Love statistics. It never lies. It always shows you the real picture.
Every Tuesday I have a class of soft skills and this week we did a little practical exercise, something like speed date. The task was to share your goals for the next 1-2 months in 3-5 minutes, explain why it is important for you and what difficulties you might have achieving these goals. The person in front of you (intent was to find a person that does not know you for a long time, to be more objetive) will listen and give you feedback: your point of strength and your point of weakness. And the same in opposite direction. When both finish you switch to another person. The feedback is anonymous, so people can be more tough with you. And this is when statistics comes into the game…
You know, when you receive the same feedback from a bunch of different people you cannot deny it. You cannot tell its conspiracy. It is simply true. The reality. And you have to deal with it.
It ended up my weakness is not enough self-confidence. Every person I talked with, wrote the same but in different words. And the most exciting part – I knew this is something I have to work on, but I needed a slap in the face to start moving (lets admit, we all need it from time to time)
While writing this post I also found the solution on how to work this out. Understanding that I offer and not ask. When I share an article on Facebook or Medium I don’t ask for your likes, I give you my knowledge; when I invite my friends to attend a free talk, where they can get valuable info, I don’t ask them to come, I give them opportunity to learn; when I want to meet a girl, I don’t ask her to be with me for a while, I offer her my highly valuable time and attention.
This type of thinking makes you invincible to the word a lot of people afraid of – “NO”. Because you don’t ask, you have everything and even more, so you want to share it and actually, the person rejecting you is the one who loses, because it might have been the best opportunity he or she could get and they rejected it. Sorry guys, I did my best.
We are slowly moving to the economy of kindness and giving. More and more people start to think and negotiate in “win-win” strategy. And to become that type of person we have to understand ourselves, keep growing, keep learning, and, of course, sharing our knowledge, experience and kindness. I’m on my way, and you?