“You can’t outwit fate by standing on the sidelines placing little side bets about the outcome of life… if you don’t play you can’t win.”
Judith McNaught, American author.
Damage control. Emergency response. Crisis watch. There’s a lot in this world that puts us on red alert. We can spend a lot of mental energy preparing for disasters and predicting catastrophes. While common sense preparedness is a sound strategy, we frequently allow our restless minds to produce an untold amount of needless anxiety.
This week I’d like to suggest an alternate mindset to guide your thoughts and actions: Green alert. Green alert is tuned towards the upside. It looks at obstacles and discerns where opportunity lies.
Here are five tips to keep yourself on “green alert”:
1. Keep your ears and eyes open. Listen to what’s going on in your market, your office, and with your clients. It’s not necessary to react, but it’s necessary to be tuned into your environment.
2. Assess what you can really accomplish in a day. Set some small daily goals which point you in the right direction.
3. Place events within their larger context. Examine how the events of today remind you of events in the past, and how you might see these events manifest in the future. Go big picture to avoid big freakouts.
4. Flex and bend, but don’t break. Plans change, things fall apart, but quickly see where the next move forward is, trying as hard as possible not to allow yourself to stick to regret or bitterness. Celebrate new directions.
5. Connect, connect, connect. Who do you know who could benefit from knowing someone else you know? Where could an introduction improve the lives of everyone involved? Reinforce your network by connecting people you know with one another.
Don’t let red threat levels and bright yellow anxieties keep you on life’s sidelines. Put yourself on green alert and go.
