* I did. Putney is their golden retriever. In two minutes and forty seconds, I, along with the nearly nineteen million other viewers, watched Putney grow from a round-bellied floppy fluffball to a six-month-old precocious and gangly adolescent, paws still disproportionately large for her body. I watched Putney face her fears, standing off against a plastic water bottle, the baby gate, and bumpy concrete. I shared her intrigue over meeting sheep for the first time. I cheered when Putney won at tug-of-war with her friends in her backyard. I chuckled when she fell asleep while standing, head landing in her water dish. Putney’s video was amazing.
Getting Unstuck
About the same time that Mattie learned nouns, he also developed preferences, penchants that at times conflicted with my well-laid plans for us both. I described this stage of child-rearing as a combination of “taming a lion” and “negotiating with terrorists.” But I’m a parent and a psychologist. As a result, I was fully anticipating using reverse psychology on my little beast at some point in his life, and felt pretty confident in my ability to employ this tactic effectively. I was right on only one of those counts.
As the sun started to set one weekday night, I corralled my sticky toddler, mustachioed with the remnants of his dinner, and tried to get him ready for night-night time. We had a bedtime routine, of course. He wasn’t going straight from meal to mattress. My goal was to get him stripped down and in the tub. But he knew that, post-bath, confinement in his crib was imminent. So out came his stalling tactics. He was well aware by now that asking to play with his trucks or blocks wouldn’t buy him any time. He tried instead to ask for stories.
That is when I found myself in a stalemate against my child. We were looking at each other eye to eye, him standing now atop the small mountain of pillows he had created. Mattie asked for “Books!” as dogmatically as can any child who has just learned how to say the word and understands what it means.
I responded, “Bath,” as hopefully as would any mother who desperately wants to get a dirty and tired child clean and into bed.
To which Mattie replied, “Books,” which was obviously followed by my “Bath.”
“Books.”
“Bath.”
“Books.”
“Bath.”
“Books.”
I decided to employ my psychological powers. As my child stared me down, awaiting my “Bath” (or, he hoped, my surrender), I turned the tables in this call-and-response. “Books,” I said.
And I almost won! As if in slow motion, I saw him draw his lips back. I watched as his little mouth start to form the syllable Baaa. He caught himself, though, just before the sounds came out. He cocked his head to one side, chuckled, and then said with renewed confidence and gusto, “BOOKS!” I settled in for a few good reads, and cuddled up next to my satisfied if slightly grimy baby boy.
Throughout the course of my life, I have found myself throwing in the towel on more than just my choice persuasion tactics. Learning how to disengage from even the most well-formulated plans has been not only par for the course but also a good move at some points in time. But, of course, one of the hardest parts of setting goals can be realizing that you might have to let them go or shift the course you’ve charted.
We humans struggle to disengage from accomplishing things we set our sights on, because we get stuck thinking about a single interpretation of how to feel successful and happy. Many of us believe that once we set a goal, we have succeeded only when we make good on that exact promise to ourselves. But victory does not have to look like what we thought it might at the outset. When we free ourselves from a linear pursuit of a single objective, we might find success disguised in other forms.
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So when do we know it’s time to try a new approach to meeting our aspirations? What are the signs that the pursuit of a particular goal will likely bring us up against a dead end? Sometimes the world tells us and we just have to listen.
That’s exactly what happened for Steve Sims. He grew up in East London and came from a construction family. He was a bricklayer, but he wanted more. He saw where money came from and went for it. Sims transitioned careers and landed a gig as a stockbroker. After six months, he talked his way into a transfer to a branch in Hong Kong.
But talking your way into something doesn’t mean you’re really ready for it. Sims flew in to Hong Kong on a Saturday, and was fired by Tuesday.
With no plan B, but a fair bit of brawn, he started working as a nightclub doorman. Standing at the door, he got to know Hong Kong’s famous and elite, and became the linchpin in the middle of a prestigious social circle. He knew who the best partyers were, and where the best parties were happening. He started throwing events himself, and the people came. Still with his sights set on a career in banking, he took his Rolodex of heavy hitters to the bank. He thought that his many established relationships with wealthy clients would fast-track him through the interview and land him the gig in finance he’d wanted for quite some time.
But that just didn’t happen. That’s not to say the banks weren’t impressed with his client list. They were. They just didn’t want to sign him on to manage investments. However, they did want to finance his events, since they understood that he could make money and give them recurring access to people who had it to spend. And with this, the parties grew. They grew so large, in fact, that he had to limit attendance. Those on the list received the password for entry a few hours before the party, then whispered odd phrases to the bouncers. That was about when Sims’s aspiration to achieve success in banking died, but Bluefish, an exclusive luxury concierge service (named after one of the first open-sesames) was born.
Sims now arranges deep-sea tours of the Titanic and high-flying expeditions through outer space. He arranged for a client to walk the runway at New York Fashion Week. He turned another into James Bond for a day, entertained by sexy vixens and chased by spies through the streets of Monaco before being kidnapped and held for ransom by pirates in the Mediterranean. He assembled a team of professional race car drivers so that two Harvard lecturers could crash stock cars. Steve makes billionaires’ most outrageous dreams become reality. And he started it all by first giving up on his own.
Giving Up to Really Grow
Theodor Geisel had hundreds of hats stashed away in a closet behind a bookcase in his La Jolla home. They were plumed, fluffed, beribboned, and spiked. He had a Baroque Czech helmet, a plastic toy Viking cap, a white leather marching-band busby, a black-and-white convict cap, a teeny-tiny sombrero, a fierce pickelhaube, and a floppy felt chapeau festooned with plumage.
Geisel, better known as Dr. Seuss, loved his hat collection and used it to his personal and professional advantage. He would unveil his stash at just the right moment when entertaining visitors, and place a different one on each guest’s head. The hats broke the ice at dinner parties that seemed too cold and aloof.