As obvious as it sounds, waiting doesn’t help us move forward.
The alternative then is to work your way into relevancy.
Instead of waiting to be hosted on someone else’s popular blog or podcast, start your own.
The Muse doesn’t show up to the idol. She’s attracted to the writer who is constantly typing or the entrepreneur that won’t stop pursuing. Always, when no one is watching.
Why wait?
Be found instead.
Most of us spend 80% of our time talking and only 20% listening.
What would happen if we flipped that around?
How much contention could we avoid?
For thousands of years, civilizations thrived on a culture of gift giving.
You had extra hay so I could feed my horse. I used my horse to plow the field. And come time for the harvest, I parted with extra crops.
Somewhere along the way though, we fell into this trap of thinking we needed to take care of ourselves first before we take care of others. That you can’t possibly fill someone else’s cup if yours is empty.
But that simply isn’t how we got here.
We got here from relying on each others. By trusting that when we feed the network, the network turns around and feeds us back.
To make things worse, we are taught from a very early age that it’s a dog eat dog world. Only the fittest will survive.
What exactly do you need more of to be generous?
It’s not money or time. We have more resources than any population in human history. All we need is to decide. To care more.
It’s just good business too. Everyone wants something from someone now. It has left us starving for true, authentic generosity. Something freely given away that touches us without any expectation of a return.
That interaction leaves a void that we want to fill. We want to thank someone for their efforts. And it inspires us to turn around and do it again for someone else.
May I suggest a different approach, rather than focusing on ourselves, instead:
Don’t run faster than what you have the strength to do.
By doing so, you don’t miss the little opportunity to help those around us along the way. Today. Right now. You can start with the resources you have.
If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.
People tend to classify and place things in designated buckets.
Are you a Jazz fan or not?
Are you proficient at typing or not?
Can you speak German or not?
The problem is that we work overtime to mash-up and stretch people/causes/ideas into a bucket that won’t fit.
“It looks like this one thing from this one time, but I just can’t seem to put my finger on it.”
Familiar? Maybe. But radical, new, innovative ideas might be too big for us to designate them.
Perhaps, the best thing we could when we don’t understand something is to wait and see what it turns into first before making any assumptions.
Our brains are wired to quickly make judgement calls to separate good ideas from bad ideas. I don’t need to test whether jumping off a 200 foot cliff is a good for my health.
That filter has kept us alive for a long time.
Yet, we let this filter get in the way, all the time. We lump ideas that might not work with bad ones. Because we confuse what is an actual risk and what is an emotional risk.
Most good ideas take time in order to work.
We can’t assume something is a bad idea if we don’t know how it will play out.
In the early days, the average voter would need a full day of travel just to submit their vote. Election Day was set in November so that it wouldn’t interfere with the harvest and there wouldn’t be to much snow to travel. Tuesday itself was chosen so that it wouldn’t get in the way of Market Day (typically on Wednesdays) or the Sabbath.
It was extremely inconvenient back then to cast your vote. We don’t live in that kind of world anymore. And yet, that is how we still treat Election Day. An inconvenience.
Maybe Election Day will always be seen as an inconvenience. So, we might as well celebrate it.
Happy Inconvenience Day.
The day where we go out and do something that is important, no matter how inconvenient it is. We use this as an opportunity to remember those who went out of their way before us to make their voice heard.
It certainly will make the long lines more meaningful.
Whether you vote or not, every election has consequences. If you haven’t voted before, today is as good as time as ever to start.
And the good news is, you probably don’t need more than an extended lunch break to get something meaningful done today.
Go, go, go.
[Only 55% of eligible voters voted for the 2016 Presidential election. Utah was ranked 39th in voter turnout that year.]
With the infinite amount of choices readily available, why does anyone choose to leave their comfort zone?
It’s a good question really. We have more than anyone ever dreamed of having only a century ago.
So, why rock the boat?
Well, we usually don’t. We let fear get in the way. We seek out to find safe conditions and create safe patterns. We do the same things we did yesterday with only slight variations. We wait to be told what to do next.
And yet…
Yet, there’s no growth in comfort zones and there’s no comfort in growing zones.
Contrary to what we are taught, growth occurs during periods of stretching and discomfort.
Rubber bands that are stretched become more elastic.
Sometimes every inch feels like a mile marching against the status-quo.
But ask yourself this:
Could someone do what you are doing even ten years ago? Did a job like yours even exist then?
If you are paving roads, getting to where it is you want to go will take longer than the next person in line.
The very fact that you are here in this time, with this opportunity means that the culture is ready to shift.
Someone needs to stand up.
That someone might as well be you.
[You can learn to stand up and lead with Pivot Adventure’s new winter courses. Intentionally designed to help adolescents to find ways to make great things happen.]
All of us are loved by someone.
But how many of them would follow you?
You can love someone and not necessarily trust their judgement.
Perhaps, that’s the problem.
We don’t care enough.
And as a result, projects and relationships suffer.
If we are going to move forward faster, we need to adopt this posture of
“I could care more.”
Not just when the water is calm but when things are rough.
Josh Allred's Blog 