Psychology

Grit and Happiness

/ Brandon Bernard / 1 Comment

Angela Duckworth has been someone I have followed for a long time. She appears fairly regularly on a favorite podcast of mine, Freakonomics. Her book, Grit, takes a deep dive into what grit is, why it is important, how it is so powerful, and how to build it. While I intend on taking a deeper look into Grit here soon, I felt that all the talk about the challenges that leaders can face, how so many people are unhappy at work, about the importance of happiness in the workplace, and how being happy requires effort, it was important to look at how to build that mental toughness when it comes to your happiness.

We already know that leaders are faced with many challenges. Lee Cockrell mentioned in his interview that we covered in the last post about how leaders need to be prepared to handle disappointment and be able to push on. But one thing we know is that many people struggle to push on and that disappointment hits people really hard. What can we do to fight through?

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The One You Feed: The Parable of the Wolf

/ Brandon Bernard / 3 Comments

I recently was watching a fairly guilty pleasure of mine- Tomorrowland. While the movie was generally not well loved by critics and it didn’t meet Disney’s expectations (it supposedly lost north of $100 million), I enjoy it and have found a number of great takeaways from the film. I’ll likely end up covering more of these in this blog but the first one I want to share with you is the parable of the wolf.

There are two wolves that are always fighting.

One is darkness and despair.

One is light and hope.

Which one wins?

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What Lies Beyond Comfort?

/ Brandon Bernard / 3 Comments

Psychologists define comfort as a state of well being and is a combination of physical and psychological factors. Unfortunately, we do not grow our skills while comfortable (our waistlines may grow, but that is a different story). Pushing oneself out of our comfort zones is critically important in the pursuit of better leadership.

There have been some wonderful talks on the dangers of the comfort zone but here, we’ll look at my favorite place where media has provided us an example of the benefits of going beyond our comfort zone and the incredible growth that can take place out in the unknown.

Finding Nemo is the 2003 Pixar film where Marlin is the single father to his son, Nemo. Nemo, however, has a short fin which makes swimming dangerous. Nemo spends his early life with his dad trying to ensure he has everything set up for as much success as possible and keeping him safe and comfortable.

On Nemo’s first day of school, his dad tries to continue keeping him safe and comfortable in a way the Nemo clearly finds embarrassing. In an attempt to prove himself Nemo swims off the dreaded drop off and toward a “butt”. Upon touching the boat, Nemo begins his triumphant return back, only to be captured by a diver. Continue reading →

What Is Leadership?

/ Brandon Bernard / 1 Comment

Leadership is a term that means so many things to so many people. It is defined as the action of leading a group of people or an organization. How to lead, however, is challenging. Most everyone has had a bad leader or manager. From leaders who are unable to admit when they are wrong or don’t know the answer, struggle to effectively communicate, have unrealistic expectations, or cannot adjust when market conditions change.

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Photo by Mathias Jensen on Unsplash

Leaders are made, not born so this blog is about becoming a better leader. Inspiration and lessons about becoming a better leader can come from anywhere. However, as a society, we have a naturalness bias. Continue reading →