Sometimes, it’s not until the conventional way is shut, that we become open to the unconventional, and it takes a roadblock for us to seek a new route, says Grace Marshall. It takes a catalyst to create change
I had my mid-life crisis in my mid-20s. You could say I’m impatient, and thought I’d get it over and done with early.
Fresh out of university with an International Management degree, while the rest of my peers were climbing their way up the corporate ladder, I took a marketing job in an up-and-coming start-up full of high achievers.
A couple of years in, it became clear to both me and my bosses that I was in the wrong environment. I made the decision to quit my job, start a family, and figure out what to do next.
Fast forward 18 years, I now run my own business, have three published books under my belt, one of which won the Management Book of the Year Commuter’s Read award, and my work as a Productivity Ninja with global training company Think Productive has taken me from Norway to New York, helping thousands of people – from start-up founders to corporate managers, artists to engineers, students and CEOs – to change the way they think about work.
To this day, I am grateful, that I didn’t work in a larger organisation, where that gap could have gone unnoticed for years, shuffling from one department to the next, getting just enough right to survive being culled, but slowly, unassumingly dying a little bit at a time.
It was cutting being in that environment where there was nowhere to hide. But cutting, it turns out, was just what I needed.
Crisis
In the early 15th century, the word crisis was a medical term. It was the ‘decisive point in the progress of a disease… at which change must come, for better or worse‘ There’s something cutting about a crisis. Something has to happen. For better or worse. Do or die.
There’s a clarity that comes from crisis, that doesn’t come from natural progression. There’s something in that cutting that cuts through the blindness of the status quo.
Stripping away the status quo
You see, our brains are lazy. We are biased to the familiar. Given the choice, we often stick to what we know. Until things go wrong, the temptation to keep doing what’s still working is too strong a pull.
That’s why we’ve seen a surge in innovation in the midst of a global pandemic. And why redundancy is often the catalyst to people pursuing career dreams they’ve had for years.
In her Harvard commencement address, JK Rowling described her ‘rock bottom’ as the foundation for her success with Harry Potter: ‘failure meant a stripping away of the inessential. I stopped pretending to myself that I was anything other than what I was, and began to direct all my energy into finishing the only work that mattered to me. Had I really succeeded at anything else, I might never have found the determination to succeed in the one arena I believed I truly belonged.’
I can relate to this. I had always been a straight A student and a serial people-pleaser. ‘Can-do’ was my middle name. I had honed the art of adapting, figuring out what people wanted from me, and delivering it.
There’s a saying that’s often attributed to Albert Einstein: ‘Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.’
The problem was, I was a chameleon. If you told me I was supposed to climb a tree, I could probably do a reasonable job of it, even if I wasn’t made for it.
Some of us have the curse of the capable. There are many things we ‘can do’ that ultimately distract us away from the work that brings us alive and calls the best out of us.
Crisis is the point in which a decision must be made – and therein lies the gift. It’s often not until we get to crisis that we’re willing to face difficult decisions, to get to the crux of what’s really at stake.
Does that mean I have to quit my job?
No, absolutely not. It was the right decision for me at the time, but I wouldn’t advocate it for everyone. In fact, I don’t think it has to take a ‘big leap’ to change the trajectory of your career. Yes, there is a certain clarity to big crisis moments, but perhaps we can learn from the smaller mini-crises that we face in our work too.
It all depends on how you look at it.
As a society we tend to celebrate success and see failure as a bump in the road, or a barrier to overcome. Inevitable yes, but ultimately just something we need to get over, get around or get away from.
‘Shake it off’ becomes our mantra, so that we can get back on track.
But struggle can also give us good information when we learn to pay attention.
That thing that’s irritating you
When I think of learning experiences, I think of the big, the scary, the new and the risky. The times I need to step up or stretch outside my comfort zone. Times when I can see the learning coming and I can brace for impact.
What I don’t think of are the curve balls. The lessons that crash land in the middle of just another ordinary day. The ones that make me feel like I’ve just been punched in the face.
These are the ones I can easily miss as learning opportunities, because in these moments, I don’t feel like learning. I feel frustrated, annoyed, let down and taken advantage of. I feel like retaliating, or retreating.
‘Who do they think they are?’
‘What did I do to deserve that?’
But these can be big learning moments.
A chemist friend reminded me recently that a catalyst is essentially an irritant.
That thing that’s irritating you right now – what if that could be a catalyst for change?
The gift of resentment
As a people pleaser, setting boundaries isn’t something that comes naturally to me. It’s often not until a line gets crossed, that I even know where the line is.
When a project becomes all-consuming, a client overbearing or a working relationship jarring, I’ve learned to ask:
‘What does this tell me?’
‘What’s the good information here, that I can use, to clarify my decisions, expectations, positioning or messaging going forwards?’
Resentment has a way of pushing its way to the surface. Sometimes it’s sharp and jarring. Other times it wears you down slowly, but either way I’ve learnt to pay attention to this particular kind of sandpaper. The stuff that rubs you raw can also be used to refine and clarify.
Wrong turn, right where the magic is
Sometimes, it’s not until the conventional way is shut, that we become open to the unconventional. It takes a roadblock for us to seek a new route. It takes constraints for us to explore new possibilities. It takes a catalyst to create change.
That detour you’re having to take, that thing that’s limiting, interrupting or irritating you right now. What magic might be waiting to be unlocked?
Author of the award-winning How to be Really Productive, Grace Marshall is known for her ‘refreshingly human’ approach to productivity. Featured in The Guardian, Forbes and Huffpost, her work as a Productivity Ninja with global productivity training company Think Productive has helped thousands of people to replace stress, overwhelm and frustration with success, sanity and satisfaction.
Her new book Struggle asks the question: what if we’ve got it all wrong about getting it wrong?
