Get back up. But not like before.
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“Fire feeds on obstacles.” –Marcus Aurelius
Whether you are running a business or managing your career, one of the great tests you will face in life is how you deal with adversity.
There are two good ways of responding. Your first option: build and plan for resiliency.
There’s plenty of good sense in doing this, but there are also limitations to this choice.
Resilience is a state of being in which you are capable of withstanding considerable stresses that life throws at you. It implies a need to be in a constant state of readiness for adversity. But it also presumes that if you are successful, you later revert back to the state you were in prior to that stress being introduced.
Sometimes this is a good goal to have. For instance, maintaining a sense of status quo can be worthwhile in a job or a relationship you find satisfying. You want to protect what you have.
But what if your goal is to build something greater than what needs safeguarding? What if you wanted to create something that gets better the more it gets tested by shocks and stresses?
I’ve been thinking about that a lot over the last several years since recovering from my own bouts of adversity in my professional life.
For me, I decided I wanted to do more than just be resilient in how I managed.
I wanted, in essence, to find the absolute opposite of fragility.
And that takes me to the second choice of how to respond to adversity.
Essayist Nassim Taleb coined an interesting new term for this: antifragile. In his book (http://www.amazon.ca/gp/product/1400067820/ref=as_li_tf_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=15121&creative=330641&creativeASIN=1400067820&linkCode=as2&tag=thinkitcreati-20”>Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder
Let me share with you what’s worked for me in adopting a more antifragile approach to my work.
Ideas: Spend less time worrying about how to protect your ideas, and more time sharpening your ability to come up with new ones. That capacity can be endless. As I’m fond of pointing out, creativity isn’t a table where only the cool, artsy kids sit, it’s a process. And it’s open that to pretty much everyone.
Gratitude: As my long-time client Colleen Francis likes to remind (http://www.amazon.ca/gp/product/0814433766/ref=as_li_tf_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=15121&creative=330641&creativeASIN=0814433766&linkCode=as2&tag=thinkitcreati-20”>Nonstop Sales Boom: Powerful Strategies to Drive Consistent Growth Year After Year
Process: My best work often comes from taking a surprise right turn in implementing an idea, but at its root it comes from consistently applying myself on a daily basis. As a writer and consultant, the obvious application is that I write and do research everyday. But it also extends beyond work-related tasks. I make a daily choice to eat healthy foods and exercise, no exceptions. And as simple as it sounds, that’s a process that’s made me better at the creative work that people pay me to do.
Service: Be in service to people rather than just providing a service. There is a difference. Not going to lie: this was a hard lesson for me to learn properly. For me, it’s meant asking better questions. I focus less on how others can others help me and more about how can I help them. It’s why I donate a portion of my professional time to teaching and to sharing what I know. Being in service to others is how better communities are built.
Choice: Not being good at something is very different from not having your heart in doing a task. This is a common mistake people make in which they sell themselves short at the expense of doing work that doesn’t give them pleasure. A good measure is to find things where, when you do them, you easily lose track of time. Stick with those things that you choose to do. For all other things, delegate if you can. Or don’t do them.
Fail: I’ve talked about this in earlier issues (http://us4.campaign-archive2.com/?u=89226eb68936fc712577977b8&id=65625e5569) of CreativeBoost. Fail fast and fail often. It’s better to take action on the foundation of one solid idea than it is to sit back and carefully consider every angle and find yourself unable to make a decision. Doubt is corrosive.
Ask: This is huge. As Amanda Palmer points out in her book, The Art of Asking (http://www.amazon.ca/gp/product/1455581089/ref=as_li_tf_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=15121&creative=330641&creativeASIN=1455581089&linkCode=as2&tag=thinkitcreati-20”>The Art of Asking: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Let People Help Criticism: This is a scary one for most of us, but putting yourself in the crosshairs of criticism does more than just expose your ideas to scrutiny. It also has a way of attracting people who like what you have to say. Take book publishing. Many of us hesitate to try this because we fear that we might not have something meaningful to say. Or that our hard work will get deep-sixed by one-star reviews. All of us survive even the harshest critics.
Resistance: I like what Steven Pressfield says in The Authentic Swing. “The enemy in the first draft is not incompleteness or inexactness or imperfection. The enemy is Resistance. The enemy is self-sabotage.” I like to short-circuit resistance when I can. I do that by writing in places where you’d think it would be hard to concentrate: loud coffee shops or even dictating while out walking. Don’t give in to the notion that you should do that thing later. Do it now.
Pare: Stop trying to fix broken things. Instead, replace them with those—products, services or even ideas—that do not break so easily. This is not hard to do. The result is that your work stays focused on where you find meaning, where your process yields results and where you can share your knowledge with others.
Very best, Patrick
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