When the conversation isn’t going in the direction you want it to go, try a redirect.
You can ask a question that is totally off-topic or use a statement that is out in left field.
“Looks like rain on Saturday.”
“How bout the Jazz last night?”
Either way, it works in the business world when someone is talking about something inappropriate or when your teenager is “war storying”.
If you are uncomfortable, chances are someone else is uncomfortable too.
You end up failing most of the time.
And it’s worth noting:
You are not entitled to succeed regardless of how much time or effort you put into something.
The internet has created a gulf of “old” school thinking and the “new.”
Neither is bad or good. Yet, we can’t pretend that the internet hasn’t changed the way we think.
If you grew up without the internet, the world can appear to be increasing in destruction and violence.
That isn’t the case. (At least not in the way we assume.)
The constant exposure has made people from the old school realize one thing, that there are a lot of people who don’t think the same way I do.
It isn’t consistent with how we grew up.
The new school just simply didn’t know differently.
In the heat of the moment, it’s important to ask the question, Whose side are they on?
Of course, that seems easy to answer. They are on their own side.
What if though, for a moment, we would imagine that person is really on our side?
That they want us to succeed and to be better without any ulterior motives.
When we can see that someone is looking out for you, how would that change the conversation?
We spend so much time focused on a specific outcome.
Yet, the better path, the warrior’s path, is one focused on the process.
When we focus on the process, and give something our all, over time, there is a personal transformation.
Having surgery to lose 50 pounds is very different from going to the gym, every day, for five years.
Getting a piece of paper after ten years of med school doesn’t make you smarter either.
Outcomes are a result, they don’t lead to growth. It’s the process of how we put in the work that gets us to become the person we seek to become.
Helping others figure this out is the key part of important work you do.
For several outings, I watched a student fall again and again every time we would start a downhill section for cross-country skiing.
Until, one day, it just clicked.
I asked him what changed.
His response, “I fell ten times but then I measured it.”
Doesn’t matter if you are riding a bike for the first time or giving a presentation…
Early on, you are going to fail. The question is, how are you going to measure it?
Is it another bump in the road that is leading toward another step in your journey?
or
Do we say to ourselves, “I’m never going to get this.”
How do you measure failure?
It’s not fair, it’s just part of life.
No one is without trial or adversity.
So, when the boss (or parents or whoever) messes things up, it’s an opportunity to fix the world; not to destroy it.
Rain doesn’t carry a narrative about your vacation you’ve spent months to plan.
It’s just rain.
It hasn’t come to ruin your day. The universe hasn’t come to spite you. That’s your narrative of how things are.
Here’s the thing about facts, they don’t carry the internal dialogue as we do. There is no voice in its head. It, simply, is.
We can save ourself a lot of trouble when we can begin to see things as they really are instead of how we want them to be.
We get down about our own story not because it is so bad. No, it’s because others have it so good.
At least, that is what we are telling ourselves.
It’s a first-world problem.
200 years ago, one couldn’t even dream of access to information at our fingertips and resources so abundantly available.
What would a king of old give up to just play with a smartphone for an hour? Or, perhaps, to fly in a plane?
It doesn’t line up.
If we could somehow transport someone from then to now, I think they would be astonished at the marvels we’ve created and disappointed by our outlook.
Human beings struggle to feel happy and content.
Industrialism has trained to believe that we should be content but never satisfied.
There is a better approach:
Why not simply create?
Because when we create, we must share. If we are sharing, we are saying to ourselves and signaling to others, “I have enough.”
When’s the last time you heard someone say they had enough?
We don’t live in a world of scarcity. We live in a world full opportunity. Every day is a chance to change things. Don’t waste it on filling it with more comfort.
It’s not hard to see when something needs to be fixed.
Traffic lights, clocks, a software update…
But in the search for fixing things, we forget to see what actually works.
For example, oxygen works. All the time, in fact. Yet, we never notice it. Because if it did stop working, then we would quit working.
So, here’s the thing about systems:
When a system works perfectly, we forget it exists.
(Out of sight, out of mind.)
Things are not going to always work perfectly in our favor. And when the world feels like its conspiring against you, it’s important to note what’s keeps us alive to begin with.
