Political Savvy in Action

Let’s play pretend:

Let’s pretend you’re six, you’re a girl, you have longish hair, and you want to cut it to chin length. Let’s also pretend that your mom doesn’t want you to.

What do you do?

You could just cut it and invite the fight. That’s certainly one way.

You consider it.

While you consider it, you learn about Locks of Love, a program that takes donated ponytails to make wigs for cancer patients who need natural, human hair wigs. You learn about a similar program run by Pantene that does the same thing with hair a bit shorter in length. And you think, “What a great program!”

Now what do you do?

Well, if you’re savvy, you start talking about how you want to donate your hair. You talk about it often, frequently asking your mom if your hair is long enough yet. You don’t tell anyone that you want short hair—what you want for yourself has become secondary to the good you want to do. You stay focused on the good.

Then, when your hair is long enough, you cut it, leaving you with the chin-length hair you wanted for yourself.

Now, we’re just pretending, right? Kids aren’t really that savvy. Heck, most adults aren’t savvy enough to put that little plan together, and if grown ups lack the foresight, patience, kindness, and sufficient willingness to delay gratification to execute that plan, then certainly a child wouldn’t be able to pull this off.

Right?

Wrong.

Grown-ups, take note: the scenario above is not make-believe. It’s how my daughter Elle got chin-length locks despite a mom who was dead set against it.

So the next time you find yourself whining because your future isn’t unfolding fast enough, or that every time you push for what you want you end up in a fight with someone, just remember that somewhere, a person a fraction of your age took an intractable problem and found a way to make it work.

Then turn off the TV, put down the drink, hang up the phone, and keep thinking until you come up with a solution that works.

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.