Tag: its-ok-to-be-afraid

Language Learning for Executives

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I _really_ want this for my badge photo.

What if you became the leader of a team that spoke a different language from you? Maybe their native language was Spanish or Japanese or Arabic. Every day they spoke English at work, but on breaks they shifted to their mother tongue, without realizing it. Unfortunately, you can’t just drop in on a breakroom conversation, unless you’re going to force everyone back to English.

Would you learn their language? You know that high-performing teams require strong relationships. Learning their language would reduce miscommunication and build trust, right?

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The Interwebs Sent Me Around the World

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“Rome, if you want to…”

What makes a guy decide to travel the world for a year to learn three languages? Doesn’t everyone know that you can’t learn even a single language in a year?! Three is impossible! And you’ll be completely alone because you can’t make friends until you’re fluent. And your career! You’ll get passed over for promotions and probably never recover all that earning potential. It’s madness, I tell you! Madness!

Maybe all of my friends thought that way. At least they were kind enough to substitute something ambiguous like “it will be the trip of a lifetime” (which could be good or bad). When they said I had to do it while I could, I don’t know if they meant it was actually a good idea, or just something they knew I had to get out of my system.

Today I’m going to give credit (or blame) to some writers on the interwebs who inspired and educated me for this trip:

How weird is it that I’ve never met any of them? Or maybe it’s weird that I actually emailed with a couple of them. (I even wrote a guest post for one of them a long time ago.)

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Fear of Failure

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Here comes diabetes.

There’s a Chocolate Fair this week!

My goal for the first 90 days is to learn to speak Italian. A few days ago I kept feeling I was going to fail at it. I was spending time on other activities, besides studying or speaking. I went walking. I took long lunches. I played computer games. It seemed like I wasn’t taking this mission seriously and I would have nothing to show for my three months in Italy. Which also meant I would fail at Japanese and German (of course). And the rest of my life really (just a logical conclusion).

...and alcoholism

Lunch in front of the Palazzo Vecchio

Then I realized I’d only been here for three nights. I had to catch up on sleep, fight jet lag, find an ATM, a grocery store, a cell phone plan, and a library card (of course).  So I told myself to chill. Just allow enough fear to motivate me to focus.

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