Is Each New Day a Tragedy or a Fairytale?
It would be boring if everything in life were easy. There has to be a spectrum of challenge for us to thrive.
I believe the most successful people not only overcome challenges but they seek them. One of my favorite sayings is, “failures are hurdles of success”. If you’ll allow me to amend it for this entry.
Failures that are a result of sought challenges, are hurdles of success.
In other words, you learn the most and find the most success from the tough times that you seek - not the ones you stumble upon.
Let this be an encouragement to find something hard that you want to do.
Not Impossible
I have known select few people that like to try impossible things. This is different than things that other people wouldn’t try. It’s similar to radical generosity - the type of giving that many people would think is inadvisable. It doesn’t mean it can’t be effective or should never be done. It’s just not for the masses.
Most do not try truly impossible things. Things that can never be done regardless of who tries. You could argue there is some illness or uncontrollable irrationality present.
Don’t fall into that trap no matter how driven you are to be recognizes, challenged, and triumphant. Your average day should be hard, not impossible.
The Sweet Spot
I know that impactmakers have “signed up” to work on something that is hard and I fear many of us debilitate ourselves at times because of our desire for big, quick change.
Most of this entry was produced while in the air on the way to Denver for XYPN Live. Check out my session Monday at 1pm! On the way back, I have to stop in Dallas, TX. They say everything is bigger in Texas but my travel time will certainly not be quicker.
Bigger is not always better and it usually doesn’t coincide. A secondary example is related to the fantasy football podcast (yes, on 3x speed) I am listening talking about different size athletes and how they generally operate at different speeds.
Don’t let your “Type A” desires force you to avoid the sweet spot of impact. Remember that delayed gratification is counter-cultural (E-Impact 56).
It’s not always easy to find but there is a sweet spot. For most situations and people, it is closer to impossible than second nature.
The Spectrum of Impact
I’m not much of an artist but here’s my attempt at a visual for the “Spectrum of Impact”.
Notice the placement of the sweet spot. Consider this an example and not a catch-all formula. Our friend Samantha Demers who I mentioned in E-Impact 87 had a recent tweet which is highly relatable.
The point is we cannot allow ourselves to assume perfection is possible and the way to achieve it is to accomplish the impossible. See the September 29, 2020 E-Impact entry and the Vince Lombardi story.
You shouldn’t mistake hyperbole for the literal. We throw around extreme words and increasingly more curse words for emphasis and minimize their meaning (whether legitimately for emphasis or even a different meaning altogether). I took a linguistics class in college and learned a lot about syntax and other aspect of language that we don’t think about in everyday conversation.
I think a big reason for why slang terms arise in each generation is that we are looking for added emphasis. They cycle in and out (and sometimes back in, like fashion) of the the ordinary lexicon but the original words (the ones that have been in the dictionary the longest) remain.
Remember when “cool” became popular? How about phat? I can’t believe I just referenced that (I just made a “dope” rhyme, this is going downhill fast).
I assume if you are reading this you don’t find yourself being lazy without intention and you’re likely not to default to the left end of the diagram above. If that is true and you control your consumption of hyperbole, you’re in good position to find the sweet spot.
Fiction or Not to Fiction (Non-Fiction)
I wrote a non-fiction book (Personal Finance in a Public World) - it’s the truth, literally. I never thought I’d be a published author and while it’s still hard to believe at times, I see a big difference between the roles of fiction and non-fiction. Although I have wondered why it’s not called “real” and “fake” or “serious” and “made-up”.
Every person’s life is a story but not every person’s life is worthy of a biographical book or film. Most people’s lives do include some events from which a good story could derive its inspiration. Keep a solid journal, you never know when a good fiction producer might come calling.
William is an entertainment legend.
You learn about tragedies and fairytales when studying literature in school. I was hardly a fan of these fictional stories but I do remember some of the titles, authors, and characters. I prefer learning about events that happened and I felt the book itself was the event in many cases.
I suppose it’s important to understand how fiction and entertainment was part of history and would assume that Spielberg is the Shakespeare of the day. In my defense though, I also avoid fictional films. Give me a documentary any day.
While I’ve made it clear my preference for historically accurate entertainment, this entry is more about the time we spend on our work - our impact.
I believe it to be incredibly important to enjoy the work that you do on a daily basis. You must find the sweet spot and live in that space. Some variance is inevitable but be careful for Mission Drift (see the September 22, 2020 E-Impact entry).
The Impactmaker Movement lives in the non-fiction world. It’s “in real life” (IRL, if you will). It’s motivating to feel the pressure of reality yet you also have acknowledge that you can’t control everything. William and Steven could and can write whatever they wanted into their scripts. It’s entertainment and controllable. We don’t have this luxury.
While our tragedies can quickly turn to fairytales, the verse is just as possible. With that being said, I suggest you break your evaluation down into smaller increments.
A huge project can seem like quite a nightmare if the only solution is to solve the problem. However, if you identify smaller solutions and smaller increments of time, you’re more likely to experience fairytale.
Bigger is not always better, as mentioned above.
A good example of this comes from my household. Mrs. DePasquale is the most dedicated kindergarten teacher in the world (please excuse the bias) and she does an amazing job on social media expressing her work. Check out @mrsdepasquale. She must have an incredible system in place, right!?
Sorta…
At the risk of getting in trouble when returning from Denver, I’ll divulge that my wife has expressed overwhelm with her efforts on multiple occasions. She has some serious goals (but not impossible) for her business and impact. They seem insurmountable when looking at the end point of her vision.
Ramit Sethi made a great point about this on the 301st episode of the Financial Advisor Success Podcast. Paraphrased, he said that most people try to jump from A to Z when they should be looking to go from A to F. I’d say you can even concentrate on A to B and find fairytale like success.
Mrs. DePasauale has had some huge motional wins recently. I’d categorize them as making it to B and C on the full journey but those moments have certainly been fairytale like.
The bigger the project, the more important it is to break it down. Assuming you’ve found yours already (if not, see the October 13th E-Impact Blog entry and E-Impact 65), identify the next few stops and work for those first.
A short example from my life is working through tax returns. Some families have a very complicated income and deduction situation that can be overwhelming when you start evaluating. At Initiate Impact, we have to take it one source at a time. It feels great to work through each one.
Breaking down your vision into small goals allows you to live and work IRL. It’s reasonable to solve a small problem or create a new thing everyday. It’s fictional to think you’ll change the world overnight.
The Nightmare on Impact Street
A nightmare is not antonymous with fairytale (or tragedy). It’s like going completely off the spectrum.
A nightmare could be a number of things and it’s different for each impact project. The best way to define something is often to declare what it’s not. This is appropriate here as your work is different than mine is different than another impactmaker’s.
Your work and subsequently your days are fairytales when you live in the sweet spot. Tragedies arise when you drift towards the impossible or get complacent (lazy). Each of these are on the spectrum.
A nightmare is when you’re on a completely different track and need more than an adjustment of effort or expectations.
If you find yourself in a night mare, stop! It’s time to reassess what you’re doing. I’d suggest taking some time off from your impact work and clearing your head.
Living the Dream
Everyone wants to live the dream. What’s your fairy tale day look like?
I’d venture a guess that it has something do with meaningful relationships, meaningful work, and progress towards making something better in the world.
Ironically, the biggest part of living the dream is managing it and not managing the pursuit. Spend time visioning (dreaming) and setting challenging yet reasonable goals. You’ll identify the sweet spot and your dream will be clear and livable.
The best dreams are lived.