That sun’s awful pretty. You could almost touch it…
Ever make the same mistake twice?
What about the same mistake thrice? Four times?
That’s about as human as you can get. It feels like we’re built to repeat our failures.
Plenty of songs, books, and movies demonstrate what that failure on failure on failure looks like. There’s one poem, though, that I think holds the key to why we keep doing the same dumb thing:
A man saw a ball of gold in the sky;
He climbed for it,
And eventually he achieved it –
It was clay.
Now this is the strange part:
When the man went to the earth
And looked again,
Lo, there was the ball of gold.
Now this is the strange part:
It was a ball of gold.
Aye, by the heavens, it was a ball of gold.
That was penned by American author Stephen Crane in his 20s. I don’t know what you were doing in your 20s, but I sure wasn’t capturing the essence of human nature like Steve.
Did you see yourself in those words?
You see something you want.
Work towards it.
Realize you maybe don’t want or need it after all…
Then when life is back to normal you find yourself wanting it again.
That’s Stevie C himself. I too would look a little awkward in knee-high boots, a pistol, and a very tiny cowboy hat.
You don’t have to stay trapped
Business owners, how often have you thought you can rest if you can just…
- Hit those numbers.
- Get that contract.
- Hire for that position you desperately need.
No matter how many times you hit that goal you set, you always seem to be overwhelmed. You never feel like you’ve done enough.
A cynic might look at Crane’s poem and say the message is “there is no golden ball.” Nothing will ever be better. I think the message is actually much simpler, and more positive: if it wasn’t gold the first time, it won’t ever be. If you keep trying the same things to grow your business, or rescue it, or stop putting out fires and focus on what you do best, and none of it works? Try something else.
And if you don’t know what else to try, give us a call. We have some ideas.