When you want to be healthy, you could focus on the good stuff you want; maybe you work out and eat healthy to have toned arms, or firm abs, or even a certain weight on the scale. But if you are unhealthy today and you are going to change your habits, you have to first [...]
Tag Archives | personal mastery
Cells Regenerate. Machines Compute. Humans Create.
Probably the only concept I still remember from when I programmed in Basic was this: Everything is a series of inputs, or outputs. Inputs are the signals or data received by the system, and outputs are the signals or data sent from it. Business can be seen as a series of inputs and outputs, too. [...]
Defying Categorization
People often ask me the question, should I do have two twitter addresses — one for business, one for personal? And authors I know that are experts on innovation then want to write two different books: one for women giving themselves permission, and the other on innovation models. We keep these elements separate — [...]
Giving Up Swearing, I Swear
Last Wednesday, Christians started Lent. The season of reflection. People give up something dear to them so that when they miss it, they are reminded to seek instead the deep and abiding love of their God. (The Islamic faith has a similar practice based on a month of fasting.) If I were practicing the Lenten [...]
Is My Work Important?
I’ve been helping someone. And helping. And helping. And now I seriously want to stop. You might think, Nilofer, girlfriend — this is easy: Say NO to the next request, and be done. But, you see, I’m in conflict. I like seeing myself as a generous, helpful, and kind person. There have been times [...]
Fearless Learning
By Nilofer Merchant on February 14, 2011 in Culture & Leadership, Entrepreneurship, The Personal Story
To learn, we must be willing to not yet know. And that means we need to stop silently criticizing ourselves and others for not already knowing the answer. When we think we “should” already know, then we spend energy eliminating seemingly conflicting data, information, opinions and stories. Only to never see what we need to [...]
Cherish The Toughie
“My start-up is creating a new market.” “The new market project is taking tons of cycles to get off the ground.” “I’ve gotta get a new job; my boss is psycho!” “My daughter just turned 13 — the teenage years!” Any of these sentences could be seen as a problem. Or they could be [...]
Living the Dream
An entrepreneur & CEO wrote me an email around the holidays that sounded just a bit desperate; enough for me to take time out of family time over the holidays to take a meeting. It took her nearly an hour to unveil her dilemma, slowly revealing what she no longer wanted and then, finally, sharing [...]
What Do YOU Think?
The next time someone comes into your office or cube and asks you to solve a problem, do this instead: Look at them in the eye. Then ask ‘em, “what do you think?”. Then wait. Don’t take the problem on. Don’t assume that because they have come to you, you should solve the problem. Cause [...]