Some lessons on gratefulness, Taking a bet on yourself and Being mindful of your goal
…including my favourite picture of the week
Hello there,
I hope this week’s article meets you well!
Over the course of the week, a tweet caught my eye and I would like to share it with you. It’s about being grateful for the things in your proximity and not focusing on what you were not given, especially when someone who isn’t obligated to, goes out of their way to offer help to you. You would be reading about it towards the end of the article.
I have always loved pictures and I take a tone of them. So going forward, I will start sharing them with you as well, sometimes with (poetic) notes and sometimes with no notes at all.
Now, let’s get into the MWB ideas of this week.
Who Would You Take a Bet On?
Imagine being given an open cheque to choose one person whose lifetime income you’ll receive 10% of. Who would you bet on? The best student in your class? Your best friend? A high performing colleague?
Whatever your criteria may be, here’s the challenge: do you meet those same criteria yourself? Can you bet on YOU?
This was a question Warren Buffet once posed to an MBA class. And if there’s one person who knows how to bet on people, it’s Buffet.
So he listed three things he looks out for when betting on people:
Integrity (your foundation)
Integrity is about an alignment between what your calendar says you do and what you say you do. Integrity is often about what you say “no” to and demands that you say no to most things.
Energy – this is about having the health to act and getting things done
Health: They recover quickly when setbacks come
Bias to Action: They’d rather take action than overthink
Intelligence – not chess or textbook intelligence, but adaptive intelligence.
When you’re running down the street & a lamppost is coming towards you, adaptive intelligence is the intelligence to see the pattern, see the lamppost coming & change your course just enough that instead of taking it in the forehead you take the blow in the shoulder & u keep moving – did you notice that you still took the blow.
Without the first criteria, those two are dangerous.
Integrity demands that you say “no” to most things. If you say yes to most requests, if you can’t think of a time you’ve said no in the last day or week, your life has been divided into thousands of little pieces and spread amongst the priorities of other people. Here is my piece on saying No: Learn to say No.
Now we know the criteria to use when betting on someone are: Integrity, Energy and Intelligence.
Do they seem like good criteria? Well they have worked for Warren Buffet and he has used this to lead a great life and make a few billions along the way.
Would you use these criteria in taking this decision - in choosing the one person to own 10% of all their future income? And will you prioritise these attributes in your life since I hope you bet on yourself?
Watch the full video here : TEDx talk: The Discipline of Finishing
The metric isn’t the goal, the goal must remain the goal to avoid vanity
When you are pursuing something, be watchful for when the metric turns into the goal. It’s often a very delicate line and extremely easy to cross.
Let me use a recent example. I started using the Bible app for my daily Bible reading because it is the easiest to help keep track of actually doing so daily without any additional effort from my end. At some point along the way though, it became more important that the metric (streaks) is not broken. Instead of the original goal of a day shouldn’t go by without me reading the Bible. So there were times I wouldn’t read but still open the app just to keep the streaks going. The metric had become the goal.
I woke up one day and realised this flip. My action was to break the streak immediately. I do not care about the metric if it has become the goal.
Since then, I have gone days here and there again without reading the Bible as it’s hard to keep track without the streaks. As a result, I have resumed tracking again with the streaks.
For now, I am still focused and optimising on the goal. I would be happy to break the streaks and start over again if the metric becomes the goal.
That’s one way in which the metric can become the goal in your pursuit. Be mindful of it and be ready to recalibrate because the goal is never the metric.
From Others: Proximity to privilege shouldn’t make you entitled
“Through life, I have come into circumstances where I was at my tether's end. This is the lesson I have learned from it: if you find someone willing to suffer any inconvenience on your account, that they are not obligated to, be very grateful. You are very lucky.
Do not focus on what they have, rather what they gave you, that you lacked, and what it saved you. Doesn't matter if he had a whole restaurant: he gave you food when you were starving, and - by it - bought you life and time. Be very grateful. You are in the face of an angel.
The other day, I was walking down a certain street full of men in their 40s and 50s, sitting by the road, in the full glare of the sun, with dry mouths & empty stares. These men probably have friends and relatives who could help. Be very grateful, folks.
Very few people will suffer inconveniences on your account. So that kid up there, that's a very ungrateful person because proximity to privilege has them believing they're deserving of it. Unless it is immediate, kinship does not entitle one to inheritance or care” Source from this tweet.
Recommended Reading For the Week
How to dive into the stock market, should you trade or invest?
No Room For Small Dreams by Shimon Peres - A brief summary on ‘No room for small dreams’
Picture of the week
I took this picture during the week while on my morning run. I often come across cats, and over time I’ve developed a fascination with them. Taking these pictures usually means pausing whatever I’m doing (my run, in this case) and looking for the best angle to capture the moment. It’s a distracting habit, but one I really enjoy.
That would be all, see you next week!
