We need empathy to understand the pain points of those we seek to serve.
A change maker also understands that the hard work of empathy is a sprint. It can’t continue forever without suffering burn out.
When we switch from empathy to compassion, we learn to endure, we learn to relieve suffering without the fatigue.
The long haul is where actual change begins to happen.
Someone I know started taking medication to help cope with the stress of her job.
What’s heartbreaking is that she chose to take medication to cope with the stress of her environment rather than change the environment so that she wouldn’t be so stressed.
Medication doesn’t change the environment. Soul crushing jobs are still soul crushing.
She deserves better. And so do you.
Ice cream taste sweeter when you haven’t had it in a while.
Success is the same way.
So much better after you work through failure after failure—testing, measuring, improving—until you find a product that works.
Strategy is an overall plan of action to get to where it is you want to go.
Tactics, on the other hand, is the means to achieve the goal.
Too often, we scratch our heads wondering why something doesn’t work. We blame the tactics: someone didn’t implement this right, timing was off, the weather/economy was awful…
But really, we need a better strategy.
There are lots of ways to skin a cat, the question is why are we skinning it in the first place?
Before I left my city government job, I was told that all of the employees needed to return their used staff shirts.
The reason?
If someone were to ever commit a crime while wearing a staff shirt, the city could be held liable.
Really?
Is Fruit of the Loom sued every time someone gets pulled over for a DUI?
Of course not.
Never underestimate the lengths managers will go to appear correct.
Hence the difference between managers and leaders:
Managers pretend to know all of the answers. Leaders, on the other hand, operate under ambiguity.
It’s a tactic, a poor one at that, to sell the people who work under you a story of irrational fear. By doing so, you never have to explain yourself or your actions.
My guess is that no one actually knows why we collect staff shirts after someone leaves (I hope it isn’t to reuse them) but it’s something that has been done for the last 30 years so we keep doing it.
Far easier to treat people like future “bank robbers” than it is to change.
Are people fit because they go to the gym or do people go to the gym because they are fit?
No one is surprised to hear when someone announces that they are starting a diet. However, everyone is surprised when someone actually sticks with it.
Because sticking through dips is not something we are used to seeing in our culture. We are used to quitting when things get difficult.
I recently quit my day job to focus on helping teenagers level up. The reactions ranged from fear to jealously.
Again, no one is surprised when people around the office whine, complain and stick with a soul crushing job but everyone is surprised when someone actually leaves to pursue their dreams.
The thing is, people like us do stuff like this:
Success doesn’t affirm happiness. Happiness affirms success.
Your chances to make a difference in this world, to live the life you deserve are finite.
Fortunately, for all of us, the amount of possibilities from the choices we make are endless.
Your first album is never your greatest hits.
The greatest hits come after you create a body of work—years of songs that didn’t work with a few that did.
Art is a series of choices:
What color?
Which font?
Tilt left or right?
This word or that?
Which is why people find it so difficult to do—you don’t know which combination of your choices are going to work.
In a sea of choices, we find ourselves too often waiting to be told where to go.
The message is clear: you are pretending to be somebody you’re not. You are not super. You can’t fly, don’t even try.
Except…
Except human beings can fly and break the sound barrier.
We live in a culture that insist (at a very early age) to be average, to stay low, to fit in, be and do like everyone else.
What we need, now more than ever, is more people to dare to fly higher.
How high will you go?
