The Rock Paradox
I listen as the sales trainer attempts to connect with the audience of sales professionals. In an effort to differentiate himself, he chooses an analogy about the navigation of river rapids.
“It’s just like paddling a canoe down the river,” the sales trainer says.
With more than four decades of paddling experience myself and as an eternal student of the river, I turn all of my attention to what the sales trainer will say next.
“The river is much easier to navigate if you just remove all of the rocks.”
The sales trainer suggests that if we remove the big obstacles in our path, we can more easily find faster flow.
I can see how the sales trainer believes this outcome would liberate people from something that holds them back.
But, the usage of this analogy is neither realistic nor true.
A large obstacle or challenge situated in the river current of your life appears restrictive and intimidating. But, such a rock does not just disappear on its own.
To rid the river of this rock requires a lot work. Someone would have to do it. And that someone would be you.
Your efforts to remove — or even avoid — the rock only reinforces the obstacle’s position as an obtrusive blockade.
But, what if a rock does not obstruct the flow? Rather, what if a rock simply directs the flow?
Herein lies a major mindset shift.
When your perceived obstruction guides the flow, a strategic response emerges. You enact a plan that identifies a path through the rapid.
Now, you no longer empower the obstacle. Instead, you direct yourself towards the rock in alignment with the true river current that runs through your life.
This is the moment that the flow of advancement appears. But, only with the essential help of the rock.
With gratitude,
-Joe
Connect with Joe:
Joe Jacobi is an Olympic Gold Medalist and Performance Coach who collaborates with leaders & teams by getting them outside the day-to-day rush of life and bringing focus to what truly matters most.
His strategies and concepts help clients, including sales and technology executives, doctors, senior-level bankers, and military leaders, to perform their best without compromising their lives.
Joe continually practices and refines his core principles and strategies via his own life and pursuits at his Pyrenees mountains home beside the 1992 Olympic Canoeing venue in La Seu d’Urgell in the Spanish state of Catalunya — the same canoeing venue where along with his canoeing partner, Scott Strausbaugh, Joe won America’s first-ever Olympic Gold Medal in the sport of Whitewater Canoe Slalom at the 1992 Olympic Games.
