Chances are you can think of more than one person to blame for how something didn’t go your way.
So, the challenge is this: List them.
How many can you assign blame to? When does the list get exhausted? At what point down the list of names do you go until you finally acknowledge accountability and put your own name down?
The faster we can get to that step, the faster we can learn from it and move on.
Go ahead and make your list – and take a page out of Santa’s playbook and check it twice, especially if you’re not seeing yours on it.
Stay Positive & Reflect Yourself Forward
HT: to the cop that gave me a speeding ticket yesterday.
That’s the heart of the goal for any project worth doing: it takes on a life of its own.
There will be a time that it doesn’t need you anymore because rich ideas spread.
Which, let’s play it out with the project you’re working on… it succeeds, grows legs and traverses the world on its own.
Outside of the impact it’s making (you’ve made!) on the world, you now have freedom.
Freedom to do whatever you want.
Maybe you try to hold on to your work needing you to encourage or nourish it. Maybe you take some well-deserved R&R. Maybe… just maybe, you start something new again.
Stay Positive & It’s Worth Having An Idea Of What You’ll Do In Advance
We assign labels to help us understand the assigned.
Not that we’re right. Not that we’ll die on the sword to keep the label as it is.
But to keep a “misc” budget line item or calling a situation an anomaly or to toss some widget into your junk drawer is to hide from the truth: maybe you don’t actually need that thing.
Or better yet, understanding it will force you to actually put it to use.
Every artist is torn between two philosophies – one of perfect or one of speed to market/feedback/contribution/etc.
The remarkable artists, though, are the ones that seek out the optimal blend of near-perfect and near-fastest.
Consider the concept of counting viable and dead yeast cells.
To explain, a sample of yeast is collected, diluted to proper cell density and then filled in a hemocytometer and observed through a microscope. Peering through the microscope, you’ll see 5 x 5 grid and within each square is a 4 x 4 grid. The perfectionist will say to count the cells in every square. The speedster will say count the cells in one square and move on. Both scenarios will either hinder or hurt the result or impact that can be made. So the optimally agreed-upon method is to count the squares in the four corners and the center, run some basic math that assumes that collective count is the same and keep the work moving forward.
It’s not the fastest way forward. It’s not the perfect way forward. It is, however, the most efficient way.
And efficient artists are the ones that build the most stable following the quickest; the ones that create meaningful change with minimal disruption; the ones that can bring something remarkable to market the fastest.
There are bound to be moments that the pocket opens.
The QB has a chance to run it for a first down. The motorcyclist gets told the ride they were eyeing is available for a test drive – but only this afternoon. The boss tells you they have a new, more senior opportunity in a different division and you have first dibs.
When your pocket opens will you be ready to leap?
It might not be open today, but you can start imagining the positive scenario today – it makes it far easier to lean in later by starting to lean in now.
Stay Positive & Leaping Isn’t Reckless If It’s Anticipated
It’s accurate and not accurate to note something major has happened in a particular moment.
Perhaps it was experienced in that moment; a love found, a motorcycle purchased, a donor acquired.
But if you peel back the moment, you begin to see the thousands that led up to it.
The thinking and planning and ruminating about it. The slight shift in decisions we made to get to where we are at now. The outside influences (again, outside our control) that have moved to align with this moment.
This is why there is no such thing as an overnight success.
It’s also why it’s important to focus on the details that might lead up to what you want – whether you recognize them in hindsight or not, they matter in the journey of getting what you want in the moment.
I agree with Daniel Pink that regret can be a good thing.
(If you’re interested in the topic at large, get your hands on Dan’s book.)
The issue is that it can be. There’s no default setting. It requires the hardest action of us to get positive value out of it; it requires us to decide to.
We can use regret of inaction to be what drives us to take action in the future.
We can use regret of action to apologize and make things right now.
The hardship arises from the fact that we can use either of those regrets (of action or inaction) to degrade our self-worth instead of using it to change our behavior (now and/or later).
There’s no science that indicates that’s the default setting. Thus, it’s an active choice we can make to learn and grow or to have it take us on a downward spiral.
Stay Positive & Sort Of Obvious Which To Choose Then, Right?
