Please Don't Give Up

I heard a story today from a person who has been through something we have all been through...something she cared very deeply about and had worked very hard to build was shoved aside by co-workers and a boss who did not realize what it really meant to her and why. It even started out not having the same meaning to her and I am not really sure if she understood why it was so important to her until today. So people made a decision about something and when she tried to provide another perspective they blew her off. Royally. She was at that place, again, we have ALL been there at one time or another, where she thought she should just back off and shut up. Now I admit, there are times when that is appropriate. But when we picked apart the hurt feelings of being ignored, the rational reasons the decision was wrong in her mind, and her perception of the hypocrisy we found out why she cared so much. She valued the program on some personal as well as business sense levels and she didn't want to see it fail. In fact, she wanted to see it replicated! So then, when asked what she needed to do to achieve a different result next time she was full of ideas and she knew that she did not want to let the program go because of one relatively little bump.

So, when you get to the point that you want to give up, on anything, write down WHY it is important to you. And then ask yourself (or call someone you can ask to push you) WHY ELSE? And keep going until the answers do not roll off easily. And you are really thinking. That is when that part of you that cares so deeply will let go of the real reason. And look at that, write it down and really think about it. THEN you can make your decision. If you decide to keep going, put that piece of paper where you will see it quickly the next time you get down and use it to help you fight off the urge to give up.

How do you bounce back when you hit a roadblock?

Comments

What an Extraverted Intuitive Needs to be Productive

The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) is based on the work of Swiss psychiatrist Carl G. Jung. Jung observed that people have inborn preferences for gathering information and making decisions and that these preferences guide an individual’s behavior. The mother/daughter team of Katherine Cook Briggs and Isabel Briggs Myers expanded on Jung’s theories and created an assessment to make the combined work accessible to all individuals. Today, the assessment is used by most Fortune 100 companies and over two million people worldwide, annually. The assessment identifies an individual’s inborn preferences on four dichotomous scales: where you focus your energy, how you prefer to take in information, how you make decisions, and how you deal with the outer world. Type is best used to understand other people, improve communication, and develop individual skills. The first dichotomy is Extraversion (gets energy from other people) and Introversion (gets energy from reflection). The second is

You Will Never Be As Hard on a Single Working Mother as She is On Herself

I was recently half an hour late to a Junior League of Washington meeting and a when I asked a question about something they had discussed earlier a friend made a joke about getting there on time. Yes, within no time at all I realized she was making a joke and didn't worry about her. The reason it hit home and I continued to worry about being late was that I was beating myself up inside about being late. Her teasing comment was barely heard because of the screaming judgmental voice inside every single mother that says "you can't do this" or "you're doing it wrong." To give you a little perspective, let me give you an idea of what I needed to do to get to my meeting at 7:00 PM. I needed to leave work at 5:00 PM, walk to a metro station, wait for the right train and take it to my station about six miles away, walk to my son's daycare to pick him up, get the feedback for the day from his teacher, on this particular day we had to find the shoe my s

Rule of Thumb for Leadership Development

How committed to that leadership development program you signed up for (or were nominated for) are you? Better yet, what does committed mean to you? I will try to attend the whole class except for that phone call I need to take and checking e-mails during the program. I will put my out of office on for the time of the program and attend the whole session. I will do all the pre-work assigned. I will make notes and incorporate something from the program afterwards. I will work for at least six months to integrate the concepts, reflect on application "experiments," and revise my process. In a world where training professionals are constantly being able to state the return on investment for leadership training, the dirty little secret is that there is often very little return because the participants are not committed to the program. Honestly, if you are not spending 7-10 hours working with the new concepts outside of the classroom for every hour you are inside th

Strategic Serendipity

Search This Blog