Let’s do an experiment, and it will all makes sense later (maybe).
Hi!
holidays approach and this could be the last post of the year where I should put an effort. I’m going to value the time I have to disconnect, recharge, collect ideas and everything else. I’m not going to disappear, I’ll probably do something similar to what I did in August, it seems a good way to give a wrap the the last four months and to the year itself with the retrospective of the retrospectives.
I want to start from the post from two weeks ago:
Here i wrote about company culture and shared values as the center of gravity for a group of people, a team of colleagues in the specific case.
Today I want to do a step forward by making a step back on this topic, reflecting on the individual repercussions of the same issue. The polls are a way to apply this reflection to the newsletter and also a moment to collect data before the end of the year and have something to reflect on during holidays. Are you ready?
Takeaways (TL:DR)
Finding purpose in life is so powerful. Scientific research is being made upon it, and is probably an evergreen research for humans from millennials. Funding purpose can drive motivation, increase happiness, health and wealth. Can give you focus and something to which compare your daily decisions. What’s more having a clearer purpose push you to gravitate towards people and environments that share similar values and can propel your growth and your sense of belonging. Is it the work of a lifetime, or something we discover earlier along the path, is probably more important to focus on the fruits of the process rather than sticking to the conclusion we find at the finish line, always leaving space and flexibility for a change.
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Weekly retrospective
As my brain focuses on a topic, of course it starts to notice it like a pattern, everywhere, because the experience of the world is filtered by that thought. So I’ll be sharing a long list of stimuli I’ve collected in the last few days and got my cogs rattling. As they all are interconnected, I hope to tell a story and stimulate reflection for you as well. As they all are separate aspect of my experience if you don’t want to read the entire piece, you can skim and stop to the paragraphs that intrigue you more.
The colleague
This is the starting point and is a brief one, at least here. I already mentioned my previous post in the introduction, go check it out to discover more!
The influencer
If you are a long time reader of this newsletter you know by now I can’t live without spamming some content from Simon Sinek most of the times. His first book and the TED talk who made him famous in the first place are titled “Start with WHY”, and the concept is applied to companies, is applied to communication and so many other things, among these of course the concept is applied to find your own “why”. This is the theme I’m discussing today, and during the years I got to consume these pieces of content so many times in so many different forms. My favourite being this video, 2 minutes with a very simple technique that I regret daily not to have applied yet. If the premises of today got your interest, if you feel in a similar position of searching for your own purpose in life, and you have space for a single piece of content today, let it be this 2 minutes video.
This guy also published another book — Together is better — which is the connection to next paragraph.
The mentor
It happens that my former manager, now friend, and always mentor, gifted me this book a couple years ago. Even if I never got the chance to apply the technique of the video she was still able to give me that strong emotional response through this book. While I was reading for the first time, there was a folded corner page, and it happened by accident, but it seemed like a message from the universe at the time and I felt so inspired.
She also pushed me directly and indirectly to learn as much as I could about my-self, to explore and try to understand my strengths and weaknesses. She once said that invest on ourselves is the best way to work with others and for others. She guided me through tools to analise myself like the Ikigai or other more professionally related self assesments. She helped me to define goals and grow every day.
I strongly suggest to search for such a role model in your life. They shouldn’t be the same person through your entire life, although they could. Find someone for confrontation, someone who’s able to let you feel seen, and that challenges you, forces you to make the right questions to yourself, and guides you. Mentorship is such an enriching experience. Don’t focus too much on hard and professional skills, find someone who’s able to let you grow as a person, and they will probably be nearer to help you with your purpose.
The counselor
I’ve been very lucky in the last few year to have so many figures tu support me. Having the possibility to take sessions with a counselor at work has given me so many tools and concepts that I bring with myself every day to deal with life. It has been a space to deeply reflect on my behaviour, emotions and my needs.
Connected to this, one concept in particular, is to learn to listen to ourselves, to our emotions, and our needs to make decisions. To trust ourselves and our physical sensations. To take the steps to go towards what we feel right at the moment for ourselves.
It really motivated me to make great changes in my life in the last two years, and I feel that finding a purpose, and a strong set of values, for my self and others, is important to have a measure of comparison to guide our decision making and is what my emotions are telling me to seek right now.
A little break. Remember to take a breath meanwhile.
The therapist
Recently I finally got the chance to start psychotherapy. I long awaited this moment, as I learned through the years how powerful is to work on ourselves and I’m of the party of those who think that anyone can benefit from this process that should be destigmatised and become as common as going to the gym.
Considered new years resolutions impend over all of us, soon, do yourself a favour and if you are one of those people that make a yearly subscription to the local gym and give up after a couple of weeks…take a long breath and invest that money on a therapist instead.
By the way, I just began to discuss the issue of finding a “why” with the therapist. I shared my feelings about missing a clear purpose, feeling suspended, lost, and missing points of reference in life. Society changes, the fundamentals of fifty years ago (a job, a house, family, kids, community) are weaker and the speed of change is so high that is hard to find something else to substitute them with. It turns out that missing anchoring points in life and a sense of purpose is a very diffused problem, and my therapist suggestion, is that we should search for anchors inside ourselves if the outside world is nothing but still.
She added that is not an easy task, it’s about digging a lot on ourselves to go deeper and deeper, it’s about asking a lot of questions to ourselves (or to others, if it helps).
The friend
In the past, I already discussed about this same feelings with some friends, and all along with their own peculiarities, but they all shared the same perception. I should have suspected that it is a diffused problem. One of them event sent me a research showing the diffusion of some of these points.
With him, I revived the discussion after therapy. I sent to him the video with the exercise from Sinek with my best intentions to help each other soon with this task, and we discussed other details, included the impact of the rhythms and how fast we are forced to go by expectations of the society, and if we are able to create enough space for such a discovery in this context.
Maybe this is the right time of the year, if we are able to slow down during holidays, we could all take some time to dig deeper on our emotions, our needs and the purpose of our lives. No pressure, no expectations, no competition, only committing to the process is a big result already.
The hobby
Speaking of coincidence, I encountered this same them as the center of the plot of the last videogame I played. I’m very passioned of indie games, and I usually search for artistic looks and great storytelling. This time I played Sable. I liked it since before launch because of its aesthetic that reminds me the illustrations from Moebius. The trailer has also been of inspiration for my own videogame of which I talked in the 15x30 interview.
So without knowing, I ended up experiencing “The Glide” of Sable — which gives the title to this post. In this fantasy world, The Glide is a ritual that every young component of society has to undertake alone before coming back to society and choosing their role. Each role, each purpose in the society has its own mask, and during the glide you are free to explore the world, help other people and collect badges that grants you the right to wear the masks connected to that particular expertise and role: The guards, the merchants, the mechanics, the climbers, the religious, yatta yatta.
Basically the game forced me to simulate this kind of experience I’m embarking myself in real life, but in a little bubble, in a different world, with different standards and with less anxiety for the consequences of my choices.
At the end of the game, when I had to make the greater choice for Sable, to choose the mask that she’s going to wear for the rest of her adult life, I went for the one that I liked more aesthetically and I kept for most of the time during the game, but also I liked it because it was one of the few “unique” masks, it didn’t belonged to a group or a job, nobody else in the world of Sable is wearing it. This choice at first showed me my need for an identity, to find my uniqueness. The mask is called “the Shade” which as well reminds me of my introversion. It is also completely full of eyes, which reminded me of my curiosity.
The description of the choice for that mask, is what ultimately got me emotional, and resonated so much with that page of the book Together is better that I pasted above.
The lesson I take here is that you never know where you’ll find stimuli for your questions and help to discover and reflect a little bit more about yourself.
Sometimes you just need to relax, to leave a little space, and important things will fill that space naturally. I’ve long neglected my passion for videogames because I focused so much on other things lately, and as soon as I come back to them, games give me so much inspiration and relight my passion.
There’s no need to stress out anything, some effort is always needed but often we just need to open our eyes and ears to observe and listen. Be calm and ready to receive from the world.
The tools
If you like more practical ways to explore and reflect your personality, your strengths, and other parts of your character, there are several tests and tools to help discover a little bit more about yourself. I already mentioned the Ikigai, but three of the most famous behavioural tests are:
Miers-Briggs (16 personalities)
You can find online so many spider graphs, questionnaires, frameworks, activities or other more flexible tools to analyse specific areas of your character and of your personality.
Personally, I like this kind of tests to understand a little bit better my behaviour and my character and I found myself very comfortable with Dimensional: an app that includes all of the three tests I mentioned and more, brings them all together, with a huge list of traits and allows to compare socially with other people while having a handy record to go back to them whenever you want. If you like the idea we can connect there and learn a bit more about each other.
Although I’m a huge fan of this tools, they are just tools, they help you to articulate some thoughts but I think that they give the most value if you use them just as platforms to support your self analysis and your reflections. Nothing pays more than spending time to think about ourselves, what we want, what we like, what we have done and especially how and why we feel certain emotions.
The neswletter
So in the end, why am I asking you so many questions today? Why the experiment with the polls? To try see the engagement? It’s a bit more than that. During my reflections I often thought at how a purpose in life can be something to compare decisions to and measure value.
I need to reflect more on what I consider value, and in the past I had the chance so many times to reflect on the difference between outputs and outcomes.
I know the “what” I can do, the outputs of my work and the possibilities of my capabilities and skills.
I’m discovering the “how”, the values that I want to hold on to do what I do.
In the end I would like to find my “why” the driver that makes me unique and gives purpose to what I do, the outcomes that I want to bring to the world.
I’m sharing this journey with you, with my thoughts and reflections, and it is important to me to look at more trustable metrics to measure value. To do this the data that Substack provides is not always helpful, is not reliable and is superficial one-size-fit-all information. As mentioned, the holidays and the end of the year could be the best moment to wrap up this kind of thinking, so the polls are an experiment to see if I can collect more valuable and qualitative information and to discover if this helps me to understand what can I do in order to make my writing better and to define better the purpose and the “why” of Already, Yet.
If you liked this post and you think some of your friends would like it as well, please share it with whoever you like.
Thanks for reading to the finish and see you next week!
Tobia