Listening is hard. I often fall short of being a great listener. It's easy for the mind to drift or to assume you know what the other person is talking about. I also struggle to find people who can listen well. I'm sure you have this challenge too.

Kate Murphy uses the phrase "lost art of listening"which is a great description.

The You're Not Listening book helps you reconnect with the art of listening. There are many examples of the power of listening to transform. For example, the feeling of love that can be generated when someone actively listens to you.

I really enjoyed the scientific studies shared in the You're Not Listening book. In particular, when someone shares an opposing view to yours, your brain responds like it's being chased by a bear!

"Your advice is not as good as you think it is."

A harsh truth shared by Michael Bungay-Stanier in The Advice Trap. This is the follow up to his bestseller The Coaching Habit.

The biggest takeaway was the three beliefs that drive people to give advice:

• You must have the answer!

• You must be responsible for it all!

• You must stay in control!

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I resonated with all of these. In particular, people often seek out my expertise as a thought leader. This means I have a strong urge to give people the answer. I continue to work hard on building awareness for when to tell vs ask.

Wow. Ego is the Enemy by Ryan Holiday is one of my all-time favourites. It addresses something we all need to grapple with and manage: our ego. Ryan Holiday has done an excellent job taking the ideas and principles of stoicism to the masses. He uses storytelling and real-life examples to demonstrate the importance of ego management. The section about money and ego was particularly helpful for me. This quote stopped me in my tracks:

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"Managing your ego is especially important with money. If you don’t know how much you need, the default easily becomes: more."

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Since reading this book 3 years ago I've really paid more attention to this. How much money do I need to lead the life I want?

Everything we do depends on the thinking we do first. Thinking for ourselves is still seen as quite a radical act. Traditionally, most of our societies have not created the conditions for us to think for ourselves. Many of us are therefore profoundly unsettled when confronted with the simple question: ‘What do you really think?’ The quality of actions depends first on the quality of the thinking behind them.

We cannot force another person or a system to change. We sow seeds, some fall on fertile ground, others on impenetrable soil, and yet others sprout but get overgrown by weeds. Our responsibility is to keep sowing the seeds, that is all we have control over.

Complex problems cannot be solved. Any attempt to create a solution changes the nature of the problem. The full landscape of the problem cannot be understood until provisional actions taken to work on the problem are taken. Yet, every one of these provisional actions creates intended and unintended consequences that change the nature of the problem; they change the context itself. Although not solvable in any traditional sense, complex problems can be approached by affecting the way the complex system – the context – around the problem evolves.