Mindset, focus and intention are hallmarks of successful people. Not everyone can be entrepreneur. Not everyone can be an employee. What motivates you? What inspires you? If you lack a growth mindset, it will be hard to create a side hustle or your own enterprise. Ask any entrepreneur and it’s usually harder than they thought it would be when they started. Yet they also realize how much they grow along with the potential upside.

Most people are not intentional about the choices they make. They let things happen to them rather than make things happen. Those who do the latter are better at managing uncertainty and all they don’t know.

This week I share some thoughts around navigating uncertainty - which isn’t just facing us in a pandemic - how to look at time, and an exercise for giving focus to 2021 which is just a few heartbeats away. Let’s go!

Navigating ambiguity and uncertainty

We want to know things for certain. When unsure, when there’s doubt, when the answers are not staring us in the face, we get jittery. Who’s going to make the decision for us? Who is going to tell us it’s going to be okay?

Fact is, no one, really. Goes back to the fact each of us are navigating our own journey based on the experiences we’ve had before. Capitalism is ruthlessly efficient at optimizing without regard for feelings. For life. It takes human empathy to reign it in.

Even the CEO doesn’t know things for certain. Sure, she can make decisions based on experience and data. But success comes from making strategic bets for which the outcome isn’t known until it is.

Many people have a hard time navigating what’s ambiguous. With sitting with not knowing what’s certain. There’s magic and art in ambiguity. There’s differentiation and courage there.

And this year, you, my dear friend, have a big free helping of ambiguity. We all do. Get used to it. Learn to love it. Because once you do, the path forward won’t seem so daunting. The weight of indecision becomes greater than the weight of choosing.

Start with what you know for certain:
Systems we took for granted failed.
Everything is connected.
This won’t be the last pandemic.
We still have a major climate crisis bearing down upon us.
You built a business before.
You built a career before.
You have resilience.

And of course, the future is ambiguous.

With that, think about the change you can make in your business, your community, your people. Think about how your business is connected and can create stronger connections and thus bring value to the customers you serve. Think about how you do and can make their lives better. Think about how you can find the abundance and bring it to the scarcity. That’s where the opportunity lies.

Recognize, too, that what is true today may not be true tomorrow. There’s no room for complacency. Hopefully you’ve realized there wasn’t room for complacency before the pandemic either. And that while you may have been cruising comfortably along before, that it was a false comfort. That our most cherished systems were not as strong as we thought they were. Many of us did. Don’t beat yourself up about that. Just acknowledge it. Embrace what you’ve got now and do the work.

Successful navigation requires confidence and options. It requires a foundation that affords you the opportunity to fail strategically. Because you will fail before you succeed.

Thoughts on Barbs and Wire

Combined they formed barbedwire, that stunning tool used to keep people and animals in and out of places. Invented in the mid 1800s, you can learn all you need to know at the Barbed Wire History Museum.

There is of course, a museum for most everything. Beyond the physical manifestation, barbs and wire show up everyday in our lives. Prickly people who don’t align with our thinking and desires. Technology that doesn’t bow to our will or in other words deliver on the promise of improving our productivity. They are things that slow us down. Or at the worst, stop us in our tracks.

We all know what these things are. They’re both the same and different for each of us. Little irritants that derail an otherwise perfectly stellar day. I would even venture to say that barbs comprise all the alerts and emails and notifications pinging you non stop all day every day. Unless you minimize them.

The wire is the connections and path taking us towards our goals. Dreams. It’s the conduit of course. Like the power in your house. Or the lines overhead connecting you to the grid. In this case, the grid is your network of people and tools who help you along the way.

The trick is overcoming all the barbs attached to the wire because success is never a smooth path. It’s a choice. Do you say ‘ouch’ and panic? Or do you say ‘dang’ and keep going?

“The details are not the details. They make the design” - Charles Eames

What is your default response?

In the heat of the moment we revert to what we know, how we know to act and respond accordingly. We’re not in a state of mind to think holistically. To bring our best self. Unless we’ve trained our mind and body to be that best self.

That’s why it’s important to practice. To do the personal work to become who you want. To show up how you want to show up when things get tough.

Will you navigate such hurdles with grace and style or flail about attacking everyone in your way? And then regret it later?

This is hard work. You will not always bring your best self to difficult moments. I think, though, if you practice, if you make it your mission to take a little step everyday to get there, you’ll do that much better next time. You’ll be able to respond from a place of strength and experience better outcomes. You’ll recognize the situation and check yourself automatically rather than just reacting. Without practice we go with what we know; what is instinctual.

I often share an article entitled “The neuroscience of leadership” from 2006 that talks about how change causes physical pain in the brain and to make it stick you have to transfer the change from working memory to the basal ganglia where habits are stored. And that takes repetition and focus.

What’s your default response and what steps will you take to strengthen it?

On the flip side, parsing your time into massive productivity slices isn’t the answer either. Being busy organizing, cleaning, responding is just that: keeping you busy with the false illusion you’re doing something productive. True productivity is doing the right things. And only you know what those are. Those nagging goals and dreams currently unfulfilled.

I’m not advocating a slovenly lifestyle. Clean. And stay that way as that frees your mind from the clutter of distraction. And dust bunnies everywhere are just gross. Whether in your head or your home or your office.

There’s also the argument that idle time is also time well spent. Time where you sit quietly with your thoughts. Where the digital is not present. Ideas happen here. Do this.

Don’t go another year and look back with regret on where the time went without anything to show for it. Look back next year and smile at the experiences you enjoyed. The work you did. And the difference you made. And if you achieved your dreams this year, where are you going next?

Your three words for 2021

For the past few years I've chosen three words to guide me in the year ahead along with a definition of what they stand for. For 2020, they are Trust, Human and Aware. You can read my previous years starting here.

Since we're speeding toward the end of this rather remarkable year, I encourage you to try this exercise as you start thinking about 2021. It's one way to give focus to the year ahead.

I first learned of this exercise from Chris Brogan who inspired others to do the same.

What say you?

Intentional success in the face of ambiguity and uncertainty.