Becoming a parent has been one of the most rewarding and terrifying experiences of my lifetime. I get to watch a little spirit explore everything in the world for the very first time... while I'm simultaneously afraid that I'll never live up to this superhuman expectation that I have to be the perfect parent and not mess her life up.
In the months leading up to the birth of my daughter, I vividly remember many well-meaning people telling me to sleep while I still had the chance. As someone that made it through MIT without ever needing coffee and without pulling an all-nighter for academic reasons, I scoffed at the idea that parenthood would affect me in any significant way in that department.
Boy, was I wrong.
Knowledge is not power. It is the potential for power, but it is only realized if it's expressed through action. Stated another way, I love the following quote by Derek Sivers: "If [more] information was the answer, then we'd all be billionaires with perfect abs."
Consider the following:
"How could they do this to me?"
While I may not know you personally, I'm willing to bet that you've asked this question more than once in your lifetime. Worse yet, some of these experiences occurred with people you knew, loved, and trusted. This makes these situations all the more painful because there is an expectation that they wouldn't (or shouldn't) knowingly caused us harm. And in the midst of all the pain, we are left to wonder why it happened.
With less five minutes before my presentation, I found myself making my 4th trip to the bathroom stall where I sat down to try and get my breathing and heart rate under control. A team of executives and principle investigators from DuPont flew a private jet up to Boston the annual review of all research performed and funded under the DMA (Dupont-MIT Alliance). I was barely into my second year of research and, despite making significant progress in the sophistication of my experiments, I was terrified that I was going to get bombarded in the Q&A period.
One of the most powerful ways to build trust is the simple-but-not-easy process of making and keeping commitments. It's simple because it only takes two steps: you make a commitment and then you make it happen. It's difficult because it's incredibly easy to overcommit one's capacity, overestimate one's skillset, and overstate one's desire to see it through to completion. In fact, the asymmetric nature of the two steps almost makes it inevitable that some agreements will be broken or renegotiated to something more realistic.
Do people trust you? It's a serious question because it greatly impacts how effective you'll be in those relationships. In high trust situations, decisions can be made quickly, there is no need to second guess a person's intentions or abilities, and the occasional miscommunication can be dealt with in a straightforward manner. Contrast that with low trust situations where decisions need to be discussed in great detail or even require lawyers to get involved.
Dread, worry, anxiety: these are just a few of the emotions that most people experience as the alarm goes off on Monday morning, signalling the end of the weekend and the start of getting back to "the grind." Most of the time this negative emotional state lingers around like a dark cloud with the only glimmers of light piercing through is hope that it'll all be over soon. The hope that we'll "get through it" so we can get back to the weekend.
No, I'm not a masochist. I enjoy warm showers just as much as everyone in this world privileged enough to have access to clean water and cheap electricity. However, I am willing to play the part of a guinea pig if there is some compelling long-term payoff in exchange for short term discomfort.
We often assume that others can see what we see and know what we know. However, the only way to be certain is to not assume, to ask questions, and to connect the dots.