Success v Significance

Success v Significance.

They can go hand-in-hand of course. What I have witnessed though is those who choose a life of significance tend to be more fulfilled and satisfied, whether or not success follows.

Typically, significance fails to follow a path that pursues success first.

houston@figment-consulting.com

Think outside the box.

Think outside the box has come to symbolize the point in the conversation when people are going to think creatively. As if prior to that point everyone has been thinking inside the box.

Who brought the box to the meeting? Whose box is it? Do we each have our own box? Is my box different than yours?

What if we threw the box away? What if we never had the box in the first place?

Let's quit placing parameters on ourselves and embrace the concept that if you can think, then you can think creatively.

Open your mind to the possibilities and understand that you don't have to come up with a great idea, just come up with any idea. Ideas tend to breed other ideas. Once they start growing then you have the potential to develop one, or two, or three, that can be great.

Don't look for a "Eureka!" moment. Be on the lookout for the "Wow, that's interesting." moment.

As for the box, let it serve as a container of supplies, not ideas.

houston@figment-consulting.com

Needs or Wants

The answer is both really. You provide for their wants and solve their needs.

While needs can be emotional, wants are very seldom intellectual.

Wants typically go deeper than what the customer says. Discover that playground within your customers, and live there. Then, you just might do something that matters, and is worth sharing.

houston@figment-consulting.com

". . . we must not lose this sense of possibility . . ."

I borrowed that part of the quote from a new book The Opposite of Loneliness by Marina Keegan. Marina was only 22 years old and five days removed from graduating magna cum laude from Yale University when she was killed in a car accident on her way to her dad's birthday in Cape Cod.

Her future had "bright" written all over it. A job lined up with the New Yorker, and a play she had written about to be produced at a theater festival, gave her reason to be excited about what lay ahead. Tragically though, her life was cut short by that accident.

Fortunately for us, we are able to glimpse into what might have been for her through her collection of essays and short stories that make up her new book. And while there are many interesting insights, and wisdom from one so young, her thoughts on the ability to do anything resonate most with me.

Though she is primarily speaking to college-age peers, her words --  " . . . we must not lose this sense of possibility, because in the end it's all we have." -- can speak to all of us.

The power of possibilities is what inspires us to achieve beyond what we can imagine. If we lose this sense, then creativity quickly diminishes, and mediocre sets in -- a mediocre life, mediocre service, mediocre thoughts, mediocre actions, mediocre behaviors. However, as Marina says, "What we have to remember is we can still do anything. We can change our minds."

My suggestion is we do not have to be a recent college graduate to feel this way. No matter where we are in life, no matter what we have done up to now, we still have the potential, the possibility, of doing anything we want.

Let's keep within us this "sense of possibility" and focus on doing the work that matters. Thanks Marina for reminding us.

houston@figment-consulting.com