The Desert of Arizona
Sunny 44 Degrees
If you don’t recognize the phrase, “Das Kind mit dem Bade ausschütten,” it basically means:
Throw the baby out with the bathwater.
We’ve heard all of our lives NOT to do this. And yet, often times it seems like a smart idea. I’ve been through this many times myself, so I can spot it coming a mile away.
I saw another example of this not a few weeks ago during a consultation with a client. During this consultation, something kind of crazy happened.
The client started the phone call dissatisfied with a certain line of work. In this case, copywriting.
In the span of 30 minutes, the client ended up getting excited about the very same work: copywriting.
30 minutes of time created a world of difference.
What changed?
Perspective changed. The target on which he would focus his skills changed. Very same work, very different feeling.
The very work he didn’t want to do for much longer (copywriting etc.) ended up being the very work he was now looking forward to doing.
The urge was to throw out the baby with the bathwater and start something new. But that’s often NOT the best thing to do.
Everything in your journey up until now has value. Sometimes, our emotional situation blinds us to this value in a way that makes it seem like a smart idea to just throw it all away and start over.
But starting over is hard.
Starting over means you’re NOWHERE.
Worst of all, “starting over” in this way often means you’re ignoring the real problem.
You have skills, experiences and insights that you’ve developed over the years. Some of the best examples can come from the worst experiences!
Either way, these things have stored value if you can look at them in the right way.
This is often the work I do with people. Helping them discover a new way to see. The way you see carries great power. As Wayne Dyer said, “If you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.”