Massimo Curatella

Tag: personal development

  • Dissatisfaction as a Motivation to Change

    Not being satisfied can be a good thing. Feeling like you should be doing different things, or getting different results can be a good force for change. You can embark yourself in a personal development journey.

    To get the best out of your self awareness and your sensitivity to something that is missing, you should act upon it. If you don’t make a plan, and you stick to it by doing something, even little, every single day, you run the risk of suffering  because if you realize that something should be changed in your life and you don’t do anything or you cannot do anything, then you create frustration for yourself.

    Being frustrated is one of the ways to become unhappy. Even if it is painful and if it requires you to feel a distance from your surroundings, perceiving the need to change yourself is a good thing. But at the same time, you need to make a plan out of it. Sometimes it’s not important to have a clear mind and a clear idea about what to do, and how, but it helps a lot to act.

    Action brings clarity. The more you do something to move you forward the more it becomes clear: If that is not what you want to do, at least you’ll know what you don’t want to do.

    Feeling yourself missing something can be a force for good. Use it as fuel to change your life.

  • Learning Pains

    I started to play a musical instrument. Last time I did it was so long ago that I barely remember. I wanted it and I have it gifted. Only passion and curiosity move me. Now I have fingers in pain and I can barely type these words.

    This pain is different from the psychological one experienced when trying to keep my daily writing habit. This is physical pain. I can feel it right now.

    And it is so good.

  • Trees of the past and future

    At every moment of my life I’m at the intersection of two trees, one made of all of the events occurred and the decisions I made which brought me to today and the other made of all the possible decisions I will make in the future.

    At every moment of my life I can consider and reflect upon the tree of the past but I cannot change it. While I can ponder and change the roots of the future tree by making the next decision.

    My future begins with the next thing I will do.

  • You Can’t Get Always What You Want

    How you react to adversities defines you character. You have to confront yourself first with your reaction to the environment and that is where your real self shows up.

    Demonstrating the capability but also the will to adapt makes you resilient. Becoming angry and refusing to find trade-offs generates unsatisfactory feelings and put you down.

    It’s not just to always look at the bright side but it definitely helps

  • I did a monthly retrospective

    And it was good

  • Adding Review and Revision to your Creative Process

    In your deliberate practice of daily creative habit building you cannot skip the review and revision phases. Exercising your kick 10’000 times without feedback and correction would have a pale comparison against a complete feedback loop.

    When you write daily only the check boxes, that’s what you risk. A stale routine of boring activities carried on just for the sake of them.

    If you are serious about improving, then, reviewing your past performances becomes essential in your habit-forming practice.

    Where should you start? From the beginning, take your oldest artifact and put it in your review queue. If it is old enough there will be a good chance you will look at it as something sufficiently new for you. That’s a good application of the future self approach. If you put enough time between your creative production and the review you are multiply yourself into: past, present and future selves.

    Second order thinking would help in your metacognition. How are you reviewing your past creations? What can you learn from them? How will the learning affect your future creations?

  • Systematic, iterative, incremental experimentation as a self-growth strategy

    Intentional serendipity is a powerful technique to have new ideas and to test our thinking skills. It requires not only being comfortable with uncertainty but to search for it. It’s a delicate balance between preserving ourselves and our interests while opening to the chance by creating opportunities intentionally. As human beings we have in our nature both the adventure spirit as well as the one of surviving and so avoiding exposure to dangers. That is why it requires an effort to go beyond our comfort zone while minimizing risks. Iterative incremental approaches are useful to form a habit to experiment, continuously. Nobody would self-impose pain or lethal risks, and a healthy attitude towards experimenting, evaluating, and reflecting on the outcome of our trials is an effective push to self-growth.

  • From Goals To Systems

    Targeting at specific goals can be the wrong thing to do when you’re aiming at personal development. You could risk ignoring or even preventing unexpected positive opportunities to happen. If you’re too focused on pursuing a goal you might force certain behaviors just for the sake of the goal not to develop your capabilities. We should focus, instead, on developing our skills and making us flexible and open to new opportunities even if they were not initially planned. Not only do I feel I am falling into this trap but I also think I am in a boring routing of filling in an empty space just to check the box for the day. “Have you written today?” is my reminder asking me every day. Yes, I did, also today, but:

    • Have I learned something new?
    • Have I reflected on what happened to me today?
    • Did I make any progress towards long-term goals?
    • Did I develop my potential instead of checking boxes?
    • Did I increase any of my skills?
    • Did I dedicate quality time to family and loved ones?
    • Did I develop my network of friends, colleagues and acquaintances?
    • Did I save resources for a difficult time?
    • Did I do any maintenance of my systems?

    We should change our personal development systems from pursuing goals to more reflective behaviors about developing our potential.

  • Create Opportunities

    By adopting the attitude of always providing value and meaning to the people around you, your family, your coworkers, your clients, you can create opportunities. Both for you, your reputation and the chance to grow, learn and discover and for other people to get help and learn from you.

    This entails being present, listening deeply, being patient and honest. By being the best person you can be you are creating the conditions to become even better.

    You don’t necessarily need big occasions, big names, or extremely ambitious contexts, you can create opportunities every time with everybody, everywhere. It’s your mindset that makes a difference.

  • Living in an Insensitive World

    How to live with the knowledge of the evils of the world without being corrupted by them? It’s in our nature to search for knowledge. We will inevitabile unearth the worst parts of human beings and life. We need to learn how to recognize what’s lethal without being intoxicated by it. We need to be aware of the bad things without being corrupted by them. It’s a difficult balance and requires self-awareness and willpower. It’s only by knowing that we can work to avoid the negative consequences of our actions or by being exposed to harm and corruption. The battle begins when we learn. We need to learn to stay safe, sane and balanced but there’s no escaping from the dark side.