrontational situations head-on doesn't just benefit you personally, it also empowers you to help and empower others. When you become comfortable with confrontation, you are better equipped to defend those who—like you before now—may be too afraid or powerless to speak up for themselves. In situations where there are power imbalances, having the confidence to confront the issue head-on can be the difference between perpetuating the imbalance and creating a more equitable and just environment. For example, when a coworker is being mistreated or taken advantage of, it's easy to feel helpless and unsure of how to support them. However, if you have developed the skills and confidence to engage in confrontational conversations, you can step in and defend them, helping to restore balance and fairness. In this way, it not only benefits you as an individual but also has a ripple effect that positively impacts those around you. Think about it, when we're honest and transparent about our thoughts and feelings, we give others permission to do the same. It's like we're the first domino that starts the chain reaction. And before we know it, others will start to open up as well, and the conversation will become more and more productive. So, don't be afraid to be the first domino. You never know what kind of positive impact it could have, not just for you but for everyone involved.Three simple rulesHere are three simple rules I've learnt to follow to help me handle confrontation effectively, especially if I'm the one leading the conversation.The first rule—also the toughest for me—is to move toward the conflict. Conflict likes to hide everywhere and is always looming in every interaction we have. If we continuously avoid it, it will pounce on us when we're least prepared to deal with it. So the first step is to understand that conflict is not something to be feared or avoided, but it is information that should be approached with a positive mindset. It can actually provide an opportunity to better understand the situation and find a resolution that works for everyone involved. By moving toward the conflict, you can diffuse the tension and help to resolve the issue in a calm and effective manner.The second rule is to remember that you don't know as much as you think, and even if you do, it's best to pretend you don't. To truly understand the perspectives of others, you need to ask questions about their experiences and listen to what they have to say. This means truly focusing on what they are saying and avoiding the temptation to interrupt or offer your own opinions before they have finished speaking. By truly listening to what others have to say, you can gain a better understanding of the situation and the concerns of all parties involved. If you approach the conversation with pre-baked solutions, you might make things worse. Finally, it's important to keep quiet and allow for pauses in the conversation. It may take a few seconds for people to respond, but it's important not to panic in those moments of silence. Instead, use the pauses as opportunities to drive deeper thought and well-contemplated responses. Rushing in to rescue the conversation from the silence will only disrupt the flow and make it more difficult to achieve a resolution. By giving people time to think and respond, you can create a safe and supportive environment for everyone involved to share their thoughts and feelings.By following these simple rules and approaching hard conversations with a positive mindset, you can lead productive and effective discussions that help to resolve issues and build stronger relationships.But what if you dread taking that first step of moving towards the conflict? Here's what I'll be doing to ease myself into it. Learning to “Move toward the conflict,”Here are a few tips for someone looking to improve their ability to embrace responsibility and face confrontational situations: * Start with small steps: Start by practising in low-stakes situations, like having a difficult conversation with a friend or family member on a subject that's not about your relationship. This will help build confidence and prepare you for more challenging situations in the future. * Identify your triggers: Take note of what makes you uncomfortable about confrontational situations. This could be the fear of conflict, the fear of hurting someone's feelings, or the fear of not being able to express yourself effectively. By identifying your triggers, you can develop strategies to overcome them. * Prepare yourself: Take some time to think about what you want to say before engaging in a confrontational situation. Write down key points, practice them in your mind, and have a plan for how you want the conversation to go. This preparation will help you feel more confident and in control. * Practice active listening: During confrontational situations, it's important to listen as much as you speak. This means giving the other person your full attention, asking clarifying questions, and repeating back what you've heard to show that you understand. * Stay calm and focused: Confrontational situations can be emotional and stressful, but it's important to stay calm and focused. Take deep breaths, practice mindfulness, and stay present in the moment (my mind wonders a lot, even mid-conversation sometimes, so this is also hard for me). This will help you stay in control and communicate effectively. * Seek support: Surround yourself with supportive people who can help you work through your fears and build your confidence. Consider seeking the guidance of a therapist or coach who can provide additional support and tools for overcoming your challenges. * Practice: The more you practice, the more comfortable you will become with confrontational situations. Try to put yourself in these types of situations as often as you can, and learn from each experience. Over time, you will become more confident, assertive, and effective in handling confrontational situations.Having the conversation is more important than doing it the “right” wayIt's easy to get caught up in the thought of doing it the "right" way, and let's be honest, what even is the "right" way to have a tough conversation? Having the conversation itself is more important than doing it perfectly.Sure, there are definitely guidelines and best practices to follow, but at the end of the day, the mere act of having the conversation is what truly matters. So, I'm choosing to let go of the fear of not doing it the "right" way and instead, embracing the opportunity to have the conversation at all, otherwise, I won't do it. After all, it's better to try and potentially make mistakes than to let the fear of not doing it perfectly hold me back from making a difference.And, who knows, maybe with enough practice, I'll even become a pro at having tough conversations. But, let's not get ahead of ourselves just yet! This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit justreflections.bhekani.com
Would you like to change your career but feel like it's too risky given how much you've invested in it? Back in 2014, I was a fresh graduate in a career that I knew wasn't really my thing. I was a civil and water engineer, but I really wanted to work with computers. My job involved going out to site and I really don't enjoy working outdoors, my sight is also not great in strong sunlight so it made it even more of a pain. I wanted to change to something to do with computers, but I had some obstacles: I didn't know exactly what computer thing I want to do. This got worse as I gained more seniority and was making good money for my age and switching would mean taking a big pay cut and a drop in seniority. Finally, I was a civil engineer, so everyone thought I had the dream job and no one understood why I want to change.I needed to figure out what I want to do and make a career switch in a way that didn't feel like I was throwing all my hard work and my parents' investment in my education down the drain. Most people discover on the job they don't like their careers and would rather do something else. They make the late realisation that what they're doing doesn't align with their natural gifts, talents, or interests. One reason for this is that we have to choose our careers early before we understand ourselves enough to know what we like and what we're good at. This is compounded by several factors. Most people don't have good guidance when they choose careers; we choose what our parents or other role models like or do, or we choose what we think will make us a lot of money. Some of us are forced into our career choices by circumstances; we come from disadvantaged backgrounds and need to make money as quickly as possible or we grew up in countries that had limited options or dead-end paths for many non-conventional careers.Whatever the case, you've figured yourself out later in life and know what you'd rather be doing. Maybe you're even doing it on the side and want to make it your main thing. But changing careers is difficult. We don't have a lot of time when we're older, responsibilities pile up and they're all waiting for the paycheck from this job we don't like. Besides, taking chances with your life when you're older is just uncomfortable. As Garry Kasparov and Mig Greengard aptly put it. It is far easier to tell millions of newly redundant workers to "retrain for the information age" or to "join the creative entrepreneurial economy" than to be one of them or to actually do it. — Garry Kasparov and Mig Greengard, Deep ThinkingIf this sounds like you, don't worry. I was also in that situation. Fast forward to today, I'm a senior software engineer working for a big tech company. To get here, I transitioned through careers as a Geographic Information Systems (GIS) Analyst and a GIS consultant without going back to school or taking gaps. And I'm quite happy with the state of my career. So let me save you some time and give you the recipe. Here are four things I did to change my career (twice) with limited risk. * Gain the skills you need before making the switch* Build a rich portfolio* Perform above expectation* Leverage your unique background to differentiate yourself#1: Gain the skills you need before making the switchYou don't have to first quit your job to gain the skills in the new thing. It's too risky and leaves you exposed.Gain the skills you need while you're at your current job. Figure out if the new thing is really something you want to do, or if it's a “grass is greener on the other side” situation. The best way to figure this out is to just do it. Don't worry about money at this stage. In fact, offer to do it for people for free. If you struggle to do good work without the motivation of a paycheck, that might be a sign. Doing it for free will allow people who would have never given you paid work without experience to give you a chance. This will start you off in building a network. If you can't find anyone to do it for, then do things for yourself. Either way, take an interest in the thing you want to switch to so that you understand what you'll need to learn and start learning it and building a network and doing actual work at low risk. This will allow you to build your portfolio—more on that next—and to figure out if this is really something you want to do and what the prospects are from the comfort of your current profession. #2: Build a rich portfolioYou don't have any certification for the new thing. The people you'll be competing with when you switch are probably younger or more experienced than you, or they have the right qualifications. You need some paper of your own. Your portfolio will be proof of your competence. Sure, you don't have a diploma, but you can build a body of work you've done that shows that you can do the work. If those people you offered to do free work for in step one agreed, then you also have a list of clients who are happy with the work you've done for them. (Maybe some of them even felt guilty for taking your amazing work for free and gave you a few cents)This will not only show your capability, but it will set you apart. Most people who have a qualification in a field don't invest as much time in building a rich portfolio, especially one that includes a range of private clients, so you'll stand out as passionate about your field. #3: Perform above expectationEvery time you talk to someone in your new career, you'll have a hurdle to get over; their scepticism about your knowledge and skills as someone who is “not native” to it. It's not great, but it's the reality. One way to make sure that this won't be an issue is to have work that is miles ahead of everyone else's. If you do that, you won't get questions about your capabilities. The work will speak for itself. If you're asked to go one mile, go two. No fancy things to say here. Just put your head down and do excellent work. #4: Leverage your unique background to differentiate yourselfWhile you don't have the qualifications that the people you'll be competing with have, you have something they don't have. Your knowledge from your other domain. Each domain teaches many cross-disciplinary skills. Each career has something unique that it gives to its practitioners. Whether it's the work ethic of chefs, the structured thinking of engineers or the compulsive attention to detail of accountants, you will have something from your current profession that people in your new one do not. Don't let that go to waste. Use it to your advantage. Let it be your distinguishing feature, your competitive advantage. If not for anything else, use it to show that you have a different story from everyone else. So they won't just be getting a software engineer if they hire me, they'll also be getting a GIS Analyst and a Civil Engineer. They'll be getting my extensive project management experience. My unique contracts management knowledge, etc. And my unique conflict resolution skills earned from haggling with unscrupulous contractors during site inspections. (Not to forget the permanent sunburn battle scars earned from hours in the blazing Limpopo sun) You have a unique story. Use it to your advantage to set yourself apart. ConclusionLet's close with more words from Kasparov and Greengard;The willingness to keep trying new things-different methods, uncomfortable tasks-when you are already an expert at something is what separates good from great. Focusing on your strengths is required for peak performance, but improving your weaknesses has the potential for the greatest gains. This is true for athletes, executives, and entire companies. Leaving your comfort zone involves risk, however, and when you are already doing well, the temptation to stick with the status quo can be overwhelming, leading to stagnation. — Garry Kasparov and Mig Greengard, Deep ThinkingHere's the main thing I learnt; if you want to change your career, you have to fully commit to it with all your time and effort. You have to switch with your private time long before you switch the nine-to-five. If you prepare correctly, it won't feel like so much of a risk. It will feel like the next logical step. The good news is that you don't have to do this forever. After some time, you'll accumulate enough experience in the new career that the experience will now become your competitive advantage. Then you can relax and ride the wave until you decide to switch careers again. You're a pro now. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit justreflections.bhekani.com
Do you set New Year's resolutions and then give up on them by March? If your answer is yes then you're not alone. When January comes around many people get a huge burst of motivation to make sweeping changes in their lives. But this motivation is fleeting and fails to stand up against the torrential wind that is our indiscipline. So does this mean we should quit making new year's resolutions? I don't think so. On the contrary, we can use this fact to our advantage.Here are two strategies that will make your resolutions yield results this year: * Set goals that take three months or less to achieve* Give all your effort in the first three months to entrench the habit * Set a theme for the yearSet goals that take three months or less to achieveMost times when we fail to get things done, it's because we don't have the motivation. Do you know what you have at the start of the year? Tons of motivation. At least enough motivation to take you to March.So here's an idea. Instead of setting goals that take the entire year to achieve, set goals that only need three months or less to achieve. That way, you can burn through the bulk of the task while you still have the fire of the new year. By the time March comes around and your motivation is dwindling, it won't matter much because you've already done 90% of the work or you're on your way towards completing your third small goal. Then you can fail all you want for the rest of the year, you already have resolutions in the bag. But hopefully, those wins will have fired you up enough to keep you going with other small wins.Back in 2019, I was interviewing with a company that had given me some time to learn C#. I interviewed with them in November 2018, they liked me but didn't like the fact that I didn't know C# so they gave me some books and well wishes and said let's meet again after a few months. I spent December trying hard to study, but it just wasn't sticking. Then January came around and the New Year's resolutions bug bit me and I went hard on those books. By the time the motivation died in March, I'd done most of the work I needed to pass the next stage of the interview and I did. (I didn't get the job in the end, but that's a story for another day)Set goals that need three months, burn all your motivation on them and you'll have some check marks in March. Give all your effort in the first three months to entrench the habit Here's a different idea; they say it takes about 21 days to build a new habit. Maybe this is a debunked myth, so let's be conservative and say it takes 50 days. Find a habit you want to adopt. The key here is to find something small and realistic. Then use the new year's motivation peak to completely obsess over it until March. I'm talking going real hard. Eat, sleep and dream this thing. Just until the new year's motivation burns up. There's a good chance that by the time March comes around and the motivation runs out, the habit will be entrenched and you'll continue it.This is how I developed a reading habit in 2020. I wanted to read more so between January and March, I always either had a book in my hand or headphones on listening to an audiobook. Regardless of what I was doing. When March came around and the motivation was gone, I had fallen in love. I found the books that I enjoy and I developed a routine. So I just continued. Sure, it was at a much slower pace, but by the end of the year, I had gone from dosing off on the first page to reading 28 books in total. I didn't need the motivation to push me anymore. It was now in me.Set a theme for the yearInstead of setting specific, rigid goals, consider creating a framework to guide your personal growth and development. It's important to remember that we often change and grow throughout the year, and it may be unrealistic to expect ourselves to adhere to the same goals we set at the beginning of the year. A more effective approach is to set a theme for the year, which serves as a guiding principle for decision-making and helps to shape your overall direction. Achieving a goal only changes your life for the moment. What you really need is to change the systems that lead to those goals. Having a theme is like having a shortcut for decision-making. When you get to a fork in the road, you will have a framework for making a decision. Reminding you to be a little different, even in seemingly insignificant moments. If this year is the “Year of Courage” for you, instead of saying I will do 12 courageous things this year (one for each month). Say, “When I have to choose between two things, I will always choose the more courageous one, no matter how small.” The result will be that your year will be more courageous than normal. By focusing on the systems that lead to your goals, rather than the goals themselves, you'll be able to make progress even in small, seemingly insignificant moments. The key is to maintain a positive trend, rather than striving for precise outcomes.I've written more about having a year theme. You can read about it here.ConclusionThe key takeaway is that to make significant changes in your life, it's important to approach the process with patience and a long-term perspective. Utilize moments of high motivation to achieve small victories, and when motivation wanes, try to maintain progress even if it's at a slower pace. Eventually, the changes will become a part of your identity, requiring less effort to maintain. And after some time, you can relax and enjoy the progress you've made. Happy New Year! This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit justreflections.bhekani.com
Start writing today. Use the button below to create your Substack and connect your publication with Just ReflectionsAs we enter the new year, some of the loud messages you'll hear online are, “love yourself”, “choose yourself”, and “prioritise yourself”. The implication here is that many of the bad things that happen to us are because we don't think about ourselves enough when we make decisions. As a result, we make decisions that are not in our self-interest that harm us. Now, I don't know how long you've been a human being, but in my experience, people don't really need to be reminded to think about themselves first. If there's one thing we're naturally good at without training, it's thinking about ourselves ahead of other people and being self-serving. “What about the people who keep making poor decisions that cause them harm? They need to love themselves, right?” Well, the failure of people who seem to continuously make decisions that turn out badly for them isn't a lack of self-love. In fact, they're also just as self-serving as the rest of us. They're just bad at it. Sometimes people have very wrong ideas about what's in their best interest. Or they get outmanoeuvred by others who are more adept at being self-serving. But at the start of the day and at its end, we're all seeking our own self-interest. Few things are certain in life, but if there's one thing we can be certain about, it's that people are selfish. For better or worse, that's one thing we all share. Besides, telling someone who is struggling “love yourself” is like telling someone who is upset to “calm down”. It is vague and often patronizing. We think about ourselves too much.The problem with us human beings, especially in current pop culture, isn't that we don't think about ourselves enough, it's that we think about ourselves too much. Sometimes that is the reason our happiness is so fleeting. We all have things going on in our lives, and if you think about yourself too much, you'll inevitably end up at all the things you do wrong. Next to selfishness, we're adept self-critics. When you dwell on your issues long enough, they'll eventually appear too big and insurmountable. It's like when you overthink breathing. Suddenly, this thing that you do autonomously becomes a task and you wonder whether you're breathing too fast or too slow and before you know it, you're tripping yourself in your breathing. But if you focus on other things, breathing just happens, you don't have to train yourself to do it. Love your neighbour as yourself. You probably know the Bible verse Matthew 22 verse 39. “And the second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbour as yourself.'” — Matthew 22:39 (NKJV)And if you're a Christian, you've probably heard someone interpret this to say you cannot start the project of loving your neighbour until you have developed sufficient affection for yourself. First, that's not what the verse is saying at all. Jesus—who said these words—was clearly taking it for granted that you already love yourself and is advising you to use that as a model for how to love your neighbour. He is saying we should keep our neighbour's interests at heart like we keep our own interests at heart. We don't really need help with the second part. He is building off of the fact that we all naturally value our own interests and work towards fulfilling them. So take that mentality and apply it to your neighbour. Don't worry about fortifying it in yourself, just apply it to your neighbour. Unfortunately, we've taken this command and we've done the opposite, which is another testament to our selfishness. We don't even need to be good people to love ourselves. We all know that we haven't been the best of people all the time. In fact, we know that we're nasty people sometimes and we look at things we've done in the past with loathing and yet we still love ourselves, regardless. Here's how C. S. Lewis puts it. “For a long time I used to think this a silly, straw-splitting distinction: how could you hate what a man did and not hate the man? But years later, it occurred to me that there was one man to whom I had been doing this all my life—namely myself. However much I might dislike my own cowardice or conceit or greed, I went on loving myself. There had never been the slightest difficulty about it. In fact, the very reason why I hated the things was that I loved the man. Just because I loved myself, I was sorry to find that I was the sort of man who did those things.”— Mere Christianity by C. S. LewisSecond, you don't have to love yourself first to love others. In fact, when you focus on loving others (and on loving God, which is the first commandment according to the previous verse) loving yourself just comes as part of the package. You don't have to focus on it. It's patronising and vague. Often in pop culture, when we talk about loving yourself, we mean you should have more self-acceptance. Know who you are, look in the mirror and accept what you see. Accept that you are who you are and that will not change.On the surface, this sounds like brilliant advice. Of course, we should all be accepting of ourselves regardless of the traits we don't like about ourselves. But if you think about it, this is saying nothing about what the person should do exactly. Should they look in the mirror and will acceptance into existence? Should they close their eyes and make a wish? It also assumes that the person hasn't been wanting to accept who they are, and this is some grand insight. In reality, it's just fluffy advice that offers no actual solutions. When we force positivity on someone who's struggling, we minimise their experience, undermine their emotion and make them feel guilty for not having thought of this simple solution.Worst of all, when it comes to accepting undesirable physical traits, it might lead to the very opposite of what it tries to achieve. At the risk of sounding simplistic in the same section where I'm saying this is vague advice, the best thing to do about physical qualities about yourself that you don't like, things you can't change, is to ignore them and focus on other things. Focus on helping other people. You will either realise that there are people dealing with much worse things or that we all carry some kind of burden and life is not targeting you and your focus on yourself will disappear slowly. This is part of why people who are suffering from depression are sometimes advised to spend more time helping others or volunteering for charities as part of their treatment. There's something about focusing on other people that heals our compulsive worry and anxiety about our own issues. Besides, you're never going to reach a state where you feel good about yourself all the time. It shouldn't happen. Sometimes you need to feel bad about yourself. When you do things that are cruel or manipulative, or cowardly. You should feel bad so that you do better next time. Feeling bad is part of the positive feedback loop. It doesn't mean you should hate yourself, you shouldn't go into despondency and despair about it, but you shouldn't feel good about it either. A better way to live. Like many things, the self-love train has derailed. The expectation that love of oneself alone should be equally fulfilling as love from others is unrealistic. Humans are communal. We need our community and we love to feel love from others. It is important that we find others to share our lives with. No amount of loving ourselves will meet our needs for community and love.The more we learn to love others and move focus away from ourselves, the happier we will be in life. As you make your resolutions this year, think beyond yourself. Think about the changes you can make in your life that will benefit others, even if they have no direct benefit for you. Forget about yourself, love other people, serve other people and then magically you'll find that your opinion of yourself improves. That's a better way to live. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit justreflections.bhekani.com
This weekend has been pretty phenomenal. First, I just watched the best world cup final of my life and I'm only now getting enough composure to sit down and write. Second, and this is what we're talking about today. After a very mediocre year for movies yesterday, I experienced absolute cinematic bliss. I'm glad this is the movie we're closing the year with. I'm talking about Avatar: The Way of Water, of course. Let's talk about it. For those who don't remember, here's a quick summary of the first movie. Avatar is a sci-fi film set on the planet Pandora, where a diverse group of intelligent humanoid creatures known as the Na'vi live. The film follows Jake Sully, a disabled Marine who is given the chance to take part in an experimental program that allows him to take on the body of a Na'vi avatar. Jake becomes deeply connected to Pandora and its inhabitants but finds himself torn between his loyalty to the humans who sent him there and his growing respect and affection for the Na'vi. The film explores themes of imperialism, environmentalism, and the struggle to balance progress with preservation.Overall, Avatar is a thrilling, thought-provoking sci-fi epic. It's a must-see for any fan of the genre or anyone who appreciates groundbreaking visual effects and an interesting story. But more relevant to everyone is that it is also the highest-grossing movie of all time after destroying the box office records with a whopping $2.9 billion. Avatar: The Way of Water is the sequel to Avatar. It's been many years for us and it's been many years for Jake and his Na'vi warrior wife, Neytiri. They have kids now. Life is great! Until the “sky people” come back and that sets up the conflict.I'm glad to say the second movie delivers on that same promise. Let's get the negatives out of the way. The Avatar movies have a poor reputation. However, before discussing the sequel, it's important to acknowledge the valid criticisms of the original movie. James Cameron is known for making highly successful blockbuster films, including Titanic, Terminator, and the Alien franchise. He is known for including fast-paced action, new technology, and well-written characters in his movies. However, this success may have led to an over-inflated ego, resulting in self-indulgent and excessive creative decisions that negatively affected the quality of Avatar. While Avatar is the highest-grossing movie of all time, box office revenue does not necessarily reflect the quality of a movie. In fact, sometimes bad films make a lot of money while good films do not.So here's what's wrong with the movie. First, it's lazy with its storytelling, basically ripping off many classic stories and adding nothing else to them. It's a fine line between ripoff and homage, between plagiarism and legitimate use of tropes within a genre, and Avatar straddles that line from start to finish. Here are some things James Cameron has been accused of ripping off for the original film.* Dances With Wolves (1990) follows a wounded veteran who moves to a new frontier and initially works for the group exploiting the land's resources. The veteran eventually befriends the Indigenous people, falls in love with one of the women, and turns against his own people to defend the tribe and their land against invaders.* The Disney film Pocahontas (1995) shares themes of racism and colonialism with Avatar and features a romance between a white man exploring a new frontier and a Native woman. The Native woman, Pocahontas, is betrothed to an uninteresting tribesman before falling in love with the white man, similar to the plot of Avatar in which Neytiri is also betrothed to an uninteresting tribesman before falling in love with the white main character Jake Sully.These are just two examples, but the list is long, featuring other stories like Dune (1984) and Princess Mononoke (1997). While there's nothing wrong about reusing classic tropes and ideas and if you boil them down enough, most movies comprise the same basic foundational elements. But you can at least add a bit of original spin to it and some nuance to it. And encourage the audience to look at a well-told story from a new perspective. The second issue is with the antagonist in Avatar. He lacks depth and has no compelling motivations for his actions. The best antagonists are the ones with understandable motivations. The guys that you feel you would almost agree with under different circumstances. Like Thanos in Infinity War, who has witnessed the consequences of overpopulation and seeks to solve the problem on a universal scale using the most brutal of methods. He doesn't really want to do it and he takes no pleasure in it, but he knows he's the only one with the will and the means to see it through. So he's utterly ruthless in pursuing his goal. He's still doing a terrible thing, but he's doing it to serve a higher purpose and you can at least see his point of view even if you don't support it. It would have been more interesting if the antagonist in Avatar, Quaritch, had a similar motivation, such as a desire to protect the troops under his command or a desire for revenge because of personal loss caused by the Na'vi. As it stands, Quaritch is simply a one-dimensional, irredeemably evil character.Ultimately, Avatar has been criticized for being overly focused on superficial spectacle and shallow emotions. While it may be visually impressive, it lacks substance and depth. Without the 3D and large cinema screen, the plot of Avatar is seen as shallow and derivative, borrowing elements from other classic stories. Its success can be attributed to a combination of Cameron's reputation, financial resources, timing, and positive word of mouth, rather than its actual merit.The Good.I love the Avatar movie. I loved it when it was released. Since then, I have watched it several times and enjoyed it. And one thing that can't be denied is that while story-wise, it had been done before in several ways. Technically, it was a massive leap, and it was a very entertaining and crowd-pleasing movie. That made it feel fresh and exciting.I remember vividly Jake Sully waking up for the first time in his avatar, feeling the sand with his new feet, taking his first run, and testing his new strength and agility. I was right there with him and I felt the same sense of wonder and excitement he was feeling. That, to me, has always stood out about Avatar and it is one of the biggest things that James Cameron did well and that he has done well again: Fully immersing the audience in the world of Pandora. Avatar is more than just a movie. It's a full sensory experience that transports you to another place and makes you feel you are truly a part of the action. This is something that James Cameron has consistently excelled at in his work,With the way the cinematic landscape has changed over the years, big-budget movies have really become big cash grabs by studios for the most part. Sure, they work on the story and the action and characters and the visuals and all that, but they lack that “something else.” Sure, Avatar made a lot of money (and I hope this one will too) but it feels like more than just money to me. It feels like James Cameron's passion project and that passion really shines through. Watching it is like witnessing a creator emerge from their cave and unveiling the thing that's kept them hidden all this time. Technologically speaking, this movie is ahead of anything we've seen on the big screen. It's a marvel—pun not intended. It's blue monkey people in a completely made-up world, yes, but it's so easy to forget that it's all computer-generated. Don't judge it from the visuals you saw in the trailer, go and see it for yourself, on the biggest and best screen you can find. In 3D and IMAX if you can. You will not regret it. It is visually stunning!At first, when they're in the forest, it feels a little like, yeah sure, this is stunning, but we've seen it before. But the moment they get to the water places, it's unlike anything I've ever seen. One thing I kept thinking about is that it really shows that Cameron spent a bunch of money diving in the sea and exploring the Mariana trench. He presents the oceans here in such breathtaking detail. It's pretty clear that for him, being part of the world of Pandora and experiencing it along with the characters is an integral part of the movie. So he gives you several moments of these awe-inspiring scenes where he slows down to just let the audience take it in. In fact, the characters also pause and take it in along with you. It's that incredible. From what I hear, the underwater scenes are even shown at double the frame rate to enhance the experience, but I didn't notice it. If you care at all about filmmaking, there will be many places in this movie where you will be absolutely stumped about how they did it. Sure, we know actors were in motion capture suits, but beyond that, it's a mystery. Everyone is comparing it with the mystery we all felt about how they shot those fighter jet scenes in Top Gun Maverick. It's absolutely stunning!One of the things that I really liked about Avatar 2 was the way it incorporated both old and new characters into the story. Jake Sully and the other familiar faces are still the main focus, but we also get a lot of time with the new characters, especially the kids. And the best part is that these new characters aren't just there for show – they're actually really important to the story and have their own arcs and stuff. It would have been easy to just make this a Jake-centric movie, but the fact that they gave the new characters so much screen time and made them a crucial part of the plot was a really nice touch. Overall, it was a great balance of old and new. Story. One of the things that came out of reviews of Avatar 2 was that the story was too simple. And I get it, the plot is pretty straightforward, just like in the first movie. But to me, that's kind of the point. James Cameron tells these really basic, relatable stories—like protecting the environment or taking care of your family—and then he goes all out on the visuals and the world-building and all that stuff. It's like he's taking a simple story and painting it on this giant, colourful canvas with all these amazing, otherworldly details. He's taking something we can all understand and making it into this big, epic adventure. And I think it works really well. It's the same thing that was done with Top Gun Maverick—a simple story, told in a visually stunning way with outstanding action scenes. I think it's a really effective way to tell a story.It's not the best movie I've ever watched story-wise, but it's clear that a lot of passion went into making it an amazing movie when you put everything together. Let me highlight a few elements that stuck out for me. So the first movie was about Jake integrating with these new people and learning to be a Na'vi. That element is here as well, in a different form. Their family has moved to join this different tribe that lives in the sea, which has evolved to live and do everything in the sea. Their technology is based around water and they even ride sea creatures. Jake and his family aren't like that. They're forest people, so a big part of the movie is them integrating with this new tribe and learning “the way of water.” I was sceptical about this theme showing up again and it feeling monotonous, but I think it was handled well. Another thing I was concerned about was the return of Stephen Lang as Colonel Quaritch and Sigourney Weaver. Bringing back people who died in a story can break the immersion in the story and make deaths feel cheap and meaningless. However, the way they brought back Colonel Quaritch was quite masterful. And his story arc and Jake's are quite similar, even though the major conflict is between the two of them. He's still pretty two-dimensional as a villain though and is just being used as a pawn to drive the plot with no meaningful motivations of his own. But given how it ended, this might still be redeemable in the sequels. But just like the first movie, the first half of the movie isn't very emotionally engaging. We're still learning the environments, acquainting with many characters and learning what they're all going through in their lives. But then around the midpoint, something devastating happens, and that's when I got hooked. I was feeling everything with the characters and I wanted all the people who did the thing to pay. And there's this action sequence with Neytiri that was just amazing! The last half of this movie was absolutely thrilling. In the wake of woke messaging that's rife in movies and TV these days, Avatar is a story about a typical nuclear family with a father who is trying hard to protect his family. It's a family story, and I loved it. There's one particularly heartbreaking scene , but that also made it all real for me. I can't wait to talk about it with those who have seen the movie. There are no gender-swapped characters, no random new black person, no awkwardly placed gay character and no “strong female leads” taking over the spotlight from their male counterparts. It's your run-of-the-mill traditional society, but in the current landscape, it feels new and refreshing. Now, of course, just like how there was a strong message to protect the forests in the last movie there's a strong message to protect the sea and sea creatures in particular. I mean, the movie is called “The Way of Water” and the trailer has shots of people marvelling at things under the sea. I'm sure you probably already expected it. Final thoughts. In the end, I think Avatar: The Way of Water is proof that you probably shouldn't bet against James Cameron. If it weren't that movie-going culture has declined since the pandemic, I think this movie had a good shot at breaking its predecessor's record. Even in this unfamiliar landscape of massive Marvel superhero blockbusters. It really is a breath of fresh air to see a big-budget film that's not about superheroes. Not just that, but one that really brings back that old feeling of going to the movies. However, if you didn't like the first Avatar movie, this one likely won't win you over. But for fans of Avatar, The Way of Water is a fantastic next chapter. And make a great setup for the rest of the sequels that we know are coming. It also builds up on the theme that Pandora isn't just something you're watching, you're living and experiencing it along with the characters. James Cameron took that Marvel movie budget and poured it into his multi-decade passion project and it shows. It was a memorable experience. The visuals look amazing. It has a classic storytelling spirit with family at the centre of it and the last 45 minutes of the movie was a brilliant action spectacle. It really feels like what movies used to feel like and it was absolutely entertaining! Go and watch it, let's take it to two billion again! This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit justreflections.bhekani.com
Read till the end. There's a delightful surprise. Introduction."Vulnerability is the birthplace of innovation, creativity, and change," - Brené Brown.In today's society, we often associate vulnerability with weakness and shy away from showing our true selves. However, research has shown that vulnerability can actually be a powerful tool for personal growth and development. According to a study conducted by Dr Brené Brown, vulnerability allows us to connect with others on a deeper level, leading to more authentic and meaningful relationships. It also allows us to process and release difficult emotions in a healthy way, leading to increased self-awareness and emotional intelligence. In professional settings, vulnerability can lead to more authentic and effective leadership, fostering a sense of trust and collaboration in the workplace.In this article, we will explore the power of vulnerability in personal growth and offer tips for embracing vulnerability in your own journey.The role of vulnerability in building strong relationships.One of the key benefits of vulnerability is its ability to deepen our relationships with others. As Brené Brown states, "Vulnerability is the core of all emotions and feelings. It is the glue that bonds us to each other." When we are willing to be vulnerable and share our true thoughts, feelings, and experiences with others, we are able to connect on a deeper level. This leads to more authentic and meaningful relationships, where both parties feel safe and supported to be their true selves.Research has also shown that vulnerability can improve communication and conflict resolution in relationships. A study published in the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships found that individuals who were willing to be vulnerable in their communication were more likely to resolve conflicts effectively and maintain strong relationships. This is because vulnerability allows us to openly express our needs and boundaries, leading to a better understanding and acceptance of each other's perspectives.In short, vulnerability plays a crucial role in building strong and lasting relationships. By being willing to be vulnerable and open with others, we can create deeper connections and improve communication in our relationships.The impact of vulnerability on our emotional well-being.In addition to improving our relationships, vulnerability also has a positive impact on our emotional well-being. By allowing ourselves to be vulnerable and open about our thoughts and feelings, we are able to process and release difficult emotions in a healthy way. This can lead to increased self-awareness and emotional intelligence, allowing us to better understand and manage our emotions.As Dr Brené Brown states, "Vulnerability is not weakness, it's our greatest measure of courage... Vulnerability is the birthplace of connection and the path to the feeling of worthiness. If it doesn't feel vulnerable, the sharing is probably not constructive." By being vulnerable and sharing our emotions with others, we are able to receive support and validation, leading to increased feelings of self-worth and self-esteem.Research has also shown that vulnerability can improve mental health and reduce symptoms of anxiety and depression. A study published in the Journal of Counseling Psychology found that individuals who were willing to be vulnerable in their relationships had lower levels of anxiety and depression and reported higher levels of life satisfaction. This is because vulnerability allows us to seek help and support when needed, leading to improved mental health and well-being.Vulnerability plays a crucial role in our emotional well-being. By allowing ourselves to be vulnerable and open about our thoughts and feelings, we are able to process and release difficult emotions in a healthy way, leading to increased self-awareness and emotional intelligence. This, in turn, leads to improved mental health and overall well-being.The benefits of vulnerability in professional settings.Besides its impact on personal relationships and emotional well-being, vulnerability also has benefits in professional settings. By being vulnerable and open with our colleagues and subordinates, we can foster a sense of trust and collaboration in the workplace. This can lead to more effective leadership and improved team dynamics.As Brené Brown states, "Vulnerability is the cornerstone of all meaningful human experiences... Without vulnerability, we experience shame, and shame is the intensely painful feeling that we are unworthy of love and belonging." By being vulnerable and open with our colleagues, we can establish a sense of trust and connection, leading to a more positive and supportive work environment. This can also lead to more effective communication and collaboration, as individuals feel safe to share their ideas and experiences without fear of judgment.Research has also shown that vulnerability can improve leadership skills and performance. A study published in the Journal of Applied Behavioral Science found that leaders who were willing to be vulnerable and open with their team members were rated as more effective and had higher levels of job satisfaction. This is because vulnerability allows leaders to show their human side, leading to increased trust and respect from their team members.Vulnerability has numerous benefits in professional settings. By being willing to be vulnerable and open with our colleagues, we can establish trust and collaboration, leading to improved leadership skills and team performance.Tips for embracing vulnerability in your personal growth journey.Embracing vulnerability can be challenging, especially if it goes against societal norms and our own fears and insecurities. However, by taking small steps and practising self-compassion and acceptance, we can gradually become more vulnerable and open in our personal growth journey. Here are some tips to get started:* Practice self-compassion and acceptance. As Brené Brown states, "Self-compassion is extending compassion to one's self in instances of perceived inadequacy, failure, or general suffering." By practising self-compassion and acceptance, we can let go of self-judgment and perfectionism, allowing ourselves to be vulnerable and open without fear of judgment or criticism.* Start small and take baby steps. Vulnerability can be intimidating, especially if we are not used to it. Therefore, it's important to start small and take baby steps towards vulnerability. For example, you can start by sharing something personal and vulnerable with a close friend or family member, or by being open and honest about a mistake or challenge you are facing.* Create a safe and supportive environment. In order to be vulnerable, we need to feel safe and supported. Therefore, it's important to create a safe and supportive environment where we can open up and share our thoughts and feelings without fear of judgment or criticism. This can be a supportive group or community, a therapist or coach, or a close friend or family member who provides unconditional support and acceptance.* Be open to feedback and support. Vulnerability also involves being open to feedback and support from others. By being willing to receive feedback and support, we can learn and grow from our vulnerabilities, leading to personal growth and development.Embracing vulnerability in our personal growth journey can be challenging, but it can also lead to many benefits, such as deeper relationships, improved emotional well-being, and enhanced leadership skills. Conclusion.In conclusion, vulnerability is often associated with weakness and avoided in our society. However, as Brené Brown states, "Vulnerability is the birthplace of innovation, creativity, and change... it's the core of all emotions and feelings. It is the glue that bonds us to each other." By embracing vulnerability, we are able to connect with others on a deeper level, leading to more authentic and meaningful relationships. Vulnerability also allows us to process and release difficult emotions in a healthy way, leading to increased self-awareness and emotional intelligence. In professional settings, vulnerability can lead to more authentic and effective leadership, fostering a sense of trust and collaboration in the workplace.By practising self-compassion and acceptance, taking small steps, creating a safe and supportive environment, and being open to feedback and support, we can gradually become more vulnerable and open in our personal growth journey. As Brené Brown states, "Vulnerability is not weakness, it's our greatest measure of courage... it's the only path to more love, belonging, and joy." By embracing vulnerability, we can unlock the power of personal growth and development, leading to a more fulfilling and meaningful life.Surprise!The article that you just read was not written by a human, but by a machine-learning model called ChatGPT. This may come as a surprise to some, as the ability to write a coherent and engaging article on a complex topic like vulnerability and personal growth was previously considered to be a uniquely human capability. However, advances in artificial intelligence and natural language processing have enabled machines like ChatGPT to learn and generate human-like text with increasing accuracy and fluency.This development raises many questions and concerns about the future of creative pursuits and the potential impact on human jobs. On the one hand, using AI to perform creative tasks has several advantages. For example, it allows for faster and more efficient creation of content, as machines can generate text at a much faster rate than humans. It also allows for the exploration of new ideas and perspectives that may not be possible with human creativity alone.On the other hand, using AI to perform creative tasks also has its disadvantages. For example, it may lead to the loss of jobs for human writers and content creators, as machines can perform these tasks more efficiently and at a lower cost. It may also lead to a homogenization of content, as AI models generate text that is based on their training data, which may not always be diverse or representative of different perspectives and experiences.Currently, AI models like ChatGPT are limited in their ability to truly perform creative tasks autonomously. While they can generate fluent and coherent text, they still depend on human input and guidance to generate text on a specific topic. They are also limited in their ability to understand and convey complex emotions and nuances, which are essential for truly creative and engaging writing. Therefore, it is unlikely that AI will replace human creativity anytime soon. However, it can still be a valuable tool for enhancing and augmenting human creativity, allowing us to explore new ideas and perspectives, and generate content more efficiently.Final Surprise!!The paragraph above describing how the article wasn't written by a human but by ChatGPT was also written by ChatGPT. It's also read by a different AI model, Microsoft Azure Cognitive Service (a less cool name). This is the only paragraph I wrote in this entire article. It's now really me, I promise! This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit justreflections.bhekani.com
When you assess yourself do you think you're good at love? When your loved ones think about you, do you think they get visions of rainbows and unicorns or blood and toil? If it's somewhere in between which side is it leaning? Whether you're good or not, where did you learn to love? Where do any of us learn to give and to receive love and why is there so much variation? We all have different perspectives of what love and intimacy are and we all have different responses to that love and intimacy. According to renown relationship therapist Esther Perel, research seems to agree that the way our primary caregivers related to us when we were children has a lot to do with how we view intimacy. However, an interesting thing I learnt from her this week is that language has an influence on us even before we can understand it. Here's how Esther Perel puts it.Language shapes our lives before we even know how to speak it. Verbs such as “to begin,” “to grow,” and “to be” describe our entry into this world. Verbs such as “to grab,” “to smile,” and “to resist” aren't far behind. Ideally, “to learn” and “to love” and “to be loved” fill our days from that point forward but we know these are the ones that carry the most complexity. We learn to love and to be loved from the responses of our caregivers. They form an internal compass that guides us—inward and outward, toward and away—often without our conscious knowledge. — Esther PerelShe says that in the language of intimacy, basic fluency comes down to seven verbs; to ask, to take, to receive, to give, to refuse, to share, and to play. To learn how we can be better at love, we need to examine each of these verbs in relation to how we were loved. Perel encourages us to go through each verb and see how we can improve our relationship with it. So let's go through them. To ask.What do you need? Do you ask for it? How comfortable are you asking for your needs and wants to be met? Rather than telling people what you don't want or being hurt when they don't meet your needs – are you able to request what you want and need? Some of us may think we know what feels good to us, what pleases us, and what is meaningful to us, but we don't feel entitled to these things. Maybe we weren't raised to feel we could ask. Alternatively, some of us have no problem asking for what we want and it might drive us crazy to guess what our partner wants when it comes so easily to us.To take.Do you allow yourself to fully engage in pleasure and feel deserving of it? Do you feel that you're allowed to take affection and attention? When we allow ourselves to take pleasure in something, we permit ourselves to engage fully, to be immersed, to feel deserving, and to experience healthy entitlement. In this mindset, we feel that we're allowed to ask for attention and affection. For those of us who struggle with this, practice reframing phrases such as “I don't want to take your time” to “may I take some of your time?” To receive.This is arguably the most vulnerable of the verbs. Do you let others give to you without fear, scorekeeping, or feelings of inferiority? Can you acknowledge that someone genuinely wants to give to you and make you feel good? It demands that we feel good about ourselves as is, that we acknowledge that someone can like and accept us, that they want to give to us and make us feel good. It's much easier for many of us to give than to receive when it comes to intimacy. Receiving requires connecting with our senses of helplessness, exposure, and vulnerability more so than when we give. When we receive, we allow another to see us. We allow ourselves to be known. “To take” and “to receive” are not the same, but they are connected.To give .Can you give without strings attached? Do you notice opportunities for giving and then take them? What is giving anyway? On the positive side, it's appropriately giving gifts, time, attention, money, help, etc. On the negative side, it's what we do to avoid conflict. Are you bad at giving? Do you give purely to avoid conflict or to cover a mistake? Do you over give or are you really stingy in some categories of giving? What do you need to give to yourself and to your partner?To share.Sharing comes from a sense of mutuality and reciprocity. If we grew up with an abundance mindset, sharing may feel totally natural. If we grew up with a scarcity mindset, or if we were raised in poverty, sharing may feel depriving and unfair or threatening to one's safety.To refuse.Some of us have a big difficulty with refusing, so we say yes to everything. We self-betray, over-commit and harbour resentment. Maybe we learned that saying “no” is unkind. Do you understand that saying “no” to your partner can help them understand your boundaries and needs? Many of us have a complicated relationship with our own right to refuse. Where did we learn that if we say “no” there will be consequences? What is the story behind our experiences of saying “no”?To play.Do you feel safe enough with your partner to engage in creativity, imagination, and exploration? Diane Ackerman says “in deep play, we can lay aside our sense of self, shed time's continuum, ignore pain, and sit quietly in the absolute present, watching the world's ordinary miracles.” Can you lay aside your self-consciousness and be silly, sit quietly in each other's presence with no distractions or problem-solve together? When we play, we can become any version of ourselves—the superhero or the villain or anyone in between.Behind each of these seven verbs are the answers to how we learnt to love and be loved. Did we learn to not expect too much? Did we dare to not be afraid? Was pleasure celebrated, tolerated suspiciously, or dismissed? Did our caregivers monitor our needs or were we expected to monitor theirs? Were we taught that we could trust others or not? Did we learn to hide when we were upset? The answers to each of these question give us a template for our emotional scorecards. Which of these verbs are you weakest at? Which could use improvement and which are you currently excelling on? The experiences that revolve around these seven verbs shape our beliefs about ourselves and our expectations of others.We didn't have a choice of how we learned them, but we have some say in which ones we prioritize in our relationship with ourselves and each other. And to show up in a more loving way is fully within our control. Challenging yourself to show up in these verbs, even though they make you feel vulnerable and scared and intimidated, is how we develop true intimacy. Every time we practice them, we learn to give up some of the unhelpful coping strategies we developed that were once meant to protect us. That is how we become more comfortable with intimacy. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit justreflections.bhekani.com
My wife and I are home in Zimbabwe and for the last couple of weeks, we've been living with our parents. One reality that dawns on you when you live with your parents as an adult is that they're also doing their best to figure out life one day at a time. Our parents raised us based on the reality they lived in, but by the time we mature, reality has changed a lot. Your parents can no longer help you navigate the unknown because it's unknown to them as well. I've been reflecting on that this week. We've all met people who seem to have everything figured out; they're determined and ambitious. They can carve out their own destiny and they create their own luck. Nothing seems to get them down. Most of us also know people who seem always to bury themselves in a hole. They're unable to recognise the opportunities in front of them and they squander the ones given to them. They harbour a lot of negativity towards life, and they seem to be perpetually stuck. Helpless against seemingly endless hostile external forces. What's different about these two people? It's hard, if not impossible, to single out one trait or belief or principle that the latter could adopt to transform themselves into the former. However, there is one thing that successful people seem to share more often than unsuccessful people and I can't help but think that there's a strong correlation between having that belief and being successful in life. Most successful people have an internal locus of control and less successful people have an external locus of control. Locus of ControlThe degree to which people believe that they, as opposed to external forces, have control over the outcome of events in their livesPeople with an external locus of control believe that when bad things happen to them, that's just the way the world is and when good things happen, they just got lucky. They have no power to change any of it. People with an internal locus of control believe that they have agency in the things that happen to them, they have control over the direction of their lives and while external circumstances can distract them from their goals; they aren't enough to deter them. People with an internal locus of control tend to take responsibility for their actions, regardless of whether those actions or their results are good or bad. On the other hand people with an external locus of control look at everything around them as part of their success or failure. We all fall somewhere on the spectrum between an internal locus of control and an external one. You included. The extent to which you fall into either of these sides was likely formed in your childhood, through your development years and your transition into adulthood. Children, especially very young children, have an external locus of control. External forces have a lot of control over the outcome of events in their lives. When you're a child, you have no agency over what happens to you and its effects. You can fall asleep in your bed and wake up in the grocery store. Somebody just took you along with them and you had no choice. It's not possible to feed or clothe yourself. You fully depend on a parental figure to take care of your needs and provide you with the things you need to survive. You have no choice but to develop an external locus of control, and that's perfectly fine. There's nothing wrong with it. That is the nature of what it means to be a child. It's a factual and realistic belief to have as a child. But, hopefully, you had a competent parental figure as you were growing up who taught you the ropes. How to cook, how to make money and how to fend for yourself in the world. More importantly, how to deal with new and unfamiliar situations. If your parents did their job right, they eliminated the need for them in your life. And, hopefully, by the time you're an adult, you still want your parents around, but you don't need them around. If they were to die, it would hurt, but you'd be okay. You'd fend for yourself and be able to figure things out when you encounter new situations.Unfortunately, many of us never outgrow the helplessness of childhood and we bring it into adulthood. We never shake the idea that we need to be provided for somehow. We remain dependent on some sort of external system to provide us with the things we need to survive and thrive. Often, this is really hard to spot. From an occupational perspective, it can look like being unsatisfied with your job. You're working so hard but being paid so little so you externalise this struggle on your boss and blame him for your life's problems. “My life sucks because my boss doesn't see how much I'm worth and is not paying me enough money.” Or you might look at the government and say, “The government is not giving me the support I need to thrive as a young entrepreneur.” Or your partner and say, “I'm not happy because he spends all his time watching sports and doesn't give me any attention.”The tricky thing is that often these are valid complaints. There's some truth and logic to them. You really aren't paid your worth and the government really isn't supporting you and your partner really doesn't give you enough attention. But the default shouldn't be to place all the blame and responsibility for changing the outcome of our lives onto these external forces. Otherwise, we're going to be imprisoned by them our entire lives and we'll feel helpless. Our default should be to look at the cards that we're given and take full responsibility for how we play those cards in the circumstances that are in front of us. Having this internal locus of control is extremely important in this time we're living in. Right now there's a looming economic recession, and it's worsened by rising energy prices that are threatening to cause a pretty uncomfortable winter (if you're in Europe like me). People are being laid off from their jobs, the climate is doing all kinds of weird things. There are threats of more wars and rumours of more pandemics. Everything feels so out of our control that it's easy to fall into a pit of despondency. And then that childlike helplessness creeps in and it feels like you have to put your entire life on hold until this period of uncertainty passes. Then, only after that can you go back to your weight-loss goals and your career ambitions and everything else. We need to realise that we can work amidst this cloud of uncertainty. There are things we can do to improve our lives despite everything going on around us. It's your sole responsibility to figure out how to thrive within the environment you've been placed. It's no one's responsibility to come and be your knight in shining armour and fight the dragons in your life. The responsibility is yours and yours alone. Hopefully, you don't take this as a scolding, but as empowerment. When you adopt more of an internal locus of control, it will feel less like life is happening to you and more like life is happening due to you. And that's a very empowering belief to have. In fact, this shift in perspective might be a prerequisite to making any substantial change in your life. Your positive actions in working your way out of an unpleasant situation do have an impact. The good habits you're building are transforming you. Your efforts are not in vain. Not only do you have the power to change your life, you're the only one who does!The other side.While I'm clearly advising you to strive to have an internal locus of control, there are disadvantages to being on the extreme end of the spectrum. As I said, people with an external locus of control tend to believe that everything that happens to them is entirely because of their direct efforts or actions. However, reality is not so simple. Our success is rarely entirely because of our actions alone. Sure, you may have put in a tonne of effort but you exist within a bigger society and other people had to be doing their part for your part of work the way it did. If we take the external locus of control to the extreme, we may easily discount the efforts of other people in our endeavours. Second, people on the extreme end of the internal locus of control will be hard on themselves and constantly analyze what they did wrong. That perspective can cause them to be hard-charging, driven individuals who have a harsh take-no-prisoners attitude. These two factors can make people with an external locus of control—which we should all strive for—hard people to work with in a team. One way to find balance is a phrase I heard from a friend several years ago. Look through the window when giving praise and look at the mirror when giving blame. Cultivating an external locus of control.While every outcome is determined by a combination of factors and never by the efforts of one person. The idea is what you believe about your life's outcome affects how empowered you feel and how much effort you will put into the future to achieve the results you want. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy. Your locus affects your behaviour. Which affects your outcomes. And those outcomes reinforce your locus. That's the bottom line here. So how do you change the prophecy of being a victim of bad luck or terrible circumstances? You change your mindset and behaviour to get a trickle-down effect of changing outcomes and reverse the vicious cycle. These different outcomes will positively reinforce the idea that your active efforts matter. Here are four ways to make your locus of control more internal: * Deconstruct the blame process. Recognise when you blame someone or other circumstances for your situation. Think about what your role was in the situation and then think about one thing that you could have done differently to change the outcome. It could be as simple as, “I could have left the house 15 mins earlier,” or “I could have started on the project a day earlier.” Then file that away as an option to use the next time you're in a similar situation. * Plan to take risks. Even if they're minor risks. Since people have different risk thresholds, how you do this is very personal. Think about a situation that makes you uncomfortable. The risk you take could be volunteering for something or speaking up in a group or asking someone for a favour or being the first person to show up for an event. These are all things that take some assertiveness to do and if you fail or get a ‘no', there's an emotional price to pay, like feeling disappointed or insulted. But the more you take these risks, the better you get at the risks. And then when you do get a positive result, it reinforces the concept that you do have some control over whether or not you get what you want. * Embrace failure. Piggybacking on taking risks is becoming comfortable with disappointments and seeing them as a stage or an experience that's one of many in your life. This ties together with a growth mindset over a fixed mindset, which I wrote about here. With a growth mindset, you see yourself as being able to adapt to circumstances in a way that advances you to a higher place. So a disappointment is a temporary step backwards or a pause in your progress, it's not a permanent state. With a fixed mindset, you believe that you're stuck with the resources you have and there's no room for improvement, so disappointments inflict permanent damage. * Focus on the things that you can control. It's easy to feel overwhelmed when you spend too much time thinking about all the factors that are not affected by your efforts. You can't control acts of nature or the economy. And to bring it closer to home, you can't control other people. So when you have a situation that involves other people like a relationship problem, even as you recognise what the other person is doing wrong, know that you can't control them. You can only control how you respond to their behaviour. If their behaviour damages you, focus on how you can limit your contact with them or limit how vulnerable you allow yourself to be with the person. Seeing as the holiday season is coming up, you might meet up with the older members of your family who were parental figures to you and face the reality of your parents no longer being able to help you navigate the unknown because it's unknown to them as well. In fact, they might look at you to be a wise guide who knows better. It's quite something facing the reality of your parents being human too. It definitely transforms the way you view yourself and the world. They were also doing the best they could with what they knew. It's a space for grace for everyone and a tremendous shift in what's possible for you and your life. I know all this is easier said than done, but it must be done. If you change nothing, then nothing will change. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit justreflections.bhekani.com
Contrary to popular belief, money can actually buy happiness. It's just that many people don't know how to spend it right. There's research to back up this claim. “The correlation between income and happiness is positive but modest, and this fact should puzzle us more than it does. After all, money allows people to do what they please, so shouldn't they be pleased when they spend it? Why doesn't a whole lot more money make us a whole lot more happy?… Wealthy people don't just have better toys; they have better nutrition and better medical care, more free time and more meaningful labor—more of just about every ingredient in the recipe for a happy life. And yet, they aren't that much happier than those who have less. If money can buy happiness, then why doesn't it? Because people don't spend it right.… Money is an opportunity for happiness, but it is an opportunity that people routinely squander because the things they think will make them happy often don't.” — Elizabeth W. Dunn, Daniel T. Gilbert and Timothy D. Wilson. If Money Doesn't Make You Happy Then You Probably Aren't Spending It Right.Many of us weren't born into wealth. Our only model of wealth is a rich uncle who bought a bunch of fancy cars and other toys when he got wealthy. So it's no puzzle that when we get some money of our own, we don't know how to spend it right. As a result, it doesn't result in our lives being meaningfully better. Fortunately, I've got your back. This week, by some stroke of serendipity, I stumbled upon some brilliant advice about the most important things you need to upgrade when you get money to improve the quality of your life. Another thing that struck me this week is that I'm now at that age where people my age get many odd illnesses. This is sad because I'm not that old. A consequence of the sedentary lifestyles we now live, I guess. So while all the advice is great, I want to shine the spotlight on the ones relating to your health. Your health.Health is one of those things that enhances the enjoyment you get from other things in life. The healthier you are, the more enjoyable your money will be. Any hit to your health will massively reduce your enjoyment of life. You won't be able to enjoy your money much if you're in and out of the doctor's office and if you're constantly on medication for all kinds of lifestyle disorders. So the first thing you need to do is change your mindset about your health. That's arguably the most important thing you have and the one thing you should guard and protect ahead of everything else. Fortunately, when you make more money, you can make some changes in your life to improve your physical health. Here are a few simple changes that can reap substantial rewards. Get a trainer.When you get money, spend it on your health without hesitation. Everyone can do a little googling and cobble together a workout program and get a gym membership. That's a good start. But when you can afford it, get yourself a trainer, and let them know what kind of transformation you want. Let them use their expertise to figure out the best exercise routine for you and the best diet for your goals. They'll come to your gym and help you stay accountable and drive you towards your goals. Getting in good shape is a winning play. You will look better, you will feel better and you'll be more confident. Get regular health checkups.Next, you know that odd pain in your back that you've lived with for 15 years. Or that bad knee that you've just accepted. Get that sorted. I don't know about you, but people (especially men) in my culture brave it through what they deem to be minor health problems. They only go to the doctor when they have no option anymore. Time to change that. Go for regular health checkups even when you feel okay. Go for other luxury or specialist treatments. See a chiropractor, go to the spa and schedule some time with a physiotherapist. When you can afford it, there's no need to keep living with those “little” issues in your health. Get it fixed. Sleep well.Statistically, we spend a third of our lives sleeping and if we're not sleeping right, it has an adverse effect on the other two-thirds. So once you have the money, invest in better mattresses and pillows. You know that bed you've been using for 10 years? Get rid of it and invest in a new one. Replace those pillows that give you a stiff neck from time to time and that linen that messes with your sinuses. Time for it to go. Get the one with a high thread count. If you can afford it, then there's no reason you shouldn't feel more rested in your own bedroom than you do in a luxury hotel. You spend a lot of time there, so make it good. Eat well.When we don't have a lot of money, we don't always eat the best food. Our primary concern is being fed and stretching every dollar, so we get the cheapest food. That's fine for its time, but as soon as you have more, upgrade your food immediately. Food is fuel and if you use better fuel, you will get better performance. During your day, you will feel less sluggish. You won't battle lifestyle illnesses like cholesterol and obesity. You'll be more focused and you'll perform better when you meet the personal trainer that you just got. This isn't about getting some restrictive diet and eating salads all the time. The goal is to increase the quality of your food while lowering the quantity. No need to eat at volume anymore and feel bloated afterwards. Get good nutritious food and savour the experience of eating without attempting to fill up your tummy. That's why you won't get a 12-wing platter at a super fancy fine-dining restaurant. Eat for right now and you'll have another meal if you have to. Travel with family.An oft-neglected aspect of our health is the mental health benefit of spending time with people we love. We're profoundly social creatures and anytime we get other people involved in what we are doing, that increases the happiness we derive from it. And sometimes all we need to get through a tough time or to clear the mental clutter is just to be around our people. When you have more money, you will probably take more holidays. You don't need me to tell you that. But when you go for your holidays, make a habit of taking your family members along with you. It's easy to drift apart because of the different experiences caused by disparate net worths. So while you can't always have your family with you everywhere, now and then travel with your sister. Take your parents along with you on your next escape. It may be nothing to you, but it could be life-changing for them and it will do wonders for your relationship. These relationships are valuable, so nature them and you'll be happier. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit justreflections.bhekani.com
I am an introvert and I love it! I also know many other introverts. In fact, I really love meeting other introverts and learning about all the uniquely introverted experiences they have. Despite how it might initially appear, introverts are everywhere, about 25% - 40% of the population. Our quiet approach to life and our need for solitary time aren't flaws, they're gifts. However, as an introvert, it's not always easy to realise how wonderful you are. We live in a world that is designed for and by extroverts. As a result, extroverts get to define everything. Being loud is often mistaken for being confident and happy. The job scene is increasingly characterised by open-plan offices, big networking parties and small talk around the office cooler or coffee machine is glorified. For those who can't blend with this, it's easy to feel left out. Unfortunately, extroverts also get to define us as introverts. But their definitions and perceptions of us are mostly wrong. I've been in many awkward situations where I'm completely comfortable with silence only to have someone persistently trying to break that silence with small talk—many flights and bus rides come to mind. I've sometimes responded to these hugely uncomfortable situations by removing myself or putting on headphones that aren't playing anything just to signal that I don't want to be a part of this. Given how liberally I talk about this, I've had more than a few people reprimand me for being antisocial or trying to encourage me to talk to people more and to stop being rude. I've gotten questions like, “What's the matter with small talk?”, “Are you shy?”, “Do you hate people?”. These are questions that introverts deal with every day. We are painfully misunderstood. Even the Oxford dictionary butchers the definition of introvert and defines us as being shy: introvertnoun: introvert; plural noun: introverts/ˈɪntrəvəːt/* a shy, reticent person.* PSYCHOLOGYa person predominantly concerned with their own thoughts and feelings rather than with external things.adjectiveadjective: introvert/ˈɪntrəvəːt/* another term for introverted.So today I want to talk about this strange person called an introvert; What goes on in our minds? Why are we the way we are and, specifically, why do we hate small talk? Introverts vs Extroverts.I'm an introvert. Yet, I speak in public a lot and I really enjoy it. I give my opinion in open forums and in many spaces you might find me speaking more and louder than anyone else in the room. This is only surprising to people who don't understand introversion and confuse it with shyness. I'm not shy at all. That said, when I'm in social spaces that have people I don't know, I blend into the background. Many people see this and think I have little to say. I have lots to say. But if in that situation, you ask me to mingle with the crowd and make small talk with some random people, I would absolutely dread it. I'd rather leave than do that. It would honestly be a little terrifying to me. But if you ask me to get up in front of all those people on a stage and lead a discussion for three hours, I'd be really excited and I can do that almost effortlessly. Again, this is only surprising if you confuse introversion with shyness. There's a statement that Jerry Seinfeld made about being a comedian that explains really well what it's like to be a non-shy introvert. “I can talk to all of you but I can't talk to any of you.” — Jerry SeinfeldOf course, there are shy introverts, just like there are shy extroverts. These two things are not related. Introverts, like anyone else, can find socialising fun. But while parties and big gatherings leave extroverts energised, introverts need to recharge after some time. Away from everyone. Being an introvert means you draw energy from being quiet and from being alone with your thoughts and your imagination. You like silence, you like to sit in solitude and think. Interacting with people drains you after a while and you need to retreat to your space. That doesn't mean that you hate interacting with people and you'd rather live alone in the mountains somewhere—although there's a part of me that finds that quite appealing. It means that you have a limited supply of interacting energy each day, so you're very circumspect about how you use it. For example, you'd rather use it on one three-hour-long deep conversation with a friend than on many small talk exchanges with strangers. Extroverts draw energy from interacting with people. They feel most at home when they're mingling and chatting. I have many friends who are like that. A few years ago, I shared a house with a friend who was like that. Gary was the prototype extrovert. He always had something to say and always wanted to fill the silence with some sort of conversation. He enjoyed talking to strangers and would make friends everywhere. Gary could take a walk outside and come back telling me, “I met a guy there who also likes basketball. In fact, his brother plays for the provincial team and I'm watching the game with him on Tuesday.” And I'd be like, “You were gone for 23 minutes and you already have a sports date with a stranger, how? Why?” That's completely foreign to me. It would never happen to me, but it happened to him all the time. I learnt that I'm an introvert in my late teens. Understanding that there's nothing wrong with me was incredibly liberating. Now, I'm deeply grateful for how I am and I lean into my strengths as an introvert. I listen patiently and make my words matter. I rarely speak without considering what I'll say, so my words are usually very thought out. And I love spending time alone or sitting quietly on my own, even in busy places. It gives me time to reflect, listen to my thoughts, and recharge. Then, after that, I am ready to reconnect and interact with everyone again. I still like the intensity and chaos of loud spaces and big social gatherings, but it's in quiet places and small, deep, intimate conversations where I feel truly at home. None of this is to demonise extroversion. I respect extroverts and I really enjoy relationships with them. I also think I understand them. But I don't think that the extroverted approach is the only acceptable way of living even though our society is structured that way. The idea that it's rude or wrong to not be sociable all the time is quite ridiculous and infeasible for introverted people. Everyone is different. Given this background, here's why we introverts hate small talk. 3 reasons introverts hate small talk.It feels insincere.As introverts, we have a small tank of interaction fuel and we really don't want to burn it on an insincere conversation. Therefore, we hate insincere conversations. We're bad at it and we have no interest in it. We don't like to talk to someone whom we know isn't really interested in the discussion. If the conversation is about the weather or the traffic or some other banal thing, then we have the impression that you're not really interested in that conversation because we're also not interested in that conversation. It's just a filler for the silence and we don't mind the silence. Our finite amount of interaction energy is being wasted on this exchange that is of no interest to either of us. So we'd rather have silence. Despite popular belief, we don't hate talking. We enjoy conversation, but it has to be a meaningful conversation. We want to get to know the other person, hear their thoughts and feelings, and get an insight into who they are and what matters to them. That will not happen through small talk that neither of us cares about, so we shut down. The same thing can happen in a non-small talk conversation. If we're having what we believe is a meaningful discussion, then we look at you and, while sharing our perspective, we look at you and see disinterest, then we shut down. Not that we're offended or anything like that, but we don't want to have the discussion anymore because it's pointless if you're not present. One thing I've heard a lot is that you need small talk to help you transition into deeper subjects. Well, this is another case where extroverts want to impose how they work on everyone. As introverts, we're perfectly happy diving directly into the deep subject. We prefer that. Small talk just impedes more meaningful interactions. Finally, if we're in an environment where no meaningful discussion could occur, maybe there isn't enough time like in an elevator or there's too much distraction, then we're happy just staying silent. We are in our heads all the time.We are constantly lost in our heads thinking about many things. Sometimes we like to plan the next conversation while we are in there thinking and imagining. Or we're thinking about many things; God, the news, thermodynamics, cats, like I said, many things. So if you're taking us out of that, we prefer it if you have a good reason. Sure, we understand you meant nothing by the small talk. In fact, you were probably trying to be friendly, but we see friendliness in different ways. To us, the friendly thing is to not say anything if there's nothing meaningful to say and let people continue to be engaged with whatever is going on in their minds. You're trying to be friendly by making conversation about the weather, but we're being friendly by not bothering you because we have nothing meaningful to say. Neither of these is right or wrong. You're being who you are and we're being who we are. We're very analytical about interactions.As I've said already, we're in our heads a lot. One consequence of that is that we analyse things a lot. We especially analyse our interactions with other people. So we will leave every small talk interaction analysing our performance in the exchange, giving ourselves a grade—usually a poor grade—for how we handled it. The extrovert will probably leave and just continue with his day and not think about it anymore. You may think it's quite exhausting to continuously think about interactions like that. You're right, it's exhausting and we would rather not do it. We prefer to avoid what to us is a high-pressure situation that will linger long and lead to very tough self-analysis. So while silence may be painful to you as an extrovert, it's not painful to us. The pain for us starts when you break that silence. And that's another difference between introverts and extroverts. Again, neither of these is right or wrong. You're being who you are and we're being who we are. All this doesn't mean that we will avoid small talk all the time. It's a necessary evil in our society, in our jobs, on the dating scene, etc. we understand that. But the main thing I am communicating is that it's work for us. It takes effort. It's exhausting and we don't like it because it doesn't come naturally to us. Imagine how you would feel as an extrovert if you were forced to sit alone in a quiet room for an hour with no one to talk to and nothing to do. I can do that with relative ease as an introvert because I'll just retreat into my mind. But you would likely feel a lot of discomfort and an immense desire to get out of that situation and get back into your natural environment. That's how we feel during small talk. Hopefully, this helps everyone out there understand the rest of us humans who aren't extroverts in this highly extroverted world. I highly recommend that you check out Susan Cain's TED Talk about the power of introverts to learn more about our superpowers. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit justreflections.bhekani.com
Do you feel you don't have enough time in the day to do everything you want to do? Have you looked at all the productivity junkies out there and wondered how they do everything they do? While I don't consider myself a productivity junkie, I do many things. I'm married and I'm a full-time senior software engineer, which on its own is a very demanding and sometimes stressful job. I'm also a co-founder and the sole developer of dealbase.africa and I do freelance work. Apart from this, I read a lot of books and blogs. I write this newsletter every fortnight and I still have time to go out skating, play video games, meet up with friends, paint, be active on social media and do other less regular things. In this article, I'll talk about how I manage my time and hopefully, you'll learn some things to help you do the same. For me, this is about recognising the things that are most important and giving my best attention to those. However, all the productivity hacks in the world won't help if you don't know why you're doing what you're doing. Without this, you'll just be filling up your calendar, ticking off to-do lists, and grinding tirelessly with no direction. A strong why will help you stay focused on the things that are important to you and to define clearly the things that will bring your fulfilment and a sense of purpose. That way, you won't get distracted by shiny objects along the way. Three simple steps.My approach for managing time follows these three steps: Focus completely for 2 - 4 hours every day. Do the one thing. Declutter your schedule. Focus completely for 2 - 4 hours every day. The first step is to realise that the big tasks that take focus over long periods of time cannot be done effectively in one go. They should be done as a slow burn, not a heavy lift. If you think about big tasks as a heavy lift, you'll continuously feel overwhelmed, pull all-nighters before deadlines and eventually burn yourself out. It's not sustainable and you'll always feel mentally and physically drained. Do a little every day and you'll be amazed how far it will get you. I'm sure many of us have read about “The power of tiny gains” by James Clear. One per cent better every day leads to 37 times better at the end of the year. The things that stand out can't all be done in one go. You have to chip away at them in small pieces every day. However, the key here is not just about making tiny gains to build up to a big whole, that's important, but even more important is reserving time to work with complete focus with no distractions every day. I'm a self-taught software engineer. I had to learn and understand a lot of big and complex things to gain the skills I need, and because tech changes so rapidly, I have to keep up and learn new complex things every day. This would have been really difficult to do if I wanted to do the work in big chunks at the end of the week. Or if I continuously context switch. So I figured out my circadian rhythm and understood that my most productive times are at night. So to this day, every night, when it's now peaceful and quiet, I put my phone away out of reach, turn off notifications, and work with full focus for two to four hours. During this time, I can take breaks, stand to stretch or get a snack, etc. but I don't allow myself to do anything other than the scheduled task. During my breaks, I don't check Twitter or Instagram because that forces a context switch and before you know it you've been scrolling for 30 minutes. I want my mind to remain focused and continue working on the task in the background whilst I take a break. Context switches will kill that focus, and I'll need time after every context switch to bring my mind back to the main thing. I define a context switch as anything that has the potential to either draw my attention away from the task at hand or to affect my emotions. I add the potential to affect emotions here because many often ignored distractions fall under this category. Listening to music is an example. Different music affects me in different ways, so listening to a playlist takes me through a roller coaster of different thoughts and feelings, regardless of what music it is. It's difficult to tune out the music and if I'll be struggling to tune it out, why have it in the first place? Even if I succeed in pushing it to the background, it's using up some background mental resources that could be processing the thing I'm working on. Given that you'll be taking out these highly stimulating things, it's important to understand that you will probably get bored during these focused deep work sessions. The allure to reach for your phone or procrastinate with pseudo-work like email will continuously gnaw at you. You'll feel like doing other things. Don't listen to those urges; stay in the zone and focus for the allotted time. If you do this enough times, it will get easier. You'll still get bored every now and then but you'll master the ability to ignore the boredom and get the thing done. Do the one thing. You need to be okay with the fact that you can't do everything. So you need to prioritise. Every day, pick the one thing that you need to do, the most important thing, and do it really well. If that's the only thing you accomplished at the end of the day, then it's a successful day. But what if my work is different and I have ten things to do every day? Well, you probably have more than ten things to do, you have a hundred things to do. We all do. But there's no way to do that many things well in one day, so if you can put the ninety things on hold to do the ten, you can also put nine aside to do the one thing very well. You need to be okay with the fact that you can't do everything. If you have ten things that are all your highest priority for the day, you'll do all those ten things badly. So break them up and give each thing its own day. Otherwise, at the end of the week, you'll still be working on the same 10 things you were working on at the start. And none of them will be done in a way that stands out. So choose the one thing, give it your full focus with no distractions and every day you'll have at least one accomplishment done really well that you're really proud of. Declutter your schedule. Besides your one thing, you likely have other things to do in your day that aren't really your things but still need to be done. Things like meetings and other obligations that you can't get out of. That's fine, we all have those. They are not part of your one thing. The problem is that if you keep accepting every request for your time, your schedule will eventually get very cluttered. You may feel like you have to accept all these meetings. However, most times, you don't, and they can be fine without you. Unless you're a key person, most long meetings will last an hour but only require you for five minutes. The rest of the time you're sitting there just listening to things that aren't relevant to you. So here's my solution; insist on an agenda being sent ahead of every request for you your time. Excuse yourself if it doesn't need you in particular or can do without you. If there's someone else who'd be more useful, recommend that they take your place. If it's something you can respond to without a meeting, write an email or a chat message and delete the event from your calendar. You'll free up a lot of time and energy by avoiding the drudge of meetings.Decluttering your schedule also means learning to say no to yourself more often. The things that are cluttering your schedule aren't all coming from other people, many of them will be from you. A big time waster is the TV. My solution is to figure out the shows you like and want to watch and schedule them on your calendar. That way they'll be subject to the same scrutiny we just spoke about. This will help you avoid mindlessly watching things just to kill time. When your scheduled show is over, turn off the TV and move on. If you find yourself distracted during a show, maybe it's boring to you now, take it out of your schedule. Don't quit entertainment cold turkey. It won't work and you'll sap away your joy. You can still watch movies and TV shows and play games. Just don't do it mindlessly; plan and schedule it. And audit it regularly. Saying no to yourself is not because you don't want these things, it's because every yes to them is also a no to the things that really matter. When you've decluttered your schedule and you now have more free time, don't think that you now have more free time so you can take on more things. That's the behaviour that got you oversubscribed. Bad habits. This article would be disingenuous if I didn't mention a bad habit I have that gives me more time (in exchange for more important things like my health). I have terrible sleeping habits. Well, it's a little better now because I've been working on it. I sleep between five to six hours per night, seven hours if I really put in the effort. Eight to ten-hour nights are very rare and even when I try my body is so conditioned that I'll wake up after seven hours. I'm also not a ‘lie in bed trying to sleep' kind of person—I don't struggle to fall asleep, when I get into bed I'm usually out in less than five minutes. At the time that I'm supposed to be sleeping, I'm usually crossing off more things from my to-do list. And since this is usually in the early morning hours when my brain is most productive, that two to four hours of focused work usually becomes four to six hours. This is not something I recommend to anyone and as I said, I'm working on sleeping more. I only included it here because this article is called “How I have time for everything” and this is a part of it. Energy management. As a final note. The following is an excerpt from an article by Cate Huston titled “Energy Management for Newer Managers”. This is relevant because often when we want to differentiate ourselves and get more done, we think it's through strong time management. As described above, we work on our schedule to really prioritize the deep work. However, we usually fail to consider energy management and yet it has the potential to derail all our good scheduling. This is what Cate Huston is talking about: One thing that many of us experience as we get older and we have many things to do is overwhelm. Superficially, it's understandable that people become overwhelmed. They get a lot of new responsibilities and need to process that responsibility; it can take some time to filter through it all and figure out how to manage it. Time management alone is not enough to help with this feeling of being overwhelmed. The other important but often ignored thing is energy management. This requires a different approach.Sometimes the most challenging thing to do on a given day is having a hard conversation. It might even be a short, hard conversation. Being proactive instead of reactive about these is largely an emotional regulation issue. Making active decisions here requires a level of emotional calm and mental clarity that we lose when we are stressed and overwhelmed. And mishandling these can wipe out all our energy and incapacitate us to perform the rest of our tasks. So, if you're feeling overwhelmed, the first thing is to figure out whether you have a time management problem or an energy management problem.What things do you add to your to-do list on Monday, but delay until Friday? Why do you put them off?What things do you struggle to do at the end of the day even though you technically “have time”?Looking at your task list for the last week, what was draining beyond the time spent on it?Looking at your task list for the next week, what do you worry you won't have time for? Why is that?Looking at your task list for the next week, what are you dreading? Why?Looking at your task list for next week, what are you looking forward to? Why?What do you think is the most valuable thing you do? Why? How much time do you spend on it?Audit your calendar / regular work and ask yourself for each thing: how valuable is this, how much time is spent on it, and whether it's energy-giving, energy-taking, or neutral.Once you've worked through some of these questions, you will probably know whether the problem is just the sheer volume of things or whether it is not the volume, but the emotional drain of certain activities. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit justreflections.bhekani.com
This week I announced on LinkedIn that I started a new job as a Senior Software Engineer at Contentful. As expected, this was followed by many congratulations messages. Besides the congratulations, there were messages asking about how I switched from Civil Engineering to Software Engineering. I expect these messages whenever I talk about my software engineering career. What I didn't expect was people saying things have been easy for me or asking how my things just seem to come together so easily. So after some reflection, I think I know now what my secret is. If you don't want to waste any more of your time reading this article, here it is: Victories are nice, but the biggest lessons come from failure. That's it!For anyone looking for further elaboration, read on. Mindset“The big lessons didn't come from the trophies, they came from losing and regrouping for the next game. They came from working through differences and learning to mesh as a team. They come from doing the less exciting parts like training and practicing.” — LeBron James.Carol Dweck, a famous American psychologist, wanted to study the different ways that children cope with challenges. So she designed an experiment where she gave 10-year-olds problems that were slightly too hard for them. Some students, when they tried and failed to solve the problem, felt absolutely frustrated and gave up citing that this is completely beyond their capability. But there were some students who responded differently. They also tried and failed to solve the problem, but they kept saying positive things like, “I love a challenge,” or, “I was hoping this would be informative.” Carol concluded that the difference between the two groups was because of differences in their mindset. She defines these two mindsets as the Growth mindset and the Fixed mindset. The fixed mindset is the idea that all the abilities we have, our intelligence, our ability to solve problems, etc. are innate and cannot be changed. Whereas the growth mindset is the idea that everything is a skill that can be learnt and honed and improved. Now, when we talk about abilities, there's an element of raw talent that we can't deny. But having a growth mindset means understanding that while there are people who are innately talented in specific things, there's a lot of room to improve for all of us in anything that we put our minds to. I can't overemphasize how important this lesson has been on my learning journey. Programming is really difficult. It has a steep learning curve. Learning it on your own makes it even harder. This might be a simplistic example, but I vividly remember trying to understand what an API is. I read articles; I watched YouTube videos, but I just couldn't wrap my mind around it. It made little sense to me. Sometimes, I'd grasp it or think I did then a little later, as if it went in one ear and out the other. I'd be completely clueless again. But I kept on because I thought surely I'm not the dumbest person who's ever tried to learn this stuff. So if someone else could learn it then so can I. Now, the concept is so simple and obvious to me that I'm hard-pressed to understand what exactly I was struggling with. So if you're trying to learn something, don't let failure make you believe that you innately don't have the ability. Let failure be your teacher and understand that you have lots of room to grow. Develop a growth mindset and you'll be surprised how much you can achieve. EffortMany people—especially those with a fixed mindset—have this perception that you should be able to do things effortlessly, and that is the mark of true genius. If something is truly your thing, then you should be able to do it with little to no effort. So if you find that you have to put a lot of effort into something, then it's not for you. You're not smart enough for it. You should find something else. However, it doesn't take too much research to discover that even the geniuses in our society achieved what they achieved through extraordinary amounts of effort. Unfortunately, those aren't the stories that get told the most because they aren't as interesting. Success stories filter that out. It's much more interesting to hear that Alexander Fleming accidentally dropped mould into a petri dish, realised that it was preventing bacteria around it from growing and in a spark of genius, discovered penicillin, than to hear that the moment was preceded by years of research, failed experiments and tireless effort. Here's what LeBron James has to say: “The preparation is more important than the competition. Those experiences that shaped me early on they taught me that being a champion isn't about stepping up and taking big shots with everything on the line. It's about the work you did that got you there. It's not about the five minutes you stand on the podium, it's about the five years you spend running sprints at 6 am. This is the mindset that says I'm going to put in the work and if I do, winning is inevitable. And if I do everything to prepare, I can live with the results, win or lose.” — LeBron James.Don't be scared by effort. Putting in effort is not a bad thing. We have to put in effort to get meaningful results. Think of putting in effort as being like going to the gym. The more effort you put in, the more your muscles have to strain to carry heavier loads and the stronger and more competent they become at carrying heavy loads. Your brain is similar. If something is complicated, put more effort into your studies, and find different materials and different perspectives. I consider myself as being great at interviews, particularly behavioural interviews, where I have to talk about myself or in situations where I showed specific qualities. I don't have an innate “good at interviews” ability and it certainly doesn't come effortlessly. In fact, I used to be really terrible at it until I figured out that the reason I wasn't good at it wasn't that it didn't come to me effortlessly. It was that I didn't put enough effort into it. So, before interviews, I spent several hours preparing for each one, taking notes, figuring out what I want to say, what they might say, where I want the conversation to go, etc. basically doing a lot of preparation. That's how I got good. So put in the effort, that's how mastery is achieved. ProcessFocus on the process, not the outcome. “A champion's mindset means a total focus on the present. It means I keep my head down right now and the future takes care of itself. I concentrate on what's below my feet as I take this step, not what's a mile down the highway.” — LeBron James.Sure, you should have a vision of where you're going. But along the way, do your best to stay locked in the current moment and trust that each small part of the work you're putting in now will get you to your goal. The second aspect of process is understanding that you will not start perfectly. Many times, when there's a part of our life that we're great at, that brilliance becomes an impediment to learning new things because we feel like we need to be just as good at everything else. Sure, you're good at your business, but when you want to learn an instrument, you'll need to start off terrible and work up to perfection. If you focus too much on the end goal, you'll continuously be overwhelmed by how far you are from it and that will eventually take a toll on you. Learn from failureNext time you fail, understand that you're not a failure. You still have room to grow and learn and be better. Then ask yourself, “what can I learn from this failure?” Take those reflections and work hard to improve yourself for the next attempt. Success is great, but often it doesn't offer the same opportunities for self-reflection and growth that failure does. I'm not suggesting that failure is necessary, but I understand that it is inevitable, so use it to your advantage. The biggest lessons come from failure. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit justreflections.bhekani.com
Many of us believe luck to be a binary non-deterministic thing; by no doing of our own, there are people who are lucky and other people who are not lucky. In another variation, we believe people's luck to be situational; for example, when it comes to business, she's very lucky. What if I told you that none of that is true? That there are things you can do to create your own luck. This is an idea that occupies my mind a lot, but it's not my idea. There are many smart people who have learnt to get the winds of luck to blow more strongly on their sails. This isn't something mystical that's accessible only to a few who've unlocked some higher plane of existence. There are things we can all do to increase our luck. Let's take a closer look.Increasing the surface area for luckBefore you come at me and say this is a little too airy-fairy. Let me clear the air. I believe that there are no inherently lucky or unlucky people. I also believe that luck happens by chance. After all, the Bible says: “I have seen something else under the sun: The race is not to the swift or the battle to the strong, nor does food come to the wise or wealth to the brilliant or favor to the learned; but time and chance happen to them all.” — Ecclesiastes 9:11, NIV.Not everything comes by hard work or training or strength or intelligence. Sometimes things happen despite all this. There are hard-working, intelligent and wealthy people who have rotten things happen to them and there are rotten people who have good things happen to them. This thought can comfort us in our ineptitude. If it's all just random, then your lack of success is not your fault. We're just continuously being dealt a bad hand. Right? Wrong! Here's the point I want to make here. You can take calculated action to create optimal conditions for good fortune to land on you more often. Put another way, while luck falls randomly, you can do things to increase your surface area for catching it. Here's a cool diagram I adapted from Shawn Wang's article on How To Create Luck.Here's how to do it. How to get luckyI've read many interesting strategies for how to increase luck. But I think they are all summed up really well by Naval—who has the most legendary Twitter account with 1.8 million followers and following 0. According to Naval, there are four ways to get lucky: • Hope luck finds you.• Hustle until you stumble into it.• Prepare the mind and be sensitive to chances others miss.• Become the best at what you do. Refine what you do until this is true. Opportunity will seek you out. Luck becomes your destiny.Let's expand on these. Hope that luck finds youHopefully, it's obvious that this is the least optimal strategy. And yet, this is the strategy that most of us employ. We believe that luck is completely out of our control. We have no agency in its acquisition. So we sit still and hope that it lands on us. When we do this, we do nothing about the probabilities. This leaves us at the mercy of random chance. You're lucky or you're not. You're fortunate to have certain privileges or you're not. In Shawn Wang's words, you have the same luck as a plant which has no agency in its success. Avoid this strategy!Hustle until you stumble into itThis is the luck that you attract by trying many times. You're more likely to roll a six if you roll the dice many times. We attract this kind of luck by taking many risks. As kids, we did this a lot. We have to if we're going to learn how to walk or talk. That's how we moved from being someone who can't ride a bike to one who can. And that's how we made many friends. We actively got out of our comfort zones and took some risks. But as we get older, the tendency is to lock onto a certain definition of who we are and stop trying new things outside our comfort zone that could stretch us beyond the boundaries of that definition. And by so doing, we narrow our surface area for catching luck.Richard Wiseman suggests three ways we can use to maximise our change opportunities that fit into this category: Have a large network of people who can alert you to new opportunities, be more relaxed and easygoing so that you can spot the opportunities when they arise, and be open to new opportunities. If you only talk to the same people, do the same things and maintain a straight jacket personality week in, and week out, your chances of stumbling upon luck are going to stay limited. So here's an idea; continuously push yourself to stretch beyond the boundaries of who you've defined yourself to be. Take an intellectual risk by tackling a fresh problem you haven't tried before or a social risk by talking to the stranger next to you the next time you're on the train. Take an emotional risk; tell someone you really care about how you feel. Luck results from a series of minor risks that get you out of your comfort zone and expose you to new situations that wouldn't happen when you're just waiting around. But luck is not just about risks. Good luck also requires effort. There are some people who take many risks but don't follow through with effort. They start many high potential things, but those things never come to anything meaningful. There are also people who put a lot of effort into what they're already comfortable with but take no risks, so they excel in their small limited context, hit the ceiling fast and get nowhere else. To maximise the surface area for good luck, you need both. Talk to strangers and be sincerely curious about them. Try new activities that are out of the norm for you. Do this often and your wide sails will eventually catch the winds of luck. Be sensitive to the luck that others missYou've probably heard Seneca's popular saying that luck is opportunity meeting preparedness. This is the luck you get from noticing that something lucky has happened that most would miss. There are opportunities for luck dropping all around us. Unfortunately, most of the time we're not well positioned to notice them or to take advantage of them. In illustrating this, Shawn Wang gives this illustration; “The canonical story on this is Alexander Fleming's discovery of penicillin, which was a huge medical breakthrough. The discovery was a total accident (some mold happened to fall in the right spot + Fleming happened to see it + he had a similar experience that was a nonevent 9 years ago), but Fleming was not only “uniquely equipped to observe it” by his background, he took action to confirm the observation.” — Shawn WangMost people judge ideas as good and bad, but ideas are neither of that. When viewed with the correct perspective, a seemingly useless idea can yield some incredible insight into a seemingly disparate discipline. The best advice I've heard for capturing this kind of luck is credited to Richard Feynman by Gian-Carlo Rota. “Richard Feynman was fond of giving the following advice on how to be a genius. You have to keep a dozen of your favorite problems constantly present in your mind, although by and large they will lay in a dormant state. Every time you hear or read a new trick or a new result, test it against each of your twelve problems to see whether it helps. Every once in a while there will be a hit, and people will say: “How did he do it? He must be a genius!” - Gian-Carlo Rota, Indiscrete Thoughts.According to Richard Wiseman, when people who consider themselves lucky encounter misfortune, they turn that bad luck into good by trying to see things in the most positive light. The glass half full effect. In addition, when things go poorly, they want to know why so that they can change things for next time. They genuinely look for feedback on how to be better and then incorporate that feedback into their lives. In this way, they develop a sense for seeing opportunity even in their own misfortune. Let luck find youThere are forms of luck accessible to everyone, and then there are forms that are accessible to people in unique situations. Naval probably illustrates it best with this example: “…let's say you're the best person in the world at deep-sea diving. You're known to take on deep-sea dives nobody else will even dare to attempt. By sheer luck, somebody finds a sunken treasure ship off the coast they can't get to. Well, their luck just became your luck, because they're going to come to you to get to the treasure, and you're going to get paid for it.” — Naval Ravikant.The person who found the treasure had blind luck; it just happened to them. Them coming to you to extract it and give you half is not blind luck. There's a very specific reason they came to you and not to anyone else. You created your luck. By working to become the best at what you do, you put yourself in a position where luck comes looking for you. You might ask, “but in this case, is it still luck?” And that is exactly the point. It's possible to excel so much that luck in that specific area seems deterministic. Which makes it hard to even define as luck. The idea here is to find something you really enjoy and that you're great at and double down on it. Do it very well and build a name around it so that anyone who needs help in that specific area will think of you first and thus come to share their luck with you. “If you are a trusted, reliable, high-integrity, long-term-thinking dealmaker, when other people want to do deals but don't know how to do them in a trustworthy manner with strangers, they will literally approach you and give you a cut of the deal just because of the integrity and reputation you've built up.” — Naval Ravikant. ConclusionTalking about creating luck is a bit of an odd thing. This is mostly because it seems attracting luck comes down to a paradox, you must believe that you have agency in generating success and it comes through diligence and hard work. But you must also understand that a big part of your success is because of circumstances outside of your control. You happened to be at the right place at the right time with the right knowledge and the right questions and all that came together to help you catch the opportunity. So while you can't control which opportunities will come, there's something you can do about all the other stuff. Finally, whether you use the model we just went through or another from the many books written on the subject. It's pretty well proven that you can influence how lucky you are. So go out there armed with this knowledge and tip the odds in your favour.Good luck!Related readings;The Luck Factor: The Scientific Study of the Lucky Mind by Richard WisemanHow To Create Luck by Shawn WangHow To Get Lucky from the Almanack of Naval Ravikant This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit justreflections.bhekani.com
You, dear reader, probably don't come from a rich family. You probably didn't have a trust fund waiting for you when you turned 18 (that's how trust funds work, right?). And there's no long line of generational wealth threading itself through your family history. And now that you're an adult, it's your turn to take a stab at starting the generational wealth in your family. How's that going? Many of us received little meaningful personal finance education from our parents. They had other challenges facing them. And honestly, many of them never figured it out either. The school curriculum didn't help as well. We have to figure things out as we go through trial and error (mostly error, if you're like me).Fortunately, I've done enough of trial and error to have picked up a bit of knowledge about personal finances in my 33 years of life. So, gather round one and all as I share with you my humble model for starting your journey to building wealth. TL;DRIf you want a quick summary, here it is. Regardless of how much you earn, every paycheck must contribute to your long-term financial growth. You do this by saving a portion of your earnings every time and setting up hedges around those savings to protect them from the eventualities of life.Here's how you should split your earnings as soon as they hit your bank: 10% - Growth Fund: This is how you ensure your growth every month. You want this fund to grow each month so you should protect it at all costs. You're building it up to invest it. Everything else after this exists to stop you from dipping into this. 10% - Emergency Fund: This is to rescue you in case something unexpected happens. For example, you lose your job or you need to pay a large sum that you couldn't have expected. 10% - Black tax. If you're like me, you probably have black tax. Parents need to be taken care of, an uncle, a cousin, etc. It's, therefore, a good idea to expect this and put aside some money for it.10% - Personal allowance. You need to enjoy the fruits of your labour to stay motivated. So give yourself some spending money. Buy yourself something nice. 10% - Charity. I strongly believe in giving; we all owe something to humanity beyond ourselves and our families. If that sounds like a lot of gobbledygook, then take this. Research shows that the way to use money to make yourself happy is to use it on others. The remaining 50% should be enough to take care of all your bills and expenses (maybe with a little extra), if it's not enough, you're probably living above your means. Cut down some things.Why you need to saveWhen we talk about personal finance, the conversation usually includes budgeting and other things and stops at saying save something each month. But how much should we save? In fact, why should we save in the first place? What's the end goal?Unless your earnings are very high, you likely won't get rich from saving a percentage of your earnings. So what's the point? Saving will do two things for you. First, it will keep your net worth growing. Your net worth is what's left after we put together all the cash and assets you own and take out the value of all your debt and liabilities. It is the proper measure of your financial position. This is worth stating because sometimes we focus too much on what's coming in and forget all the holes through which it leaks out and leaves us with nothing at the end of the month. A structured saving plan will help keep you growing your net worth even whilst expenses are coming at you from all directions. Second, there's a lot of wisdom in the adage that “luck is opportunity meeting preparedness.” There are many profitable investment opportunities all around us, every day. Unfortunately, most of them either find us without enough “free” money to take part. Saving will ensure that you have some “free” money prepared and ready to pounce at opportunity when it avails itself. Even if you wanted to take a more structured approach and start a business. Any business worth its salt will require some capital. It certainly helps to have some of your own to limit the amount you have to borrow from other people. Unless you're planning to win the lottery, that capital won't just fall on your lap. You need to build it up one brick at a time. Saving is storing up seeds so that when planting season comes around, you can plant them and, hopefully, in due time, reap a huge harvest. This is the reason for the growth fund. The savings mental modelThe core of your structured wealth growth plan is your growth fund. From each of your earnings, put away 10% into your growth fund. Think of this as the centre of your personal wealth growth plan. It's the creamy centre. Every expense that comes in your life is trying to get to this creamy centre and deplete it. Therefore, you need to protect it by building hedges around it. BudgetThe first, and most commonly known hedge is the budget. The budget ensures that regular, expected living expenses don't get to the growth fund. We can spend some time evaluating all our expenses and what we expect them to be and ensure that we don't allow these to grow beyond what we planned. This works pretty well and we should all do it. However, as life would have it, we can't anticipate all costs. Some unexpected things will come that are greater than your budget can bear and will poke through it and deep into your growth fund.Emergency fundYour luggage will get lost while travelling, now you have to dip into your savings to buy clothes. You accidentally dropped your phone and killed it, now you need to dip into your savings to buy another phone because you need it for work. Lost your job because of COVID-19 and the job market is tight. Now, you need your savings to carry you while you look for a new job, meanwhile. Emergencies are going to try really aggressively to deplete your growth savings. You need a hedge to stop them. That hedge is your emergency fund.There are many theories about how to do this. The most popular advice I've heard is to figure out your total monthly expenses, multiply that number by 6 and that gives you how much you should have in your emergency fund. That's your target, but you arrive there by saving 10% of your earnings till you reach that target. When you reach it, you can pause the contributions and direct that 10% to the growth fund until emergencies erode the emergency fund, then you fill it up again. That way, if something happens and you lose your income, you'll be able to live for six months without altering your lifestyle. Of course, if you lose your income you need to downgrade your lifestyle, meaning you have an even longer runway to get yourself back on track. So, even when you lose your income, your emergency fund serves as a hedge to protect your growth fund. Unfortunately, your personal emergencies aren't the only thing trying to poke through. You've budgeted for all your expected expenses. You've accounted for your 6-month runway. But family obligations can emerge and poke through your existing hedges. Family obligationsA common argument is that a major impedance to wealth building for black professionals is “Black Tax.” Some people actually feel the load of black tax so heavy that they're left in the negative every single month. According to Wikipedia, Black tax is “a term that originated in South Africa for money that Black (or other persons of colour) professionals provide to their family every month outside of their own living expenses, usually out of obligation. It is caused by continued economic imbalance that can be traced back to apartheid, colonialism, and slavery. It has been described as Ubuntu, but with an incapacitating twist for the black professional.”This is very much a reality that many of us have to live with and how much of a cost it comes with varies from person to person. Whatever the amount in your circumstance If we don't account for these costs, they also threaten to dip into our growth fund. Therefore, we need to plan for it by building a fund to take care of family obligations. I advise putting aside between 1 - 10% depending on your circumstances. When needs arise, you don't need to stop everything else. You've already made provision. And when the fund is depleted for the month, you can say that you aren't able to help this month with a clear conscience. So if it's a cost that can be deferred, you'll help next month. Would be great if this is where it stops. But threats to our growth aren't all external. Sometimes we are our own enemies. Our own extravagance and indiscipline can threaten to throw the entire plan out the window. Save something for yourselfAll of this saving stuff can steal the joy out of your hard-earned money. To keep yourself happy and excited about your earnings, put something aside for yourself. This is not savings or for bills or any of the other “important” stuff. This is your personal allowance for splurging. You don't have to, but if you want to this gives you the means. You can make small purchases each month. Or you can save the allowances for several months and make a big purchase later. Whatever the case, this is to help you enjoy the fruits of your labour today so that you don't delay all your gratification. My advice is for this to be 10% at most. We as humans all need some meaning in our lives. We are also highly social and the needs of those around us matter to us. As good as this is, if we're not careful, it can also threaten to poke through our hedges and dip into our growth fund. Give away some of itA more appropriate name for this fund would be, “The Happiness Fund”. I recently came across a research paper titled, “If Money Doesn't Make You Happy Then You Probably Aren't Spending It Right.” The primary argument it makes is that money can actually buy happiness, but many people who have money aren't that much happier than people who don't because they don't know how to spend it right. “The correlation between income and happiness is positive but modest, and this fact should puzzle us more than it does. After all, money allows people to do what they please, so shouldn't they be pleased when they spend it? Why doesn't a whole lot more money make us a whole lot more happy?… Wealthy people don't just have better toys; they have better nutrition and better medical care, more free time and more meaningful labor—more of just about every ingredient in the recipe for a happy life. And yet, they aren't that much happier than those who have less. If money can buy happiness, then why doesn't it? Because people don't spend it right.… Money is an opportunity for happiness, but it is an opportunity that people routinely squander because the things they think will make them happy often don't.” — Elizabeth W. Dunn, Daniel T. Gilbert and Timothy D. Wilson. If Money Doesn't Make You Happy Then You Probably Aren't Spending It Right.Drawing on empirical research, the paper proposes eight principles designed to help people with money get more happiness from their money. The second of these principles is, “Use your money to benefit others rather than yourself.” How does this work exactly? We, humans, are very social creatures. As a result, the quality of our social relationships is a strong determinant of our happiness. Because of this, almost anything we do to improve our connections with others improves our happiness as well—and that includes spending money. Several studies support this and the argument is made really well in the paper. The bottom line is making giving or spending money on other people, a regular part of your spending routine will probably make you happier. If you're Christian like me, you're likely already familiar with returning your tithes and offerings. I count these under the same banner of the Happiness fund. So put aside at least 10% to give away. Surrounded by these hedges, your growth fund will have some substantial protection against the torrent of expenses that life throws and should be able to grow every month. The budget, againYou may have noticed that I didn't include a percentage for the budget as I did for every other category. If you maxed all the rest, that should leave you with around fifty per cent of your earnings to take care of your expected bills and expenses. This should be enough to cover all of them with some left over. If this isn't enough to cover your expenses and bills, then you're probably living above your means and you need to make some adjustments to your cost of living. Building the habitFollow these principles, and in no time you should see a nice steady pot grow. If this is the first time you're trying a structured savings plan like this. I advise you to do this for at least a year before thinking about how you can invest your growth fund. This will give it some time to grow without strain while you learn the discipline needed to see all this through. If possible, automate it. Setup debit orders or savings pockets in your bank account. Deduct these categories first when your money lands before doing anything else. There's nothing like knowing you have some good savings stashed up somewhere and that emergencies won't cripple you. But this is about more than just feeling good about your savings. It's about wealth creation, remember? So when your savings have grown, it's time to put them to work in building your generational wealth. And all of this is just step one. So, see you when you've built up your stash. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit justreflections.bhekani.com
I've been reading Cal Newport's “Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World”. It really clearly articulates many things that I've learnt and practised in my professional life. I have written about many of them in the past year, but I'll admit that it was all mostly haphazard. So today I will pull all of that together, summarise the little I've read of the book and give you a quick primer on how to do deep work. Winning in the digital ageOur current technology-disrupted world gives the biggest rewards to very specific groups of people; owners of capital or people with access to it, those who can work with intelligent technology and those who are superstars in their field. According to Cal Newport, the most accessible of these is the last one. However, to become a superstar in your field, you need to master two skills: The ability to quickly master hard things. The ability to produce at an elite level, in terms of both quality and speed. “As intelligent machines improve, and the gap between machine and human abilities shrinks, employers are becoming increasingly likely to hire “new machines” instead of “new people.” And when only a human will do, improvements in communications and collaboration technology are making remote work easier than ever before, motivating companies to outsource key roles to stars—leaving the local talent pool underemployed.” — Carl Newport, Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World.Because of the rise of digital technology, we have to learn new skills to stay competitive. But, digital technology is changing at such a blistering pace that it's easy for your newly gained prized skills to become obsolete. So it's a continuous rat race to keep up. As if that's not enough, the most valuable of these digital skills are really complex and quite difficult to learn. So you don't just need the ability to learn fast, you need the ability to learn hard things fast. That's the first challenge. “And because these technologies change rapidly, this process of mastering hard things never ends: You must be able to do it quickly, again and again.” — Carl Newport, Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World.The rise of digital technologies has also led to rapid improvements in digital communication. This has set the stage for remote work and many companies that were ahead of the curve—mostly tech companies—rode this wave quite early to expand their talent pool. Then the COVID-19 pandemic came and lockdowns made it an imperative for any company that wanted to survive, opening everyone's eyes to the fact that it's not only possible but most times preferable for both employees and employers. As a result, we no longer compete with people in our geographical vicinity for work. We're now competing on a global stage. This means that our abilities need to be competitive on a global stage. With the talent pool so vast, every company is looking to hire the best they can get. So if you want to get the best jobs, you, therefore, need to perform at an elite level. That's the second challenge. “If you want to become a superstar, mastering the relevant skills is necessary, but not sufficient. You must then transform that latent potential into tangible results that people value.… [performing at an elite level requires you] to push [your] current skills to their limit and produce unambiguously valuable and concrete results.” — Carl Newport, Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World. (edited to fit)Now that we understand the abilities we need, the next obvious questions are, How does one cultivate these abilities? And what does this have to do with deep work? Well, the two abilities just described depend on your ability to perform deep work. Hard things are complex and you need to give them all your attention and focus. If you haven't mastered this foundational skill, you'll struggle to learn hard things or produce at an elite level.What is deep work?If deep work is the avenue through which we learn to master difficult things fast and perform at elite levels, why isn't everyone doing deep work? To understand this better, let's first understand what exactly is deep work. Every piece of work that you do can be classified into one of two categories. Deep work and shallow work. Cal Newport defines deep work as “professional activities performed in a state of distraction-free concentration that push your cognitive capabilities to their limit. These efforts usually create new value, improve your skill, and are hard to replicate.” On the other side of the spectrum is shallow work, “non-cognitively demanding logistical-style tasks, often performed while distracted. These efforts tend not to create much new value in the world and are easy to replicate.” These are the most common work rituals of our modern world; sitting through meetings, responding to email, writing non-cognitively challenging reports, etc. “Deep work is hard and shallow work is easier and in the absence of clear goals for your job, the visible busyness that surrounds shallow work becomes self-preserving.” — Carl Newport, Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World.Many of our misguided value systems place a lot of value on busyness over productivity. We have the illusion that keeping a full schedule and being a busy body is the way to work. However, producing at an elite level is less about time spent working than it is about the quality of the work put in it. Newport advises that to produce at an elite level, we need to consolidate our most cognitively demanding work into intense and uninterrupted pulses. This batching of hard but important intellectual work into uninterrupted stretches is key to high productivity. Thus, the new law of productivity is.High-Quality Work Produced = (Time Spent) x (Intensity of Focus)By maximising the intensity of our focus when we work, we can maximise the quality of results we produce per unit of time. And if we do this effectively, we won't need to have a perpetually fully schedule or to be busy all the time. While we can't escape shallow work entirely, we should aim to reduce the time spent on it, thus maximizing the time we have for deep work.Deep work through deliberate practiceSome people seem to have this innate skill in hard things. They breeze through it like it's nothing while you struggle to understand the basics. It's easy to look at that and think that these people are natural prodigies. Hollywood loves prodigies and might be responsible, to a large part, for making us think this way. However, in reality, there are very few prodigies. Most people who have mastered cognitively demanding things have done so through deliberate practice and hyper-focused work. “Let your mind become a lens, thanks to the converging rays of attention; let your soul be all intent on whatever it is that is established in your mind as a dominant, wholly absorbing idea.” — Antonin-Dalmace Sertillanges, The Intellectual Life.Cal Newport describes the following as the key components of deliberate practice: Your attention is focused tightly on a specific skill you're trying to improve or an idea you're trying to master. You receive feedback so you can correct your approach to keep your attention exactly where it's most productive. You cannot be efficient in your deliberate practice amidst distraction. If you cannot keep your focus on the specific skill you're learning, you're introducing inefficiencies to the learning process that will keep you from truly mastering it. “To learn hard things quickly, you must focus intensely without distraction. To learn, in other words, is an act of deep work. If you're comfortable going deep, you'll be comfortable mastering the increasingly complex systems and skills needed to thrive in our economy. If you instead remain one of the many for whom depth is uncomfortable and distraction ubiquitous, you shouldn't expect these systems and skills to come easily to you.” — Carl Newport, Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World.Deep work optimises performanceTo produce at your peak level, you need to work for extended periods with full concentration on a single task, free from distraction. Put another way, the type of work that optimizes your performance is deep work. If you're not comfortable going deep for extended periods of time, it'll be difficult to get your performance to the peak levels of quality and quantity increasingly necessary to thrive professionally. Unless your talent and skills absolutely dwarf those of your competition, the deep workers among them will outproduce you.“… the common habit of working in a state of semi-distraction is potentially devastating to your performance. It might seem harmless to take a quick glance at your inbox every ten minutes or so.… [but] that quick check introduces a new target for your attention. Even worse, by seeing messages that you cannot deal with at the moment, you'll be forced to turn back to the primary task with a secondary task left unfinished. The attention residue left by such unresolved switches dampens your performance.” — Carl Newport, Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World.Developing the ability to do deep workAs I mentioned at the start, some of Cal Newport's ideas are things I've adopted throughout my life. Here's a summary of the ones I've written about. (I'll get into a bit of self-promotion here, so please forgive me, it's done with the best of intentions.)Overstimulation is ruining your life | Just Reflections - Issue #44The barrage of highly stimulating content that digital media is constantly throwing at us is making us addicted to sensory overstimulation. This is degrading our ability to do deep work, which is typically not very stimulating on a sensory level. That's why you feel that persistent itch to open another browser tab or check your notifications while working when it “becomes too quiet.”The challenge I give you is to think about the amount of stimulation that's in your life. What's adding value to your life and what's desensitising you? How can you reduce the amount of super-normal stimuli that you're indulging in daily? You might find that by reducing the time you spend looking at screens, you could start to look forward to reading a book instead of watching a TV show. Who knows, you might even start taking walks without your phone to be alone with your thoughts in nature? You can read more about this in issue 44. Allow yourself to be bored | Just Reflections - Issue #34Most of us accept and understand that distraction isn't good for our productivity. However, most of us are also really uncomfortable with being bored. As a result, we want to fill every empty moment. We find it really uncomfortable to just sit with our thoughts. Waiting in a long queue? Check what's trending on Twitter. Waiting for that long build process at work? Check what's going on in Ukraine. Conversation running dry at the dinner table? Check whether you've gotten any important emails. You may do these things only in your leisure, but it is training you to fill lulls in activity with distraction. So even when you sit down for deep work, you'll feel the itch. Even if you resist the action, those thoughts are enough to drive some of your focus away, preventing deep work. The solution? Train yourself to be comfortable with boredom. Don't yield to the urge to fill every quiet moment with distraction. Just sit quietly with your thoughts. Don't listen to music or podcasts when you go for walks, just take in the atmosphere and watch the people and think. Your brain will eventually get used to these quiet moments and when the time for deep work comes, you won't feel so uncomfortable. “...[be] fully present in each moment and [enjoy] where [you] are. Slow down and enjoy the little things you walk past every day. Breath in the air, let the rain hit your skin, laugh with friends, take in the view. Those brilliant and vibrant parts of life are just as worthy of celebration as accomplishing our big goals.” — Soul, Pixar movie. Check out issue 34 to learn about how your aversion to boredom might also make you less creative, less altruistic, less likely to assess your current state and less likely to set goals for the future.Put your phone down | Just Reflections - Issue #16Speaking of filling the gaps, many of us have a seriously toxic relationship with our phones. Smartphones are incredibly useful devices. In the digital age, we speak of information being at our fingertips largely because nearly all of us carry these connected devices with us everywhere. Many of us literally have our phones in our hands for most of the day. But as philosopher Paul Virilio wrote, “When you invent the ship, you also invent the shipwreck.” As good as phones are, they also take away a lot from us. One of those things is true human connection. We miss out on a lot because our eyes and minds are constantly glued to our phones. It's an acceptable thing now to meet up with someone in person and then both of you spend half the time on your phones talking to other people who aren't present there with you. And the other half commenting on all the things you're seeing in your feeds.How is this relevant to deep work? Well, part of deep work involves using downtime to enhance the next deep work efforts. This involves getting adequate rest by fully disconnecting from work so that we have enough physical and mental energy for it when we get back to it. But it also involves being fully present with our loved ones when we're not at working. We won't be able to achieve this well enough if we're tethered all the time. We all know that our phones are also our biggest sources of distraction. I give more comprehensive advice about learning to put away your phone in issue 16.Learning Things | Just Reflections - Issue #6You probably don't know as much as you think you do. We've been spoiled by the intuitive and drop-dead-simple user experience of many consumer-facing technologies these days. The accessibility of information makes it easy to quickly Google random facts on demand. And when you want to learn something fast, there's probably a YouTube video for it to give you a quick on-ramp. This leaves us with the illusion that we have a deep understanding of many things yet in reality, these avenues rarely give deeply set knowledge. Sure, they're useful as a quick reference to get up to speed, but without intentionally focused study, that knowledge quickly fizzles off. We need to challenge our beliefs about our competency levels consistently.Bigger than that, we need to develop a reliable system for learning things. I go into more detail on this in issue 6. Minimise your reliance on willpowerIn an environment and culture that makes deep work difficult, we have to introduce smart routines and rituals to our working life. These should minimise the need to reach for our limited willpower when making decisions about work so that we maximise opportunities for unbroken concentration. “The key to developing a deep work habit is to move beyond good intentions and add routines and rituals to your working life designed to minimise the work of your limited willpower necessary to transition into and maintain a state of unbroken concentration.” — Carl Newport, Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World.One key way of doing this is scheduling deep work sessions on your calendar and sticking to them. Scheduling in advance takes away the need to use willpower. Be as detailed as you can be about how you will do this. Identify a location used only for depth, like a conference room or a library. Set a specific time frame for each deep work session. The good thing about using a calendar is that it forces you to set and define a specific start and end time. Don't leave these open-ended. Your ritual also needs rules and processes to keep your efforts structured. Should you go into flight mode for deep work sessions? Are there metrics you can track your productivity? If you have all these pre-decided, you don't need to rely on your willpower. When the time comes, just do what your calendar says you should do. For however long it says you should do it and follow your pre-decided rules. You were in a more sober state when you made the rules and set the schedule. Don't revise any of it when it's time to work. If any change is needed, you can schedule it for the next time you update your calendar. I only just started this book, so I'm sure I'll learn much more. Maybe I'll even change my mind on some things. But for now, I thought I'd share with you what has resonated with me so far. I hope you learnt something. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit justreflections.bhekani.com
Before we start, a bit of housekeeping for those of you who might not make it to the end. If you're listening to the newsletter, you'll be surprised to hear that I have an AI reading for me today. I have been struggling with reading out loud that I spent a bunch of hours on Friday and today building a little app that uses Microsoft's Cognitive Services Text-to-speech models to turn your articles into audio. So you just give it a link or a text file and it will send you back audio. I think this will be useful to me beyond Just Reflections because I have many situations where I want to read something, but I'm in a spot where it would work better to just listen. The app is mostly done now I just need to improve the voices, but I haven't made it public yet because I don't want to rake up a huge Azure bill but I'm happy to share it with my readers, so if you want early access, just reply to this and I'll send you a link. Today is issue number 52 of the Just Reflections newsletter. I've been writing every week for a full year now. As I promised here, from today onwards, the newsletter will switch from weekly to fortnightly (or bi-weekly for those of you who enjoy weird English). So the next issue will be on the 1st of August 2022. The reason for the change—as I've explained before—is to give more time to improving the quality. Year one was really about building a consistent writing habit. Year two is about improving the quality of the articles by giving each one more time. So I aim to write the first draft by the end of the first week—as I've been doing—and then spend the second week improving it so that it's ready to publish by the end of week two. Let me quickly give a disclaimer here. Writing—or doing any other creative pursuit—on a schedule is hard. You can't schedule creativity. This means you'll have hits and misses. Creativity is a delinquent rebel that doesn't want to be boxed, so don't expect magic from me. But do expect that year two will improve on year one. With that out of the way, let's go!Show up, anyway!I've been writing every week without fail for 52 weeks. There aren't many things I've done that consistently for that long out of volition. So I feel like a real achiever right now. When I didn't feel like it, I wrote. When I was on vacation, I wrote. In fact, even when I had COVID-19, I wrote. Rain or shine, I stuck to it. It hasn't been easy though. There were weeks when I was exhausted because there had been many things happening that weekend. I'd be dosing off at my desk cooking up something for all of you. Sometimes I didn't feel like it, but you know what? I showed up anyway! For all of you, my faithful readers, of course, but mostly for myself (there's really some psychological trickery in this maintaining a streak stuff). It's amazing to look back now and see how far I've gone. It's a great feeling to refer to my work when I do other work. Stop planning and do itThere's yet another more important reason for showing up. When you have a goal to do a creative pursuit more consistently, you may be tempted to spend a lot of time planning it out. But trying to plan your way to creativity is a mistake. Look; I love to plan, however, for creative things planning too much is likely to paralyze you into inaction. Creativity flees when you're trying to ensnare it in your plans. It likes to catch you while you're busy doing. Until you've built a habit, planning is the enemy of consistency. You want to eliminate the decision and make it a foregone conclusion. I wrote consistently because when Sunday came; I wasn't stopping to decide whether I'm writing today. Sunday meant I'm writing, whether or not I want to, regardless of what's happening. I just got on my computer and wrote. If we spend too much time trying to create the perfect plan for the perfect execution at the perfect time, we'll burn all our energy preparing and never actually get around to doing things.So don't wait until it's the first of the next month when it's a round figure to go to the gym, go now. Don't wait for summer to end, don't wait for the perfect time, the perfect time is now. When you do this, you shift your thinking from “I need to be ready to write” to “I am writing already; what would I want to change next time?”Start from plentyNow that you're jumping in with minimal planning (geez! said without context, that sounds like terrible advice). Anyway, now that you're focusing on doing instead of crippling yourself with planning. The next pitfall to avoid is spending too much time figuring out what to write about. To this I say, start from plenty.Simply put, starting from plenty involves writing all the things that catch your attention in your everyday life. This ensures that when it's time to write, you have an enormous bank of interesting things to choose from. In other words, you're starting from plenty. I'm a very last-minute guy. So much, in fact, that I'd say over 80% of the issues for this newsletter were written on Monday morning after 1 am. Most of them were finished around 5 am, 5 hours before they need to go out, leaving me with only 4 hours to sleep and wake up for work. Writing so close to the deadline means that I have no time to look for something to write. When I sit, it's time to move. So, to make that possible, I need a bank of ideas I'd love to write about ready for me to choose from. To be clear, when I say write the things that interest you I don't mean in-depth writing. Just a sentence or two will do with links and cross-references of the source. This means you need a good quick capture system that's easily accessible from anywhere. I use Google Keep for things that I've read and want to write notes on and Pocket for links that I want to get back to later. They're both tiny apps that I can quickly and easily open and throw stuff in. I can open them anywhere that has a web browser. And both save my things for offline reading so I don't need the internet to catch up with what I noted. When I come across a quote I like, I pull up a note and paste it. When I see an interesting article I want to read, I drop the link into Pocket. I keep my thoughts in a Keep when I watch interesting movies. That way, when it's time to write, ideas are plenty. I just pick one, follow the link, and follow the rabbit hole. The challenge is never, “I can't find something to write about,” rather it's, “Which of these many things should I pick today?” That's what starting from plenty means. Focus on consistency, not correctness.When trying to build a habit, the most important thing is figuring out how to stay consistent. We should set up routines and incentives that help us do the thing, and worry very little (if at all) about whether we're doing the thing “correctly”. I'm not saying correctness is not important, I'm saying it's not the focus when building a habit. We have to be consistent about doing the thing before we can think about whether we're doing it well.Make the right thing the easy thingI consider myself to be pretty motivated. I enjoy creating things. So you'd think that taking some time to write each day is a foregone conclusion. Not so. Writing is its own activity. I have to make an active decision to stop what I'm doing and start writing. That makes writing a task requiring conscious effort—however small the effort seems—or put more concisely; writing is an active demand.During the day, I deal with lots of small active demands, such as forcing myself to put on get out of bed when I'd rather sleep in, or closing down the software project I'm working on to write. These demands are not difficult or important decisions; they're just things that require conscious choice and willpower. And willpower is an exhaustive resource. As my day goes along, active demands pile up and my willpower diminishes. By the time I've fought off my lazy self and dragged myself to the gym, stepped through the rest of my morning activities, settled into work on my current project, and put in a solid few hours of programming, I just don't have enough willpower left to force myself to switch contexts and start writing.The solution is to make writing a passive demand. You can achieve this by creating a routine that incorporates writing. This is great because it can help you make the right thing the easy thing. I have a Sunday evening routine; I set my phone to charge away from me, sit at the computer and ready the things I saved to my Google Keep and Pocket that week, and then that transitions into writing.If I try to change the order, say checking my Pocket on my phone, I almost always end up wasting time on YouTube or social media. However, I've never gotten into the zone of reading and then gotten up to check my phone. The routine makes the right thing the easy thing. This is because the routine takes away the active demands. I don't have to decide to put my phone away. It's an established step in a larger process: I do it "on the way" to something else.So, to be consistent as a writer, I don't need to decide to write every week. I need to make sure that writing is part of what I do every week.Go wide, then go deepOne struggle I had when I was thinking about starting a writing habit was deciding what to write about. I hadn't figured out that to figure out what you want to write about you have to write. Until you try, it's hard to know whether something is enjoyable enough to keep doing. This is where planning gets us into the weeds in habit building: we're forced to hypothesize about how much we would enjoy something, and we are tragically terrible at predicting that sort of thing.It's not possible to plan your way to consistency. You have to experiment your way there. Cast a wide net, try anything and everything that sounds fun, and keep track of what you're enjoying so you can do more of it. This is the reason I didn't box myself to a specific thing with the newsletter in my first year. I went where the interest led. One week I'd write about money, the next week about relationships and then the next about behavioural psychology. Essentially, going where my interest leads. Now that I've done it for a while, I have a pretty good idea of the things I enjoy writing about that I want to explore more. I still have a lot more experimenting to do but going wide first has helped me identify the things that I want to go deep on without me over-committing to one thing at the start with inadequate knowledge. Just make sure you can distinguish between the things that are hard because you still need more practice and the ones that aren't fun to you. A good way to achieve this is to not give up on something too early just because you'd have to work at it. Put in the work first, commit for a while, and then you can decide. Those are just a few of the lessons I've picked up from my first year. I'm really excited about where year two will take me. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit justreflections.bhekani.com
People love to impress each other. We dress to impress; we show off our material wealth, our connections, our bodies, our intelligence and yes, even our morals. Like many others who spend a fair amount of their time on social media, I have seen my fair share of virtue signalling. But what is virtue signaling? It refers to when someone attempts to show that they are a morally impressive or virtuous person. Virtue-signallers adopt a holier than thou attitude when approaching discourse. By pointing out the supposed moral imperfection of others, they appear to be a more progressive and compassionate person.Thanks to social media, we're virtue signalling more often, to larger groups of people and with more to gain from it. With offering support being as easy—and requiring as little thought—as sharing someone's Instagram story, or re-tweeting something on Twitter, feeds have been flooded with posts that “stand up against social issues.” So much, in fact, that even brands have started virtue signalling.This could have been great and a vital step towards affecting change, but it's telling how quickly the support fades. Take the Black Lives Matter movement of 2020 as an example. For weeks after the horrendous events that triggered these social movements, social media was overflowing with support for those affected by racial discrimination and abuse. But the support disappeared just as fast as it came. Social media has made virtue-signalling trendy, which ultimately offers no help to those who need it.Now, we could just toss virtue signalling in the bin as just one of those weird social media behaviours. But research is showing that there could be something more sinister at hand. It can lead to serious problems related to how we discuss society's problems and what we decide to do about them. Virtue signalling isn't virtuous. It requires no effort, hard work or self-sacrifice. If people spend their time broadcasting emphatically how good they are, there's a very good chance they are not. It turns out the old adage is true, “Actions speak louder than words.”Who are the virtue signalers? Virtue signalling is predominantly associated with the left. But it would be wrong and naïve to assume that it doesn't happen on the right. It likely exists across the political spectrum. Be honest, you've also done it too. Social media is likely the driver of why it seems so one-sided. Before we go further. Remember, sometimes people engage in behaviours that look just like virtue signalling with genuine intentions. Which makes this issue a little complicated. None of us can really know for sure when someone's trying to impress. Regardless, let's look at five of the most common forms of virtue signalling and discuss why we do them and why it's a problem. The five forms of Virtue SignallingI found this impressive classification of the most common forms of Virtue Signaling by YouTuber Laci Green. Let's check it out. 1. Piling onPiling on could be an angry type, like cancel culture. But most times it's just piling on agreements to what someone already said. For example: Say it again for the people at the backThis!!I want to echo what others have said
It's July, which means it's the middle of the year, which means it's time to review how the year is going. Be warned, this is going to sound like an excuse for not meeting my goals, but stay with me, there's a good point to it. Give yourself a themeDid you set any new year's resolutions this year? How's that going? If I had to bet on the status of your resolutions, I'd say they're probably not flourishing. They might even be failed or foregone by now. If this is you, don't worry. I'm not judging and you're not alone. I also set some resolutions at the start of the year that I've fallen short of. Here's how the effort curve for new year's resolutions usually looks: I'll also take a leap and guess that this isn't your first time trying out new year's resolutions. You've been here before; go vegetarian, quit smoking, exercise more, read more, quit Twitter, etc. You've made resolutions with concrete conviction, fallen right off in short order in March, only to return next year to choose another resolution. Or the same one. Resolving, retreating, returning year after year after year of your unchanging life. Maybe you're one of the more disciplined among us. You resolved to lose 10 kilos by the end of the year and actually did. But then next year, when the resolution was about reading more, you gained all the weight back. You're left chasing the same outcome again because you only treated the symptoms without addressing the cause. Whichever one of these sides you fall on, New year's resolutions can be a stark reminder that human behaviour change is really hard. So maybe this resolution stuff isn't the way to change. Maybe there's a better route to positive life change. Well—as you may have expected—I have some ideas. Allow me to suggest a gentler approach. Give yourself “A Theme.” “Achieving a goal only changes your life for the moment. That's the counterintuitive thing about improvement. We think we need to change our results, but the results are not the problem. What we really need to change are the systems that cause those results. When you solve problems at the results level, you only solve them temporarily. In order to improve for good, you need to solve problems at the systems level. Fix the inputs and the outputs will fix themselves.” — James Clear, “Atomic Habits: Tiny Changes, Remarkable Results.”Focus on the trendInstead of setting yourself up to fail by saying, “I'm going to lose X kilograms by next year,” or “I'm going to read at least one book per month.” A theme would be something like, this is the “Year of Reading” or “Year of Health.” If that sounds too broad to you, that's the point! For some things, precision matters and for others, it doesn't. We've already established that human behaviour change is hard. So when building yourself into a better version of yourself, exact data points don't matter as much as the overall trend line. If the trend is going in the right direction, so are you! In fact, just moving a trend line from one direction to another is hard enough without defining arbitrary goals that will make you feel like a failure when you fall short of them. Even just decelerating a negative trend is positive. Your themeIs there something you want more of? Well, life is a branching path, and it's the trend of your decisions that will get you there. Some will be big decisions, but most will be small. They will all accumulate towards your goal. Stuck in a long queue and you're bored? If it's the “Year of Reading,” then open a book instead of Instagram or whatever else. That's it, that's all it takes. You were at a branch and you went toward your theme instead of the other direction. Having a theme is like having a shortcut for decision-making. When you notice branches, you will have a system for considering the choices. Reminding you to be a little different, even in seemingly insignificant moments. If this year is the “Year of Courage” for you, instead of saying I will do 12 courageous things this year (one for each month). Say, “When I have to choose between two things, I will always choose the more courageous one, no matter how small.” The result will be that your year will be more courageous than normal. In picking a theme, choose something that is nice and broad for the general direction you want to navigate your life. Think words like Novelty, Fun, Health, Family, Finances, etc. The term “navigate your life” is important here. The diverging paths of life are hidden ahead in the future. You can't plan the whole route because there's no certainty about the future. Many unseen obstacles await and at any moment, you are where you are now and can only navigate from here with the information you have right now. Perhaps you started a “Year of Completion” focused on finishing all the projects you started in the past. Then you realise they're no longer relevant to the alternative career path you've chosen. You haven't failed. It's still the “Year of Completion.” The broadness of a theme allows its meaning to change as you change. You started out wanting to read more books, but then you found out that reading-reading doesn't work for you and listening-reading to audiobooks is where it's at. You're still on theme! Here are some words you can use in choosing your theme: The details of what they mean to anyone else don't matter. What matters is whether there's something about it that strikes you or calls out to you. Take the one that resonates with you and run with it. A broad theme allows its meaning to change with you without the guilt of having failed to achieve the goal of a past you who doesn't exist anymore. Just having a theme will make you aware of paths you otherwise wouldn't have paid attention to, which will change you. It's like when you plan to buy a certain model of a car, suddenly you'll start seeing that car everywhere. It's not that there are suddenly more Range rovers on the road, you're just noticing them more. Your theme should get you thinking about your thinking and thinking about your thinking changes your thinking, which changes who you are. If this feels very hippy-dippy, lovey-dovey, huggy-wuggy, fuzzy-wuzzy, that's fine. Not all tools need sharp edges. You should always work to build the life you want to live and themes are a fuzzy, high-level, long-term way to navigate your life towards a broad area of change. Based on your theme, you may set up smaller and more specific systems which will guide your actions towards the goals of the theme. My “Year of Health,”With all that being said, I'm changing my resolutions for this year to themes. July was my deadline for being 70 kilograms. Today is July 3rd and I'm 76.9 kilograms. I failed, but that's fine because this is still the “Year of Health” with a focus on lowering my weight. So while my weight is not where I want it to be, I've made some big strides in taking control of my health sustainably. Here are some wins that I can register today. Before this year, I would eat upward of 2000 calories per day on an average day. Now, maybe your job involves digging holes all day and 2000 calories is nothing to you, but I'm a software engineer and my job involves sitting at a desk all day and moving my fingers. That, unsurprisingly, burns very few calories. It's worse because I work from home 100% of the time, my commute is barely 10 metres from my bed to the next room and on some days I work from the bed. All this meant that on an average day I was accumulating a calorie excess. So it's no wonder my weight was out of control. These days I eat about 1500 calories on average, so even with no additional movement, that's 500 calories off my intake every day. I'd say that's a trend in the right direction. At some point, I took up running on the treadmill three times a week. That was an enormous struggle. Not for the reasons you'd expect. I find running incredibly boring. My runs were only 20mins per session, but even in that short time I would get so bored that running was more of a mental exercise than a physical one. I wouldn't struggle with the running, but that monotonous repetitive movement felt like watching paint dry. I tried all the tricks, listening to music, to books, to podcasts, running in silence, but nothing helped. So it was hard to stay consistent. Fortunately, I found a new hobby that's good exercise and also fun; inline skating or rollerblading for you cool kids out there. This means I get to burn calories while enjoying what I'm doing. I'm still new to it and I'm still learning, so I've fallen many times. I also can't wander off too much because I'm not yet confident that I won't bump into people or cars. But I'm working on it and I'm getting better every day. Soon I'll be able to put in some real cardio on skates. This means I can burn off some calories while also having a great time. I've also made some skating friends. Anyone who knows me knows I drank a lot of juice. I drank unwieldy amounts. Much more than I should and certainly more than what a guy who moves as little as I do should be drinking. An unintended result of this is that my palate was so used to drinks being sweet that water tasted horrible to me. Despite this—and based on the advice of self-help YouTubers—I forced myself to keep a bottle of water on my desk. I don't know what it is but if there's a bottle of water right there you'll end up drinking it. Just out of boredom, I guess. So if boredom makes me want to put things in my mouth, I may as well make sure it's good things I'll put in my mouth. This got me used to the taste of water. Now it's fine and I refill my bottle often. To compound this, somewhere along the way, something convinced me it really makes little sense to keep chugging down sugar water for someone with as sedentary a lifestyle as mine. So I just drink water most of the time now and as much as possible, I don't even keep the sweet drinks stocked in the house anymore. I believe it was a combination of these factors that allowed me to drop my weight from 85.6 kilograms on the 4th of January to 76.9 today. This is 6.9kg short of where I wanted to be, but it's 8.7 kilograms less than where I started and I'm really proud of how far I've come. I'm also happy that I've achieved this through minor lifestyle changes that aren't too restrictive or gruesome, so I'm confident that I can sustain them long-term. However, it seems like with what I'm currently doing +/- 77kg is the furthest I'll drop because I've been here for a while, so if I want to drop some more kilos, I'll need to do more. But it's the “Year of Health,” and there are many more healthy choices I can still make. This is where I am and my advice is wherever you are, whatever the state of your resolutions, give yourself time to find a theme that resonates with you and try it out. — This article heavily derives from CGP Grey's ideas on creating a theme for yourself and James Clear's “Atomic Habits: Tiny Changes, Remarkable Results.” This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit justreflections.bhekani.com
Last week I wrote about one of Dr John Gottman's books, “Why Marriages Succeed Or Fail And How You Can Make Yours Last.” That book lays out most of his foundational ideas about marriage, including the four horsemen of the apocalypse; Criticism, Contempt, Defensiveness and Stonewalling. And the different kinds of stable couples. If you're hearing about all this for the first time, it's probably worth reading that article first. Here's the link. This week I will talk about his other more prescriptive book called “The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work.” The principles he shares are based on the extensive research that he's done on couples in his “Love Lab” in Seattle, Washington. I'm mentioning this to signal the idea that it's not based on his hunches, but on well-researched data. Before we get into that, let's take another look at how Gottman predicts divorce. The signsLast week, I explained that Gottman can predict with over 91% accuracy whether a couple would stay together long term. Here are the signs he looks for. Harsh Start-up: How a conversation begins often predicts how it is going to end. So if someone starts a discussion with criticism, blame, sarcasm or accusations, it likely won't end well. The Four Horsemen: There's more detail on this in the previous article. Gottman looks for these horsemen in the couple's arguments. Flooding: If either partner gets psychologically or emotionally overwhelmed during the argument, it doesn't bode well. It's worse if the other doesn't pick up on this and drags it on while the counterpart is now flooded.Body language: Crossed arms, leaning away from each other, not making eye contact and not mirroring each other's movements. These are all signs that things aren't going in a good direction.Failed repair attempts: When tension rises in a conflict, sometimes a partner will attempt to de-escalate with anything; a silly comment, humour or even directly saying we need to take a step back and cool down. Those are called repair attempts and they help to prevent emotional flooding. If those attempts don't work to de-escalate the situation, it is a bad sign. Bad memories: Things were not always bad. The problem is that when bad things are happening, couples rewrite the past negatively, forgetting all the good memories and remembering all the bad ones. They can't seem to remember that earlier magic even when they're asked how they met, about their wedding day or other special moments. Everything is negative. Withdrawal: When one partner is distant, calm and completely emotionally disengaged during arguments that's a sign that the end is near. Is there anything a couple can do to fix things at this point? Yes! Gottman gives seven principles. The seven principles are not about focussing on these areas of negativity and difficulty. Rather, each of them builds trust and friendship, which is the bedrock of successful relationships. The seven principles for making relationships workMost relationship advice focuses on the same old pointers; better conflict resolution and communication skills. According to Gottman, getting couples to disagree more “nicely” might reduce their stress levels while they argue but frequently it's not enough to revitalise marriages that are on the rocks. In fact, after studying many couples whose relationships made it through troubled times he realised that they were never perfect unions. They still had significant differences in temperament, interests and family values. They had frequent conflicts, they argued over money, work, kids, housekeeping, sex and in-laws as much as the failed couples. “At the heart of the Seven Principles approach is the simple truth that happy marriages are based on a deep friendship. By this I mean a mutual respect for and enjoyment of each other's company. These couples tend to know each other intimately-they are well versed in each other's likes, dislikes, personality quirks, hopes, and dreams. They have an abiding regard for each other and express this fondness not just in the big ways but through small gestures day in and day out.” — Dr John Gottman, The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work.Gottman's principles focus on increasing the number of positive interactions that happen in a relationship. This is because he discovered you need to load up several positive interactions to counteract the effects of one negative interaction. In fact, there's a magic number here. According to the research, you need five positive interactions for every negative interaction. Here are the principles.1. Enhance your love mapsKnow your partner better. Know what they like, who they like to talk to at work, what they do all day, what their passions are and what their history is. Good couples are intimately familiar with their partner's world, which makes them able to weather the storms when they arise.With how busy life is these days, I think this is one area that needs to be watched closely otherwise we'll discover that we've been estranged from our partners. So even if it's not your favourite thing, teach yourself to take interest in the things your partner loves. You may not care much about spoken word poetry but if that's what your partner loves, you lose nothing by learning it enough to have a stimulating conversation with them about it. If you don't know where to start with learning it, ask them to teach you. I'm sure they'd love that and it will create an opportunity for you to bond. “… Although he's not religious, he accompanies her to church each Sunday because it's important to her. And although she's not crazy about spending a lot of time with their relatives, she has pursued a friendship with Nathaniel's mother and sisters because family matters so much to him. If all of this sounds humdrum and unromantic, it's anything but. In small but important ways, Olivia and Nathaniel are maintaining the friendship that is the foundation of their love. As a result, they have a marriage that is far more passionate than do couples who punctuate their lives together with romantic vacations and lavish anniversary gifts but have fallen out of touch in their daily lives.” — Dr John Gottman, The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work.It should go without saying that learning to relate to your partner's interests and even learning to love them will improve your friendship overall. And couples who are good friends experience a lot of positive sentiment override. Their positive thoughts about each other and their marriage are so pervasive that they tend to supersede their negative feelings. Therefore it takes a much more significant conflict to cause them to lose their equilibrium. I'm not suggesting that you should know as much about football as their Sunday social football teammates, but each interest of theirs that you choose to ignore is a connection opportunity missed. And it's one area of the love map of your relationship that you've chosen to be unfamiliar with. 2. Nature fondness and admiration You need to cherish each other and honour what is good and true and positive about your partner. After all, you chose them for many positive reasons. Try to remember those. The absolute foundation of all relationships is fondness and admiration and if you don't have those, the relationship will not make it. “Fondness and admiration are two of the most crucial elements in a rewarding and long-lasting romance. Although happily married couples may feel driven to distraction at times by their partner's personality flaws, they still feel that the person they married is worthy of honor and respect. They cherish each other, which is critical to keeping their Sound Relationship House intact and preventing betrayal. If fondness and admiration are completely missing, reviving the relationship is impossible.” — Dr John Gottman, The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work.It's very easy to forget or stop noticing your partner's good qualities, especially if you've been together for a long time. When you forget these, the negatives will start to seem more glaring and if you're not careful, after a while that's all you'll see. So talk about your partner's good qualities, tell them what you like about them. Complement them often. When they do something you particularly love, tell them about it. Reminisce on your past; how you met, what you felt on your first date, and what you told your friends when you first realised that you love this person. Even long-buried positive feelings can be exhumed simply by thinking and talking about them. This will help you keep that fundamental sense that your partner is worthy of being respected and loved. You'll need this during the storms of life.Finally, it's important to tell them about the things you love about them in private, but it is also important to tell them in public. Make your fondness and admiration publicly known. No one wants to only be loved behind closed doors. 3. Turn towards each other instead of awayA rare commodity in today's world is attention. Focus your attention on your partner when they make a bid for your attention. Listen without distraction, be helpful and be present. Sometimes bids for attention are wrapped up in anger or blame. When this happens, focus on the ask and not the negativity. Your attention is the most precious thing you can give to someone. I get particularly irritated when I'm try to get my partner's attention and they listen while on their phone or they turn to me while keeping their phone in their hand, the screen on ready to scroll to the next post in the feed. That irritation is heightened if they immediately reach for their phone the moment I stop talking. I know I'm overly sensitive because I've put a lot of intention into making sure I put my phone away during any kind of quality time so I feel like I deserve that in return. Especially in the moments when I clearly need my partner to be fully present with me. “In marriage, couples are always making what I call "bids" for each other's attention, affection, humor, or support. Bids can be as minor as asking for a back rub or as significant as seeking help in carrying the burden when an aging parent is ill. The partner responds to each bid either by turning toward the spouse or turning away. A tendency to turn toward your partner is the basis of trust, emotional connection, passion, and a satisfying sex life. Comical as it may sound, romance is strengthened in the supermarket aisle when your partner asks, "Are we out of butter?" and you answer, "I don't know. Let me go get some just in case," instead of shrugging apathetically. It grows when you know your spouse is having a bad day at work and you take a few seconds out of your schedule to send him an encouraging text. In all of these instances, partners are making a choice to turn toward each other rather than away.” — Dr John Gottman, The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work.If you ignore your partner's pleas for attention, eventually they will stop asking. 4. Let your partner influence youThis is also called power-sharing. Let your partner's feelings, thoughts and ideas influence your decisions. Co-operate and yield. Marriage should always be a partnership, not a dictatorship. According to Gottman, this is a problem that's most prevalent in men than in women. If you're in a relationship and you're only looking out for what matters to you, regardless of how it affects anyone else then you need to reconsider that if you want your relationship to survive. Being in a relationship comes with sacrificing some of what you want to make space for what your partner wants. That's how you make a life together. And that's how you ensure your lives grow in the same direction. A marriage can't work unless both parties honour and respect each other. This is true regardless of your belief system. 5. Solve your solvable problemsEvery relationship is a union of individuals who bring to it their own opinions, personality quirks, and values. All conflicts in relationships fall into one of two categories: either they can be resolved or they are perpetual, which means they will be a part of your lives forever in some form or another. Once you're able to identify and define your various disagreements, you'll be able to customize your coping strategies depending on which of these two types of conflict you're having. Gottman's research reveals that 69% of a couples' problems are perpetual. You want to have a baby but your partner says he's not ready yet and doesn't know when he'll be ready. She wants sex far more frequently than he does. He's very lax about housework and rarely does his share until she nags, which makes him angry. Despite these perpetual differences, couples can remain satisfied with their relationships if they learn to deal with their unmovable problems in a way that doesn't make them overwhelming. One solution to perpetual problems is to learn to live with them and approach them with good humour. “At times it gets better; on occasion it gets worse. But because they keep acknowledging the problem and talking about it, they prevent it from overwhelming their relationship. These couples intuitively understand that some difficulties are inevitable, much the way chronic physical ailments are unavoidable as you get older. They are like a trick knee, a bad back, an irritable bowel, or tennis elbow. We may not enjoy having these problems, but we are able to cope by avoiding situations that worsen them, and by developing strategies and routines that help ease them.” — Dr John Gottman, The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work.The remaining 31% are solvable problems. Work to solve these through compromise. Gottman gives a process for solving these which includes softening your startup, not including blame, criticism or contempt, making some repair attempts, de-escalating away from emotional flooding and compromising by finding common emotional ground. 6. Overcoming gridlockGridlock occurs with problems that haven't been solved well and have hardened into uncomfortable sore spots. This mostly happens with perpetual problems which centre around fundamental differences in personality or lifestyle needs. For example, we have what I believe to be a perpetual problem around how we spend leisure time. I like to be out and about around people and I gladly welcome any opportunity to do so without batting an eye. My wife is a homebody. She will take any opportunity to be at home relaxing and watching TV. So, whenever we go out somewhere, I get on edge at some point because I'm enjoying and would love to stick around till the end but I know I'll be getting a text soon about going home. And when we're home, anytime we have some free time, I'm sure she gets similar anxiety knowing I'll come saying let's go outside for a walk or I'll tell her of some invitation I just accepted somewhere. Now, I can obviously go out on my own and she can also relax at home on her own. The problem is that both of us don't want to be doing these things alone and we'd rather do them with each other. Many times gridlock happens when you have aspirations, desires and dreams that have not been acknowledged or respected by your partner. So, try to uncover those dreams with respectful and open questions and curiosity. Understand those differences so that you won't continually bash your heads in situations where you can't find a satisfying compromise for. You'll find it easier to accept them and even have some inside jokes around them. Perpetual problems are like an allergy, they're not going away but you can treat them so that they don't ruin your life. 7. Create shared meaning“We got along okay and really loved each other, but I didn't feel that connected to Kevin. It was like we were roommates who made love." Helen, a "devout feminist," had always prided herself on her independence. At first she thought it was great that she and Kevin had their own lives-separate careers, interests, and friends. But the longer they were married, and especially after they had children, the more she felt something was lacking. She didn't want to give up her strong sense of individual identity, but she wanted more from her marriage. After attending our workshop, she realized what it was: she wanted to feel more like she and Kevin were a family.” — Dr John Gottman, The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work.Sometimes what is missing is a sense of shared meaning. People are happiest when they have meaning in their lives. Relationships are no different. In addition to everything else, relationships also have a dimension that has to do with creating an inner life together—a culture rich with symbols and rituals, and an appreciation for your roles and goals that link you and that lead you to understand who you are as a couple. Without that, you may feel lost, like your happy relationship isn't going anywhere. So how do you create shared meaning? Develop shared couple-based rituals, something that you do together and that holds meaning for the two of you. Be supportive of each other's roles. Discuss shared goals and understand the values and symbols that uniquely define your relationship. We usually think of culture in terms of large ethnic groups. But culture can also be created by just two people who have agreed to share their lives. Each couple can create its own microculture. and like other cultures, this small culture can have its own customs (like Saturday dinner out), rituals (like watching every new Marvel movie together regardless of circumstance), and myths—like the stories the couple tell themselves (whether true or false or embellished) that explain their sense of what their relationship is like and what it means to be part of it. Developing a shared culture doesn't mean you're aligned on everything. Instead, it's about creating a mashup that honours and incorporates each other's dreams. And it is flexible enough to grow as you grow. When a relationship has this shared sense of meaning, conflicts will be much less intense and perpetual problems less likely to lead to gridlock. Final thoughtsIt might seem like a lot of work but happy relationships are beneficial to almost every other part of our lives. From our mental, physical and emotional health to our financial and community wellbeing. So they're worth the extra work. Gottman has a variety of worksheets and questionnaires in this book so if you want to give his method a shot, you're guaranteed that a lot of work has been put into making it simple and practical. Gottman recommends intentionally spending time working on your relationship. He recommends at least six hours a week. I know that all seems a little textbookish for something that is supposed to be smooth and enjoyable but well, that's what the experts have found to be what works. And I'm sure none of us needs to be told that relationships can make our lives really, really miserable if we don't put in the time to make them work. Finally, don't let negativity slide. Better to address it early than to wait until it has turned into something way worse. Let me know what you think. I always appreciate comments and SubStack has a nice comment feature right on the article. But if you would rather keep your comment private, email me. 2022 Resolutions:As the number of subscribers to the newsletter is growing. I'm disliking the way the resolutions section looks on this platform. I also don't want to create noise for people who don't know what it's about or don't care. So I'm thinking of a way to do it differently. I'll probably create a small micro-website for it and then include a link here to that site so that we keep this high signal. For today though, I'll just include the chart and sleep summary. Weight: Get to 75kg by April 28 and 70kg by JulySleep: Consistently sleep avg. 8 hours per dayAverages this week:Duration: 4h 27m.Avg. bedtime: 04:51.Avg. wake-up time: 09:18. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit justreflections.bhekani.com
There are many traits that can lead to the collapse of a relationship; poor communication, conflicts about money or in-laws, a dispassionate sex life and a lack of emotional intimacy, to name a few. But if I asked you to give only one that's sure to lead to the collapse of any relationship invariably, what would it be? Well, Dr John Gottman has the answer. If you could only take relationship advice from one person, then Dr John Gottman is undoubtedly the best choice you can make. John Gottman, a psychologist who's spent over 30 years studying intimate relationships, is the Michael Jordan of relationship psychology. He is famous for devising a method for predicting whether newly wed couples will divorce within 10 years with over 90% accuracy. All from just observing them in a conversation for 5mins. Gottman's seminars also report a 50% higher success rate of saving troubled marriages than traditional marriage counselling.What Gottman does is he hooks couples up to a series of devices to measure biometric fluctuations like heart rate, blood pressure, etc and then records them having a quick conversation. He then goes and analyzes the conversation frame by frame, looking at the biometric data, body language, tonality, and specific words chosen. And then combines all of this data to predict whether the relationship will make it.His findings are quite interesting. Contrary to popular belief, Gottman suggests that lots of healthy couples raise their voices, have a tonne of conflict, don't always have a vibrant sex life and don't always listen well to each other. However, in healthy relationships, there is a golden ratio that balances negative interactions and positive interactions. According to Gottman, you need at least five positive interactions for every negative interaction if you don't want the negative interaction to cause things to go south. Gottman disbands the idea that healthy relationships are bastions of open communication, “I” statements and active listening. Sure, these are important, but the bottom line is that if you're going to have a close relationship with someone, you're going to have a certain degree of tension and conflict. You're going to hurt each other's feelings and when you're in the middle of a fight, you're likely going to forget to be good communicators and active listeners in the heat of the moment. You're pissed off, after all! He acknowledges all of that and identifies three different kinds of stable couples: Validating couples: These are the couples that listen well, validate each other, are supportive and bring up issues healthily. These couples represent the typical view of what a healthy relationship should look like, but they are not the only stable type. Volatile couples: These are couples who argue a lot and are intensely emotional, but they also have a lot of fun with each other. They can tease and insult each other, but they have enough positive interactions to offset the negative ones. They also tend to have less traditional relationship roles.Avoidant couples: These couples avoid conflict with each other. They can live easily and satisfactorily like this, but they tend to have less emotional intimacy and can thus be susceptible to romantic affairs. They are the most traditional in terms of relationship roles and tend to be bound by similar religious or philosophical views. But this stuff about positive and negative interactions isn't what Gottman's method is famous for. He's instead most famous for what he calls “The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.”The Four Horsemen of the ApocalypseGottman narrowed down four things that are particularly harmful to relationships and tend to lead to divorces (or breakups). As I go through these, think about whether you and your partner use any of these while arguing. The four horsemen of the apocalypse are:1. CriticismFirst, Gottman distinguishes complaints and criticism. You have to be able to complain about things when you're in a relationship with someone, otherwise you'll end up being resentful. A complaint might be something like, “I don't like when you leave the dishes at night because I have to do them in the morning” but it turns into criticism when you say, “You always leave the dishes for me to do” or “You never think about my workload” or “You're so inconsiderate”, you get the idea. Complaints turn into criticism when you attach the person's character, use “always” or “never” statements or pile on multiple complaints at one time. 2. DefensivenessI have a tendency to quickly become defensive in an argument. “I wouldn't have done that if you weren't late all the time.” The problem is that defensiveness in a conflict never ends well and it escalates the negativity. It's not that you can never defend yourself. It's that when someone is complaining to you, they want you to listen to them before you point out why they are wrong. Defensiveness is a form of not listening and minimising your partner's thoughts and feelings. It's also one of the most harmful of the horsemen since it almost always spirals into emotional flooding. More on that later. Instead of being defensive, listen to your partner, ask clarifying questions and make sure you understand the entirety of their complaint. A good tip I learnt from Jordan Peterson is to repeat the complaint you just heard in your own words to their satisfaction before you think about saying anything. Emphasis on “their satisfaction.”3. ContemptThis one is really bad. Insults, sneers, eye-rolling, name-calling, sarcasm. It's basically fighting dirty and putting down your partner, making them feel inferior. Avoid it at all costs!4. StonewallingThis is the act of putting up an emotional wall. It includes not responding, shutting down, walking away or silent treatment. It effectively ends the interaction and eliminates any possibility of a positive outcome. There's a distinction that needs to be made, of course, between stonewalling and taking an emotional break. Here's that bit about emotional flooding, I promised. We all have a physiological reaction to conflict. We can feel our pulses quicken, breathing rates speed up and blood pressure rising. This is called emotional arousal. We can still productively engage if we stay within our window of tolerance. If our physical response gets too high, we go into hyper-arousal, which is when our bodies engage in fight or flight and we can no longer have a rational discussion. At this stage, we become unreceptive to new information and think in a repetitive loop, “You're misunderstanding me, you're misunderstanding me, you're misunderstanding me.”Sometimes, however, our physical response slows, and we shut down by going into hypo-arousal, which is a freeze response. People who have undergone trauma are especially prone to this. There is no point in trying to engage someone who has reached either of these levels. Therefore, it's useful to take an emotional break even in the middle of a conflict. It's different from stonewalling since you're trying to regain control of your emotions before you can engage again. And you can communicate this to your partner. So watch your partner as you are arguing. If they start repeating the same phrase over and over. They're likely emotionally flooded and need some time to decrease their physical response before they can engage productively. Don't push things, just take a break. A little more about contemptYou'll notice that I said little about contempt, that's because I have a lot more to say, so it needed its own section. Contempt is, interestingly, the single biggest predictor of divorce, according to Gottman. The masters of marriage—as he calls those who do well—do all the four horsemen as well sometimes, but there's hardly any contempt in their interaction. And when it happens, they quickly repair it. The antidote for contempt is also more complicated than it is for the other four horsemen. It is creating a culture of appreciation in the relationship instead of one of criticism. This is difficult because of how the mind of a critic works. A critic walks into a room feeling somewhat irritable and looks for reasons why they're feeling irritable. Then they point out people's mistakes that are contributing to their irritability. The critic is always looking at the relationship in terms of what's missing instead of what's present. They expect people to respond with gratitude for having all their mistakes pointed out to them. And they're disappointed when people don't respond that way. And naturally, people avoid them. When a critic is driving down the highway, they see only two types of other drivers; idiots who drive slower than they do and maniacs who drive faster than they do. It's a habit of being really involved in people's mistakes and not at all in their successes. This attitude of criticism is likely a spillover of self-criticism and it has become a habit that they apply everywhere. They look at themselves and think, “You're not that smart,” “you're not that good-looking,” “you don't deserve that promotion,” and this self-dialogue ends up spilling over to the surrounding people. The antidote is to not be involved in people's mistakes—let them make mistakes—but be involved in scanning for what's working and what they're doing right. Gottman says the best relationships have what is called “Positive Sentiment Override.” Being irrationally biased towards the positive when it comes to your partner. If they do something negative, you see it as fleeting and situational. They must be having a bad day. But, if they do something positive, that's a reinforcement of the fact that that's who they are. Obviously, some disclaimers apply here. If you're in an abusive relationship, maybe you don't want to use positive sentiment override.How to improve the odds of your relationship's successTo really make a relationship work, you need three factors; friendship and intimacy, making conflict constructive and developing a sense of shared meaning and purpose together. Honouring one another's life dreams. So, if you want long-term relationship success, first, stay firmly away from the four horsemen of the apocalypse. Second, Gottman suggests some things you can do to make things better: Edit yourself: Filter what you say and how you say it. Be kind. We all have critical thoughts about our partners, but don't say every critical thing that enters your mind. And treat your partner with respect. Soften your startup: Be aware of your own tendency towards criticism or contempt. Bring complaints gently and without blame. Accept influence: Make sure you're not being dictatorial or inflexible. Create an atmosphere of power-sharing. Understand when your partner is sacrificing to do something for you and let them be involved in and influence your decisions and thoughts. Focus on the positive: Remember, you need five positive interactions for every one negative interaction. Focus on the good stuff, say nice things to each other, have fun, laugh and be affectionate. You'll be amazed at how differently your conflicts might go if you raise the number of good interactions you have together. I'll go into more detail on these and more in a separate article.According to the research, an average of 69% of couples' problems will never get resolved, so it's actually counterproductive to try to solve all your problems. So the important thing is how you approach not solving the problem. Do you bring up a talk with criticism or patience? When your partner is open with an issue, are you open to hearing it? Are you defensive? If you and your partner are having a bad day, are you able to table the conversation until you're both in a better mood? Are you practising positive sentiment override? Here's the bottom line. People in good relationships still fight. Things aren't great all the time. They also get alienated from one another and they sometimes don't like each other. Things aren't always so good in the bedroom. They fight and they make up. But the overarching feature that characterises good relationships is that they're very gentle with one another. They think about what they are going to say. They care about how what they're going to say will affect their partner's feelings. I'll close with this quote from one of Gottman's lectures:“In our research, we've been able to identify the real differences between the masters of relationships and the disasters of relationships. The basic finding is that the masters of relationships are very gentle with one another. They're kind, they're affectionate, they have a sense of humour, they have perspective and they really are considerate of their partner's feelings. As a result, they wind up staying good friends throughout the whole course of the relationship. In fact, they get better and better. And they make romance, passion and great sex a priority in the relationship. They make playfulness and having fun a priority. They continue courtship across the whole life course.… The other thing that really discriminates the masters from the disasters is that the masters really build trust and commitment in the relationship by cherishing their partner and really communicating when their partner hurts or is in pain or angry with them that they're right there and ready to listen. That's a huge thing because they can repair the times when they hurt each other's feelings. They can really revisit hurt feelings and stop and say, ‘you know, that really sucked,' and they fix it. That's a big thing that's different between masters and disasters.” — John GottmanI find Gottman's work enlightening, plus he provides lots of real, tangible things you can do to improve all your relationships. If you want to learn more about Gottman's work, I recommend these two books as a start: Why Marriages Succeed Or Fail And How to Make Yours Last: This is the book that most of the thoughts for today's article came from, andThe Seven Principles For Making Marriage Work: This is the book that most of next week's thoughts will come from. (If I don't get distracted by something else)2022 Resolutions:Weight: Get to 75kg by April 28 and 70kg by JulyI'm really struggling to break that 77kg line. It's not a complete surprise though coz I spent the entire week sitting at my desk working with barely any movement. It was a hectic week. I need to find my way back to my daily caloric deficit. Sleep: Consistently sleep avg. 8 hours per dayAverages this week:Duration: 5h 10m.Avg. bedtime: 02:51.Avg. wake-up time: 07:50.Business: Start a business in 2022Nothing here again. My attention was completely elsewhere. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit justreflections.bhekani.com
There are many books out there about how to be happy. But happiness is quite elusive. So what if you had a different goal. What if, instead of being happy, you wanted to maximise your misery. Surely, pursuing misery must be much simpler, right? Well, if that's what you think then you're completely correct. It turns out the road to misery is the smoother one. No crazy curves, no thorns, no uphill and no bumps.Misery is not out of reach for even the most fortunate of us. It's an equal opportunity servant. Like playing tennis or juggling, misery is a skill set that can be honed and perfected. And today, if you want to be unhappy we know how to do it. We have the technology and we have perfected the art. In this article, I will teach you some strategies to become less happy. You may discover that you have already mastered many of them and practice them regularly. Regardless, you can always get better…or worse I guess. So, sit back my friends. Let me show you how to become the saddest saddo to ever do it.1. Avoid all exerciseTypically, in these how-to lists, we start with minor points and build up gradually to the more powerful ones at the end. On this list, I'm starting with the best. If you're only willing to try one thing, then take this one and it will get you there. Remain indoors as much as possible, preferably in one room, and be inert and unmoving. You don't want to let a beautiful day tempt you for a walk so close all your windows and curtains and use artificial light only. Avoid anything even vaguely related to exercise. This will keep any reward chemicals related to exercise out of your brain. Stillness will also guide you nicely to medical problems which will keep you in bed meaning even less movement. It's a vicious cycle. Sedentary people are more miserable and miserable people are more sedentary. This is a very potent strategy, so maximize it. Avoid exercising religiously! Make your bedroom your all room. Live, work, play, eat and sleep in the smallest space possible. And if you have to get out, drive everywhere you go, even if it would be faster to walk. 2. Mess with your sleepThe second big ally you have in the journey to misery is insomnia. Its mere presence will be unpleasant but it will also ruin your productivity. This is good because productivity might make you happy. Make sure that you never get into a regular sleep cycle. Vary your bedtime and your wake times at least twice a week (more is even better). Sleep in late, preferably very late, on some but not all days. Tell yourself you're making up for your sleep deprivation and sleep for long hours in the afternoon as well. You will feel terrible when you wake up early and when you wake up late. Irregular sleep is another really effective strategy because it also creates a vicious cycle. The more you vary your sleep the harder regular sleep becomes which makes your sleep more variable. You get the idea. The goal is to never sleep at the same time or wake up at the same time.But if you really want to take this further then don't waste your time on sleep. Get by with as few hours of sleep as possible. There'll be plenty of time to sleep when you're dead. By reducing your hours of sleep you will reduce your concentration, dull your mood and easily get overwhelmed by life's demands. You will be more irritable, less productive, less creative and more prone to bad decision-making. Tell yourself that you're too busy to waste your time sleeping. 3. Maximise your screen timeNow that you're moving and sleeping as little as possible. You need something to do with all that extra time. Simply sitting still is boring and hard to maintain. It may also lead you to get into mindfulness and reflection. We don't want that. Instead, fill your time with screens. Boredom could also drive you to move, so let the screen entertain you. Tiredness could drive you to sleep so let the screen keep you awake—sort of—as long as possible. Always fall asleep with your phone in your hands and put your eyes back on it as soon as you wake. Every moment your eyes are off the screen is a moment you might be drawn to something more productive, so keep your head down. When you tire of scrolling through the phone, turn on the TV. In fact, have the TV on while you scroll on your phone. And if you're really looking for a challenge, have the TV on, and scroll through your phone while you work on your computer. Convince yourself that you can multi-task.Fortunately, on the screen, you have many allies competing to hold your attention for as long as possible. Let them reach you to pull you back every time you turn away. Turn on your notification bell, turn on vibrate, and if there's a notification light turn that on as well. You want to make sure that you never miss an alert. When you sit down to work, first open your email, Twitter, Instagram and Facebook. Just to make sure you missed nothing.4. Stroke your negative emotionsNow that you have screens in front of you all the time. You might eventually scroll through all the things that interest you and get tempted to do something else. So, read the news and get all the details. The news media companies will work tirelessly on your behalf to find, record and report on every disaster, every refugee, and every detonated bomb. Screens can then play all these events for you repeatedly, social media can provide blow-by-blow commentary from countless ill-informed perspectives. Today we can view tragedy continuously and enjoy the excitement of watching catastrophe unfold in real-time. Be well informed while doing nothing. The things you care about could draw away your attention, giving you a reason to leave your all room and take meaningful action. Fortunately, you can use the things you care about as further sources of misery. Focus on the bad to fuel your resentment and despair. If you must contribute, do so only in meaningless token ways. Post black squares on your Instagram, add hashtags to your bio and add the Ukraine flag next to your username, you get the idea. After that, be disappointed when things don't change.As often as possible, get angry at the government, the pandemic, Will Smith, Amber Heard, global warming, etc. You really want to reinforce the idea that the world is messed up and there's nothing you can do about it. Focus on the shortcomings of others, the failings of your country and the state of the economy. This will really make you feel powerless and since the goal is to be miserable, that's perfect.5. Always follow your impulsesHow should you decide what to do when you're not on the screen? The good news is most things that will elevate your mood bring relatively little anticipatory desire. So the best way to decide what to do is to follow your gut.The odds are stacked in your favour on this one. When you put no effort you will default to things that will cause you misery in the long term. You will want to stay indoors, you will want to not exercise, you will want to sleep in, you will want to do what you know will make you sadder after you've done it. Your impulses will mislead you, so be sure to follow them all the time.Always procrastinate. When the thought dawns on you to do something productive just ignore it, you'll do it later. You want to get in the habit of delegating all your important work to the future version of yourself who will probably have a lot more motivation and energy than you do right now.Continue to do things that make you feel weak and inferior. Never prove to yourself that you can overcome obstacles or better yourself. Never attempt to transcend your vices or change your lifestyle for the better. Subscribe to the idea that people can't change, so you shouldn't try. 6. Stay in your comfort zoneLet your comfort zone be the authority on what you do and don't do. If it's not comfortable, don't do it. Avoid discomfort at all costs. Take part only in activities that are familiar and effortless. Don't concern yourself with gaining fresh perspectives or novel experiences. Stay in your lane. Living in your comfort zone is warm, reassuring and very tempting. But one day you will wake up to the reality that your comfort zone is shrinking millimetre by millimetre. Once, you felt fine in all but the largest crowds, today you can detect a flare of anxiety at the dinner table. Your avoidance of crowds was once a subtle preference, now it is an overwhelming need. Once, the thought of speaking up in a meeting was mildly concerning, now it provokes outright panic. “The zone of comfort hides a secret, the longer you spend in it the smaller it gets.”A part of your brain, monitoring your behaviour, will conclude that the paths you have not taken must truly be unwise and threatening. And your inward impulse will become steadily stronger. What seemed like a momentary preference will become an urgent need for safety and familiarity. So listen to your fears and take them seriously. It is better, of course, if your zone of comfort is small, to begin with. 7. Set VAPID goalsOne of the best ways to be miserable is to relinquish all your goals altogether. Unfortunately, this would be too extreme for many of us. So here's a better idea that will give a similar result. You've probably heard that you should set SMART goals. Ignore that, set VAPID goals instead. Vague: You should be unclear about how you are going to complete the goal. If you want to run a marathon you should be unclear about how you will train, look for the right equipment or even which marathon you will run. Amorphous: The finish line for your immediate goal should be indistinct so that your depressive self can disqualify any progress you have made. Setting a goal to clean the entire house today will allow you to criticize yourself when you don't finish because it's impossible to clean the entire house in one day. There's always more to do. Pie in the sky: Indulge your innate ability to overestimate what you can do. Say that today you will revamp your company's finances. You will never complete that in one day and this is perfect. Irrelevant: Tell yourself that if you achieve your goal of overcoming social anxiety you will be able to do the research for your mechanical engineering master's thesis. You should then lock yourself in the house and study business as a necessary prerequisite. Delayed: Avoid setting a specific time to complete your goal. Instead, resolve to get to it when you feel like it which will likely be never. Make both the target and the path unclear. This will distract your productivity nicely. After this, focus only on the end goal with no regard to any intermediary steps. And be sure to berate yourself for every failure to achieve your goals at every step of the way.Never be proactive about finding new opportunities to grow your career or meet new people. Wait for the opportunities to come to you. After all, if it's going to happen it's going to happen. “Que sera, sera,” right? You'll meet the love of your life one day and things will probably just work out. You'll make friends with outstanding people who share your interests if you just wait long enough. Don't try and figure out actionable steps to get there, it's not in your power, anyway. Just wait until things work out.For some extra impact, make fear of negative consequences the primary motivator of everything you do. If you must set deadlines, set ones that frighten you and punish yourself for failing to meet them. And remind yourself constantly that your entire life could fall apart if you don't keep your head above water.8. Believe you are specialNow that we've lulled the internal triggers of joy, let's move our attention to external ones. The first of which is other people. If you're not careful, your associations with other people might make you happy. You likely already have some people in your life right now so let's start with pushing those away. The best way to do this is to believe that you're better than everyone else. Behave like you're entitled to things because you're just different from everyone else. Assume that the people who have what you want in life just don't deserve it as much as you do. Always regard yourself as talented, unique and one of a kind. This will really help you develop an outsider complex which will make it difficult to open up to other people or see things from their perspective. But since you don't want to do any of that uncomfortable stuff anyway, that's perfect.Next, be default no. When a friend asks you to go out for lunch, just say no. After all, you're very busy these days and have a lot of work to do. When your manager gives you an opportunity to lead a new project at work, try to find an excuse to get out of it. The key here is to give everyone the impression that they should just let you do your own thing. Be so good at saying no that people stop asking you to do anything.This might become difficult at some point. A good way to stick to your ways is to be suspicious of people. Never give people the benefit of the doubt. Believe that everyone just wants to take advantage of you. Because of this, you should be guarded and put up walls to protect yourself emotionally. Assume the smiles that people give you are fake and their motives are always malevolent.9. Pursue happiness relentlessly It turns out a relentless pursuit of happiness is actually a fairly good way of producing its opposite. If the steps so far haven't made you completely miserable, it's time for some clever manoeuvring. Happiness is such an elusive goal that if you try to achieve it directly you will achieve the opposite. So, to be truly unhappy set your expectations for happiness very high. Imagine happiness as a place where happy people are happy all the time. This will turn happiness into a perpetually unreachable state of bliss that no one has.See life not as it is, but as you wish it to be. Daydream of a day when things will be better. Fantasize about a life where all your problems are gone. You want to make sure that you mentally escape as much as possible to distract yourself from the obstacles of real life. Pour your mental energy not into fixing your problems or improving yourself but into building up this fantasy to be as detailed as possible. Reflect daily about what you would buy if you won the lottery or became a celebrity. Constantly compare your life to this mental picture and become resentful at the discrepancies.And with that, we've reached the end. Though this is not an exhaustive list it should be enough to set you on a steady path. If suffering is what you're after and you crave the daily strife, simply follow this advice and you'll be miserable for the rest of your life.Many of these are adapted from the book How To Be Miserable: 40 Strategies You Already Use by Randy J. Paterson, PhD. It's a fantastic, quick read. Check it out. 2022 Resolutions:Weight: Get to 75kg by April 28 and 70kg by JulyNah running is not more entertaining, I'm just developing the mental strength to bear it I think. I'll keep at it. Sleep: Consistently sleep avg. 8 hours per dayAverages this week:Duration: 6h 30m.Avg. bedtime: 04:05.Avg. wake-up time: 10:21.Business: Start a business in 2022Nothing to report here. Just a normal uneventful week. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit justreflections.bhekani.com
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