Play with your Limitations- Dr. Lobna Karoui
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Manifesting your Dream is about tapping into your sense of Freedom that maybe you haven’t discovered yet.
Manifesting your dream is about saying YES when Everyone else is saying NO because they’re too terrified to step into the light.
Manifesting YOUR Dream is about opening up the Freedom of choosing CHOICES that you didn’t even think were possible.
Manifesting Your Dream is really about saying YES to a greater level of Contribution that you get to play out in your life.
If you are an incredible being with a VIBRANT Heart, with a BIG Mission, with a HUGE Purpose and you really know deep down inside that you have put here to change the WORLD, your actions are going to amplify that and create that very change.
It’s a new experience for me that I would be here sitting in a green park, watching kids playing and enjoying life and choosing this special family time to talk to your hearts, Minds, Souls about manifesting and living DREAMS.
Dream Big…
I Grew up in a Family with Awesome parents. My Dad is a Hard worker with a unique faith and focuses on doing all the best for my young sister, brothers and me. My Mom is a brilliant strategic Lady who aligns elegance and values to personalize education to our different personalities, capacities and abilities. They were very much paddled by the system: Go to school, get good grades, work hard and be Responsible. But at the same time, they never influenced my choices and they always had my Back to achieve my DREAMS. I remember when I was 18 years old, I was trying to convince my Dad to let me be a candidate for a military career. He didn’t find this trajectory appropriate for a young woman. With my Mom, they did all their possible to detail their arguments and then they decided to let me try it. My Dad was working very hard as an agriculture. Every single day, his morning routines started at 2 am by going to a big market, far away from our house and sell farm products. He then goes back to our village, without any break and as any entrepreneur, he goes through the hard work in the Farm. For an agriculture, every season brings surprises and you have to manage uncertainty and risks. Feeding many families, having employees in such conditions is a continuous challenge. With all of these busy responsibilities, for more than 15 years, he never accepted taking a week off. For his bold daughter, he took 3 days off to help me achieve my target. During these days of competitions, psychological interviews and many others exams, my Dad spent hours and hours in the super hot days of July 1999, waiting for me and talking to other parents of male candidates. These Dads were shocked to see my Dad tolerating my female approach, letting me live my own experience and spending hours and days with male guys who I never met before. I spend these days, moving from one competition to another, talking to candidates with a deep belief in my dream. Every single day, my Dad was waiting and seeing male candidates leaving the competition. It was challenging, hard in many steps but I never gave up. During these days, I was curious about this potential career and I did my best to meet military high achievers (even if we are not allowed to do this). By living this intense experience and getting knowledge from great, experienced People, I spend many weeks visualizing this dream in greater detail and trying to feel it. Going through this process, intuitively, I understood, later, that it was not really, truly my dream. Having such an experience at such a young age was unique and I’m grateful to my parents who let me follow my path.
Growing up in different countries, working with people from different cultures, being a mentor, meeting great leaders, I perceived people achieving the dreams or expectations of others instead of Focusing their energies and actions on learning about who they are and what they really want to achieve. Many people live with a conviction that the only way to go to the Future is by reproducing choices of others who seem successful and happy. It could be true at one time but later, wise people learn that it’s just an illusion. Learning knowledge and gaining experience from others is crucial, building your reality is on your Hand. For me, I’m always looking after new energies, humble people, growth mindsets to keep my mind open for possibilities, to build MY own path in MY own life. I believe that other options, other ways help me create one more step in my reality.
Everyone is looking for Abundance
In 2008, after being in Artificial Intelligence R&D for a couple years, presenting my research in the high ranked AI conferences and Teaching in the most prestigious institutions, I shifted from an academic career to an industrial one. During my first 3 years in the Telecommunication industry, I was impressed by learning from leaders and applying their recommendations to improve Teams’ motivations and Business outcomes. In 2011, after spending continuously more than 90 hours per week working on challenging projects, with high expectations to gain more by using less and less resources, I was just trying to have Fun when I found the talk of Eric Schmidt — Google CEO about “Everybody needs a Coach”.
I was listening to him deeply and looking for a solution to my long hours of working. I was struggling…I took Eric Schmidt’s advice seriously to improve my skills. After a few sessions with a professional coach, I remember him asking me a question: “Lobna, how much work are you doing on actually conditioning yourself to succeed?” For me, I was thinking that he is asking about my strategy to achieve my target. His answer was “Success is 80% the inner game, and then only 20% where you do on the outside. 80% are psychology, your mindset, your energy, your inner wiring and then 20% the strategy”. I felt disappointed in a way but very quick I was curious to learn more about the 80%. I decided from that day to shift my way of thinking and work much more on my personal Growth to achieve my next Dream “Being a Leader”. Thanks to my coach, we worked on this target and I felt myself more comfortable on handling uncertainty and rapid changes. At the same time, I learned how important it is to enhance my inner energy. For leadership knowledge, I spend more time reading books, listening and watching leadership videos, acquiring the growth Mindset of a Leader and talking to some of them. I spent more than a decade applying what I learned and practicing it in many industries. I was and still am inspired by Simon Sinek. For me, being a Leader is a continuous challenge to excel in a competitive business environment, with humility, compassion and rigorous perseverance.
Back to 8 Months ago, I was launching AI Exponential Thinker in California in the presence of Simon Sinek. During his awesome talk about “The infinite game”, I felt myself reviewing many experiences and discussions with some top managers in big corporations. I was reviewing how proud they were of having “leadership programs”. I was reviewing some managers struggling with their teams on achieving their business targets. I found myself walking to Simon and asking the question: “Through my professional steps, I was seeing some managers pretending ‘leadership’, how can we figure out such issues for companies and businesses, especially in a time of Exponential and Fast-moving Technologies? As everyone inspired by Simon Sinek, I was looking for contextual tips to my field of expertise. Simon smiles and said in a sense: “People asked me often this question. The solution is ‘be a leader’, the one who cares about others, the one who lifts others, the one who is humble, the one who eats last. By being a Leader, people around you will see and feel the difference between a Leader and a manager. They will work to be Leaders in their turn.
Be a Leader in the Exponential Technologies Era
After almost two decades working in many industries and collaborating with game changers from different businesses in designing Disruptive use cases, studying the benefits and Risks of these intelligent systems and building new AI products for more than 50 Million customers around the World, I was seeing the brilliant impact of Leaders in this fast-moving time of Markets. In this Exponential Technologies Era, Businesses are struggling with uncertainty, Chaos and changes.
Leaders rally The Troop and empower authenticity.
Leaders drive to settle a great vision for their businesses.
Leaders care about people who care about stakeholders and customers.
Leaders embrace challenges and achieve great improvement.
Leaders estimate the risks without mastering all the details.
Leaders are comfortable handling contradictions to always raise standards.
Leaders are brilliant mindsets with humility and decisive with compassion.
Companies need much more effective leaders who drive their digital transformations, optimize costs, build scale technologies and empower people’s creativity without scarcity. A few years ago, I was pitching a disruptive concept to a C-suite Leader in a CAC40, with a clear perception of the business benefits. At the end of these crucial meetings, the leader told me: “Lobna you are so passionate about AI and it brings to our businesses a new way of perceiving Innovation that we never experienced before”. This great person, without knowing, gave me such a huge push to prepare my next dream, at that time.
These last two decades, I was living a dream of “Building AI products for people” that I combined with another dream of “Being a Leader”. Struggling, enjoying, trying, learning, fighting, growing are essentials to achieve the SUCCESS and live a DREAM. In this brief personal Memo from my heart, I would love to encourage everyone to play with your limitations and truly engage your efforts to learn about your 80% inner game. AI Exponential Thinker is another Dream to help everyone live their Dreams, by embracing Trust Technologies and building authentic resilience.
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