Are you aiming too low?

I do a lot of work with individuals trying to grow professionally, and I keep seeing something that I can’t quite believe:

People will go to great lengths to avoid doing the one thing they need to do to be successful. They will actually expend more energy avoiding the topic than it would take to overcome it.

It’s not like I didn’t know this before–this knowledge was a driving force behind the title of my book!–but I still find it surprising. Time after time, I watch people reject helpful answers in favor of others that are, at best, incomplete, and at worst, a waste of time. It’s most interesting to watch this play out on an online forum, where you can literally watch a thread develop where the person asking the question ignores helpful responses and asks for clarification/more info about posts that are flat out not helpful or that will create further damage. On a relationship issue, I saw posts about how to maintain trust go ignored while others about how to win an argument get drawn out and turned into their own forum subjects. Obviously, these folks aren’t looking for help. They know the answers, and they’re looking to avoid those answers. I can’t imagine the guy on the relationship forum isn’t aware that building trust in a relationship inherently reduces the number and severity of arguments. And yet…

Part of me feels like I’m back in high school, watching my friends hatch some crazy scheme while giving zero consideration to the consequences… except now the people I’m interacting with are real people, with real jobs, real families… and real repercussions for their actions. It can be frustrating to watch these folks march into certain failure on account of having too narrow a focus. It’s like there’s this trick of nature that makes it hard for people to see the whole chessboard, and a second trick on top of that one that makes them forget that they’re not seeing the full picture.

I’ve discovered from my own experience about how to start stepping back. I find that if I’m planning for that next conversation and not the action to follow, or if I am treating the next obstacle in my path as the biggest thing I’m facing–instead of an obstacle en route to a larger goal–I am focused too narrowly and will come up short. I may not fail, per se, but I am aiming too low, and I will regret it in the end: like the guy who wants to win the argument with his girlfriend instead of building trust, I’ve taken my eye off the ball and refocused my energy on my problems. Game over.

Refocusing is still tough. For one thing, it can be a little embarrassing to admit that I’ve been exerting effort on the wrong thing. For another, I don’t like being wrong, and refocusing comes with an implicit admission of having been wrong. Thirdly, when I broaden my perspective, my problems tend to shift from being externally created to internally created, and frankly, that can be annoying. It feels easier to blame others.

It also feels like a waste of time. I can get mad all I want, and I can plan for that conversation in which I give someone what-for, but to what end? It doesn’t move me forward one inch. So what I’ve done instead is, I’ve started using feelings of blame as the triggers to alert me that I need to broaden my perspective… to pull back and scan the whole chessboard.

I know everyone can do this. That people don’t do it more often is a mystery to me. It’s not because we’re afraid, lazy, or stupid. I’ve seen too many people overcome too many setbacks to believe any of these things about people in general. It’s more like, we’re walking through a dream in which we accept the ridiculous as perfectly normal–we forget to shake our heads and say, “Hang on a second, why is there an elephant in my backyard?”

Of course, if that’s the case, then the solution to helping people stop aiming too low and achieve their highest goals is real easy:

“Wake up!”

C’mon, folks! It’s time for breakfast and the table seats six billion. There’s plenty of space… I’ll meet you there!

Jason Seiden is Co-founder and CEO of Ajax Social Media, a training company that shows professionals how use social media to work more effectively.