Get paint on your face

For the next 5 minutes, let’s elevate your career.

In today’s email:

• The beauty of career regrets

• Maintain the gaze

• Get paint on your face

• Forget about it

• Career wisdom from Michelangelo

ON YOUR CAREER

The beauty of career regrets

Some people say they have no regrets. That all their collective good and bad decisions have delivered them the life they have today and they don’t want that changed. Others say regrets serve no purpose so why have them.

I have career regrets. And most people I speak to also have them. The regrets that seem to sting the most are when people have been too timid. They didn’t accept a leadership role, move overseas, or take more risk. In hindsight, they would’ve been bolder.

And this is the beauty of such career regret - we still have time to be bolder. We can be more assertive, learn new things, and initiate a long-term project. Regret can be fire in the belly. Looking forward and adding lots of value is the best way to address career regret.

COMMUNICATION

Maintain the gaze

When we’re in face-to-face meetings, we want to allocate significant eye gaze to each participant. This communicates we think they’re important. It makes a positive impression that could lead to valuable long-term relationships. Juniors remember who treats them with respect.

Limiting our eye gaze to the people we consider most powerful can be damaging. In complex sales, there are usually multiple decision-makers. We may unwittingly get someone offside because we only maintained eye contact with their boss.

Eye gaze should shift slowly. This conveys we are confident. Looking at others invites them into the conversation, which builds trust with people who are new to us. And we get real-time feedback from others’ body language on how persuasive we are. Maintain the gaze!

PRODUCTIVITY

Get paint on your face

Michelangelo painted 5,000 square feet of the Sistine Chapel’s ceiling. It’s been estimated he worked 18 hours per day for 4 years - 26,000 hours of work. Michelangelo wrote to his brother, “I work harder than anyone who ever lived. I am not well and worn out with this stupendous labour and yet I am patient in order to achieve the desired end.”

Michelangelo painted while standing on scaffolding, often with his head tilted back and arms raised overhead. He wrote in a sonnet, “…my brush makes my face a richly/decorated floor.” He got paint on his face. Michelangelo was literally immersed in his work.

Huge projects can be messy and exhausting. Mastery takes hard work. And patience. Sometimes, we need to get paint on our face to achieve great things.

1 MINUTE TO HAPPINESS

Forget about it

I try to fast forward the forgetting of perceived insults. Nearly all will be forgotten in time. Why suffer them now?

CAREER WISDOM

Michelangelo

Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni (1475 — 1564) created extraordinary works of sculpture, painting, architecture, and poetry. Unlike many artists, he had a well-paid career. Michelangelo had many wealthy patrons including bankers, city governments, and nine popes. He was also a successful investor in real estate, acquiring several farms around Florence. Some of Michelangelo’s career wisdom: