“The Anticipation Of The Future Is More Intense Than The Future Itself”
Benjamin Hardy

Excitement and fear. Two most powerful anticipation feelings in a world. Both able to build and destroy, both can be motivating and discouraging, both are being used as tools to drive or stop the world.

When we were kids excitement and fear was rather in balance. We didn’t know so many things and were afraid of them coming to our lives (we also had the common, well known fears of monsters under the bed and “what will mom/dad/teacher say to that”), but at the same time we were constantly excited of not only what we knew was good, but also about the unknown entertainments.

Adults tend to experience fear more often than excitement – both in “motivating” other people as well as driving/stopping themselves. Living in fear of doing or not doing something becomes a person’s way to live and we all know, that a man can get used to anything, so after a while he may not even notice, that his whole life is about living in fear.

Excitement, good vibrations, positive anticipation – these are a bit underrated in the adult life and there’s a reason for that. The older we get, the less things amaze us, because gradually we feel like we know and have already seen everything. We tend to ignore the small blessings in our lives, because they are not new. They’re not inspiring. We only focus on the unknown excitements, the things we’re afraid of and uncertainty of our own future. At the same time we often forget about the things that we already have – the joys of life as we know it, our small victories and achievements, simple being with people we love and cherish, the fact that we can have so many things that our parents couldn’t dream of (and our grandparents wouldn’t even know there’s a thing to dream about). We take things we know for granted and we don’t use them as our drivers, because we underestimate them. We forget how much we can do, how far we can go and how beautiful is life filled with positive excitement.

This simple truth is really worth to be reminded from time to time, as the world is full of options and each of them can be exciting in an own unique way. Excitement is one of the keys to a well-balanced life. It keeps us going and motivates to move forward. And it feels so good :)

“Wherever you are, make sure you’re there.” 

 Dan Sullivan

 

It’s been a while since I wrote anything. Vacation makes a person lazy as hell. For 2 weeks I was getting up at 8:00 or 9:00 (can you imagine a breakfast in the hotel that is only served until 9:30?? Disgrace!), reading belles-letters just for the enjoyment of reading, lying on a beach, swimming with sea turtles and picking up mushrooms in the forest. On top of that trying to not think about work at all. In my humble opinion this is what makes a great holiday.

During vacation I was thinking a lot about where I’m going with my life. How whatever I’m doing now will impact my future self. What shall I do in the nearest months or years to fulfill my destiny (or just make the life I live worth living)? Unfortunately there was no groundbreaking discovery or spontaneous enlightenment in this department. Not even the small catharsis. But I did have some thoughts about life. And I'd like to share them here.

Although it’s really hard to predict the actual outcomes of the current actions, basing on the life experience and common knowledge one thing seems to be very likely. Today’s problems will probably mean nothing in the future. Today’s doubts will only make us laugh in 10 years. Whatever we fear or despise today, we might actually enjoy 2 years from now. What is enjoyable at this moment, might appear overwhelming or boring in 5 years’ time.

My friend once told me a story about how much she wanted to go kayaking as a teenager. It was her big dream, she was thinking and reading about it a lot and never really tried it back then, because of the usual teenage reasons. The years have passed and one day she had a chance to try. She got excited (it was THE DREAM!), went on the kayaking trip and… didn’t enjoy it. Turned out it was not her dream anymore and she couldn’t find the excitement from the past in herself.

Life is a constant change. We never know what the future will bring, but there is a great chance, that we will feel completely different about the same thing today, when we just imagine it and in the future, when it will actually happen. Personal conclusion? Carpe diem. We live in the now and now is what really matters. Our future self will most probably not care much about what we’re doing at this particular moment – they will have their own “now” to take care of.

“You can choose courage and you can choose comfort, but you cannot choose both."
Brene Brown

What is courage to you? Is it overcoming your own inhibitions? Is it doing something for the first time? Is it facing the difficult situation even when it’s horrifying? All those things for sure. But what about letting go of something you’ve been worrying about too long? What about cutting yourself some slack, when you beat yourself up for each and every mistake? It can always be considered courageous when you DO something. But sometimes NOT DOING something takes so much courage, that it seems almost impossible to overcome this challenge.

Meditation is a great example of a challenging art of not doing, speaking or thinking. When you start meditating there’s this perfect moment, when your mind achieves beautiful clarity. You’re so proud to be sitting there and finally doing nothing and benefiting from that. It takes less than one minute to set you straight and lead your mind back to the “worry track”. And when I say you, I mean myself.

“Why is this project not going as I have planned? What is she doing with this douchebag? How can I help them? Will he be OK with what I came up with yesterday? It’s so uncomfortable and my nose it’s itchy, noooo, I won’t scratch it! I'm meditating, I need to be calm. I liked this dress I saw a week ago, why didn’t I buy it? I want a waffle.” And this is just the first 30 seconds. To get rid of all these thoughts and bring the clarity back is a hard work. But it pays off.

Normally it is about 7 minutes for me and it usually seems like at least half an hour. I believe it’s easier for men, because they have these empty boxes in their brains, that they can use anytime and then think about nothing, literally. For a woman not thinking, talking or doing anything is a big excersize. 

The real victory is allowing the thoughts flow. Acknowledging, accepting and letting them go. Panta rhei, everything flows. That’s the way to do it. How? Courageously. One step at a time. And breathing involved.

They say (men, of course), that if you want to see the world championship, try to make a regular woman do and think nothing for 11 minutes. I tend to agree, unfortunately. But one day I’ll have my 11 minutes of full emptiness and clarity. Just wait for it.

"Expect everything and attach to nothing.”

Carrie Campbell

Funny thing. I thought I have the expectations topic thought through and all my convictions about it are well established. The main one is: expect nothing, as the more you expect the higher probability, that you will end up being disappointed. For years I’ve been trying to fight my expectations with more or less success. The more expectations I remove from my life the more proud I am of myself. The general idea is that I won’t get disappointed or heartbroken because of somebody’s actions, because I didn’t expect anything in the first place. Whenever I start expecting something I give myself a slap on the wrist trying to get rid of this feeling. It’s a self preservation thing. Also the less I expect, the more chances are of a pleasant surprise (and I like pleasant surprises).

So this is a new concept, that I would like to explore further. Expect everything, but attach to nothing. 

 

At this point let’s assume that the expectations aren’t really a bad thing. On the contrary, setting high expectations is setting high standards. Without high standards human beings tend to settle down for mediocrity or position themselves as life victims. And when the good standards are set it’s easier to build the life we want.

It’s really the outcome, the specific result, that we should avoid building in our minds after each expectation is set. And this is the hard part. We’re human, so we imagine things. When the imagination kicks in, we like to create these perfect scenarios, where everything goes exactly as we have planned. The sky is blue and the sun is shining and we’re singing with the birds like a Disney princess who is just one step of meeting and marrying her Prince Charming. Well, the real world is not a Disneyland, the Prince Charming can always be late or not a great husband material and on top of that a thunderstorm might appear when least expected and ruin the whole scenery. These things happen in life and they’re not always pretty. The main idea is to except what happened, make the best out of it and move on to the new (and sometimes a lot better) outcome. 

 

Creating a plan is crucial for any big undertaking – it gives purpose, structures the activities and keeps the timelines working. But space for the unknown must always be a part of it. You cannot really predict the actual outcome of event the most meticulously planned project.

A tip of the day. Keep in mind ideas and standards, strive for them and aim for the best, but always mark your final plan with an *

*This may end up in a completely different way.

“It doesn’t make sense to hire smart people and tell them what to do; we hire smart people so they can tell us what to do.”

Steve Jobs

Today will be about HR. I recently went to Paris to attend a Corporate Research Forum conference: Recourcing – How HR’s Core Competence is Evolving where I was exploring how the talent attraction nowadays shifts from “recruiting and hiring” to “advertising and engaging”. We all hear it's an "employee market" out there and companies must prepare for it. But what does it really mean?

According to Anthony Robbins, who made some extensive research by questioning approximately 3 million people, we can identify 6 basic human needs, that we fulfill daily in different ways. These needs are the core reasons for each decision we make in life and the more aware of them we are the more resourceful decisions we can make and the easier it is for us to create an inner peace and sustainable state of happiness.

The 6 core needs are:

Needs of the Personality

- Certainty (we need to feel safe and in control)

- Uncertainty or Variety (we like being surprised by life, need the change and challenges)

- Significance (we need to feel special, like we matter to the world)

- Love and Connection (people are important for us as we need to be connected, we have a need of loving and being loved by others)

Needs of Spirit

- Growth (the need for constant emotional, intellectual and spiritual development)

- Contribution (we want to give to the world, leave our mark on others’ lives).

Companies these days do a lot in order to meet these basic needs of their employees. The big HR strategies are being created to make sure, that people feel safe in their work environments and have new things to deal with in order to not get burned out or bored. Awarding systems are reflecting sense of meaning and importance of the employees. Connecting people together, feeling “like a family” is what keeps them in their positions for a longer time.

The needs of spirit are also being more and more addressed by employers: extensive learning & development portfolios offer variety of ways to grow and improve and the activities like best practice sharing and volunteering (very popular especially in big UK corporations) are becoming number one priorities for candidates who search for a new job.

People want to work, where they can see the point of their contribution. They are no longer just earning money, they want their work to be meaningful with a clear purpose. That’s why Employer Branding activities are more and more required in big companies.

Nowadays companies build something called external talent pipelines, which is basically connecting with people via social media like LinkedIn or Glassdoor, contacting them on a regular basis (like once in half of a year) and just checking how their careers are going. They don’t offer any jobs, just stay in touch. It's a smart long term hiring strategy. You invest your time and interest in a person, you network with them and then, when the right time comes and you have a suitable position, you know exactly where to go to find a talent to fill it in. On the other side, the talent is already connected, already knows you and somehow can trust that this position is something they should be interested in. 

I believe this is where the recruiter's role will be shifting in the future, as even now, with today's research we're already aware, that the AI can better (and more objectively) assess a person during an interview than a person, which means that the future of a typical interviewing will actually belong to robots, not humans.

Connection is everything these days. The world is full of opportunities and the great way to benefit from them is staying connected and being open to new challenges. That's how we learn, aquire new skills and become better talents - the ones worth showing up in somebody's external pipeline.