Welcome to the Deploy Yourself Newsletter, where I share what impactful leadership looks like to show your own power. I also share the most insightful lessons and stories I encountered in the last two weeks. You can also read this issue online.

Hey,

Who is your climbing buddy?

Leadership is like climbing a mountain with no top. And if you know, even the most professional mountain climbers do not climb alone. They often have a few people (their team) supporting them on the journey. Yet in leadership, there is still a myth that we have to do it alone.

On the mountain, your climbing buddy can tell you when you stray off track, can throw a rope when you slip up, or call for help when you are injured or unable to continue the journey.

In leadership, it is the same. Nobody is perfect, and leadership does not demand us to be. A good “leadership buddy” allows you to move forward into the unchartered waters that leaders often have to, knowing that someone has your back. Your leadership buddy can show you where you are better than yourself.

They can prevent you from wasting time and energy in crevasses of strongly held opinions, blame, frustration, stress, self-pity, and impostor syndrome. They can allow you to confidently move forward and remember who you really are – especially when you forget it yourself. And we all forget that at times.

Who is your climbing buddy? Who could be one? Who are the people who always have your back?

How can you create a team of buddies to empower and support your leadership – not because you are weak or imperfect – but because the future you have committed to is so much important?

What could be possible in your life if you stop trying to do it all alone? Who are those people you can invite to be your climbing buddies?

Do not rush to answer this question. Think about it. Journal about it. And see what comes up.

And then reply back and share what you discover. I read and respond to every reply.

Articles and Stories Which Have Fascinated Me

One

Choose Carefully – Podcast

All of us make choices all the time, and we may think we’re making those choices freely. But psychologists know and say that there is an architecture behind the way choices are presented to us, and this invisible architecture can influence decisions both large and small.

Here is a podcast that illustrates how we make unconscious choices and how decision architecture can influence those choices.

An episode on the Hidden Brain podcast

Two

100 Days Of Joy

People incorrectly associate happiness with accomplishments and achievements. They can quickly serve as death sentences for delight and enthusiasm.

As adults, we lose sight of the things that bring us joy because we’re too focused on success. But things that bring joy don’t need to have a metric attached to them. They are worth doing simply because they make you happy. Nothing is a waste of time that gives you energy. 

In The Untethered Soul, Michael A. Singer explains that people have a phenomenal amount of energy inside of them:

“It doesn’t come from food and it doesn’t come from sleep. This energy is always available to you. At any moment you can draw upon it. It just wells up and fills you from inside. When you’re filled with this energy, you feel like you could take on the world.”

When we prioritize joy we draw upon the energy that fills us from the insides and emanates out to everyone and everything we come in contact with. And if we don’t prioritize joy, we fall into a repetitious trap of shoulds and expectations and worry. 

From an article titled 100 Days of Joy

Three

Are you Interested? or Are you Committed?

When one says he is committed to something, does it mean a trade? Does it mean that I will do this or that only if you do some other this or that? Does this commitment expect something in return from the other side? Will the commitment waver if one doesn’t get a response from the other side?

In my experiences over the years, I have realized that our aim should not, and cannot, be to make our commitment contingent on some external factor. If our commitment wavers because of a lack of response from the other side, then maybe that was not even committed in the first place.

That is the difference between interest and commitment. If I am interested in some results, I will take steps to get that result. But it will be very easy to give up (in the case of interest) when circumstances turn averse or not as expected. We no longer see the interest getting fulfilled, so we have every reason to back out. Fair enough.

But a commitment is bigger, it is a promise you make to yourself (more than anybody else) and then there are no excuses, but only results that matter. For example, a mother has a commitment to her child, and she will even go hungry to feed her child. A mother doesn’t demand fairness from her son, she just loves her, for that is her commitment.

Where have you been holding back your commitment?

From an article from my desk – The difference between being interested vs being committed.

Four

What is boredom? And what does it have to do with desire and meaning?

Contrary to popular belief, boredom doesn’t have much to do with being idle. Instead, it has more to do with desire, and the inability to direct that desire toward anything meaningful.

Idleness doesn’t lead to boredom as long as that idleness is desired. Sitting alone and doing nothing may look really boring to an outsider, but for the person that finds meaning in that activity, it is not.

This is why escaping boredom through binge-watching Netflix or scrolling through Twitter feels empty afterwards. Your engagement in those activities wasn’t grounded in intention, but rather from a mindless whim to satisfy a sense of longing.

Desire’s greatest trick is in convincing us that we will be satisfied after we fulfil it. We realize that the “promised land” is actually just a starting point for another journey.

Funnily enough, the antidote to boredom is to actively seek it at various moments in your life. By giving yourself the space to do nothing, you cease looking outward for novel experiences and look inward to uncover the meaning that can be found within the nuances of your mind.

From an article on More than That – The Riddle of Boredom

That’s it for now. If you have any questions or feedback, or just want to introduce yourself, hit reply. I read and respond to every reply. All the best,

Sumit

(Twitter) @SumitGupta
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