Edition 💯 and The Red Queen Effect

This is the 💯’th edition of 10x your mind! 🥳 Can you believe it?!

I know it's just a number but I want to take a moment and celebrate this milestone with you. This wouldn’t be possible without YOU, my amazing readers! Every minute you spend reading these newsletters makes my writing worth its while.

Thank you for continuing on this journey with me. Thank you for reading. And thank you for your beautiful responses, both in emails and comments. They mean the world to me. I know it's tough to carve out time from our busy lives. My heartfelt wish for you and me is that we can carve out time for ourselves, no matter how busy life gets. And life keeps getting busier and busier…Isn’t it?

Do you feel like you're constantly running to keep up with work, home, health, and goals? So how much of "running to keep up" is good? Today, we'll uncover a valuable life lesson that Alice learned. Alice who, you ask? Remember, the one from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland?

In Through the Looking-Glass, a sequel to Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Alice follows a kitten through a looking glass into another world.

One of her adventures in this world included racing with the Red Queen. Alice keeps running faster and faster to keep up with the Red Queen. The interesting thing was that however fast they ran, they didn't seem to pass anything. The trees and surroundings looked the same.

Ultimately, when they stop, Alice notices that they are exactly where they started— the same tree, the same spot. 🌳🌳

Alice looked round her in great surprise. “Why, I do believe we’ve been under this tree the whole time! Everything’s just as it was!”

“Of course it is,” said the Queen, “What would you have it?”

“Well, in our country,” said Alice, still panting a little, “you’d generally get to somewhere else — if you ran very fast for a long time, as we’ve been doing.”

“A slow sort of country!” said the Queen. “Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place.

If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!”

The Red Queen effect is falling behind by not making enough progress.

The world around us is constantly changing and evolving. If we make no effort to change, we won't just not evolve, we will de-evolve (I know it's not a word, technically, but it conveys the meaning just right!) 🙃

Imagine you get a great job as a salesperson while starting out. You get too comfy and are satisfied with your responsibility and benefits.

If you don't keep working harder to land new sales or find new opportunities to grow, you can't keep enjoying the same perks. Your colleagues will get promoted, and even those less experienced than you might surpass you. If you stay where you are, you'll eventually be fired. 

It takes effort even to stay in the same place. To grow, you need to double that effort.

More importantly, to grow, we need to be responsive to change.

We need to be open to trying new ways of eating better, working smarter, and even working out smarter. We need to be open to new learnings and new experiences. 

It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.
—Charles Darwin

Most of us have at least one old childhood friend who stayed back in their small hometown, refusing to venture out and try new things. After decades, if you bump into them, they won't look like someone living a normal life. They would look like they went a hundred steps back.  

The same holds for health. You might be in great shape today but if don’t keep up with your fitness regimen, you won't remain in good shape. If you keep doing the same reps with the same weights, gym trips won’t be enough to make you stronger. 💪

If I keep running only 5k distances at the same pace, I won’t become a better runner. It might maintain my current fitness level but that's that. To become faster and stronger, I need to include different kinds of training, running long distances, short sprints, and strength building. 

The good thing about the Red Queen effect is that it pushes us to do our best.

No wonder top performers stay top performers even when they move to an entirely different environment. It's not that they are naturally gifted. They know that to stay at the top, they need to put in extra effort, and they do it. 

Does that mean that we need to keep going faster and faster? When does it stop?

This brings us back to keeping time for ourselves, no matter how crazy life gets. Although you have meetings to run, order groceries, drop kids to school, go to the gym, call the client, update your skills, eye the next promotion, and land the next gig, you must leave some time out for yourself. There’s nothing like a relaxing session of reading, writing, or taking a long walk in nature.

It's not just about speeding up, but also about stepping back and relaxing. This balance is what keeps us healthy, happy, and moving forward in the right direction.

Here's to another hundred editions of exploring, learning, and growing together. Thank you for being part of this journey. Let’s keep making every moment count! ❤️✨