If you put a crab in a bucket alone, it will climb out, but if you put a bunch of crabs in a bucket, they will pull back any crab who tries to escape.

Crab mentality in humans is a form of mental manipulation. It’s a destructive mindset where people pull others down to prevent them from succeeding. Instead of supporting and encouraging each other, they engage in envy and competition.
People around you can be very manipulative in persuading you not to take a chance on yourself. They exist everywhere – at work or amongst family and friends.

Your journey is never a betrayal to anyone no matter what you achieve. Know the crabs in your bucket. Stay alert, stay focused!

That would be you.

You are the CEO of your life. You are responsible for your every decision. You choose your path, your career, your attitude, your surroundings, your friends and your responses to everything that happens in your life.

Odds are, you’re doing it poorly.

If a company groomed its people as poorly as you are grooming yourself, it would soon go bankrupt. You would fire your help/teammate if they wasted as much of your time as you do. You would quit if your boss cheated you the way you cheated yourself.

Do you ever wonder what is holding you back? There could be many different reasons, but here are a few common ones:

You make excuses

“I can’t do this because I’m too ____.” “I would do that, but _____.”

Sound familiar?

You have an unsupportive tribe

You do not surround yourself with like-minded people whose lifestyles are similar to the one you desire.

You repeat your  mistakes

And are you surprised that nothing has changed? If you do not try something new you recreate the old.

You trust the wrong people

You may not realise but you do choose the wrong people to validate what you need to believe because you are not rational. You desperately want to believe them because you think it is ethical even though you know that they have not travelled the path even an inch that you desire. It’s just because you want to validate what you think not what is right.

You follow outdated beliefs

You have deeply held beliefs which no longer support your vision but were either intentionally or unintentionally ingrained in yourself from a young. You never realise that an outdated part of machinery will choke its original functionality. You never realise that the modern world demands a new set of beliefs which can support your dream and progress.

You have unclear boundaries

Several times in your personal/professional decisions you say “yes” to something when your gut screams at you to say “no”.

If you don’t honour your various boundaries, you don’t honour your purpose and your path.

You sell yourself short

Do you have passions, wisdom, and expertise to share with people but you’re holding yourself back because of insecurities, doubt, or even shame?

This is YOUR life and it’s happening now! You are your own boss, but still, you choose to ignore them because you don’t want to hold yourself responsible. Learn to manage yourself. It’s hard to think of a more essential thing to learn.

1. As a software engineer, you are not there to take requirements blindly.

You are there to partner with your business and product partners.

That means you have to earn an equal seat at the table on product decisions.

2. Being smart or good at what you do does not give you the right to be a jerk.

Empathy as an engineer is a superpower.

Caring about those you work with will do more for your career than writing beautiful defect-free code.

3. As someone in the code, every day, you will see things that others will never see.

You will know what’s possible; they’ll guess what’s possible.

Some of the best product features are born because engineers found clever ways to solve something.

Look out for those things.

4. You are there to add value first.

All the code you wrote will end up in the recycling bin of some computer if it does not add value directly or indirectly to the business.

It doesn’t matter how pretty your code is or how much you love it if it doesn’t add value.

5. Your code should follow this pattern:

i) Make it work

ii) Make it fast

iii) Make it beautiful

Reminder: You won’t have a chance to make it fast or beautiful if it doesn’t add value.

6. Build relationships with engineers in other teams and other companies.

Learn about the problems they are solving. Learn different architecture and designs than the ones your team uses.

You never know when their solutions will save you days of work.

7. You don’t need permission to add value.

If you see something and know you can fix or improve it, do it.

Nobody will ever say to you, “why did you add all that value? What is wrong with you!?”

Every time I’ve done that unexpectedly, I’ve earned outsized rewards.

8. Advocate for junior engineers.

Just because they don’t have 5+ years of experience does not mean they won’t be good.

Without junior engineers on the team, no one will grow.

Help others grow; you’ll grow too.

Despite what people’s social media accounts may have you believe, no one lives a perfect life. Behind the scenes, our lives are full of twists and turns, of loss and love, of beautiful coincidences and nasty surprises.

The problem isn’t that life’s not perfect. The problem is that we get angry, sad, and frustrated because we expect it to be.

But here’s the thing. We can’t change the things that happen to us, but we can change the way we think about it. Our reaction is a reflection of our thinking. It’s a path for us to become the most caring, considerate, and compassionate version of ourselves.

Of course, these changes take time, and time is the most important gift you can give to yourself. As often as you can, slow down your life and press pause. This means consciously scheduling uninterrupted time in your day that you can use to think, reflect, and just in the present moment.

When you do this, you will notice that many things in your busy life are not what they seem – and not as they need to be. You may pause and realize that, even though you had a crappy day at work, you are surrounded by colleagues who admire and respect you. You may pause and find that the anger you’re feeling toward your friend/spouse/child is really sadness over something else.

So whenever you’re struggling with a situation or decision that your imperfect life throws at you, pause! Think about what you would like your values, purpose, and mission in life to be. Recall the times in the past you’ve demonstrated strength, wisdom, and courage.

Remember that you’re not defined by the things that happen to you, but by how you choose to deal with them. And then move in the direction of who you want to be.