McLaren's Epic Win, Stevie Nicks Fight Against Imposter Syndrome & Endangered Owls
Winning requires teamwork, determination, grit and at times falling 'out of love' with your work.
In any given week, I am buzzing with random, super cool ideas - at least I think they’re cool!
These ideas range from spirituality to artificial intelligence, from bitcoin to Oprah, from avocadoes to Earth’s crust, from conservation work to capitalism. The list is truly endless.
So rather than save all my juicy thoughts, I shall put just a few of them into writing. (Don’t worry, I will still write my longer opinion pieces on bitcoin, the economy and society.)
Here we go…
F1: The McLaren Team & Their Stunning Win At Monza
The Italian Grand Prix this past Sunday was REMARKABLE. Ricciardo took the lead from Max Verstappen at the start of the race and remained undefeated the whole race. There was also the collision with title rival Lewis Hamilton and Max Verstappen, which caused both drivers to end their race. (It also cost Max a three-place grid penalty in the next race.)
Nevertheless, Ricciardo remained sharp, focused, driven and motivated ‘till the end. It was beautiful to see him win P1 after - what felt like - forever. I’m so happy for him!
This win also comes after Ricciardo recently said:
“Naturally you always have these highs and lows. I fall out of love with the sport at least once a year! It’s always done this [to me] and it will probably keep doing that.” Daniel Ricciardo, Driver for McLaren, Formula 1
I love the honesty in that. He shows us that it’s possible to win EVEN WHEN we may feel uninspired by our work, or have fallen out of love with it, or wondered why we’re still doing it.
The good, the bad, the sucky… it is all still part of winning.
What was also fascinating for me was the moment Ricciardo’s teammate, Lando Norris, found himself driving behind Ricciardo (in second place). He saw two options at that point:
Try and beat Ricciardo (because according to Norris, Ricciardo was going a little too slow and he thought he could potentially pass him). Or,
Defend Ricciardo
For any competitive, driven racer, you’ll know that their impulse is to win. And while Norris had that impulse, he chose to go on the radio to ask the team what THEY wanted him to do. “What is best for the team? To overtake him or defend?” To which the team replied, to stay as he is, meaning in second place defending his rival and teammate, Ricciardo. That showed immense emotional maturity and intelligence by the 21 year-old, British-Belgian racing driver.
“I just asked the team what do you want me to do, can I go for it, can I not? And as much as, inside, I wanted to go for it, I was just as happy to stay in second because I’m a team guy, I love the team.” Lando Norris, Driver for McLaren, Formula 1
What a legend.
Play for your team and know that one day your turn to win podium will come too.
Stevie Nicks: The Impostor Syndrome of a Rockstar
We all know and love Stevie Nicks, singer of Fleetwood Mac, songwriter, fashion icon, and pop culture trendsetter. For 45 years, she has shaped rock & roll and captivated us with her charm, power on stage, and unrivalled voice. But fronting a successful band wasn’t always easy…
Like all of us, she struggled with imposter syndrome, wondering if she’d ever fit in and leave a legacy behind her.
In fact, when she joined Fleetwood Mac, she was acutely aware that Christine McVie (her bandmate) was an accomplished performer and songwriter with many more years of experience than her. “I was thinking about what to do […]. At that moment, my life truly felt like a landslide.” Stevie Nicks
“Stevie was painfully aware that Mick Fleetwood had wanted only Buckingham, and that she’d been invited to join at [Buckingham’s] insistence. She was determined to show the others that, in her, they had gained a valuable artist as part of the deal.” - Stevie Nicks Tribute to the Queen of Rock & Roll
In order to fight this feeling of ‘not belonging’, she put everything she had into the studio sessions, worked long hours, persevered among the complicated dynamics of the band and fought her way through that uneasy feeling.
Luckily it paid off…
Time would prove her to be a powerful force with her songs, Crystal, Rhiannon, Landslide, Sara, Dreams, Gypsy, Gold Dust Women, Silver Springs and many, many more beautiful songs. When Fleetwood Mac went on hiatus, she made her solo debut with Bella Donna, becoming a chart-topping superstar - a record barely held by a woman, let a lone a woman in rock & roll.
Stevie reminds us that two things can be true at once: we can feel like a fake and still be the biggest rockstar. Whatever you do, make sure to put that angst into productive endeavours rather than continue swallowing in self-pity.
Photo credit: Ultimate Classic Rock
Owls: An Endangered Species & Our Need to Conserve Them
In British Columbia, we are very lucky to have one of the greatest (if not the greatest) biodiversity in Canada. In visiting Grouse Mountain, I was able to learn about one of the endangered species of BC, the Northern Spotted Owl.
Fortunately for me, I met Cleo, a female Barn owl (born domestically in spring 2011 and hand-raised). You can tell she’s a Barn owl from her heart-shaped, beautiful face and the white and brown speckled body. How gorgeous are they?!
(Photo credit: Grouse Mountain Refuge for Endangered Wildlife )
Barn owls live in open areas like “grassy fields, old agricultural fields, meadows and wetland edges, farms, and rural towns.” They tend to love living in barns too, hence the name “barn owls.” They are nocturnal and eat small mammals.
Fun fact: “A nesting pair of Barn owls with six owlets can eat up to 1,000 mice in a single three month nesting period!”
Also, owls have fixed eyes (meaning they can’t really move their eyes). Evolution has made up for this by providing them with 14 bones in their neck-head area that allows them to pivot their heads 3/4 each way. (For context, humans have 7 bones in their heads but have an ability to move their eyes).
Owls also have an insane ability to hear. Owls can hear the heartbeat of a baby mouse inside its pregnant mom!
Like all predators, owls are important to our ecosystem because they remove the prey populations that can be surplus. Their main threat today is loss of habitat from farm land converting to housing, deforestation, busy cities that operate 24/7 and the use of pesticides (for rodents); which causes an eventual death with the owls or reproductive issues.
Please consider ways to protect owls, or any animal that is endangered in your local area.
Quotes:
Shonda Rhimes
Writer and Creator of the shows Grey’s Anatomy, Scandal, Private Practice and Bridgerton.
“Remember that you belong in any room that you enter. If you don’t feel like you truly belong, act like you belong. It should be OK to not feel like you’re getting it right all the time cause nobody ever is. A lot of people are stopped by the idea of perfection, like ‘I must know this. I must know that.’ Nothing has to be perfect. Just write.”
William Green
Author of Richer, Wiser, Happier: How the World’s Greatest Investors Win in Markets and Life.
“You do want to clone. You want to figure out what people who are smarter and wiser and more experienced have done, how they've laid out the means of investing and how they've laid out the rules of everything really, because it's not just investing. You can apply the techniques of cloning to anything that you do, figuring out who does this best and what do they do and what have they figured out about what works. But I think you have to do it in a way that suits your temperament.”
Julia Galef
President and Co-Founder of the Center for Applied Rationality, a non-profit organization training people in strategies for reasoning and decision-making.
“Discovering you were wrong is an update, not a failure, and your worldview is a living document meant to be revised.”
Stephen R. Covery
Author of the The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change.
“The ability to subordinate an impulse to a value is the essence of the proactive person.”
Bernard Arnault
French investor, businessman and billionaire CEO of LVMH (Louis Vuitton Moët Hennessy).
“Money is just a consequence. I always say to my team, don’t worry too much about profitability. If you do your job well, the profitability will come.”