“There’s never been a better time to change the way you think. Replace every ‘I can’t’ with ‘How can I?’ It might sound like semantics, but I promise it will bring whatever you want to accomplish much closer to becoming a reality.” ~ Maynard Webb
As leaders we all have situations that just suck the life right out of us. It may involve your team, clients, suppliers, property, kids, partners and the list could go on….and on.
A friend of mine is currently faced with one of these ‘situations’. Let’s call her Sarah. She hates going to work. Her team annoys her, it’s just plain hard and things aren’t going to plan. Worst part about this is it’s her business! Her own team! Sarah had a hard year last year, it seemed relentless and she was exhausted. She had big hopes and plans for 2015. They’ve already been hijacked. She feels defeated.
In all honesty Sarah wants to get up and walk away. If only she could. So she chooses to be out a lot, commonly called avoidance. A winning strategy…..no! A temporary reprieve yes! And boy can I empathize with her.
What Sarah needs is some DISRUPTION! You may think it sounds like the very thing she doesn’t need right now, but I can assure you she does. Sarah needs to disrupt her thoughts. She needs to stop thinking about this in the same way if she wants any chance of improvement. She needs to think differently.
Allowing herself to continually think about the ‘situation’ in the same way is causing Sarah to experience it in the same way. If Sarah disrupted the way she thought about the situation, could she change how she reacted and handled situations. Why? Because your thought drive your actions. Change your thought pattern, change how you handle it.
Did it work?
Yes.
Sarah changed her thinking from annoyance, ‘hard’, being hijacked, and ‘I hate this’ to a mindset of opportunity. You may think it sounds corny. It’s far from it. Once she accepted her reality instead of trying to ignore it, once she disrupted her thought patterns it allowed her to behave differently, to approach situations and people differently and enable herself to feel better.
By disrupting her thoughts it gave Sarah back control. She was back in the driver’s seat rather than allowing herself to feel helpless. And that’s where we all want to be, well most of us most of the time.
If you want to be back in the driver’s seat and create different results to what you created last year, I challenge you to disrupt your thinking – now. Everyone is better off with a little disruption in his or her lives – or at least their thinking!