Some people will like you, some people will not like you, and most people will be somewhere in the middle.
Your responsibility is not to change where people stand.
Your responsibility is to spend more time with people that, for the most part, like you and less time with people that, for the most part, do not like you.
You’ll feel better. And they will feel better too.
You get out of a three-hour meeting where you have discussed important topics for the future of your team, your department, your company.
The first instinct is to share the bits and pieces of information you have collected with your peers – impressions, thoughts, gossips, directions, changes, tasks. If you are leader, you’d probably call right away an extraordinary meeting with people reporting into you, just to make sure that everybody can share in your own frustration, excitement, or whatever it is that you are feeling.
It would probably be a lot better, though, if you would take a moment to actually think about what just happened. Go for a walk. Call it a day. Take a piece of paper and write down what you have heard. Sleep on it. Go on for one or two days before talking to anybody that was not in that meeting about what comes next.
Your confusion does not have to be other people’s confusion.
Sure, sharing is fantastic and it makes you feel a little less lonely. But when you do not yet have a clear idea of what you should share, is it really worth it?
It’s ok to be cheerful even when not everything is going well. It’s ok to be down even when most things seem to be perfect.
We need to be able to recognise that life is made of a multitude of pieces. The one that is in front of us right now is what determines our current mood. And fortunately there is much more for us to appreciate, at any given time.
Can you put boundaries around what happens in a given day? Can you keep it enclosed in the specific situation, the momentary emotion, the sudden thought?
Professional setbacks don’t have to spill into your personal life. A rejection or even a big failure do not have to determine your next actions or take away from your motivation. Someone being rude does not mean that every person you will meet from there onwards will be deserving a cold stare.
What happens is in the moment. The story we build around it can stay with us for a long time.
What happens is immutable. The story we build around it can be shaped however we prefer.
It’s a superpower to reclaim.
The real edge in today’s world is not to have all the answers, but to motivate people to invest their resources – time, energy, money, attention – to find the answers. Possibly working with others.
We all heard that the world is more complex than ever, more ever-changing than ever, more fast-paced than ever. Yet we fail to understand what that means. Most of us are not asked to draw from their previous expertise to come up with ready-made solutions. Quite the contrary, the more you can tame the knowledge and information you have, sit with a problem, ask around, collect ideas, prepare the setting, coach people, lead the execution, the more you will be relevant.
We don’t need actions. What we need is systems.
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