A good friend once told me, “Be careful, the best and worst moments in life often lie very close together.” The best and worst moments in life … I get that, it’s what I call the flip side. I told you I play indoor soccer. I’ve played on average two nights a week for over fifteen years, and last summer I experienced both the pleasure and pain of the “flip side” – all in one week. On a Wednesday night, I scored a hat trick (a 3-goal game). It’s not a great thing, but for me it’s a significant and enjoyable achievement, a rarity even. Nine days later halfway through our Friday game, I hyper-extended my right knee. No contact, no foul. When I planted my foot to stop and turn, my leg buckled backwards. It took me six weeks to get back to playing. The flip side.
In May of 2012, I attended the first Kruger Music Academy. I was supposed to go with my friend Davis. He plays banjo and first introduced me to the music of the Kruger Brothers actually. Unfortunately he wasn’t well enough to make the trip with me. I called him each evening to tell him of the day’s events and let him enjoy the experience vicariously. I’ve been to every Kruger academy now, and it has literally changed my life. But one month after that first academy gathering in 2012, Davis Holloway died of leukemia. The best and the worst … the flip side.
This duality is also evident in all of our pursuits, competencies and values, in that usually our greatest asset is at the same time, our worst liability. So what does this all mean to our professional lives? I believe this truth to be a lesson in patience or maturity, and also one of perspective. I mentioned earlier that as we grow and mature we get more comfortable with ambiguity. Ambiguity just means inherent uncertainty. In these first few decades of the twenty-first century, we’d better learn to get comfortable with uncertainty.
In every aspect of our lives, ambiguity expresses itself as tension. And, guess what, tension is good for us too! Purposeful tension, and then the release of it, makes for an exciting ride. Without tension, there is no joy of release; without anticipation there is no relaxation – and these two generally lie very close together … one the flip side of the other. There is a narrow path of healthy tension – that marks the difference between fight or flight … and apathy.
The flip side. I think this can also mean that when we’re stuck, we don’t have to start over from the beginning. We are perhaps, and probably already very close to magic. An internationally known fitness professional I know often preaches the simplicity of getting just “one percent better every day”. My point is that success is often only one percent away! In leading and in life, don’t try to force some massive epiphany. Get one percent closer.
Let’s do something different – we can’t help but get better:
- Look for it – within your major job responsibilities, consider what might be the flip sides coming soon to your world.
- Feed ‘em or starve ‘em – depending on whether it’s a positive or negative flipside becoming apparent. Nurture life’s desired opportunities, wait for it, you’re probably only one percent away from magic. For a negative flip side, put it on extinction … set boundaries and turn away.
-Don Brown
don@donbrown.org
Don Brown dedicates his career to ‘helping people with people’ in leadership, sales and customer service. Bilingual and experienced at the executive and line-level alike, you see the results of his work across dozens of industries, including brewing, automotive, airline, banking and medical equipment.
Speaking, writing, coaching and selling to the best – Ford Motor Company, Anheuser-Busch, United Airlines, Harley-Davidson, Jaguar Cars, Hilton Hotels and many, many more – Don takes great pride in long-standing customer relationships (some running well over twenty years).
