💎 Friday Gems (Thought Control, 100 Wants Challenge, Expedition Mindset, and much more!)
Once the malady is seen the cure is present.
Empathy is not a checkbox.
Empathy is not empty slogan.
Empathy is not optional.
As designers, when we claim to be human-centered, we need to have empathy for ALL people and not just the users of their products or services. Our empathy shouldn’t be transactional and for the benefit of a company or our team or our in-group. We must expand our empathy, our hospitality, our grace to all humans especially in these challenging times.
Let’s show empathy for all humans and not just those privileged to buy our products or use our services! ✊🏽
On to this week’s gems.
In this week’s edition:
💎 Awareness: Thought Control
✌🏽 Self-Discovery: The 100 Things Challenge
💜 The Mindful Designer: Expedition Mindset
🧠 Wisdom: Survival
🎵 Music: "Denial is a River" / "Boiled Peanuts" - Doechii
Awareness
💎 Thought Control
Peace isn’t a place with no fear, but a place where fear can be felt.
Do you ever feel sleeplessness before a big event? It happens each and every single time for me the night before a race, a presentation, a podcast interview, basically anything that gets me out of my comfort zone. I usually fight the thoughts, tossing and turning, as they rage through my mind and body but reading Carina’s post on how she also struggled with her runaway thoughts gives us a path forward through the angst.
Fear wanted to have a seat at the banquet table and I was trying to think it into going away.
The thoughts are not the issue, the emotions we feel are not the issue, it our distaste for the feelings that cause us the distress.
But fear wasn’t the problem. My distaste for it was. My thinking was the fumes from the fire I hadn’t put out yet.
Getting to the root of issue is critical to breaking free from the grip our thoughts have on us. Accepting our emotions and working with them is the path forward to less sleepless nights and a better life.
We can’t start to feel until we stop hating our big feelings or ourselves for being “sensitive.”
P.S Thank you Carina for sharing the Doechii video, I had heard about her but never heard her music let alone watch her perform and like you I’m obsessed. 💜
🔗 Thought Control by
Self-Discovery
💎 The 100 Things Challenge
It was easy to come up with the first twenty or so wants. The middle sixty stretched my brain. And the final twenty was when the real challenge began.
The insightful part was what happened next.
If you’re like me, you spend a many hours in your head thinking about the things you desire.
These things we want bounce around in our heads, sometimes we are aware of them but other times they subconsciously direct us in directions that aren’t aligned with our values and can end up distracting us and even hurting us.
This is where the 100 Wants List challenge can be a powerful tool for self-discovery.
Kim Witten, a transformational coach, initially shared the 100 Wants List Challenge with me when she joined on the Low Fidelity podcast. Kim recently updated her challenge by sharing the insights she gained as a result.
When you embark on this challenge keep in mind that our wants change depending on our mood, so try doing this challenge when you’re not rushed or stressed out.
Think of the list you create as a living document and update it as you become aware of your wants.
As I started my own list of wants, I realized that instead of making a vague statement such as “I want a better car”, being more specific brought more meaning to my want and instead wrote, “I want a more reliable car so I don’t have to worry about it breaking down.” which I think will help sorting and prioritization of my wants.
The goal is to challenge yourself to get past the surface level wants to the interesting and perhaps the hidden wants that could be influencing your thoughts and behavior.
This is a wonderful exercise that can be done regularly to see what patterns emerge and most importantly to live a more intentional life.✊🏽
🔗 Dare to Create a List of 100 Things You Want - Then do this with it by
Personal Growth
🧠 Expedition Mindset
An expedition mindset is an approach to problem solving that can be applied to a wide range of workplace challenges. It emphasises planning, rapid prioritisation under pressure, with an emphasis on healthy team culture and wellbeing.
The Expedition Mindset was originally developed as a toolkit for research teams on expeditions in Afghanistan which required disparate team members to come together quickly to work towards a shared, high impact goal, with high pressure and severe constraints which also has many similarities with work projects.
As mindful designers, we are also working with diverse group of people who need to come together quickly, with high pressure and a high visibility goal as well as with many constraints.
Whether we are out in a hostile land or in the safety of an office, developing an expedition mindset is a empowering tool for our personal growth.
Here are a few skills needed to develop an expedition mindset:
Awareness of team member intents - Bringing awareness to each team member’s goals can help with decision making.
Prioritization - I would make this ruthless prioritization so that the team works on the most critical tasks without wasting time.
Flexibility - Each moment brings new information and change. By remaining flexible we can adapt to new information without letting it derail us.
Self-sufficiency - Feeling empowered to make decisions on our own enables us to use be creative and feel a sense of ownership of the team goals.
Extensive Team collaboration - By removing the noise of drama, distractions, and bringing more clarity the team can feel supported to work together towards the goal.
These real skills will help you feel empowered to bring your best, lean in, and make an impact within your team and with the team’s goals.✊🏽
🔗 Developing an Expedition Mindset by Studio D
Wisdom
💎 Survival
It is not the strongest species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the ones most responsive to change.
—Charles Darwin, On the Origin of Species
Music
💎 Denial is a River by Doechii
Yes, I have been living under a rock. This is the first time I have heard the amazing and lyrical rapper, Doechii. The rhyming lyrics, the music, the storytelling, the choreography, the everything, is just perfect!!!
That’s it for this week’s Friday Gems. Hit reply and share any gems you have found insightful.
May curiosity be your guide!
Another great post, Rizwan! I especially liked what you had to say about specificity bringing more meaning to your 100 wants challenge, what a fantastic insight. (And thanks for featuring it, too)