Avoiding the Swamp of Despair

Avoiding the Dark Swamp of Despair

I called my mentor today and said “I need a coach today.” I just knew the feeling inside me. I was in a total pity party moment feeling the “This sucks and I have no idea what I’m doing” feeling that typically precedes a dark deep dive into the dreaded Dark Swamp of Despair. 

I am looking at my numbers. I’m looking at my touchpoints. I’m looking at my appointments. And I just know…it’s not enough. It’s not enough. And I want full success now. I want to be on the “I’m so proud of my achievement!” side of this journey. 

And, I realized, I need to take a step back. I’m not going to make my goal if I don’t shift. Both in mind and body. So, I thought I would share some key techniques I have picked up along the way. I hope they are helpful to you and I would love for you to share with me what you do to avoid the dark swamp. 

Technique 1: Take a breath

Sounds simple, right. Just breathe? Autonomically, your body is going to do it anyway, but this time force yourself to take a deeper breath. Turn on your Spotify Deep Focus mix. Breathe in through your nose. Breath out through your mouth. All the schmutz. Just blow it out. Put all those negative, downtrodden, “you’re a loser” thoughts out of your mind and out of your body. 

I mean, really…you’re reading my blog, so you must not be a total loser. You at least have good taste in content creators. So, chill out! You’re not a loser. Let’s repeat that and yell it out to the universe if you have to: YOU’RE NOT A LOSER.    

You’re just a non-loser in a bad place. Breathe out the schmutz and begin the process of getting out of your head. 

Technique 2: Ok, fine. Have your stinkin’ pity party. 

If after breathing, you still feel like you’re just in a bad place. Let the universe take you through that. We feel for a reason. So just go with it, but just be mindful as you do. 

Allow yourself 3-days max for a pity party. Thank you, Mr. Walter Bond for this technique. Fine, fine. Feel down. Feel the feels. Have all sorts of fun at your own pity party. Invite Lionel Richie if you want. But, just get it of the way…because it’s kind of ugly. 

All joking aside, sometimes you just need to sit on the “This is harder than I thought” precipice and just give yourself some time to figure yourself out. 

This is the problem with life. We see the people who are already successful. We see the nice cars they drive, houses they live in, clothes they wear. We see it all and we want it. We want that world where money is (finally) not the obsession and something else is. We want to pass Go and collect our $200 million and just be done with the journey already. We’re tired. We’ve been at the long haul. And we just want to get to our destination. 

What we don’t see is the successful person’s journey. We don’t see the pity parties they hosted in their own bedrooms. Maybe thinking the same thoughts: “Oh man! How am I going to do this?!” We just see the end result and assume it was easy. I guaran-damned-tee you it wasn’t. 

So get out of your head. If this stuff was easy, you wouldn’t have this opportunity to make it happen. Your personal road to achievement and success is going to be tough. So breath, feel your feels and move on to the next step. 

Technique 3: Talk To Your Coach / Mentor / Board of Directors and Prepare for Brutal Truth

Don’t talk to a loved one. They already know you’re a loser and are with you anyway. Wrong place to go. Go to someone who put themselves in your life for the sole purpose of making sure you don’t screw this opportunity up. Don’t just admire the person who is already where you’re at. Go talk to them. If I have learned anything in my journey, it’s that people are very willing to share their story, if you’ll only ask. And people really do like to help. So the mentor/coach in your life WANTS you to succeed. They are investing you, just as much as you are investing in them. 

Caveat: don’t come with problems. This isn’t a monkey trading event. Don’t shift the monkey on your back to them. Come to the table with “I’m trying this tactic and it doesn’t seem to be working.” Do some pre-work. Maybe there are some ideas you have about how to course correct and you just need some validation that you are thinking along the right path. 

Technique 4: What are your habits? If they’re stupid…stop doing them!

I read a fabulous book this year called The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business by Charles Duhigg. To boil it down, we are creatures of habits. We have cues in our life that trigger a response that leads to a result. The more we ingrain these cues into our lives, the more habitual something becomes. 

Sometimes this is good. 

We hear our stomachs grumble. It reminds us that we are hungry. We eat a meal. 

Sometimes it’s required. 

You hear the siren. You move the family to the staircase. Everyone is safe from the tornado threat. 

Sometimes it’s vital to winning. 

Quarterback shouts the play. You execute the play. The team advances the ball. 

Sometimes we have the cue --> response down, but we need a different result. So we have to either change the cue or the response to get to a different result. 

Current habit: The clock turns to 3:00 PM, grab the cigarettes to smoke a cigarette, satisfy the craving for a cigarette

New Habit: The clock turns to 3:00 PM, we get up and stretch and grab a drink of water, go back to work. 

With the new habit, we have just removed one cigarette from our day. Good job! I don’t smoke; so no lungs were harmed to create this last example. 

Where am I going with this? What do we call maintaining the same response to a cue, while expecting a different result? We call that insanity. Stop going the insanity. Use the brutal truth from technique 2 on yourself to analyze what is actually happening due to the habit you have formed. 

This is what got me out of my funk. I want deals in my pipeline. I haven’t set new meetings in over 2 weeks. Well, time to look in the mirror. My habits were doing nothing to help my pipeline. 

Here was my habit: Get frustrated because my pipeline is dry. Go to YouTube to piss away some time. Pipeline is still dry. 

Well, that’s just dumb. It’s a coping mechanism. But it’s still really dumb. I had to get out of my head. I had to force myself back up the road a few steps back to the belief / persistence… bridge to happiness. 

Today, I arrived at work. I took out one of my handy-dandy Cyber Group buck slips (available for a limited time only at a Cyber Group near you) and wrote out my list of things I needed to do today. No more excuses. You want opportunities in the pipeline? You’re not going to find them on YouTube. Go make it happen. 

And so I did. 

• I met with my teams for current projects I am the officer in charge for.
• I wished happy birthday to one of my clients. 
• I reached out to another client to talk about customer satisfaction surveys.
• I followed up with another friend in my network, whom I briefly talked to yesterday, to setup a time to re-connect while not on Bluetooth (e.g. in person)
• I walked around to my team to just check in and make sure everyone is doing ok.
• Back to my desk to invite another client to lunch next week. 
• I followed up with another client who mentioned he might need us to help him out in another area of his organization.
• I followed up with HR on getting signed up for my CSP-SM class. 

Results:

• I have two new lunches next week that weren’t on the calendar in the morning when I got to my desk 
• The client I wished a happy birthday to, called me later in the day to advise that he was likely going to need to expand one of our engagement with him
• The client who mentioned a new service need agreed to meet next Friday to discuss. 
• CSP-SM checked off my list. Can’t wait to collect that badge!! ?? 

This isn’t rocket science. It just takes focus. Want a different result? Get out of your head and create a different habit. It’s just that simple. 

I don’t know if anything today is going to net out to new sales, but I’m further along in making something happen than when I was pissing the day away wallowing in the pit of despair. 

So there you have it! What are some goals you have? Are your habits set to help you iterate to those objectives? Try these techniques and let me know if they work. Or, help our community grow by sharing the strategies you use in your life. 

Do well. You got this! You’re the best you in the universe. 

Until next time. 

Jonathan P. Goldstein, MBA, PMP, A-CSM, CIEIO

McKinney, TX