Harnessing negative energy

Like all ambitious people, working hard and striving for amazing results, never stops. When you’re committed to making a difference with whatever problem you are solving out there, your efforts never stop.?

Hundreds of decisions are made every day, some in the moment, while others are made after days or months of reflection, analysis and discussion.?

These decisions are made with the best intentions with the data you have available. Never are all decisions the right ones and in fact, accepting that many will be wrong, but some may inevitably be right is the only attitude one can have.

When you’re working with teams and something doesn’t go according to plan, as long as the person/people that made the decision in good faith and made the best call on the day they could, there is little to be upset about and to just get learning.

The one area that opposes this attitude is an external force created as a by-product of a decision not delivering on the outcomes one expected. You make the call, you get on with delivering on it, and the results are not what you expected. Damn!!!

With kids, without the kids, on the job, at home, or the many other environments you live your life in.

The question raises, when this force happens, is it happening to you, or is it happening for you?

Let me explain.

When a force begins to work against you, in whatever it may be. A teacher at school, a result of a test/exercise, a loss in business, a person that leaves you, an investor that is angry, etc… There are thousands of scenarios when something happens (ie a force) that at the time is happening to you, where you get upset, feel like a loser, and you complain that this has begun to happen. Yes there are many situations.

However, if you can reframe the situation and force it to be something that is happening for you, it can be quite liberating.

Now clearly context matters so there is no perfect approach, however in nearly all the cases I am pondering, if something that has happened to you for some reason sucks, I wonder if reframing it to be something that is more for you, might assist with tackling the issue.?

Allowing it to fuel your resolve to solve it rather than as a force that holds you back.? Galvanizing the force to be about how you can solve it, turning it into a positive, making the situation better, can be really empowering.

As I’m writing this, I think about the 5 stages of grief. Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression & Acceptance.

If we can fast track these steps when something happens to acceptance, you can turn it into something very powerful. However, if you get stuck in anger, bargaining and the worst, depression, it is a sobering and debilitating position.

I know it’s hard, there are many things that can impact this and getting stuck in these phases is the worst. Especially with kids as they sometimes don’t have the maturity of adults (not always) to be able to move the stages across. Having said that, sometimes they move quicker than adults and are great teachers for us here.

Having been a recipient of countless forces that have hit me in my life and struggling to work out how to solve them, I have been endeavoring to take any force/outcome that is thrown to me and reframe it to be more for me. That way, I can harness its energy and if anything, solve it faster. Using it to propel me forward.