life simple

“Many years ago I had a martial arts master from Korea. It was just like in the movies—he’d make me do crazy things like carry buckets of water up flights of stairs. He was very unaccepting of apathy. I was young at the time, so when he’d asked me a question, I’d often answer by shrugging, or saying ‘I don’t know’ or ‘I guess.’ Then one day, he told me: ‘You never give me straight answer. Your life is too complicate. I make simple for you. Do you want to be weak or strong?’
I said, ‘Strong.’
‘Do you want to be slow or fast?’
‘Fast.’
‘Do you want to be smart or stupid?’
‘Smart.’
‘Do you want to be alive or dead?’
‘Alive.’
‘You shrug one more time, you’ll want to be dead.’”

[from here]

Exhaustion is not a status symbol and productivity is not a metric of our worth.

One of the things that I found was the importance of rest and play, and the willingness to let go of exhaustion as a status symbol and productivity as self-worth.

We don’t know who we are without productivity as a metric of our worth. We don’t know what we enjoy, and we lose track of how tired we are.

What struck me the most is the fact that so few managers and supervisors and teachers and leaders get any instruction on how to give feedback. When I interview H.R. people who spend their days doing exit interviews, over and over the most common criticism they hear [from people leaving their jobs] is, “I never got any feedback.”

I think to create a feedback culture where discomfort is normalized — where there are going to be some uncomfortable conversations but they’re going to be done respectfully and wholeheartedly, with the aim to move the mission of our work forward and to move your personal goals forward — that is the heart of engagement. People felt fundamentally ignored because they weren’t receiving feedback. And when they did, it was corrective. It was fast and not meaningful, and it was blaming.

In the end, people just want to be seen and heard and valued. And they want to be inspired by leaders who engage in the behaviors they ask everyone to engage in. I think it’s that simple and that complicated.

[from here]

Richard Galliano

[Richard Galliano]

...cine a zis ca acordeonul nu e un instrument serios?