Miss The Stone

Solutions, not Problems
Ever feel you’re always told by people why something can’t be done? I see people really wound up by this fairly regularly, whether in a restaurant, or on a sales call. Surely winners shouldn’t careless about why something cannot be done. Rather, they want to know what needs to take place for something to happen. It’s so negative to talk about problems, and in my humble experience, when people are switched around to talking about solutions instead, the subtle change in orientation works wonders. I’m reminded of a lovely little story I just picked up:
Riding your bike/New Age thinking
A fella I’ve done some work with in the past, Paul Magee, was sent on a New Age Thinking course (I kid you not!) back in the early 80s, with a load of salesguys from Burroughs (later merged with Sperry to form computer giant Unisys in 87ish). One thing he remembered to me when we met up in Beaconsfield (just west of London) a couple of days ago, was that when you were a kid, remember seeing a stone in the middle of where you were cycling towards? The problem was that if you see the stone, and look at it, even if you tell yourself you must avoid it, you end up riding right over it! The point is focus on what you want to do, in other words, miss the stone, so look to each side to ride on around it – not looking at the problem itself, but the solution.