Welcome to the Deploy Yourself Newsletter. Every two weeks I share about what impactful coaching and leadership look like. I also share the most insightful lessons and stories I encountered in the last two weeks. You can also read this issue online.
Love People, Not Things; Use Things, Not People
The above line is the first line of every notebook I use, whether digital or physical. It is a simple reminder that I started using a while ago to remind myself of my deepest value – love and care. Today when I was thinking about the central message for this newsletter, this line was sitting on top of my digital notebook and staring at me. So here we go – Love People, Not Things. Use Things, Not People.
If we look at the big picture, people are always more important than things. All materialistic things have been created by humans. Never has any materialistic thing created a human being. Things can always be replaced – houses can be rebuilt, lost possessions can be regained but the people in our lives are never replaceable.
During tough times, it is always the people in our lives who help us weather the storms and never our possessions. Yet how easy it is to get attached to our jobs, money, and ‘what we can buy‘ when the real joys of life are always free?
Progress in science, technology, and industry has completely transformed the quality of life we live today. But it is important to remember that all materialistic progress was only created to serve us and make our lives better, not the other way round.
If what you read above made you realize something deep, hit reply, and share the insight that you had?
Articles and Stories Which Have Fascinated Me
One
What Your Coworkers Need Right Now Is Compassion?
“My coworkers and I don’t see the world in the exact same way and that’s OK.
We have different ways of coping with uncertainty, grief, and stress.
They are under pressures that I don’t always see and can’t fully understand (and probably aren’t entirely my business).
It’s not helpful to me or to them to compare our challenges.
We are all doing the best we can.
It’s not always easy to be patient and understanding, especially with everything going on. But I’m going to keep trying because it’s what my coworkers and I deserve.”
From an article on HBR titled What Your Coworkers Need Right Now Is Compassion
Two
Why Empathy Might Be The Most Important Human Ability?
To walk in another person’s shoes is to shift perspective, and to see and feel the world as another sees and feels it. What I mean by feeling as another person is that you must learn to not only see things intellectually from someone else’s point of view but also to feel the same emotions that the other person feels. This might mean feeling scared, tearful, or elated depending on the situation, and understanding on a profound level what has made the other person feel this way.
Researchers have found that when we feel another person suffering, it activates not only the visual cortex in the brain but also our emotions and physical sensory receptors. Imagine witnessing someone get a paper cut: you not only sympathize with their pain, but you might also wince, or draw your own hand back involuntarily. You can almost feel the slice happening to you.
Conflicts don’t occur because of different perceptions, not exactly. Rather, conflicts occur because of our inability to step outside of our own perspective and acknowledge the other person’s point of view. And this is why I believe that seeing and understanding different points of view is a superpower for those who possess it. Friction should be between points of view, not between people. Empathy allows us to escape unnecessary stress from friction in relationships.
From an article from my desk titled Can We Walk In Another Person’s Shoes?
Three
“Of all the things that sustain a leader over time, love is the most lasting. It’s hard to imagine leaders getting up day after day, putting in the long hours and hard work it takes to make extraordinary things happen, without having their hearts in it.
The best-kept secret of successful leaders is love: staying in love with leading, with the people who do the work, with what their organizations provide, and with those who honor the organization by using its products and services. Leadership is not an affair of the head. Leadership is an affair of the heart.”
From one of the most powerful leadership book I have read – The Leadership Challenge by James M. Kouzes and Barry Z. Posner
That’s it for now. If you have any questions, just hit reply. All the best,
Sumit
(Twitter) @SumitGupta
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