I went for a walk this morning, and on a quiet and pedestrian street in my neighborhood, I saw a toddler running, or more accurately trundling, from around the corner.
His mom followed behind, pushing one of those toddler push bikes.
Suddenly the kid tripped on the sidewalk and fell flat, if not quite on his face, then on his belly.
I looked at him with the overactive sympathy of someone who’s never had a kid, and who knows nothing about kids. I was sure he’d start bawling right away.
I then looked at his mom. I was sure she’d run over and start comforting her son.
But the mom wasn’t moving. She seemed to have no intent of moving. She just stood there looking at the kid from 15 feet way.
The mom noticed me looking at her. Our gazes met. And she gave me a weary smile as if to say, “He does this all the time. He’ll be fine.”
Sure enough, before I’d even had a chance to look back at the kid, he’d gotten up and started running, or more accurately trundling, in his straight line to God-knows-where his will was taking him.
A couple days ago, I started reading a book called Straight-Line Leadership by some very Serbian-sounding dude named Dusan Djukich.
Last night in that book, I read a bit about “zigzag people” — people who sometimes go on spurts of success and productivity, only to inevitably regress to earlier, pre-success levels. Says Djukich:
“Zigzag people simply don’t see that after that good start, a ‘challenge’ doesn’t have to stop them. They can keep going. In fact, they can use the challenge to build strength along the path.”
I thought of that this morning when I saw the mom with her toddler. You can think of it too, when coaching others that there’s nothing very remarkable about falling flat. It’s ok to get up and keep going where you were going.
You can also think of it when coaching yourself, or rather, when living your life and making your own progress.
The next time you hit a challenge, you can think of that trundling toddler, or think of Djukich’s message above, and realize you can fall flat and still get up and keep going. The “challenge” doesn’t have to stop you, and in fact, you can use it to build strength along the path.
But enough Djukich Soup for the Soul.
Let me just add one last thing:
The reason why I’m now reading Straight-Line Leadership is because it’s long been on my reading list.
The reason it’s long been on my reading list is because I’ve repeatedly heard Travis Sago recommend it.
Over the past week, I’ve been promoting Travis’s Royalty Ronin membership for its most promotable aspects — like money-making, partnerhsip-building, and new marketing and sales ideas.
But the fact is, some of the most impactful books I’ve read over the past year, which have nothing to do with sales or marketing, came via Travis’s recommendations inside Ronin.
If you’re a reader, and if like me, you like to go to the original source, you might like Travis and his teachings, and more importantly, you might be motivated to actually put them to practice, without zigging and zagging all the time.
A week’s free trial to Royalty Ronin, so you can make up your own mind, is here:
P.S. If you’ve already signed up for a trial of Royalty Ronin via my link above, forward me Travis’s welcome email — the one with “Vroom” in the subject line.
I have a small but growing bundle of bonuses, including my Heart of Hearts and my Inspiration & Engagement trainings, which are waiting for you as a way of saying thanks for taking me up on my recommendation.