
#1: Beth Wilkinson – Lindsay Magazine
“If you are never getting noes, then you are probably not aiming high enough!” Beth is the founder, editor and creative director of Lindsay, based in Naarm (Melbourne), Australia. In this brief talk, she shares seven lessons that she has learned since starting her magazine: make something with love, pitch with care, never ever take silence as a no, don’t take noes to heart, don’t set your own limitations, it’s not meant to be easy and be proud of your successes.
Eric Eliasson and Lara Mitra interviewed several liders to understand what makes a successful career. While there is good advice there, there’s one that particularly caught my attention:
“We have never expected more from our careers. Jobs purport to give us everything: belonging, purpose, meaning, community, and an identity. Buying into this mindset can lead to unhealthy results: when work does not go well, you will feel unwell. For me, the key to avoiding this cycle is to diversify the things I am passionate about and dedicate my time to. Kat Cole, former President and COO at Focus Brands, shared in our interview how putting more time and energy towards volunteer work made her happier and ultimately more effective. By diversifying, I lower the stakes for what work needs to do for me — and all my human needs can be fulfilled with a variety of pursuits.”
Which reminded me of a sound advice given by Neal A. Maxwell: “[…] some of us neglect to develop multiple forces of satisfaction. When one of the wells upon which we draw dries up through death, loss or status, disaffection, or physical ailment, we then find ourselves very thirsty because, instead of having multiple sources of satisfaction in our lives, we have become too dependent upon this or upon that. How important it is to the symmetry of our souls that we interact with all [principles], so that we do not become so highly specialized that, if we are deprived of one source of satisfaction, indeed we are in difficulty. It is possible to be incarcerated within the prison of one principle. We are less vulnerable if our involvements […] are across the board. We are less vulnerable if we care deeply about many principles—not simply a few.”