The Man in the Mirror.

 

If it is to be, it is up to me.

When Adam was confronted by God about why he ate the fruit of the forbidden tree, he chose to make a scapegoat of his wife. When God turned to Eve, she followed suit by blaming the serpent. (Genesis 3.) While it would have been much easier to take responsibility for their disobedience, they chose to find someone to blame for failing to do what was their job. This has been the trend for a majority of us ever since. We shy away from taking responsibility for the state of affairs we find ourselves in. We look for someone to blame and pin all our failings on. That is the way of losers.

Winners think differently. They take responsibility for the direction of their lives. Life has got many variables. Some of these variables are in our control while others are not. The key to taking responsibility is in understanding the variables in our control and giving our utmost best to get things done. No one gets blamed for variables beyond their control. The biggest problem is that we don’t often tell ourselves the truth about what variables are in our control. Like Adam, we want to pin our shortcomings on someone else and we therefore try hard to find that someone when we re cornered.

What I always wonder is why Adam would hide from God if he was certain that he had no part to play in the turn of events? Every time you fail to control your variables, it is no secret even to you. You might work hard to deflect the attention from yourself but deep down you know that there was more you could have done to change the situation.

Winners look for ways to get things done irrespective of the difficulty of it all. Losers look for the easiest crutch to lean on and absolve themselves of responsibility. Everyone who embarks on a significant task must be armed with the knowledge that tough times will come. The pursuit of any worthwhile goal will often meet with sufficient resistance. The challenge you have as an individual is to rise above it and still get the job done. You have to ask yourself this question. Will I magnify my goals or my excuses?  The choice is really simple. The battle is between your goals and your excuses. Your best excuses or reasons will not get the goal accomplished. Setbacks are bound to come and the best thing to do is to prepare for them in advance. One of the things that leads people to lean on excuses is that their plans were not rooted in reality. While you hope for the best and keep an optimistic state of mind, your planning must factor in the worst case scenario. When you have thought through what to do in the worst case scenario, you are all set to go and should anything go better than your worst case scenario, you are still good to go and will find yourself accelerating faster than you thought possible.

The best way to approach any task is to pray as though everything depends on God and plan as though everything depends on you. More often than not, we get frustrated with the turn of events because in our quest to walk by faith we forget that faith without works is dead. Faith is no substitute for action. Faith calls on you to listen for what needs to be done and go out to get it done. 

Whenever you experience failure, before you look for the source of the failure anywhere else, begin with a thorough introspection. Be sure that you carried out your task to the best of your ability. Be sure that you gathered all the info you needed and the resources for the job you had embarked on. Jesus talks about the need to count the cost before you embark on a building project. (Luke 14:28) You have to pay attention to his words in this regard. Before you blame God, the devil or anyone else for that matter, ask yourself what is my role in this matter? Until you have cleared your name, do not shift the issue elsewhere.

Our success or failure in life has a lot more to do with us than we care to admit. Other people might contribute to it but ultimately, the buck stops with us. If we accept substandard performance from ourselves, it teaches others that we are okay with substandard performance and that is exactly how they will relate to us. If we hold ourselves to a high standard, the same thing will happen with others who deal with us. We teach others how to deal with us by the way we deal with ourselves.

I challenge you to look back over one of your past failures and successes. Ask yourself what you did to find yourself there. Ask why you failed or succeeded. Without a hurry reflect on it all and tell the truth to yourself. You can even enlist the help of someone who was close to you through that journey. Clarity and accuracy are critical when it comes to a deep look at yourself. Part of the reason why we fail at the same thing over and over again is that we gloss over our own contribution to the whole situation. We are also not able to win consistently because we are not clear on what we did to attain our past victories. When this happens, the truth is that our victories are a result of chance. While there is an element of luck in every breakthrough, more often than not, the consistently successful make their own luck by controlling the variables in their power. The mantra to live by is do your best and leave the rest to God.

Many of us are quick to leave to God even that which is our own responsibility. The truth is that it feels good to experience miracles and find supernatural solutions to our issues. However God spares miracles for times of desperation where nothing else can save us. This is why the children of Israel ate manna in the wilderness for forty years but the moment they set foot in Canaan, the manna ceased. (Joshua 5:12) It is not a good place to be where you are uncertain of what will happen next. Constantly living with your heart in your hand is not the way we are designed to be. The plan is to position us where we will flourish by employing what has been deposited in us.

I want to challenge everyone who is reading this to take their role in their life, business, family, ministry and wherever else with the seriousness it deserves. You are ultimately responsible for how things turn out. If you don’t like the results your life is producing and you are looking for someone to hold responsible, begin with the man/woman in the mirror. Take an active role in determining the course of your life. Become intentional in pursuing the results you are looking for. Act with integrity when it comes to your goals. Let your actions speak louder than your words. Put your money where your mouth is. Quit talking constantly about what you will do and go out there and start doing it. Let it be clear to everyone around you what result you are looking for. When people know what it is you seek, they will facilitate you to get it. When it is not clear, they won’t be sure how to help you. Believe it or not, there are many people willing to help you but you have to give them room by clarifying what it is you are going after. Don’t make the mistake of leaving to chance the thing which is your responsibility. Every evening when you go to lay down your head, purpose to conclude that there was no more that I could do today in the pursuit of my goal. Until you can say that with sincerity, there is a lot you are leaving undone daily.

Take responsibility for your life son. No one is coming from outer space to get things done for you. You are all you’ve got. From today remind yourself that if it is to be, it is up to me.

In my article next week I will be sharing on the second side of this story. Be sure to check it out.

PS: I am putting together a WhatsApp group where we discuss matters opportunities and Key life Skills you need to thrive in today's world. Drop your Digits to +254725832477 if you want to be a part of this conversation born out of our recently held Crossroads Virtual Summit. 

The Concorde

 

Have you ever embarked on a project that showed so much promise but never really took off in the long run? Are you familiar with the concept of sunk cost bias? The French and British governments went through just such an experience on a monumental scale. The Concorde was meant to be an aeronautical marvel. It had all the signs of a great undertaking. Who wouldn’t want to do a cross-Atlantic trip in half the time a traditional airplane would take? Surely the rich would find this very convenient. While the rest of us worry about the cost, they would be thinking about how much time they would save by choosing the Concorde. For some reason however, the project never picked up as expected. They were never able to breakeven let alone make any profit from this experiment.  For forty years, they continued to pour money and other resources into it hoping it will turn around but it didn’t. They eventually came to the painful conclusion to shut down the operation.

There are so many questions one can ask in this regard. Why did it take them forty years to shut down a leaking concern? What is it they never got right about the whole project? Millions of dollars were lost trying to make the thing work to no avail. It was a very costly experiment. There are many reasons that can be advanced as to why they continued so long in this losing position. We could talk about government bureaucracy, the fact that it was an experiment but the overarching problem was the idea of sunk cost bias.

What is Sunk cost bias? To put it simply, we find it very hard to walk away from anything we have invested a lot of resources in.  Some projects consume us so much with the promise of great returns that we are willing to put in everything. What happens is that because you have already sunk a lot into it, you convince yourself that pumping in a little more will get it going. At the end of the day you keep sinking more into this project and it keeps disappointing you but you can’t find it within you to walk away. Saving the project becomes an exercise in futility but you just can’t let go.

The people outside can see clearly that this is not working but as the person who is in the thick of things and consumed by the quest to make it work, you might not see it with such clarity. A vanity project can end up consuming more than its fair share of resources and in the process deny other projects the funding they need. The longer it takes you to identify your vanity projects the more your critical projects will suffer. If you must indulge in a vanity project, make sure the basics are taken care of first. I guess the French and British governments realized that it is no longer justifiable to keep sinking more into the Concorde and called it in.

My question to you is what is your Concorde? What is your vanity project? What is that pet project to which you have devoted a lot of your energy? Are you/ have you become a victim of sunk cost bias? One of the things about pet projects is that the owner is more often than not blind to the fact that this is happening. You would do well to seek the input of others who can give you an objective view of things. This is where paying attention to your critics can be of help. I guess one of the best ways to protect yourself from this kind of bias is to make sure you are not surrounded by Yes men/women. You need to have around you people who can put you to task in justifying what you are trying to do. You need people who can ask you difficult questions. With that you will be on your way to fighting Sunk-cost bias.

Telltale Signs of a Concorde Kind of Project.

Unjustifiable investment of resources

Long past expected due date of return

A requirement to inject just one more round of funding yet this has been the case multiple times.

An aversion to genuine critique-You do not a=want anyone to question you.

Activity shrouded in mystery-it is not very clear what is going on.

Eating into other project(s) allocation(s)

Uneasiness with higher-ups when it comes to discussing this particular project.

Subordinates who are stressed out wondering what the whole deal is.

Victims of Concorde projects

Individuals with a big ego

Companies

Governments like our example

Churches

Non-Governmental Organizations.

Guard against Concorde projects

One Concorde kind of project is one too many. It could spell the end of dominance for an industry leading company. It could mean a redirection of resources from essential services to fund vanity projects. It could sink your entire nest egg as an individual leaving you with nothing to show for all your years of hard work. It could also lead to misplaced priorities for those in service to humanity like churches and NGO’s.

With all this at stake, what can be done to ensure you don’t become a victim of vanity projects?

To begin with you must become open to criticism from all quarters. While you don’t have to take it to heart, examine every criticism with an eye to pick the truth from the trivialities. Not all who criticize you want your downfall.  Some genuinely want you to do better or articulate your idea better.

Listen to both Higher-ups, contemporaries and reports. The people who know about the particular project are best placed to tell you whether you are onto a winner or not. You do well to pay attention to them and what they have to say. While the first remedy could be criticism from outside sources, this groups offer internal criticism. Before you dismiss your higher-ups as removed from reality, contemporaries as speaking out of jealousy and reports as speaking to matters above their pay-grade, pay attention to the merit of what they bring to you. When you realize that there are questions arising from all the groups, know that this project is a potential Concorde.

Seek justification for all expenditure. Choose to use what accountants call Zero based budgeting as proposed by Greg McKeown in his book on essentialism. This whole article is inspired by what he shares on the story of the Concorde. This type of budgeting forces you to justify every resource allocated to a project. This way your eyes will be opened to the projects which have been consuming your resources without cause and you can then cut them off.

Be ready to acknowledge you are wrong. Ego can be one of our greatest enemies. Nobody wants to be told that what they conceived is a waste of time and resources. This is why we hold on to it tightly even when it is not making any sort of sense. The only way to make amends is to be quick to see your fault and adjust accordingly. Those who are ready to admit their faults will cut their losses early on before it becomes too hard to walk away.

Look for a neutral second opinion. It is good you find people who can offer you honest opinions removed from any emotional attachment. When you are in doubt about your project, don’t hesitate to talk to someone who is as far removed from what you are doing as possible. That person will help you see things for what they really are.

 Don’t be afraid of waste. Many of us keep on walking in the wrong direction since we believe going back is a sign that we have wasted that time. We must get rid of the fear of being looked at as those who took a wrong turn. Everyone takes wrong turns in life. The problem is if you don’t accept early on, it will cost you more when you eventually have to turn around. Think about getting lost in the forest. Do you keep on walking when you are no longer sure which way you are going or do you turn back to retrace your steps? Those who keep walking are likely to end up lost while those who retrace their steps have a chance of finding the right path. No matter how much you have invested in it, when you realize it is not working, be quick to let it go.

A critical question.

How do we differentiate between a Concorde and Thomas Edison’s incandescent light bulb?

Many people keep flogging dead horses because they are not sure whether they are dead or alive. So how do you tell which one is alive and which one is dead? While Thomas Edison failed many times, there is something about his failure that kept him going. The concept of failing forward becomes important here. A Concorde has no meaningful sign of progress. Edison’s light bulb got better with each iteration. One of the best ways to differentiate the two is tangible progress. A vanity project shows very little to no progress while a potential project sees consistent improvement.

A budget injection moves the needle on a good project. The same injection makes very little change to a vanity project. If an escalation in resource allocation does nothing to the final output, then it is time to bid good bye to your project. If on the other hand you can see where the resources are going, keep at it even though it takes a bit of time.

What else do you think we can use to make the distinction? Let me know in the comments below.

A word of caution

This advice does not apply in all situations. Different projects have different timelines and measures of progress. Before you apply this advice be sure you are clear on the dynamics of your particular project. A good way to do this is to look at others who have embarked on similar projects. Benchmarking can help you tell whether you are on the right track or lost. I also know there are projects which are so novel that there is no existing benchmark. I would leave such projects at the discretion of the implementation team but my advice would be that you ensure you are surrounded by sober, objective people who can tell you when you are going widely off track.

As we end this, are you aware of the Concordes in your life? What are you going to do about them? Do you need help identifying and dealing with the Concordes in your life, business, ministry, family or whatever concern? Get in touch with us at Optimize Institute. Contact +254725832477 Or email me on asenasam@gmail.com 

Whatever you do, don't waste your energies on a Concorde.