In one hand I show you I have a dollar.
The other hand is closed.
Which hand do you choose?
The fun of the game is over once the choice is made and I open my hand.
So if the point is to have fun, then the goal is to spend as much time as possible (years) within the tension of giving the choice but not yet opening the other hand.
What’s the face you make to where everyone else knows this is new and different and a little un nerving and not the norm. You don’t have a face for that and neither do they. We give others way more credit than we should and take more imposter than we should.
When the Olympic runner steps up to the line…what’s the face they make for being a little nervous, anxious, afraid and uncertain?…they don’t have a face for that…even though there’s a good chance that’s going on.
They simply step up to the line feeling all of those things but acting pretty normal. And so we think they are fearless and made of steel.
But when it’s us stepping up to the line, we know we’re a mess…but they don’t. They think we’re fearless and made of steel because it turns out the two things often look the same.
In third grade basketball we started playing against the handful of teams from towns that were near by. And we were a good team. We always beat Wadena, Park Rapids, Pillager and the others…but Pequot Lakes…they always beat us.
So many second place ribbons from tournaments because of them.
Season after season…We knew they were good. We knew we were good. We knew we’d never beaten them before and it was going to be a close game every time. We just couldn’t make it out on top…yet.
Then…Star of The North tournament. Summer after seventh grade.
We won.
And as it turned out, all the way through high school, we never lost to them again.
We always knew we could beat them but after we did, we had proof of concept. Which did prove to be beneficial.
But as much as we had elevated confidence from proof of concept…I think once we beat Pequot Lakes, they accepted losing to us as the new ‘way it is’…and the way it is is perhaps even more powerful than proof of concept.
We often get caught up in one or the other for too long.
Laser focused on the tasks at hand. All tactics, little inspiration, no romance.
Or
Dreaming and wishing and talking about fantastic outcomes without any actualization. All dreamy desire, little action, no impact.
Somewhere in the middle is where we probably ought to spend most of our time…but when there is a season of extremes, enjoy the good parts of it and then intentionally start a little swing back toward the other one.
Try selling a kid on the idea that although the big chocolate bar is big…the small piece of chocolate is much better.
It’s nearly impossible. The kid is computing two things…chocolate and how much of it am I getting. You could even offer a sample of both…the big bar still wins.
Two things here…
-Go find people who are looking for something other than ‘how big is the chocolate bar’…rather than trying all day to convince the kids of something they’re not interested in.
-If you keep the kid excited about chocolate long enough, then overtime boredom and curiosity are likely to set in and one day the smaller better piece will be chosen. But for today the big bar is fine.
The other day a friend of mine proclaimed…
‘There’s no greater feeling than haggling for something you don’t need.’
The implications of this are obvious and widespread, but I’ll highlight a couple…
-When you engage in this way you can’t lose. Well, you can lose, but you won’t take it personally. Which is a win.
-When you don’t need the thing, you have a heightened ability to sense the seller’s desperation. On the other hand when you’re desperate yourself, it’s hard to properly gauge it from the other party.
-Since you’re not desperate you have all your tools at your disposal…and you’re more likely to be creative and develop even more tools on the spot. And the options are clear, not clouded.