#28 - Seeing What's Possible is a Mindset Choice

A very short, bonus musing on a Friday

Lots of new subscribers in the last few days, welcome! As a reminder, Exonomist is intended to be written in raw form — expect typos, imperfect ideas, and for me to come back later and disagree with myself :).

I’ve had many bosses in my life, more than most due to 8 years of management consulting where I frequently jumped between projects. I’m still close with many of them (I write this from Brooklyn, where we are spending the weekend with…one of my old bosses!). I’ve taken away lessons from every one of them, but there’s one lesson from a recent boss that I’ve taken very deeply to heart, and it is this:

Seeing what’s possible is a mindset choice.

I remind myself of this almost every day now, because the fact is that there is opportunity in front of us at all times. Opportunities to learn, to laugh, to achieve, to help, etc. And when faced with a new scenarios at work, it’s easy to start counting the things that are unfortunate, frustrating, or morale-killing about a situation.

I view my role with everyone I work with to help people see what’s possible, and I think the world could be a little better if we all spent more time doing this for the people around us. Here are some examples:

• When you have a new boss, embrace the fear, but also the excitement that comes from a new relationship

• When you start a new project, instead of just counting the things that are wrong / disadvantageous, start framing these things as learning opportunities or chances to help improve how you and others approach work / getting shit done

• When your favorite shirt is in the laundry and you’re like, “damn…I really wanted to wear that shirt”, embrace the other options you have in your closet, maybe something has been overlooked (this is definitely the first time I’m talking about clothes in this blog)

• Overall, embrace a healthy dose of optimism, and share it genuinely with people around you (genuine is the key word, because it’s super annoying when someone is way too excited and way too positive about everything — I believe the more elegant word here would be “insufferable”)

• When you share your optimistic lens with those around you, you will allow them to see what’s possible, and it’s only when we see what’s possible that we make progress

And that’s all most of us are really trying to do every day: make progress. Your mindset towards what’s in front of you will determine your degree of progression. Don’t take your mindset for granted.

On that note, we’re off to go take a long walk, get some coffee (no decaf today — we’re embracing full caffeine… the devil’s elixir as I like to call it), and embrace what’s possible in today.