Throw yourself a curveball
This week feels surreal for some reason. It’s probably because I’m still living 2 timezones at a time. But enough about that. No puzzles today. Just some lateral thinking questions that you should ask yourself from time to time:
How do you project yourself? If someone met you today without knowing anything about you, what would they think?
One example/interpretation, as usual, at the end of this email.
If you were forwarded this email, subscribe here so you can be the one annoying your friends with lateral thinking newsletters.
Make it difficult for yourself
A lot of the time, we look for an easy way out.
A lot of the time, that’s important.
The truth of the matter is, however, a lot of people don’t handle extreme situations well. It’s because we’ve been sheltered or because we’ve never had to handle cases outside of our control.
We always train to defend ourselves from tough situations.
But tough moments happen.
Whether we like it or not, we have to face them sooner or later and make the best of a bad situation.
People who’ve had to do crisis communication (or not to mention handle operations in a crisis) know this very well. People who’ve been in the military unfortunately know this far too well.
It’s often better to make a bad decision than to freeze up and make no decision at all.
A bad decision will save 10% of people instead of 30% of people.
No decision at all will guarantee the doom 100% of people.
So if you feel you have it easy, throw yourself a curveball from time to time. Ask yourself: “How would I do this if everything was stacked against me?”.
Keep going down the rabbit hole until you don’t have an answer. That’s a good place to stop.
Even if you never have to answer this question - the simple thought process will serve you well.
Potential answer:
You see yourself as calm and reserved. You know you’ve seen a lot so you take your time to bide situations and answer accordingly. Compared to other hot heads, you come up with a rational and sane decision.
However, other people see you as indecisive. You think too much and act too little. You’re an artist, a philosopher, good when things are calm and there’s time to think, but useless when there’s a need for action and quick thinking.
See how easy you can see things differently if you switch perspective?