?What makes me a winner every day ?

Stacking up wins might be easier than we think

Happy Monday Friends,

I learned in my customer service training many years ago that it takes 20 positive experiences to counter one negative experience. Research shows that it is the same for our brain and psychological experiences.?We need a surplus of 20 small wins not to keep dwelling on a single perceived failure.

This information is crucial to understanding our willingness or discomfort to undertake creative challenges. For every perceived failure, we have to train our minds to spot at least 20 small wins. The more we stack up evidence for our ability to figure out complex situations, the more we are able to navigate future challenges.

But it is not that easy to always focus on the positive side. Evolutionally our brain is wired to perceive a threat or failure much more intensely than perceiving a win. Therefore, we have to work a little bit harder to spot our wins.

A simple trick that has helped me stack up small wins is asking myself at the end of each day :

What are my 5 wins for the day??I sit with this question for at least 5 minutes and list out everything that I feel was a win that day. It could be as simple as getting my inbox to zero, putting 100 words on a blank paper or taking a rest day to walk around and reflect. Then I ask myself:

What didn’t work, and how can I do a better job next time??It is a helpful way to reframe failure and makes me think about the possibilities of figuring stuff out instead of just framing something as a total failure.

What I have learnt from frequently doing this exercise is that the days with just big wins and just big failures are rare. Most days are sprinkled with small wins and small failures. In fact, one can’t exist without the other. The more we learn to spot them and dance with them, the better we get at facing our fears. It is the combination of both that makes us a prolific winner.

Have a great week,

Love,

Wajiha

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What I enjoyed this week :

Book:

Wanting by Luke Burgis: The book discusses Rene Gerard’s memetic theory. In my opinion, the book could have been shorter. But, it is still filled with tools to spot memetic behaviour in us and all around us. It is a great reminder to inspect what we truly want instead of chasing what social media, advertising and our social circles tell us what we should want. Here is one of my highlights to explain the concept a bit further.

“An unbelieved truth is often more dangerous than a lie. The lie, in this case, is the idea that I want things entirely on my own, uninfluenced by others, that I’m the sovereign king of deciding what is wantable and what is not. The truth is that my desires are derivative, mediated by others and that I’m part of an ecology of desire that is bigger than I can fully understand.”

Reflection:

Ramadan Kareem. It is the first week of Ramadan. It is my favourite time of the year because it is an Islamic month designed for introspection, reflection and community. But you don’t have to be a Muslim to observe it. Ramadan is for everyone.

If we dedicate a month to reflect and work on limiting exposure to external distractions, limiting our material consumption, giving more charity and extending our support to those in need in our community, the ripple effects will continue throughout the year. And yes, we can't eat anything from sunrise to sunset, not even water, because this is the least we can do to truly put ourselves in the shoes of those who don’t have clean drinking water due to our excessive consumption.