Thought Picnic: Knowing your cards

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.