Episode Transcript
KLEA: All right. So, Ian, so glad to have you back on the Purposeful Planning Institute Podcast. My name is Klea Harris, and we, once again, are so delighted to have Ian McDermott back with us to discuss how to deal with setbacks. We had a part one—if you missed it, please go check it out in the archives—but Ian, you’ve told us that we only covered half the conversation. Of course, this is a never-ending conversation, but we did cover half of the principles you have for us. So please give us a run-through, if you don’t mind, of what people are missing if they’re just jumping in. And then, let’s take it forward.
IAN: So, previously—what did we cover? Well, the first thing was to understand that setbacks happen. That’s part of life, as opposed to thinking, “What’s the matter with me? Everyone else is leading a perfect existence.” No. The first question is, “Is it really a setback?” Because whatever has happened, there’s a kind of perspective you can take, which is: “Oh, I didn’t anticipate that. Now, what can I learn?” But of course, you need to have a learning mindset to do that. And if you do, the setback is better described as feedback. You may not like the feedback—it’s not about beating ourselves up. Quite the opposite. It’s about asking, “How can I understand this in a way that assists me in moving forward?” I thought I was going to get this result, or I never anticipated anything happening here, and suddenly, this has happened. That ability to see whatever it is as feedback is really the springboard for moving forward into another aspect of having greater agency. Namely: if it is feedback, then I need to be in a good state to figure out, “Well, what can I do with this? How can I move forward from here, even though I hadn’t anticipated being here?” So, the second principle is this: being able to control your state is a real gift, and it’s a learnable skill. People naturally have responses to the unexpected, the unanticipated. Well, all right then, have the response. But don’t kid yourself by just trying to watch TV until you’re completely distracted, or eating yourself silly, or drinking too much. These are all distractions, but they don’t actually assist you in engaging with what’s going on. So, if you have your response, you’re upset, you’re disappointed, whatever it is, that’s fine. It is what it is. Now, given that, what would change your state for the better? “Well, I’d like it all to be different.” Okay, fine. But what would you actually need to do to change your state? And if you’re not sure—that, in itself, is really useful. Because a lot of the time, people aren’t sure how they can enhance their current state. They don’t even think they can. It’s like the weather: you just hope for sunny intervals later, or something. But could you change it? Yes, you could. One of the ways of understanding how to change it is to think about how to make it worse—paradoxically. And if you do that…
KLEA: It's so true.
IAN: Yeah, so what would be making it worse? And if you want to know more, that is what we were talking about before. But in essence, part of what you are doing here is learning to take care of yourself in a way that works for you, so that you can then do something else, which is the third area we explored in some detail before. Namely, do not just aim to be comfortable, aim to be resourceful. A lot of times we would just like to be comfortable, “Oh, that is nice, cozy, familiar.” The danger is that when something unanticipated happens, it is outside the norm, it is an anomaly.
KLEA: You're already uncomfortable. Don't reestablish your comfort, because that's probably what got you in trouble in the first place.
IAN: Well, I do not know, whatever the case right now, it would help to be able to be more resourceful. And then the question arises, “Well, what do I need in order to be resourceful?” That is what we were exploring last time. And going forward from there, I think this time, the next step, really, those were the first three things. Then the fourth thing would be, in a way allied to being more resourceful, which is to be more flexible. And flexibility comes in many forms. It could be mentally, physically, emotionally flexible. Why is flexibility so valuable? All you have to do is think about what it is to be rigid when something has not gone the way you want it to go. "I am going to respond with rigidity. Okay, exactly, how does that assist? I am just going to stay here until it changes." And then you are starting to command the ocean. "Can you, like, you know, if you are going to push the water back?" Well, no, you are not. Yeah, you may need to adjust. So how could you adjust? How could you help yourself by being more flexible? And this takes many forms. The most obvious, of course, is just physically getting up, moving around, stretching, doing whatever it is that for you makes you less rigid, less contracted, less tight. Does this matter? It matters a lot, because your neurophysiology is neurophysiology, it affects how your brain is functioning as well. So what do you need to do physically?
KLEA: So you are saying that if you are feeling rigid or clamped down with your perspective, with your response, with your feelings toward your situation, there is an actual tie between your mental state and your physical state. You would recommend getting out and moving, getting the oxygen pumping, doing some stretching, yoga, or whatever it may be, just to create a more flexible mental state as well as a physical state. Is that what you're saying?
IAN: Absolutely, because they do go together. And by the way, it is not just the obvious kind of extension of long muscle, rich fiber. It is also to do with, “What is going on in your stomach? Is it tight? Yes, I always find I solve problems best when I feel really tight in my stomach." There has not been something I have heard anybody say so far. Of course, there may well be someone who does, but I have not met them, so there is something here about just loosening up. But it will not just be physical. Obviously, it is going to be mental as well. How can you see things differently? Could you do something different? It is interesting how often, when people are finding what they are doing is not working, they do more of it. They try harder. And the cliché version of this, I suppose, would be the American in Paris who cannot get a Parisian to understand English, asking, "Where the bathroom is? And the bathroom, the bathroom, you know," as if obviously volume is going to suddenly translate in a way that previously the same word did not. Wrong tool for the job. You need to be able to respond in a way that is different. So, for example, I was one time working with somebody who was going to be doing a presentation to the family. Previously, they had a go, and the way it went was that they just felt like they were trapped in the lights, and they could not stop feeling panicky and that it was all going wrong. However, when we debriefed about it, they realized that if they had just stepped to one side, literally moved, and said, "So clearly, that is not the way I need to be talking about this, is it?" and then proceeded, they had just done something different. By acknowledging how the people were responding and that what they were doing was not useful, he realized he needed to do something else. So can we be more flexible? And that is mental, but we also need to have the emotional flexibility too.
KLEA: How do you develop that flexibility? I mean, be more flexible.
IAN: Well, that's a very good point.
KLEA: I know that we talked about moving, but so often I think, is not that like intergenerational issues? Often we saw it modeled, and so often we have to develop completely new ways of associating with the world because the models that we maybe had were not as flexible. Or maybe we saw it and then we thought, "Well, that did not work, and I am going to do it differently."
IAN: But you see, I think what the question you're asking goes right to the heart of the matter, which is, “Okay, so we need to be more flexible. But how do we do that?” Intergenerational flexibility is also a dimension here, because does every generation see the world the same way? Good Lord, of course, we know they don't. Members of the same generation don't see the world the same way, never mind across the years. So this brings me to, I guess, if we're saying be more flexible, then there's another aspect which is going to be, “Let's make it a separate point,” because it's incredibly important, which is, change your perspective.
KLEA: Is this number five?
IAN: Number five, what does it mean to change your perspective? Changing your perspective means being able to see things from, and now we have these expressions in the English language which are there for a reason. "How do you think it is for me?" That is going to be stepping into someone else’s shoes, "Walk a mile in my shoes," or "Look, if I see this from a different angle. These are all verbal expressions that point to the need to be able to change your perspective,” and being able to do that is a learnable skill. You can do it in many different ways, but one of the ways that is going to be really critical is being able to see things from more than one perspective at will.
KLEA: That is high level emotional intelligence.
IAN: Well, I think it is actually something that is really quite easy to do when you know how.
KLEA: Yeah, give us some tips.
IAN: Well, there are how-tos here. If we were in a different setting, there are particular tools and techniques that have been developed, step one, step two, step three. But I think rather than trying to do that in this context, which is not the ideal context, what I would suggest instead is that we think about how often it is useful to understand what is going on by understanding what is going on for somebody else. Your example of intergenerational issues would be a case in point. "Do you know what it is like for someone else? Can you walk a mile in their shoes? No. But could you imaginatively step in? Yes." And part of the way you do that is just by asking them. "So tell me how it is for you." What a concept, you are actually going to ask them, as opposed to mind reading and then acting as if it is reality. Way too often people do the mind reading. And I think probably one of the scariest sentences in the English language is, "I know just how you feel." No, you do not. I can assure you, whatever else is the case, you may be able to approximate, you may be in the ballpark, but nobody knows just how someone else feels. Often, people barely know themselves how they feel. So there is something here about changing your perspective. Now, you can do this in lots of ways. As I say, stepping into other people's shoes, wondering what it is like for them, and there are questions you can ask that will make a big difference. For example, I was very recently working with, but there was somebody describing how one of the members of the family was boasting about having got this one-thousand-dollar pair of sneakers, and that was so important to them. And the person telling me was kind of irritated and almost contemptuous, like, "Really?" My question was, "What would have to be true for that to be so important for someone?" Now that is a different perspective, because it requires thinking about what might be going on for that person. Why is it so important that other people know the price of these sneakers? What is that proving? And so you get curious. And if you ever want to help change your perspective, get curious. It immediately opens up all sorts of questions you probably would not otherwise have considered. Equally, here is another question to ask whenever something, especially a setback, occurs. By all means recognize, "I wish this had not happened," but it has happened, and so now, what is the opportunity here? No, this is not being Pollyannaish, you are not in denial about the fact that you would rather it had not happened, but if it is going to happen, what is the opportunity here? And that is a way of thinking that can allow so many different options. I remember many, many years ago working with a colleague after we had just done this day with a group of people, and it had been a tough day. I am not used to those, I was not then, and I do not have them now, but they were kind of at us. Only at the end did we learn that they had actually been told they had to do this, they did not want to do it, and there was a threat of redundancy around as well, which we did not know. It all became clear the following day, because we knew we were going back. "Oh, goody." So there I am driving, and he is sitting beside me, and I said, as I think about the day, and I started talking about it, he said, "Look, Ian, I have just been doing this all day. Could we just go to the pub?" And this was in London, so there are some good pubs in London. He just did not want to talk about it. He said, "I do not want to talk about it," to which my response came quite naturally, and it was a lesson for me. I said, "Look, if I am going to feel this bad, I do expect to get something out of it."
KLEA: I've got to learn something, because this is too painful.
IAN: Well, exactly, and it is just so second nature for me that he looked at me physically and then he said, "Okay." And then he was open to talking about it, and we actually came to a much greater understanding because we knew the questions to ask the participants the following day, which just threw light on it. It was like, "Oh, this makes perfect sense now," and then we had a good day that they could use. So, different perspectives, “How do you get them?” All of that, I think, makes a huge difference. And we have a limited amount of time, so I just want to pop one other thing in here, which is, if you like, number six. I think whenever you are having this sort of experience of something going wrong, a setback, it is really important that you, first of all, keep going, that you stay active, and that you do not give up. This really matters because it can be dispiriting, and professionals, when they learn how to do this—to stay active, keep going, not give up—it is amazing how valuable that can be for families, for teams, for organizations, and for individuals. And just to put the flesh on the bone, so to speak, of what that means in practice, I mentioned London, which I think has triggered an association for me. A few years ago in London, there was going to be an evening seminar I was doing, with 150 people coming to central London. For those of you who know London, it was just near Oxford Circus, and I was going to do it at a particular building. I turn up, I am there an hour ahead of time because there were some things to do, and the place is absolutely black. There are no lights on, so I try to go inside, and the person on the door does not let me and says, "No, it is blackout because there is a power cut. We are not going to be able to do anything here." Now, we had booked this place, we had 150 people who were going to turn up, there was a resource team of people arriving, and we were not going to be doing this in this building, that was very obvious. So what now? It is interesting, there was not enough time to notify everyone, we did not have a building, there was no way you could do this on the street for 150 people, so it was like, “Right, let’s begin.” And I just start walking up the road. There were a number of other institutes around, and I just walked into each of them. I was now in the business of saying, "Do you have a free room tonight?" It is completely ridiculous.
KLEA: You post a poster on the door of the old one.
IAN: But what else do you do? I phoned a number of colleagues to say, “Hey, this is what's going down. I'm here. I'm going to start moving around.” Long story short, after about 20 minutes of this, I walk into a place called The Royal Institute of British architects, Riba, and just go to the desk and say, “Give her a room for tonight because of a power cut. Blah, blah, blah.” And he said, “Oh, let me get the Events Manager down.” Events Manager comes down. I tell her what's happened. And said, “Actually, we do the main auditorium was free tonight,” so great. We do that. Yes, okay, so I'm now. Only my colleagues, they're saying, right? We'll redirect people. Human chain is created. It's a very walkable distance, yeah, and it happens. So, the small miracle. But of course, there's no miracle at all. Yeah. What's required is to stay active, keep going. And yeah, I think the other thing is, it's so in a way, I'm just reminded of Churchill. You know, when you're going through hell, keep going.
KLEA: Keep going. Yeah, I love the phrase, God can't steer a parked car. So if you want to have some direction, you want to get out the other end, you got to keep driving.
IAN: Precisely. I think that is probably not a bad place to pause for now, because there is something really important about you just not giving up. There is no point in doing the same thing over and over. That is why being flexible, being able to change your perspective, and having the resourceful attitude that enables you to do something different really does matter. But all of that starts with you having some sense of what is going on in me. Can I be in the most resourceful state to help me deal with what right now seems like a setback, but could end up being one of the best things that has happened in quite a while?
KLEA: Oh, it's so true, and it makes you so relatable when, in the future, others need you to encourage, lead, and teach them. I'm grateful for your examples and experiences, because clearly you've had your own setbacks, and that's why you speak to it, I assume.
IAN: It's true, and I'm grateful for them. And here we are.
KLEA: Yeah, here we are. It makes us, I think, much more powerful teachers when we can speak from the pulpit of experience instead of 'that's the truth.' Well, thank you so much, Ian, for your time today and for giving us a follow-up to part two. I hope that this will be of some service to our community and to those they serve. I look forward to speaking with you again.
