PhotoCredit: WrongWay
A big part of squiggling is having the confidence that you are on the right path. That you are making progress and moving forward, even when it feels like you are not. Especially when you feel that you are not.
Life doesn’t progress in neat straight lines. We expect it to. We like to think we can chart our goals and our progress to the day and date. “This will be the million dollar month for our business”, “I will lose xx weight by the awards dinner”, “We will have babies before I am 35.”
We learn straight lines as kids. Everything we do is brain-expanding and feels (mostly) easeful. We are constantly reading, having new experiences, playing, creating and dreaming. Growth is fast, non-complex and rather linear.
As adults, it gets complex. Growth is slow and reserved for moments when we are not “busy with grown-up duties.” Maybe we read a book. We dream in very rare, inspired, moments. Creating is seldom and play is unlikely.
We don’t make much time for growth but we expect it. We expect to be smarter, fitter, thinner, promoted, funded, respected...and all as the result of doing the same stuff we did yesterday. The same formula, the same inputs, the same exchanges. We are doing the same stuff...and expecting different results. Someone once called this the definition of insanity.
The linear game is a fool's game. Your revenues will fluctuate, you will have good weeks and bad weeks and sometimes what goes up will get stuck in a tree and will not come down. These are the results of the linear.
Sometimes you have to do the opposite of what you think you should do. Sometimes you have to go left to go right. Take a detour. Take a day off. Cancel your meetings for a week. Block out a month of mornings as reading time. Ask yourself “what are three other ways I could tackle this problem?” Experiment. Try a different approach.
So often we think our destination lies dead-ahead and that the straight and narrow will get us there. We can’t see that the road curving off will eventually bring us to our destination. We are speeding down the highway so fast we miss the exit that will get us there faster.
Commit to your destination but don’t be rigid about the navigation. Have a look at your day-to-day and ask yourself if there are any side-streets you should explore?