The search for personal and professional satisfaction is based on the understanding that the days, each day, have to be good.

By Luiz Gustavo Mariano

If, on the one hand, to be a good leader, we need to like people, how can someone afford to dedicate themselves to others without dedicating themselves minimally to taking care of themselves? How to do this?

Reflecting on the end of what was one of the most intense and unpredictable years we have ever lived, I think that the search for personal and professional satisfaction lies in the understanding that every day, every day, has to be good. Carpe diem.

It's no use working to expect to have wonderful weekends, for one day to have wonderful trips. Live to think only about the future and only about it.

The future starts in the present. And for that to happen, productivity, choices, that is, the day-to-day routine, have to be balanced — to be good.

We still play companies, businesses and our lives as if they were a game with some sort of end, a competition, an eternal exercise in comparison. But there is a question: a marathon, a bicycle race, has an end, a point of arrival; Will there be an end to our professional and personal trajectory? And I'm not talking about retirement here, it's about the journey. It cannot be played as if it were an eternal sprint.

And the most obvious of the obvious needs to be said: the day has to be good, from the way we wake up, the first banal routines of the day, going to the office (or to the corner of the house); we need to institute break between meetings, set aside an hour for lunch, set a time to go out, take care of the body and brain or just breathe.

What happens today is that you usually enter a day and leave it without having made or even realizing if we made the right choices. Taking good care of yourself is for later — or never.

Leaders are also exposed. Young professionals, who are starting their careers, somehow aspire to get there one day. How can leaders inspire these people, be a professional and personal reference if they themselves have a disorganized, unstructured day to day, taken by superficial, tired sentences and decisions, always by trial and error?

May 2021 be the year in which we manage to be aware of the consequences of the daily choices we make and the decisions we make. We are what we are because of the choices we make — and choosing to do nothing is one of the worst choices we can make.

A good year to all of you!

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