The only difference between a problem and a solution is that people understand the solution.
—Dorothea Brande
* * *
Laurel was rushing off from work to a night class when she said, “I don’t know why I’m taking these classes. I’m searching, I guess. I read everything I can get my hands on. I don’t know what I’ll do for a living in the long run, but I’m going to keep looking for it. And I’m going to keep studying, and I’m going to read all the books until I find it.”
Laurel would be better off sitting alone in a dark and quiet room all by herself. As Pascal famously said, “All men’s miseries derive from not being able to sit in a quiet room alone.” Notice that he said “all.” Not some miseries. All.
Why doesn’t Laurel see that she’s chasing something that’s already in her? Because the chasing keeps her from seeing. Try looking quietly into your own heart while you’re running across the street. All Laurel really has to do is sit in a quiet room alone. And sooner or later she will ask her innermost being, “What would I love to do?”
People often say, “I’d love to go on vacation,” because it’s a place where they can let go of the chasing. It’s a place where they can stop attaching and adhering to their stressful thinking—where they can stop judging themselves, where they can close the door on self-critique and just relax and enjoy the moment and be entertained by life.
The hands-off manager wants that “vacation mind” in the workplace. A workplace where you can incorporate relaxing and enjoying yourself, and allow what’s natural in you to come through.
But wouldn’t that slow down productivity? Not at all; in fact, our experience has shown that the opposite is true.
Steps to hands-off success in your life
Three action steps to take after reading this chapter:
1. The next time you take a shower, stay in a little longer than normal just to observe how easily ideas are flowing to you from your right brain into your left. Relax in the warm harmonic of the water and the sensation that you are taking your own sweet time. Let yourself notice the connection between relaxation and letting go, and inspired ideas.
2. Have a meeting with a key player on your team and bring no agenda to the meeting. Simply ask her how life is going for her right now, how she’s feeling about her work, and what she sees as possible improvements in the work area. Let ideas rise to the surface.
3. Change the way you manage your time. Have only one item on your to-do list. Make the top page your to-do list for just today, and leave only one thing on it. Have the second page contain all the other tasks you used to think you had to do, and when you finish your one thing—doing it thoroughly, slowly, and well—put another task from the possibility list on your fresh to-do list. Just one thing.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Practice Finding an Inner Vision
You will recognize your own path when you come upon it, because you will suddenly have all the energy and imagination you will ever need.
—Jerry Gillies
We were working with Jack and Melissa, a husband and wife team of business owners who had just suffered the pain of trying to train an incompetent employee for four months to no avail.
It took them all four months to realize they were not going to succeed. They were trying to force their new hire into being able to do her job as a division leader. The problem was that the new hire hated the work and was constantly making absent-minded mistakes. She didn’t have the skills and talents necessary to do the job.
We asked Jack and Melissa about the hiring interview.
“We had a bad gut feeling,” said Jack. “But her resume looked so good and her references were great. And we needed that position filled so badly. I guess we were hoping for too much. Letting our wishes get in the way of good judgment.”
“But Jack, it wasn’t good judgment you were ignoring. Good judgment said to hire her based on the resume and references. You were ignoring something else. Something more valuable than good judgment.”
“What was that?”
“How you felt about her. Your instinct. The voice inside. It was trying to tell you she wouldn’t work out and you didn’t listen.”
Learning to make your decisions based on this kind of inner listening is different from trying to judge what the “right” or “wrong” thing to do would be. That’s the old school of management—to take “right and wrong,” make them absolutes, and try to impose them on the workplace. Just because almost every manager does this doesn’t mean it works. It seldom ever works.