“Brick walls are not there to stop you, they are there to make you prove how much you want something.”
Randy Pausch: The Last Lecture
Randy Pausch was living the American Dream. He had a job he loved as a professor at Carnegie Mellon University, a wonderful family, and fascinating hobbies. Then he was diagnosed with terminal pancreatic cancer and given less than six months to live. As he was dying, he was giving speeches and writing a beautiful book about lessons on how to live.
We all sooner or later run into brick walls. When that happens, we need to remember the admonition in the title of the book by W Mitchell book (of whom more later): It’s Not What Happens to You It’s What You Do About It. There are four possible responses to running into a brick wall, each of which can be appropriate, depending upon the situation.
Response #1, Quit: The first is to quit, giving up the quest. After a certain number of years, someone who’s been toiling away in the minor leagues has to accept that the dream of playing in the Big Leagues is not going to be realized and to find a new set of goals to pursue. I started Values Coach in 1994 after realizing that the insurmountable brick wall standing between me and my then-goal of being CEO of a large hospital was trying to tell me that my calling in life lay elsewhere. Sometimes brick walls are there to tell you that you are on the wrong path.
Response #2, Keep hammering: The second is to keep pounding away at that brick wall, enduring all the pain and frustration of picking yourself up time and again, knowing that it will knock you down many times before you finally crash through. Every spouse of an alcoholic or parent of a child who’s gotten into drugs knows the daily anguish of running into a seemingly impregnable brick wall, hoping that this will be the day that one last crash into that wall will lead to a breakthrough. So does every author who has papered his or her walls with rejection letters and yet continued to buckle down at the writing desk the next day.
Response #3, Shift gears: The third is to find a way over or around the wall. When Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard started the company that still bears their names, their first project was a pin counter for bowling allies. It hit the market and immediately ran into an impenetrable brick wall. Rather than pounding away trying to sell the device with brute force marketing, they tried something else - and developed the technology that Walt Disney used for the soundtrack Fantasia. They launched a company that for more than seven decades was a model of both technological and cultural excellence, and that today is trying once more to get around another brick wall.
Response #4, change the playing field: The fourth is to find a new wall. When I visited the Center for the Intrepid, a high-tech rehabilitation facility for the most horribly injured Veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, I met men and women who, because of their injuries, would need to find careers other than the ones they were pursuing before being sent to war. Their work at CFI represented the first of many new walls that will continue to test their resolve.
It’s important for you to ask what the brick walls you run into might be trying to tell you. In my case, the brick walls that stood between me and my “dream job” of hospital CEO were trying to tell me that I needed to change course and find what author Carlos Castaneda famously called “a path with heart.” But the brick walls I run into when I get rejection letters from publishers are trying to tell me that I need to work harder at being a better writer and being a better promoter of what I’ve written.
It’s Not What Happens to You It’s What You Do About It
- Staying on Top When Your World's Upside Down
- Introduction
- The Laws of Adversity
- The Great Divide – defining moments in adversity
- Carve the statue of you
- The four ways to handle brick walls
- Embrace the 4 personal freedoms
- Get clear about your values
- Align your goals with your values
- Have the courage to pursue your highest goal
- Thank God Ahead of Time (TGAoT) for whatever happens
- Use adversity as a platform for change
- Fear of failure is really fear of humiliation
- Congratulate yourself on being rejected and on failing
- You must overcome your fear of success
- Leadership is most important when the world is upside down
- The flip side of love is loss
- In grief seek comfort - and give comfort
- Imagine your organization as a support group
- Grieve – then move on
- There’s no such thing as false hope
- Practice a healthy humility
- Go off alone somewhere
- In the trials of adversity work on character strength
- Identify the problem behind the problem
- Change your questions
- Make the most of midlife crisis
- Stop doing what isn’t working and try something new
- When you put the pieces back together make the vessel stronger
- Stop thinking about yourself
- Stop ruminating
- Train your doubt
- When one door closes, push open another
- Ignore the nattering nabobs of negativity
- Utilize your gifts
- Hang tough!
- Don’t give in to apparent failure in the middle
- Rescue your failures
- There is no free lunch
- Raise your expectations
- Live into your potential
- You don’t need OPA
- Use DDQs to redirect your actions
- Use EDQs to redirect your moods
- Do good for others
- Practice Rafe’s Law
- Work until your mission is finished
- Bigger problems = better life
- The difference between courageous and crazy is often
- Escape prisons you’ve made yourself
- It’s not personal, permanent or pervasive
- Develop emotional power
- Get real by integrating ego and soul
- Do something!
- Get more sleep and practice Neuro-Attitudinal
- Practice strategic laziness
- Break your addiction to negative thinking
- Transform negative self-talk into positive affirmation
- Erase the graffiti of negative self-talk
- Pay attention to the metaphors by which you create your perception of reality
- Direct your dreams in a positive way
- Interpret dreams to your benefit
- Distinguish between problems and predicaments
- Create rituals
- Playing it safe can be a dangerous game
- Use the 6-A Formula to Create Memories of the Future
- Face the granddaddy of all fears
- Ignore the chatter of the world
- Stop whining
- The Pickle Pledge – a simple promise that will change your life
- Take The Pickle Challenge
- Build up your stamina
- Don’t pick fights you don’t need
- The steepest hills are in your mind
- Turn off the tragi-tainment
- Build upon The Pyramid of Self-Belief
- Act confident to earn confidence
- Stop waiting for someone else to “empower” you
- Take to heart The Self-Empowerment Pledge
- Monday’s Promise: Responsibility
- Tuesday’s Promise: Accountability
- Wednesday’s Promise: Determination
- Thursday’s Promise: Contribution
- Friday’s Promise: Resilience
- Saturday’s Promise: Perspective
- Sunday’s Promise: Faith
- Keep a personal journal
- Pay attention to the patterns in your life
- Overcome your own laziness
- Transform despair into determination
- Enthusiasm is the master value
- Stop awfulizing
- Adopt the Nedlog Rule
- Practice mutuality
- Say Yes to what matters by saying No to what doesn’t
- Write a poem
- Train your brain
- Replace anguish with hope
- Combine ignorant bliss with unearned confidence
- You can be a victim or a visionary but not both
- Work fast
- Caring is the root of courage
- See the world as it really is
- Fear can make you stupid
- Maintain your momentum
- The most important choice you ever make
- Illuminate the darkness
- Get out of stuck
- You cannot change the past but you can rewrite your memory of it
- Turn bad news into the best thing ever
- Write your own horoscope – a Youroscope
- Don’t hit the brakes when you hit the gravel
- Dealing with the energy vampires
- Be productive
- Your trajectory is more important than where you are at any point in time
- Forgive
- Even when the last thing you want to do is to forgive
- Forgive 360
- Stop abusing your imagination with delusions of grandeur and delusions of disaster
- Stop procrastinating
- Create something knowing there are no guarantees
- Get started
- Lost causes are only really lost when you stop fighting for them
- What doesn’t kill you…
- Expect a miracle