Twelve and a Half summary

Self-awareness is exactly what it sounds like –⁠ a rich, conscious knowledge of your own inner life. 

These days, everyone thinks they’ve got what it takes to be a CEO. Well, I’m sorry to break it to you, but that is not the case. The idea of being a CEO sounds cool. But just because something sounds cool is not a good reason to do it. If you want to be a CEO, you’d better be doing it for an actual reason, like because it’s your calling –⁠ not because you like the image. This is where self-awareness comes in. Do you want to do something because you like how it sounds? Or do you want to do it because it’s who you are? Get to know yourself. Be self-aware. This will help you understand your strengths and your weaknesses, your true passions and your false ones. 

At the core of accountability is the knowledge that, at the end of the day, you are responsible for every situation in which you find yourself. Take that in: you are responsible for every situation in which you find yourself. Now, you may not be responsible for the circumstances themselves. But you are always responsible for how you react to the circumstances.

Most people don’t approach life like this. Most people blame. That’s their first reaction. It’s “Sally messed up my project,” or “My boss just doesn’t pay me enough.” Accountability doesn’t blame. You wouldn’t point the finger at Sally. You’d say, “I have to be clearer in my instructions to Sally in the future.” You wouldn’t complain about your pay. You’d say, “I need to ask my boss for a raise or find a new job.” Accountability is a challenging ingredient for many people –⁠ it’s hard to say the words “It’s my fault.” But those words contain immense power. They enable you to regain control of yourself and the situation. If you take responsibility, if you’re accountable, then you are in control.

Optimism is, to put it simply, a hopefulness and confidence about the future. It’s not the same thing as being naive. It doesn’t ask you to delude yourself into thinking everything’s always going to go great. Instead, it’s just asking you to assume an attitude of hope and confidence about the future. After all, hope and confidence are the things that will help you make it in the end.

Back once again to our scenario. How do you use optimism? Well, by tapping into optimism, you can challenge some potentially negative predictions you’ve made about your content. If you’ve been telling yourself, “I’m never going to create a piece of content that works,” try transforming that into “Tomorrow, I’m going to make a post that’s going to change the course of my business.”

Empathy and humility go so well together that we can group them. Empathy is the ability to understand and share the feelings of other people, while humility is the comfort you take in your understanding of yourself. Together, empathy and humility make it possible to truly put yourself in someone else’s shoes without feeling in any way superior –⁠ or inferior! –⁠ to them.

To use our business scenario again. You’re a newbie in the world of business and your content isn’t delivering the sales you want. You aren’t getting customers. You can use empathy and humility to ask yourself why somebody should watch one of your videos. After all, your content just represents one tiny island in a massive ocean. There are plenty of other things someone could be doing besides scrolling through your channel, and you’re just one person. So empathize with the fact that everyone is spoiled for choice –⁠ and that they may not choose you. And be humble about this fact.

Why should someone watch your videos?

Conviction is all about believing in yourself. It keeps you on track and prevents you from being overinfluenced by other people’s opinions. It gives you the power to choose to die on your own sword instead of someone else’s.

Tenacity is the grittiness that inspires you to push on even when the going gets tough. It’s extremely unlikely you’ll achieve raging success on your first go-around in the business world. Maybe not even on your second or third go-around! When Gary Vaynerchuck first launched his YouTube channel, Wine Library TV, it had basically zero viewers. And the email newsletter he sent out to subscribers? It didn’t do jack. But he stuck with it. He knew that building a business takes time. He had tenacity.

Patience is the ingredient that enables you to maintain your tenacity. Without it, there’s no way you’re going to be able to get through the many, many tries it’ll most certainly take to make your business a success.

Put simply, ambition is the desire to do or achieve something. In the business world, ambition has a bit of a bad rap. People with big dreams tend to get made fun of. But even having an ambition at all means you’ve already won. It means you get to strategize, set goals, and work to achieve things –⁠ even if you never attain your biggest, most difficult-to-attain ambition. 

To deploy ambition in our scenario, ask yourself a simple question: “Why am I trying to grow this business in the first place?” By answering it, you’ll refocus your mind on the goals and targets you’re trying to achieve.

And now we’ve reached the twelfth and final ingredient of emotional intelligence: curiosity.

Curiosity is the strong desire to know or learn something. It’s what leads you to treat new trends, ideas, or products with respect, pay close attention, and then research the heck out of them.

We’ve covered all twelve ingredients of emotional intelligence! Now, we’re gonna change tack a little bit. We’re going to look at a few more situations where you can deploy the 12 ingredients in more detail.

Here’s the first situation. You and your partner are out on a double date with two of your friends one evening. It’s been a while since you’ve seen them, so you’re looking forward to catching up. But right when you sit down, your friends bring up the topic of NFTs –⁠ which you quickly learn is an acronym that stands for nonfungible tokens. It’s a topic you don’t know much about, and from what you do know, you’re not impressed. What should you do?

Time for the next example. For several weeks, you’ve been having trouble with your coworker, Rick. You’re trying to impress the leaders at your organization, but Rick has constantly been stepping on your toes, trying to do your job for you. You’re not sure whether he realizes what he’s doing or not, but either way, you're frustrated. You feel that this situation is messing up your shot at getting noticed by your manager. How should you handle this?

First thing’s first: deploy empathy. Don’t automatically assume that Rick has bad intentions. Instead, recognize that Rick is trying just as hard as you are. He might be trying to achieve one of his goals or ensure a livelihood for his family. You can’t get angry just because someone else is working hard. 

OK, moving on. As a successful, forty-seven year old head of marketing, you've pretty much got it made. Your salary is a quarter of a million dollars a year, you’re starting to get more vacation time, and you’ve finally achieved the perfect work-life balance.

Yet, you can’t get a certain thought out of your head. What if you started your own company and worked for yourself? You know you’d be able to pull a couple of people from your current place of work and get them to join you. You could even bring them on as partners and give them each 33 percent of the business. Should you make the move?

In the next example, imagine you’re a young artist, fresh out of art school. You’re looking for a stable job but driving for Uber in the meantime. One day, you’re scrolling Twitter when you come across a conversation about NFTs. You read about them for a few hours and realize this could be your ticket to success. What’s your next move?

Unlike in the past, you don’t have to keep looking for a job in the advertising industry or Hollywood. You can actually cash in on your creativity and passion. Mentally transport yourself back to when you were a teenager who dreamed about becoming the next Leonardo da Vinci. Tap into the ambition that drove you to art school in the first place.