Managing the existential questioning after the holiday period

Photo by Daniele Levis Pelusi on Unsplash

The last two weeks have been a lethargic period for many people. For me, I’m noticing that I’m probably more frazzled than I was before this ‘rest period’ started.

It is often the period of rest that allows issues to surface. When we are too busy, we don’t give space for the bigger questions in life to arise. For me, this has been a new layer of existential questioning of who I am. I think deep down I knew I was due such a moment of crisis. Knowing this does not make it any less confusing or painful.

I look at this philosophically – I wouldn’t be able to handle this level of confusion compared to the version that I was a year ago. As we grow, life gives us new, larger challenges. So in other words, I’ve been given a bigger challenge because I’m now able to face it, compared to before.

I’ve learnt to let go of the small things much better than I used to. Usually, if I have something bother me, within a day or so I’ve probably forgotten about it. But with this, the feeling of confusion and fatigue has lingered for over a few weeks now.

The temptation is to retreat from the world. I could tell myself that I need my ‘me time’ and to block out everything and everyone else. But with maturity and wisdom, I realise that this often actually compounds the problem. I can’t ‘outthink my problems’ and my tendency to withdraw only makes me disassociate further from the world. I also feel worse because I am no longer doing the things I enjoy either.

I’ve had a pretty sociable last two weeks. Considering I spent it in Belgium, I ended up seeing quite a few sets of friends over the last two weeks, rather than the self-imposed isolation which it could have been.

I’m very grateful for this. Going out and seeing friends, especially when I don’t feel like it, breaks the monotony of being in my head. It has allowed me to remember that there is a world out there, and the cool winter breeze helps me ground back into reality.

There is no escaping the fear and confusion. It is part of the process. Running away from it does not make it go away, it just merely prolongs the experience. But neither does trying to fix it, or rushing through the process to the ‘everything’s fine’ moment. Such thoughts risks us falling into denial about how we really feel.

Instead, I’m content to experience the experience I’m meant to be having. And, this does not mean that I need to pause my life.

Truly, one of the greatest levels of mastery in life is being able to do things you commit to, even when you don’t feel like it. This can be as grand as writing a 100,000 word novel or as small as doing the dishes after having dinner.

At the same time, a key part of this is being gentle with oneself. I recognise that I’m not at my tip top shape, so I don’t force myself to be. I’ve spent more time laying in bed than I usually would, sometimes into the afternoon. This might not necessarily be the ‘healthiest’ thing, but it’s also comforting. Sometimes comforting is nice and okay.

If we never took time to question what we are doing in life, we would never do anything new or different. Questioning ourselves is a key part of our existence. It is something to embrace, rather than escape.

What does 2024 hold in store?

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One of the great things about writing articles weekly is that it’s pretty easy to go back to them and see how life panned out in 2023.

These last few days I’ve been resharing some of the most meaningful articles that I’ve written this year. It’s a good way of being able to reconnect with the ebbs and flows of the last 364 days.

So in my 52nd and final article of 2023, let’s first look back to help me look forward.

But let’s start with what I’m feeling right now. Although in the short term I’m still feeling tired from a year that seemed to finish late, I feel like I’m in a much better place than I have been throughout the course of this year. Last week, I described this as a ‘foundational year’, in that I feel far clearer in many aspects of my life compared to the beginning of the year.

I dug out my old articles, and found one looking at how 2022 went. I also found one of 2021 as well.

Ironically I wrote that I thought 2022 would be my foundational year. Instead, it turned out to be a year of frantic exploration and kicking off some radical change. 2022 was the year where I really shook the snow globe of my life. 2023 was about letting the snow settle into place.

It’s also interesting to read about the evolution of the way I see the world. in 2021, I wrote about achieving a lot, but not feeling particularly happy. We were still in lockdown times, and I was still settling in with a new job and moving countries. The emotional separation of leaving the UK was still weighing heavy on me.

2022 felt like I had something to prove. I was leading into the December period with ambitions of doing many different things. I had just published my book, and was already planning on working on a podcast, as well as thoughts of a next book. Reading this all now sounds exhausting, and with the benefit of hindsight I can see how hard I was pushing myself to achieve all these things. It was as if I was fighting against time itself.

Whilst this definitely carried over into the first half of 2023, by the end of this year I feel far more relaxed. I don’t feel the need to have 50 different goals, nor grand ambitions to do new, cool sounding stuff. In contract, my December was left pretty empty this year. What is nice is that this was just an intuitive sense of keeping my schedule light, rather than something I had to force myself to do.

My shift in mindset is not due to a drop in ambition. If anything, they’ve only increased. But it stems from a deeper knowing that I don’t really need a bucket list of cool sounding things to drive my life forward. I know that I will do lots of cool and exciting things anyway, so pre-supposing lots of goals doesn’t really make too much sense to me anymore. Instead, I want to be put myself in a mental and physical space where I am best able to seize the opportunities that will appear in the next 12 months.

The idea of not having lots of goals can feel quite counterintuitive. We’re so used to being told that having goals are important. But I equate it to riding a bike with stabilisers. When we are just beginning in our search for direction, it is helpful to have goals to push us forward. Otherwise, we drift aimlessly, or fall flat on our face.

I feel like I’ve come to a moment where I don’t need the restrictive list of goals. I can take the stabilisers off, and ride where life takes me far more freely. This would have been too daunting before, but now I have reached a level of mastery where I am far more comfortable with the unknown.

So then, how do I look at 2024? Well, I think a lot of the things that I’ve set in motion in 2023 will bear greater fruit – my personal development, focus on relationships and greater focus on mental/physical wellbeing. I’m already seeing life feel more rhythmic and fun rather than a constant struggle to get somewhere. which is what it was before

Despite what I said about goals, there are a few things in my mind that I want to do (the difference being I won’t chastise myself if I don’t!).

Firstly, physical health is finally going to get top spot. For years it has languished lower down the priority list, but it’s time I really connect with my body and work to improve my fitness and general healthcare. It’s definitely improved over the last 6 months, but there’s further I can go.

This is probably one of the most daunting ones for me. I’ve made many attempts to ‘get fit’ ‘or ‘get in shape’, and they’ve never really stuck. Usually it’s because other things take precedence. This is not what I want to happen in 2024.

As another idea, I may go back to writing a new book. The itch for writing returned over the last few days, and I have a longstanding idea around a philosophical fiction book – currently entitled ‘Jane’s quest for meaning in the 9 to 5’. I wrote the first four pages this year, then stopped. It would be a nice project to return to, and I feel better equipped to write it as well.

I did a lot of personal development courses last year, so I feel less pulled to do lots more right now. That may change, but at least for the next few months I want to slow down with consumption of new material. Also from a financial standpoint, I’ve invested so much to the point where money has felt a strain. It would be good to have a few months pause, pay off some overdrafts and feel more financially solvent. I’m fortunate that this doesn’t require any dramatic cut backs, though it is an exercise in self-control.

If there is one course I would like to do, it would be a Vipassana retreat. These are 10 day silent meditation courses, hosted in retreat centres globally. I flirted with attending one this year, but honestly, I was already doing so much. One thing I’m noticing is how much I love the stimulation of life, to the point I just want more and more. I think this would be a great ‘reset’ button around a lot of my habits and way of living. No doubt it’ll be tough, but I think it would be so valuable.

Otherwise, I want to keep myself open and responsive to life. I want to allow free space and energy for new things to come into my life, rather than booking it all out already. Like many people, I think I’ve been guilty of letting great things pass me by. Whilst no one does this intentionally, it often comes from an overfocus on pre-set goals. This isn’t something I want for 2024.

What did I even do in 2023?

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Before logging off work, I wrote a recap email of all the things our team had achieved this year.

It was meant to be a short thank you email with a summary. But I realised that this would not really be doing the task justice. So instead, I spent some time properly trawling through our achievements.

Over the last year, my team had published 3 reports with 2000+ accumulative views, 5 events with over 400 attendees (including one in the European Parliament and another in Dubai for COP), 20 videos with over 17500+ accumulated views across platforms, 8 media mentions (either quotes or op-eds). We also ran ten working groups, a research workshop along with four individual interviews, 10+ stakeholder meetings, 15+ meetings with businesses, 4+ position papers on files, and 5+ speaking opportunities to promote our work at other events.

I’m not sure I totally did it justice, but I’m glad I wrote it out rather than just saying ‘we wrote 3 reports and did 5 events this year’.

We can really downplay the accumulative effect of what we have achieved. So I thought I would also do a similar exercise for myself, blending in the personal and the professional.

  • This will be my 51st article of this newsletter this year. They average about 600 words (if not more), meaning I’ve written over 30,000 words just through this blog. The readership has grown to 1600, and on average, about 450 people read each article. Accumulatively, my articles have been read at least 22,500 times this year. Pretty cool considering it’s something I do in my spare time! According to LinkedIn, this is my 156th article I’ve written too. Once I get passed January 20th, I will have not missed writing an article for two years.

  • I invested deeply in my personal development. I attended three 3 day seminars, one 2 day seminar and a 7 day developmental immersion. Additionally I had a one day in-person session with my coach. I also went to India for 10 days, which including some solo travel, was directly focused on attending The Ultimate Experience, another personal development conference. In total, I’ve spent a whole month’s worth of days on personal development – all stuff outside of my ‘formal job’.

  • This is not also factoring all the additional coaching calls. I’ve averaged fortnightly calls with my coaches, completed an online 8 week programme and tuned into numerous additional free personal development talks. I’ve easily wracked up above 100+ hours. Again, this is another 12 working day’s worth.

  • I got my voice out there far more this year. From a professional point of view, I wrote op-eds around circular economy policy – two in Euronews and one in Euractiv. I was quoted in the Brussels Times, as well as a quote at the bottom of an article in Forbes (the Forbes quote is longer than I remember!!) I’m also co-author for the three publications we did on circularity which I mentioned earlier on. (here, here and here)

  • I also spoke at more events – in the last month I spoke at two event in Brussels, at the Sustainable Packaging Summit in Amsterdam and to Spanish Clean Tech companies in London. Earlier in the year I also spoke on policymaking to sustainability start ups in Cambridge. This has been underpinned by my regular attendance of Toastmasters, where I’ve been honing my speech craft. I did four prepared speeches over 2023. I attended around 15 club meetings/socials (which include impromptu speaking exercises) – I am also Vice-President of Membership there.

  • I attended interesting events, including the EU Industry Days in Málaga, Innovate Zero in the UK as well as those on my doorstep in the European Parliament (one of which we hosted) and the European Commission (on the Paris Stocktake). There are also a few podcasts I’ve been on this year, I recorded 5 episodes with a friend sharing reflections, but also additional guest appearances around sustainability, diversity and personal development.

  • This has been a year around exploration and self-expression. This is the first year in my ‘nine year cycle’ which is a year of creating foundations for the next 8 years. I certainly started this year feeling pretty lost and unsure about what I really wanted, and I end the year with far more clarity and ease about myself. The journey between these two points have included some very difficult moments filled with confusion, but also many fun moments too.

  • I’ve also become far more comfortable in my own skin. At the beginning of the year I would freeze at the idea of dancing or moving to the rhythm of music. I’ve attended a number of ecstatic dance events which has really freed up my skin and allowed me to get out of my head. I’ve also been much more active and connected with my body through exercise, as well as shifted my diet towards regular intermittent fasting. I’ve gotten in much better shape (albeit a slump from stress in the last two weeks).

  • I am far happier with the relationships around me. I have put more effort into the relationship with my parents, which is one of the reasons I go back home to London more often than I used to. I’m glad I’m doing this now (even if not perfectly) whilst I still can.

  • I’ve become more discerning around friendships. I used to try very hard to maintain friendships, whereas now I’m much more content to let them go. For a friendship to work, there needs to be the time and energy from both sides. This has given space for new connections where I feel a much more equal balance.

It feels pretty nice writing out these things. Each time I go back I add a few more points when I realise I have completely forgotten to mention something! I had to go through my calendar to remember what I had done earlier in the year.

Whilst I knew I did a lot, the sheer amount was not really visible to me. So it’s nice to have it written out more fully (even if there are more things I could write here!)

So if you feel inclined, I recommend you doing a similar exercise for yourself. It will make you appreciate yourself far more.

Why we don’t need to be constantly improving ourselves

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We’re nine days from Christmas, and I’m feeling pretty exhausted.

I don’t even celebrate Christmas. There’s no additional stress for me around expensive travel plans. Neither am I trying to buy well-thought out gifts for distant relatives I barely know. In that sense I’m quite blessed to have a calm Xmas time. But I feel tired all the same.

This year has felt more pressurised than previous years. It’s been noticeable how many people I know have been feeling the squeeze. The cut off point where projects came to a grinding halt is no longer the case with our hybrid world.

As for me, I usually write these articles about what I’ve been feeling over the week. The last month of articles have had an underlying theme of fatigue.

Usually, I would start feeling reminiscent about what I had achieved around this time of year. But right now, I honestly don’t really feel like it. It just doesn’t seem very fun to reflect right now. I’ve had an ample share of emotional intensity for the last few months, so adding more doesn’t feel like a fun thing to do.

I realise that I may be putting pressure on myself to be more self-reflective. After all, am I not that guy who likes to talk about how he feels? Usually reliving and analysing things is my happy place.

What I’ve realised is that the pressure to learn and grow can sometimes be quite suffocating. We can create a sense that we must always improve ourselves, to the point where we put ourselves on a self-improvement hamster wheel. I’ve definitely done this a lot this year without realising it.

The irony is how counterproductive this can be. One of the most important lessons for me has been around letting go of a situation without trying to be perfect. Yet without realising it, when faced with my imperfections, my response has been to go harder.

I’ve completed an astonishing number of books, courses and workshops this year. I’ve gotten loads from them, so I definitely don’t regret it. Yet there has come a point where they’ve become a distraction rather than an aide to my learning. Sometimes the solution is to sit still, rather than going on a course to learn how to sit still. I’ve learnt this the hard way – both through my reduced energy and reduced bank account.

After some rest, I probably will return to a more reflective state anyway. This is a temporary state of tiredness rather than a life-altering one. When I’m in a good space, learning is not something I have to force. So if it’s feeling like I am pushing myself to do so, it’s probably a sign that I’d be better off having a break.

I’ve felt similar with reading – I’ve gone from reading an incredible amount of books earlier in the year to basically stopping for the last two months. Whilst in the past I might feel guilty about this or question my ‘guru credentials’, now I’m far more relaxed. I have the experience to know my sense of wonder will return when I am ready to engage with it properly.

This is a kind reminder to yourself to let yourself live life fully. Learning is great. But living is greater. Only once you’re properly experiencing life, you can see what you want to learn or improve.

Navigating the turbulence of the December work rush

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One thing I’ve noticed is that lots of people (including myself) have been radiating stress. This is probably caused by the squeeze of work before the year end.

Christmas is usually a busy moment, but tied along with increased workloads and tired souls, I’m noticing an extra level of fatigue. Either that or perhaps it’s just what I’m experiencing for myself anyway.

As both a human being experiencing these things and as a manager, it can be tricky to know what to do, or how to respond. I’ve certainly seen that the usual platitudes are not particularly helpful for people – they haven’t been for me. Usual responses can be easy one-liners such as that it would be a good idea to take more breaks, working less or to simply not stress out. I find these more frustrating than useful.

Whilst there is certainly an underlying truth in these sayings, they are often buried in with a working context where the message is anything but ‘work less’. It’s hard to take seriously a voice which tells us to take a break when it’s the same voice that is telling us to work harder. I’ve certainly experienced this many times in my career, and so it’s one I want to avoid preaching myself.

I think it’s important to accept the realities of our situation. When we take a role, we can find ourselves with rather stretching deadlines. Reminding ourselves that the deadline we face is not the be-all-end-all can be helpful, but it doesn’t necessarily solve the problem either. Even when we know life won’t end if we don’t do a task, it doesn’t stop it being something we feel like we either want to or should do anyway.

I think we can give ourselves grace to see that these periods are stretching us, and – dare I say it – allow ourselves to feel discontent about it too. We can allow ourselves to feel our feelings without turning into victimhood. After all, Experiencing unpleasant emotions during a time of stress is a perfectly normal reaction.

I’m looking to ride my emotions as well as I can. This week, I had a moment where I just felt very emotionally drained, to the point I needed to just take time to sit in silence during the day. I’m generally pretty on top of my emotions, so the feeling was a little scary if I’m being totally honest.

I’d like to say I’ve gotten pretty good at reading my own emotional signals, so I can react pretty well. But my heart goes out for those who haven’t really tuned into themselves, the blocking of these emotions is why we are seeing so much unhappiness and burn out. The answer to emotions is to experience them, not to ignore them.

So in this December rush, remember that it’s okay to feel. This is a moment where you might be more challenged than in other parts of the year.

Sometimes the best antidote for being stressed is accepting that we are stressed.

An invitation to stop using time-saving hacks

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Last weekend I volunteered to help make food at an event. It was a pretty basic task. I had to restock the drinks bottles on the shelf, refill the snack bowls and make some pizzas in the oven.

I was surprised to find it was the most relaxed I’ve felt when making food in about a year. The basic task of cutting up pizza slices was bringing me more joy than similar tasks usually do.

The big difference was that I was taking my time. Since I was at the event for a few hours, there was no need to rush. I could work at a steady, enjoyable pace.

Normally when cooking, I try and optimise my timings. I start heating up the pan before cutting up all the vegetables because I can chop the garlic quickly and throw it in. After that I then quickly cut up some other veggies on the fly to throw in, whilst keeping an eye on the pan. Whilst it’s nice to be able to juggle difficult tasks, without realising it I have been doing this to the point that I’m putting myself under a needless time pressure.

Even today, I came home after doing some grocery shopping. Certain items go to the bathroom, which is upstairs next to my bedroom. I instinctively split out everything that needs to go upstairs so that I can take everything up in one trip. Whilst on paper this sounds efficient, in practice there’s usually too many items and I usually always forget something, so I’ll have to take the trip again anyway. I’ve been caught in a game of mental arithmetic to try and avoid multiple trips upstairs, even though there is absolutely no need to rush.

These may sound like mundane examples, but it’s a bit scary to notice how often I overplan things for the benefit of ‘saving time’. The irony is that by the time I’m done with all my time-saving hacks, I’m tired and end up crashing on the sofa for longer. Because of this, basic tasks like washing and cleaning feel more complicated because of the amount of additional steps I create for myself when doing them.

The worst bit is that this amount of planning takes the joy away from doing simple tasks. Rather than simply washing the dishes when I see them, I multi-task that with when I’m waiting for food to be cooked. I’m inadvertently training my brain to always have several things on the go. This takes away from the satisfaction of cleaning my kitchen, because I’m not taking the time to do the job properly.

Ironically, a lot of what I do within my workplace is to break down tasks into as simple tasks as possible. I want to avoid making tasks feel complicated, as I can see how much of a disempowering effect that can have. I think it’s what has driven a lot of my professional success.

Yet in my personal life, I am making my tasks far more complicated than they need to be. I’ve noticed that this makes me less likely to follow good habits, and I find it harder to relax afterwards. I’ve noticed recently that I end up doing things like watching something on TV whilst also scrolling on my phone at the same time, because a single source of stimulation is not enough.

This over-efficiency habit is not conducive for calmness and deeper presence. Whilst there are moments where it can be useful, such as reacting to a short term deadline, it’s not the best way to live in the longer term.

Another way of looking at it is living more in the moment. Living in the moment means choosing whether we react to the things that are in front of us. It means we are far more likely to do our laundry by getting straight into action – rather than getting stuck in the thought that the laundry needs to be done and put it off for later.

I invite you to look at your life. See where you might be making your life more complicated than it needs to be. Simplifying actions may actually be the real time-hack.

The power of understanding our productivity fluctuations

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In the past four weeks I’ve been doing more public speaking then I’ve done in the last six months

 On Monday I had another speaking engagement – my fourth this month. On Tuesday was the working group with our members (one of my main deliverables in my job). On Wednesday I gave the final push to a paper we’re launching at COP on the social aspects of circular economy. In practice, this meant mass reviewing 1000 revisions on track changes and comments to a semblance of a clean document.

Unsurprisingly by Thursday I was knackered. I remarked to one of my colleagues that this was one of the least productive days that I’ve had in months.

It was quite difficult to see that I had delivered far less than I had been in comparison to the week or even the days before. Suddenly very basic tasks that would probably actually only take me 30 minutes felt like an insurmountable task.

By the weekend, I felt quite drained and a bit guilty for not finalising everything I wanted.

It then occurred to me that last week I had to juggle travel, speaking, emails and project work. I even remembered remarking how I had basically done two days worth of work in an intense 3 hour period last Friday.

When I gave myself the grace to realise how much I had been pushing myself over the last two weeks, I could see that this was a natural cycle of energetic flow.

I’ve been noticing this phenomenon of post-stress work guilt. I’ve seen many colleagues and friends go through an intense period with high workloads and pressure. During these moments we often reflect that this is a short term thing, and that once the project is over we can finally relax. Unfortunately, when the quieter moment comes, we start to feel guilty that we are not doing enough. This means that our body doesn’t have time to recuperate the stressed energy that we used.

When we take a step back it can seem pretty obvious how self-defeating this is. If we are exerting ourselves beyond our normal limits, it’s completely  natural that our capacity after the intense moments will be restricted. And yet rather than letting ourselves return to a rested state, we can instead push our way through more work out of a sense of loyalty or guilt. This leads to mediocre work, and a constant sense of tiredness.

I believe that we have learnt to be relentlessly consistent in our productivity.  this sounds like a good thing to strive for, at least on paper. But the reality is that as humans, we aren’t built to work in this way.

In our contracted 40 hours work week, our metrics can tell us that we need a consistent level of  productivity throughout these hours. Yet the reality is that we can have moments that are incredibly productive whilst in others moments that are anything but incredible.

There are two ways to tackle this. On the one hand we can look to be as consistent as possible by making sure that we have effective routines. And for many instances this can be very helpful, our ability to control our environment and the way that we live means that we can create the right conditions to succeed.

On the other hand, life is not perfectly consistent. We may have new challenges appear in front of us. We’ve often seen this during a time of intense project delivery, but we often forget about the additional strains that life outside the workplace can throw at us. Marital issues, illness or any other host of events can make us tap into our reserves.

The more that I am in tune with the rhythm of life, the more I feel in flow, no matter what I am feeling.

The biggest secret I have learned has been that the best way to deal with emotions is to not deal with them. By this I mean experiencing emotions without feeling the need to analyse or react to them. This is different to avoiding the emotions which just leaves them lingering under the surface.

So when we are looking at the question of productivity in our lives, it is helpful to reflect how we can be consistent in our routines, but also be flexible to the shifting enigma that is life.

The more that we can be comfortable with the idea that we do not have to be perfectly consistent the more that we will ultimately get done. The only thing that guilt does is serve to hold us back by making us feel bad about ourselves.

And my personal belief is that the only way to long term, consistent productivity is by being happy and motivated.

Being an outsider in a room full of insiders

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This week was a European tour for me. I started in Brussels, then went up to Amsterdam to speak at the Sustainable Packaging Summit. on Wednesday I came straight to London (with a small box of chocolates for my dad’s birthday) to speak with a group of Spanish cleantech startups. I’m now going back to Brussels this Sunday (and speaking at another event on Monday there!)

I’ve been posting quite a lot recently about the importance of getting out of our comfort zones if we want to get wider perspectives. This week was me putting this into action – spending time outside of the people I would usually speak to, and learning about things that I honestly had little knowledge about.

There’s a reason we tend to want to stay in spaces that are more comfortable – it’s a lot easier hanging around with work colleagues in Brussels talking about my niche policy interests. Getting out of this space is uncomfortable as I don’t really know what to expect.

From a professional perspective, it’s also quite nerve wracking. I went to speak on a stage at a conference all about packaging when I was probably one of the people who knew the least when it came to the technical aspects of the subject. I even had a comment of someone a tad confused as to why I was on the speaker line-up since what I do didn’t sound all that relevant.

Feeling discomfort in such spaces is completely normal, and indeed part of the process. When we want to do something different, it means opening ourselves up to new things. For me, this meant going into a space of experts of something I knew little about. It was also really humbling to realise how little I knew about the chemistry in the way packaging is made, as well as how complex it all was.

Nevertheless, there is a real value in being an outsider. What I shared on stage was a more broad outlook at European policy. I was invited for this reason – to give my own expertise, rather than opining similar things to the ones that the room already knew.

I think it worked. I had a few people telling me that they really appreciated my broader perspective, as well as someone asking if I would be interested in speaking at a similar conference in a few months time.

Being an outsider means that there is little space to hide. It allows us to be different and share something novel, but this also requires a deeper level of self-assuredness and confidence. But standing out for the right reasons is far more memorable than doing what everyone else is doing as an insider.

So for me, this meant really being sure of my own skills. I had to be a lot more connected with my intuition. It was about being bold and following what I thought was useful to share, rather than looking for an easier route to get agreement. As is the life of the outsider.

As an ethnic minority, the idea of being an outsider does really get reinforced, even if subtly. Just this month I’ve spelt wrong several times, including being put up on a website publicly. I’ve also had my name mispronounced when introduced too.

Frustratingly, I’ve seen much more difficult (but European) names from central or eastern Europe being spelt correctly, but my more ‘ethnic’ name being spelt wrong, despite it being right there for everyone to see.

Knowing how to respond is tricky – when I’ve raised it, people don’t really understand the problem. Everyone makes mistakes right? We’ve all seen a typo in our name after all. And yet, the level that it happens to me compared to those with ‘whiter’ names is probably two to three times more.

I’ve tried to ignore it, but that only leads to greater frustration. I chastise myself for not standing up for what I believe in. Yet raising it also brings discomfort in a place in spaces where one is meant to be ‘civil’.

My answer is to come from a loving space, but to raise it anyway. The more I can be understanding around an error, the easier it is for someone to receive my explanations that such mistakes have a negative effect. From my eyes, I am experiencing a lower level of dignity and respect due to my racial background. So it’s important for me to share this.

Alas, being an outsider is not an easy game. But it is also more rewarding, and often more fun. My ethnic diversity also gives me a rich set of perspectives and it is also what I draw upon when I speak. It gives something different. And in a world where we’re clamouring for solutions, it’s vital to get different viewpoints.

When we see ourselves free of needing to be part of any particular group, it allows ourselves to express far more openly. To me, that is the ultimate freedom.

And it’s no wonder that those who really master this are the most successful people in the world.

The balance between being right and being effective

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This week, I’ve been reflecting on the idea of ‘being right’. After all, so much of what we do is based upon finding the correct answer.

But what does being right really mean?

For a long time, I saw being right as synonymous with the best way to do things. In my mind, once we reflected upon something for long enough, there was more or less a single answer that was correct. So this meant that such an answer would obviously be the best thing to do. For example, when in a workplace this meant that logically it would be the best course of action to follow.

Looking back, I’d say I was pretty naive. The idea that people are genuinely rational is a fundamental lack of understanding that i had. But I don’t blame myself. After all, this was how I was taught the world work. You work hard, you’ll get good grades. Get good grades, get a good diploma. Get a good diploma, get a good job. Get a good job, get a promotion. And so forth.

As a young budding graduate starting my career, I thought the best way to pull ahead was simply being better at finding the logical truth behind things. And to my own credit, I got pretty good at it. Yet despite really honing my skills at being as analytically effective as I could, I was surprised at how limited my impact was. It didn’t seem like people were often all that interested in hearing how things could be improved.

After some soul searching, I looked at seeing whether there was a better way of seeing the world.

One thing that has really helped me was to realise how narrow my view of logic was. I realised that In my own head, I could set fixed parameters which highlighted what was ‘correct’. I hadn’t quite realised how much loaded information I was putting that simply was not objective at all.

Opening my mind has been a way in which I can see different ways of looking at things. It allows me to realise that there is an inherent flaw in the idea that anything can be objectively ‘right’. I’ve found myself more open to new ideas and changing my mind than I had to previously. Broadly this has been for the better.

But opening my mind does not mean throwing away critical thinking. Many in the liberal, left-leaning space can become so preoccupied with incorporating the views of others that they forget that they have their own minds too. For me, this meant that I was foregoing my natural instinct to placate others. In a workplace setting, this can look like getting the agreement of the majority of the room, at the behest of the actual expert on the subject who knows what they are talking about.

Practically, this meant that in a workplace I was often dimming my knowledge and intuition because I would caveat everything with ‘well I could be wrong’. Whilst humility can be nice, it also was a gateway drug for no longer following my own brilliance.

There is a beautiful sweet spot. One where we can see our own truth, and understand our own instincts. We do not constantly question them, or shy away when they are telling us something that is uncomfortable to realise (for instance, the instinct to speak up when you can see something wrong happening in a meeting or an injustice on the street).

But we must also recognise that our own intellect has its limits. No matter how much we attain information, there is no possible way we will know everything. If anything, the opposite happens – the more we learn, the more we realise how little we truly know. It’s no wonder that the greatest gurus, experts and leaders often make this point.

This is where the balanced approach comes in. To lead, we need to be able to have a position. If we are not willing to put a flag in the sand somewhere, we will never really say anything of substance. But we must also understand that setting out such a view has potentials for error. So coming to our own conclusions does not mean that our views may later shift.

We are all guilty of seeing ourselves as more right than others. On a superficial level we may be willing to concede certain informational points (such as what time someone said the next bus was). But what most people do not see is that many of our moral stances and values are grounded within the same assumptions of being right compared to others.

In other words, we generally implicitly assume our moral positioning and judgement of what is right or wrong is the correct one compared to others. So when people do things outside of our own framework, we end up judging them. Perhaps we label them as being too loud, too much of a know it all, too soft, or too lazy.

What I have found is that the more I am open to different ways of looking at things, the more I am influential. Most arguments are not about ‘winning’, they are often about being heard. The ability to set a position and be open to challenge on it is extremely powerful. This is the case even if we do not end up necessarily shifting our view.

Ironically, people are more likely to listen to what I have to say when I’m not trying so hard to push it on them.

Finding the balance between reflection and overthink

Photo by José M. Reyes on Unsplash

The last few weeks I’ve kept my days clearer and my evenings quieter. X Some call this ‘slowing down’, though I find that term a bit confusing – because whilst I am doing less activities, my mental space doesn’t feel particularly less active. If anything, it feels like I think more, rather than less.

It’s been an interesting experience for sure. Having freer evenings has allowed me to lounge around and enjoy spending time alone. When I tried ‘doing less’ in the summer, I ended up getting fidgety and felt quite miserable because I didn’t know what to do with myself. I think I’m having a better crack at it now though.

More sedentary time was also needed – I’ve injured my abdomen and need some time to rest it. I’ve already re-opened the injury by going back to exercise too soon, so it’s better I don’t repeat the same mistake. I can also feel an accumulated fatigue within my body. It has been to the point where I’ve felt tired doing simple things like walking up the stairs. This is despite being in better physical shape than I have been in a long time.

What’s been surprising is how much more tired my body has felt when I’ve given it time to rest. My expectations would have been that giving myself a few days would give a natural recovery, and I would just feel better pretty quickly.  

Instead, I’m finding that I’d probably been running on reserves for some time. Now that I’m finally giving my body space to rest it needs to properly go into recovery mode for a few weeks. So more aches and pains are resurfacing. Part of this is probably just being more sedentary, but I think it’s a necessary price to let the rest of my body heal.

Spending more time alone has given more space for thought. And this has felt like a blessing and a curse. It’s been nice to relieve myself of the high standards that I need to be constantly doing more, or always be available to other people. I can allow myself some creature comforts and not always push myself so hard. I think this is also helping my relationships improve, because as I value my time more, others value it more as well.

It’s also allowed myself more space to process my day sub-consciously, gleaning more intuitive knowledge from an event rather than just moving straight to the next thing.

At times, it’s also been very confronting. Some intuitive thoughts can be rather unpleasant. I’ve recently seen my neediness around social relationships and people. It’s not a fun thing to realise how a lot of my behaviour has been subconsciously driven by the buzz of meeting people, to the point that I have gotten addicted to it. Like any drug, spending time with people has overtaken other parts of my life. This has not been particularly helpful for my overall wellbeing.

It can be tricky to see the difference between genuine intuition or overthink. For example, am I having a genuine realisation about myself or am I just being self-critical?

It’s taken some real learning to discern the two. To me, intuition is something that comes to me without spending too much time thinking about it. My belief is that this is coming from the wider sub-conscious processing, which can take a day or two to come through.

Meanwhile, overthink is sitting with the analytical process of trying to explain ‘why’. Whilst our brains are fabulous for many things, they are not designed to handle subjective feelings and emotions. Such things are not a maths solution with a single answer, so using the brain in these spaces can be fraught with overanalysis and actually pretty unhelpful stories.  

Let me give an example. When I sat with myself sometime last week, some pretty intense emotions came up. I felt a hard pressing sensation on my upper chest. The temptation on this was to ask ‘what’s wrong?’. Going down this path would start searching for a reason. In the past, I would come to some rather wild conclusions – at one point I just believed I wasn’t destined to be happy. Another time I came to the conclusion that it’s because I have it harder than other people.

Now, I let the emotion sit. In the short term, it’s more intense because I’m not distracting myself by trying to think ‘why’. But when I can bear the emotional intensity, it tends to pass faster and more healthily. I usually gain clarity a day or two later.

With perspective and time to properly feel what I was feeling, I could see that these were feelings that I wasn’t giving time to surface by being so busy. I could also gain a deeper wisdom of what I can do better, rather than ending up blaming the world in one way or another.  

Because these moments aren’t pleasant, the temptation is to see them as negatives. During the summer, this meant that I ended up avoiding them, because I saw the feelings as bad rather than part of a process.

I haven’t quite found perfection – I still can jump to conclusions or want to push negative emotions away. This is one of the reasons I’ve really struggled to speak about the Israel-Palestine war these last weeks. It’s so emotionally intense and upsetting that I’ve found it really hard to say something on it. I realise this is my tendency to avoid such heavy emotions. I also realise that this is not particularly helpful, and my silence also plays a part.

So for what it’s worth, I find the situation incredibly distressing. I know that there are innocent people on both sides caught up on it. There are also people who prefer violence to peace on both sides too. I do not agree with this approach – I believe love and peace is the ultimate solution to our woes.

But I think it’s also important not to be naive, as I also see the seismic imbalance of a government-led destruction from one side of the other. Historic ties have meant that such atrocities are being ignored internationally.

States of war are as good as reason as any for us to realise the importance of self-reflection. Our tactics to avoid uncomfortable emotions don’t serve us in the long run.

The more comfortable we can get with discomfort, the less we have to fear. And a less fearful world will be a far more peaceful one.