Other people!

They'll tell you what to do, how to feel, before you know it, you're pouring your life out in search of something other people told you to go look for. Soon, you're lost in the search of what's not yours in the first place.

The irony of the world we live in.

When you're young, an infant, when you were very much cute and cuddly, everybody is nice to you.

You life is carefree, and you feel unconditional love from all over.

You're surrounded by your peers, and everyone is basically doing the same.
Soon enough life begins. You get a bit older & start going to school.

Nothing really changed except now you have a certain place you need to be for a good portion of the day to 'learn things' you may or may not be interested in. Odd but hey - life isn't asking too much of you.
From here, things start snowballing.

- Get good grades, so longer school hours,
- Getting physically stronger and more capable to care for yourself,
- The pressures to fit in and conform increase,
- After graduation, you have some big life choices to make, to some extent.
Now, you're entering adulthood, and everyone is willing to cut you some slack, but at the same time you are now held accountable as an adult for your actions, 80% of which is influenced by society & other factors.

You quickly learn to conform to what's expected of you.
Whether this is university or an entry level job, your life now is starting to be consumed by responsibilities.

You find that if you work hard enough, you can have the nights, weekends & days off so you live for these times when you get to connect with people you care about.
Yet another snowballing experience:

- Late 20s/early 30s go by so fast
- You're now 100% accountable for your mistakes,
- Now you pay for everything yourself,
- Stay in the loop w/ society & politics,
- Financial security becomes a drag.

Life is beginning to become a grind.
Late 30s/40s things get even more interesting. The expectations of you to be someone you weren't sure you were supposed to be is taking effect.

Are you married? Do you have kids? You begin to look back on life and wonder if you made all the right choices, yet you do the needful.
At old age, people say you're basically knocking on death's door so everybody is nice to you.

You life is carefree, and you feel unconditional love from all over. You're surrounded by your peers, and everyone is in the same boat in every way. But now you're about to leave.
So the irony is pretty simple:

When we're all at the age where we are physically & mentally in our prime, we are much too busy to truly enjoy our lives. The only times where life is always great is when you're too young to realize what is going on, or too old to enjoy anything.

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1/“What would need to be true for you to….X”

Why is this the most powerful question you can ask when attempting to reach an agreement with another human being or organization?

A thread, co-written by @deanmbrody:


2/ First, “X” could be lots of things. Examples: What would need to be true for you to

- “Feel it's in our best interest for me to be CMO"
- “Feel that we’re in a good place as a company”
- “Feel that we’re on the same page”
- “Feel that we both got what we wanted from this deal

3/ Normally, we aren’t that direct. Example from startup/VC land:

Founders leave VC meetings thinking that every VC will invest, but they rarely do.

Worse over, the founders don’t know what they need to do in order to be fundable.

4/ So why should you ask the magic Q?

To get clarity.

You want to know where you stand, and what it takes to get what you want in a way that also gets them what they want.

It also holds them (mentally) accountable once the thing they need becomes true.

5/ Staying in the context of soliciting investors, the question is “what would need to be true for you to want to invest (or partner with us on this journey, etc)?”

Multiple responses to this question are likely to deliver a positive result.
I'm going to do two history threads on Ethiopia, one on its ancient history, one on its modern story (1800 to today). 🇪🇹

I'll begin with the ancient history ... and it goes way back. Because modern humans - and before that, the ancestors of humans - almost certainly originated in Ethiopia. 🇪🇹 (sub-thread):


The first likely historical reference to Ethiopia is ancient Egyptian records of trade expeditions to the "Land of Punt" in search of gold, ebony, ivory, incense, and wild animals, starting in c 2500 BC 🇪🇹


Ethiopians themselves believe that the Queen of Sheba, who visited Israel's King Solomon in the Bible (c 950 BC), came from Ethiopia (not Yemen, as others believe). Here she is meeting Solomon in a stain-glassed window in Addis Ababa's Holy Trinity Church. 🇪🇹


References to the Queen of Sheba are everywhere in Ethiopia. The national airline's frequent flier miles are even called "ShebaMiles". 🇪🇹