MIND newsletter: Painkiller or vitamin?
Happy Saturday everyone!
1. M (Challenge your mindset)
One piece of advice I received in my early career was “be a painkiller, not a vitamin”, meaning be unique, differentiate yourself and prove that you are irreplaceable.
Up until recently I still thought that it is good advice in this Western work culture.
What I did not realize was that in proving I’m unique, I lost an important part of my identity cultivated by the Eastern philosophy I have been raised with – the identity that could merge with others’ because we are all connected (or a no-self concept in Buddhism).
Does everything have to be an expression of our inner nature? Perhaps not.
Is ego bad? Absolutely no.
But we need to know how to regulate that and find the balance between being a painkiller – claiming your strengths and unique skills – and being a vitamin – not taking yourself too seriously and knowing that we are just a tiny part of this collective energy.
That balance will define how you interact with others, how you answer questions in a job interview, and how you lead your life through the ups and downs.
2. I (I’m my own coach)
Balance every thought with its opposition. Because the marriage of them is the destruction of illusion.
Thought can only defile ego if we believe it’s always true. However, thoughts are not facts.
While we have lots of emotionally charged thoughts, they are not all absolute truths. Recognizing the difference between fact and opinion can assist us in challenging the dysfunctional or harmful opinions we have about ourselves and others.
A good exercise for us to differentiate between factual thoughts and opinions, is to go through each statement you have in mind, then:
– Form its opposition
– Try to identify whether the original statement is a fact or an opinion
– Can both statements (the original and the opposition) be possibly true? If yes, very likely both are not facts.
3. N (The power of Now)
What is one thought about you and one thought about others that you just realized weren’t true?
4. D (Do)
Practice exercise 2 every day, note down those thoughts and observe how they influence your attitudes and behaviors.
