Christian Peters
Reader & Continual Learner
Reader & Continual Learner
I read a lot of books, over 60 a year for the last few years.
I have a mindset that if I can consume a book quickly and take away even just one idea, apply that one
idea to my life, it was worth my time.
One Idea from "We Need Your Art" by Amie McNee: Creativity is the missing piece
of Self Development. Reading and working to improve yourself is great, but it won't make the
same impact in your life as when you start creating something in your life as well. She
references a study showing that having a creative hobby or outlet reduced cortisol levels,
leading to less stress.
Making art will feel scary. It will take courage, but it is that courage that gives us the
positive feelings and changes us for the better. Don't stress over the perfect or most ideal.
Give yourself permission to start really small and really easy to build the confidence and
courage to continue making.
If you never show up for yourself because you put others first or you reject your own ideas
before you even start, you are
building a lack of trust in yourself. Give yourself 2 weeks to consistently show up for yourself
through daily micro creative activities and build that trust and habit in yourself and see what
difference creating makes.
One Idea from "The Cure for Burnout" by Emily Ballesteros, M.A. is to follow
healthy
selfishness. If you are a people pleaser or an achiever, you could be causing your own burnout
by focusing too much on external expectations and not enough on your own needs.
For the achiever, it can feel like all or nothing: if you don't give 100% all the time, then you
are failing. Consider that your 80% might be better than someone else's 100%. Could you be more
healthily selfish by recognizing that for you to continue to achieve, it's better to give only
80% in
one area so that you can give 100% to yourself?
For the people pleaser: you feel you can never disappoint someone else, but how often does that
lead to
you disappointing yourself? What if you accepted that healthy relationships can handle you not
doing everything you think is expected of you? You can have your own thoughts, opinions, and
boundaries and still maintain those relationships.
For everyone: Done is better than perfect. Do things reasonably, not perfectly. Give yourself
permission to do things well enough.
One Idea from "10 to 25" by David Yeager: provide a mentor mindset by setting
both high standards and offering high support. While this book targets helping parents and
teachers with people ages 10-25, many concepts could apply to anyone you mentor, coach, or
collaborate with regardless of age.
Stress doesn’t have to be seen as negative, it can be enhancing. If we re-frame feelings of
stress from pressure to excitement, we can recognize that it's there to energize us and harness
that energy in the moment instead. This is where holding others to high expectations becomes
crucial. Without elevated benchmarks to strive for, we won't experience the beneficial tension
that pushes us.
However, high expectations alone can be damaging when not paired with the support needed to
achieve them. We want our aims to be both attainable and challenging. We can add guidance so
that expectations feel reachable by acknowledging the bar is set high and is meant to stretch
them, reminding that it's natural to feel stress. Express confidence in their ability to grow.
Take time to learn about their current struggles. Then collaborate on how to improve and
ultimately achieve the desired outcome.
One Idea from "Tiny Experiments" by Anne-Laure Le Cunff, PhD, is the difference
between setting goals and making a pact. I have
always struggled to set good goals, to look ahead and think about what I could achieve and work
backwards on how to get there. When I have tried
to set goals, I often have great intentions, but fall off on them along the way because they
either are no longer a high priority, or I learn
it's going to be more difficult than I expected, or I just plain fail at getting to that goal.
I think that for me, setting a pact instead of a goal would be more valuable. From the book, a
pact is an actionable commitment that you will
fulfill over a set period of time. It follows the format of "I will [action] for [duration]." If
your goal was to write a book, that's a one-time
success or fail that's going to take a long time and a lot of effort to achieve. The pact
version would instead be “I will write for 10
minutes every day”.
I really like this approach because I can focus on daily or weekly actions, I can focus on
outputs I control rather than outcomes that may
not always be in my control, I can achieve small wins frequently and build habits.