Michal Stawicki's Blog, page 5

8 Sure Signs You Need Coaching

[image error]It is extremely frustrating for me, as a coach, how utterly confused people are as to what coaching is. They mistake it for consulting, mentoring, therapy and a whole mix of the three above.

I got tired of explaining what it is because, even if I’ll get my point across, people tend to undervalue the power of coaching. And thus, they discount it and don’t even try to find a coach.

So, instead of explaining in vain, I will give you something else today: eight signs that you may hugely benefit from coaching. If any of the below points applies to you, I sincerely encourage you to get a coach as fast as humanly possible.

Here they are:

1. Feeling “Stuck”

Sometimes you exactly know where you are stuck, like my accountability partner, Søren, who knows he has a mental block around money. And this is about as much as he knows.

However, often you don’t realize you have a mental block. Actually, it’s quite rare to be as self-honest about your difficulties as Soren is. We invent and buy into our own lies to excuse ourselves. The typical (by far, not comprehensive) list of such lies is:
“It’s not the right time…”
“I don’t have time…”
“When [specific but not likely circumstances in faraway future] happens, then I…”
“I’ll definitely do it… someday.”
“I just have thick bones.”
“Tomorrow… next week… next year* I’ll do it” (* delete as applicable).

There is an easy trick to reveal if you are stuck: you want something, but you cannot achieve it – repeatedly. Those goals may be in any area of your life: lose weight, quit smoking, triple your revenue, finish your graduate school, run a marathon, start dating again…

You may not even be aware of your excuses in this area, but the fact that you cannot reach your goals, time after time, is a sure indicator of some kind of block.

2. Wanting To Pursue a Life-long Dream

Sadly, most of us don’t actively pursue our dreams. We hide them at the bottom of our souls like priceless treasures instead of trying to achieve them.

I know this very well from my own experience. I buried my dreams so deep that I wasn’t even aware I still had them. It took me over a month of serious self-examination before I uncovered I wanted to be a writer! And then, I felt completely helpless.

I didn’t even know what ‘being a writer’ meant. It took me several months of a trial-and-error approach to start pursuing this dream.

This is where coaching can be very handy, both in the phase of uncovering hidden dreams and in defining what the first steps are.

3. Transitioning Into a New Stage of Life

Starting a new education level. Starting a new career level. Moving to another city, state, or country. Retirement. Getting married. Expecting the first child. Turning into empty nesters. Selling your business.

Seriously, in all of the above, coaching could be helpful. My friend from our coaching training liked to complain that “All this coaching could not be even a career if people were still talking like in the old times.”

And he was probably right. Coaching is so useful in transitioning into a new stage of life because it forces you to press the pause button and examine your life. You have to reflect and establish your priorities. You probe your desires and define your priorities. We are SO not used to doing it in the hurry of everyday life.

4. Transitioning Into a New Stage of Career

There are organizations where coaching is obligatory at a certain level of your career development. If you are promoted to a team leader, director, president, or partner of the company, you need to go through coaching. Why? Because usually in the dynamic business environment you don’t promote people who are ready for promotion. You promote people who are available within the organization and let them grow into the new role.

But it’s not a bad idea to get coaching no matter if your organization requires it or not. External perspective and a confidential conversation partner are always welcome when you are far from being sure of what you are doing.

5. Longing to Become Your Best Self

You don’t need to be “broken” to want to be better. Desire for growth is one of the natural human needs.

And it’s interesting how different areas of life it encompasses. Some people want to pursue art and get better at it. Others want to develop professionally. Many want to get better at soft skills of various shades – from being able to strike a conversation to mastering one’s own emotions.

In my coaching training, I was surprised that there are even frameworks and techniques to work on your relationships through coaching!

6. Pivoting

A new stage of life or career may happen to you, but can also be engineered by you. If you feel like there is “something more” in the future for you, coaching is a right tool to discover what this “something” is.

More often than not, this longing for something more comes from the point of frustration. You don’t know what you really want, but you surely know you don’t want to repeat the loop you are stuck in.

This was the exact feeling I had had back in 2012, when I knew that I didn’t want being stuck in my miserable day job till retirement. Yet, I had no clue what else I could do. I didn’t give myself an internal permission to explore different options. A skillful coach, who would have helped me to probe different possibilities and to see that the biggest obstacle on my path to better life was my own self-image and self-talk, would have been priceless for me.

7. Planning

Another common pitfall is deciding on something, and it may be even the right decision, and then going headfirst without much (or any) reflection. There are definitely moments in life when you should press the pause button and think hard before you go into action. Ask any bride; most of them planned their weddings since their childhood.

This is actually the modern affliction – we don’t stop to think. Coaching allows exactly that – a space to think and process through your thoughts.

I’m amazed by the results of one of my coachees. She is a solopreneur who provides quite a high-end service – expert advice on sales via LinkedIn for big companies. She struggled with a pile of debt and no future projects on the horizon. Within a few short months, she systematized her business, paid off a large chunk of her debt and booked herself full for the coming months.

I credit exactly zero of her progress to my knowledge of sales or LinkedIn. I’m pretty ignorant on both areas. She was able to progress rapidly because our regular coaching sessions gave her space in her crazy busy schedule: the space to reflect. Apart from being a solopreneur, she is also a single mom. Her days had been filled with non-stop activities since dawn to dusk. What she desperately needed was time for planning her activities and rearranging them in a more coherent fashion.

Coaching provided exactly this for her.

“If you fail to plan, you are planning to fail.” – Benjamin Franklin

Business activities are not the only things we fail to plan. Brian Moran in his book 12-Week Year instanced some research which concluded that we can shave off the longer project 20% of the required time just by planning. Writing a book, moving to a different country, choosing and graduating from a college – those are some common examples of projects that could’ve gone much smoother with some planning.

8. Being Anxious or Overwhelmed

We connote those states with the need of professional help – therapists and psychiatrists. But mental health, like physical help, is an area where an ounce of prevention is much better than a pound of cure. You don’t need to get crazy to get help. In fact, we get crazy because we don’t dedicate enough time and energy to mental and emotional self-care.

Coaching is a tool which allows you to articulate your own concerns and worries. Hearing them out loud makes miracles for your self-awareness… and your ability to manage difficult emotions. As long as your worries are just an intangible mesh of bad feelings and negative thoughts whirling in your head, you are helpless against them. They paralyze you. They overwhelm you.

But if you put them into words, magic happens. In order to put something into words, you need to activate the conscious part of your brain. You can think through your worries instead of just mulling them in your mind over and over again. Then, clarifying any decision and an action plan turns from ‘impossible’ into doable.

Getting rid of your worries can never be a coaching objective on their own. Coaching is action- and future-oriented. It’s not dwelling over your past and analyzing past regrets.

However, being anxious or overwhelmed is the clear sign you need coaching – you don’t do a good enough job on your own. You let your emotions cloud your judgment and dictate your actions (or worse yet – inactions). Allowing for external insights opens up the doors to new solutions, broadens your mental horizons and gives you the opportunity to get into a real dialog with your body and emotions (instead of this weird dance consisting of subconscious prompts and your automatic responses to them).

You Can(not) Do It Alone

The above point aptly describes the whole coaching situation. At the root of most of your problems, there is a single person. You.

And that’s the truth for everyone on the planet.

“We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.” – Albert Einstein

A coach is not a knight on the white horse who saves you from yourself. A coach is not even a helper. He is a companion. A person who is NOT you and can see things you are not aware of. Above all, the coach is there so you are no longer alone. That’s how human beings tackled their problems since the dawn of civilization – together.

The Signs You Need a Coach

You can solve your problems or up your game alone. Of course, you can! There were plenty of people in the history of humankind who pursued their dreams, planned complicated projects, or transitioned into a new stage of life – on their own, without any assistance.

You can also drive a nail with your bare hands. It’s totally doable. But why bother, if you can use a hammer for that? This simple tool will spare you a lot of time, pain and effort.

Notice the signs you need coaching in time, and solve your problems working together with another person. Spare yourself a lot of time, pain and effort.

The post 8 Sure Signs You Need Coaching appeared first on ExpandBeyondYourself.

The Busy Entrepreneur’s Guide To Creating A Lifestyle Business Book Review

[image error]This one was a surprise!

I’m a book-junkie, and I already read almost all in the space of ‘systemizing your business’ genre. Thus, I had very little expectations when getting The Busy Entrepreneur’s Guide To Creating A Lifestyle Business. What new things could a 40-page long booklet teach me?

And I was right, it didn’t teach me much. However, it steeled my determination to keep working on my business (instead of “in” it).

Any CONs of this book? Well, it’s short, so it is not comprehensive. But I think it’s actually one of the advantages. So, let’s go over the…

PROS1. Ultra-short.

A busy entrepreneur, overwhelmed with tasks, who fights for his life to stay afloat has no time to read 300-page volumes. But he can read The Busy Entrepreneur’s Guide To Creating A Lifestyle Business in under one hour.

This short eBook does exactly what it was designed to do – provide a DOABLE framework for busy entrepreneurs.

2. Reflective.

Despite the concise form, this book is not just a string of specific to-dos. About half of the book is about the flawed modern attitude toward business, which is especially, pardon my honesty, stupid in case of business owners. Yes, stupid:

It is absolutely crazy for us to feel guilty about working fewer hours if we get the same results in 3 days as we used to do in 6.

We are the ones who call the shots. We can decide how much we work, with whom, from where and when. Yet, most entrepreneurs don’t even see those opportunities because we are stuck with the busy work.

The author is right:
“Freedom is actually a mindset, and not a destination.”

3. Well-written.

Denise Gosnell is a good writer. This is a strictly business book, yet I read it with interest. The author skillfully sprinkles the tidbits of her own story throughout the pages, so The Busy Entrepreneur’s Guide to Creating A Lifestyle Business is more than just a dry textbook.

She writes not just about the business technicalities, but about the human condition and the state of our society – all in this ultra-short booklet.

4. Great Exercises.

I admit I’ve done them too fast, without the necessary reflection, yet, they still helped me to gain some clarity. I’ll repeat some of them.

And I’m eager to try the forced hyper-efficiency exercise on my business (and myself).

Summary

The Busy Entrepreneur’s Guide To Creating A Lifestyle Business is a real gem.

Oh, by the way, I already have a part-time business, a part-time job, a coaching practice, and I write and publish regularly. I kind of created the Lifestyle Business for myself. I rarely work more than 40 hours a week.

But I wasn’t even half as smart about this as Denise. She inspired me to squeeze even more freedom, time, and happiness out of my business activities.

If you are a business owner too busy for your own good, you need to read (and apply!) this Guide.

The post The Busy Entrepreneur’s Guide To Creating A Lifestyle Business Book Review appeared first on ExpandBeyondYourself.

War and Your Circle of Influence

I live 500 miles from Kjiv, and the best I can do is to avoid media.

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Photo by Alexandr Podvalny from Pexels

The war in Ukraine was no surprise to me. I’m Polish. I know history well. My whole life, I expected nothing good from Russia. I was surprised whenever a Russian behaved like a human being. Barbarian mayhem, lies, deception, zero honor, and killing kids? No surprise for me.

Needless to say, the start of the war didn’t soothe my nerves. My home is 500 miles from Kyiv, less than 200 miles away from the border with Ukraine. The week before the war, I was scrolling through media headlines every morning. I did the same on the 24th of February. I spent that day, probably like most of us, trying to live my life while frantically checking the news in media.

It put me in the fight or flight mode. My system was buzzing with adrenaline. Normally, I go to bed after 10 pm and I collapse. Falling asleep takes me about a minute.

That Thursday, I didn’t even try to hit the bed. I was hyperactive. Since I did very little work during the day (I was completely distracted), I worked till midnight. I finally went to bed at 1:30 am. I slept for about five hours.

The Cure

The next day, I decided to avoid media. I had to go to the office early, so I escaped home before my wife woke up and turned the TV on. Friday was much better than Thursday for me. I was still anxious and extremely curious what’s going on in the Ukraine, and I found a good filter for news – I read the Wikipedia entry about the Russian invasion.

The dry and factual way in which this entry was written helped me to detach a bit from the whole situation. I stuck with this method.

Well, I stuck with it till Tuesday, the 1st of March. I didn’t go to the office, and I was around when my wife turned on the TV. Fight or flight response was triggered. I couldn’t help myself, but checking the news every 10 minutes. Another day went down the sink. I worked for just three hours, and I did a poor job. In other words, I turned into a hot mess.

You can help others more by making the most of yourself than in any other way.” – Wallace D. Wattles

The main thing about the fight or flight mode is that it shuts down the conscious parts of the brain. Your blood is pumped away from the brain to your legs and arms to fight or flight. Research has proved that this response severely impairs human thinking abilities (here is a good article on that).

This is exactly what happened to me. I was ready to fight with my bare hands, but I couldn’t focus on a single task for 10 minutes. I wasn’t making the most of myself, that’s sure. And I wasn’t helping anybody by being a hot mess.

Circle of Influence

This war is outside of my Circle of Influence. There are very few things I can actually do to improve the situation of the Ukrainians.

I will donate some money. Being a Polish, I can bypass middlemen NGOs.

I’ll donate some medical supplies; my church community actually cooperates with the Ukrainian Embassy in this regard.

I’ll fight with useful idiots and Russian trolls on the Internet, but since I almost never use social media for everyday encounters, it won’t be much.

And that’s all I can do for now. I should focus on my Circle of Influence – my family, my business, my own wellbeing. Then, those activities may turn into something useful for others – articles and books, which will inspire and inform.

Following the news didn’t help me one bit. It didn’t help Ukrainians, either. In fact, it hurt them because it took me away from my Circle of Influence. Being a hot mess, I didn’t contribute much value to the human family.

I prescribe the same medicine for you. Define your own Circle of Influence. Focus on it. Do your best to ignore media altogether. Stay away from the news. Impairing your ability to think (fight or flight mode!) will not serve anybody.

Take care of yourself, your family and your responsibilities.

Make the most of yourself. This is the way to help others. Including Ukrainians whose lives were put upside down by this war.

Originally published at Medium.

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Three Specific Ways to Maintain a Habit for a Long Time

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Photo by Barbara Olsen from Pexels

The key to maintaining your habits for a long time is an intention to do so. If you aren’t mindful about your habits, sooner or later, you will slip. Then, you will either go back on track, or you will just let it slip further. If you don’t care about your habits, not continuing them doesn’t seem to be a big deal, right?

So, how to care about your habits?

You need to realize their utmost importance. You cannot be indifferent about your habits.

Maybe the message from James Clear, the author of Atomic Habits, will do that for you:
How long does it take to build a habit?
21 days? 30 days? 66 days?
The honest answer is: forever. Because once you stop doing it, it is no longer a habit.
A habit is a lifestyle to be lived, not a finish line to be crossed. Make small, sustainable changes you can stick with.

The key is to care. Once you care, you can do something about the longevity of your habits.

The Three Methods to Maintain a Habit for a Long Time

As to the practical tips for habit maintenance, I see three methods. One of them – tracking – supports you both at the beginning (habit development) and at the end (maintenance).

It helps at the stage of building a habit, which is the most difficult part of keeping a habit. You cannot maintain a habit you don’t have, can you?

Let’s dive into each of those methods, one by one.

1. Develop a Solid Habit.

Very often, a failure of maintaining a habit lies in the poor job at developing a habit in the first place. It’s easy to get back to a solid habit. It’s almost impossible to continue an activity that is not yet habitual.

One of the best things you can do to maintain your habits for a long time is to develop your habits in a very methodical and intentional way.

It comes back to my point that you can only maintain the existing habit. You need to create and solidify it first. You see, when you form a solid habit, it’s easy to get back to it because it’s literally hardcoded in your brain.

The most important part of habit formation is your cue for starting it. If your habit’s trigger is reliable, you will “stumble” on it all the time, and it will be a signal for your mind to restart the habit.

A few years ago, I went through a period of spiritual darkness you could’ve called a depression. In that period, I abandoned my habit of a morning cardio workout coupled with listening to podcasts. I had a hard enough time just coping with day-to-day responsibilities. I felt like I just couldn’t bear this one habit (and a few others).

But the cardio workout and listening to audio materials had been a part of my morning ritual. I didn’t quit on the whole routine. After about a year, I got back to my workout because I still had the same trigger present in my life. After such a long break, one day I simply lay on the floor and started exercising. This habit’s loop was still alive in my brain.

When your habit is rock-solid, and the trigger is always present, maintenance of the habit becomes automatic. You don’t even need to care about it.

At the end of 2012, I developed a habit of gulping a glass of water first thing in the morning. I don’t really care about this habit. I don’t identify with it. I don’t track it. Yet, it’s one of my most solidified habits because I made it a part of my morning ritual. My morning ritual is also based on an extremely reliable trigger — waking up in the morning.

2. Identify with Your Habits.

Going back to James’ quote – your habits are your lifestyle. If you can attach some activity to who you feel you are, giving up on such a habit is close to impossible.

I’m a writer. I write every day because that’s what writers do. If I skip a day, I feel bad about myself. I feel confused and unsure. My identity is at stake.

Writing is, by far, my biggest daily habit. It consumes nowadays about 30 minutes of my time, every single day. At its peak, it took me one hour a day to write.

I missed only two days since 23rd of September 2013. That’s the power of identity.

3. Track.

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Photo by ThisIsEngineering from Pexels

Developing a new habit without tracking it is a fool’s proposition. However, tracking is also great for habit maintenance.

I keep a writing log, where I note down what I wrote, where, how much, in which language, and at what time. Putting entries in my writing log created an additional mini-habit to my writing ritual. I always register a few parameters in the sheet before I start writing.

However, writing is my identity habit. For the last seven years, I have cultivated some habits that I don’t identify with so strongly. But I tracked them.

One of them is speed reading. I love to read. Speed reading practice is, however, an annoyance. It is not how I usually read. Yet, I kept this habit, and one of the factors contributing to its longevity is the fact I’ve tracked this habit in an online app.

By the way, building streaks gamify your habits. When you observe you’ve done something for a year, you feel motivated to keep going.

The Takeaway

If you want to maintain your habits for a long time, the best solution is to combine all three ways – developing a habit, identifying with it, and tracking it.

Developing a solid habit is a prerequisite. Without this, the other two methods are not as effective.

Identifying with a habit is like a glue that holds your personality and activity together forever.

Tracking a habit is extremely useful at the development phase and very handy to keep your motivation alive.

Originally published at Medium.com .

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What Is Coaching? (aka Overcome Your Inner Saboteur)

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Photo by The Coach Space

Most people have no clue what coaching is or how extremely powerful it is.
So, I’ll try to explain what coaching is and what it can do for you in this article.

Definition of Coaching

Here is how The International Coaching Federation (ICF) defines coaching:

partnering in a thought-provoking and creative process that inspires a person to maximize their personal and professional potential. The process of coaching often unlocks previously untapped sources of imagination, productivity and leadership.

Do you feel convinced now? Do you feel the unstoppable urge to get a coach right now?!
Nope?
*sigh*

The above definition is as precise and good as one can make. However, if it doesn’t speak to you, I’ll try to convey what coaching is with a few parables.

TV Series

This is my favorite coaching metaphor. Coaching is like watching a TV series. No, not in the sense that it’s a great pastime which allows you to enjoy your popcorn or pizza even more.

As a coach, I feel like a spectator watching a TV series. I never know what’s going to happen next or what the creators of the series will introduce. I have some insight into the series’ world, but it’s limited to what I see on the screen. However, behind the screen there is the whole world hidden – with its history, resources, geography, inventions, magic, politics, principles, and whatnot.

A coachee has access to this whole world. In fact, he or she IS this world. My job as a coach is to give them access to the untapped resources of their world. And we can leverage them all.

Can you grasp the difference between being able to access only the story from the screen and the incredible richness of the whole world behind the screen?!

Whole cities, oceans and continents. Whole nations and armies. Raw resources. Food supplies. Inventions. Political systems. Everything available to draw from at your wish.

This is the difference coaching can make in your life.

Additional Brain

Once, I explained to my client how coaching works; that it’s not advising or imposing my point of view on him, but rather tapping into his own resources and ideas. He was a very analytical IT guy and came up with his own metaphor:

“Hmm, it sounds like getting access to an additional brain!”

You surely know the common myth that the left side of the brain is more analytical while the right is more creative. It’s not really the truth; human brain functions are not physically located in specific areas of the brain by default.

Yet, this myth taps into something – there are two halves of the brain and their cooperation create the magic of the human existence. By merging signals from both sides of the brain we can be creative and logical, and everything between.

Similarly, via coaching you have some access to your coach’s brain. His or her life experiences created a human being who has a slightly different point of view than you. Your coach has a much better chance to see you for who you are than you – being stuck in your own thinking.

A good coach is trained to empathize with you, but without getting drawn into your internal dramas. Thus, you can reveal those dramas (and everything else) and get an insight much closer to the objective judgement than just your own.

Your harshest critic is always going to be yourself. Don’t ignore that critic, but don’t give it more attention than it deserves.” — Michael Ian Black

Easier said than done, Ian. But with the help of a coach, it is truly possible.

Supportive Passenger (or Navigator)

This is the metaphor of The International Coaching Federation, mostly to underline that a client is in the driver’s seat and has full control over the journey. If you ever had a nagging wife in the passenger’s seat, you know that this is not the entire truth. “Turn left! Watch out! Why haven’t you turned when I told you?! You never listen to reason!”

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Photo by SplitShire

But put in the passenger’s seat a supportive and wise friend, and your trip can look very different. Or even better, imagine being a rally driver and your coach as your navigator. He won’t tell you how to drive, only what’s ahead of you.

Ask any rally driver – a good navigator can make a lot of difference. Instead of hesitating in front of a sharp turn, or even worse – being reckless – you are fed with the relevant information at the right time to make an informed decision in a split second.

So, as a coachee, you are behind the wheel, but you can be so much faster – without taking unnecessary risks – with your coach who can warn you, correct your course or simply give you some cheerleading when you are flawlessly speeding ahead.

Borehole or a Refinery Process

Coaching provides you access to the resources you couldn’t have tapped into alone. Even though those resources are yours to use, they are blocked by your own programming, self-image, life experiences, self-talk, habitual thought patterns and other means your subconscious uses to keep you at check.

Coaching is like a borehole, which gives you the access to the immense oil fields hidden below the surface. Or think of coaching as a refinery which takes the crude oil and transforms it into plenty of different highly-refined resources, which can be applied in better and faster machines, and turn into the plastic with its zillion applications.

Overcome Your Inner Saboteur

Your subconscious mind hates spending energy and pursuing your dreams. Being the best version of yourself consumes loads of energy – mental, physical, and emotional – and the subconscious mind is the ultimate energy miser.

Coaching is a process that maximizes your potential. It makes more of you and it does it much faster than you could’ve done it on your own.

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Resisting the Siren Song of Social Media

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Photo by Tara Winstead from Pexels

Recently, I had an unproductive week and I spent a way too much time on YouTube watching “Pitch Meetings” – a hilarious series of videos where a YouTuber pretends to be a screenwriter and a producer at the same time and is “pitching” existing movie ideas revealing weaknesses in plots, acting, and everything between.

“Way too much” in my case is about two hours that week. But it was still more than my second weakness in order – news websites.

I confessed my struggles to my mastermind buddies, and we talked it over for some time.

During our conversation, I realized I didn’t have such problems with other platforms and media I have been using on a daily basis. I’m at Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Medium and Quora every day, yet I didn’t waste my time there. How come?

Intentionality

After a moment of reflection, I discovered the crucial element which makes a big difference in using or wasting my time at online platforms: intentionality.

Whenever I had been intentional with those platforms, I used them productively. Whenever the intention was vague or there was no intention at all, I wasted my time.

So, How to Be Intentional with Social Media?

I have a few ideas for you:

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Photo by Polina Kovaleva from Pexels1. Be Clear about Your Objective.

Is it entertainment? Then, you would be better to determine some time constraints or you will be lost in the social media maze.

For me Facebook is for communication, so I use Messenger extensively, and visit several topic groups. Quora and Medium? They are for publishing and promoting my content and tasks related to that – research and keeping in touch with my readers. In short, for my writer’s brand.

It is equally important to know what a specific platform is not for. I love funny cat gifs and memes as much as any other person. But I decided FB will not serve me well in regard of entertainment.
Ironically, this is the only social media platform I use in accordance to its name (social), not the function (make users spend as much time as possible on the platform).

If I want to catch up with my friends, I’ll visit their profile or send them a message. If I want to touch base with my writer friends, mastermind buddies or other entrepreneurs, I visit dedicated groups.

And I don’t use Facebook for anything else.

2. Avoid the Main Feed like a Plague.

Aka: Avoid others’ agendas. Main feeds of social media are supposed to be “curated” to your tastes. In reality, they are designed to keep you on the platform as long as possible, period.

A very important side note, let’s look into a few definitions of the word “feed:”
an act of giving food, especially to animals or a baby
food for domestic animals
a device or pipe for supplying material to a machine

Then appose those definitions with the social media feed, and you discover the horrifying nature of this instrument: it’s a device to supply your senses with brain-numbing stuff in an automatic fashion.

How do I achieve avoiding the main feeds? I determine my entry points for each platform. And I never visit social media from any other entry points. For most platforms, I have just a couple of entries: my profile and notifications. On Facebook, I also use direct links to the groups. On Quora, I have a couple of favorite topics to explore.

Pro tip: don’t use social media on your mobile; the mobile applications are designed to make the main feed your default option.

It’s terribly difficult to define any other entry point for a mobile application, and even if you succeed, you don’t have any other option than the main feed to go back to. I struggled with Facebook on my phone for months (I installed it for FB Lives I watched on my long walks during the Great Lockdown). In vain. Finally, I removed the FB application.

I also removed Netflix because it used the exact same mechanism. I couldn’t defend myself from compulsive scrolling.

Expert pro tip: If you really, really, really need to have a social media app on your mobile for some emergencies, move it to the faraway screen and turn off all notifications. That way, you can use it only when it is your intention, not when something pops up on your screen.

3. Avoid Others’ Agendas, Continued.

The main feed is just one tentacle to drag you into the social media intestines… I mean, ecosystem. There are plenty of other means their lords use with terrifying efficiency.

Others Who Bought… You May Also Like… Recently Uploaded… There are dozens of traps set up on your time on social media platforms. And you should do all in your might to avoid them.

Some of them can be dealt with by useful browser plugins (yet another reason to visit social media on your desktop, not on your mobile). Others can be avoided by developing a specific “ad blindness” – you basically train yourself to ignore those specific areas of a platform.

For example, at the bottom of Quora answers page, there is always this “View other answers to this question” which I totally ignore. In fact, I trained myself to not scroll down so much to even see it.

4. Follow Your Own Agenda.

However, you need to have one in the first place to follow it. This is what I meant by intentionality.

Whenever I use any social media platform, I try to accomplish a simple goal:
“I’ll check the notifications.”
“I’ll check my stats.”
“I’ll research the Habits topic and look for new questions to answer.”
“I’ll reply to messages.”
“I’ll visit the Medium Mastery group, share my latest article and check out what’s new in the group.”

Once I’m done with such a goal, I’m gone. I have no more business in hanging around on Quora, Facebook, or Twitter. They are my tools, not the entertainment centers.

5. Set the Boundaries.

Soon, your small social media missions (check the notifications, visit a group, etc.) become your habits. When you train yourself to use a platform in a specific way, when you repeat and repeat the same sequence of actions, it will become your habit. It’s much easier to keep your boundaries intact, if you do this that way.

This is where I failed with YouTube. I had no boundaries, no goals at all. I just went there to mindlessly scroll. I set no intention.

A few examples of my boundaries:
“Don’t explore Quora, if I have less than five notifications.”
“Don’t explore Facebook, if I have less than six notifications.”
“On Twitter, go directly to the Polish Ministry of Health account and check out their reports; nothing more!” (I got myself into a very bad mental space when I started to read comments under those reports and got involved into s*itstorms there).

Sometimes, a tool can help you with sticking to your boundaries. On Twitter, there is a ‘trending’ feed on the right. I found myself ‘magically’ attracted to those headlines and images. But when I used ad blocker to block just the images, fighting the temptation to click became easier by an order of magnitude.

I think I need to go back to using a plugin that strips YouTube of everything but the current video and a search bar. I definitely also need to introduce a rule: “Only one Pitch Meeting video at the time.” Otherwise, I will be kept drawn into the abyss of humorous madness. This is not the way I want to spend my life.

Consider social media as a tool. If you use them as an entertainment center, you’d better set some ironclad boundaries as soon as possible.

Social media’s main objective is simple now: to make you spend (waste!) as much time as possible on their platform. In the attention economy, your time is the new currency, which directly translates into hard cash.

Be intentional how you spend your time on social media or you will become time-bankrupt; exactly like people who are not intentional with their money become financially bankrupt.

Originally published on Medium.com.

The post Resisting the Siren Song of Social Media appeared first on ExpandBeyondYourself.

Turn your Dumbphone into a Smartphone Again: One simple habit to protect your mind – and sanity!

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Photo by  cottonbro  from  Pexels

There is no greater misnomer than a “smartphone.” The device in itself is not smart at all; it’s just a thing. It is as smart as a vacuum cleaner or a hammer. And smartphones make 99.99% of their users dumber, not smarter.

Yes, there is an incredible computing ability. Yes, you can access with your smartphone the Internet – the biggest knowledge database ever created in human history. Yes, you can leverage incredible applications to track your habits or finances, to do your daily tasks more effectively, to manage your calendar or a to-do list.

So what?!!

This device also bombards you with a zillion notifications beeping in the least desirable moments. When you pick it up and check one thing, you are mysteriously drawn into opening another app, then scrolling through its feed, watching funny videos, then reading another thing. Now, you are not only distracted, you actually wasted several minutes of your precious time on this planet.

That’s not smart at all. That’s dumb. Thus, this device deserves a more apt name – a dumbphone.

Smartphone – a Great Tool for Developing the Mindfulness Habit

Some time ago, I decided to develop a new tiny habit. Here is the recipe for it:

Before I unlock the phone’s screen, I will think what I’m going to do on the phone; I will also give this activity a specific intention.

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Photo by EKATERINA BOLOVTSOVA from Pexels

To deconstruct this habit for you:

“Think” means I will name the specific action I’m going to perform on my phone. So, not: “Entertainment!” but rather “Check out new releases on Netflix.”

However, most of the time, I’m using my phone compulsively to check notifications, my book sales, or the number of steps I have done today. Thus, before unlocking the screen, I’ll state in my head the purpose of using the phone this time: “I will check out my steps count… I will answer a message from my customer on Coach.me… I will check the weather forecast…”

“Intention” has a religious meaning. I found this on the first page on Google after typing “intention religious meaning”:

the person or thing meant to benefit from a prayer or religious offering.

(in the Roman Catholic Church) a special aim or purpose for which a mass is celebrated or prayers are said. ‘Many of the pilgrims who travel there today pray for a special intention.’

After practicing this habit for about a week, I already could tell I hit the jackpot. I wanted to be more mindful (or less mindless, which I suppose has the same effect) when using my phone, and I achieved this result in a very short period.

Why Such a Design?

First of all, I wanted a habit, not a productivity technique. A habit for me is something which integrates into my being and subtly (or not so subtly) changes me from the inside out.

Second, I value mindfulness very highly, and I know that I default to the worst in me when I lack it.

Third, I value spirituality above all, so I knew that adding a spiritual component to the habit would make it more important for me (read: will develop faster and become stickier).

Fourth, I noticed how my smartphone started to be for me a “dumbphone” – a tool that turns off my conscious mind and wastes my time.

Many times, when I wanted to check out something necessary – like the weather forecast or if I have just gotten a message from a customer – I unlocked my screen, saw some random notification and woke up two minutes later trying to recall why I took the phone in my hand in the first place.

Lastly, using my phone for this habit was a great idea from the habit development standpoint. Unlocking the phone’s screen had been something I had been doing about 75 times a day. And you need around 66 repetitions to make something a habit; the worst-case scenario is 254 repetitions according to eggheads. Also, pausing before unlocking ideally fits the definition of the Tiny Habit – something that:
-you do at least once a day,
-takes you less than 30 seconds,
-requires little effort.

Development of a Habit

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At the beginning, it didn’t do as well as was planned. I was picking up my phone and unlocking it without pausing all too many times.

Of course! You always suck at the beginning! It’s only normal. One of the biggest dangers in habit development, and this habit was no different in that regard, is not the difficulty level, or the effort to remember about a habit – it’s frustration with yourself.

If you get frustrated and beat yourself up for each failure, your chances for success are miniscule. At first, you fail more often than not and it’s NORMAL! But if you beat yourself up and feel constantly frustrated, guess how likely it is that you will keep trying? Yep, that’s how most New Year’s resolutions end up.

It doesn’t mean you need to pat yourself on the shoulder when you fail and be proud of yourself. You should focus on noticing when you do the right thing, not the wrong one.

I know myself well, and I didn’t expect perfection from the start. Quickly (in a couple of days or so), I started catching myself whenever I grabbed the phone and unlocked it mindlessly.

Thus, I developed another tiny habit on top of my ‘dumbphone habit’ – if I unlocked the screen without going over my small mindfulness ritual, I locked it again, went over the routine and continued using the phone.

A week later I needed to lock the screen back less often. Most times, I go straight to my mindfulness routine.

Results

I thought I would pick up my phone less often. Usually, this is how tracking an activity you want to get rid of works. When you start realizing how hopeless you are, the sheer act of tracking builds the resistance against a bad habit.

However, when I checked the actual data after a few days in the ScreenTime app, it appeared that I was picking up the phone more. The sub-habit of locking the screen again added more attempts to the app’s counter.

The nice measurable result was that my screen time went down by 8%. And that included about an hour on Netflix at Sunday evening. The hour, which I consciously decided to spend that way.

And that was the greatest output from this small mindfulness discipline – I use my phone more as a tool and less as a mind-sucking vortex [link to mermaid song social media]. Of course, there are also the nice byproducts I built into the habit – increased mindfulness and spiritual activity.

The Tiny Dumbphone-to-Smartphone Habit

The basic recipe for this habit goes like this:

After I pick up the phone to unlock the screen, I will think (or say aloud) what I’m going to do with the phone.

You can add some whistles and bells to it – like I did with intentions – but not much. Remember that the tiny habits definition says it takes less than 30 seconds. Attaching an intention to my tiny habits takes me literally a couple of seconds, tops.

I strongly recommend you check out the Screen Time (it’s in iPhone settings) or its equivalent first. Set a baseline, so you’ll know if you make progress or not.

It’s quite probable you will forget your tiny mindfulness habit many times. Shrug it off. It’s part of the process. It’s normal at the beginning.

It’s also probable you will start catching yourself at forgetting about your new habit right after you unlocked the screen. Your brain loves to remind you what you are doing wrong. Use it to your advantage. Lock the screen and perform your unlocking-screen ritual.

This habit is relatively easy to develop because you will have many repetitions every day. It can become semi-automatic in a week or so (depending on your success rate and how many times you picked up your phone in the first place).

I highly recommend building this habit to everyone who feels they are not in control of their screen time (probably 99% of the smartphone users population).

You will get dozens of opportunities to pause and reflect. It will do wonders for your mindfulness. And mindfulness does wonders for your self-awareness. And self-awareness is the first step to self-knowledge.

Success in the knowledge economy comes to those who know themselves–their strengths, their values, and how they best perform.” — Peter F. Drucker

Plus, you will save yourself from the mindless scrolling!

Originally published at Medium.

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Book Review: The 4 Minute Millionaire

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Book by Niklas Goke

The 4 Minute Millionaire is a nice, short book. I appreciate what Niklas did with it – summarized hundreds of hours of research, reading books, watching courses and listening to podcasts in a concise format. This book is Personal Finance 101, and I’ll buy a copy for each of my kids.

I love the premise of the book:
This book won’t make you a millionaire, but it’ll equip you to become one.
After the lecture, I can attest it’s true. But, traditionally, let’s start from…

CON

I found one stupid piece of advice in The 4 Minute Millionaire – the idea that investing in the stock market is better than investing in a house – in the context of mortgage and debt. Niklas provided some backbreaking theoretical assumptions and provided some data out of context (the data suggests families stay in their homes for nine years on average) to justify his opinion.

However, it has nothing to do with reality. Everybody needs to live somewhere, so it’s never a dilemma between having a house or investing in the stock market. It’s always the dilemma between renting and owning a house. First, you need to live somewhere, then you can invest.

The idea that mortgage debt is different from any other debt is an old wives’ tale.”

Yes, at the basic level, it’s totally the same – you need to pay off the capital and the interest rates. From every other angle (security, timeframe, the level of the rate of interest…) – sorry!, it’s a different animal than every other debt.

And here comes the mic drop:

The average homeowner has 44 times the net worth of a renter. Forty-four to one is a mic drop. What side of the equation do you want to be on? Forty-four to one. In any sport that’s a big win. 44 to one. And so that’s the mic drop, and everything else is just gasbaggery. It’s just talking; it’s flapping the jaws.”

Niklas’ suggestion to invest in index funds instead of owning a home is like a suggestion to eat junk food and never exercise because you can be hit by the bus tomorrow, so what’s even the rationality of trying to stay healthy?

*facepalm*

The only saving grace for him was that, in this fragment of the book, he tried to explain that “common financial sense” is not always applicable in your specific case.

I guess that if you are an empty-nester without a spouse, renting a tiny condo and investing in the index funds the surplus over the fat mortgage you’d have paid makes sense.

But in 45 true cases, 44 are clearly in in favor of the common sense (owning a home).

PROS

Ha! And that was the end of CONS for The 4 Minute Millionaire. This book has many benefits. Let’s go quickly over them:

1. Synthesis.

I love how the author was able to translate hundreds of hours of absorbing content from various sources into the 2-hour read. Hats off. He did it very skillfully. For example, I read one of the books Niklas mentions – “Your Money or Your Life”- and he captured the essence of the book perfectly.

2. Some Killer Quotes.

Don’t let fear and greed win. Don’t let these bastards dictate your financial fate.”

“Saving and investing. Most people think they’ll naturally be good at these tasks. They also think they’ll actually do them. Needless to say, most people are wrong, and that’s why almost no one retires early.”

“In a way, debt is time travel. It means you’re saying no to something later so you can say yes to something else right now.”

“Emotions shut down the conscious part of brain. Keep your mind clear, and your finances will function so much better.”

“One quote and we have the state of humanity in a pill. Two simple, obvious things. Yet, almost no one practices them.”

This is so awesome a concept! Debt as time travel! It reminds me of the movie ‘Family Guy’ when the main character played by Adam Sandler had a remote control which allowed him to rewind the boring or uncomfortable parts of his life. Debt is this kind of time travel – not the exciting adventure, but skipping the uncomfortable parts of life to pay a much higher price later.

3. Solid Knowledge.

I’m no millionaire, yet I significantly improved my finances in the last decade. I practiced most of the tactics Niklas teaches in The 4 Minute Millionaire. Paying yourself first, the envelope system, tracking my expenses – I have been doing all of that. So, I can recognize when the author preaches the right things to do.

4. Investing.

I’m no investor either. Once, I let greed take the worst of me and burned my family’s savings playing with futures. The lesson was as painful as memorable. Since then, I haven’t tried to invest in anything more risky than bank deposits.

However, I generated a nice surplus of income in the last few years, and my business is in the perpetual growth mode. I also have to start thinking seriously about my retirement. I need to master the investing game.

The 4 Minute Millionaire will be a great starting point for me. Niklas provided a few universal investing rules from big names in the financial world. When I have funds to invest, I’ll know where to begin.

Summary

I just scratched the surface. The 4 Minute Millionaire has more great points. It’s written in the personal style, so characteristic for the good indie books. It’s short and to the point. It’s well organized, so after reading it once, you can easily jump around the book returning to relevant sections.

It’s a good read. I recommend it.

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Your Beliefs Create Your Reality: The simplest method to discover your subconcious beliefs

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Photo by  SHVETS production  from  Pexels

Your beliefs create your reality. There was a time in my life when I had sneered at such statements.

Pshaw! Beliefs! Anything else? Maybe a Santa Claus or a tooth fairy?

Oh, my old, ignorant, stupid self. A tooth fairy may share a lot of features with beliefs — nobody saw them in real life, they belong more to the imaginative realm than to the physical one — but there is a striking difference between those two entities: A tooth fairy is a fictional creature; my beliefs are very real mind protocols stored in my brain.

They are as real as habit loops, and their influence is as real and as pervasive too.

Beliefs

So, what are beliefs? According to the dictionary definition:

an acceptance that something exists or is true, especially one without proof

When it comes to the beliefs you hold, the “proof” part is totally irrelevant. When you cling to a specific belief, you can be showered with ironclad proofs and still hold to it. You will just interpret those proofs in a way that will keep your belief intact.

Hint: all the folks who think a protective mask is an ultimate magic item against COVID and all the ones who claim masks are worthless, bordering on deadly. Or better yet, the ones who don’t believe “in” COVID. Hello! It’s a virus, a part of a physical reality! Can you not believe “in” oxygen and thus eliminate it from the universe?

Human minds, apparently, can do even that.

In short, your beliefs can distort reality because they determine — for you — what is the truth. And truth is:

that which is true or in accordance with fact or reality

Your beliefs are your reality.

Consequences

The house you live in. The relationships you have. The work you do. The car you drive. Your net worth. Your bank account statement. Your health and physical prowess.

Everything, your whole life, is just a function of your beliefs. A “function,” not the direct effect. We don’t live in a Matrix-like reality when you can just think something and it will pop up from thin air. But our reality is shockingly close to it.

Why? Because your beliefs are a big part of your ego. And your ego is something more dear to you than your life. Well, it IS your life. Who would you be if you would not have been yourself?

You fight to keep your self-identity intact with claws and teeth, like you’d fought for your very life. Thus, whenever reality seems to be out of sync with your beliefs, you adjust your beliefs… or your reality.

You get a new great job, but your self-esteem is not up to par with it? You sabotage yourself. You do something stupid like coming drunk to the office or bombing the deadline of a crucial project.

You get a crappy job, but your self-esteem is way above that? You look for opportunities to get a better position. And when such an opportunity appears, you grab it!

The Proof from My Life

Remember I said I had sneered at the concept of beliefs shaping my reality? Well, one event convinced me that my beliefs do exactly this.

At the end of 2014, I wrote down a few goals for 2015. Like almost always, I missed almost all of them. The story of my life.

But, a couple of years later, I found in my journal an entry from the next day after setting my goals. On the 22nd of December 2014, I asked myself, “What do you really think will come out from these goals?”

My jaw dropped. In 2015, I achieved exactly the chunk of my goals I believed I could achieve. You can read the more comprehensive version of this story here:
https://stawickimichal.medium.com/how-does-one-break-a-habit-of-self-sabotage-289cfb74aa75

How to Create the Reality You Want

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Photo by elifskies from Pexels

And not the one your subconscious beliefs dictate.

It’s a very complex issue, demanding a looong answer and many words, certainly book-worthy. I’ll just show you the first step in this article.

Self-Analysis

First of all, you need to realize what your current beliefs are. Doing some self-analysis may be useful. This is extremely tricky. We are experts in lying to ourselves (again, protecting our sensitive ego). Even if you uncover part of your true beliefs, you will be more aware of the steering wheel in your life.

You should do self-analysis in writing, like I did when asking myself about what I really believed I could achieve in 2015. Writing automatically activates the prefrontal cortex in your brain — the part responsible for logical thinking. Why? Because language is the real protocol for the conscious mind.

Einstein did miracles with his imagination — to formulate his relativity theory he imagined himself traveling on a photon with the speed of light. However, to put the theory in writing, he needed to translate this imaginary concept into words and sentences. Writing, language, is a bridge between images in your brain and abstract concepts (like setting yearly goals).

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My journals

Self-analysis is the cheapest, quickest and the most available way to uncover your beliefs… Yet, very, very few of us ever do that. Even less do that on a regular basis.

The Best Way to Discover Your Beliefs

Examine your reality. Look around. How are your relationships? What is your net worth? Your reality will tell you what your beliefs are.

I recently did that exercise trying to figure out my beliefs around money. Some of the things I discovered were the direct copy-paste from my reality. Some required more digging. But the scrutiny of my financial position shone a light on the beliefs I didn’t even think I had. Here is a sample:

“I’m not able to earn more than $8k a month.”

“I cannot provide more value to my customers than nowadays.”

“Making money is evil.”

The first two beliefs were a direct mirror of my reality. Almost. Remember what I said about distorting reality with your beliefs?

In the last few years, I made over $8k twice. Barely. But in my finance tracking system, I didn’t register my day job salary. So, the reality was that I was able to earn more than $8k. My subconscious chose to ignore the evidence.

The third belief required more work. I inquired deeper about the first two beliefs and discovered the third one hidden even deeper.

Summary

Do you want better results? You should better know your internal beliefs about this area of life. It applies to everything — finances, health, relationships, work, education, and so on. This is the first step.

It’s hard to extract your beliefs just by asking yourself a bunch of questions. Humans are masters of self-deception. But if you attempt to do that, use pen and paper.

The quickest way to uncover your subconscious beliefs is examining your reality. Who you are and what you have now is created, almost entirely, by your beliefs. Any deviation of reality from your beliefs is just temporary (like me making barely over $8k twice). So, don’t compare just a current snapshot from your life, but recurring patterns.

Once you know your current beliefs, you can dismantle them and work on instilling new ones, serving you better.

You cannot dismantle something you don’t even notice. And building new beliefs in direct opposition to your old ones is like building in the dark. You will stumble all the time.

Discovering your beliefs doesn’t have to be hard. They are all hidden in plain view. Your reality will tell you what they are.

Originally published at Medium.

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SPI’s The Community Experience Podcast

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Photo by Amin Asbaghipour from Pexels

This morning I listened to the 1st episode of a new SPI show, The Community Experience. Below are my Cliffs Notes from the episode, things I noticed and found interesting.

BTW, I love SPI for their transcriptions. I hate the podcasts without transcripts. It takes me 10x longer to jump over the episode in the audio form to dig out all the golden nuggets. So, in this article, I’ll extensively use quotes from the podcast.

Here go my takeaways.

Body Doesn’t Equal Health

Jillian R. [the guest]: So to give some context for America, 75 percent of Americans who are adults say that they are not satisfied with their friendships. At the same time, the average American says that they have one close friend. (…)

Then when you see the impact that loneliness has on your physical health, they say that, you’ve probably heard the statistic, that loneliness impacts your health just as much as smoking a pack of cigarettes a day. And the one that’s less cited is it also impacts early mortality just as much as excessive drinking.

Gosh! This is huge. Most of world leaders sentenced their citizens to ‘smoking a pack of cigarettes a day’ and early mortality rates equal to ‘excessive drinking.’ In the name of what? Health!

The world has gone insane.

Why was that even possible? My thinking: because we became extremely materialistic. Mind and soul are not considered important. The body is a modern idol.

Jillian R.: I feel like all these accountability groups are really just masks for something way deeper, but masterminds or accountability are socially acceptable not like, “Oh, I just really would like deeper male friendships please, but sign me up for a mastermind instead.”

Tending to your physical needs is OK. Tending to your mind and soul is not socially acceptable. Drop mike.

COVID Acceleration

Jillian said the Great Lockdown forced her to shift more quickly into the role of teacher. COVID accelerated so many things, including remote work or e-commerce. Yet, it had also the impact on our character. No wonder, our habits shape us into who we are and our habits shifted during the Great Lockdown.

Cohorts

According to a dictionary definition, a cohort is:

a group of people with a shared characteristic

It’s a future of online and offline communities. This is where deep connections are born and cultivated.

Circles of Trust Book

Sounded like something worth reading.

Organized Religion

Tony [the host]: And then what else do you think is feeding into this problem?

Jillian R. [the guest]: Well, this is the thing I mentioned at the start of my book, is how many young people are disaffiliating from organized religion and for very good reasons. There are very good reasons why people would not trust the church for example. If they identify as LGBTQ, there’s huge reasons why you wouldn’t feel safe in that community because you’re literally told that you’re bad.

Yet organized religion has so many wonderful benefits in terms of feeling connected to a higher purpose, feeling connected to spirit, having a place where you can go every week to be in community, to help others, to be helped if you need assistance, to be in intergenerational relationships.

As a Christian, I couldn’t notice a bunch of nonsense in Jillian’s opinions. It seems like the most opinionated people about the organized religion are those, who have nothing to do with it. And they lack even the basic knowledge. And logic.

OK, let’s assume that identifying as LGBTQ and organized religion are totally incompatible. Then what about the remaining 93% of young people? They miss all the wonderful benefits with no reason whatsoever?

And I found the “benefits” utterly funny. The center of a religion is God. This is something you won’t find anywhere else in the world – not in a non-profit (higher purpose), yoga classes (connected to spirit), work (a place to go FIVE days a week), nursing homes (intergenerational relationships), etc.

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Photo by Brett Sayles from Pexels

The only unique benefit of an organized religion is God, and I won’t get into a theological discussion why it is a benefit in itself.

People who criticize organized religion are usually full of prejudices. They criticize it because they don’t believe in the concept of God, it’s fashionable, it’s something (religion=evil) they take for granted without an ounce of reflection, and plenty other reasons which have nothing to do with logic.

Tony: There’s this factor that it’s not just religion, we also have this sense of a decreasing sense of citizenship and civic participation (…) we see that in terms of corporate identity, that there was a greater sense that maybe in the second half of the 20th century that who you worked for, the company you worked for, there was a reciprocal relationship there, your identity was tied to your employer.

See? Organized religion is just part of the landscape. I know Christianity is such an easy target, you can kick it, and a good Christian will only turn the other cheek. But being anti-Christian won’t automatically make you smart. In fact, it makes you look dumb when people have enough common sense to look at the full picture.

Sorry for the rant at the end, but I had to take it off my chest.

Summary

The final verdict of the podcast? SPI is a professional brand, the hosts made up for the guest’s awkwardness and squeezed out of her many useful tidbits. I’ll wait till I listen to a few more episodes before giving my final verdict.

Originally posted on Medium.

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