Headwinds and Tailwinds

We all see the headwinds of our lives much easier than the tailwinds which have brought us to where we are. The passive aspects of success are easy to ignore regardless of the amount of work and effort that it took to bring them into play. In truth, the only aspects of success that we commonly latch onto are those that are directly related to barriers we have overcome. We have a much easier time feeling triumph relative to a struggle, and can easily forget the resources and help we received to overcome.

So how do we avoid this pitfall—this trap that can lay us ungrateful and in the crosshairs of the perceived headwinds of life that oft try to push against us and obstruct our path to success—how do we move forward? Just parallel parking, the key to avoiding a trap is to have a proven strategy that leads to success. You remember the original diagram you saw that defined how to parallel park and you imprint that every time you successfully parallel park. So too, when we realize that this pitfall is a common experience, we should be willing to take ownership of our part in it and create strategies to overcome it.

It is pivotal to take responsibility for the part that we play in it, because the same biological function that sabotages us, the brain, can be the key to pushing back against the lack of objective relativity in existence. To begin this process and understand why and how you perceive and fight against headwinds it's important to quantify where your base is now in the categories of life that you want to see improvement. These categories could be Health, Relationships, Career, Social, Financial, Educational, or Personal. You should take inventory of where you want to see improvement and where you perceive the most barriers and rate how you feel that is going in your life on a scale of 1-10. Then rate how strong the barriers are in your life that limit your success in that area on a scale of 1-10. Your scale may be different, so articulate what a 1 means and what a 10 means before you rank it then spend some time journaling about why you scored each of those the way that you did.

Taking inventory allows us to build an awareness around the present that we can use to check against the future inventories that we take as we try to build more of an awareness and appreciation for the tailwinds, while fighting against the repetitive reminders of headwinds that stand in our way and make themselves much louder than the tailwinds. The hardest part of doing this is that it requires consistency and pushback against ourselves and the dominant narrative that we allow transcending the relative reality of our circumstances. In order to find more gratitude and appreciation, as well as be more aware of the tailwinds and how they influence us, we need to actively be journaling.

I am an Attitude-Behavior (AB) Journal junkie and I am always surprised how much better it makes life seem. As a lifelong worrier, it seems silly that the trick to not worrying is a relative perspective to the situations that I’m facing. I’ve built out a form that allows me to easily input and do my journal in less than five minutes. At the very beginning, it does seem to take a little bit more time, but that may be more related to an unfamiliarity with attempting to be grateful or cognizant of the resources that most influence you in a positive way.

Join me in this exercise:

1. Write out 10 things that you are grateful for
2. Write out 10 things that you want to attract
3. Write out the top 5 professional actions you commit to accomplishing today with a section left for their outcomes
4. Write out the top 3 personal actions you commit to accomplishing today with a section left for their outcomes.
5. Write down the top 3 domino goals that you’re focusing on
6. Affirm why you want those top 3 goals to be accomplished

This should give a framework for you at the beginning of the day. Fill this out, quick and easy, then come back to this journal at night and fill in the blanks as well as these next few steps.

1. Write out the outcomes of the professional actions you committed to
2. Write out the outcomes of the personal goals you committed to
3. Write out the top two reoccurring head trash comments that you made to yourself, (e.g. I’m stupid, I don’t try hard enough, the industry I work in is struggling). These head trash comments will generally be associated with the headwinds you face
4. Work out new affirmations that change the view of those headwinds and commit to reminding yourself of them if those thoughts arise tomorrow
5. Reflect and review on what you are saying to yourself. How’s your relationship with you going? Are you on the same team? What’s preventing internal success to move you from a state of headwinds to a self-fulfilling prophecy of commitment?
6. Rate your success from the day on your identity side and on your role side and explain to yourself why you gave yourself the score you did.

Ultimately, AB Journals keep our minds in check and fight against the headwinds that we might expect on a daily basis. By putting more energy into focusing on the tailwinds that we experience we can build a more relative and realistic view of our reality and help us become a positive change agent in our organizations that leads by example and has knowledge of technical strategies to success that can revitalize our organization.

If you’d like to have a conversation about how my Sandler team could help change your organization reach out to me. Connect on LinkedIn if you enjoyed my article and let me know what your thoughts were!