21 Comments

Both the article and the comments have fully summarized the important aspects of this topic. I fully agree with you both, Sebastian and Minodora, that awareness and anticipation are crucial to having a balance between healthy challenges and “good times”relaxed position. We as humans cannot always be in a state of tension just like we can’t always remain idle... I just wanted to add one smart and relevant phrase that I learned from my martial arts instructor: “If you find yourself in a position where you have to defend yourself, you already lost half of the battle “... meaning that even though you’re capable to go through with the fight, the fact that you didn’t anticipate it and prevent it takes off the points of your record :) I find it a beautiful analogy with the subject you both discussed... Once again, great topic for reflections, Sebastian! You know how to choose them :)

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Thank you Oksana for your insights, I really really like the quote you share from your martial arts instructor. It is exactly like that. This is why the lesson for life and how to apply is to simply understand that preparedness and anticipation is everything. We are not machines that can get it always right, but what one should realize through self-awareness is if one worked on all that was under one's control, and what is not, was at least observed not to be fully surprised by it.

This framework can be easily extrapolated to the political times we live today, without entering in a debate here, one could try to think... in which of the 4 quadrants are we today? is it a moment of strong men or a moment of weak men, is it one of good times or bad times? is there any correlation between the two? Again, not something to be answered here or to be interpreted as if it were black and white... but certainly something to reflect upon.

Thank you again for the engagement.

Sebastian

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Absolutely agree. Also, speaking in the current social and (geo)political context, this is why it’s important to know and understand the history which tends to repeat itself to some extent in one way or another... Given, of course, that the history wasn’t “censored” or rewritten at the time of being presented to the public... But that’s a totally different discussion.

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It would be great if we can continue the conversation in the near future as I'm curious which quadrant you guys think we're in now and how you make that determination. I feel it's an important topic.

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At the geopolitical, historical cycles level it is always interesting to try to understand if the world is in a time of strong men of character building good times, or in a time of weak men of character creating problems in the future… or if we are already in those good or bad times and we are living in a transition period… don’t have the answer, just the reflection

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Sebastian and Minodora, I don’t think there is a clear cut answer to this question. I feel it’s all in the eye of a beholder. From my perspective, we are in a destructive stage that resulted from a decade of relaxed and indulgent practices. But my opinion may be too biased and exacerbated by the fact that the life of my family and friends back in Ukraine has been uprooted a year ago and I lost a few close friends for some unknown elusive “higher purposes”. For someone on the other side of the line, we could be in the strongest situation ever considering the current technological progress and its potential we and may be becoming even stronger. For someone doing research in Antarctica, things are pretty much the same, maybe just a bit warmer because of climate change...:) The thing is, there are so many contributing variables that represent the complexity of the current state of affairs that operate simultaneously that we may just not comprehend their true impact on us and future generations...

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Thanks for sharing Oksana and certainly thanks for your vulnerability with respect to the sad situation in Ukraine. I’m sorry to hear about the lives touched closed to you. I tend to agree with both your perspectives, that on one hand individual circumstances may make people see the current times different, however from a macro level I have the feeling that we are in a relative “weak leaders, hard times” global scenario in general terms... which is not very encouraging of course. You can read the book “The Fourth Turning”, by William Strauss and Neil Howe and have a feel for what story tells us which cycle we may be in. But of course these things require a lot more time for analysis and conversation.

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Thank you Sebastian. And thank you for the book recommendation, I’m curious to read what it had to say.

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I've been reflecting on this today and I agree with both of you. I feel there's different layers and levels we can consider; from an individual point of view as suggested by Oksana or a macro level noted by Sebastian. As individuals we go through our own cycle of good times versus hardship... unique for each of us. On a macro level it's tough to generalize as there's so much difference country by country, or continent by continent. I also agree with Sebastian that overall we are in a time of hardship that followed a time of prosperity and relaxation that made us weak and I feel that in the past 5-10 years humanity lost important core values like family, connection and community, commitment to one another, depth of thought, etc.

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I'm really sorry to hear about your loved ones and million of other people from Ukraine going through this tragic and unnecessary war. Their courage and bravery impressed the whole world. Let's pray it will end soon 🙏

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I appreciate your words, Minodora. Let’s hope.

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That is going to be some good discussion, Minodora! 😊

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Thank you Oksana. I really like your comments and insights and I'm happy we can all engage in reflections and conversations that we can benefit from, that opens our minds to new concepts and learning. Beautiful quote from your martial arts instructor. We can use it so often in our lives.

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When times are hard the obvious option is to get stronger, more resilient and hopefully anti-fragile. Then as the stamina and character grow the individual will achieve success personally or professionally. It is easier to achieve for most as we want to push through, to solve the problem as we don't really have a choice. The opposite to that: good times may prompt us to relax and enjoy those good times we, so hard fought for... don't we need them? The challenge is here because it's easier to invite complacency in when times are good. In terms of leadership it's more challenging to keep a team motivated and striving for success when times are good and great leaders need those skills to motivate a successful team to grow even more successful. What do you think and how can this be achieved?

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The main factor here is to keep always a constant state of alertness to trends and an even attitude towards the good and the bad. Of course that rewarding and relaxing as part of celebrating a success as well as applying more pressure and stress when things are not going well is part of normal life... However this framework of thinking is to me very important for self-awareness.

One knows that if in the good times you become complacent, bad things will come, so the trick is to 1. SWOT yourself and your team frequently, 2. always focus on trends and leading indicators, 3. understand that it is the job of any person (personal or team) to seek continuous improvement; so it doesn’t matter if times and tough or easy, it is consistency in this dimension what helps stay in course.

In a bigger scale of analysis, an enterprise that aims to last 100-200 years, that has that line of sight, knows that life is cyclical and what really counts is to develop continuously new capabilities, understand trends, prepare for the hard times and thrive and grow in the good ones, because nothing will last forever.

In a more simple scale, with a team, after a good year, the key of the matter is to understand that there is always a new possible ahead, a new bar to raise, a new aspect to improve, so the team have always an opportunity to celebrate and get to work, not to sit down and live in the success of yesterday.

In a personal level, you are in a relationship, things are great, perfect... can you just relax and stop paying attention to the details that make it great, or should you be aware of what could make ir break and keep working at those good things?

In my mind this is a framework for self-awareness of a doom loop that needs ro be avoided at all costs by being consistent at elevating the possible for continuous improvement.

Hope it helps, long answer and probably not well organized.

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Of course it helps and thank you so much for the feedback. You touched on very important things to pay attention to: self awareness, consistency, trends, different possibilities, anticipated or not scenarios that can challenge the status quo, new learning opportunities. Also I'm glad you brought into attention the personal relationships as that's an area where we all can improve and do better. Maybe easier in business as there's always the next performance review or metrics to show us how well we're doing but in personal relationships we don't really have those metrics and we need to come up with them and check in often to make sure we know exactly what's happening, how we do and how we can improve. Again, your feedback is very helpful and insightful. Thank you!!!

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Couldn’t agree more that this approach is so much needed in personal relationships. Great observation, Minodora!

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Great article Sebastian on a very current and importanttopic! Thank you for reflecting on it and sharing so we can reflect too and start a conversation.

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Thanks Minodora for the feedback

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