One of my favorite bloggers is Joe Raasch, of the Happy Burro blog. He recently "tagged" me as part of the Think Different challenge. I actually don’t know where it started, but it’s an interesting challenge where you are supposed to think differently about something in your life about which you currently have negative thoughts or feelings (Joe suggested work or your mother-in-law, but I hope I’m not limited to that, because I work for myself, and, frankly, I like my mother-in-law! Hi Nancy!). Anyway, find something you have negative thoughts about and then decide to look at it differently. Break out of your thinking patterns about the topic itself. Figure out how to simply approach it differently.

I welcome the challenge, of course, because my mantra is "if you do what you always did, you’ll get what you always got." Thinking about things differently is pretty central to both who I am as a person and what I do in my work. This is often a path to problem solving. When you think about it differently, you can access new perspectives or new data, and that can help you generate creative solutions.

But that’s too easy! I’m thinking about something harder: that situation where you really want to do something, but you can’t, and you’ve already done all the creative problem solving. It’s really true: you want it, but you can’t have it or do it. This has a million manifestations. I want to make decisions in my organization, but I’m not allowed. I want to launch my own business, but I don’t have the cash. I want to challenge what my boss just said, but if I do there will be hell to pay. I want to change this organization, but it is too entrenched in old thinking.

As I said, I’m not talking about you fooling yourself with inaccurate stories. I mean examples where you want to challenge your boss’ thinking, but there really will be hell to pay. That’s not just a story you tell yourself, that’s based on experience. You really can’t challenge your boss’ thinking in that meeting, because the consequences just aren’t worth it. You want to, but you can’t.

So where does your thinking go in those situations? Clearly there is frustration, but I find it quickly moves to powerlessness. Wanting what you can’t have can be a serious power drain. So often in those situations, I simply do nothing. And the nothing quickly spreads to other areas of my work.

So I am trying to think differently about it. First, and this is a pretty big principle to be aware of in life, "power" (the internal, energy kind of power) is much more easily accessible than we think. It is more a state of mind than a tangible resource that is either up or down inside you. So when I face a situation where I want something that I know I can’t have, I remember to first intentionally access more power. This is not to overcome the obstacle and get what I can’t have (remember: in these situations, you REALLY can’t have it). But I look underneath the want (why do I want it?) to guide me as to what to do next. And no matter what, I find something that I need to do next, even if it is not directly tied to that issue.

Because when I do something—when I act, instead of retreat—better things happen. It actually dissipates some of the frustration, and it helps me regain clarity. In the end, I still want what I can’t have, but the intensity of that is diminished, because I moved the energy somewhere else. Sometimes that clarity of realizing you can’t have something is really helpful, but only when it moves you to action. Often, the clarity you need is not really about the want/can’t have issue.

Okay, now I will tag some others in this challenge. Here are the rules of the game, as Joe provided:

Write a new blog post in which you "think different."

1. State that the post is a part of the Think Different Challenge and include a link and/ or trackback to this post so that readers know the rules of the challenge. 


2. Include a link and/or trackback to the blogger who tagged you.


3. At the end of your post, go ahead and tag some fellow bloggers. Don’t forget to email them to let them know they have been tagged.


4. That’s it! Just sit back and enjoy reading people’s responses to the challenge.

So I tag:

Maddie Grant (Diary of a Reluctant Blogger)
Matt Baehr (Blogclump)
Chris Bailey (WorkPlay)