A lot of us suffer from what we call the ‘ Hero Trap ‘- an over reliance on our ability to handle something that becomes infuriatingly urgent which could have easily been avoided had it not been the temptation of the short term hack. It is always the toss up between urgent or important.
One of the sought after items when you went to see a circus was the Juggler’s act. And you were always left wondering how she is managing the act of throwing and catching consistently without fail amidst all the audience excitement and bewilderment. It is about attitude preceding outcomes. An attitude of training is far more important than the desire to have six-pack abs. Likewise, the act of throwing is more vital than the act of catching. And that is the secret to the Juggler catching ball without fail, time after time.
Life has parallels from juggling. Disaster Management Teams are seized of this. It is said that emergency response is overrated compared to emergency avoidance. If one were to introspect, we will realise that we spend most of our life catching aka reacting. Attending meetings that have been called by someone else. In fire fighting. Distracted by people who are making the loudest noise.
The lesson we can learn from jugglers is not catching. But throwing. Initiating. Contributing. Caring. Showing up. Shipping out. And soon we will spend far less time worrying about catching in the first place.
A project gone sideways, the end of a rocky relationship, the loss of a crucial game etc all leads us to think about what happened at the last moment, which is where we miss the wood for the trees. Actually, what is overlooked is what happened in the beginning or the middle, where the patterns could have been picked up, where one could have distilled the signal from the noise, when you had a stronger chance to make things better.
“Life is a juggling act with your own emotions. The trick is to always keep something in your hand and something in the air.”
Chloe Thurlow, Katie in Love