Welcome to the Deploy Yourself Newsletter. Every two weeks I share what impactful leadership looks like to show your own power. I also share the most insightful lessons and stories I encountered in the last two weeks. You can also read this issue online.

Hey,

Are You Speaking Your Truth?

I struggled with fear for a long time – fear to start this newsletter, fear to pursue coaching full-time, etc. What I have figured out in the last few years is that fear tells you what you really care about. Fear reveals what will make your life meaningful and make you come alive. Underneath fear is desire – the desire of what you really really long for.

Fear is very useful as it is designed to keep us safe. It helps us escape danger, and plan for challenging situations. Fear is also a sign that you have a dream within you, and you long for something beyond your current comfort zone. You can either let fear stop you, or you can listen to fear and use it as a compass to guide you towards what you really really desire.

I feel a little fear every time I write this newsletter. I am scared to speak my truth to my coachees – the truth that they don’t want to hear. But the truth is what my coachees want and pay me for. I speak to them as nobody would. As a coach, it is my job to serve them, not please them.

Are you speaking your truth? Or, are you playing safe and only saying what is acceptable around you – at your work, in your family, and in your communities. It is not easy and comfortable. But it very meaningful and empowering. It scares me every time I speak my truth to a coachee, but it becomes worth it when they later thank me for saying it.

I AM IN. ARE YOU?

Reply to this email right now if it sparked something for you, or if you want to know more…

Articles and Stories Which Have Fascinated Me

One

Lessons From Geniuses, and How To Be One?

IQ, it turns out, is overrated and so, too, are other standardised tests, grades, Ivy League schools, and mentors. Stephen Hawking didn’t read until he was eight; Picasso and Beethoven couldn’t do basic mathematics. Jack Ma, John Lennon, Thomas Edison, Winston Churchill, Walt Disney, Charles Darwin, William Faulkner, and Steve Jobs likewise were all academic underachievers.

If IQ is overrated, curiosity and persistence are not. Nor is having a childlike imagination through adult life, the capacity to relax so as to allow disparate ideas to coalesce into new, original ones, and the ability to construct a habit for work so as to get the product out the door. Genius is not an absolute but a human construct that’s dependent on time, place, and culture.

From an article “What Can We Learn From Geniuses?” on AEON

Two

Celebrate and Reward Yourself To Make New Habits Stick

If we really want to make lasting changes in our lives, psychologist BJ Fogg believes we need to break them down into specific, easy behaviors (what he calls Tiny Habits), and find ways to trigger and reward them. Taking 30 seconds or less, a Tiny Habit is fast, simple and will grow. For example, instead of having “get in shape” as a vague and intimidating goal, do two push-ups every time you make your morning coffee — that’s your Tiny Habit.

When you celebrate, you create a positive feeling inside yourself on demand. This good feeling wires the new habit into your brain. Emotions create habits. Not repetition. Not frequency. Not fairy dust. Emotions. Celebration is the best way to use emotions and create a positive feeling that wires in new habits. It’s free, fast, and available to people of every color, shape, size, income, and personality. In addition, celebration teaches us how to be nice to ourselves.

From an article – “The power of celebration to make habits stick” – on TED

Three

A definition of love beyond the limited domain of “romantic love”. Love (and care) is the foundation of trust. And trust is the foundation of all the work we do together as colleagues and comrades.

Love for a person is acceptance of him or her the way he is and the way he is not. – Werner Erhard

That’s it for now. If you have any questions, just hit reply. All the best,

Sumit

(Twitter) @SumitGupta
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