Day 12: Pivoting: A User’s Manual
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pivot
noun
a pin, point, or short shaft on the end of which something rests and turns …
verb
to modify (a policy, opinion, product, etc.) while retaining some continuity with its previous version:
The start-up was able to pivot the app to a new market without losing too many man-hours of coding.
-Dictionary.com
Let’s face it: Some things we try won’t work out the way we’d hoped.
When that happens, we have a choice. We can beat ourselves up, abandon our efforts, spiral into self-doubt.
Or we can pivot.
Heidi Neck calls it “intelligent failure”: Those disappointments that give you information you didn’t have before, so you can make a better decision next time.
when to Pivot
I talked to a student this afternoon who had just experienced a setback - a test that didn’t go well. It was a big disappointment for him, requiring a different plan for the upcoming year than the one he had set his hopes on.
He has two choices: Treat the setback as a statement that he was incapable of reaching his goal, or that his goal was the wrong one, and abandon the effort.
Or he can decide that this setback is showing him exactly what he needs to work on to achieve his goal. He can take an adjusted route, move forward, and still head toward the same goal as before.
How to Pivot
Of course, that’s easier said than done. When we experience negative feedback of any kind, it’s easy to let that feedback be our judge and jury, a final conviction with no possibility of appeal.
Often, the hardest part is getting past this mental block.
From experience (including recent experience) with fails large and small, here’s what I’ve observed to be the internal process for pivoting:
First, notice that the voice that announces “you’re a failure” is full of sh*t. You are not a failure. One of your efforts failed. Well, welcome to the club! All successful people fail. The only people who never fail are those who never try.
Get up off the floor.
Now turn off Netflix, pick up your phone, and enter into Google “successful people who failed” or something like that. Read about other people’s failures. Do you think they are “failures”? Of course not! Their effort just failed. And if you’re reading about it, it probably means something really good came out of the knoweldge they gained from it.
Imagine them facing the audience, review, board of directors, electorate, judge, etc. that delivered their negative feedback. As you stand beside them, do you think they are a failure? If not, why are you so “special”? Why is your failure any greater than theirs?
As your mind starts to turn things over, see if you can turn any corners. Do you hear that little voice that says, “Hmmm … what if I did this thing differently?”
That’s your Creativity talking. And your creativity is your connection to the divine, the higher power - the Creator working through you. That’s your gold. Listen to it.
At first, the Judgmental voice may be louder than the Creative voice. But pay more attention to the Creative voice anyway. If the Judgmental voice tells you to do something, stall for a while. If the Creative voice suggests doing something, do it.
It may be that the first couple of times you act on a suggestion from the Creative voice, it’s half-hearted. That’s okay! Don’t wait until you feel 100% fine to start taking action. Think of it like driving a manual transmission: Once you press the gas pedal, the car will start to move forward even if you only let up on the clutch just a little. It’s like that with pivoting: As you take the first Creative action, even if you only ignore that Judgmental voice just a little bit, you’ll start to move in a positive direction.
As you start to move forward, you can lay off the clutch (the Judgment) more and more. In fact, you’ll almost certainly do so naturally, because Creativity is life. As you take Creative actions and feel the life force moving through you, you’ll likely forget about the Judgmental voice more and more - until eventually you think of it only as “that thing that helped me learn what I needed to learn to get where I needed to go.”
Congratulations - you’ve pivoted!