One of the key reasons I was trapped into aimless wandering for sometime was because I kept listening to what everyone around me was saying. That was when I came across this quote by Winston Churchill
“You will never reach your destination
if you stop and throw stones
at every dog that barks.”
During our journey brings us many ‘barking dogs’ to deal with. If we allow them to scare us, distract us, or bite us, they may easily prevent us from reaching our destination.
Here are some points adapted from Inner Leadership which contains several tools that can help to keep us focused and on track:
- Staying calm in a crisis and connecting with what matters most, because keeping a clear head is important
- Making clear sense of our situation, because clear understanding leads to good choices
- Knowing which dogs matter (and which do not) and deciding how we will behave when we meet them, because some issues need to be engaged with, actively, and in a way that works for you
- Realising that there are five basic strategies you can employ for dealing with the dogs you choose to engage with (and five other strategies that can also be useful)
- Being clear about your destination, because then you can get back on track quicker
- Choosing the best way forward for you now, because you have to start from where you are now
- Creating a vision that will inspire you when barking dogs are all around, because inspiration is what will get us through this time of change
We will never reach our destinations if we stop and throw stones at every dog that barks. So it is useful to plan out our strategies and tactics in advance.
Do you know which dogs to ignore, which ones to pay attention to, and how best to handle them?
Kenrick Vaz 