Making the best of it: It’s how you play your hand

Making the Best of It

Over the recent bank holiday, I hope you’ve had time to relax and do something different, as I’ve had. I entertained,  walked in woods bursting out in bloom, played board games and worked on puzzles. One of the puzzles was a series of anagrams, no clues, just anagrams. I was a bit stuck with this one initially but then worked it out (see the end of this blog).

It reminded me of a time when I gave a workshop that didn’t go too well–a “sour pitch” and how it turned out well in the end. We can change our luck by playing our hand well.

What not to do…

I was pretty upset, but fortunately, I remembered

• Denial. So often when life deals us a bad hand, we deny it. Pretending the workshop went well might have made me feel a bit better temporarily, but deep down I knew. Denial stops you realistically assessing the situation.
• Anger. Anger damages the body and brain if it runs amok.  Raging at the participants or organisers would have created long-term problems and wouldn’t have changed the outcome. I wouldn’t have been able to think straight. Here is more information on how anger affects us NICABM-Anger-infographic-printable+pdf
• Blame/Excuses. I’m only human and I could think of lots of excuses and even somewhere else to point the blame.That wouldn’t have solved the problem or helped me produce a better workshop the next time.

How to make “Sour Pitch” more positive

• Expect a solution. If I gave up after a sour pitch, that would define me. I decided that I could and would do better. If you expect to find a solution, you will look longer and harder so are more likely to find one.
  
• Assess/Deconstruct.  Instead of seeing it as one whole bad experience, I broke the workshop down into the various parts, just as one would break apart the words above into the individual letters. Taking each part, I saw that some had worked well, others hadn’t and some individual parts were in the wrong order.
• Use resources and ask for help. I asked for feedback. I listened to Simon Raybould and other experts.
• Keep trying.  It’s hard to try again if things have gone badly. However, if you don’t try again, you won’t ever succeed. I put together another workshop, practised and practised.  Some things didn’t seem quite right, just like “choirputs” uses all the same letters, but… 
• Stretch out of your comfort zone. Criticism always hurts, and the temptation is always to stay safe. Still, I wanted to get my message across and thought of the difference a successful workshop could make. So, I arranged another couple of speaking engagements.

When it finally came together, it was fantastic…still, one has to to keep practising and polishing. Oh, before I forget–here’s the answer I came up with, but did you find a different one? Please email me with your solutions info@nancyradford.com.