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Now you have got the tools of everyday rituals and daily reminders in your mental workshop to align your internal conditions for achieving a productive day.
But one may still wonder that despite sincere efforts to control the inner state of mind, there generally are some outside circumstances (seemingly not in one’s control) which have the tendency to disturb our mind and shatter our emotions.
Let’s honestly admit that this is not going to be easy one (but rest assured, it can be handled).
All of us have to deal with the outside world on pretty much regular basis in one or another form. And there are definitely going to be difficult people to face or handle; some timelines pressure and some negative outcomes despite our best efforts.
In the face of such situation, one may easily get into a trap of thinking that these situations have greater power over us to bend us. Sometimes, we start believing in our head that this is true (but this can be handled to great extent with some strategies and practice, more on that later in this chapter). And this is despite us being 'aware (but only at ‘intellectual’ level and not a deeper level) that:
“100 percent of my feelings are generated from my thoughts from moment to moment” Jamie Smart
But don’t be ever get fooled or bogged down in these situations. Rather, these situations demand us to step back, slow down and try some different approach to address the situation.
I have come across basis my experience that most of the adverse situations can be categorized in these 3 buckets:
So let’s deep dive to understand each of these adopt some practical solutions to handle
Who are negative people?
Short answer: the people, who drain our energy levels, when we spend (or have to spend) more than required time with them.
Human heart is the most intelligent tool on this planet (even 1000 time than our brains) and can easily feel the levels of energy. Sometimes, after meeting some person, you feel very energetic or peaceful at heart.
But there are times, when after meeting someone you feel very pessimistic about the life, about future, about the economy and about anything. You tend to blame everyone in the world for anything happening around. Such people are negative people and drain lots of your energy.
This negativity could be in different forms. And you may start feeling angry, you may feel fearful about some future event, you may have a feeling of lack of something etc.
Now, we need to handle such people in a way that it does not disturb our thinking and so our peace of mind. To be more strategic from the perspective of handling such persons, let’s put them in two different categories:
Now let’s first take up the the second category of people, which is much easier to handle, after which we will ascertain how to deal with most imported external factors of our life i.e. mandatory partners.
The simple solution to deal with the optional partners is to limit the interaction and touch points with them to the minimum possible, only on need basis.
It may be only to the extent of greeting hello and may be occasional brief interaction on random topic at the social occasions or community gatherings. But some of you may think that if most of the people around you are in negative state of mind, then with this advice you may be tattooed by society as an anti-social person.
And the answer is, Yes!
But for your own good, “Better to be alone than in a bad company”
But don’t freak out, here is a great solution to this: Be Selectively Social.
Human mind craves for love and belongingness. It surely needs the company of people.
If you keep looking around, it would not be very hard to come across to people having similar approach towards life.
However, assuming your bad luck, you don’t find them physically, even in that case, in this ever dynamic internet age, you definitely will find people virtually sharing same thoughts, as you do.
For example, you may search facebook groups on any topic of your interest. Also you may such google with ‘your interest area’ + ‘Forum’ and there are bright chances that you may find some community or forum interacting on your interest areas.
The bottom line is that don’t hang around with optional negative partners only for the sake of sounding socially connected.
Please remember the consequences of staying with such person are far graver (in the long run) as compared to being called ‘anti-social person’ by such people. You will be imprinting negativity in your mindset and creating major obstacle in crafting your desired life. You will lose the hope of a brighter future, you will start finding fault in others always for everything, you would be less action oriented and more be sounding like a victim of the circumstances.
Ideally, your life should run around the principle of:
“3 minutes/3 hours/ 3 days” Rule:
This rule simply states that your body understand the energy if you just listen and feel the vibrations in your body, when you are around different kind of people (as explained earlier in this book).
So hopefully now it is very clear on how to deal with the negative people in this category. Lets move on to handle much critical segment now.
In situations, where you are interacting with such people, be watchful of the thoughts popping up in your head. Generally speaking, it is always better to avoid such circumstances, which generate negative thoughts. But, here we are talking about finding solutions to handle such situation with mandatory negative partners.
So what next, when you are watching your thoughts. Please see what kind of feelings are generated and how is your body reacting to this feeling. The feelings could be that you feel some sensation in your stomach, your may need to swallow a lump through your throat, you feel like freaking out etc.
Once you realize that the aforesaid feelings are caused only by such thinking in a particular way, then practice thinking a different thought. It may be difficult to spontaneously thinking in a different way at times.
Let’s understand with an example:
You are dealing with any person who has some authority over you (your boss, leader, your bullying close relative or any other dominant person), who is angry over some matter. Then instant thought which would come is of Anger, resentment against that person, which will raise negative feelings, which will ultimate affect your actions.
What you need to do in such situation is to immediately think differently.
"Life is 10% of what Happens to Me and 90% of How I React to It" –John Maxwell
Get into the shoes of the other person and think from his point of view. He may have some genuine concerns, which needs to be addressed, which you can understand only if you choose to think from his perspective. With the updated thoughts, you may have a different kind of feeling and you would act totally differently.
As we know that all of our feelings are generated from thoughts, so the first best solution is to immediately change the thoughts to those which serve us. And the best part is we can become the master of our thoughts, with practice.
Unless, the other person has some really bad intentions of ulterior motives against you, this technique generally works. Even if that person has bad intentions about you, then it is much better to replace your thoughts quickly to deflate his or her bad intentions. You should never give the remote control of your feelings in the hands of such people.
Also, the daily rituals and reminders, which you have learned so far in this book, will definitely help you to develop a different mindset to handle such situation comparatively in a better way.
An argument with such person will give much more feed to the negative emotions of that person, as this person is already unconsciously looking for some ‘spice’ in his life through arguments.
When you feel the desire to argue in such circumstances, remember that the rule of the game is “if you win the arguments you still have lost. If you lose then you have really won”.
Try this, if you don’t argue with such persons than you will have a sense of accomplishment or at least peace that you have saved your energy for your better productive work file. I am not advocating here not to put your point across. Be polite, be firm and put across your point and if the other person doesn’t agree then, no worries and nothing to lose, except the argument.
Please remember, the above discussions are for low impact arguments on some random discussions.
For life changing decisions with such kind of negative persons, one needs to be firm on the stand and if the circumstances demand, then don’t hesitate to break the terms with such mandatory partners like your job, your business (don’t decide with that intensity about your key relationships with spouse, family, parents- as they are to be treated with much more delicacy as compared to your other life aspects).
You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with. ~ Jim Rohn
When dealing with the negative people, try your best that the above quote is applicable to them and not to you. In other words, you should not become average of the negative people around you, rather they should get impacted by your positivity.
If people really close to you are suffering from negativity or pessimism in life, then one of the solution could be that bring so much positive people or circumstances in their life that it has the impact of diluting their negative approach towards life.
When such people see a different breed of human beings beaming with positivity and enthusiasm and lively approach towards future, it will have the impact of breaking their old pattern and force them to look at the life differently.
Let’s take an example of a glass filled with water but with thick mud at the bottom and you want to clean the water of this glass. The simple solution is to pour clean water consistently in a way that water keeps flowing out of the glass, until all the muddy water is out. You will notice that more clean water you put, the muddy water gets out of the glass and in no time, you have a cleaner glass of water, totally transparent.
Same thing applies to negativity. Depending upon the conditioning or background of such people, the timelines may vary, but yes, bringing more positive people in association with our such close persons will change their negative mindset.
So, we have now covered the bucket regarding dealing with negative partners. Lets’ move on to the next bucket.
Let’s admit, most of us have to deal with lots of work pressure day in and day out. The timelines always seem to be on yesterday basis and deliverables seems to be never ending. At times, we tend to feel that we are not capable and we start doubting our self-worth. Life starts appearing as a struggle with oneself and the outside world. This is the time when anxiety, worry and stress slowly start building their nest in our heads, if not handled at the early stages. The more you delve into such thinking, situations gets worsened over time.
So sooner you realize the symptoms, better you get yourself prepared to handle the situations:
Now, you have already learnt the significance of positive mindset to handle different life situations, , few strategies stated in this chapter, will help you to handle adverse work-pressure in a much effective manner.
Whenever we think that there is a work pressure upon us, it is mainly on account of a limited number of things- generally not more than 3-4things at any point of time. It is rarely the case that one has to simultaneously handle twenty things at one particular point of time (humanly not possible, unless you automate or delegate)
So the first and foremost action is to shortlist those few things, which if not handled timely, will have drastic adverse ramifications.
Such activities, for example, can be serving very high value customers/clients, addressing the deliverables, required by your superior for further top management reporting or handling any other crisis situation.
“What is the one thing, if I do today, that will make all other things unnecessary and unimportant today”- extracts from the book- “The One Thing –by Gary Keller”
So it is the time to don a thinking hat and ask yourself, what is the one such most important thing at this point of time, which if addressed right now will relieve me of immediate pressure. And generally, with some practice, you can shortlist such activities to be handled on priorities. Once identified, the process needs to be repeated for other remaining activities, which will then take the priority.
That way, you can handle the work pressure effectively.
However, sometimes, it might seem that there are multiple significant activities, which needs to be addressed simultaneously. In such situation, still one has to decide and take some action to move forward.
“At any point of time, you can either decide (A) to do the thing or (B) not do the thing or (C) don’t decide at all, which is also a decision and the worst one” ~ Anonymous
In such a scenario, there are multiple approaches, which could be taken.
- You may consider delegating the activity to some reliable person and supervise the deliverable; or
- You may outsource the activity to some outside service provided with clear instructions on the scope and timelines; or
- In some cases, the best thing can be to speak up to the relevant stakeholder and explain him/her about the situation and you can do only this much given the work deliverables.
Also, you may feel that there is a need of additional resource for handling the excessive workload to address that and in this scenario also, you need to speak up and raise the concern. If you genuinely express the concern to the right stakeholders, in most cases, people are reasonable to understand and thus accommodate for such matters.
So the rule here is to “prioritize, prioritize and prioritize” and always speak up genuinely.
As covered in the previous point, to grapple with the heavy work pressure, you must always prioritize the significant activities and develop strategies for handling. However, please note that once you have identified the activity to focus on, then you need to put all your energy there.
During the course of undertaking such prioritized activities, you will come across multiple new things, which you don’t know of yet, which therefore would require learning and mastering new skill sets. You must buckle up to take responsibility and stretch you own set boundaries.
“Life begins at the end of your comfort zone.” ~ Neil Donald Walsch
Stretching oneself out of the self-imposed boundaries and acting beyond one’s comfort zone has immense benefits.
It increases your courage and confidence to handle further challenging tasks with ease. If you work along with people, you tend to develop people management skills faster, which are critical to deliver the results in stretched timelines. Also, to perform or deliver your services/product in a tighter schedule (if it is beyond your comfort level) develops your cognitive skills and makes you more resourceful to come out with new ideas or tools to handle the work at hand effectively.
Therefore, you must keep expanding boundaries of your comfort zone, slightly and gradually, by doing things out of your comfort zone.
A short story explains the limitlessness of human potential and stretching one’s own boundaries.
Roger Bannister, a british athelete was the first person in the world to break the record of running a mile in less than 4 minutes in 1952 Olympics.
When he initially expressed his commitment to achieve this seemingly insurmountable goal; everyone around laughed at him and told that it was never done in the past and is a humanly impossible task.
But the man was full of faith and dreams and strongly believed in greater human potential. To achieve that dream, he immensely stretched his comfort zone. He started following a very rigid training program and started minutely observing his diet, his performances, the size of his long steps etc in very diligent manner. And the result is now history, as he broke the world record of running a mile in less than 4 minutes.
Once Roger did that seemingly impossible task, the other sprinters also achieved the similar or better results.
So some time accepting work-pressure helps to stretch your boundaries and set new trend in the world.
As rightly said by someone: “Great things never come from comfort zones”
To handle the work pressure smoothly, one needs to attain mastery in his/her craft, whatever one persues. One needs to diligently master his skill-set required to perform the work on a regular basis for success. This is called sharpening the saw theory, as you learnt in the woodcutter story in one of the previous chapters.
Follow PRO-PRO-PRO approach:
Always striving towards excellence in our chosen path and mastering your craft is the only thing, which will change your way of looking at the problem. The PRO-PRO-PRO approach towards looking at the problem does wonders. In this approach, you consider the work-pressure not as a PROblem, but rather as PROject to be executed and delivered, which is the way to become a real PROfessional in your career.
“I have not failed, I have just found 10,000 ways that won’t work”~ Thomas A. Edison
Okay, let’s face the reality. Despite our best efforts, there may be times that we are not able to hit the mark. Surely, there would be times when we fail.
But that’s also fine. No one has come out in this world with an assurance or guarantee to succeed every time.
So now what would you do?
You need to sit back and analyze, why didn’t you succeed?
The reason for failure might be that you should have adopted a different strategy at a particular time to crack it. It could also be the case you lacked certain specific skill set required to complete that project. It might be the case that you lacked consistency in your action steps and thus necessary momentum to meet the deadlines.
Failure simply means certain obstacles to be crossed for reaching from “where you are” to “where you want to go”. And failing to cross the obstacle at times would simply mean that you need to be little stronger and bigger than the obstacle, mentally, emotionally, physically etc.
It is very enlightening to learn how the scientist define the term failure, which methodology needs to be applied to every aspect of our lives.
As we know that scientists have a job to keep experimenting with combinations and admixtures of various chemicals to see the reaction in their research and development effort towards any innovation.
But the key point to be observed here is that if some experiment fails, they immediately take it as a “data point”, that this particular process or combination does not work. Nothing more than that!
They never take it personally that there is something wrong with them or doubt their self worth. Rather they learn from the data point and improve their processes better for innovation. They don’t get stuck over there, but move on to try another experiment.
Therefore similarly, we all should collect our own “data points” from our ‘failure’ in life experiments and as a prudent person not to repeat them, rather try different approaches faster.
“If you want to succeed, double your rate of failure” ~ Tom Watson (CEO, IBM)
Please note that Failure does not mean NEVER.
It simply means may be later or may be something bigger is on the anvil. But one needs to be persistent in his or her efforts and after analyzing the lessons learnt needs to do some course correction.
Look at all highly successful people around and if you hear their stories, they would have lost in the jungle of failure, if they had not persisted long enough and hadn’t corrected their course of action with the ‘data points’ learnt.
You know the superhit mobile phone game ‘Angry Birds’, but you might not know that there were 51 games earlier created by entrepreneur Mikael Hed, over a period of 8 years, which were failure. Any other person could have easily given up and would have lost in the 99% breed of people, who fail and declare themselves as failure. But such a long persistence, failure after failure, with a hope and a faith that there is something in the offing, the man kept going. And now see. Angry Bird game is one of the most played mobile phone game and had earned tremendous financial rewards to the founder.
Take another example:
J.K. Rowling, the best-selling author of Harry Potter series, was a big failure and at a time in her life was very close to suicide. But she decided to come back with determination and she is now the richest author in the world with her net worth close to a Billion US dollars.
Your creativity is the gift to the world and you can’t withhold it with yourself, if there are temporary setbacks. All the failure and setbacks are the polishing material to get the best out of you.
Therefore:
- A diamond never complains the cutter to give it the desired shape.
- Gold has never resisted getting into the fire.
Because they know that the shine, the shape, which is in the offing, is the result of this hard time only.
So, keep putting best efforts, because:
“You never fail. You either succeed or you learn”.
