Embrace the disruption in your life

We keep hearing that Wall Street wants predictability. You could say the same for the businesses and business owners I know. 

The truth is, we all want predictability in our life, and I wonder how rational this thought is. As much as I like to know what’s coming down the road, that doesn’t always seem to be in the cards.

I think we need a different paradigm for predictability. We need to embrace disruption. After all, disruption happens, and every time it does, we think it’s something brand new that has never happened before.

We live in a world of hills and valleys.

Life tries to teach us that progress goes in one direction. You know that’s not true. Instead, what is true, we go forward, and we go backward. Over the long run, we end up going forward. It all depends on how you look at predictability.

Over the long run, life is relatively predictable. In the short run, it’s not. Since we often focus on the short run, we are often frustrated. We want things to be what we expect, and that just doesn’t happen very often.

Smooth never feels that way in the short run.

If you look at a graph of daily movements in the stock market, you might just get vertigo. But, when you look at the long-term performance of the market, it’s pretty predictable, and the line seems to go up and to the right. 

That means over the long run; there is predictability. In the short run, not so much. 

How does this apply to other areas in your life? Does this make you feel confident or do you need to look at daily swings in your life? 

Too often, we let our emotions get in the way of forward progress.

I know I often have to fight to keep my emotions under control when things don’t go as I expect. When I was younger, I used to take out my frustrations on others. It’s one thing that made me very difficult to work for. I let my emotions impede how the world works.

If this sounds like you, I want you to realize that bouncing from one disappointment to another is hard to be around. As a leader, it’s important for us to consider how our reaction to the difficulties of forward progress keeps us from moving as fast as we want.

If instead of being disappointed and taking it out on others, why don’t you try saying, “this is just the way the world works.” Help those around you understand that failure is just part of the process of moving forward. 

If you let your emotions get in the way when predictability goes out the window, you become difficult to work with. I know this from first-hand experience.

How often do you use the word overwhelmed?

I hope the answer is never. You see that when people believe they're overwhelmed, it’s often because things are going the way you expect them to. I want to take a step back when you tell yourself you’re overwhelmed. 

If this is how you’re feeling, you might have too much on your plate. Or, you might not like the direction a project is going and you feel a bit out of control. It’s when you feel that life is just too crazy that you need to take stock of what’s the root cause of this. 

The easiest way for me to get past this is to ask questions and then ask another question on that answer and continue doing this for at least five times. When you do this exercise, I bet you’ll feel calmer and under control. 

We need to have a different way of thinking about predictability.

I hope you can start looking at the smooth curve and not the jagged lines that go all over the place when you look at a short time.

Last week I wrote about taking a gratitude break. You might remember I asked you to look back at what you’ve accomplished. If you want to graph those things, I bet you’ll see a steady improvement over a long period of time. It’s the short-time disappointments that seem to hurt progress and our happiness.

If you were to start a personal gratitude practice, I bet you would find the short-term variations in results won’t bother you nearly as much as they have in the past.

These things just might make your life feel a little more under control.

If you take these few things and make them part of your life, you could find some new ways of thinking about predictability.

1. Understand that forward progress is not something that only goes in one direction. 
2. You’re going to face hills and valleys in anything that’s worthwhile doing. You’ll likely take two steps forward and one step backward.
3. For you to stay level and move faster, you just have to realize that disruption is the norm. It’s not abnormal for things to go well and a change jumps in your way and tries to ruin your day. 

Sometimes disruption is just what the doctor ordered. When our lives become disrupted, it forces us to take a step back and ask ourselves some questions.

Are you willing to do this? We have an infographic that might help you when disruption appears in your life. It’s called the Stage 2 Decision process, and it’s easy for you to get. Just send me a message, and you’ll get your own roadmap for managing disruption and decision-making in your life.

That’s about it for the week. Why don’t you hit return and let me know what you think about disruption and how you can manage it in your life?