Integrate!

If you're reading this post, I know you answered yes to the title question. The truth is that everyone gets frustrated some of the time. It's that feeling you get when you are anxious to move forward and you're not, or when you've let someone push the same button for the thousandth time, or when you hear the voice in your head telling you that you deserve the roadblocks you're facing. Frustration sucks. But here's a different question: are you finished being frustrated yet?  And the answer to that might be more complicated than you think. You might want to hang in there with your frustration until it gives you a strength or an insight that you need. You don't have to be a Jew or a Christian to appreciate the story of Jacob - one of our great stories of frustration. He was not the eldest son (automatic frustration in a system where the eldest son gets the lion's share of opportunity and inheritance). He worked 7 years for the right to marry a beauti...

I wonder what you really think when a work or social situation puts you into a connection with someone who is quite different than you in some way. Even if they are different in a way you admire, it might be hard for you to relate. You might find that you are quickly bored or tongue tied or simply unable to get any traction with a conversation. If you can only connect with people who are already like you, how will you ever have the different ideas needed to produce something better than what you already have? It takes work and practice to connect with the expectation that difference often leads to opportunity. You need to put yourself in a position to interact with different people and expect opportunity to arise from difference over and over again, tweaking your ability to connect until you reliably generate opportunity from difference. How do I know this works? It is one of the things I train people to do. I attract different kinds of people to the same courses and put them in ...