Superpower

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.

In need of systems

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.

The road you take

If you navigate the internet in search of answers and all you get is confusion and frustration, you are not any different from most of us.

And it is not that people are mean and they don’t want to let you in their own secret.

The point is that there is no secret.

There are probably hundreds of roads to get where you are going. Some of them seem similar, some are very different, some contradict each other. Some are cryptic, some are clear, some seem to go in completely different direction but are actually the two sides of a same coin.

It’s easy to get lost on roads that others have built for themselves.

That’s when you understand that the only road that matters is the one you choose to take. Every day.

Only once

It’s rarely as bad as we think it is.

It’s rarely as bad as we think it will be.

We put stakes on the things that happen to us and we never pause to think that it is us who determine how important outcomes are.

Is failing at a job truly that disastrous?

Is delivering a project late really so determinant of the company’s future success?

Is expressing our doubts or asking a difficult question truly going to jeopardize the relationship with a friend?

If a behavior is repeated across time, it is wise to take note and try to address it. But if it happens only once, is it really going to be that bad?

Probably not.

Time to heal

You need to give wounds proper time to heal.

Of course, you want to get back to work. Of course, you want people to accept your point of view and get back to their tasks. Of course, you are all working on something bigger and the time spent grieving is time not spent pursuing a new opportunity.

But wounds do not heal as fast as you’d want them to. People do not heal as fast as you’d want them to. You do not heal as fast as you’d want to.

Give it time. And in the process, do listen. You will learn something about wounds, people, and yourself.

Getting ready for the next wound.