You can’t ask for suggestions on how to improve and be upset about the feedback you receive.
Did you want to hear something that is different from your current worldview?
Or
Were you simply looking for evidence to reinforce what you already believe?
They say when the student is ready, the teacher appears.
Except students are never ready.
You are never ready to level up, to try something you have never done before.
You are never ready to hold your child for the first time or to start a new venture.
Conditions will never be optimal, timing is never perfect.
You just do.
Often quite badly at first.
And with time you get better.
If you are waiting for a teacher to give you instructions on where to start or what to do next, you are going to be waiting for a very long time.
You’ve won the lottery if you were born into a situation with access to clean water, if you didn’t have to worry about when your next meal was coming and if you had a roof over your head.
You’ve won the lottery if you have access to education, health care and tools like a laptop and the internet.
You’ve won the lottery to be born into the safest, richest time period in human history.
And…
The circumstances you were born into may not be perfect. You may not have the life you deserve. But maybe you’re one of the lucky few that won the genetic lottery–born with more opportunities than what most of the world has.
In 2004, we were Facebook’s customers. Today, we are now their products.
Phones and apps our intentionally designed to keep us on the hook, to keep us dissatisfied just enough that we will keep going back for more.
Think of it like a slot machine only more addicting.
It’s no mistake that we get excited when someone likes are posts or that the total number of friends is posted for others to see.
And now, we have become so dependent on smart phones we think that the choices that are given to us from a quick google search are the only ones available.
Abstinence from smart phones and the internet are not the answers. But we can start demanding more from these companies. It starts with asking the right questions:
Why does my feed choose to show me these posts?
What information am I not being exposed to?
How are my “likes” shaping my feed?
By saying Yes to this, what am I saying No to?
Economies are built on scarce resources. Our attention is turning more and more scarce every day.
Each person is exposed to more than 30,000 advertisements a day while the average person checks their phone 150 times a day.
We have to be better.
The game has changed and too many of us are still playing checkers (or Plants vs. Zombies).
The other day, I had a blueberry avocado muffin. A very unusual combination.
To my surprise, it worked. It was the best muffin I have ever had. (How many of us can say they have had a memorable experience eating a muffin?)
Someone had to have the guts to be the first to try mixing blueberries and avocados together, knowing full well that this might not work.
That is what artist do. They throw away the recipe and decide what to mix and match.
What is the worst that can happen anyway? If it doesn’t work, you can try again.
There isn’t much to lose and everything to gain.
It turns out that 42% of women who have an abortion live below the federal poverty line. And when the women were asked why they had an abortion, 73% of the respondents said they could not afford to have a baby.
What if abortion isn’t a political issue but an economic one?
How would that change the conversation?
Except when you have to carry them.
They are big and heavy and awkward to handle.
Plan on staying put if you decide to hold onto one.
If you choose to move forward, far easier (and faster) to leave them behind.
A few years ago, an old man set up a booth in Central Park to sell his spray art.
The first two pieces sold were talked down 50%. After that, he was able to sell three more pieces. The old man’s take for the day was $420.
It turns out that the art pieces were created by one of the most famous artist of this generation, Banksy. The pieces sold were said to be worth $42,000 each.
What a bargain.
Too often human beings fail to understand what the true value of something is.
We ignore the evidence and miss the opportunities that are right in front of us because of our judgments, biases and prejudices.
If only we would pay more attention.
The problem is we choose to measure the wrong things all the time:
Bank accounts.
Time.
Payroll.
Safety days.
What if instead you chose to measure:
How did I help someone accomplish something that I couldn’t do?
How did I help someone see the world as it is?
How many doors did I open for others? (And how many of them turned around and opened doors for someone else?)
How often do I ship something into the world that is important and might not work?
[Once your survival is taken care of, how are you going to make things better?]
In 1970, Dr. Susan Beal was tasked with finding out why so many infants were dying from SIDS in Australia.
Over the next two decades, she would go on to visit the home of every victim (over 500!), looking for anything that might be helpful to solve this complex problem.
It turns out, there was a connection between how babies slept and death. Dr. Beal would go on to be the first person in the world to advocate for babies to sleep on their backs.
Because of this discovery, the rate of SIDS has dropped 85% in Australia since 1989. A global campaign followed where it is estimated that 17,000 babies have been saved in England and 40,000 in the US.
What a difference one person makes.
We don’t need more time or resources, what we need is to decide. Decide what kind of change you are going to make in the world. Now, go make a difference.
(All it takes is one grain of rice to tip the scales.)
