Lessons learned, resilience and self-confidence

En Español

It’s Sunday morning on Feb 2nd, 2025, and it just started to snow. First snow falling this winter. Today’s post it’s about gratitude, lessons learned and resilience. As a leader (as we’re all called to be one, regardless) I must spend a good portion of my time reflecting, learning and planning to move forward. Personal and professional lives are intertwined, so the principles we apply to one are applicable to the other. In both settings, expectations management is required, we’re the ones who usually set the wrong expectation (on oneself and people too). I’m currently listening to this awesome playlist I’ve just found on YouTube music while I work on a couple of assignments for university. I’m hoping to complete the remaining credits soon and with that get my new degree in Organizational Leadership to then move on to the master’s program.

At my age, I have been able to learn and understand people a bit better, and some of the stuff I’ve been studying for this organizational leadership program (e.g.: Social sciences, psychology and organizational behavior in particular) allows me to put context thus understanding on why people do and behave the way they do. In the past, I used to spend my time reading and learning about programming languages and software architecture, don’t get me wrong I still do it, but I have diversified my appetite for learning, and since it’s related to my new degree it’s interesting to read and understand people better if I want to lead them (and myself) more efficiently.

Fear is a major obstacle in everything, and it comes in different flavors as a matter of fact (e.g.: Losing a job, changes in life’s circumstances and more), no matter which is the reason, fear is always there, we cannot get rid of it, unfortunately. It’s part of our “Fight or flight” response which has been an important reaction for our survival. All we can do is to keep it under control and objectively assess the situation. Life’s too short to be afraid, upset or mad. If we truly want to be happy, we must know ourselves and improve ourselves, before trying to help others. In this way, we should be able to become the leader we aspire to be.

For that reason, we cannot take any drawbacks or disappointments as losses, but more as a lesson learned. We cannot blame others for our circumstances or bad decisions, or anything because they’ve all been our choices, so if we stumble and fall twice, we must be ready to get back up three or more times. Resilience needs to be there along the way, because it’ll help us develop calluses in our mind and heart (calluses harden and thicken our skin due to pressure or friction), because if we expect too much from others, we’re doing something wrong, we must expect more from us than others, since we’re leading and living our lives. Let’s keep on walking forward, work hard and get the award for trusting in ourselves.

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