16. For Every Frustrating Situation, Find a Creative Solution
Someone once said that frustration is the creaky, stiff door to the Secret Garden.
I don’t know if you’ve watched that childhood drama, but it centers around a garden which is unapproachable and whose entrance has overgrown, remaining almost completely hidden until accidentally discovered by one of the main characters of the film.
Sometimes our current frustrations seem likewise: not only can we not see the solution, but when we find it, it seems too difficult to clear away the weeds and ivy to be able to push open the stiff door to our solution.
The two typical responses to this are to either stubbornly push harder and harder until the door budges open, or to walk away defeated.
In the film, the main characters meet a gardener who has been visiting the secret garden for many years, and they discover that his method of entry is entirely different: he uses a ladder, climbing over the high wall surrounding the garden almost effortlessly.
The obvious takeaway from this story is that when confronted with an almost impossible situation, try to re-frame it in a totally different way. Try to step out of your shoes so that you can spot the ladder on the ground, or the gardener who knows where the ladder is hiding.
If you persist in pushing the door open, you might well find that eventually budges, and your tenacity prevails. But all along, there might have been a far easier solution which might have taken far less time and effort.
It’s not always like this of course, but I’m wanting to encourage you to cultivate a different way of thinking, so that when you face frustrations, you allow your mind the space to work on a different solution, instead of locking down on to one particular method.
Remember this: the main difference between a tenacious person and a stubborn one is that the former differentiates between the method and the goal to the extent that when a tenacious person encounters frustrating barriers, they figure out a different way of reaching their goals instead of sticking doggedly to their original plan, come-what-may.
Here’s an apocryphal story to illustrate what I mean: A CEO of a dog-food company, after examining the lack of sales of their top product, fires his existing sales and marketing team for their lack of efficiency and obvious incompetence, only to find that 6 months later, the sales figures remain almost the same.
He calls an EGM to find out who is to blame, spilling forth his frustration in a tirade of accusations to all present. In the midst of his heated monologue, a junior sales manager sticks his hand up, and tentatively asks:
“Sir, may I offer the solution?”.
The CEO glares at him, ready to bite his head off for being so impertinent to interrupt his flow, but grudgingly agrees to give the newcomer his first, and almost certainly last, speech.
“All right, you’ve got 30 seconds, Jones – now let’s hear it!”.
“I don’t need 30 seconds sir. The reason why our sales figures are consistently bad is simple: the dogs just don’t like our dog food”.
Sometimes the solution isn’t obvious, because we aren’t asking the right questions, or looking at the problem from the right perspective.
If you can learn how to step back from the frustration – and you might well need others around you to help you with this – then you may well find that a creative solution appears.
Now, I’ll be the first to admit that life is often more ‘messy’ than this series of success secrets can deal with – but what I’m putting forward here is a principle you can easily adopt which more often that not will enable you to move forward.
The challenge, as always, is to apply what we learn in the context of our current circumstances and future hopes. But that’s why you can leave your comments below and contribute your experience and wisdom.
Dez.
