Inspiration

Inspiration

True or false?

/ binarybea / 2 Comments

Something interesting happened to me a few days ago: I was in a training course and saw a slide with a quote by Einstein that I thought was really cool, so I decided to publish it on Instagram. I wrote a post with the quote in English, and another one with the Spanish translation. Everything OK up to this point.

Two minutes later, I got a message from Instagram saying that I had published false information (according to their "independent fact checkers"), that they had added a notice to my post warning viewers about the content not being true, and that my account was at risk of being disabled for monetization.

All of this because apparently, Einstein was not the author of that quote...

Paper card pinned to a cork board, with two handwritten checkboxes: TRUE and FALSE

I was a bit shocked, to be honest. I quickly rewrote the post, including the quote without mentioning the author. Once again, Instagram notified me that they had added a notice to my post because it was very similar to another one they´d already labelled as false. At least this time I could see an option to request a manual review, so I requested it; I´m curious to see their reply.

The thing is, I have mixed feelings about this topic; on the one hand, I´m glad that there´s some level of fact-checking being done, though on the other hand, I wonder how effective it may be beyond checking authorship for specific texts (by the way, all this happened with the post I wrote in English; the Spanish version got published without any issues). But mainly, I was really upset that they accused me of lying! Me, lying? It was all a misunderstanding!

Well, when I got to reflect on it a bit more afterwards, I remembered something else they told me at the same training course: regarding moral issues, like lying for example, when someone does something that´s wrong we tend to think it´s because they´re a bad person, while when we are the ones doing something wrong, we believe it´s justified given the circumstances.

In short, we believe we are in possession of the truth, and everyone else is mistaken.

We forget that there are very few absolute truths in this world, if any. We believe we objectively know the facts, but what we´re really doing is interpreting them in our own way, filtering the perceptions we receive from our senses according to our own beliefs and assumptions.

And here´s where it´s good to remember the words of Ramón de Campoamor; words that I was lucky to double-check in Google before making another mistake, as I was convinced they were by Calderón de la Barca 🙂

In this traitorous world
nothing is true or false:
everything is according to the colour
of the glass with which one looks.

Ramón de Campoamor

This whole thing about there not being anything true or false may be a bit frustrating, because our brain prefers categorical answers: good or bad, right or wrong, black or white. But in reality, it gives us a great deal of freedom; it gives us a whole colour palette to choose from. Both the great wise men of old times and our modern psychologists explain to us that in the majority of cases, our problems are not caused by the things that happen to us, but by the way we interpret them; the main cause of our suffering are the stories we tell ourselves about the things that happen to us. ¿What if we told ourselves a different story?

That´s the good news: once we realize that truth is very often a matter of points of view, and that it´s not THE truth but MY truth that I get to see, then our map of possibilities increases exponentially, and we can allow ourselves to reinterpret those situations in ways that help us, instead of making us suffer.

So, next time you´re faced with a situation that makes you feel angry, frustrated or sad, I encourage you to ask yourself what other versions of "the truth" can exist that are different from yours. What are you assuming? What other perspectives are you not seeing? What meaning are you attaching to that situation that it doesn´t really have, or doesn´t need to have? What other meaning could you find for it?

By the way, the quote in question deserves a post of its own; it´s on Instagram, and it´s true that I published it without double-checking whether it was by Einstein or not (lesson learned).

Success

/ binarybea / Leave a comment

What thoughts appear in your head when you hear the word "success"?

In my case, up until relatively recently, I always had the feeling that success was something out of my league, and that it was for other people, not for me. The things I did were ordinary, not extraordinary, and therefore, there was nothing I could think of that I had achieved and could be considered a success.

Photo taken at dawn - dark silhouette of a person standing on top of a rock, with their arms extended in victory, against the blue and pink sky

I remember how I used to hate it when I heard that cliché question: "what does success look like?", because I was never able to answer it. I didn´t have a clue.

These days, after years of learning about personal growth, at least I get to understand the question. It´s all about visualizing the result.

This concept is widely used in coaching: the first step is always to define a goal, and objective, something you want to achieve. But, how will you know that you have achieved it? What is that new situation that you´re so looking forward to? What will you see, what will you hear, what will you feel when that moment arrives? The more details, the better.

This is important for two reasons: first, because the better defined our desired state is, the easier it will be to achieve it (or at least, to get closer to it), as we will be giving clear instructions to our brain about what we´re looking for. And second, because each person has their own values, their own priorities and their own way of understanding life, and all those factors have (or should have) a massive impact on the kind of results we want to achieve, and also in how we value those results.

So, for each specific situation we get to work on, it´s good to think through what it is that we´re really aiming to achieve, keeping in mind that we may need to dig a little deeper to get to the truth: how will I benefit from achieving this goal? How far do I need to get to consider myself successful at it? And where does that measurement come from? Who sets the standard? Am I doing something that´s truly important to me, or am I trying to fulfil expectations?

Which brings me to today´s quote, and once again, it sounds to me much better in English than in Spanish; hopefully my loose translation will be understood by Spanish speaking folks:


Success isn’t about how your life looks to others. It’s about how it feels to you.

Michelle Obama

What about you? What does success mean to you, at this particular point in your life?

Taking the initiative

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How good are you at taking the initiative, especially regarding big life decisions? Are you one of those who "make things happen", or do you tend to let things happen to you?

Wooden scrabble-like pieces forming the phrase "MAKE STUFF HAPPEN"

I´m bringing this up because I´ve had a few conversations about big life decisions in the last few weeks, specifically around moving to another country. On the one hand, two good friends I met shortly after moving to Ireland are now getting ready to move back to Spain, and talking to them made me think about my own future, and consider where I´d like to live in the short, medium and long term. And on the other hand, this week I welcomed a family friend who just made the opposite move, from Spain to Ireland. His excitement and openness to living new experiences made me remember my first few years here, the tremendous impact moving had on me, and how I got to progressively forge a new life as years went by.

To answer my own question: I always considered myself a person with little initiative, relatively speaking: many of my big life changes have been either a shared decision with a little push from other people (like coming to live and work in Ireland) or decisions made by others (like my separation and divorce). But now, looking back, I realize that I´ve also made big decisions by myself. The determination to carry on with my life in Ireland when my world came crashing down around me was probably my first big decision on my own, the first time I truly took the initiative.

The first of many.

Sometimes, life gives us a little push so that we know it´s time to take ownership. The trick is to stay alert, learn to welcome what life brings to us, and trust that that´s what we need to continue to grow.

So, in line with that idea, here are a couple of quotes plus an extra bonus quote. The first one comes to us from the wisdom of stoicism:

The willing, Destiny guides them. The unwilling, Destiny drags them.

Seneca

This phrase was explained to me at the time using the metaphor of a dog tied to a moving cart. The dog has two options: he can keep up with the pace, trotting happily along with the cart, or struggle to resist, trying to slow down or change direction, and ultimately getting hurt, as he gets dragged by the cart anyway.

The second one is a beautiful wordplay:

There is a time to let things happen, and a time to make things happen.

Hugh Prather

As I read this, what comes to my mind is: how can I know when it´s time for one thing or the other? I would say it´s a question of figuring out our usual strategy, and whether it works for us in certain specific situations. What do we find most difficult, the doing or the not doing? Would it make sense to adjust?

And the third one, from the same author, closes the cycle:

Just when I think I have learned the way to live, life changes.

Hugh Prather

What gets us moving

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The beginning of the school year and the beginning of the calendar year are typically the times when we take the opportunity to kick off new projects, create new routines, learn new things... Essentially, to start a new chapter of our life, in one way or another.

It´s when we start to move again, when we get in motion, after a holiday break.

But, have we ever thought about what it is that moves us?

The term motivation comes from Latin, motivus, meaning "movement", and it´s the force that pushes us to get moving and achieve what we want. There are multiple theories and explanations about motivation that are really interesting, and I´ll elaborate more in future articles, but today, I would like to focus on one observation originated from NLP (Neuro Linguistic Programming) on this topic.

NLP primarily consists of identifying patterns in thought and language and working with them to achieve better results in life. In particular, the so-called metaprograms are patterns that point out our natural preferences around getting motivated and performing tasks: for example, some of us are more focused on going "towards" whatever we want to achieve,, while others focus more on moving "away from" whatever we want to avoid (the pattern is called "towards" versus "away from").

This proves very useful when trying to find the best way to motivate ourselves and others, both personally and professionally. What is truly the most important thing for me when I think about this goal or challenge in front of me? Reaching a high level of quality and client satisfaction or making sure there are no problems or complaints? Achieving success or avoiding failure? Attaining pleasure or avoiding pain? Both approaches are completely valid, and one will probably resonate much more with us than the other; it will push us more towards action.

Also, when we´re working with a team or addressing a group of people, it helps to include both approaches to ensure the message sinks in with everybody: "This new app will mark an inflexion point for our product. If we go ahead with the implementation, we´ll be able to multiply our sales and become market leaders; otherwise, we will remain stagnant and our competitors will overtake us".

Other examples of this double reasoning can be seen in some motivational quotes, like this one I have at home for example, which, according to the internet, is attributed to Mark Twain:

Square greeting card with white print on a black background, says "Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn´t do than by the ones you did. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover." (Unknown)

Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.

What do you think about these two approaches to motivation? Which one do you identify with most?

Untranslatable words: struggle

/ binarybea / Leave a comment

Those of you who have been reading this blog for a while will know that every now and then, I write about a sentence I find difficult to translate, either from English to Spanish or vice versa (if you´re curious and want to read those articles, you´ll find them under the category called Untranslatable).

Today, I´m not bringing you a sentence, but a word, more specifically, a verb: to struggle.

The Spanish dictionary says struggling can be translated as fighting, confronting or tussling with something. And yes, it´s something along those lines, but with a few more nuances, I think. Maybe because (at least in my head) most times, that "something" is not a physical thing, but a situation or challenge we don´t know how to manage, so we experience some suffering as we attempt to overcome it.

The photo gallery in Wordpress gave me this visual representation of struggle, and I thought it was spot on:

The rope could represent anything, real or symbolic (or imagined!) that we are confronted with, and towards which we feel we have no resources.. I think it´s a really interesting metaphor because the rope as such doesn´t have a life of its own; it all depends on what we do with it: we can keep tangling it more and more until we end up paralyzed, or we can untangle the knots bit by bit, one after the other, and break free. It´s almost as if that fight, that confrontation, that tussle, deep down, was with ourselves.

And here´s a thing I would like to make very clear: this happens to all of us at one point or another, or rather, at many points throughout our lives. It´s a part of life itself. That´s how we learn, how we grow, how we evolve.

One story that often comes up around this topic is that of the butterfly: part of its metamorphosis involves coming out of the cocoon, which takes a huge effort; it´s a real struggle. Anybody looking from the outside would think it´s going to die without achieving it. But the butterfly achieves it. And it has to be the butterfly itself, on its own, because that´s how its wings become strong, to be able to fly. If someone, with all their best intentions, had opened the cocoon earlier to let it out, it would have stayed weak and would not have survived.

Similarly, we all have to follow our own path and experience our own transformations. But do we really need to have such a hard time? Or watch others having a hard time, without helping them? Well, one thing we can do is treat those moments in life like what they really are: phases of growth, completely normal. And yes, we can help, but not by trying to resolve the other person´s problems from the outside, but by respecting their process, and accompanying them so that they can find their own resources and solutions.

I think this quote summarizes it really well; it´s the first cornerstone of co-active coaching:

People are naturally creative, resourceful, and whole.
People are not broken and do not need fixing and have their own innate wisdom on how to live life.

What I mean by this is that, leaving out certain exceptions where there´s a pathology or disorder (in which case it´s necessary to consult a psychiatrist or psychologist), in general, all we need is a bit of time, support and self confidence to overcome the challenges that are put in front of us.

That, and self discovery, lots of self discovery, it always helps 🙂

Whatever is due to happen

/ binarybea / Leave a comment

Today I´m bringing you a quote I came across a few months ago and really liked; it´s an invitation for us to let go of control a little bit and trust life a more, or at least that´s how I interpret it:

Whoever is due to come, let them come,
whoever is due to go, let them go,
whatever is due to hurt, let it hurt...
Whatever is due to happen, let it happen.

Mario Benedetti

A bit scary, isn´t it? Especially if, like me, you tend to try to control your environment so that things always turn out how you want them to.

But, you know what? Whatever is due to happen is going to happen anyway, so why not relax, enjoy each moment and trust that everything is going to be OK in the long run? Trust that we already have (or can acquire) all the resources we need to face whatever life puts in front of us.

Hey, I´m not saying we should just sit down and wait for life to do everything for us; that´s not the point... The point is having a clear idea of where we want to go and what´s important to us, but without forcing it too much; being open to learning along the way, flowing and adapting as we make progress, so that we can welcome whatever comes instead of getting frustrated because it´s not what we expected.

It´s also about recognizing when something or someone is no longer doing us any good, or they´re simply not helping us grow, and being brave enough to stop clinging to them and let them go so that there´s free space for new people and experiences.

And yes, there will be moments when life hurts a little; that´s unavoidable. But in reality, that´s not what we find hardest; the worst part is the suffering that we add to it, and as I say in this other post, that´s totally optional.

So, do you dare give up control a little bit and let whatever is due to happen happen?

Untranslatable sentences: taking a step back

/ binarybea / 1 Comment

Today I'm bringing you another one of those sentences that I think work really well in English, and for which I don't have a convincing translation into Spanish: taking a step back.

The literal translation into Spanish would be dar un paso atrás, and it's used in the sense of distancing ourselves from the details of a situation in order to see the whole picture more clearly, and be able to make better decisions.

And what better moment for taking a step back than while enjoying a few days off?

This is a long weekend for us in Ireland, or as they say in Spanish, estamos de puente . My niece Ana and her boyfriend, Javi, are here visiting us (thanks guys!), and we're taking the opportunity to get out of Dublin for a few days, and do touristy things around the West of Ireland.

There's a lot of talk nowadays about the importance of switching off and recharging batteries every now and then, mostly because we are hyperconnected and overworked in our daily lives... I encourage you to go the extra mile, and next time you take a couple of days off, also take a step back and reflect on some of these quotes:

How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.

Annie Dillard

Action expresses priorities.

Mahatma Gandhi

Do fewer things. Do them better. Know why you're doing them.

Cal Newport

Sharpening the saw

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If you´re into topics like productivity, time management or personal development, I´m sure that more than once you will have read or heard the idea that one must pause to sharpen the saw.

Manual saw making its way through a wooden block

This is how Stephen Covey explains it in his book, Seven habits of highly effective people:

Suppose you were to come upon someone in the woods working feverishly to saw down a tree.

– What are you doing? – you ask.

– Can´t you see? – comes the impatient reply. – I´m sawing down this tree.

– You look exhausted! – you exclaim. – How long have you been at it?

– Over five hours – he returns – and I´m beat! This is hard work.

– Well, why don´t you take a break for a few minutes and sharpen that saw? – you inquire – I´m sure it would go a lot faster.

– I don´t have time to sharpen the saw! – the man says emphatically – I´m too busy sawing!

This metaphor illustrates really well how we often get too deep into the weeds of our day to day tasks and forget to stop every once in a while, first of all to rest, but beyond that, to be able to take a step back, gain some perspective and find more efficient (and more enjoyable) ways to achieve our goals.

Another great example along the same lines is one of those quotes that appear printed on geeky T-shirts, especially dedicated to IT people: Six hours of debugging can save you five minutes of reading documentation.

It´s that well known adage, work smarter, not harder, which we know so well in theory, and we find soooo difficult to put into practice... Maybe it´s partly because our society values super busy people; we associate being busy with being productive, so consciously or unconsciously, we keep looking for ways to stay busy (and then we love complaining about how busy we are, it makes us feel important), Or maybe it´s because it´s easier to stay in the momentum we have created for ourselves (which deep down is nothing more than a comfort zone) than to question the way we´ve always done things, even if there is a benefit hiding behind that.

This habit of sharpen the saw can be adopted at multiple levels and in different formats. For example, this past week at work, I had the opportunity to get together with my team (in person, bonus points!) to take a moment, celebrate what we´ve achieved in the last quarter, and plan the work for the next quarter. This is usual practice in Agile methodologies, and it´s been proven to work really well.

And at a more individual level, we can schedule time every week or month to sharpen our very own saw, and that time will be well invested for sure, I remember that one of my very first managers here in Ireland suggested this to me (thanks David!), and for years I kept a time slot booked for myself every Friday afternoon, when the work of the week was already done, and I would sit down in the canteen/cafeteria with my notebook, look at the trees outside the window, and do lots of reflection and planning, getting my ideas in order... I have to say that I used to get a lot of benefit from that little habit, and now I´m in the process of restarting it again, be it on Friday afternoons or at a different time during the week.

And, given that it´s actually impossible to separate our work self from the rest of our being, this principle goes beyond the concepts of work and personal life, because at the end of the day, each person is a whole self. Stephen Covey proposes four areas where we must sharpen our saw: physical, mental, social/emotional and spiritual.

What about you? How do you sharpen your saw? And now that I think of it, wouldn´t it be easier to explain the metaphor with an axe, instead of a saw? Because I´m not sure how a toothed saw like the one in the photo can be sharpened...

Untranslatable sentences: echao p’alante

/ binarybea / 1 Comment

Today, in our section on untranslatable sentences, we´ll talk about a very popular colloquial expression from Spain: ser muy echao p’alante.

The Collins Dictionary provides three translation examples for es muy echado p’alante, I hope they make sense to those of you reading this in English:

  • He’s very pushy
  • He’s very forward
  • He’s not backward in coming forward (informal)

To me, being echao p’alante means being brave, in the sense of daring to take the initiative and taking action when faced with certain situations, without fearing ridicule (or maybe fearing it a bit, but without letting that condition them).

Little girl riding on a horse with her hands in the air, seen from behind

My friend Bárbara comes to mind; she served as chairperson of our primary school's Parents' Association for several years, and I remember her one day explaining to me how, every time there was a call for volunteers to organize an event for the school, there were always certain people who threw themselves forward (echar literally means throw), and others who threw themselves back.

I was one of those parents who signed up to help in whichever way I could, but mainly to help, not to lead. I was not the one taking the initiative, I was happy following somebody else's lead. And that's a pattern that's been repeating year after year in many aspects of my life.

So in short, I am not (and never was) particularly echá p’alante... The good news is that now I know that that's part of my personality, more specifically part of my instinctual biases, as opposed to a weakness of character that I have to get over.

According to Mario Sikora's instinctual biases theory, which is taught in conjunction with the Enneagram, our natural instincts as human beings can be grouped in three main domains, the preserving domain (striving for survival, looking after our basic needs, looking after our close ones), the navigating domain (sense of belonging to a group, social relationships with our peers), and transmitting domain (reproduction, spreading our message, leaving a legacy in this world).

Each person tends to have the instincts from one of the three domains a lot more developed than the others, with a secondary domain, and then a third domain that's far less developed. And broadly speaking, we could say that individuals who are strongest in the transmitting domain tend to push forward, given their instinctive desire to transmit, to convince, to make progress. In contrast, individuals who are strongest in the preserving domain tend to pull back more, to try and protect ourselves by keeping a low profile. Individuals who are strongest at the navigating (or social) domain tend to seek balance between what they give and what they receive, expecting reciprocity.

An important point I would like to highlight is that no instinctual bias is better than any other: we need them all, because each of them relates to a particular set of capabilities and strengths, and they all balance each other within the group. We need preservers, navigators and transmitters in our tribe.

For me personally, learning about instinctual biases is helping me a lot to understand my own reactions and behaviours, as well as those of others. But that doesn't mean we can use them as an excuse to continue with our same old ways. On the contrary, it makes us realize that instead of forcing ourselves to do things that are radically against our instincts, we can work with them to our advantage, designing strategies that get us the results we want in a more natural and adaptive way.

In my case, given that my instinctual bias is in the preserving domain, I know I have to pay special attention to the topic of taking the initiative and stepping into action, because those things don't tend to come naturally to me. I use tricks to motivate myself and make progress step by step, without getting exhausted or overwhelmed. And what helps me the most? Phrases like these:

If you don't go after what you want, you'll never have it.
If you don't ask, the answer is always no.
If you don't step forward, you're always in the same place.

Nora Roberts

What about you? Are you one of those who throw themselves forward, or back? What motivation would be strong enough to push you forward?

Starry night

/ binarybea / Leave a comment

I can´t say that painting is a topic that I´ve always been interested in, or that I´ve dedicated much time to it during my life, but it is true that there are certain works of art that I find especially beautiful (or interesting), and that I´m really fond of.

Among them, there are several pieces by Vincent Van Gogh.

Painting: "room in Arles", by Vincent Van Gogh
Painting: "chair", by Vincent Van Gogh

I think this is mainly thanks to a coffee shop that existed years ago in Madrid´s city centre, Van Gogh Café, which my family and I used to visit very frequently, given its lovely atmosphere,, the superb food they offered and the fact that it was located just next to my parents´ apartment. I have very good memories of going to Van Gogh´s when the girls were still little, especially with my parents at lunchtime, and sometimes with the additional company of some of my siblings, siblings in law or nephews and nieces, whoever happened to be in Madrid on those dates. And on a couple of occasions, we also had big celebrations, with the whole family gathered together 🙂

The café was of course decorated with all things Van Gogh, with copies of his best known paintings scattered all over the walls, paper placemats printed with a collection of his many self portraits, and even a reconstruction of one of his scenes, with a real table and two chairs placed next to a big front window. Unfortunately, that venue closed down a few years ago, but the simple style and the vibrant colours of Van Gogh´s paintings stayed in my memory since then.

That´s why I was so happy when I recently got to see some of his paintings at the National Gallery, in London, including the one with the sunflowers (or to be precise, one of them, as he painted several canvases with the sunflowers theme), the chair you can see above, and this landscape with clouds that I didn´t remember seeing before, and that I also found quite cool:

Pero el que se lleva la palma en mi opinión es el de la noche estrellada, a la que hasta Lego le ha hecho un homenaje, y que también es uno de los cuadros estrella de la exposición interactiva (o como la llaman oficialmente, «la experiencia inmersiva») que hemos visitado este fin de semana en Dublín:

I loved learning a bit more about the life and works of this great painter, who was gifted with very deep sensitivity and an extraordinary talent, both of which sadly came together with a great deal of suffering, as it often happens in the world or artists.

There were several of his quotes that I found really inspiring, like for example:

«Si oyes una voz dentro de ti que dice que no puedes pintar, entonces adelante, pinta,,y esa voz será silenciada.»

«Las grandes cosas no se consiguen por impulso, sino a base de ir enlazando una serie de pequeñas cosas»

«El corazón del hombre se parece mucho al mar: tiene sus tormentas, tiene sus mareas, y en sus profundidades también hay perlas.»

«¿Qué sería de la vida si no tuvéramos el coraje de intentar nada?

Y también me acordé de que hace años alguien le compuso una canción preciosa, «Vincent», aquí la tenéis con la letra en inglés y en español: