Why Try To Get Out Of Your Box, When You Can Use What's In It?
Preparing for a meeting. Preparing for work to be done. Preparing for a launch.
It all takes time. Strategy. Resources. A team.
But I’d argue that it takes more energy and ought to take more time to mentally prepare.
Mentally prepare for the challenging questions you’ll face. Mentally prepare for success and failure. Mentally prepare for the emotional labor at bay.
Any prep you do, factor 2x for the mental preparation to go along with it.
Stay Positive & Are You Ready? Mentally Ready?
Imagine that you were going to get made fun of with either decision you make.
Or consider that you’ll upset someone with the choice you make.
How about how someone will inevitably disagree with the move you make, regardless of the move.
Someone will be disappointed.
Once you accept these conditions, it makes deciding easier. Deciding what’s right because it’s right; not because of what someone else will think/feel/react/etc.
Stay Positive & Decisive
You are what you eat.
Rather, your business is what it consumes.
Rather, your customer base is a reflection of your business.
Logic then implies that if you want growth-mindset customers, you need to be in a growth-mindset yourself.
Maintenance mindsets attract and retain maintenance customers.
That’s all well and fine.
Unless it’s not what you want.
You are what you eat.
Stay Positive & Don’t Like The Taste? Spit It Out.
It’s not that you can’t make different decisions in the same environment.
It’s that you can make more different decisions in a new environment. Better ones, even.
A place where there’s no momentum. No status quo. No lingering way of doing things or statuses that people left in the room last time they were there. The emptiness calls on you to fill it anew.
Changing the conditions doesn’t just work for work – it applies to relationships and health and all our habits.
Go to a restaurant you’ve never taken your partner. Run in a part of the city you’ve never seen. Host your next meeting off-site at a venue no one has been.
Stay Positive & You Control The Conditions
It’s probably not. The odds are against you.
But unlike a scratch off lottery ticket, how you perceive the situation or person influences the result.
The best way to make a friend is to be a friend.
Turns out that attitude applies to other relationships and events as well.
Stay Positive & When You Act As If, It’s Not As If For Very Long
Sometimes I can see my daughter is about to get a little hurt; she’s about to make a mistake.
And I let it happen.
There’s nothing that will lock in a lesson better than her making the mistake. I could tell her what will happen in a variety of tones and ways. I can show her videos of it happening to others. She can even watch her sister make the same mistake. But nothing sticks as well as her doing it.
Which it’s not far off to think we benefit just the same.
The other reality: many of the times I think it’s going to be a mistake for her…. it’s not.
Which it’s not far off to think we mistake ourselves just the same.
Perhaps the next time you feel fear/hesitation creep in, it’s worth treating yourself similarly. Give the grace to make the mistake. If it ends up being one, you learn more from it. And if it ends up not being one, well, kudos.
Stay Positive & Kind Of A Win Win, Isn’t It?
That’s where the gold is. That’s where the work is. That’s where the education is.
It’s in that space between the question and the answer.
You’ll find diffusion between question and answer. You’ll find passion, too.
Asking someone a question that gets them to think is the best kind of question.
And the thinking that happens is far better than any kind of answer that can be given.
Stay Positive & What Kind Of Questions Are You Asking (Yourself?)
