self-knowledge – Page 2 – Sasha Dichter's Blog

A “no” can mean a lot of things.

It can mean that you’re wrong or that you’re right.

It can mean you’re way off course or completely on track.

It can mean that you’re threatening or that you’re misguided.

It can mean that you need to try harder and it can mean that it’s time to give up.

It can mean that you asked too soon or too late, that your story had no mojo or that you happened to ask on the wrong day.

A “no” by virtue of being a “no” tells you very little. A “no” is deeply subject to interpretation. Its “no-ness” is not inherently meaningful.

But knowing what a “no” does to you – now that could be valuable. If no’s makes you slow down, shy away, and question yourself, that’s something you want to know. If no’s save you from wasting time but you often forget to listen, you want to know that too. If no’s cause you to push harder and to want to prove others wrong…yup, knowing that is important too.

Does a “no” attract you or repel you? Does it have gravitational force or refractive powers? Does it stop you in your tracks or add fuel to the fire?

What do you know about how you react to a “no”?

Schools teach two sets of lessons, one useful, one problematic.

The (generally) useful lessons are the ones that teach us the things that schools are meant to teach – reading, writing and arithmetic, progressing to critical thinking and deep domain expertise.

The second, silent, unspoken lesson is that schools are in the business of teaching us (defining for us) what we’re supposed to learn and master (they give out the grades after all). And then more silently still they hand over this role to our employers who define the rules of the game with evaluation matrices that tell us if we “did not meet” “met” or “exceeded” expectations.

Whose expectations, exactly?

It takes a while (sometimes forever) to figure out that the most powerful levers for one’s personal development aren’t the skeleton keys that teach us how to be great __________ (speakers / analysts / bloggers / designers / teachers / coders / investors / whatever). That’s just skill mastery.

The most powerful lever is is figuring out what configuration of skills matter the most to what we hope to accomplish. This is why we can’t outsource this process of discovery (it is discovery, it’s not a set playbook) to our teachers and employers and parents and friends.

Our job, first and foremost, is to figure out what it takes to be great, and then to have the courage and conviction to go out and do those things that will get us there.

The figuring out part is the messy, quiet bit that people mostly don’t talk about, even though it’s really the most important thing.

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