GarthBox

There was a tiktok video in which the person joked that we can look at anything in the world and know what it would feel like to lick it.

Stupid. But they have a point.

Unfortunately (or fortunately) most of the experiences that shape who we are, how we behave, how we treat others isn’t based on what it feels like on our tongue. It requires us to experience it. Our imagination can’t do it well enough for us.

Giving a $100 to a complete stranger has a different emotional impact when we do it versus when we think about it. So does working in a coffee shop. Or being a parent.

Anything worth doing can’t be done via the imagination. Virtual reality will never change that. It may get us closer to the experience of licking it, but not all the way.

Stay Positive & By All Means, Imagine, But Best To Do Than To Imagine If There’s The Option

You can have everything you want in life if you help enough others get what they want.

But if you don’t know what they want, how the hell can you help?

The expression isn’t a shortcut. It takes work and for you to give a damn about someone else before you.

But once you know. Then you can act. Once you act, then you can benefit.

Simple, but hard.

Hard, but worth it.

Stay Positive & So, I Ask Again, Do You Know Their Ambition?

It doesn’t make sense to travel to a different country and not know the basics of saying hello, where’s is the bathroom, two beers please…

So why would we go into a meeting not willing to speak a bit of the language of those attending?

Or why have a 1-1 without knowing a bit of how to speak the language of your boss?

Or date someone without knowing a bit about their love language?

Stay Positive & You Don’t Need To Speak It In Full, But Some? Mandatory.

Someone somewhere decided that you could only get that shirt color in black or green.

Someone somewhere decided they weren’t going to target the cleaning industry.

Someone somewhere decided they wouldn’t increase the cost of a hotdog and Costco.

Last time I checked. You also fit the bill of “someone somewhere.”

Me too.

Now let’s role play and say you are working a business deal to sell a widget to a target company.

Given that you are “someone somewhere”…. don’t you think it’s fair that you could decide that not closing the deal is not an option?

What decisions would you make differently? How would you sell differently? How would you stretch to make the only available option work?

Maybe it’s not a deal after all. Maybe it’s about eating healthier. Don’t you have the power to remove the option of junk food? Maybe it’s about your relationship. Don’t you have the power to remove the option of going to bed mad at the other – or worse, them mad at you?

If you’re going to be someone somewhere. Be it.

Stay Positive & The Power To Remove Options Is Yours

Everything significant is inconvenient.

There may be some good things that are convenient, though. Holding a door open for someone is good and convenient, given you’re standing right there, but it’s not significant.

Holding it open all day from 2 a.m. to 10 p.m., unpaid, is no longer good. It’s significant. That’s a lot of people’s days you’re putting a positive impression on (assuming you’re not dressed and looking the part of doorperson…). But, assuming if you’re like most, you’d prefer to be asleep at 2 a.m. – obviously this particular significance is extremely inconvenient for you.

I’m all for the idea that there is a limitation we each have to inconvenience. Too much and we lose ourselves. Too much and it back fires. Too much and regardless of what you’re wearing, they might think you’re employed to open the door and significance is lost.

But to do nothing that is inconvenient? That’s a race to the bottom. No promotion. No outlasting the competition. No merit awards. Nothing but the thought of “what If I had done X even if it were inconvenient.”

My team was ideating getting pedicabs for an event. On top of all the other coordination we’re doing, it is 100% inconvenient for us to execute. After discussion, there’s not enough significance to doing it, but that’s not the point. The point is the team didn’t stop thinking the idea through after the immediate fact that it’s inconvenient. The ideation then turned to how can we ensure this inconvenience leads to significance. That’s where the marketers shine.

When does your team stop evaluating once faced with inconvenience? When do you?

Better yet, when was the last time you did something inconvenient?

Stay Positive & Steady Inconvenience Is Key

Progress is made steadily when there is space and time and you work them in your favor.

Time for ideas. Time for agency. Time for observation and reflection.

Space for all the same.

The trick is to make sure you have both and flex them in a variety of ways. A bit of pressured time here, and a whole lot of flexible time there. Then you apply some space constraints here and then an open field there.

If you manage them both, you’ll see your project excel at a greater pace.

Stay Positive & Oooo Push It

You can be doing great work but if there’s no visibility to it, you’re bound to get frustrated with your lack of progress.

In work. In relationships. In life.

A few tips aside from creating a live feed and asking people to watch you …

• Use an upcoming group setting to say how you’d like to celebrate some progress marks or recent achievements on the team and you’ll go first.
• Source a lesson learned from an action you’ve done and when you share the lesson with others, make sure you include how you learned it.
• Ask someone to help you with an incredibly small element of that project you’re owning.

The trick here isn’t that you need to give complete visibility, but those that make it a regular, unforced priority to have others see the work they are doing ultimately move forward (again, in work, in relationships, in life) faster.

p.s. notice a key thread of what makes it easier to get credit for all the efforts you put in? Hard to call you out for bragging if what you’re sharing is actually helping someone else.

Stay Positive & Need A Hand With Anything?