London, United Kingdom
I find it helpful to regularly go for long walks and gather my thoughts. At the start of these walks, my thoughts just amok, jumping from item to item, concern to concern, and feeling to feeling. It doesn’t help that I’m usually in very busy cities with a lot going on around me. (This is where I recommend noise-cancelation headphones and calming classical music playlist.) To have thoughts, to have feelings, to have instinctive responses to stimuli is the nature of Homo Sapiens (and any other creature of nature). To govern those feelings, those instincts, and to respond instead of react is the essence of being human. Having a personal process of mastering one’s thoughts is critical to living an effective life.
Through the years I’ve come to find the following daily personal reflection questions the most beneficial (and challenging).
| Category: | Morning | Evening |
| Identity | How can I act today as the man I aspire to be? | Did I act today as the man I aspire to be? |
| Focus | What matters most right now? | What matters most right now? |
| Integrity | How can I live aligned with my values today? | Did I live aligned with my values today? |
| Gratitude | What am I thankful for in this moment? | What am I thankful for in this moment? |
| Growth | What will I understand today? | What did I understand today? |
| Results | What will I accomplish today? | What did I accomplish today? |
This doesn’t take a lot of time to do (usually 15-30 minutes for me). But it’s a very important anchoring exercise for me, stabilizing me against the buffeting of life’s every day challenges and the shifting winds of human interaction. I can’t control most of Mother Nature and human nature, but I can influence my world better if I master myself. I’ll write more about this another time.
Dominating my thoughts today (and pretty much every day) are three categories: family, business, and Filipinos. When thinking about these categories, I ask myself, “What am I accountable for?” and “How do I deliver on these accountabilities with excellence?” By focusing on what I’m actually accountable for, not what others think I should do or provide, I’m able to deliver on what’s most important with focus, helping me to become more reliable and excellent over time, and improve my results. I have found that when I don’t focus, when my attention goes to the strongest influence or stimuli instead of my chosen priority, I end up participating in some meaningless activity. When I focus on delivering on my accountabilities with excellence I find better results. As for family, that accountability has a lot to do with building a strong foundation for our family. For business, it means focusing on our targets and making sure we’re doing everything we can and doing things as excellently as possible. For how to improve the lives of Filipinos, I’ve been focusing on helping improve the financial situation of Filipinos both in the Philippines and in other countries. I try not to be too caught up with anything else.
As I gathered my thoughts and realigned my priorities, I remembered the recent speech of Finland’s President, Alexand Stubb, which he delivered at the 80th UN General Assembly. In his speech, he talked about how foreign policy in its simplest form is really about three things: values, interests, and power. He explained how every country has different levels of each and that the reality of power (hard and soft) is that it is the luxury of bigger players. So smaller players have to achieve relative power through being excellent cooperators.
This is also true for interpersonal relationships. If we are to see what we value flourish, if we are to see our interests protected, and if we are to be of any influence, we need to have the necessary power – hard and soft – but enough, and usually that power comes through cooperation. The strength of that cooperation is directly influenced by the level of shared of values and shared interests. Without getting too intellectual or philosophical, this is all that means: There can be no great nor sustained achievement without true shared values and shared interests fostered in strong cooperation.
But how can we have shared values when we don’t know what we value but simply want more? And how can we have shared interests when our interests are not based on self-reflection but random scrolling? This is why I believe most of us need a leader, hopefully a benevolent one we actually follow, to tell us what to value, what to focus on, and what to do. But another problem arises since we also distrust leaders because we distrust their intentions (maybe for good reasons).
So here we are: We don’t know how to lead ourselves towards success and we distrust the people who should know how, but since we still need answers and solutions, we look for it in the resonance of our echo chambers, the feeds and friendships we’ve developed around us based on what appeals most to our sense of safety. Again, to have thoughts, to have feelings, to have instinctive responses to stimuli is the nature of Homo Sapiens; to govern those feelings, those instincts, and to respond instead of react is the essence of being human.
Hopefully, we can be a better human, something more than an animal of reaction and instinct. Let us bravely and honestly reflect on who we are, clarifying our identity, our values, and our objectives. Let us cooperate effectively with people of shared values and shared interests, avoiding those who simply want more, and punishing those who are only self-interested. Maybe, as we master ourselves and cooperate effectively, we can achieve meaningful and sustainable results.