Exothermic/Endothermic

In my last post I said that Self-Improvement was rubbish. Not strictly true because the post was about self-improvement and it was far from rubbish. I just wanted to warn against Self-Improvement replacing World of Warcraft in your life and not actually making a difference. The difference is made through acting not by reading a book or an article and thinking "Oh this is nice...what a well written piece...I know so much more about the world now!".

If you're doing that, please, please stop. Do it for the starving children in Somalia whose parents feel the need to turn to piracy.

The difference is made by acting not by thinking. Life isn't entertainment. You aren't a comedy. Life is serious business and it's the only one you've got. Live it to the max.

A few people brought up points I confusion I didnt meant to leave hanging. Their question runs like this, "If we don't look to the outside world for help, how are we meant to change our inside world?"

Let me answer that for you. Wherever I use self-improvement I am referring to bettering oneself. This might seem counter-intuitive so bare with it:

Self-improvement is not about changing who you are. Becoming a better person is not about learning how to be like some other awesome person. Self-improvement is about self-discovery. It is about releasing your true self. Letting your hopes, dreams, thoughts and feeling shine.

Dull and matt ------------------------------> Bright and shiny.

It is about allowing your natural personality come through and all the best things about you work together in perfect harmony.



This is particularly pertinent to me as a coach. I often get resistance in people who say they want great things but they don't want to change who they are. Some coaches would dismiss this as EGO rearing his ugly head again. It's true that most people could do with having their ego dissolved a little. Nonetheless this is a GOOD thing. I don't think anyone needs to change who they are. They need to drop all the add-ons and java updates around their personality that obscure their true self.

This stems from my belief that we are all naturally incredible people. We all have special gifts and talents that we can share with the world. Most people when asked if they have something to give would agree. Most people would say that they have more to give than they are currently giving. Self-improvement is about reaching this place.

Self-management

Many of the ideas in what follows come from Peter Drucker's article "Managing Oneself" in the Harvard Business Review. I read it last night and it seemed to bring out many of the points I was looking to make in my article.

The rest is padded out with my own experiences and NLP.

- What are your strengths and what are your weaknesses?

This can apply to anything you want in your life. Your social life. Your work life. Your learning. Your weekly game of golf.

If you really want to be good then do something.

1) Write down what things you want to be good at. Do it now.

I'll play along with you.

a) Philosophy Studies.
b) More depraved nights out.
c) Management - My Own Business and Football Management.

2) What do you think your strengths and weaknesses are?

a) Strengths - I am good at creating arguments, I am good at distilling complicated points simply, I am open-minded, I am good at research, I am good at applying philosophy to the real world.
Things I can work on - Disciplining myself to sit down and read, Engaging with topics I find dry or irrelevant, I need to be more widely read.

b) Strengths - Being depraved, not giving a fuck, having fun/self-amusing, getting horrendously drunk, bringing the party whilst sober, positivity, strength of character.
Things I can work on - Persistence, Consistency, Finding people as depraved as me.

c) Strengths - Confidence in myself, Ability to make decisions under stress, Working as part of a team, Working as a leader, Getting things done, Transmitting confidence to others, Competitiveness, Being positive, Taking responsibility for the results of my team, Creativity, Values-driven.
Things I can work on - Experience, Knowledge of a particular field (self-improvement and football coaching), Communicating ideas calmly and effectively, Never appearing arrogant.

Those are mine. Do yours. Notice any reoccurring trends in your strengths and weaknesses. My reoccurring strengths are my Infectious Positivity, Values and Confidence. My weaknesses are my lack of experience and ability to stick to what I perceive as a mundane process.

3. Other questions

What distinguishes these points is how little people actually know about themselves and how often they are wrong. We think we know far more than we do about ourselves. Once we discover the answers to these question we will be in a far better position to achieve the success we deserve and grasp opportunities that come our way.

How do you learn? Do you learn by reading like Eisenhower, by writing like Churchill or Beethoven, or by speaking like me. Im heavily auditory so I learn by speaking to myself and by discussing things with other people. Everyone in the library around me knows this. If I am to learn effectively I have to be able to hear what's going on. I then cement it like Beethoven by writing it out. If I write it, I never have to read the notes again. It's there.
So how do you learn? Write down what you think, play around with it and see if you're right.

Leader or follower? Do not stigmatise the answer to this. Being a leader isn't necessarily better. There is far more pressure to produce results as a leader. If you don't work well under pressure, are not decisive and are not willing to take full responsibility for everything that happens to you and your team then you will not make a good leader. There are plenty of support positions of value. General George Patton, an American military hero of WWII, was denied the chance to become an independent commander as the head of Defence said, "Patton is the best subordinate the American army has ever produced, but he would be the worst commander." Generally those who aren't leaders can be superb advisers. Are you a good adviser?

Values: How do you believe the world should work? Put yourself in a position where the world can work the way you think it should. Work for an ethical investment fund if you believe investing in arms is wrong, don't shop at Primark if you believe clothes shouldnt be died with the blood of Bangladeshis and shop there if you love cheap clothes!

Long term/Short term: Which is more important and how will you get there? In football Arsenal FC represent the long term approach investing in youth and giving young talent the playing time to fulfil their potential. This has led to a lack of silverware over the past 5 years but the future looks very, very bright. Chelsea on the other hand have been immensely successful by investing large sums of money in players at their peak. How sustainable is it? Usually a balance will be struck but there will always be instances in your life when you choose one over the other. How does that affect you?

Big Picture/Little Picture Do you prefer to look at the details, the nitty gritty and make those subtle distinctions that make the difference or do you like to look at the big picture? The former risk not seeing the wood for all the trees. The latter can make careless errors through a lack of attention to detail. Those who like to see the big picture often work very well with those you see the details. Which are you? How do you work best?


4. Use these results

So you don't know what you want to do with your life?

Use these results. When we play to our strengths and get results we feel good about ourselves. We are positive. We are open to the world. We naturally give ourselves Permission to Land.

What can you do that will utilise your strengths?

5. Reality Check

Every time you start a new task, set a new goal and do something new write down what you think will happen. Then, a day, a week or a year later, check to see whether what happened matched up to what you thought would happen. You might be surprised.

This is an excellent opportunity to refine what your strengths and weaknesses actually are.

Also, don't develop an ego around this. I really encourage you to play to your strengths but this does not mean to posit your strengths as being the only valuable thing a human can have. Drucker says that engineers often pride themselves on their lack of people skills saying that humans are too volatile to be reliable. Maths gives certainties which are better. Those in human resources often make the opposite claim that maths is trivial and an understanding of what drives and motivates humans is more important.

Both views are impoverished. Stick to your strengths by all means but keep an open mind. What knowledge can I take on board that would allow me to bring out more of my strengths? How are my current beliefs limiting my potential?

This is a good point to address the most common objection among young people: I dont know what I want to do with my life!

As hinted above, not knowing what you want to do with your life is no excuse for not knowing what motivates and drives you. Knowing your strengths, weaknesses, values and more can help you. It will allow you to structure your life the way that works best for you such that everything you do is infused with a bit of your essential quality. You develop character. You develop a personality. You develop a sense of self.

However, it is not rare for some of the most gifted individuals to not know what they want to do until they are in their mid to late twenties. Don't panic!

Consider the following question, "What should I contribute?" If you were going to do various jobs, what would you contribute to each one? Which unique perspective do you have? Don't think about what others do. Don't ask if others have failed. Consider just yourself. You don't want to sabotage yourself. If all great people had looked at the dozens of failures that came before them and chosen to give up instead of having faith in what they have to give, the world would be far worse off. You can achieve great things with that unique thing, that unique way of looking at the world that you have.

Reframing the question is often a useful exercise. What don't you want to do with your life? Where dont you belong? What type of thing dont you want to do with your life?

Accept others

Other people have strengths and weaknesses. Im not going to spell this one out. Have a think about how the rest of this post ties in with this. How will you have to behave to get maximum results?



My objection to the self-improvement community at the moment isn't that it doesn't try and as a matter of fact do a lot of good. It's that there is a lot of waste. The number of people who see progress is very small. The reason for this is two-fold. firstly there is an emphasis on making people feel inadequate and like they need to change who they are. This is not true. You are enough. Secondly, there is a one size fits all approach which doesn't reflect the amount of different people. Sure, if you WERE X, Y, Z your life would be better. But people aren't all X, Y, Z. People are all different. We all have different aims, wants, needs, motivators, desires and passions. Any attempt to help people has to reflect this.

We all naturally have the gifts and qualities required to have boundless fun, success, happiness, money, sex, drugs, rock'n'roll and peace.

You are enough. Let's go exothermic on this shit.