Oh, how I have missed you. It feels good to come home to writing to you. I have been thinking how much joy writing to all of you brought me last year and how little time I have allocated to this creative passion and meaningful purpose in my life. Granted, I did start a new company Disco (which I am really loving), and startups are quite all consuming but nonetheless, this newsletter comes from a deep place in my soul that has been on hiatus and feels really great to be connecting to.
How are all of you? Under the weight of our to-do lists, busy work agendas and return to modern life, this newsletter is intended for you to pause and reflect on:
1) Are you creating the future you actually want? (not the one your mother, partner, brother, boss, kids want!) and 2) How can you thrive, not just survive amidst an ever increasing pace of modern life, uncertainty and “matrix” like world?
Welcome to our 12th Food For Thought newsletter.
GC's 3-2-1 newsletter usually comes with 3 ideas to explore, 2 things to read/watch/listen to, and 1 question for you.
EXPLORE
1. Getting 1% Better Every Day
The very reason I am writing this newsletter is thanks to intentionally finding time for micro-habits, like writing every day. Time and attention is our scarcest resource, and without intentionally allocating time in our calendars to the things we want to get better at, it is impossible to make progress.
“We convince ourselves that massive success requires massive action. Actually, the inverse is true: Small improvements accumulate into remarkable results.
Habits are the compound interest of self-improvement. They seem to make little difference on any given day and yet the impact they deliver over the months and years can be enormous. Making a choice that is 1% better or 1% worse seems insignificant in the moment, but over a lifetime these choices determine the difference between who you are and who you could be.
Audacious goals, dreams and visions happen in micro habits, tiny steps.
If you get 1% better each day, you’ll end up with results nearly 37x better after 1 year.
Think about that! WOW!
It is not for a lack of motivation or desire that we don’t achieve the things we want to be good at, its because we haven’t designed these habits into our lives and made them as James Clear so eloquently writes about - easy, obvious, attractive and satisfying.
2. F*cking Up
As the co-founder of a startup that is moving at 100 miles an hour, it is inevitable that things don’t always go right. Whether it’s an email that didn’t land right with a potential customer, or an oversight in a program we are launching, or a bug in our software, or a hypothesis that is wrong, there is no shortage of f*ck ups we need to deal with.
I was once told that:
How we deal with things when things go wrong, not right, is the truest sign of our character and exposes our values as a leader, far more than when things go right.
I have always struggled with making mistakes, part who I am and part society’s conditioning. Especially when I was younger - as a pleasing, achieving alpha woman, f*cking up for me was really traumatic and hard.
Today, it’s still not easy. So many of us are conditioned to go straight to blame, criticism, feelings of shame, guilt and not-enough-ness. I have experienced all these feelings at points in my journey. At 43 though, I realize that harping on these feelings aren’t helpful to ourselves, injured parties, our teams and our families. So here’s three things I have learned lately about f*cking up:
1) When we f*ck up, we learn the most, if we are able to take responsibility for our impact, not our intention. If we can acknowledge that our intention (what we aimed for) did not equal our impact (how it landed), we can create space for learning and receiving with radical candor, authentic feedback that will help us grow, from those we impacted.
Openness to feedback can lead to deep learning and insights. Taking it one step further, it can even create better and more authentic relationships with those who have been impacted if they feel an authenticity in our intention and a responsibility from us in accepting the impact we had. It takes a lot of courage to admit we are wrong but the fruits of putting aside our ego and accepting our impact are bountiful.
2) Most decisions we make are reversible. It is actually amazing how many decisions are reversible. And therefore it’s surprising how easy it is to fix a lot of the mistakes we make, especially if we are willing to take immediate action and be adaptable. We can’t change the past so harping on what has happened and holding resentment, blame, criticism just further inflames a wound, but learning from a mistake, and then quickly determining what to differently moving forward and taking immediate action on fixing our path goes a really long way. In many ways, startups are just a serious of mistakes and experiments that you are constantly fine tuning, fixing and iterating on.
3) When we f*ck up, we become aware of our actions. We aren’t on autopilot any longer, it makes us conscious of the impact we are having. By taking space to reflect on why we f*cked up, we course correct micro-habits and patterns that over time will have an outsized impact as we saw in the idea above.
3. The power of community
“Alone, we can do so little; together, we can do so much” – Helen Keller
At Disco, we are building a product for creators to offer community based learning experiences that deliver transformative experiences. And so it should be no surprise, that our customers love our tech but also want community for themselves to learn.
Why? Community is how people learn best. A curated peer group that learns together, reflects together, gives feedback together and offers support and accountability is the best way to learn and grow.
With this insight, we recently launched the Disco Accelerator, to give 20 thought leaders and experts step-by-step methodology, hands-on projects, marketing support, feedback, community, and accountability to build a live learning empire.
I wanted to share this with our Gamechanger community for three reasons:
1. How are you building community in person and virtually to help you achieve your goals and learning?
2. How can the Gamechanger community learn and grow better together? What type of learning experiences would you like to participate in?
And…
3. I know there are some incredible experts and thought leaders who read this, and this week coming up is the last week to apply as a thought leader to our accelerator. If live learning interests you or you know some exceptional creators, send them to disco.co/accelerator and and in the application where it says referral, put Gamechanger newsletter and I will ensure all these applications have special attention.
READ / WATCH LISTEN
1. Ikigai: The Japanese Secret to a Long and Happy Life by Hector Garcia
Thanks to a very special friend of mine Kai Sotto, I was gifted this beautiful book, that resonates so deeply with writing this newsletter. A short, wonderful read especially as we savour the last moments of summer.
“According to the Japanese, everyone has an ikigai—a reason for living. And according to the residents of the Japanese village with the world’s longest-living people, finding it is the key to a happier and longer life. Having a strong sense of ikigai—the place where passion, mission, vocation, and profession intersect—means that each day is infused with meaning. It’s the reason we get up in the morning. It’s also the reason many Japanese never really retire (in fact there’s no word in Japanese that means retire in the sense it does in English): They remain active and work at what they enjoy, because they’ve found a real purpose in life—the happiness of always being busy.”
2. AcadeMEglobal - Purpose + Passion: Pursuit and Potential for Teens
And on the topic of purpose and passion, if you have a teen in your life, you have to check out this new program being led by the exceptional Erica Ehm, AcadeMEglobal - 5 transformative ½ day sessions to set teens up for their future - this year and beyond with passion and purpose at the core.
“When you’re living a life you’re choosing, it all just starts to flow. School makes more sense when you know where you want it to take you. Your community service hours now match your passions. You see clearly who you are and what you offer. You find your people. You start pursuing post-secondary pathways and careers that excite you.” - AcadeMEglobal.
Sign up here and share with parents of teens that you know 👉https://studio.disco.co/academe-bootcamp
It’s for transformative experiences like this one that I feel so privileged to be building Disco!
REFLECT
1. What tiny changes can you make in your daily habits?
2. How can you make f*cking up a less painful and more transformative experience?
3. How can you create more community in your life and work?
With the deepest of gratitude for subscribing to this newsletter and being patient with me as I find my way in re-establishing tiny habits that bring me joy.
Candice
p.s. If you liked this, feel free to share it with other #gamechangers you know.
Thanks for sharing your authentic and real words and insights. It is always a special treat to read your heartfelt reflections and practical wisdom.