I walked up to the burger joint with the phone at my ear as a friend rattled off a current crisis. I plopped down, barely glancing at my fellow pub mate. After ending the call, I glanced to my right and found him smiling.
“I’m sorry, that was rude, to be on the phone inside. I hate when people do that,” I offered up. And that is how I met Marco–who embodied one of the reasons I had moved to the Pacific Northwest.
In Mexico, I was blessed with a bevy of women friends, mostly my age or older. Many retired. They offered a bountiful gift of wisdom and experience. But I longed to meet people of different ages and that wasn’t happening in the expat group that surrounded me.
Marco and I quickly fell into a conversation about the best pizza places, which coffee shops were stellar, and how neither of us had intended to be at the restaurant that night.
Two days later I invited Marco to join me for “the best pizza” where he shared the story of his greatest heartbreak. “Let’s rent a car, drive to her house, and woo her back!” he joked. One week in my new neighborhood and a weighty item on the pros list for vacating Mexico - checked off!
At 40, Marco is up to different things, day and night. He works as a tech salesman by day, but has also been known to DJ house music on a barge in the middle of Lake Union (sometimes I tag along).
His win, win, win (no matter what) approach to life reminds me that though I don’t have his colorful past or personality, my quieter version of win, win, win, brings my pros and cons list to life. I can wear down a pencil making my pros and cons lists, but once done, I stop analyzing and start acting.
Action in the form of one foot in front of the other is formidable in making a wish list become real. The one trick is being ok with not knowing the shape and timing of how and when the things on the list come into being. The other trick is to remember I have a part to play and that involves paying attention to what’s inside and out.
“What if I hadn’t paid attention to what I was searching and stayed put in a town that wasn’t quite right?”
“What if I just kept talking on the phone or hung up the call and looked straight ahead instead of engaging with that guy who turned out to be a new friend?”
I go before I know and that offers up wins time and time again. What is your version of win, win, win? How can you go before you know?
And as we like to do, we offer further reading on the subject of making things happen. Check out the research we provide, talk with us about what you want to create, become a member of Jane Ain’t Done Yet and you will receive research-backed guidance in the form of interactive worksheets and community.
System 1 & System 2 Thinking: This framework highlights the tug-of-war between our fast, subconscious intuition and our slow, anlytical logic. It was popularized by Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman in his book Thinking, Fast and Slow.
The Eisenhower Matrix: A simple grid that sorts tasks by urgency and importance to help you filter out distractions. It is based on the time-management principles of former U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower.
The WRAP Method: A four-step framework designed to widen your options, reality-test assumptions, attain distance, and prepare to be wrong. This tool was created by Chip and Dan Heath in their book Decisive.