The 2 Options You Always Have (and one is definitely more powerful)
No matter what the situation, the challenge, the headwinds or the tailwinds, you always have exactly two options to move ahead (yes, yes, in both business and life).
One of the options will leave you with the status quo – about what you have right now. The other will be transformative…
The world today is admittedly a very, very uncertain place. There are global worries about things like the war in Europe, national worries like the inflation in the U.S., business worries like technology disruption and I’m sure no shortage of family and personal worries about things like health, safety and overall wellness. And through approaching all of that and anything else you can either:
Take the passive wait and see approach
…or you can…
Commit and actively will something greater into existence.
It’s easy and sometimes even appropriate to use that first option to wait and see. Sometimes there are data points or information that is needed before you can confidently step forward. There’s a trap in always using the wait and see approach, though. Always waiting, wishing or hoping things work out how you want them to before deciding on your course of action leaves you wholly reactive to how the situation might shake out. Said a little more harshly, you become a victim of circumstance.
My view is that wishes are best saved for wells and birthday cakes.
Imagine a U.S. president taking the oath of office and saying, “I hope to faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States.”
Or a wedding ceremony where the officiant asks the couple if they take each other for richer or poorer, in sickness and health . . . and they say, “I’ll try.”
What about receiving an acceptance letter from your dream university that reads: “Congratulations. You might be admitted to…”
Perhaps it sounds ridiculous here, but it lands as perfectly natural when you’re wanting, wishing, hoping, trying, might-ing your way through a typical day. Instead, the second option of committing and willing something into existence is much more powerful. It retools your brain to be proactive instead of reactive. Initiating conversations, views and actions that make you a creator of what comes next instead of just a responder. It’s the difference between being intentional and incidental. It’s using committed, definitive and clear language like I will or I won’t. Full stop.
See where you’re at with this little exercise?
Next time you come up against something, watch what words you use. Are they passive like want, wish, hope, could, try or might? Or are they active such as “I will”? The first step to changing something is to notice it in the first place.
If you haven’t yet, I’d invite you to commit to something – personally or professionally – as part of our #NoMatterWhat Community. Via this LINK HERE, you’ll see something that says: I Will ______________. It’s in that blank that you take yourself out of what is happening to you and become an active player in doing something about it.
The world will always be uncertain. We can’t know exactly what will come next. But spending our time in the shoulds, the woulds, the wishes and the wants won’t change much. When you commit, it’s the start of growing in an entirely new, proactive and intentional sort of way.
