Give Up on Getting It “Right” and Be More Human

I thought I’d already learned my lesson.

My goal was to do a virtual training on practice development techniques for a law firm’s associates. I’d record that and have some proof that I know how to do online learning programs.

The day the company was supposed to tell me the date in September for the program, I got an email saying its Education Committee was postponing this until January.

That gave me a “sunflower head moment”: my head drooped in disappointment.

But I was in a mastermind for speakers that afternoon. This gave me an idea: why don’t we record something as a group — and be the audience for each other — and all of us will get video of speaking in front of an audience?

This ultimately grew into a program we called “Fascin8: 8-Minute Insights for Interesting Times.”

I believed the lesson was “reframe what felt like defeat into something better.” As you will see from this video, there was more learning to come.

Yes: there are times when we face adversity and the best thing to do is get through it. (I do love Sir Winston Churchill’s line: “When you’re going through hell, keep going.”)

But often there are other choices. It takes that deep breath to calm our brains and move out of amygdala hijack to find these.

Until then, I’ll share my cautionary tale with you as an example of “Take my advice — I’m not using it!”