Harness collective intelligence

While on my bike, the headwind I was riding straight into got me thinking.

When faced with resistance, how do you respond?

Do you welcome it as useful feedback and make improvements, ignore and accept it’s just the way things are, or do you change course and go whichever way the wind seems to be blowing?

If you have a clear sense of purpose, resilience will push you through almost anything, because you are confident in your direction.

However, what if it’s implicit faith? Take a moment to learn what that headwind might be trying to tell you. Are there competitors that are better, cheaper, or faster? Are they winds of change? Or just part of the journey to help you smooth out your edges and toughen your skin?

If you pay close attention, you may discover insights into where your market is headed, or how the wants, needs, and fears of your target audience are evolving.

If you believe you have something special, despite what others might think, remember that great ideas are polarizing. Someone’s going to have to hate your idea if anyone will ever love it.

If you are not confident in your direction, maybe you are not motivated by a purpose that resonates with you yet. Either you haven’t discovered what you’re meant to do, or perhaps you just haven’t nailed down how to share your idea with others.

Something to caution yourself of: sometimes the wind you feel is created by your own movement. Consider pausing to see if that resistance is still there, or if your own actions are the primary contributing factor. Sometimes the faster you move, the more you stumble. This is often the symptom of insufficient planning and strategy. So you may need to slow down to go fast.

Other times you might determine that you are your own worst enemy and that you are finding yourself procrastinating. I think it was Gary Vee I heard say recently, about laziness: you might be doing something you’re not in love with doing. You’re probably not leaning into what you’re passionate about. So, if you find yourself procrastinating, or feeling lazy most days, you might not be doing what you’re meant to be doing, or you haven’t been able to really connect with what matters to you, or others, as a benefit to what you are doing. But, once you figure this out, you’re likely to find you have the energy to push through to a point where you forget to pull yourself away from your work, because you’re so into it, and love doing it so much that it doesn’t feel like work anymore.