500 Words a Week - New Year’s Reflections
I’ve two main reflections for moving into 2023. One may be familiar to anyone who seen my Instagram post yesterday. The picture below, I got for Christmas when I was 16/17.
At the time I wanted it for the obvious reason of having Arnold on it. Looking at it now, I resonate more with the word below Arnold. I’m incredibly lucky to be doing something that brings me so much enjoyment. That younger Charlie who asked for the poster wouldn’t have a clue about what the future held and would be shocked if I could go tell him where we currently are and what we are doing.
Sometimes we lose sight of the forest for the trees. We get bogged down in the day-to-day proceedings that we forget to zoom out and look at how far we’ve come. Moving into 2023, I’m going to try and remember this more often.
At the same time, we can’t let the comfort of looking at how far we have come stop us pursuing our path forward or moving towards that which we would like to achieve. This links into my next main reflection.
The second main reflection is, are we allowing ourselves to become too comfortable at times?
Are we doing enough things that make us nervous? Are we doing enough things where we feel on the brink of our ability, pushing us forward and developing us?
Are we doing things that make others slightly question what we are doing? Or are we abiding by the group and not trying to deviate from the norm?
This aligns with something I heard over the course of the year called “Tall Poppy Syndrome”. In that, the poppy that grows faster or ahead of the other poppies will inevitably be trimmed down to match the other poppies. People will look to criticise those who go outside the norm or defer from the group.
There’s a wonderful quote from Nassim Nicholas Taleb from “Antifragile” which summarizes this reflection:
“If you take risks and face your fate with dignity, there is nothing you can do that makes you small. If you don’t take risks, there is nothing you can do that makes you grand. Nothing. And when you take risks, insults by half-men, small men, those who don’t risk anything, are similar to barks by non-human animals. You can’t feel insulted by a dog.”
