The act of living is moving forward under uncertainty and assuming responsibility, which is what I also call leadership.

A problem about life is not a technical problem

I recently started working with a new client. I will call her Claire, which is not her real name. She is a really successful young CEO: always the best in her class, the best university, a super fast career, really smart, really sharp. She came to me because she had started to wake up in the middle of the night with an anxiety attack. Not about anything specific. She wakes up, she cannot go back to sleep, and she doesn’t really understand why.

In this situation it is very easy to reach for quick solutions. What self-improvement tells you to do is to find a technique for that particular issue. Often that is the worst answer you can give to a client, and the worst answer you can give to yourself. If you don’t know why something keeps you awake, there is a reason you cannot access. It is like a leaking faucet: you put your thumb on it and for a second the water stops, but you are building up pressure, and the moment you let go everything bursts out.

Aristotle distinguished two kinds of activity 2,500 years ago. Poiesis is a craft, the making of something: a table, a chair, a doctor healing a patient. There is an end goal, and you have to be very good at reaching it. Praxis, which can be translated as action, is something you do for its own sake: the activity is the doing. Life is praxis. When you go and get that moist piece of brisket, the goal is not to say at the end of the meal, I have achieved the meal. The pleasure is the eating.

So when you apply a protocol, a routine or a three-step solution to a general anxiety about the trouble of living, it cannot work. It is a categorical error, and it is what self-help does all the time.

Stories that sunset

What Aristotle said life needs is phronesis, practical wisdom or judgment: understanding what matters to you at this moment, in this particular situation. That is why routines and protocols don’t apply. To make that judgment is exactly to say: this has served me well so far, and it doesn’t serve me well now.

We are a collection of stories in our head. There is some truth to them, real events that happened, but mostly they are stories, and some serve us for a certain period of time until we find a new one that serves us better. In Italian we have a beautiful verb, tramontare, which would translate as to sunset: something that slowly ends. You watch the sun going down, and you know that tomorrow it is going to set again. It is like a boxer who leaves the ring at the peak of his career.

Unfortunately that hardly ever happens, because people want one more fight, and then the end is abrupt. My identity was so caught up in this person, living these stories in this environment, that now I don’t know who I am, and I don’t know what is next.

We change with others, not by ourselves

Identity grows with others and through others. If you grow up in a family where everybody tells you how intelligent you are, and at school people say the same, you develop the identity of somebody who is intelligent because of what other people recognize in you. We always see ourselves through others. Not exclusively, but mostly. So to think that we can change by ourselves, alone, with a five-second rule, is absurd.

What matters is finding someone who has your interest at heart and who can challenge you: someone who, if you say something outlandish, can tell you they think it’s BS, and give you a perspective you cannot have by yourself. Journaling and similar exercises might have their place, but they are solitary exercises. It’s you telling stories to yourself about yourself, with no contrast with reality. One of my biggest recommendations, when people ask what they can do for self-improvement, is to read good fiction, because through it we look at the world through somebody else’s eyes.

Don’t ask ChatGPT, because ChatGPT will tell you you’re a genius. Find a real person who likes you, loves you, and can push back.

Moving forward, under uncertainty, assuming responsibility

All three elements matter. Moving forward, because leaders move forward. You might be the most charming team member and make everyone happy, but if you don’t move forward you are not a leader. It’s not a judgment, and it’s not an accusation.

Under uncertainty, because you never have perfect information, by definition. Should I buy the new company? Should I expand the market? Only very seldom are there obvious answers, and the same applies to our personal life: should I marry that person? Most of the time you don’t know, but you still make the decision, and if it doesn’t work you regroup and take another decision. It is a bit like driving on ice: you keep making micro-adjustments, never too much on one side or the other, or you go off the road.

Assuming responsibility, which is as important as the other two. If I make the decision and you pay for it, it is very easy for me to take a lot of risk. Taking bold decisions when nothing happens to you and the price is paid by somebody else is not leadership. You have to be accountable for the decisions you take. It has to fall on you, which is what happens in real life.

What you find here is a very summarized version of a longer argument, not an exhaustive explanation. If you want to find out more, contact me at info@federicomalatesta.com.