Against the Grain
The unmistakable giggle of a young child entertaining herself floated into my ears. It pierced past the noise-cancelling headphones and airport cacophony.
I turned my head to search for the life-affirming, unencumbered source of laughter. It was a 6-year-old walking the wrong way on a moving sidewalk.
In her eyes glistened pure curiosity as she discovered, for the first time, that if you walk against the sidewalk at precisely the right speed, you don’t go anywhere.
Then, suddenly, an idea struck. A cartoon lightbulb may as well have appeared above her head.
What if I walk quicker than the sidewalk?
She moved her tiny legs as fast as they would go, making slow but sure progress in the complete opposite direction of her gate and clearly exhausted mother.
The path of most resistance
If you know where you’re going, and you’re sure, then by all means take the moving sidewalk. Swim with the current, go with the flow - pick your metaphor. If you have a clear destination you may as well take the fastest and most efficient route.
But you don’t have a clear destination nearly as often as you think. At best you have a vague idea of your intended outcome. It’s a feeling or gut instinct, but nothing like a map or blueprint.
In those cases, when the destination is loose and the journey unclear, the easy path offers no benefit over the hard path. It’s not more effective or efficient. If you don’t really know where you’re going, getting there quicker is of no use at all.
Walking against the sidewalk, swimming upstream, following the path of most (or at least more) resistance instead builds resilience. It slows us down just enough to notice new opportunities.
As Norton Juster wrote in The Phantom Tollbooth, one of the greatest books ever written for any age, “There are no wrong roads to anywhere.”
Next time you’re struggling to find the right path, try an obviously wrong one instead. It may not be so wrong, after all.
Fear soup
“It’s very challenging to surrender when you have no reference point.”
-Shawn Askinosie
The path less traveled is scary. It’s even scarier when you end up there by accident.
It feels like a different lifetime when I was constantly in airports flying around the world to speak with hundreds of people in far-off places. But the above story was just a few weeks ago.
Without warning the whole world currently finds itself in uncharted territory. It is an especially challenging time for business leaders who have all of their own personal and family concerns, plus having to make choices that impact the lives and livelihoods of their teams.
One of those leaders is Shawn Askinosie.
Shawn is the founder of Askinosie Chocolate, an award-winning, small-batch luxury chocolate company that sources 100% of its beans directly from farmers and shares in the profits. He is recognized worldwide as a leader among leaders for his non-profit work, community outreach, and upstanding moral compass.
We planned on having a lovely chat about the best parts of life and work. But then the world turned upside-down.
Shawn suddenly finds his own philosophy and principles being tested like never before. At the time of our podcast recording he was just hours away from having to furlough half of his small team of 20, in order to give his employees a functioning company to come back to, and protect the mission.
When Shawn got on the call, he was clearly distressed. I offered to reschedule, but he refused. In fact, he was grateful for the opportunity to work through his thoughts and feelings in real time, as a case study for leaders of other organizations who are or will soon be faced with similarly difficult choices.
Leaders: Do not miss this episode.
Listen/watch here: https://www.beyondnetworkingpodcast.com/turning-sorrow-into-joy-with-shawn-askinosie/
