Is tiggers are wonderful things!
Their tops are made out of rubber
Their bottoms are made out of springs!
They’re bouncy, trouncy, flouncy, pouncy
Fun, fun, fun, fun, fun!
I think we all need a little more bouncy, trouncy, flouncy, pouncy fun these days, and here are a couple of books that might help.
First, my fellow Entrepreneur blogging pal, Lena West, sent me a book she highly recommended from Barry J. Moltz, appropriately called, Bounce!: Failure, Resiliency, and Confidence to Achieve Your Next Great Success. I have to confess, one thing that kept going through my mind while reading the book is that the author is a slightly handsomer version of Henry Winkler. Now I mention this because it was a good thing, as reading the book I was hearing Winkler’s distinctive voice in my head, and there’s just something nice about listening to the Fonz give you advice. So what sort of advice did we get here? No, it’s wasn’t to date the Polaskey twins, but looking at business failures in a whole new way.
Here are some excerpts that stood out:
1. Don’t hide mistakes. When pilots make mistakes, the FAA encourages them to report it. This is a much better business model than what happens in the real world, where people feel they need to hide and cover up mistakes.
2. Humility vs. ego. “Why do we repeat some mistakes over and over, while others we figure out the first time? Humility allows us to see our mistakes, learn from them and not repeat them. Ego, by contrast, hides mistakes and, in a way, dooms us to repeat them until we screw up so badly our mistakes can’t be hidden anymore.”
3. Humility balances ego. “Humility leads to a balanced ego and an acceptance that many business results are beyond our control. Humility is not the absence of pride, but freedom from the burden of personal arrogance that tells us that we can and will, individually, determine our own futures.”
Now that last one is ringing true these days for many of us–our best client goes bankrupt, our supplier raises prices or, in my own case with DowntownWomensClub.com, a HUGE source of site traffic for us made some improvements to itsr own site, which resulted in our link being buried with the rest of the pack. We’ve been scrambling to recover the lost site traffic. But maybe it was reading these books or just a maturity that comes with living through a few down business cycles; I chalked it up as a setback, not a failure, even though it may prove to be too difficult a setback to overcome.
Here are a few other ways to think about failure:
1. Change the vocabulary. Use a more neutral word. You notice I used “setback” above. Other suggestions: “decision point,” “outcome” or “result.” Even “disappointment” sounds better than failure. Moltz includes a quote from Anna Belyaev, CEO of TypeA, a training agency, who takes a long-term view. “I try to stick to the very objective definition of failure. At the end of the day what I usually say is, you don’t know whether you fail until you’re dead.”
2. Fear of failure can motivate. Moltz says, “Many times in business, the only thing that made me move was the greater fear that staying exactly where I was would never lead to success or, worse, would hasten my failure.” Definitely shades of Seth Godin’s The Dip.
The next book in this group is The First 30 Days: Your Guide to Any Change (and Loving Your Life More) by Ariane de Bonvoison. The first 30 days is not focused on business like Bounce!, so I found it to be a bit more in the “self-help” category, but it has a different bent in that it looks more at “change” than at failure. Personally, I’m someone who loves change. In fact, I thrive on it, but only when it’s good change or change that I initiate. It’s the other changes, those beyond our control, that aren’t so easy for any of us to deal with appropriately. Here are some of the good points about change that I picked up:
· Make the change your own. “During change I’ve found that a lot of people have a tendency to hold on to other people’s patter. People need to look at themselves and ask, ‘who am I as an individual?’ not ‘who am I as the daughter of my mother of rather, the wife of my husband or the mother to my kids?’ ”
· It’s our desire for total certainty that causes us to feel paralyzed when faced with change. Loved the quote she included here from Gloria Steinem: “The truth will set you free. But first, it will piss you off.” Hmmm. Maybe that explains a lot about people’s fears in this election . . .
· When she asked people what is the best change you’ve ever made or had to face, they tended to answer with the most difficult or hardest changes, such as divorce, receiving a cancer diagnosis, going bankrupt. It seems that the toughest changes reap the most rewards.
· The six primary emotions or change demons: fear, doubt, impatience, blame, guilt and shame. [Note that Moltz also had an interesting section on shame, too.] But these demons aren’t all bad. They exist to help you recognize how you don’t want to feel and get you back into alignment with the calmer, wiser version of yourself.
· She includes a great quote about the change demon, guilt, from Peter McWilliams “Guilt is anger directed at ourselves.” This introduced the section about how to conquer guilt.
Finally, the last book in this category is The Bounce Back Book: How to Thrive in the Face of Adversity, Setbacks, and Losses by Karen Salmansohn. This one is also not about bouncing back specifically from business, but it’s great advice delivered in Salmansohn’s usual fun, quirky style. Her book includes a lot of happiness research and theory, which is another way to look at bouncing back–making yourself happy. If you like your self-help in bullet points, this book contains 75 tips to help you bounce back in style. Like the other authors, Salmansohn is living proof that someone can overcome adversity. To hear more from Salmansohn, you can tune into my blogtalkradio show, Smash the Ladder with Anita & Diane, where she was my guest.
The Top Shelf Bottom Line: If you’re feeling like you’re in the bottom of a down cycle, it would be well worth it to pick up one of these books. Moltz’s is more business-oriented, de Bonvoisin’s focuses on change, and Salmansohn looks more at how to be happy. So grab one if you need some help getting in touch with your own inner Tigger, because . . .
The wonderful thing about tiggers
Is tiggers are marvelous claps!
They’re loaded with vim and vigor
They love to leap in your laps!
They’re jumpy, bumpy, clumpy, thumpy
Fun, fun, fun, fun, fun!
But the most wonderful thing about tiggers is
I’m the only one
6 Responses to “The Wonderful Thing About Tiggers”
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October 31st, 2008 at 8:54 am
Thank you Diane for the review. I need to start using a tigger as my mascot. Henry Winkler? I love it!
November 3rd, 2008 at 7:11 am
Hi Diane,
Just wanted to say that I’ve started reading your blog. I’m wondering if you have heard about the book, “What Men Don’t Tell Women About Business”. I heard the guy (Chris Flett) on the Today Show and thought you probably have already heard of him. I’m wondering what your thoughts were. He seems to be really taking on the ‘Old Boys Club”. I just emailed him, but haven’t heard back.
Anyway, keep up the great writing.
Best,
Bihter.
November 3rd, 2008 at 8:29 am
@Barry – thanks for checking in and glad you don’t mind book reviews that meander from Tigger to Fonzie.
@Bihter – As a matter of fact, I reviewed Flett’s book last spring and I did really like it — http://topshelf.entrepreneur.com/2008/04/10/mean-boys/.
Although, there was a livelier discussion of both the book and my review on: http://www.lipsticking.com/2008/05/the-alpha-woman.html.
Thanks for reading & commenting! And, please keep making suggestions of what I should be reading.
November 5th, 2008 at 8:23 pm
Great content! Keep up the good work!
November 11th, 2008 at 3:17 am
Hi Diane,
I’ve been doing some additional research on the author, Chris Flett, that I talked about on my last comment. His company is “GhostCEO” (www.GhostCEO.com) and his book is a bestseller. I found it on Amazon here. Anyway, he was in the NY Times last Sunday under the “Career Couch” and he makes reference to women’s blogs like yours so I thought you might like to connect. I’d like to see you interview him and see what he’s all about. I saw on another blog he was a guest blogger. His email is: chris@ghostceo.com
Best wishes,
Bihter.
November 14th, 2008 at 11:05 am
Diane, I really enjoyed reading your post. Great way to make things fun, yet very necessary. Great Insight!