The Elephant in the Room

Hey readers 👋

On Monday, I experienced a very awkward moment when I stepped into the lifts at my apartment. Two strangers who have come to visit their friend were also in the lift.

The awkwardness was a result of the stink in the lift. The lift stunk of bin juice, and you could clearly see the residue on the floor!

I attempted to beat this awkwardness by calling it out.

“Oh it stinks in here - looks like someone made a mess when taking the bin out”.

It worked.

I could sense the relief of the other passengers in the lift after calling it out - we all shared a laugh.

By pure coincidence, Seth Godin posted in his daily blog earlier this week about how the best way to get rid of the elephant in the room is to simply mention its existence.

By mentioning the stink in the lift - effectively calling out the elephant in the room, I was able to get it to leave.

Featured Article

This week’s featured article is one of the articles that resonates the most with me. It’s one I wrote about how the best way to learn something is by “doing”.

We should stop procrastinating, overthinking or reading about whatever it is we want to do and should actually get on with it and do it. We’ll figure out the rest along the way.

It’s such an easy concept to grasp and one we intuitively understand, yet challenging to implement in practice.

The Best Way to Learn Is by Doing | SamuelObe.com

We think we must know how to do something or have the experience before getting started. Successful people are different and start before they are ready.

Samuel ObeSamuel Ajayi-Obe

3 Things I've Enjoyed Reading This Week

1. How to be successful - The American entrepreneur turned investor Sam Altman, shares his 13 thoughts about how to achieve “outlier success”. A good read for those of us still figuring things out in this journey called life.
2. The 3 levels of self-awareness - Mark introduces his ideas of the levels to self-awareness and shares tips on how we can all become a little more self-aware. It would improve every relationship you have, even the relationship with yourself.
3. Elon Musk post series - Another of Tim’s best posts on his site WaitButWhy. The first post in the series is dedicated to my favourite entrepreneur - Elon Musk. The other posts in the series, discuss issues close to Elon, including; his work at Tesla, Space X and SolarCity.

Tweet of the Week

This Week's Wisdom

“We all think of ourselves as independent thinkers who reason based on facts and evidence, but the truth is that our brain spends most of its time justifying and explaining what the heart has already declared and decided. And there’s no way to fix that until you’ve learned to recognize what the heart is saying.”

- Mark Manson

I use readwise to resurface content I've previously highlighted. My followers can get an extra month for free by following this link.

Every Sunday, I write a lesson I wished I had learned 10 years earlier, to feed our brains with intelligent content to start our week.

I also share interesting articles, book quotes, and the occasional speech or TED talk to help us all get smarter, wiser, and live better.

I follow my curiosity at SamuelObe.com

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