- Carl Jung

Traditionally this is where I share my own reflections on leadership and growth, but I'm going to break with convention this week for all the right reasons.

Tim Ferriss recently shared an essay written by Dr Michael Levin, entitled 'What Advice Do I Give My Students?'.

I'd never heard of Dr Levin before and the title didn't exactly have me hooked.

But in a world full of clickbait headlines, performative nonsense and self-appointed gurus, this essay was like a signal in the noise.

I'm sharing it in the hope that it has the same impact on you.

You will have heard me talk about the importance of any leader maintaining an 'explorer' mindset and as Dr Michael himself says, his essay is: "For the outliers whose world-view is not calcified. You are able to think of examples in the past where you've recognized when your idea was wrong and changed your mind.

“You like hearing others and learning – you don't just push your own ideas, you are constantly sifting others' wisdom to collect the toolkit you need for your life project."

I strongly suspect that if you're a subscriber to this newsletter you see some of yourself in those words.

I urge you to read the whole thing, but I'm sharing my 5 favourite quotes with you here and explaining why they resonated so deeply:

What resonated most with me was the distinction between feedback on what you did versus feedback on who you are.

Specific critique is actionable. It tells you precisely where the gap exists between your thinking and their understanding.

The hard part, as we all know too well, is separating that signal from the noise of your own defensiveness.

Your ego will want to dismiss criticism that makes you uncomfortable. But discomfort is often the marker of feedback worth paying attention to. The signal that you know there is a kernel of truth in what you’re being told.

I’ve been living this reality for the past year and trust me, the feedback that has been the hardest to hear in the moment has ended up being the most valuable. 

That's the skill: learning to filter the emotional delivery from the informational core, so your next attempt is stronger.

The right feedback is an accelerator of progress, so you not only need to be open to it, you should be actively seeking it out.

External advice, frameworks, and ‘best practices’ can inform your decisions. But they shouldn’t make them for you.

Why? Because no one else has your specific context, internal data or inner life. They don't feel what you feel when a decision sits wrong. They don't have access to the pattern recognition your brain has built from thousands of micro-experiences.

This is something I emphasise constantly: you need to become CEO of your own body, your own mind, your own choices. You need to have agency.

Your intuition isn't mystical. It's pattern recognition built from your unique dataset. That’s why leading scientists like Dr Levin embrace it rather than dismissing it because it can’t be conventionally measured.

The challenge is learning to distinguish genuine intuitive insight from fear, social pressure, or wishful thinking - trust expert Rachel Botsman shared an article on linkedin last week that has some highly relevant insights in this regard (see Live Better. Lead Better below for the link).

That's why Dr Levin talks about honing intuition. It's trainable. You make hypotheses, take decisions, observe outcomes, interpret the data, recalibrate, repeat. You literally act like a scientist, experimenting, learning, iterating.

^{(For more on this subject, I’d highly recommend reading You Already Know: The Science of Mastering Your Intuition by Laura Huang, which came out earlier this year).}

The leaders I know are making decisions worth millions with incomplete information, managing teams through uncertainty, and navigating competing priorities that can't all be satisfied simultaneously.

Here's what the most confident of them will acknowledge: they're figuring it out as they go.

The difference between effective leaders and struggling ones isn't certainty. It's comfort with uncertainty.

The struggling leaders exhaust themselves trying to project omniscience. The effective ones make the best decision they can with available information, stay alert to feedback, and course-correct when new data arrives.

This is where self-compassion becomes critical. Beating yourself up for not having got every decision right not only means you’re holding yourself to impossible standards, it also wastes the very energy you need for progress. 

Dr Levin's framing is liberating: it's not just you. It's everyone, especially the high performers. Why? Because they’re the ones willing to operate on the fringes, exploring new frontiers, embracing failure as an opportunity to learn.

When you don’t get the response you hoped for, it's tempting to construct a narrative about gatekeepers, politics, or people not getting it.

Dr Levin's reframe is both harsh and liberating: people aren't conspiring against you. They're just managing their own limited bandwidth. They have their own priorities, pressures, and problems.

This matters because anger at people in these scenarios is just more wasted energy.

Every minute spent resenting someone for not championing your idea is a minute you could have spent making that idea more compelling, more clear, more impossible to ignore.

Obsessing over factors you can't control (such as other people's attention, priorities, or biases) is self-sabotage. Let it go. Move on. 

That's where your agency lives.

This reframe by Dr Levin is gold dust.

Impostor syndrome isn't evidence you're not good enough. It's evidence you can see the gap between where you are and where you could be.

The people who never experience impostor syndrome? Often they've stopped growing. They're comfortable. They can't see the gap because they're not looking for it.

Every leader I work with who's genuinely committed to getting better experiences some version of this. They know where they want to be and they're acutely aware of the distance between their vision and their current reality.

That awareness isn't the problem. The problem is when that awareness paralyses rather than motivates.

Here's the shift: impostor syndrome isn't a sign something's wrong with you. It's a sign your standards are high and your self-awareness is intact.

Acknowledge it, but use it as fuel rather than as a reason to stop trying.

So that’s just my take - it’s such a rich piece of writing that I’m sure you’ll have your own favourite parts that speak to you.

Most importantly, don’t just acknowledge them. Act on them.

Find one that landed for you. The one that made you slightly uncomfortable because it's highlighting something you know you need to address.

Then do something about it this week. Not next month. Not when you're ‘less busy’. This week. Actually… tomorrow. 

Because here's the truth Dr Levin captures beautifully: progress isn't about having all the answers. It's about being willing to be wrong, to course-correct, to keep moving even when the path isn't clear.

Progress is ALWAYS possible. Just take that first step.

1. “If you’re not where you want to be in some area of your life or work, it might be time to start asking some harder questions and really listening to the answers,” says Robert Glazer. This 5-minute read ties in perfectly with what I touched on above - you can’t get better without proper feedback.

2. Hitting rock bottom is an incredible lever for change and transformation, says endurance athlete and podcaster Rich Roll. 50 seconds that will help you reframe how you view your toughest moments in life.

3. World-renowned trust expert Rachel Botsman challenges one of leadership's most sacred cows: your gut instinct. A 2-minute read that might make you rethink your next big decision.

4. Former Olympian Steve Mesler knows better than anyone what the key to great recovery is. He explains why you need to treat sleep like a system in 6 simple slides. 

5. Finally, before you waste January on another failed resolution, do yourself a favour and listen to this 30-minute Huberman podcast on the science of making and breaking habits.