This fear of not fitting in is at its strongest when we’re young, but it never fully leaves us until we become confident in who we are. Whether we are teenagers entering college or adults joining a new company, our first instinct is to be careful with our words and actions. We don’t want to upset the status quo; we fear failure, ridicule, and standing out. We are petrified that people might not like us

Reasons Why We Need Play

When we sit alone with a good book, our mind wanders and wonders into different worlds that we haven’t seen or heard of. I remember when I read Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts. His vivid portrayal of life in Bombay and the sense of community the locals felt even in the direst circumstances fascinated me and kept me turning pages.

Pain, setbacks and sadness are inevitable in our lives, and we need to be realistic enough to accept them as part of our journey. Pain is not just “a part” but an important one, as it becomes this great teacher, rather than something we simply endure. When we dig deep into pain, we remove the mounds of anguish blocking the path to our joy.

Walt Disney, a man who inspired generations to dream with his animation films, cartoon characters and theme parks started off as a failure. He was fired in 1919 from his job because he “lacked imagination.” His first business went bankrupt, as he was unable to manage money and employees. Over 300 banks denied him help.

Technology has also made it more difficult for us. We can now easily measure our so-called success and compare ourselves to others. We forget that most people craft their lives digitally, showing only their best moments. Many social media users take 20 pictures before posting the best one. Most scan their feed and like only the people who liked their posts (and some buy likes), rendering “likes” meaningless. All this leads to yet more raised expectations. Maybe our photo got 80 likes, but we “need” 320 to be like that young fashionista we follow.

Real estate magnate Gary Keller is an Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year and finalist for Inc. Magazine‘s Entrepreneur of the Year. He explains how we can be more productive in his book, The ONE Thing: The Surprisingly Simple Truth Behind Extraordinary Results.

However, as I’ve transformed myself from the inside out, my values have changed too. What used to give me joy, no longer does. Instead of luxury and comfort, I would rather seek inner peace, simplicity and authenticity—ironically, the very things that money not only can’t buy, but usually neglects.

Parkinson had spent much of his working life in the British Civil Service, where he observed first-hand the numerous inefficiencies caused by an expanding bureaucracy. He found that even simple tasks became more complex to fill up the time allocated to them. Conversely, as the time drew nearer for the completion of a task, it miraculously became easier to solve

I had spent the few weeks prior celebrating my 18-year-old daughter’s graduation. (Or was it consoling myself for her impending leave of absence?) I also had many events planned that took me out of my usual comfort zone—namely launching a new initiative The Authenticity Project and speaking at TEDxAccra for the second time.

Everyone laughed, including me. I was a hard-nosed businessman who chased financial success and the luxury, prestige and social status that came with it. I was insensitive, unaware of the complex people and stories surrounding me.

During Braun’s talk, I got inexplicably emotional and started crying. I understood on a visceral level that giving back, helping our fellow human beings, isn’t something we can do, but something we must do. At that point in my life, I was focused on self-growth, trying to bring out the best version of myself, but I hadn’t given much thought to giving back.

I was sick in bed, struck by some mysterious virus. I had so looked forward to this break after a hard and energy-sapping year, but in the chaos and melee of people that is the holidays, I had somehow lost my bearings, my grounding, and finally my well-being.

In Steve Job’s Commencement speech at Stanford University in 2005, he declared, “You’ve got to find what you love,” and said he was lucky to have found his passion at an early stage.

He didn’t mention, however, that to become great at something we also need to put in the hours. We must constantly practice our passion if we wish to improve. Job’s own life work demonstrated the results of working long focused hours.

Charles Duhigg, in his best-selling book The Power of Habit, defines grit as the tendency to work “strenuously toward challenges, maintaining effort and interest over the years despite failure, adversity, and plateaus in progress.” Angela Duckworth, a researcher at the University of Pennsylvania, coined the term “grit” in her popular TED talk of April 2013 and her best-selling book, Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance. She is a student of Martin Seligman, the father of Positive Psychology, and was intrigued about what qualities could most accurately predict outstanding achievement. She picked up the research where Walter Mischel of the “marshmallow experiment” had left off. Mischel had ascertained that kids who delayed their gratification in refusing a marshmallow immediately (for a greater reward of another one fifteen minutes later) were shown to achieve more in later years, as compared to those who had less willpower and succumbed to eating the first marshmallow immediately.

The idea of deep work is nothing new. Cal Newport, professor, scientist, and author of Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World, coined the term in early 2016.

Deep work describes our ability to focus singularly on a task, without any distractions, in order to produce meaningful, quality work. It can apply to writing a book, understanding a complex concept, solving a computer programming issue, or creating a brilliant marketing plan.

The term “flow” was coined by Hungarian psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, one of the founders of positive psychology. He dedicated his life to the study of flow, which culminated in his seminal book, Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience. His research (since 1975) considered how we get into a state of flow and the benefits it produces in creativity, success, and living a more meaningful life.

In Zen Buddhism, there is a concept known as “Shoshin,” which means “beginner’s mind.” To achieve this state of mind, we must let go of our preconceived ideas and remain open to the many possibilities and experiences available to us. It’s like emulating the mind of a child who is discovering something for the first time, like riding the bicycle.

For half my life, I’ve lived exactly according to society’s plan for me. My dad didn’t force me onto any path. He built his own life and was successful at it. Implicitly, however, and without quite meaning to, he laid a path for me as well.

Descartes proposed that while the study of matter or the atoms that make up our physical bodies and everything in the universe belongs to the realm of science, our mind and everything unseen falls under the domain of religion. Isaac Newton, the most famous physicist in history, then crystallized this thinking by proving that all atoms are made of solid stuff. The Newtonian universe was like a machine governed by a set of laws. In it, we could determine, calculate, and predict everything. Energy was an outside force, separate to matter, which could only change the physical state of matter when applied to it. Our minds had no control over events.