Stop Seeing Stop Signs
And start seeing challenges as invitations to Go!
It was the best of times.
It was the worst of times.
It was any other day.
If only Dickens had opened with an extra line like that,
perhaps we wouldn’t be so prone to worry about change.
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How do we handle a crisis?
We’ve been told life is a journey of our own making: Set goals, develop plans, gather resources and then, get going.
Discover your why!
Follow your dreams!
Build a life worth living
and get the things worth having.
Except sometimes life just doesn’t play along.
Like when the financial crisis crashed the housing market
Remember those days? A lot of us had thriving careers at the time (much as we do again, today) At the time, I had 30+ employees in two companies occupying thousands of square feet of office space with millions of dollars of contracts. I’d done everything right, I thought, leading a firm that over-delivered customer service, held down costs, provided our people the best training possible, and innovated every chance we got. When signs of a housing bubble emerged, we acted quickly to increase savings, deliver even more for clients, and created a great place to work for our talent.
Until the bottom fell out of the entire economy.
As the pugilist-philosopher Mike Tyson once said:
“Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face.”
I remember how my emotions exploded: first denial that the troubles would last, then anger as it got worse. At night I negotiated invisible situations in my head before bed. In the morning, I felt a little fear as I checked my emails.
As a leader, I wondered what steps I’d missed or mistakes I’d made. I was so used to controlling everything up to that point. The idea everything could change due to things outside my power was the most frustrating part of all.
So I called my mentor.
The worst of times that wasn’t my fault
“First, not every crisis is a personal failure,” he said. “Don’t take responsibility for what’s happened to the industry; you couldn’t have changed it, avoided it or prevented it.”
“But it’s all going to end,” I said.
“No, this isn’t the end game,” he continued. “It’s just life presenting one of its problems. You knew there would be these days. You just hadn’t considered they’d be not of your own making.”
You won’t figure out what to do, he added, until you let that part go. “Because you’re still the leader. Not your fault, doesn’t mean off the hook.”
He gave me an exercise to work out
“The key to navigating high-stakes situations is to discover what you CAN do,” he said. “Stop thinking about what’s no longer possible, might go away or lamenting what you planned to do before. That doesn’t matter anymore. The change has occurred, and others will definitely follow.”
I felt my shoulders loosen up.
"Your job is to figure out what you can do next. What steps are still open, and what steps can you create? Forget past plans, and start designing future ones. You still retain the most important influence of all, over your attitude, stress and fears.”
Then his voice fell to a whisper:
“Always remember: you always have the power to become the person you can be, no matter what happens in life next.”
That’s your path from panic to power
I thought of his advice last week when I did a podcast emphasizing “that winners won’t be determined by their to-do lists, but their to-be lists.” And when I spoke at a conference of 1500 salespeople in Connecticut who were ready to expand their value with every deal they do next, even if it looks different than the ones they did last.
So you might see why all the stop signs at Hartford Airport seemed so ironic to me on the way home!
(My driver didn’t obey a single one, by the way. Probably because we’d still be there halted between signs every five feet if he hadn’t decided to step on the gas!)
Go! And Become a Far, Far Better You
We regain the power to move forward once we stop trying to force the future “back” into the shape of the past. At some point, after the shock, bargaining, and even the anger start to subside, you ask yourself: Am I done wasting energy? Will I get stuck here forever?
Or have I realized that every day is a point of no return? That it’s time to throw myself into the work of building my future, which starts with becoming —
Far, far better than I’ve ever been before!
When I look back on the period after the 2008 financial crisis, I remember deep challenges and changes. I sold one company to the employees and closed the other, finding anyone who asked for their next job. I recall the last day in my past-perfect, all-window corner office. Then moving a desk, a plant and a phone to a tiny space above a convenience store. My first day walking from there, I looked over my shoulder and wondered:
And just what am I supposed to do now?
Today, fifteen years later, I realize how things were about to change, faster than I could have expected. It would become a period of incredible innovation - making online videos, writing new courses, delivering new keynotes, and networking with new groups. Within a year I’d travel 200,000 miles around the world. Within two years I’d be talking about topics I’d never tried before. Making new mistakes on things that didn’t stick.
But a few things did stick, leading to a phone call that would change everything for the next dozen years.
“I know it’s been a while,” a past client rang to say. “But I have a project that’s perfect for you. I knew you’d be the first phone call I was going to make.”
“It’s a leadership ascension program,” I said almost giddy. I’d been working on my leadership sessions for almost two years. “I’ve been working hard on these topics for a while,” I added. “Even if there isn’t a budget, I’m all in.”
“We’ve been watching,” I could almost hear him smile over the phone. “You’ve reinvented yourself quite well. People have noticed. I have a feeling you’re going to love this project,” he added, “and don’t worry. We have a budget.”
To Grow you must Go!
With hindsight I can appreciate how lucky I am not to have become stuck at those stop signs, trying to re-create the place I called “normal” before the crash. No transition is ever ideal. But sometimes, we don’t get to control the plans.
All we can control is our next steps. Which starts with only one stop: to give up worrying when things will "go back" to the past, in the best of times or bad. Because they never have, and they never will.
They’ll be different, and so will you.
Of that you can be sure.
So make it a priority today to do what you can,
Most especially to become more.
The future isn’t at an end,
When you learn to move forward.
And paraphrasing the last line now of Dickens’ old book,
you’re ready to become a far, far better You,
than you have ever been before!
—M
P.S. Here are three key steps I applied to find new growth after the financial crisis
Life may throw you a curve, but it always prepares you for them in advance. Back in 2008, I learned these three lessons for building more value for my clients. Eventually, they helped me design an incomparable value proposition from which to grow my business, differentiate from the competition, and drive unexpected results.
Let me explain each one so you can try them for yourself.
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