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.
15. Understand the Importance of Taking Full Responsibility…
All my mistakes belong to me! 
Even the ones I do by mistake.
OK, enough tongue-in-cheek word-twisting – what do I mean by this statement?
Well, I’ll be honest here – I still find this secret of success something of a challenge. It’s easier, after all, to find some external reason why I am not successful in any given area of my life. I play the blame game all too easily. But I know that for as long as I play that game, I am losing, not winning.
Taking full responsibility means that I must acknowledge my role even in the decisions that I do without noticing; I must accept that my carelessness also contributes to my responsibility.
Let me clarify: there are things that I don’t do, that I don’t think about, that still have consequences to others.
Have you every experienced the shock of being found wanting, and you didn’t know there was a problem until it was pointed out?
What is your first reaction?
Is it to put your hands up, admit that it’s your fault, and begin to work out an action plan to put things right?
Or do you feel a rush of anger, or victimization, being quick to point the finger towards your circumstances or others around you who haven’t played their part in fulfilling what was required?
I told you I found this a challenge.
BUT – and this is an important point I am wanting to make here, so listen up if your thoughts are already beginning to spiral as you read the above – if you can get this lesson right, if you CAN take full responsibility for your actions as well as your inactions, THEN you will see a radical shift in your success.
I hope the above wasn’t too ‘between the eyes’ – I just want to make it clear that taking full responsibility is one of the most important secrets that successful people have learned.
They don’t take it personally. They have learned the value of teamwork, masterminding, rubbing shoulders with others..all as an incredibly important part of the learning curve of life. In fact, they see this secret as one the keys to unlock doors that remain shut for the vast majority of people.
Why is it so difficult to accept this key for so many?
The answer lies in the word judgement. None of wants to feel judged by others. We all want to be accepted. We don’t want to be found wanting.
The truth however, is that we are all found to be wanting in some areas of our lives. None of us is complete on our own.
That is the whole point of being in a team, community or masterminding group.
You learn that within the context of being accountable to others, you find a safe place to allow people to correct, challenge and guide.
So, the takeaway here is to find such a group of people with whom you can hone your skills, increase and mature your strengths, and improve upon your weaknesses.
If you’ve not found such a community, click on my name below, and let’s chat. If you have some insights – share them below.
Dez.
14. Be Wise in the Course of Persisting
Those who doesn’t persist, gain nothing.
Those who persists without wisdom, may lose everything.
Those who persist with wisdom have everything to gain.
The key here is to allow the pathway that you are forging to be altered as you monitor your progress, or its lack. Skilful downhill skiers have this to a fine art, so that it becomes intuitive. The difference between winning and losing is sometimes just a hair’s breadth, and successful people know how to trim their direction to gain that small, cumulative difference.
Real wisdom only comes in the context of relationship, as wisdom is something you gain by learning with and through others.
Even the most successful people have whole networks and teams of people helping them. These invisible armies are very rarely noted or are noticable, but know that consultation, (‘trimming’) is a necessary part of vision. Persistence comes to those who make a habit of ‘failing often‘, but real wisdom amplifies the effectiveness of the pathway being forged in pursuit of the goals you desire.
So seek counsel in others who you know have trodden such a similar pathway of wisdom for themselves, and be constantly alert for the rocks to avoid on your journey.
13. Learn to Live in Today – Tomorrow May Never Come
Learning to live in today is about appreciating what there is now more than harking back to what once was, or anxiously awaiting what tomorrow might bring.
It doesn’t mean negating the responsibilities you have, by any means. It is more to do with attempting to capture the ever present now.
Can such a habit be developed? I think so.
Here are some simple methods I use to practise the ‘now’:
- Close my eyes for 2 minutes, and listen to the sounds around me. This is an interesting twist on what many people do to change their state of consciousness. By listening to the sounds, I am attempting to take them in fully for what they are, what they represent. It’s as if I’m letting the sounds happen to me.
- Watch something intently that changes slowly with time, seeking to observe something you haven’t seen before. My favorite has been watching small bubbles of water rise in a bowl of soapy water.
- Spend time with my 3 year old, and watch how she gains enjoyment from the smallest of things.
- Watch clouds for 5 minutes, and see how they slowly change shape over time
- Watch the shadows on a wall slowly change as the Earth turns
There are probably many other ways to cultivate the sense of now. The idea is to become a better observer through your senses. This focus on the things around you in time somehow shifts your mind away from past and future, and helps you re-gain the now-ness that you almost certainly had when you were very young.
At its core, there is a sense of appreciation in this technique.
Learning to live in today is all about appreciating what we have around us, and seeking for deeper treasures than at first seem apparent. It’s not about abandoning our plans, or about being irresponsible. As adults, we tend to have a very strong sense of how we square up to those things. At the time of writing, many of you will be all too aware of the fragility of life, and how precious it really is.
So take the time, to share this day with others that you care about, and help them celebrate what is so near to you, but so easily missed.
12. Don’t Be Afraid of What People Think About You
This is a ‘biggie’ for many people.
If fear of people’s opinions is something you currently suffer from, you are only too aware of its debilitating effect on your ability to achieve what you want.
In fact, fear of others’ opinions has such a profound affect, that in many instances whole communities suffer as a consequence, but I don’t want to dwell on the consequences: you are probably aware of how ‘viral’ its effects are.
What then is the solution to being afraid of what other people might think about you?
Is it possible to give a sufficiently in-depth guide here, or am I only able to offer some pointers?
Certainly, it’s the latter, as I suspect if I could provide a succinct solution in less than 500 words that worked for everybody, many psychiatrists would be looking for a new career.
Before I continue, I would like to differentiate between being afraid and having a phobia…the latter is obviously far worse, and I won’t attempt to deal with it here. Also, as I’m not trained in psychiatry, I should give the obvious disclaimer here: please don’t take my thoughts as any kind of advice, or assume I am responsible for any subsequent actions that you might take consequent to reading this post.
OK, that out of the way, what steps have I taken in my personal life to eliminate fearing others’ opinions of me?
Firstly let me say that I am an open, empathetic personality-type, so I am aware of peoples’ thoughts and emotions.
There are no magic bullets, but I have practised the following:
- I don’t judge myself (that’s the biggest ‘biggie’ for many)
- I focus my mind to attempt to find the golden nuggets in people
- I try to affirm people where it seems appropriate for their encouragement
- I try to form opinions as slowly as I can, realising that my judgements will at best be a foggy representation of the other person’s complete personality, strengths and weaknesses
I’m not saying that I don’t ‘thin slice’ (see Malcom Gladwell’s excellent book entitled Blink if you want to know what that means), but in my initial impression, I always temper my opinion with the knowledge that people often transmit mixed messages.
If you look at the pattern of actions above, you’ll notice that much of what I have learned in not fearing others’ opinions of me, is actually related to how I view other people.
In other words, if you want to be free of being afraid of what other people think of you, start practising not judging others. It’s tremendously freeing.
Being unafraid of what others think of you obviously means that you are in a much stronger position to set new trends, to try out new things, to risk making mistakes, to do things in a completely different way to get completely different results….
The list goes on…
What is clear, is that if you have no fear, many things become possible.
As always – share your thoughts below.