Sometimes problems arise. It is a fact of life. It is a fact of business. Get used to it. And now I am going to tell you yet another thing that you already know:
The actual impact of problems is largely determined by how we choose to respond to them.
When something happens that feels like it is going to derail your business or cause you difficulty, I recommend taking a moment and reframing it into what I call the positive frame. As an entrepreneur, you should carry this with you in your back pocket. There are two things to do to see things in the positive frame:
• Expect that things will actually be better with the change.
_________________
• Look at everything as an opportunity.
Some people suffer greatly when they choose a problem-based worldview. It seems natural and correct to them that everything that happens should be looked at from the perspective that it is problematic in some way. This is a very accurate-feeling model, because everywhere you look you will find prob-lems if you expect to see them. (I suggest to you that we are such active par-ticipants in the creation of our worlds that if you expect opportunity, discrimi-nation, or even Communist conspiracies as you go through your life, you will find evidence to support those biases as well.) The problem-based worldview is a common one in which the observer will often end up end up physically manifesting the actively created problematic reality with symptoms such as knotted muscles, indigestion, headaches, and a pinched expression on the face.
Ouch. (Fair disclosure: I used to be that person.) The irony is that if you take the same situations and choose to view them as opportunities, you are also right!
For instance, some years ago I was advising an Internet software-as-a-service startup that was in the process of acquiring funding. The founders were upset as they complained about how a competitor had appeared in their space, where there had been none before. They were really feeling bad about their prospects and the loss of their hoped-for first-mover advantage. My advice to them was to view it as a positive development:
• Look guys, if there were no competitors, your investors would likely ask you what is wrong with the market. If it is a good idea, there will be other people going after it in most cases.
• Another benefit for you is that this competitor will help educate your future customers about the fact that soft-ware as a service even exists for this business. They are doing you a big favor in opening up people’s minds in this way.
• They will also make mistakes that you can benefit from. It is much better to be a smart second-mover than an unin-formed first-mover.
Choosing an opportunity-based worldview feels oh-so-much more fun, engag-ing, and productive than choosing a problem-based one. It allows you to stay creative, engaged, and effective when those around you need it the most; par-ticularly when the brown stuff hits the fan—and it will.
____________
Potential
As you read this, you are sitting somewhere, looking at this text (and enjoying it immensely, no doubt). As you lift your eyes from this paragraph, you can no-tice some of the details of the space around you. How much of that space could you see if you covered your eyes with your fingers? None of it, I would imagine. How about if you crack your fingers open a little bit so that you can see through slightly? How much could you see then? A big improvement over seeing nothing, but still very limited—probably a field of blackness with a single half-in-focus spot of light in the middle. There is a lot to see around you, but we can recognize that much of the space around you is invisible with your eyes covered in this way.
This is the kind of limited vision we often fall into without thinking about it.
Beyond actual vision (photons hitting our retinas), other fields of information that are available to us get a similar treatment whereby they rest largely hidden from our understanding. When thinking about what possibilities the future could hold for you, and how you might take hold of some of those possibilities to change your life for the better, this kind of blindness can be very costly indeed.
Everyone in the world has this kind of blindness to some extent. Think about your own senses for a moment. Take a quick tally of all of the available stimuli that are coming at you, all the time. It would be unmanageable if we actually processed all of the information available to us at any given moment: sounds, kinesthetic sensations, light, smells, tastes. We only notice a narrow slice of these things at any given time. So we cope with this overload by having a nar-row window of focus—like looking through a cardboard tube when viewing the Grand Canyon. We see only a slice of the rich and often overpowering streams of information that make up our environment.
In the midst of this real-time processing of stimuli, we will frequently pull back from the moment and reflect on the abstract field of future possibility. It is what could come; something not here now, but that could be arrived at with the proper actions. A problem with this exercise in imagination is that, as hard as it is to capture the true nuance of actual concrete occurrences around us, planning possible future outcomes is even less tangible and much less constrained. Recognizing this, it is fascinating to note that because it is less
_________________
concrete, it is inherently much more rich and variable. Unlimited is a good word to describe it.
There is literally an unlimited potential for us as human beings to make bold, unexpected choices and experience fantastic outcomes—should we want to do so. But we are blind to it most of the time because that field of possibility is hidden behind things like tending to our jobs, brushing our teeth, and watching reruns of Seinfeld. It is an eternal truism that you see what you see—and don’t see what you don’t see.
I am going to make up a new phrase here: potential field. This is like the mag-netic field reaching into space around a magnet, but it is a field of possibility as it extends forward in time and space from where you are right now. This ab-straction of a potential field extends out from each of us. The many variations of this potential field represent all that could be. All that you could do. This po-tential field can be shaped and explored, but only in a very shallow and limited way, unless you are willing to break the repetitious patterns that hold you in the place where you are right now.
What would happen if you decided that you could question anything? What would happen if you could entertain any dream regardless of how outlandish it seems?
There is a potential of freedom moving in any direction from the here and now, out into the direction of your passion—a place where your fire is lit up, and you light up the people around you. Think about it.
This optimistic, anything-is-possible mindset is where the entrepreneur finds the power to do what the entrepreneur does. It is a big part of what makes an entrepreneur an entrepreneur. It is also, incidentally, often a learned skill. It is something that you can learn to do just by … doing it.
• If there were no constraints on you, what would you want to do today?
• If there were no limitations in terms of money or time, what would you do in the next year?
• If there were no limitations in terms of opportunity, scale, reach, and impact, what would you want to accomplish in the next 20 years?
Download from Wow! eBook <www.wowebook.com>