Find your blind spots...

“I’m quite easy going”

A dear friend looked at me confused and said, “What are you talking about, you are one of the least easy-going people I know.”

I went on to explain myself with little success and we agreed to disagree.

Many things have happened since then — I shifted from a corporate setting to more of an entrepreneurial one, took on the city experience, became a professional blogger (you can say professional when you get paid), continued to craft my skill as a sales and marketing journeyman… and then a virus decided to make its presence known and changed everything. Like many of us, I hunkered down to ride out the storm, managed a small bubble, and worked hard to keep myself healthy and mentally sharp.

Segue to a small app called MindPal which became my companion to sharpen my mind — various games and puzzles designed to keep the mind challenged and nicely categorized to identify your strengths and those areas for development.

As the pandemic faded into fresh memory, I stopped playing MindPal and eagerly got back into a world that was the same but different — most importantly though, I was in motion again. Recently I picked MindPal for no other reason than to play some games, and in a non-pandemic mindset, intently studied the categories that in effect illustrated what my competencies looked like.

Speed, Memory, Attention, Flexibility, Language, Math and Problem Solving

I was not so much interested in the scores as much as the relative comparisons and was particularly relieved that Problem Solving was the strongest category (for no other reason than it validates my main value proposition). As I moved down the list I landed on flexibility and couldn’t help but smile.

Then, like now, she had been spot on.

Success comes with the ability to leverage your strengths and minimize your weaknesses and this ability creates the alchemy you need to meet any opportunity or challenge that comes your way. Unfortunately, an aspect of the human condition is to focus on our strengths (and those things that come easy to us) and shy away from our weaknesses (that are harder to deal with) — and this is a problem.

Not dealing with your weaknesses, to either turn them into strengths or minimize their impact, will impact the alchemy to drive success. Worse still, not recognizing you have a weakness simply creates a blind spot, and how will you make your way if you can’t see? I appreciate there are two viable strategies when looking at strengths and weaknesses — you could work to optimize your strengths and weaknesses so net-net you are in a good place or leverage your strengths so much that they overshadow your weaknesses and in effect become irrelevant. The merits of each can be debated but either way, you need to know what your weaknesses are and assess if they are impacting your success.

And one more thing.

There is a comfort that comes with our strengths because they come easy and during the pandemic, as I played with my MindPal app, I was reminded of a truism that tends to get dismissed because it is so counter intuitive — Comfort Kills.

We were not built to be too comfortable and are hardwired for challenge — if you don’t challenge your strengths and search out any blind spots (and improve on them), you will slowly find ourselves getting softer, weaker, duller, lazier, and less engaged; until one day you find yourself looking in the mirror asking yourself what happened.

I just gotta figure out the whole easy-going/flexibility thing.

iamgpe

A two year pandemic journal...

It is said, and thankfully I’ve only experienced this figuratively, when the shelling starts, try to get as small as you can.

Whispers of a new virus started in late 2019 and by April of 2020 many jurisdictions had implemented mandatory lockdown in an attempt to control the spread; by August 2021, vaccines were being rolled out and by April 2022 many jurisdictions were opening back up with the promise of picking up where we had left off.

During the time of Covid, my mantra was to get as healthy as I could, don’t get sick and don’t make anyone else sick — I maintained a very small bubble and in effect became as small as possible.

The gym fitness journal I started just before the pandemic offers insights into my progress and the interruptions due to the lockdowns — it is a journal by proxy of what I did for two years. There is an 18-month gap in the journal as a result of the lockdown and the gym was substituted with running the stairs at the Wallace St bridge. My life became very simple. Work; Run stairs; Saturday Zoom call; Check in on my 90-year old father. REPEAT.

My journal became active again after two jabs in my arm and changes to policy — the journal illustrates and notes my progress, injury, more progress, and smaller lockdowns. Stair running started to shift to more walking and hiking which found its way into the journal. The virus itself had also come a long way since the wild type of late 2019 and the Omicron variant has made everything comparatively easier. I am almost at the end of my current journal — dog eared and worn; it has been a great companion.

The last two years have made me physically healthy to be sure — I didn’t put on 114 pounds, I didn’t lose most of my hair, or break a couple of teeth eating ribs, or accidentally stab myself in the cheek when I got overly excited about eating pie. The pandemic is behind me, and I am back to getting out and about, but lately I’ve noticed I’m dealing with things as if I am still trying to be small; two years of instilled habits are hard to break. The time to be small is over and there are things to deal with, opportunities to take advantage of, and a grand life to live. More than ever, this is a time to get big and bold.

Considering what we have on the horizon, big and bold are exactly what we need.

I have my new workout journal picked out and the first thing I will write in it is “Aus der Kriegsschule des Lebens.— Was mich nicht umbringt, macht mich stärker,”*

iamgpe

* “Out of life’s school of war—what doesn’t kill me, makes me stronger.” — Nietzsche

If you want to go far...

Before I take you on a metaphorical journey, I wanted to mention two very important truisms that I was reminded of recently.

Truism #1 — “Shit happens.”

Truism #2 — “If you want to go fast, go alone; if you want to go far, go together.”

A gravel bike race is interesting endeavour — before you start the race everything is made available to send you on your way and when you finish, you are offered everything to celebrate your accomplishment. Between start and finish though, you are expected to be self-sufficient — there are no course marshals, no water stations and no one looking out for you if there’s any trouble. The 65 km race I signed up for was increased to 71 kms on the day of the race, and a decision to turn left instead of right added another 10 kms to that. As I pointed out, shit happens.

I was about halfway through the race when I came alongside three other riders at a stop sign — I quickly joined in as we looked for a green arrow that was a common marker along the route; there was nothing to indicate if we should turn right or turn left. After consulting our phones, various copies of maps and written instructions, four strangers agreed that turning left was the way to go. The next five kilometres of road was a challenging uphill ride and at the crest of a hill one of us stopped. As we caught up, it was suggested we’d turned the wrong way, and grudgingly, we all agreed. We had to turn back.

It was at that moment we:

added 10 kms to the ride.

added at least 40 minutes to our race time because of extra riding, discussions and decision making.

became a small team with the simple goal of finding our way and finishing the race.

For reasons conscious or unconscious, we all realized that there was a better chance of finishing the race if we stuck together — there were more green arrows “missing” but as a group we found our way; we encouraged each other when the trail became extra challenging; there was alway someone who saw the green arrow when others didn’t, and we would take turns with the pace to ensure we all finished. We even tried to help other riders on the way.

After being on the road for approximately 5 hours, 30 minutes and 29 seconds, we all crossed the finish line and thanked each other as we made our way to meet others. I will never know what would have happened if I had been on my own, but what I do know with complete certainty, when Asha, Devon, James and I made that left, I knew I would finish (and I remember saying to myself, “I’m going on an adventure.”)

As I crossed the finish line, I was out of water and food, on the verge of dehydration, cramping in both legs — and for my efforts came in 152nd**.

Definitely doing it again next year.

iamgpe

** Of the 200 riders that started, only 158 crossed the finish line.