daily reflections: everyone is a CEO of their own lives

I have spent the past 3 years of my life trying to build businesses, rather unsuccessfully though. I’m nothing close to being a CEO in the traditional sense, but I did learn a lot.

But not all the lessons stuck - until recently I got reminded again by Steven Bartlett in The Diary of a CEO.

For context, I built 4 software application, 2 of which I never launched, the other 2 gained thousands of users but never got to monetisation. In addition, I launched over 10 different content creation channels but never got any past a thousand followers, or more unsatisfactorily, past 3 months.

The lessons I learnt through my experience and documented effectively in the book didn’t just make me better at business but also led to significant personal growth. Majority of the principles shared for CEOs can be easily transferred to our personal lives and more.

The Self Pillar 
Or who you are

This pillar is about knowing yourself deeply—your thoughts, emotions, habits, and behaviours. It is the foundation for understanding how you operate and why you act the way you do.

• Priority: Focusing on what’s important first especially your health

• Mastery: Becoming crazy good at something, and building knowledge, skills, network, etc.

• Self-Awareness: Understanding your beliefs, your uniqueness, and your habits

To help you create a stable and resilient core, enabling you to navigate life's challenges and pursue your goals with confidence.

The Story Pillar 
Or influencing what people think

This pillar deals with the narratives you create about your life—the stories you share with others about yourself and your businesses.

These narratives shape reality and influence decisions.

• Your brand is your crazy: your absurdity and what makes you piss people off are things that makes you unique

• Human behaviour is not always predictable or logical - psychological biases applied

  • The same thing repeated over and over again may lose its effect - habituation

  • Superficial things and other external (but sometimes irrelevant) factors can influence how we think about something (even when it shouldn’t) - like packaging of a product, pricing comparisons, etc.

  • People find more value when they have ownership - whether through trying the product before, or having to personalised or put in effort into using the product

  • Our brain is easily bored and needs to focus on important things - grab our attention in five seconds or it’s gone

To take control of your narrative and use it as a tool for growth, empowerment, and connection.

Side Thought:

Unfortunately, many of the ideas shared here are also applied for nefarious purposes.

Beware of it being used against yourself in undesirable ways (although oftentimes you might not even notice it.

Find out more in behavioural economics books or Robert Greene’s writings.

The Philosophy Pillar 
Or how you and the world works

Philosophy represents the principles, values, and beliefs that guide your decisions and actions. It is about creating a meaningful framework for how you approach life.

• Mind over matter - what we think about what happens is more important than what actually happens - nothing is truly good or bad, just our perception. Specifically, pressure is not good or bad, only how we use it to better ourselves or to stress ourselves

  • Failure matters - it means you’re constantly trying to improve and get better - and that’s the best way to find success (as shared in the previous newsletter)

  • Denial - avoiding to see reality because of your ego or fear will just delay the pain - ask the hard questions

• Discipline matters - it’s the only way big things can happen - consistent compounding efforts

  • Details matter - they compound to become big things later on

  • Focus matters - having a plan B makes you lose focus - it’s not a time management issue, but a psychological one

• Context matters - your environment will influence the value of your skills (or products) - or more technically, demand and supply matters

What this means…

I’ve attempted to rephrase and put in my own words what Steven has written effectively in his book.

Like most books written in a list format e.g. the 48 powers of law, the 7 habits of highly effective people, tools of titans, and more — the difficulty is often in digesting and integrating everything you’ve learnt.

Most people end up doing nothing about what they’ve read - and for a few reasons.

We think by understanding it - that it will naturally show in our actions - but that’s rarely the case.

From my experience, we need to constantly reflect on how we get actively apply it in our life so that it becomes relevant to us and part of who we are.

Treat the book like a reference - something to refer to once in a while to remind yourself. Or take one or two ideas at a time to work on.

A CEO is just a title,
Joesurf