Hammers and Nails: Framing Challenges
Posted by: Kenrick Cleveland in Sales Training, tags: Sales Training“When you are inspired by some great purpose, some extraordinary project, all your thoughts break their bonds: Your mind transcends limitations, your consciousness expands in every direction, and you find yourself in a new, great, and wonderful world. Dormant forces, faculties and talents become alive, and your discover yourself to be a greater person by far than you ever dreamed yourself to be.” -Patanjali (author and yogi)
I’m sure you’ve heard the saying, when you’re a hammer, everything is a nail. To me this saying expresses the limitations we place on ourselves, unnecessary and unconscious limitations, limitations that box us in, keeping us from growing to our full potential.
There is good news if you’ve been going through life as a hammer, especially if you’re not accomplishing what you want to be accomplishing — all that needs to take place is an internal shift in attitude and this shift need not be difficult.
What the heck does that mean, Kenrick? Well, if the way you’ve been addressing challenges hasn’t been working for you, it’s time to try a new approach. Can we agree on that? I mean, the definition of insanity, as given to us by none other than Albert Einstein, is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
When we’re children, we learn quickly that knives are sharp, irons and stoves are hot and we avoid making the same mistakes over and over again. Well, what happens when we’re adults? We ignore the deep knowing and continue to hammer away at things in ways that don’t work for us.
In relationships of all kinds, when we make decisions, what is it that keeps us thinking we have to be a hammer banging away the the world which we view as nails. It’s habit. Maybe there’s a little apathy mixed in there. Laziness, perhaps. All the usual suspects that keep us stuck in our small models of the world. On the up side, now that you’re aware of it, you can change it.
My approach in life is that I am a magician and everything in my life is a opportunity to create what I want, what will be best for me, for my family, for my students, what will bring the most good to what I do in life.
I didn’t always know I had this ability to create what surrounds me. Because of this, I wasn’t always happy in life. There was a lot of trial and error and stumbling because I always believed, as I had been taught, that work is hard, good things come through struggle. Once I gave up on that notion and decided that all good things come easy to me, I realized I was able to receive good things easily. I began to create my universe full of pleasure, joy, and success, none of which are ‘hard work’. I realized almost in the blink of an eye, that the one thing I was struggling against was myself and the limitations I imposed upon myself.
Isn’t it time you stopped being a hammer and chose something expansive and empowering?
