What to give and what to hold
A friend as he was
thriving in his mid-level executive role once said to me, “I always go into
meetings with three points in mind. The things I ready to negotiate, the things
that are non-negotiable and the things that are open for discussion.” In
essence, he knew what to give, what to hold and what he could afford to lose.
There is a
discipline that goes into preparing for meetings if at the end of that meeting
you intend to come away better informed and better prepared to tackle the
issues discussed.
Degrees of tolerance
This discipline
however does not just pertain to meetings, it pervades all spheres of life and
can be recast as what one is willing to accept, what things are just
unacceptable and the things in view of the situation or circumstance one is
willing to tolerate, endure or even excuse.
It takes a good
sense of self, self-worth and self-esteem to project in those ways and
generally that is what is viewed as character and or principle in makeup of
that person.
Chaotic is not living
Yet, I wonder about
the distractions of life and of technology in some cases that makes many things
negotiable and very little constant. That some people thrive on upheaval rather
than stability is not only strange, but it could well be that the life is more
chaotic than engineered.
The inability to
commit, when stability is in the horizon because we are presented with more
choices yet no choice. The quest for better over the good in anticipation for
the best and ending up worse is an unnecessary precursor to stress and
depression.
Where we think we
are making decisions, we are sometimes running away from our reality and
engaged in pursuit of Utopia in life, in relationships, in our work life and
many more areas of endeavour.
Stand somewhere to run anywhere
It is unhealthy. We
need to find a platform of stability to launch ourselves from, a steady boat on
stormy waters, something that is part of routine so that we can work better on
our creativity and creativeness to be better people to ourselves and our
communities.
We need to limit
the distractions so that we can become involved participants rather than
spectators and worse still, voyeurs ogling at the experiences of others. This
is not to dampen our sense of curiosity, but if curiosity is for titillation rather
than the opportunity to learn something new, we would be left with mirages and
images of the lives of others and nothing to talk of, of ourselves.
We need to stand
somewhere to be able to run anywhere.
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