Keep going. It’s worth it.

How do you keep going when everything is “No”?

How can we as aspiring artisans, in whatever we do, keep going?

How can we become resilient without becoming naïve or obstinate?  Let us tell you a story.  It is the story of our yesterday.

It was a no kind of day.

Everything, every call, every email in, every question asked carried or was met with a no.

Heck, even the yesses from yesterday were either taking on no-shaped dimensions or were converting into no altogether.

The inner monologue starting to chatter.

• “Who do you think you are?”
• “How am I going to get this mediation thing working?”
• “You must have been crazy to thing you were going to be the one to make this work.”
• “Give up.  Go back to the day job.  Engineer a way back in, find a berth in safer harbours.”
• “Nobody wants this dispute resolution/collaboration/mediation thing anyway.”

Despair, the explorer’s constant shadow, was sat beside us, breathing over us, sidling ever closer and reaching out in an attempt to embrace us.  If we had not turned towards it, to stare it down, it may well have caught us.

A colleague asked “How are things going?”

Here was an interesting choice.  How would we respond?

“Oh, fine thanks, yeah, really good. And you?” (Denial)

or

“Thanks for asking. Do you know what? It feels like a “No” kind of day today.  It’s exhausting.” (Acknowledgment. Honesty. Vulnerability)

We chose the latter and the day started to turn.

Artisan Choice #1 Acknowledging the struggle

When we acknowledge the struggle and the felt sense of despair then we are able to externalise it.

Speak it out.

Name it.

“You know what? This is hard, right? It’s difficult right now.”  There is no shame in this at all.

Once we have done this then our words and our nomination hang in the air like a speech bubble above our heads.  We now feel a different challenge.

“Do I want this sticking out of my head all day for everyone to see, or am I going to start working on it and changing the message?”

Acknowledging the struggle places it outside of us.  This is critical.  The struggle is the thing itself as opposed to being a perceived flaw or weakness within us.

When we deny the struggle then we remain wracked with self doubt and resentment.  That is not going to help.

Also, when we speak it out other people quickly chime in with “Oh yes… those days.” Which brings us onto our second tactic.

Artisan Choice #2 Normalise the difficulty

It is meant to be this way.

Creating brilliant work is not easy.  If it was, everyone would be doing it.

Mediocrity is easy but that’s not what you’re looking for, right?

In claiming autonomy for yourself and your work you are going to meet immense resistance.  You see those noes in your inbox?  Those are the knots in the wood you are trying to carve.  Amongst the noes lie your opportunities to be excellent, to refine your skill in handling your tools, whether they are marketing, creating content, connecting, whatever it might be.

It is meant to be this way.

It is challenging, yes, but challenging does not mean too hard or impossible.

There is learning within the challenge and without the challenge we would not learn.

Artisan choice #3 Challenge assumptions about no

When we are experiencing these days of no then we need to challenge our assumptions.

The no is often seen and felt even when it is not there.

You receive an email in the morning which seems terminal.

“Well, that’s the end of that.” you feel, and yet, when you re-read it two weeks later, you see that there was a question within it, perhaps a different opportunity that had been hidden to you by the No-filters you were working with.

How does this work?  Daniel Kahnemann’s book Thinking Fast and Slow discusses System 1 and System 2 thinking.

System 1 is rapid thinking.  It likes patterns in order to quickly make sense of what it sees going on.

If we are seeing and feeling a lot of noes going on then we will see and feel a whole lot more.  Why? Because our very efficient System 1 thinking makes sense of everything now by saying;

“What’s this new data? A new email. Let’s see what it says… mutter mutter… ah, yes, that looks like a no to me, and that fits in with the pattern of what we are experiencing right now and so it must make sense.  Yep.  Conclusion reached.  It’s a no.”

What we need to do is to hear and acknowledge that System 1 voice and then make a deliberate choice to now engage your System 2 thinking.  Brace yourself though.  System 2 takes effort and can be exhausting.

System 2 is more inquisitive and sceptical.

System 2 says “Hang on. Give me a minute.  Let me work this out properly. What is this email saying?  What do they mean by that?  Oh, look, it’s not a no after all, this is something altogether more complex and nuanced…”

Kahnemann displays the difference between system 1 and system 2 effortlessly with this diagram (or similar)

42

x

17

If we asked what the diagram is then our System 1 brain, in it’s rapid understanding, self sorting, pattern recognising, sense making way tells us this;

“Oh yes, I know what that is. It’s a maths sum.  It’s multiplication because it’s got an `x’ in it.  It says `What is forty two multiplied by seventeen.'”

If we wondered, though, what forty two multiplied by seventeen is then we engage with a struggle.

Do it now.  Go on. What is forty two multiplied by seventeen?

Go.

Feel how much tougher and slower that was?  You had to engage with the complexity of the problem, carrying over units from one column to the other, remembering to add on a zero for the tens and so on and so forth.

So it is when we have our days of no.  Don’t make do with the system 1 response.  Challenge yourself to engage your system 2.

Artisan choice #4 Breaking the tide of no

In our own story, only yesterday remember, when we were stuck in the blue funk of no, sensing despair and the creep of discouragement, we chose to do a couple of things to break this.

The first was to be grateful.

This is something that we learned from a valued follower and friend on Twitter who tweets a daily gratitude point.

Remarkable things happen as soon as you express gratitude.  Our mindset and world view changes immediately.  Just try thinking of something that you can be grateful of today, right now and try to feel despair at the same time.  You just cannot do it.  You cannot even remember what despair felt like.

While we were in the middle of our day of no another valued member of our community sent a tweet referring us to a brilliant article;

Have u seen this @jasondyk @neildenny My friend @rlh137 sent it to me, I thought immediately of @_getartisan ow.ly/gF9wz…

— Tammy Lenski (@tammylenski) January 9, 2013

How grateful were we to know that people thought about us? – we all need our work to be recognised – and the article was just the tonic.

We responded expressing that gratitude.  It was a powerful shift in our thinking. We had broken the slew of no with the smallest of celebrations, the smallest of victories.

Did it feel good?

You bet it did!

And now we’re on a roll.  We’re starting to like this new mindset.  All of a sudden, we’re looking everywhere, reviewing those emails and our experiences through the day and now, instead of seeing the noes that affirmed our system 1 thinking, we are deliberately employing a mediation technique and hunting out those unique outcomes.

Unique outcomes are those instances that fly in the face of what we presume is going on. So a couple who are in conflict over seeing the children are able to work together on one occasion to achieve something. That would be a unique outcome.

These unique outcomes serve to undermine the patterns that we can get locked into.  But they are fleeting critters.  When we spot them, we need to seize them, to grab hold of them and cherish them like trophies.  They will serve you and your resilience well.

A final tip on gratitude and unique outcomes.  In our experience they are always there. Expect to find them. Be vigilant and always have your net ready.  The bigger the net, the better.

Artisan choice #5 “The temporary suspension of the need for a successful outcome”

This is a line from Richard Sennett’s book “The Craftsman.”

It suggests that the craftsman (in the conventional producer sense) is able to tolerate the wait for success.

As we continue to build our mediation, collaborative and dispute resolution practices then we will need a similar ability.

Be reassured that you are making progress.  Find ways to recognise and record the progress that you make but neither expect nor demand the finished product.  It will come and only when it does will it, and you, be ready.

This struggle that you are in is an education.

The complexities are stretching you, shaping you and strengthening you.

As you wrestle with the challenge, the complexity of redefining yourself, the work you do and the services you offer, as you struggle with that, with every sinew, every tendon straining then you are growing stronger day by day by day.

No one ever said it was going to be easy, but this new work and life that you are crafting for yourself, your own family and the people who you serve is going to be a thing of wonder.

Keep going. It’s worth it.

If you would like help with your personal or business growth or need an inspiring and challenging keynote for an event you are planning then contact us here.