Many things frustrate us. According to the dictionary, to be frustrated means to feel upset or annoyed (uncomfortable in any case) due to the inability to change, achieve, or have an influence on something. There are so many things that we can’t change or we don’t have an influence on! What a burden of frustration we carry every day … Of course, we can do a lot about this discomfort as well as about many other discomforts. The first step is to become aware of what makes us frustrated, then to understand why it makes us frustrated, and then to either do something (if we can) or continue with our lives and accept that we are simply not almighty. Maybe we’ll be inflamed by the cognitive dissonance I wrote about in earlier works, and maybe we can continue living with less anxiety and frustration. Where does, however, lie one of the biggest frustrations of successful business people?
The frustration of successful business people
Successful business people are those who are very good at their job and who are satisfied with the life they live. Such people have a lot (in every sense), but they can also give a lot. Such people not only can give a lot, but they also want to give, and as a rule, they expect others to take from them what is given to them and to become better. It is true, however, that there are people who don’t want to take; there are also those who want to take, but just can’t. So what can you do then, you who want to give everything and want everything from others, if others don’t want the same?
I have always wanted to pass on all my knowledge, advice, tricks, and experience to my employees; I work similarly on this blog, in my lectures, in direct work with clients. I simply want to give everything I have from knowledge and experience because I believe that I have gained a lot from others and that things can be the best possible for me only if they are the best possible for others around me. It’s not good enough for me just to be good, I want to be the best I can be! To be good, I can make it alone, but to be the best possible, others around me must do much better. That’s why I study as if I know nothing, and I share as if I have everything. However, many cannot or don’t want to receive everything I have to give. Like you, that’s why I was frustrated many times.
A wise woman who often inspires me, Ksenija Mijatovic, passed me on a great metaphor about volume. The story goes something like this: You are a one-liter water carafe. Your associate is for example a 3-deciliter glass, your client a half-liter glass, your child a 2-deciliter glass. Since you have a liter, in exchange you want to “pour” everything into them! You have what you give and you want to give it. Unfortunately, they cannot take it. The associate can take a maximum of 3 deciliters, the client half a liter, and the child at that point in life only two deciliters. Maybe they want more, but they just can’t take more! And so you pour and pour into smaller volume glasses and it starts to overflow and not only is it not accepted with joy (and gratitude, which also frustrates you), but it starts to make a mess. Not only does it make a mess, but your frustration grows further because you have and want to give, and the other side does not take it!
I understood the following, and that has helped me many times so far to give better – it is not my task to pour everything I can. My task, as a person who has “larger volume” at a given moment, is to precisely estimate the “volume” of other persons, and on the basis of that, to pour just as much as needed. That way, there is enough space for them to pour their own experience and knowledge into themselves, and what I pour into them is accepted in the best way and is useful to the one who receives it. The point is not to unload myself, the point must always be that others become better because of what I do. Since I always have more to give, after pouring just enough, I start working on increasing the “volume” of people I wish well to. By increasing their volume – by opening new perspectives, with patience and debate, by sharing specific knowledge and learning techniques, in the end, I get into a situation to pour more and more, to add more good because I have what to pour and where to pour it. I increased the volume.
Just because you can do something doesn’t mean you should do it. The goal must always be that because of what we do, others become better. – Dragana Djermanovic
Where can a problem occur?
There is no limit to the volume, just as there are no limits at all. This means that everyone’s cognitive limit (i.e. volume) can be increased indefinitely. The same goes for my own cognitive limit or measure. Working with others, we must not forget to increase our own volume so that we can receive from those who know more than us, but also so that we have something to supplement those who have become better and bigger – wiser, more experienced, and more potent than they were when we started working together.
I exceeded some of my teachers. It happened that many people poured everything they had into me, so our volumes equalized. After that, I grew, they didn’t. Now, even though I want to give to some of those people from whom I took a lot, they have no place for that.
Give and pour (yourself), but don’t forget that it’s equally important to give and to increase your own volume and volume of others. Have a limit in giving, but expand your own limits and limits of others endlessly. It’s the Perpetuum mobile of progress that we are told little about. So all of us, on the way through the spiral of progress, become the best possible for ourselves and for everyone.
Possibilities are huge, measured only by volume. With the change of perspective we see, we are able, we give and we can receive, infinitely. For me, that’s the only way.
Do you give more than needed? Pour, but know the volume. Give as much as it can be received. Expand so that more can be received. Keep growing <3
2020
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