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Note: There was a technology hiccup and these didn’t get sent out, and so, I’m sending them out now.
Our mission is to spark new thinking and ideas for creating a thriving business and rewarding life.
The Negative Punch
We live in a very healthy, productive world. Is it perfect? Not by a long shot, but it is progressively improving. Health care, innovation, disease, homelessness, crime, and almost all metrics of a successful society are all going in the right direction in almost all of the world. As they say, “You can look it up.”
I don’t claim it’s perfection, but I’ve always felt that life is about success and not perfection. So why is it that we believe things are so gloomy? There are three primary reasons:
- We tend to assume and believe the negative. We’re always afraid something is going to go wrong.
- The media believe that “news” is about the negative: disasters, illnesses, criminal activity, drugs, corruption, and so forth.
- Some people feel the world is negative until every single personal grievance, no matter how minor, is acknowledged and addressed by everyone else.
The Business Impact
In the U.S. we are living in a zero-unemployment economy (under 5% is chronic unemployment). Businesses are thriving. The economy is the strongest is history. And despite constant warnings of recession by the negativists (sooner or later there will be one, just as a broken clock is correct twice a day), the stock market continues to climb. (While the U.S. is on an unprecedented growth trajectory for ten years, Australia has been on one since the 1990s!)
Businesses of all sizes need external expertise these days. They can’t solve their own problems or ensure their own innovation any more than a patient can operate on his or her own appendix or write a prescription for medication.
Conditions are highly positive. We can fall victim to the negativity around us, which is often present by default.
Summary
Your business and your life are what you make of them. We have tremendous control over our destiny. Not absolute, not perfect, but very significant. It’s not the competition, or technology, or the economy, or disruption, or volatility to blame if you’re not as successful as you would like to be.
It’s you. So parry the negative punch and go on the offensive. Every day is a great time to be alive.
SAC Annual Meeting
Join me for the upcoming Society for the Advancement of Consulting (SAC) annual meeting in New York City on Nov 5th-6th. I’ll be speaking in the mornings, followed in the afternoons with additional content from colleagues. Click here to learn more and register. Or, you could join SAC and enjoy this conference at SAC member pricing as well as close to 20 archived best practice webinars and many other benefits.
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