There’s Never Enough

The problem is that just like the word “fair,” the word “enough” means different things to different people.

And just as there will never be “enough” (and a person should watch using words such as“never” and “always” as well, but for the purposes of this point, we’ll ignore that philosophical admonition)—time, energy, effort, focus, attention, care—there will also never be a truly “fair” solution to a conflict.

Because, what’s “fair” for you, may not work for me. And vice-versa.

So, since there will never be “enough,” let’s instead pursue a process, rather than an outcome; connection rather than avoidance; and relationship rather than keeping track of who’s ahead and who’s not.

Let’s instead pursue managing ourselves, becoming more and more self-aware, and ruthlessly pursuing the truth of our own stories.

Because there’s never enough.

Just Make It Work

Two things are happening simultaneously in our organizational cultures, our markets, and our personal lives.

We have established non-curiosity (“I don’t care how it works, I just want it to work”) as the new standard for engaging with the work, the ideas that interest us (or not) and the world of conflicts that inevitably surround us.

We have also decided that we don’t have the time or emotional or mental bandwidth to care deeply about a topic, person, or idea, and thus we have jettisoned that character trait (caring) as well.

At the same time, for anyone who is interested enough to look, there has been an explosion in the ways that people are explaining what they do, why they do, and—most importantly—how they do it. From videos on the Internet to long-form blog posts, to intentional curation via your email, to documentaries streaming on your over-the-top video player, there are more people taking more time, to explain what they do, to more interested (curious) and caring audiences than ever before.

These two cultural occurrences represent a split and a niching down into time, attention, caring, and curiosity that is dividing audiences, and may well portend a future of less curiosity and caring at mass, and more curation, curiosity, and even care, at the edges of the conflict universe.

The things that matter, the solutions that “stick,” the statements that are meaningful, and the audiences who will care about the impresario’s show, are not going to be found in the immediate, speed driven, bite-sized, mass market.

They will be found at the edges, slowly, over time, and they will be hungering for you to arrive, with your deeply thought out solutions to their most pressing problems.

[Podcast] Earbud_U, Season Five, Episode # 7 – Eddie Thomason

[Podcast] Earbud_U, Season Five, Episode # 7 – Eddie Thomason, Speaker & Inspirational Entrepreneur

[Podcast] Earbud_U, Season Five, Episode #7 - Eddie Thomason

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The fact is, entrepreneurship might be interesting and hot right now, but it wasn’t always this way.

The fact is, being a rapper or a hip-hop musician was seen as being the way to success, not that long ago.

The fact is, becoming an athlete (particularly an elite one) is still viewed as a path to success for many people.

The fact is that these are all narrow doors.

It’s never mentioned (or rarely mentioned) in breathless articles in Inc., or Fast Company, but the vast majority of entrepreneurs would be far happier aiming at making a living creating $3 million dollars in value for clients and the market per year, than they would trying to win the start-up lottery.

The vast majority of entrepreneurs fail; the vast majority of freelancers go back to working regular jobs; and, the vast majority of people are perfectly happy being employees.

But…

If you get your head right about what exactly is on offer, and what exactly it’s going to take to attain and grow your entrepreneurial dreams, then you can stare all kinds of events, people, and incidents in the face and never blink.

Listen to the interview with Eddie and connect with him in all the ways that you can below.

And start the process of staring your dreams in the face.

Connect with Eddie all the ways that you can below:

Eddie’s Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/unlockyourselfU/

Eddie’s YouTube: https://youtu.be/rxfnHLrv2s8

Eddie’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/unlockyourselfu

 

Calling for a Reckoning

This post may not apply to you, but consider it a warning:

It doesn’t matter how well-meaning you are.

It doesn’t matter how intentional you are.

It doesn’t matter if, after saying what you said, you respond to another person by saying “Well, you have to understand, that wasn’t what I meant.”

It doesn’t matter if the room and audience you said it in front of, applauded when they heard it because it resonated with them.

It doesn’t matter how much you think you were really talking about something else.

When you publicly recommend a reckoning for transgressions that have been long publicly litigated and litigated to a conclusion that merely “is” (rather than a conclusion that may be considered “just” by any modern conception of resolution), then you might as well bring in the heavy equipment.

Because, invariably, you are going to have to oversee the digging of multiple graves.

Be careful when demanding a reckoning to get to justice.

Storytelling is a Skill

Making noise, making a point, and making a difference are different actions.

Where we run into trouble is when we conflate the results of all three and then use those results (and that conflation) to determine what our story will be to the market.

Telling a story to the market that resonates with certain individuals in the market requires three acts:

The first act is to be intentional. Just as we are intentional with our peacebuilding efforts, we should be intentional with our storytelling efforts.

The second act is to be incisive. Being incisive requires being self-aware enough about our own story to do some critical surgery and to cut out what doesn’t matter so that we can focus on what does matter—for the audience hearing the story.

The third act is to be persuasive for others rather than to be persuasive enough to convince ourselves that we’re right and the market is the thing that needs to change. Being persuasive is hard because it’s a skill that requires empathy (which is underrated), self-awareness, and intentionality to be operating all together at the same time.

There are more opportunities than ever for people to make noise.

There are fewer meaningful opportunities for people to make a point.

There are the same number of opportunities there always were for people to make a difference, though not always at scale.

We should be sure we what story we are telling, to whom and why.

Dive Into Yourself

The deepest dive you can do is into yourself.

If you want to find the resistance to changes that need to be made in your organization, it starts with you.

If you want to discover why other people aren’t resonating with your story, it starts with you.

If you want to know how to empathize with others and their plights, it starts with you.

If you want to understand how to manage conflicts and how to be satisfied when conflicts can’t (or won’t) be resolved, it starts with you.

If you want to advance in your career, social, financial, or even in your community life, it begins with you.

[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v4BQ83oIyVM[/embedyt]

The trouble, of course, is that understanding begins with you. And you think that you already know who you are and that you don’t need to go any further. Or even worse, you think that other people need to conform to you because you’re the one that knows the answers to their toughest questions, not them.

Self-awareness is the most underrated leadership trait, and that’s because on top it looks easy, but when you go deep into yourself, it becomes more and more uncomfortable.

Gaining self-awareness means going into your family, your friends, and even the systems and organizations you work in, make money in, and/or recreate in, and asking them the critical questions that matter:

  • What am I blind to here in this system?
  • What do I accept that has been told to me as reality?
  • What can I reject?
  • What are the “rules” or “standards” or “expectations” that “everyone” conforms to in this environment and do those work for me, or am I just accepting them because it’s less comfortable than not questioning?
  • What do I owe others?
  • What do others owe me?
  • What are my responsibilities here?
  • What are my obligations in this environment?
  • How does being here (wherever “here” is) match up with the story I’ve told myself about how my life and experiences should work?

Self-awareness should not be confused with behaving selfishly. Selfishness comes about when we seek to deny someone else’s humanity and pretend that the interaction is a zero-sum transaction. Self-awareness is the quiet, mindful, anticipatory work we do by ourselves, internally that positions us for success in relationships where the opportunities and possibilities can be expanded rather than retracted.

The deepest dive you can do is into yourself.

Dive in.

There Are Easy Solutions to Complicated Problems

The two most difficult roadblocks to success in resolving hard problems are the presence of real trade-offs and considerations of power.

Most complicated problems and difficult conflicts have simple solutions. We often confuse what we believe is a hard solution with a complicated one. What makes solutions to hard problems not easy are the presence of trade-offs (scare resources in scare environments) and power.

In a world of scarce resources (the two scarcest being time and attention these days…even more than money) the trade-offs that must be made to create the space for solutions to your most pressing conflicts can seem insurmountable.

Here are a few (of many) trade-offs. Each one can either represent a zero-sum trade-off or an even exchange trade-off:

Conflict or Apathy

Attention or Ignorance

Awareness or Ennui

Momentum or Slowness

Going Along or Resisting

Reassurances or Courage

Change or Status Quo

Focused or Distracted

Power is the consideration behind most forms of fear. Either a lack of power or power focused in an area that doesn’t benefit getting to a solution. That power is often cloaked in reassurances and comes with a healthy dose of resistance.

We often confuse easy with simple in our own minds. Easy solutions to conflicts usually involve the kinds of solutions that favor whatever trade-off benefits us and validates our perspective.

Easy solutions also preserve our power (maintaining the status quo), or grow our power in each conflict situation. Hard solutions take away or diminish our power, as well as go against whatever trade-off we’d like to have honored.

What makes solutions hard to simple problems is that we are often blind to what is hard, and are aware of what is easy.

Be sure that you are making trade-offs you can live with, in a search for complicated solutions to hard problems.

Change Comes Upon Us Gradually

Change comes upon us gradually.

Change comes in our organizations when we hire one person, and then two, and then more, who think differently about the mission, vision, values, and goals of the organization.

Change comes when the people (or persons) at the top of a hierarchy choose to give up their power over and engage in power with; and, not as a marketing ploy or with lip service.

Change comes when a person in an organization, decides to take a risk, stand up, challenge the status quo respectfully, firmly, and consistently.

Change comes when technology creeps into systems that we once believed were sacrosanct, but are now revealed to be hollow.

Change comes when we are lamenting the things that have passed and are looking with fear at the future that has yet to come.

And then, change is upon us all at once.

And we collectively can’t remember a time when the change wasn’t the norm.

First 200 Bad Drawings

There are 200 bad drawings inside every comic book artist.

Just as there are an estimated 1,000 bad words/turns of phrase inside of every writer.

And there are a certain number of below quality (or poor quality) teaching or training experiences inside of every teacher and trainer.

There are 1,500 bad jump shots inside every free throw shooter. As there are multiple bad layups inside of every basketball player.

In professional fields from comedy to athletics, the audience accepts that there is a curved path that the performer has to walk, from being inexperienced to being experienced.

What the audience doesn’t know is where the performer is at on the path from being inexperienced to being experienced, which complicates the audience’s judgment of the performance.

And can warp its feedback.

But the thing is, once the performer gets all the inexperience out of their system, and successfully works their way through the curve from inexperienced to experienced, the performer won’t care what the performance “looks like” to the audience.

The performer won’t care about the feedback about their performance from the audience either.