My favorite thought-hack when things go wrong

Last week in the blog I gave you a little pep talk to help you when you need to break some bad news to a client, called “tell it like it’s good news”.  If you missed that, you can check it out here.  This week, I thought I’d share some companion thought work that folds in very nicely and supports the “tell it like it’s good news” concept.   

It’s a little self-fulfilling prophecy I like to call “this is the best thing that could have happened”.  

It goes like this:

You get a bit of “bad” news on a project.  The tile is discontinued, you can’t move that wall like you hoped, etc.  

Your first thought will be “damn, this is the worst!”   When that happens, try a new thought on for size. Try thinking, “I know I’m disappointed about this now, but actually, I’m going to look back on this and realize it was the best thing that could have happened on this project”.  

Huh.  

Feel the energy shift?  Instead of feeling a black hole of defeat and dread, there’s a new, lighter energy… curiosity.  Your brain is wondering about this new thought. It wants to find out how this could be the best thing?  If you let it (and I suggest you do), it will begin to work for you, gathering evidence for how this could be true.  If you nurture this little seed of a thought, it will grow into a full-blown solution-finding machine, bringing iron-clad resolutions into the situation you never could have seen coming.  It’s truly magical.  

The first few times I tried this and it worked, I thought it was just a fluke.  But I kept trying it, and it became so reliable I now just recognize it as being a self-fulfilling prophecy that pretty much always works.  Here’s a recent example:

We specified a beautiful natural basalt mosaic tile for a bathroom floor in a herringbone pattern.  The stone was a dark charcoal, gorgeous, and the whole bathroom was designed around it.  So during installation, I got a call from the contractor.  They had started laying the floor and realized about a third of the tile was a much lighter color.  So they had some dark stone laid, and boxes of light and dark stone left over.  This was an out of stock stone so there was no way to get more.  

So what to do?  

I had some choices.  The contractor should have checked the stock before he started laying tile to make sure it was all consistent.  The tile supplier should have quality controlled their (very expensive) tile to be sure it was consistent.  A lot of things “should” have happened, and I could have put on my boxing gloves and fought those fights.  I could have, but I also knew this would lead to delays and even more headaches on the project for everyone.  What to do?  I decided to try something else.  What could it hurt?

It felt impossible, but I tried on my little thought “this is the best thing that could have happened.”  Hmmmm.  I let go of blame and frustration, got quiet, and ideas for solutions started coming to me.  One of them was to do a strip of the lighter tile in the middle of the floor, thereby creating a chevron pattern - making it look intentional.  Was there enough tile to pull this off?  Yes.  I got excited about this idea - it’s actually much more fun and interesting than just a plain dark floor.  I talked with the contractor and we determined it would work.  

Now it was time to talk to the client about it.  Now based on the facts of the situation, I could have easily  spun a tale of woe about how the tile did not arrive the way it “should” have.  I could have pointed fingers at the contractor who didn’t check the tile before laying it or how the supplier messed up.  But I didn’t do that.  Instead, I focused on the positive and how this was actually good news.  

At this point, you can see how easy it was to do that because by then I was convinced that it actually was good news.  I was excited to present this new solution, which led to an even more interesting design.   I’m happy to report, the client got excited about it too.  My prophecy was, indeed, self-fulfilling because I now look back on that and think that was the best thing that could have happened.  “Happy accidents” as Bob Ross would say!  

The above example may sound like a fluke, a lucky outlier, but it’s not.  I use this thought all the time in my business, and it pretty much always leads to solutions that I couldn’t see coming.  It takes problems and transforms them into magical outcomes.  

If you want to try this, here are some tips:

• Acknowledge your feelings of frustration, disappointment, fear, whatever comes up when you get the bad news.  Process those feelings in your mind, heart and body, and release them.  Don’t dwell on them or add more fuel to the fire by thinking of even more reasons why it’s bad news or blaming those at fault.  
• When you’ve let yourself feel the negative emotions, let go of them and sit in a quiet place.  Shut off distractions and quiet your mind. 
• In this quiet space, think, “how could this be the best thing that could have happened?”
• Allow thoughts to come to you.   
• If nothing comes right away, go about your day, but every time you remember that circumstance, continue to think “this is the best thing that could have happened.”  Or, if that doesn't feel authentic, try, "how could this be the best thing that could have happened?"
• It’s important to keep your mind in a positive space for this exercise to work.  When feelings of blame, frustration, anger come up, feel them and release them, and then go back to your positive thoughts, and do whatever you can to cultivate gratitude and love for the project and for yourself.  Don’t get sucked down the rabbit hole of blame or frustration - your solutions don’t live there.  
• No one needs to know you’re doing this, not even your clients.  But you’ll find that when solutions present themselves and you have a chance to work them out, you’ll bring so much positive energy to solving the situation your team and clients will very likely get swept up in that and join you in supporting the solution.  I’ve seen this over and over.  

So there you have it, one of my very favorite tools that I use in my business and my secret weapon when things go wrong.  Give it a try the next time you get some “bad” news and see how it can magically create a positive outcome!