Glasp’s note: At Glasp, we value the close personal relationships we’ve built with thinkers, creators, and doers who fuel curiosity and growth. This week, we spotlight Bobby Powers —a lifelong learner passionate about leadership development and continuous improvement. With more than a decade of experience leading teams and developing learning and development at startups, Bobby understands the transformative power of curiosity and mentorship. You might remember him from his Glasp Talk appearance, where he shared insights on leadership and personal growth, inspiring thousands. We’re honored to continue learning from Bobby and are thrilled to share his thoughtful reflections with our community.
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Hi Glasp Community!
I’m Bobby Powers, and I run the Leader & Learner publication on Substack. I share two posts per week that will help you become a better leader and learner.
I’ve been writing online for 15 years, and my writing is mostly fueled by what I read.
I read 70+ books per year in addition to hundreds of articles. And because I want to remember and share what I’m learning with others, I depend heavily on tools like Glasp and Obsidian to catalog what I’m learning.
To me, the highest bar for things I learn is anytime I stumble on an insight that changes my perspective on the world or how to show up within it.
I’m talking about the types of insights or quotes that I can’t stop thinking about—the ones that gradually become life rules that guide the way I work, communicate, make decisions, and interact with others.
Below you’ll find 11 life-changing perspectives I’ve picked up from other people. I hope they’ll be as thought-provoking to you as they’ve been to me.
1. Don’t wait to get picked
“When you’re coming up, you kind of have this sense that somebody at some point will be like, ‘Now it’s your turn.’ And it doesn’t ever happen like that...You have to make your own turn. You have to will it into existence.” -Greta Gerwig
Most of us grew up with people telling us when we were ready to do certain things:
Parents who told us when we could start staying up past 9 P.M.
Teachers who told us when we were ready for tests or college entrance exams
Coaches who told us when we were ready to join the starting lineup
But adult life doesn’t work like that. If you wait for permission, you’ll never do anything interesting.
Don’t wait to get picked. Give yourself permission to do the thing. Believe in yourself enough to start the business you’ve always wanted to create, embark on the creative project that’s always scared you, or live the life you’ve always wanted to live.
2. When things go wrong, ask “What can I learn from this?”
"All events are neutral, and I can choose how to react to them. I can choose to be a victim to my circumstances, or I can choose to stand responsible for how I handle my circumstances." -Daniel Negreanu
There are many names for the concept of focusing on what you can control in a situation and forgetting about what you can’t. People refer to it as Stoicism, internal locus of control, high agency, growth mindset, the Let Them Theory, and a hundred other things.
I’m a proponent of all of those mindsets, but the point isn’t what you call it. It’s that you live it.
When life knocks you down, how do you respond?
When things don’t go your way, do you complain or do you introspect?
When you fall down a seventh time, do you stay down or do you rise up for an eighth attempt?
3. Die on the treadmill
“The only thing that I see that is distinctly different about me is I'm not afraid to die on a treadmill. I will not be out-worked, period. You might have more talent than me, you might be smarter than me, you might be sexier than me, you might be all of those things you got it on me in nine categories. But if we get on the treadmill together, there's two things: You're getting off first, or I'm going to die. It's really that simple, right?” -Will Smith
I’ve known people who scored a perfect score on their SATs but did nothing with their life. And I’ve known others whose test scores couldn’t have gotten them into a state school, but they became highly successful entrepreneurs, athletes, or executives.
The difference between unsuccessful and successful people often comes down to whether they measure their sweat in droplets or buckets—how hard they worked to build upon whatever natural talent they were given.
4. Embrace your version of weird
"Normal is forgotten. Only weird survives." -George Mack
In addition to hard work, another quality often predicts success: uniqueness. In a world of billions, it’s hard to make a name for yourself if you look, act, dress, and communicate the same way as everyone else.
You need to find a way to stand out. A few random examples from various fields:
Dick Fosbury won gold in the 1968 Olympics by using a completely different high jump technique (the “Fosbury flop”) that everyone eventually adopted.
Takeru Kobayashi doubled the Hot Dog Eating Contest world record by dunking his weenies in water, then sliding them into his stomach with a body-wiggle.
Liz Wilcox made millions building an email marketing brand by standing out with bright colors and a Survivor headband (she was a contestant years ago).
Ryan Holiday built a literary empire by pursuing his love of ancient philosophy—a topic no one else seemed to care about when he started writing about it.
Each of these people found success in their chosen field by finding something unique, then leaning into that uniqueness.
In the words of Meryl Streep, "What makes you different or weird, that's your strength."
5. Strong opinions, loosely held
“When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?" -John Maynard Keynes
No one is more boring than someone who refuses to make up their mind, and no one is more frustrating than a person who refuses to change their mind.
It takes courage to take a stance. In life and work, you often must choose a side. But once you’ve chosen a side, you must be willing to change your mind if you learn new information.
True wisdom lies in both taking an informed stance and revising it as you grow.
6. Operate in permanent beta
“If you’re in permanent beta in your career, twenty years of experience actually is twenty years of experience because each year will be marked by new, enriching challenges and opportunities. Permanent beta is essentially a lifelong commitment to continuous personal growth.” -Reid Hoffman
Software companies frequently release beta versions of their products. The idea is that they’ll release an initial version, then get user feedback and iterate upon the product to make it even better.
In contrast, people often view themselves as fully baked—done growing, done changing, done learning. What a horrible way to live!
Look at yourself (your skills, your ideas, your opinions, etc.) as still in beta mode. Live like a perpetual student, trying to absorb everything from your daily experiences. Another way to say this is, “Be a learn-it-all, not a know-it-all.”
7. Hypothesize and test. Repeat.
"For sustainable success, we need to pause to learn from each repetition; to make small adjustments each time, picking up new abilities and knowledge along the way. When we use trial and error, we set in motion a series of growth loops where progress emerges in conversation with our environment." -Anne-Laure Le Cunff
As Anne-Laure Le Cunff explains in her book, Tiny Experiments, it’s almost impossible to know whether an idea will work by merely thinking about it. You need to test your ideas in the real world.
Think like a scientist. Formulate a simple hypothesis, then test it.
Conduct hundreds of mini-experiments every year. If something works, keep doing it. If it doesn’t, stop or pivot. This simple concept is life-changing if you actually use it.
8. Live from a perspective of abundance, not scarcity
“For me, and for many of us, our first waking thought of the day is ‘I didn’t get enough sleep.’ The next one is ‘I don't have enough time.’ Whether true or not, that thought of not enough occurs to us automatically before we even think to question or examine it. We spend most of the hours and the days of our lives hearing, explaining, complaining, or worrying about what we don't have enough of...
Before we even sit up in bed, before our feet touch the floor, we're already inadequate, already behind, already losing, already lacking something. And by the time we go to bed at night, our minds are racing with a litany of what we didn't get, or didn't get done, that day. We go to sleep burdened by those thoughts and wake up to that reverie of lack...
This internal condition of scarcity, this mind-set of scarcity, lives at the very heart of our jealousies, our greed, our prejudice, and our arguments with life.” -Lynne Twist
In her book The Soul of Money, Lynne Twist talks about three toxic money myths:
There is never enough
More is better
That's just the way it is, and there's nothing you can do about it
Twist explains that these toxic mindsets come from a perspective of scarcity. But her insights can be applied to way more than just money.
People who approach the world from a scarcity mindset view the world as a zero-sum game: If someone else wins, they lose. If a friend gets a promotion, they feel jealous. If a fellow musician gets an award, they feel cheated. And as you can imagine, that’s a horrible, sad, and selfish way to approach life.
A better operating model for life is living from an abundance mindset. View the world as a positive-sum game: someone else’s victory doesn’t mean your loss. In fact, it may even help you. Focus on increasing the size of the pie for everyone. Cheer on others’ successes. Or, as Twist says, “Collaboration creates prosperity.”
9. Run toward the fire
"You get paid in direct proportion to the difficulty of the problems you solve." -Elon Musk
When most people see a difficult problem, they run in the opposite direction. But there’s a rare breed of human who gets excited about challenging tasks.
Those problem-solvers who run toward the fire tend to learn and grow rapidly because they’re always tackling something challenging and new. (They also tend to get paid more and promoted more.)
So, this is my challenge to you: use fear as a compass. If something scares you, lean into it. Raise your hand for daunting projects. By doing so, you’ll turn into a super-powered learner and a formidable problem-solver.
10. Focus on the first step
"Far too often, we don't start because we can't get our minds around the entire thing. We don't take the first step because we can't figure out the seventeenth step. But you don't have to know the seventeenth step. You only have to know the first step...start with 1." -Rob Bell
Generally, the most worthwhile initiatives are quite daunting. They’re so big, it’s hard to wrap your mind around the whole thing: writing a book, running a marathon, starting a business, recording an album, etc.
The only way you can approach these types of projects is by taking them in chunks. You essentially have to ignore everything except the very first step:
For a book: Focus on sitting down to write 300 words of the first chapter today
For a marathon: Lace up your shoes and take a short run today
For a business: File the incorporation paperwork today
If you think beyond Step #1, you’ll freak yourself out. Focus on the first step. Focus on what you can do today. Nothing else matters.
11. Stop starting. Start finishing.
"The more you try to do, the less you actually accomplish." -Chris McChesney, Sean Covey, and Jim Huling
One of the most common mistakes in business and life is trying to do too much.
This happens to corporations (e.g., a company tries to pursue multiple products or markets and doesn’t gain traction in any of them) as well as individuals (e.g., an employee multitasks because they have so much to do, then later realizes they’ve made progress on nothing).
It’s easy and exciting to start new projects.
It’s difficult and important to finish existing projects.
Choose the difficult path.
Conclusion
As you can probably tell from this post, I love learning new things and sharing those lessons with others. It’s my deepest passion in life.
If you’re interested in getting two posts every week that will help you become a more curious leader and learner, I’d be honored for you to subscribe to Leader & Learner.
📣 Community Updates by Glasp
🟥 Glasp Talk with Bobby Powers:
Glasp Talk features intimate interviews with luminaries, revealing their emotions, experiences, and stories. The guest, Bobby Powers, is a dedicated learner passionate about leadership and personal development. With over a decade of experience managing teams, leading onboarding, and Learning and Development programs at various startups and SMBs, Bobby is also an avid reader, having read over a thousand books in the last 15 years.
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