Adventures next to Dutch canals

Hi, everyone. Hello from a warm and sunny afternoon in Amsterdam. I'm right now in Wantel park and it's a glorious day out here. I think the temperature is about 22 degrees and I'm sitting behind an idyllic lake. Deliberately, last night I chose to stay away from the city in a really quiet place where you can look up the sky and actually see stars. How many of us, at least I, when I travel in many cities, don't get time, or sometimes the weather doesn't allow for us to. For that to happen. And I spent a good chunk of my evening and night reflecting and reflecting upon how the year has been. About one year since we started the Network Capital Premium model. Many things have worked. Many things could have been better. But it comes at the backdrop of my research on how reflection works and how 95% of us get it wrong. And I am very much a part of that 95%. You know, when we reflect, we tend to focus on things that are beyond our control. Like, why is it happening to me? Why didn't I get promoted? Why didn't that particular job come to me? Why is that person behaving that way with me? And at this stage of our lives, or actually in many stages, why is something that we have very limited influence over. A much better approach is to try and ask what that shift from why to. To what often makes us see the overarching context much better and helps us see what's happening like a sociologist visualizes a scenario. So last evening I tried consciously to not focus on why X is happening or why Y is happening in my life, but rather what can I do about it and what is it that is in my sphere of control that I can influence? And I created a small list of things that I could do better or I can do better, or I could have done better. In the year gone by, and I got through that shift from why to what. I found that the time that I spent reflecting was far more productive. It was far more. I felt far more in control. And as you know, that I've been trying to study and understand the scientific research behind it. So there are a couple of people who study Tasha Ehrlich, Anthony Grant from the University of Sydney, and many other professors. In fact, it turns out that if you are a part of that 95% subset, which is most of us, the more time you reflect, the worse you get. In fact, in the short term, reflection, the way most of us do, it has some sort of effect to calm the system down. But once the that short term period wears off. Often the wrong way to reflect leads to more depression, lack of job satisfaction, lack of satisfaction with the personal relationship. And they strongly advocate this why to what focus. And I think that each of you should give it a try. And also there's another larger construct that was harder to accept personally for me is that I've always tried to teach myself that happiness is a choice. And happiness is something that I have to manufacture myself, create meaning through my work. But when I really look back and found out or try to figure out what gives me happiness or what gave me the satisfaction I really want, I realized that happiness in most cases depends upon our community, other people. So one way to try and shift the locus of control of happiness meaning beyond the why to what focus is to really focus on adding value to the people who we care most about and the people we end up spending most of our time with. So consider doing this next time you're reflecting. Please try and not ask yourself why. Focus on the what. And please consider the fact that your happiness is not entirely in your hand. You're not in this as a solitary person trying to figure out meaning. Do this as a community and make each other accountable to it. I'm signing off right now, but you'll see more of this work on reflection, more of this research surface on Network Capital Premium. As always, ideas are welcome. Have a lovely day. Thank you.