Leo's Letter #43 // Earned Secrets
It's personal, not strictly business
Hey, it’s great to have you.
Welcome new subscribers! I’m glad you enjoyed my Chief of Stuffs article.
Before I get into this article, I have to say that this is not a business article. Instead, it’s a reflection on my trip to Mexico earlier this month. To make up for omitting many specific details from the trip (those are for me to digest in private), I tried to make this piece interesting by making it actionable.
Read on for my thoughts on:
Using skill to get you past where luck can take you
The value of having friends to give you feedback
Becoming comfortable with new sensations so that they become familiar
Lastly, for the business-minded, if you want me to write about my earned secrets in the workplace, reply to this email / comment on this post. I’ll then write it.
During my time working at AbstractOps, a process automation company, I remember the founders referring to the term “earned secrets”.
These were the bits of knowledge gained through blood, sweat, and tears.
The founders, Hari and Adam, were both operations executives within their former companies. They handled tasks such as running payroll, handling expense reimbursements, and managing contracts.
The pair met, shared their best practices, and found out that they were seeing the same sorts of problems. They then interviewed dozens of other founders and discovered that their interviewees also faced the same issues.
Startup operations was a common problem. Hari and Adam set out to build AbstractOps as a common solution.
The company would leverage their shared experience to figure out the right way to perform any task, from registering a company with a state payroll department to granting equity to new employees.
No more having to Google how to do X. The system could say, “this is the way”.
A tale of two trips
This post is not an ad for AbstractOps.
It’s a reflection on the two trips I took to Mexico this year. After having an absolute blast on my solo trip to Mexico City in August, I thought I’d be able to hit the ground running on the second time around in December.
However, I was in for a surprise.
On my first trip, I simply put myself out there in a new environment and had a great time.
On my most recent trip, I expected to get the same outcomes just by being there. I arrived with inflated expectations and didn’t realize my limits.
Despite being in a different environment, I was the same person in my:
Attitudes - thinking too much and always in the “go, go, go” mindset
Thoughts - being too quick to an opinion vs. taking things in as they were
Expressions - sometimes being like the person who talks during the movies
Ok - this is an exaggeration and one without much detail. I’d been drinking from the fire hose two weeks into a new job. I carried this work mentality of purposely getting in over my head to this trip - I tried to get “everything” and ended up getting “nothing” (again a hyperbole).
As the blog More To That puts it, travel is no cure for the mind. I was in a new environment but my mind wasn’t.
Not the personal development journey I expected
Fortunately, there’s light at the end of the tunnel to my story of earned secrets.
I learned that luck could only get me so far. I also learned from my friends who were with me on this trip.
I had absolutely no idea about some of the blindspots I uncovered after asking my friends for feedback. I had nobody to share my experience with in real-time on my first trip so I’m incredibly grateful to have experienced my second trip together with others who looked out for me.
As one friend put it, he said that it gave him no joy in giving me his critique. He was only saying it for my benefit.
My memento to his offering is reflecting on his feedback and incorporating it.
A three-step process to earning secrets
You can earn secrets through the process of understanding, feeling, and applying.
First, you have to understand where you are now, where you want to go, and what you need to do to get there. This involves honest self-inquiry coupled with seeking feedback from others to uncover your blind spots.
Warning: it’ll be uncomfortable. Who loves listening to themselves speak or watching a video of themselves present? Not me! But I’ll do it to improve.
Next, you have to feel the difference to notice the change - you don’t know what you don’t know.
On the mental side, philosopher Wittgenstein once said “the limits of my language mean the limits of my world”. A book like Brene Brown’s Atlas of the Heart aims to map the language of human experience through words. A worthwhile read.
On the physical side, I learned how to feel from a photoshoot in Mexico City. My photographer encouraged me to stretch out, oftentimes in a much more pronounced way than I ever did given the limited range of how I normally moved my body. I felt completely different with my arms stretched over a bench and sure looked different in my photos. No wonder there’s the phrase “power pose”.
Lastly, you have to apply what you’ve learned and felt to get used to it. Habits are built through repetition. Take weightlifting as an example - you grow muscle through progressive overload. This is the gradual increase in weight or frequency of a lift. Your muscles will eventually get used to the tension you put on them. You add more tension for them to grow. If you don’t use them, they’ll shrink. Your social skills are just like a muscle.
My personal enjoyment trip became a personal development one and I’m thankful for the earned secrets that came out of it.
Until Next Time
Thanks for reading! Have any thoughts to share? Comment on the post!
Find me at leolu.info or on Twitter.
+1