A story by Kat Fernandes-Kinsella

I was drowning in trouble but I looked fabulous. I even wore a hat.

“Come on!  Come on!” 

I clung on to the railing, holding myself upright against a screaming and jumping crowd.  I was doing my fair share of screaming and jumping. 

“Come on!  Come on!”

Hooves and colours thundered past us in a million-dollar flat-race.    My eyes were fixing on a bay racehorse, the favourite to win, then losing her in the blur of motion. 

“Come on!  Come on!”

The jockey was a beloved acquaintance and a national treasure.  Strange that you can love an acquaintance who you simply haven’t had time to become friends with.

“Come on!  Come on!”

The excitement of the race was my short respite from going under, but…

“Come on!  Come …come….ooooohhh…awwwww………”

Sixth place.  How?  The horse was at her peak, the jockey skilled and trusted.  While other spectators celebrated their win, I walked round to the stables, dispirited but ready to comfort the jockey.

There he stood, still wearing his helmet, saddle in hand: a lot poorer in both money and prestige than he could have been, if ONLY he’d been in first place. 

He smiled.  Not a trace of sadness or humiliation (my predicted emotions for him), and said:

“Today wasn’t our day.  You can’t push the river.  We’ll have another day. ” 

You can’t push the river.  There I was, open-mouthed, taking that in.  My life was boiling over with difficulty.   And yet here was a just-beaten sage in jodhpurs, handing down wisdom from pretty much every culture who had faced tribulations, failed, learned, survived and thrived. 

My troubled-mind eased: today is not my day.  I couldn’t fix or control anything: I can’t push the river. But I could breathe and let go.  And wait it out: I’ll have another day.

And there. 

Just like that.

Things did not get better. 

But I did.

And slowly, in the time it takes for a river to flow its course, life turned out…alright (…perhaps better than alright)

Was this kismet?  Fate?  Chance? Free will?  I have no bloody idea: go find your own philosophical jockey and get his opinion.  But I do know that the bad times come and go.  And so do the good times.  It passes.  It all passes.  How I respond to the comings and goings, and whether I seek calm in the thrills, and hope in the spills, is up to me.

The fear that most employees share is the risk to their pride, status, and what others think of them if they fail at a task.

 
This fear has stopped so many great ideas from being shared. “What if they thought it was a stupid idea?”, “ What if it doesn’t work?”, or “who am I to suggest such thing when experts in here didn’t think of this?”

 
If these thoughts cross your mind, remember that innovation lives at the intersection of fields, where non-experts tend to play the most.

Try asking instead: “What if it works?”,
“So what if others don’t agree?”, “How is that really affecting me?”, “What if I never get this chance again?”
 
Being afraid is not the problem. It’s a protection mechanism and one should pay attention to this sensation. It helps you stay alert.

Being stopped by this fear is the problem. It holds you back and questions your intuition. It will take a lot of courage for you to get out of your comfort zone and test a risky idea.

But it is worth it.

You are worth it.

Share one ridiculous idea in a conversation today. See what happens.  

Courageously yours,

Randah Taher

Problem finding can be as important as problem solving. This is not a call for the misinformed managers who actively search for problems with employees. Those people need a different type of help.

I’m talking about problem hunting with the intention of understanding situations from different perspectives, and not only the original lens we saw the problem with. Searching for problems can highlight unwritten processes and ways of work as well as illustrate tacit knowledge of how people fix immediate problems. When someone faces a challenge at work, they try to fix it as fast as possible so that work can continue smoothly. This sometimes creates additional issues elsewhere or down the road. Without proper reflection mode, this cycle continues.

If we’re properly hunting for problems in the first place, we’re able to see this a mile ahead and fix it with a big-picture lens, so that people don’t loose time and energy looking for information that are not readily available. E. Paul Torrance called it sensing gaps in information. Others call it problem sensitivity, problem discovery, or problem defining. According to Einstein, “The identification of the problem is more important than the solution, which may merely be a matter of mathematical or experimental skills.”

Happy problem hunting,

Randah Taher

Everyday you get to make new decisions.

You get to choose whether yesterday’s – or last year’s – decision is still valid for the time being and can be used given all the new insights you have.

We hold on too close for past decisions that don’t serve us anymore.

We grow and we flourish and yet some of our decisions don’t grow with us.

You have the right, and the responsibility, to tell your former self you made the best decision at that time. Thank you. But now I know better and I need to change. It doesn’t matter how much time or money we spent on this, we paid for learning.

The hardest ones are the emotional things that keep us from doing things our way, in today’s world. So don’t cover your eyes because your heart is aching. You’re actually being kind to it by letting all these non-needed decisions go.

It’s impossible to learn something if you think you already know it.
If you find yourself responding to every question asked, commenting on all conversation topics, or talking about your experiences without a breathing moment, you’re manifesting ignorance more than anything else.

When we pretend to know what we think we know, we ignore anything that will contradict our beliefs. When we strive to give others the impression that we know-it-all, we portray the image of being better, more important and smarter. We also shut off incoming signals from outside sources that can greatly educate us, leaving us less smarter than what we thought we were.

There’s nothing more powerful than a leader who says eloquently “I don’t know.”
This is the ultimate wisdom from those who know.
It opens mind, ears and attention to what might be the answer. It grounds the person and connects with others who are eager to explore the question together.
Are you open for knowledge?

For some people, work is life.

For others, they work is in the way of living life.

And then there are all who fall in the spectrum between those two.

Regardless of where you are and how much you love your job, there’s great value in finding experiences that help you detach from work and become more involved and absorbed in your non-work life.

Typically these experiences involve learning new things (i.e.g a new language), seeking out intellectual challenges (e.g., playing chess), doing things to challenge ourselves (e.g., competing in triathlons), or simply doing things to broaden our horizons (e.g., taking a class in a field different from our job).

The more varied experiences you get involved in, the more you broaden your view and create the conditions to sharpen your systems thinking and analogy making skills. Not only that, but getting involved in outside experiences help us in two ways:

First, they force us to devote our mental and intellectual resources to something other than work. Doing so enables us to achieve some level of detachment from it.

Second, they can be highly reinforcing. They allow us to feel a sense of achievement and accomplishment. This can add to our satisfaction on the job or compensate for it should we find ourselves not in the ideal work environment.

How many outside experiences are you involved in that help you detach from work at a psychological level?

In Tony Robbins’ legendary in-person events, every ninety minutes the music cranks up and everyone gets on their feet to jump and dance. His assertion is that when you stay in your peak state, have a longer experience, and involve your full body, you can see new possibilities and perceive problems differently. This, in essence, levels you up to have a stronger will and have more faith in your exponential abilities. 

What if your body has different ideas than your head?

How would you allow it to communicate with you?

What do you think it will say?