Chapter 86: Don’t be the slave of your phone
“Men have become the tools of their tool.”
Henry David Thoreau Going back to the busy father mentioned in the last
chapter, this tip comes in handy.
Don’t always pick up your phone each time it
rings;
your phone is supposed to be for YOUR convenience, not for those who
call you. Give yourself the freedom to continue what you are doing and let the
call go to voice mail. Some time ago I always got very anxious when I didn’t
take a call.
I thought I had missed something.
My roommate Pol was much
cooler about it. He only answered the phone when he wanted to, when he felt
like it, and if not - he just went on doing what he was doing without bothering. I
started liking the idea and worked on adapting this “Zen-like” mentality telling
myself that “They will call again.” I also learnt that if it’s a really important call
the caller will not give up and probably call five times within 3 minutes.
Action Step:
Try it out! Don’t be a slave of your phone and leverage voicemail.
Chapter 87: How to deal with problems
"Every problem has in it the seeds of its own solution.
If you don't have any problems, you don't get any seeds."
Norman Vincent Peale
Do you have many problems? Congratulations!!! And I’m not kidding! You
have many opportunities to grow, because a problem is always an opportunity to
grow by learning from it! So let’s have a better look at this. Over 20 years ago,
when I started working at
Disneyworld in Orlando, we – the newbies – were taught that the word
“problem” doesn’t exist in the vocabulary of a Disney Cast Member: “We don’t
have problems, we only have
challenges
here”. Dr. Lair Ribeiro writes that
“Your problems are your best friends” and
Leadership Guru Robin Sharma asks us to see our problems as blessings! So
what are problems now? Challenges, blessings, friends? Or all three of them?
Isn’t life just facing one problem after another? What makes all the difference is
how you face it and how you learn from it! When you start learning from your
problems life gets much better. Look back at the problems you had in your life.
Didn’t each one of it have something positive?
Maybe a loss in business saved you from an even bigger loss, because you learnt
from it. In hard times it can be very beneficial for you to adapt the belief that
life/God/the universe only puts a problem in your way if you are able to solve it!
Questions:
1) What problems do you have in your life right now that you haven’t found
a solution for yet?
2) Make a list of your problems.
3) What would change if you see these problems as challenges or even
opportunities? How would it make you feel?
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