Best of the bad

Yesterday's training session was not great (in my opinion) due to client-side issues however, today we were able to salvage a great deal as last night I redesigned the content to cater for the limitations and use the cards dealt. It went well enough that while the client and I were driving back in the taxi he said - we made the best out of a bad situation.

Indeed.

I think that making the best out of the bad is somewhat of a skill and perhaps for me, it has been a bit of a savior throughout my life as I think that without a dab of the skill, I could have ultimately been in a much worse off situation than I am at this time. Not that my situation is all that great, but as they say, it can always be worse.

Tonight I have spent the evening with my client who was present at the training days I delivered to their outsourced service support team who are getting ramped up for the job. It has been a very interesting night full of conversation and while the person seemed like they would be a bit dull at first, the conversation was highly enjoyable and over the last two days when we have spent time together, we have had some very sharp conversations.

One thing he did mention that he does is that he gets up early on the weekends, makes a coffee and just thinks about things he doesn't usually spend time thinking about, to see if he can come to thoughts he has never had and possibilities he had never considered.

I do the same, although I try to never get up early. Previously I have mentioned that I play a game I have dubbed "Psychological Pyromania", where I imagine terrible situations and try to find ways out of them. Every time I develop a solution, I put myself back in the cage and take that particular solution off of the table. I do this until I am trapped.

Sounds like fun?

It really is and it is also very terrible as the situations I image are far from comfortable, however they are possible in worst case situations. I do this in order to firstly keep my mind active and secondly, to get accustomed to the feel of failure. Fear of failure is what tends to hold people back from trying and taking risks and I have found that if I am accustomed and comfortable with the feeling, it doesn't freeze me and I can continue to act, even if scared.

I have so many fears in this life that if I do not learn to act regardless, I will never move at all. While fears in some respects are healthy, like physical safety, I believe some are not. I think many these days fear the possibility of being wrong so strongly, they do not even want to think wrong thoughts and if you do this, you tend not to think much at all. at least, anything interesting.

Many try to avoid having bad ideas with out realizing they are a a starting point on the pathway to developing good ideas. First draft ideas are unfiltered, unprocessed thoughts and may not be representative of anything much at all. The starting point becomes irrelevant as they are investigated, trimmed and refined into something better, something even very good. I see that in order to have a great idea, a lot of not great ideas need to be thrown into the mix to be used as fuel to feed the fires of inspiration.

The thought pyromania I described above is a type of meditation for me and my writing is a lot of ideas that get thrown out to be both outcome of old and fuel of new thoughts to be discussed. Discussion is important and it is good to remember that discussion with the self is a valuable process.

What I think happens is that people avoid thinking uncomfortable thoughts, but instead what people should recognize that their own mind is a safe space of imagination. All things that man has ever intentionally created were thought before they were made, but not every thought was driven into reality. Thinking a thing doesn't make an idea bad, making that thought into a reality might.

Personally, I would rather spend my time thinking a million bad ideas in the hope of finding the one brilliant one that I am willing to make a reality, than think what everyone else thinks. Perhaps the Pareto principle could be applied here too where 20% of people think 80% of the thoughts.

What is perhaps an interesting thing is that while people worry about whether they are able to speak their minds, many people tend not to even think their minds and rather choose to focus their mental attention on what they feel comfortable with and what they believe is correct. Lots of people have a lot of correct thoughts yet, don't seem to have great outcomes.

Well, I can leave this for another day as after taking my client out to find Pierogi for dinner (thanks for the reminder @gtg) and then a couple G&Ts back at the hotel, I think I should get some sleep before the early start to the journey home.

Goodnight.

Taraz
[ a Steem original ]