Principles — Invest. Connect. Share.
tl;dr — “The 3 essential acts in your life are: invest your life well, make meaningful connections, and share as you learn.”
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At the start of this new year in 2021, I’d like to share three principles that have become top-of-mind. Instead of resolutions, I propose living with these guiding principles to move toward your vision, along your own path, and at your own pace.
Invest your life well
Your life consists of the time you have on earth, the actions you direct your energy, and how much attention you give to those actions.
When you start seeing your life as an investment, you will be more aware of your choices to be, do, and have — enjoying more inner peace, being more resilient to setbacks, and being more purpose-driven.
Our time on earth is short. So it makes sense to invest it proportionally to the vision you have for yourself and the people around you.
Not all investments of time are equal. Of the time you invest and allocate, your energy is in shorter supply — our energy level comes and goes as the day passes.
So investing in maximizing your energy is crucial. Energy differs from person to person, but is primarily from living healthily — getting enough quality sleep, eating right and regularly moving your body.
Even when you’re doing what you can to maximize your energy, and direct it proportionally to the right time blocks, not all energy investments are effective, because attention is in even shorter supply.
Attention, or being “in the moment”, is bliss. It’s being in flow. Immersed in what you are meant to do, what you are meant to say, in the moment, and yields the greatest satisfaction and overall leading to an effective life.
Being attentive comes from self awareness and knowing your limits. It comes from desiring and cultivating the right environment for you. There are may ways to improve your ability to stay attentive: from meditation, learning to be still, regularly taking breaks, learning to breathe, and so on.
Experiment for yourself by making these into tiny, atomic habits that work for you.
In short, investing your life well requires understanding your own biology, forming useful habits, and a willingness to stay attentive.
It’s your life. What are you doing to make the most of it?
Make meaningful connections
As you become more self aware and regulate your life well, you’ll find that it’s by connecting meaningfully with the people around you, that really moves the needle in increasing your overall happiness and satisfaction.
While there are varying degrees in meaning, I argue that a meaningful connection needs to be mutually beneficial. By beneficial, I’m not talking about seeing connections as “win-win” transactions.
I’m talking about giving value without expecting anything in return, from both sides of each connection.
In the last 20 years, we’ve been given innumerable ways to “connect”: Meetup (2002), LinkedIn (2002), Facebook (2004), YouTube (2005), Twitter (2006), Eventbrite (2006), the iPhone (2007), Instagram (2010), Snapchat (2011), Zoom (2011), Medium (2012), TikTok (2016), and countless others.
It’s so easy to have a consumer mindset. To scroll through our social feeds, to “react”, to “call in”, and so on.
We intuitively know that it’s not the number of followers or connections, the likes and comments you receive, that makes meaningful connections.
Shallow connections are rarely meaningful. And the current ways of connecting, especially from social media, often make it difficult to have meaningful conversations and connections.
The winning perspective over the longer-term, rather, is to maintain a mindset of first giving, and not expect to always receive value. This “Giver” mindset is another key to living a fulfilling and meaningful life.
One of the best ways to give value at the beginning of making a new connection, is to first understand the primary motivation behind the other person. Then, think about who in your network you can introduce in order to answer that motivation.
We had just endured one of our most socially-distant year, thanks to COVID, in 2020. Things have not been “normal” all year long.
In 2021 and beyond, do you really want to go back to “normal”? Where do you stand?
Share as you learn
The third key principle is to share the lessons you get — as you learn.
The important point is not only what you share, but also when.
It’s said that whatever it is you teach, you get to learn it twice. Once when you learned of a concept, a method, a path — whatever. The second time is when you teach it to someone else.
The act of teaching enables us to learn far better than keeping it to ourselves. Framing what you had just learned into a lesson format, makes your brain work to make the lessons stick.
The timing is important. As you realize something and have the motivation to do something about it, you have to act. Otherwise, you begin to lose momentum.
The principles in this post were what I was already starting to live by, but it never occurred to me to summarize them into these three sayings until yesterday (Dec 31, 2020).
The decision to publish this morning (Jan 1, 2021) means I invested the very first waking hours to make a meaningful connection with you, my dear reader, and sharing with you as I’m continually learning how to be human.
Will you help me share this message?
Thanks!
