How You Do One Thing Determines Your Success Rate

In the midst of all the chaos that life's throwing at you, how well are you doing with it? There's only one thing to work on to improve how well things are going. What's that?

Honestly, there is little that can be said about the ideas of challenge, the feelings of “I can’t,” or “Impossible,” or “it’s difficult.” We’ve all suffered those feelings at some point in time, and one thing that hurts us is a basic human trait we have to get past. Which, for most of us, makes things harder because we’re human.

Looking backward, starting at an early point, the first I can’t moment I stumbled across understanding fear. After getting into some circumstances that fear played a major part of my response, I became very accustomed to how it physically affected me. The rush of your heart beating, sweating palms, shaking hands, and tunnel vision can be attributed to highly tense situations that cause fear.

Then, in 1994, came the impossible. Questions like, “How in the hell am I going to do this?” came to mind all the time. I was dealing with a shock to the system, trauma, loss, and a mountain of responsibility that was supposed to be shared. Ultimately, at 21 years old, and relatively immature, that responsibility landed on my back.

We’ve all been there at some point.

So, how do you deal with these difficult, impossible scenarios? For example, how hard is the world today? If you answered pretty dammed, then you’ve been paying attention and felt the effects of this sort of new world order we’re all living.

The reason why many people struggle to deal with the new world order, or new anything, is their resistance to change.

Nobody likes change. Why is that?

Change implies a couple of things. When you think about it, not the definition of change, but the effect, what does change do to you? Why is change something that is sometimes hard, resistable, and scary?

Change implies getting yourself into a less comfortable position. It’s the need to go out and conquer the unknown, or at least fact the unknown. And, when we are maturing, along the road that is our life’s journey, we plan both the stops and the destination in our heads. So, if that goes awry, it becomes scary, or even painful sometimes. We resist things we didn’t intend on, because they aren’t what we wanted. We fear things that are unknown to us, because that’s human nature.

How do you conquer that?

Developing A Plan

To deal with the new world, or new things that we are confronted with, we have to develop or hone one trait. It’s the ability to adapt.

How adaptable are you?

If you’re not someone that deals well with the need for adapting, then you’re just another soul struggling among millions. Not everybody is adaptable. However, you can hone your adaptability, and if you’re not good at adapting to changes in your world, build a more adaptable approach.

Have you ever stretched your network? Do you engage with colleagues and professionals from various backgrounds, or just ones similar to yourself? By opening your network to different backgrounds, you can gain new insights and perspectives you might not have before.

For example: As a caucasian, working in Law Enforcement most of my life, I knew how I viewed things as a younger officer. But, what about the older officers? What about the black or hispanic officers? Getting a chance to work in an environment that was diverse gave me a chance to hear perspectives I might not have come to on my own.

How tuned into the need to grow are you? Throughout a career, or managing a home, or a business, or even your free time, things can improve through effort and learning. When you can look upon a challenge as an opportunity rather than a problem, this can help you to significantly improve your adaptablity.

Example: Having to play the heavy isn’t easy. I had to learn to do it, and balance the need to achieve a goal with the restrictions that are placed upon officers. It took time, but once I learned to apply being the heavy hand and then being able to communicate effectively with the other side, I was able to adapt to nearly every situation I’d stumble my way into. And sometimes, in life, we stumble into things we don’t expect.

Growth requires feedback from different places. I worked myself into a supervisory role. Managed to be in a supervisory role or middle management role most of my life, between running a security operation at 23, becoming a sheriff’s sargent at 27, and running my own route for a service company at 50.

In 2/3 of the positions, feedback didn’t come easily. As a solo operator from 50 to 53, who was going to be there to give me feedback? As a sheriff’s sargent, most of the time there was little feedback until somebody made a mistake or something went wrong. But, I could get it from the officers assigned under me. By developing good relationships with them, they were able to come to me and tell me openly if they took an issue with something I did, decided, or directed. It helped me to not only improve my skills, but it also helped form good relationships at work.

Adapting comes down to willingness. Simply, if you’re unwilling to adapt, you quickly become that person people refer to as a dinosaur. And, nobody wants to be the old timer who is referred to as a dinorsaur.

By learning as you go, being willing to step out of what’s comfortable and into the chaos of things, and developing as many contacts and relationships as you can, you can more easily adapt.

There’s a Stephen Hawking quote that I heard once in a training seminar. I’m going to leave off with that.

Intelligence is the ability to adapt to change.

— Stephen Hawking

I guess, in my mind, what he was saying, was to be smart. Embrace the change!