Lessons from 2022

On vulnerability

Ties that are formed from a stance of vulnerability tend to deepen faster than relationships that begin in the midst of regularity. There is truth in the thought that vulnerability brings people closer. The humans whom I met in the middle of this trying time jumped from being strangers to good friends. Conversations still involved the usual small talk but they are also peppered with recollections of real experiences that I would not have otherwise shared given a better state of life.

On becoming more relatable

The Morning Show | Season 2, Episode 5: Ghosts

There’s a certain affinity that can only be formed with individuals who are going (or have gone) through the toughest adversities. Broken people tend to be more relatable for the very reason that they are more human. I myself am more comfortable pouring my heart out to someone whose life is far from perfect. If this is the effect that brokenness from a damaging season has on the people around me — if it truly makes them feel more at home with me — then it just became a whole lot easier to accept why I have to go through what I am going through.

Being a proven people-person (Includer is my fifth theme, mind you), the last thing I want in any social interaction is to be hindered by differences — in culture, status, or achievements among others. Now I am prized with this rare experience which, when shared, has the capacity to tear down walls that people may have formed based on their impression of me.

On the relative nature of hardships

Because I have gone through this most difficult ordeal, I have come to notice that my tolerance of hardships has shifted significantly. What would have previously bothered me a few years ago appear to be simpler, easier to resolve. I no longer cry over spilt milk as much (at least for the smaller servings that used to stump me before), and the things that I fret over have become less petty. I am proud to say that time spent on regrets and rumination are far shorter nowadays.

On overthinking

The Crown | Season 1, Episode 2: Hyde Park Corner

I have also began to be picky with the matters I use my brain cells for. A spontaneous realization occurred to me one day and it came from a media and broadcasting parallel: airtime is precious and expensive, and I better follow the same principle with how I utilize my mind.

More seriously, I am learning the difficult practice of acceptance — accepting what has already happened (the unchangeable past), then pouring all my energies into what I can still control (the unwritten future). This does not come easy to me, having grown up as a massive ruminator and control freak (a deadly combination) and I had to take a major beating before finally starting to break out of the toxicity. Someday, and soon, I will laugh at the next mishap that comes along.

On patience

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This one is among the harder lessons to learn though I can say that I have made some progress. As if a single learning is not difficult enough to embrace, my mind was recently awakened to two paths to exhaust: patience in terms of time, and patience for myself.

On coming to terms with how I am wired

They say that hardships present the best opportunities to know oneself more. I have come to learn that contrary to the case for the majority, recollecting difficult experiences over and over again cause me more pain than good. Whereas popular belief and the ‘woke’ world would recommend revealing problems to the universe to uphold vulnerability and ‘healing,’ the opposite is true for me. Just the thought of being too personal on platforms filled with people whom I do not even know enough to trust, drains the strength out of me. I have decided to keep this adversity on a need-to-know basis — I can count with two hands and a foot the number of human beings who know the full account of what I am going through. I have come to know that this is what brings me healing and in the grand scheme of things, is what matters ultimately.

[to be continued]

Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman

3

“I feel sorry for beautiful people. Beauty, from the moment you possess it, is already slipping away, ephemeral. That must be difficult. Always having to prove that there’s more to you, wanting people to see beneath the surface, to be loved for yourself, and not your stunning body, sparkling eyes or thick, lustrous hair.”

6

“When the silence and the aloneness press down and around me, crushing me, carving through me like ice, I need to speak aloud sometimes, if only for proof of life.”

17

“Some people, weak people, fear solitude. What they fail to understand is that there’s something very liberating about it; once you realize that you don’t need anyone, you can take care of yourself.”

20

“The light was soft and gentle — 
summer was drifting ever onwards 
and the evening seemed delicate, fragile. 
We walked in silence, the kind that 
you didn’t feel the need to fill.”

22

“I suppose one of the reasons we’re all able to continue to exist for our allotted span in this green and blue vale of tears is that there is always, however remote it might seem, the possibility of change.”

23

“Time only blunts the pain of loss. It doesn’t erase it.”

31

“Tiny slivers of life — they all added up and helped you to feel that you, too, could be a fragment, a little piece of humanity who usefully filled a space, however miniscule.”

36

“Eleanor, I said to myself, sometimes you’re too quick to judge people. There are all kinds of reasons why they might not look like the kind of person you’d want to sit next to on a bus, but you can’t sum someone up in a ten-second glance. That’s simply not enough time. The way you try not to sit next to fat people, for example. There’s nothing wrong with being overweight, is there? They could be eating because they’re sad, the same way you used to drink vodka. They could have had parents who never taught them how to cook or eat healthily. They could be disabled and unable to exercise, or else they could have an illness that contributes to weight gain despite their best efforts. You just don’t know, Eleanor.”

39

“Your voice changes when you’re smiling, it alters the sound somehow.”

MasterClass: Effective and Authentic Communication by Robin Roberts

On public speaking:

• Engage your audience by establishing eye contact and looking at (a spot slightly above) them. Don’t spend more time looking at your cue cards.
• If you came prepared, there is always one audience member who’s paying attention to you, hanging onto your every word — find that person and deliver your speech to her. Don’t focus on the ones who are looking at their phones or distracted by other things.
• Enunciate, darling. Identify the little improvements in your manner of speaking and think of ways to carry them out.

You’ve already climbed so many mountains to get to where you are. Why, all of a sudden, do you feel that the one ahead of you is insurmountable?

Robin Roberts

Someone: I wanna be the next Robin Roberts.
Robin: That job's taken. You be you.

Grit by Angela Duckworth

Fortunate indeed are those who have a top-level goal so consequential to the world that it imbues everything they do, no matter how small or tedious, with significance.

Angela Duckworth

Interest → Practice → Purpose → Hope

“Grit depends on a different kind of hope. It rests on the expectation that our own efforts can improve our future. ‘I have a feeling tomorrow will be better’ is different from ‘I resolve to make tomorrow better.’ The hope that gritty people have has nothing to do with luck and everything to do with getting up again.”

Would I consider my earlier suffering to be
the result of particular mistakes I could 
avoid in the future?

Would I expand my focus beyond the recent past, 
remembering the many times I'd shrugged off 
failure and eventually prevailed?

If I try, I have a chance. If I never try, then I have no chance at all.

Cody Coleman

“If you want to be grittier, find a gritty culture and join it. If you’re a leader, and you want the people in your organization to be grittier, create a gritty culture.”

“There’s a hard way to get grit and an easy way. The hard way is to do it by yourself. The easy way is to use conformity — the basic human drive to fit in — because if you’re around a lot of people who are gritty, you’re going to act grittier.”

Often, our passion and perseverance do not spring from a cold, calculating analysis of the costs and benefits of alternatives. Rather, the source of our strength is the person we know ourselves to be.

Angela Duckworth

MasterClass: Film Scoring by Hans Zimmer

The music diary of Sherlock Holmes is one of my favorite lessons in Hans Zimmer’s class. It was a chance to look over the shoulder of a musical genius, peeking into his creative process when he pieced together the melodies, sounds, and tunes that later became an original score that earned an Academy Award nomination. The general tempo was 142 BPM and it was amazing how Hans wrote multiple variations of a landmark tune using different instruments, volumes, and perspectives. His Sherlock Holmes musical diary had a total of 811 bars, no less.

At the beginning of this lesson, he mentioned how he only began writing after a lot of procrastination and moments of having completely no idea where to start. I would think that an award-winning composer like Hans Zimmer would readily have it all together so it was truly relatable to learn that he also goes through the same struggles that are common to ordinary creatives like me.

Hans uses adjectives to describe the segments and bars that make up Jack Sparrow’s theme

As it turns out, Hans did not go to music school and this worked to his advantage. When working with professional musicians and the orchestra, instead of being trained with technical terms like pianissimo and ritardando, he uses simple words of instruction to communicate the required emotion (how) and the story or scene that is being supported by the music (why). I am deeply fascinated by masters like him who did not take the traditional training in his field and yet came out as one of the most successful. (A similar case is Sara Blakely who did not go to business school and yet built a billion-dollar empire with Spanx.)

MasterClass: Advertising and Creativity by Jeff Goodby and Rich Silverstein

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MasterClass: Style For Everyone by Tan France

Know your proportions. Know yourself.

Tan France

Like me, Tan is a huge fan of the classic, white sneakers. He wears it the same way I do, with the pant legs folded up to expose the ankles. He is also into folding up a coat’s sleeves and tucking out a bit of a loose top, both of which give an impression that he did not just wear the clothes but that he actually put together an outfit and carefully thought it out.

You don’t have a problematic body type; you just need to learn how to dress it.

Tan France

On buying for your body type:

• Tapered/skinny jeans work for almost everyone as it elongates the wearer’s legs. Short pants, on the flip side, gives an impression that the wearer’s legs are shorter than actual — even if she is actually tall.
• Tops should reach to the wearer’s natural hip. Going below that lengthens her torso and shortens her lower body.

For mix and matching color:

• Travel through the color wheel and start incorporating pieces that are of the colors adjacent to the wearer’s staples. Example: Since I wear a lot of blues, I can start by adding greens and purples to my outfits.
• Denim can be treated as a neutral and it goes with a lot — if not all — colors. Denim on denim (Canadian tuxedo) actually works, just avoid wearing extremely different shades at the same time.

Disappointment With God by Philip Yancey

Faith means believing in advance what will only make sense in reverse.

Philip Yancey

Is God unfair?

Why doesn’t he consistently punish evil people and reward good people? Why do awful things happen to people good and bad, with no discernible pattern?

Is God silent?

If he is so concerned about our doing his will, why doesn’t he reveal that will more plainly?

“The very clarity of God’s will had a stunting effect on the Israelites’ faith. Why pursue God when he had already revealed himself so clearly?”

Crystal clear guidance may serve some purpose but it does not seem to encourage spiritual development.

Childlike faith vs. fidelity

Faith like Job’s cannot be shaken because it is the result of having been shaken.

Rabbi Abraham Heschel

Is God hidden?

Why doesn’t he simply show up sometime, visibly, and dumbfound the skeptics once and for all?

“God did not play hide-and-seek with the Israelites, they had every proof of his existence you could ask for. But astonishingly — and I could hardly believe this result, even as I read it — God’s directness seemed to produce the very opposite of the desired effect. The Israelites responded not with worship and love, but with fear and open rebellion. God’s visible presence did nothing to improve lasting faith.”

“Would a burst of miracles nourish faith? Not the kind of faith God seems interested in, evidently. The Israelites give ample proof that signs may only addict us to signs, not to God.”

Two Wagers, Two Parables

“Each one of us must choose whether to live as if God exists, or as if he does not exist. . . . Is anyone watching? And the answer to that question rests squarely upon faith — by that and only that the just shall live.”

MasterClass: Business Strategy and Leadership by Bob Iger

Business requires a lot of risk and Bob Iger is one of the lucky ones to be naturally comfortable with it. One would not be able to deduce his go-getter attitude by how well-mannered and soft-spoken he is and yet this CEO was behind several of Disney’s game-changing maneuvers.

I particularly like the story of how Bob navigated the company through the $71.3-billion deal for 20th Century Fox. It was the biggest risk that they had to handle (Marvel and Pixar were far less) and yet he narrated the experience like it was just a minor mishap to his day. It was a combination of strategic thinking, being one step ahead, and recognizing real value that gave Disney the win.

Other takeaways:

• Stay relevant and keep up with competition. Following ESPN’s transition to on-demand content, Disney transitioned all their other content to form Disney+.
• Find ways to improve how business is currently being conducted. Prior to Disney’s acquisition of Marvel, the creation , distribution and consumption were being managed by different entities: Sony and Colombia created Spider Man, Fox and Universal also owned certain properties, while Paramount distributed the films. Disney streamlined and controlled all three functions, thereby allowing them to protect and continue to create brand value.