As you grow older, there will be a lot of things you didn’t become.

Things you wanted to be, but that you were not, and will never be.

As they stack up, the weight grows bigger and bigger. It might be as well a chain around our necks. It certainly feels that way.

But our brain plasticity gives us a chance to put the chain aside and see our present as a never ending starting point. There are lots of things you didn’t become, but there is even more things you still could be.

Takes courage to let go all those sunk costs, and not doing it will prove itself dramatically more costly.

But if you manage to let go, possibilities are endless.

Is called Google.

They are not a search engine. They are an advertising company, that happened to kill the information delivery industries in order to be able to advertise.

It became part of their business model as a natural way of searching for news but they were aiming to show people web sites related to their search.

There could be nuances on the way your company strategy has been defined.

You could provide some service or product unrelated to your original scope leveraging them with your current structure.

Even though sometimes people stumble upon a veiled opportunity, something they weren’t even looking for, this is relying on luck to identify said opportunity and act upon it.

It is always better to actively search patterns out of the habitual modus operandi of your company to find unexpected ways to grow.

In a research, a kind show of strength contest between two mice, they were forced into a tube to push one another in order to reach the opposite exit.

The winner kept winning and winning, even if they had similar body weight and physical features.

Once the researchers helped the loosing mouse, pushing him from behind a few times to win, he developed a winner mentality and started winning by himself.

So forcing yourself to win, pushing from behind is kind of hard, but you can force yourself to find little wins hidden in bad days.

Is a training exercise for your brain.

When you find yourself winning, your brain register that event and creates a framework for himself to make decisions in the future.

It means that if you are facing a situation with a given amount of risk involved, your brain will ponder differently the odds at winning this time based on the past winning events: if you have won consistently in the past, you will probably win this time also.

What advantage is derived from this? Well, it will give you a time frame edge, since the winners will hesitate less, they will move first.

It will also give you an “entitlement edge”, because if you are a winner, you deserve the desired outcome, and if someone or something is threatening what is yours by right, then you will fight harder to maintain or get what you deserve.

Forcing yourself to find and enjoy micro wins, wins hidden in catastrophes and wins that may seem irrelevant, will help you build that winner stack, tricking your brain.

You will be training yourself to be the winner just like the little mouse in the tube contest.

Immediate, candid, human interaction.

Turning in your seat and saying “hello!”.

Or arriving to the lobby of the hotel and start looking for the badge hanging on people’s neck exhibiting that they and you, are part of something and that you have the permission to approach them and to be open to them.

The interaction that creates valuable networking, that builds long and lasting relationships because just by attending you kind of speak “the same language” as others attendees, making them part of the same subculture.

The kind of spontaneous interaction that can be described as “good feeling” about someone. And then trust, and support, and momentum arises…Such things are kind of hard to activate through zoom.

Although, AR & VR are coming…

I have goosebumps while writing these lines.

SpaceX, that company that almost disappeared in 2008, today has achieved something awesome: Starship SN10, a shiny retro looking rocket, was launched, turned to fall belly first, and then landed beautifully to be reused again.

It is amazing and inspiring. Just the thought of humanity becoming interplanetary, for us GenXers (growing up with StarWars and StarTrek, and lots of other science fiction authors like the amazing Douglas Adams) it is life getting us closer to our dreams.

Kudos Elon and SpaceX. Thanks again for pushing the boundaries of what is possible.

Humanity can barely peek the real impact of your achievements.

The future looks a little brighter for all of us today.

A risk junkie belongs somewhere else, not in business.

It should always be about purpose, not the neuro transmitter cocktail released by gambling. If the thrill is more important than a continuing business, eventually, reality will come.

On the other hand, if you have an absolute intolerance to risk you will amount to nothing. Playing it safe all the time will never bring outstanding achievements.

Yep, it may sound like a contradiction but it is more like a balance.

Ideas, today, have zero value.

Ideas are spawned by the millions and almost nobody act upon the ideas they have.

Excuses will come and stop a huge percentage of those people. Feelings of inadequacy will keep another big chunk. And life will derail those who have managed to try but faint-heartedly.

The tiny group of people that keep going no matter what, those will actually change the course of the world.

Execution is everything.

If you have the fortune to cross paths with somebody that can execute upon ideas, you’ve found gold. Stick to them. Become them.

So you watched grey’s anatomy. And maybe how I met your mother. Let’s not even talk about game of thrones.

If you are the average person, you’ve spent between 5 to 6 hours a day watching video content, mostly series and other kinds of entertainment.

And you complain about lack of opportunities. I mean, come on.

How about you skip the next season of your top 3 shows and start building a new skill? Sounds too much? Too hard?

You don’t need those 10,000 hours they talk about. You only need to stop wasting time.

Talking about all those hours binge watching shows, here’s a spoiler: sooner or later you’ll regret all those wasted hours-turned-into-years.

It is 1:37 a.m. That awful insomnia has hit again and you are part sleep and part awake.

You’ve been browsing your Instagram for a couple of hours, clicked in a promoted post, landed in Amazon and got caught there.

It’s been more than half an hour now that you’ve spent just browsing through hundreds of garments of the fall collection.

You are tired and angry. You need that shot of dopamine that comes with the purchase, and you know it.

You have been struggling with yourself enough, the last thing you need is to turn on the lights, wake up your spouse, have an argument on what are you doing, get your credit card, fill the information, confirm…

Then you find “One click shopping”. You smile, click on the goddamn button, and finally you can go to sleep. You have been programmed to expect friction less customer experiences.

It is a simple concept. It seems so obvious and it is so easy to overlook.

For silicon valley fellas, it is now ingrained in their DNA: remove friction as much as possible. But for the rest of us mortals, oftentimes it is hard to focus our businesses with that goal in mind. And our businesses suffer.

Every client is expecting you to make things easy for them. It is not a wish to have now. It is a must have feature.

Measure your levels of tiredness and excitement.

You ought to feel both tired and excited.

If you are not tired, it means you could have given more.

If you are not excited, it means you are not aiming high enough or that your work is meaningless.

And if your both not tired and not excited, well, changes must be done. Stop wasting your life.