How to Unlock New Possibilities When Plans Unravel

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Jonathan Fields (00:00:30) - So when was the last time led through a major curveball that completely upended your plans? Can you even picture a time when you found yourself blindsided by disruptive events that derailed your goals and left you scrambling to adapt? And if so, well, how did you handle it? Looking back, you wish you had the skills to approach it differently. It's an inevitable part of life and work. As we've been reminded in the past few years, we all face unexpected twists and turns that can leave us feeling anxious, angry and adrift. But what if these curveballs also present opportunities to grow and evolve in truly powerful ways? In this week's SPARKED Hot Take, that's what we're diving into the unavoidable yet transformational topic of adapting to life's curveballs, especially in the domain of work.

Jonathan Fields (00:01:23) - And joining me today to offer insights and practical tools is Sparked Brain Trust, regular founder of Parachute Executive Coaching and acclaimed executive coach, advised her senior leaders for more than two decades and the author of two great books, The Accidental Alpha Woman and The Complete Executive, Karen Wright. So together we share stories of moments and experiences where we've had to respond to disruptions that range from adverse weather tanking, a major business event or an unexpected job termination, triggering grief and anxiety, and dig into the different approaches that we can all tap into in times of uncertainty. And we close out the conversation, sharing really the greatest tool that we've both found to build the mental resilience to handle whatever comes your way. And it may be more obvious than you think. If you've been blindsided by change and long to build your adaptability, this conversation offers insights to transform obstacles into opportunities. Excited to share this much-needed wisdom. I'm Jonathan Fields and this is SPARKED. Hey, before we dive into today's show, you know, we've learned that a lot of our listeners are sort of at this moment where they're really exploring the notion of work in their lives and their next moves in their careers.

Jonathan Fields (00:02:45) - And if you are in that place, we talk about the spark and the sparketypes a lot on this show, this body of work that we've developed to help you really identify what makes you come alive and how to apply that to the world of work. We've heard from a lot of folks that they would also love some help along that journey. If you're curious, you can also find on our website a directory of certified Archetype Advisors who know this body of work and can really help coach and guide you through it. So we'll drop a link to the show notes in that right now. And if it feels interesting to you and you just like somebody to help guide you through this next part of your career or work journey, take a look and see if somebody resonates. It might be the perfect fit to help you along this next leg of your journey. Again, that link is in the show notes now.

Jonathan Fields (00:04:10) - Karen Wright. Always great to be diving into a conversation. Today is one of our SPARKED Hot Take episodes, where we take on one particular topic that is on our minds around work and life, and we dive into it and talk about it. And this week's topic is one that you and I are personally acquainted with, that many people listening will have experience in many different ways, and the least of which would probably be the net of the last three years. But the topic is curveballs and adaptability. Take me into this a little bit.

Karen Wright (00:04:46) - I can take you into it personally, or based on the conversations I have with clients all the time. But what it boils down to is the idea that you've got a plan and a lane and a direction and a goal, and, you know, all of the things that we disciplined, control oriented people like to have.

Karen Wright (00:05:03) - And then something swoops in to just disrupt everything. And the anxiety, the confusion, the overwhelm, all of that, that comes with that. And, you know, to your point, like we've we've experienced a lot of it this last couple of years, but it just seems that almost every day, either I experience it or somebody that I'm talking with does. So I just I think, I think it's just a part of life these days that, you know, just because you've got it planned and organized doesn't mean you won't be surprised.

Jonathan Fields (00:05:35) - Yeah. You know, it's interesting because I think a lot of people became acquainted with the phrase black swans through Nassim Taleb book. And like, there are these extreme outlier events that you really there's no way that you can reasonably predict or foresee coming. Yet they're so big and so disruptive that they turn the fiber of everything upside down. Whether it's your work, your life, the state of the world, the universe, the environment, whatever it is. And I feel like a lot of times when we're thinking about how do we, quote, protect against that? We spend a lot of time trying to think about, like, what are these big, really big, really giant, disruptive things that might come our way and how can we scaffold against them? But we don't often think about what are some of the more mundane day to day types of things that could drop into our personal lives, our health, our work that would be really disruptive and have forced us to change our plans and substantial ways.

Jonathan Fields (00:06:33) - How would we potentially prepare ourselves to navigate and experience like that?

Karen Wright (00:06:39) - I mean, because the first thing that comes up for me is what is preparing mean, because most people I know, and I think myself included, would think of preparation in terms of do I have documents together? Do I have a rainy day fund? Do you know, there's like logistical things, but more and more, I am coming to understand that there are some things that are going to happen where the most important preparation I can do is the mental agility, the mindset, the willingness to accept that there might be a new thing in front of me that I wasn't planning for, because there's absolute no way you can logistically plan for every possible thing. I mean, there are people who try to do that. I just don't think it's something you can really do successfully.

Jonathan Fields (00:07:21) - Yeah. So the word adaptability, or I think the word agility has been thrown around a lot. And, and I feel like that has become sort of a growing notion in the world of work especially.

Jonathan Fields (00:07:34) - It's like, how do we actually if we can't necessarily prepare ourselves in advance for anything and everything, or if we can't anticipate all the different things that might happen, what are the practices? What are the thought processes, what are the prompts and the questions that we might start to ask now so that if and when these things come into our orbit, to the extent that we can find a way through them without everything just completely falling apart, including us.

Jonathan Fields (00:08:01) - Right.

Jonathan Fields (00:08:02) - You know, is that even possible? And if so, like, what are those questions and prompts and practices and or skills that might help us step into that place of adaptability or agility? But before we get there, I think the question that you posited is also really important, which is, how do we even know when when it's that moment? Because so often we if we don't want it to happen, we reject the fact that it's happening.

Karen Wright (00:08:31) - Yeah. There is that thing about if I decide it's not there, then it's not there.

Karen Wright (00:08:36) - Even if it's there, whatever it is, you know, I think part of it has to do well. A lot of it has to do with expectations. If I expect life to be very predictable and even keel, I will most surely be surprised, because that's just not how things work. And that can be health. That can be weather, it can be friends and family, it can be work. It can be any number of things. It can be I didn't get the right pizza when I ordered delivery tonight. So I think, I think for to have a healthy perspective on I know what I thought was going to happen, but it doesn't always work out that way. And and not allowing a disruption of any size really. To throw you out of your ability to. To think about action. Right? To get thrown into. Inertia is probably the biggest problem. And I would draw a line between inertia and reflection or thoughtfulness. Because when you think about the kinds of questions that I find useful when confronted with a disruption, there's a moment of breathing and reflecting to say, all right, what's really happening here? And then who am I in this? What's my best contribution in this?

Jonathan Fields (00:09:40) - Yeah, that makes so much sense to me.

Jonathan Fields (00:09:42) - The idea of expectations also I think is really powerful. You know, there's you know, the difference between expectation. Reality is both where the struggle lies. It's also where the story lies and where where potentially all of the amazingness and the adventure lies. Even if when you're in it, it doesn't feel like that and you don't want to be in it. Sort of make this more granular. One example that popped into mind for me for five years, as you well know, because you were there, our team ran an adult summer camp where, you know, for four days at the end of every year or at the end of every summer, we would sweep in. We would take over 130 acre kids sleepaway camp with all the kids bunks and everything like that. After the kids left and the place was cleaned out and fumigated and we would invite eventually, by year five, we were close to 450 people from around the world who would get on planes, trains, automobiles, everything to show up at this four day thing.

Jonathan Fields (00:10:40) - Often people would come, you know, like solo, and they would just meet new people there. And we did it the very first year we would normally do for the last four years. We always did it the last weekend in August, the very first year we did it later in September. We didn't realize that where we did it was, I know.

Jonathan Fields (00:11:01) - Where you're going with this state.

Jonathan Fields (00:11:02) - New York, where every day past the end of August it got colder. And so the first year we had 250 or so people show up. And we had we had gained this out. We had like we had like thought of everything that could possibly go wrong. We had made incredible plans. We had an incredible crew that was there. And we we thought we had thought of everything that could. And what we hadn't thought about was the fact that that we had picked a date where the weather could be anywhere from really warm to really cold, and we happen to have a weekend where it was below freezing at night, and there was intense rain for a lot of the days.

Jonathan Fields (00:11:46) - And, you know, we didn't really think that was the one thing where we didn't figure out, like, how do we deal with this? And yet, you know, we found ourselves with 250 people sleeping, ten to a kid's bunk with no insulation, with the wind whipping through in the middle of the night with driving rain and freezing temperatures. And we were responsible for making that a great experience for the next four days.

Karen Wright (00:12:14) - And all the campers, by the way, packed with t shirts and bathing suits.

Jonathan Fields (00:12:17) - Exactly.

Karen Wright (00:12:18) - Because they were coming to have some summer.

Jonathan Fields (00:12:20) - Fun, right? You know, and.

Jonathan Fields (00:12:22) - So there's a moment where at first you're kind of like, oh, please tell me this isn't happening. Please tell me this isn't happening. This is there any way you can wish this away? And then, like, pretty quickly, you realize there is zero utility in that thought pattern. Let's just own 100% of what's going on because and we we, you know, in this scenario, we couldn't not own it because 250 people were there experiencing it with us.

Jonathan Fields (00:12:46) - And also we wanted to make sure that they felt both safe and seen and taken care of, you know, so you switch gears really quickly, but there is still this initial impulse that says, please tell me that this isn't happening. How can I how can I wish or imagine this away? And I'm somebody who's an entrepreneur a number of times over. And I've been in like doing new things, risky things for many, many years and trying new things. And I still I still dropped into that zone, which I remember distinctly. And it surprises me that I will still go there.

Karen Wright (00:13:22) - Well, the weather is the classic thing that will never do exactly what you think it's going to do. And and that's I usually use weather as an example when I'm talking with clients about attitude and mindset and focusing on things you can do something about. And so when you go back to the camp example, having given that I was in one of those cabins and having that experience, probably half the people in the cabin said, all right, how do we figure this out? And I've got someone took a photograph of me wearing every single item I had packed.

Jonathan Fields (00:13:55) - And I looked at, I.

Karen Wright (00:13:56) - Don't know, like a giant Yeti or something, but they were probably half the people in the in the cabin who were just mad. They were just angry. They were frustrated. They were disappointed. They were upset. They were all sorts of things about something that they actually couldn't control. Like the event itself. They couldn't control. All they could control was who they chose to be in it and what actions they would take. And so rather than dig into their suitcases and find however many pieces of clothing they could put on, they chose to sit quietly in a corner, shivering and being upset that it wasn't nice out. So, you know, it's a classic. I think it's in seven Habits of Highly Effective People, right? The things you can control, the things you can influence, and the things you can do nothing about. And the best place to focus your energy and attention is on the things you can control, and then maybe on the things you can influence.

Karen Wright (00:14:44) - But whether ain't it?

Jonathan Fields (00:14:46) - No, it definitely isn't. You know, and to come full circle on that experience, you know, it's interesting to hear because we can hear the experience from your side and from the people that were participants in this. And then like, I have our experience from like the team that was putting this on and, you know, from our side, we were basically just saying to ourselves, okay, we're not sending 250 people home because literally people came from the other side of the planet to do this. I know, so what do we need? Like what can we do to do two things. First, make people feel like they're safe and as safe and comfortable as they can be. That's like first and foremost. And second, the second question is where's the opportunity here? Yeah. Like how do we turn something that that seems like like, oh, this is this is the worst thing that could have happened. This is the thing that we didn't see coming or like, this is the one thing we didn't plan for.

Jonathan Fields (00:15:40) - Is there something about this that can form the basis of something that was fun and adventurous and eventually become one of the big stories, like become one of the legends of what would be become this like annual thing. And we immediately like, bought out, like we found a, you know, a superstore a half an hour away. And like, we were driving everything that we could possibly drive over there to buy gloves and socks and blankets and and umbrellas and hats and everything. And we're clearing out Amazon to try and get deliveries overnighted and all this stuff. And just like it's almost like backing a truck up and like pulling it up in the gate and handing out everything to anyone who would have wanted it. And but I think what that speaks to is this, this idea of like, what do you do in that moment? So, yeah, this the thing has happened. You've been forced to acknowledge it's real. You have to accept the fact that you you do not control the ability to make it go away.

Jonathan Fields (00:16:42) - It's going to take whatever time it needs to take. So how do we then respond to this? Yeah, in a way. So so I'm curious. You know, that was our mode. Basically we were just in an action center. We're like, we know that we need to change the way that we're briefing this event moving forward. But there's zero utility in actually talking about that now. Right. Let's just respond to what's happening in the moment in the bunk you were in. I'm curious whether the dynamic, whether you sell the dynamic change and whether it like the half half or so people that first were digging in and really rejecting it, whether you saw any shift over time.

Jonathan Fields (00:17:18) - A.

Karen Wright (00:17:18) - Little bit, I think because they saw the rest of us having fun with it and being a little bit silly with it. But for me, I can relate this to facilitating a workshop. When you find some people that are on board and some people that are resisting. Right. And so to to understand that we are each responsible for creating our own experience and taking responsibility for whatever experience we're having in any given moment, anywhere.

Karen Wright (00:17:44) - We the one place we have control is inside our own heads, with with how we process things and how we interpret things. So I think there were some people in the bunk that could sort of grudgingly look and say, oh, they they seem to be having fun. I guess maybe I might as well just jump in. There were a couple that were pretty attached to their own perspective, and how this wasn't what they signed up for. It wasn't what any of us signed up for, and that didn't really matter because there wasn't anything we could do about it. So I would say some moved along the spectrum a little bit. A couple never really got there.

Jonathan Fields (00:18:13) - Yeah.

Jonathan Fields (00:18:14) - So if we zoom the lens out and we look at this more sort of holistically and we maybe shift over to the example that you just gave, where one example would be facilitating a program or a workshop where certain people are bought in. Certain people are absolutely not certain people are there only because they're checking a box and they're told they have to be there, or any other situation in work where you plan for something you've shown up and it's not.

Jonathan Fields (00:18:37) - It is clearly not going your way. What in your mind are the key skills or practices that would let us respond in the moment, that would let us be more agile and more adaptive, and give us the capacity to make it as good as we can possibly make it, even if there are things that are fundamentally out of our control.

Karen Wright (00:19:03) - Yeah, I think the first thing is to really look at whatever the situation is from a factual perspective. Because so often the everything we process is through a lens of expectations. And if you step away from that and say, all right, it's the content of this workshop isn't what I thought it was going to be. Doesn't make it bad, doesn't make it wrong. Doesn't mean I have to be mad. Is there something I can get out of it? Right. So it's really let's let me look at the the bare bones, black and white facts of what's in front of me, and then see what I might be able to learn or gain or benefit.

Karen Wright (00:19:38) - Or is there a way I can accept what is, rather than what I had hoped it would be? I think that really has to be the first step, because it's our attachment to the thing that we had in our mind. That is usually the biggest.

Jonathan Fields (00:19:52) - Problem, yet.

Jonathan Fields (00:19:53) - That makes a lot of sense. I guess there are two questions here. Or practice it. Or what? What abilities do you think would be really useful for somebody to have, or what capabilities or skills for somebody to have at that moment? And then the bigger question is knowing that and knowing that at some point we're all going to be in this situation. What practices might we start to say yes to now so that when the time comes, we would have those capabilities?

Jonathan Fields (00:20:24) - Well, you.

Karen Wright (00:20:24) - And I both bring everything back to mindfulness practice, right? So the learned ability to choose your thoughts is the most powerful thing you can ever learn how to do. To recognize when your thoughts are becoming an impediment to your happiness and impediment to your functioning through a situation.

Karen Wright (00:20:46) - I had the most fascinating conversation with my younger son, who was about 17 when we had this conversation, and he he was telling me a story about how he was really angry with something that had happened at school and some person that was the cause of this thing. And I, of course, leaped into my very cocky, well, you know, you can choose your own emotions and all of that. And he was adamant, no, I cannot choose my emotions. I'm angry. I'm all of these things. And and I was reiterating my point and he said, I cannot choose whether I get angry. What I can choose is whether I stay angry. And there you go. And he was completely right. Because, of course, even those of us who've attempted to practice mindfulness for decades will still have moments when an emotion rises up. But to recognize that and be able to make a conscious choice comes from a practice of recognizing being self aware and then making conscious choices.

Jonathan Fields (00:21:38) - Yeah.

Jonathan Fields (00:21:39) - I mean, and I know psychologists call this metacognition.

Jonathan Fields (00:21:43) - It's the ability to and but there's really two stages to it, right? One is the ability to make conscious choices about where you're going to place your thoughts. But the metacognition is the awareness of where your thoughts actually are at any given point in time first. So you can understand whether they're in a healthy, functional, constructive place or in an unhealthy, dysfunctional and destructive place. And that alone is its own skill.

Jonathan Fields (00:22:07) - Yes. Yeah.

Karen Wright (00:22:09) - And there's oftentimes a little bit of pride or ego attached to well, I don't have bad thoughts. That's not who I am. But we all do. We're all human. You know, I see this the conversations that I will have with people around this have oftentimes to do with another work related surprise, which is a termination when someone gets confronted with, you no longer have a job. And yes, there's the stages of of grief that everyone has to go through. And I do believe that there's real process there. But, you know, in that situation, my work is to help people get as quickly as possible to that recognition of the way I'm processing this right now is not the mindset that will help me through it.

Karen Wright (00:22:48) - And so I may need to stay in this spiral for a little bit, but as quickly as possible, I need to be able to progress forward in order to then go and solve what is now a problem I didn't expect to have.

Jonathan Fields (00:23:00) - Yeah, and I want to parse it that phrase progress forward a little bit because what you're not saying and let me know if this is right is get over it. You know, we're basically saying no, you're you're you're angry. You're upset. You're what you're feeling grief whatever is feel it like like feel all the feels. Acknowledge it. Don't deny it. Because when you stifle it, it's just going to turn into something really toxic and it will never go away. So let it all come. Like feel all of it. And then but then at the same time, like at a certain point, you know, the question becomes, what do I do with this feeling? Like, how can I reorient without denying that this is a reality? And without denying the fact that I'm feeling what I'm feeling, can I reorient the energy that I have around it in a way that will be more helpful for me, rather than stewing and just feeling worse and worse and worse?

Jonathan Fields (00:23:56) - And it's that idea.

Karen Wright (00:23:57) - Of holding two things at the same time. I can be upset, angry, unhappy at this and also recognize what action steps are important and what mindset I need to have that will help me solve. So it is. Yeah, you're right. You can't. You can't ignore the feelings. Your feelings are your feelings. They're going to happen. And if you don't deal with them today, they'll come back up another time. Yeah.

Jonathan Fields (00:24:20) - One of the things that tends to accompany a lot of feelings when we occur in our way is whether, you know, whether the root feeling is sadness or grief or whatever it is. Often anxiety gets layered over that. Yes, it's anxiety because we start to tell stories. We spin all sorts of stories about like, this is the future scenario, which is awful. This is how I'm going to end up in this terrible place, or this is how I've wasted the last ten years of my life. And and then that creates this anxiety about, like, this is this is going to be my future.

Jonathan Fields (00:24:51) - Everything is awful. And it can feel very real and very embodied and very visceral. And at the same time, what we know about the research is that there is an inverse relationship between anxiety and your ability to be creative and problem solving.

Karen Wright (00:25:07) - That's exactly right.

Jonathan Fields (00:25:09) - So the thing that you most need to do in that moment in time actually becomes stunted when you're in a high anxiety state. So one of the things you know, that I think is mindfulness or mindfulness based practice often helps us with is to sort of breathe is to just down regulate that anxiety, the anxiety element of a disruptive experience, not necessarily so that it goes away. I think that's probably unrealistic for a lot of people, depending on the circumstance, but just downregulated enough so that we feel like our brain can function on a level that lets us figure out like, what is the next intelligent step from here? And if we don't actually do that, then we just stay stuck in that spin cycle.

Karen Wright (00:26:01) - Well, that's we think about it from the from positive psychology, the definitions of optimist and pessimist.

Karen Wright (00:26:06) - And the optimist is the one who understands that they have resources and that they can make good choices and that any given situation is not permanent. And it was not personal. You know, these are external circumstances. So so it's really connecting or reconnecting with that idea of I have agency, I have skills, and this too shall pass and I can make choices that will help me get through it.

Jonathan Fields (00:26:29) - Yeah. So I think what we've really come around to is the fact that we're all going to, at some point, be confronted with something we didn't see coming, and we don't want to happen. It may well derail us initially. And just like your son shared with you in that conversation, maybe we feel like we don't have a ton of control over that initial response when it happens, and many of us don't. It's it's real, it's emotional, and it's it's can be really painful. But the switch becomes like, what do I do once I'm moving through that initial moment? How can I step into a place of as much awareness, as much acceptance, as much agency, and as much problem solving and action taking as possible? And the thing that both you and I point back to often is these are all capabilities that tend to come over time with a committed mindfulness practice.

Jonathan Fields (00:27:29) - Yep.

Karen Wright (00:27:30) - And the reason they call it a practice is because it just might not be perfect all the time. But if you know that that's something that is useful and valuable and can help you progress and grow, then I mean, I certainly know for me, at different times in my life, it has been more and less important to stick with that practice. And the more surprises and being confronted with, the more stresses I'm under. Obviously, that's almost always the time I'm least inclined to devote the time, and it is, of course, the most important time to devote the time.

Jonathan Fields (00:28:00) - Yeah, it's like that old phrase like when? When is the best time to start a mindfulness practice, you know, like ten years ago. When's the next best time? Today.

Jonathan Fields (00:28:10) - Today. Yeah. Because if I don't.

Karen Wright (00:28:11) - Feel like meditating, I should meditate twice.

Jonathan Fields (00:28:14) - Yeah.

Jonathan Fields (00:28:14) - It is. It is one of those things that it's a slow burn. You know, the benefits build slowly over time. With repeated practice, it changes just the quality of the way you move throughout the day and the quality of your attention and your ability to respond.

Jonathan Fields (00:28:29) - So for those listening, maybe you're in a moment right now where there's a curveball that's just landed and you're thinking, well, okay, so I get how mindfulness practice can be really, really critical, but I don't have that practice. So I guess I'm just busted. And the answer is no, no. There are other more intervention based tools. But like start the practice today. It's there are so many different places you can go. The instructions are very straightforward and simple and anybody truly can do it. It's it's not something where it is only accessible to a rare few, with a ton of time on their hands and high level teaching and training. There are so many just freely available guided versions of mindfulness out there. Literally, if you just Google it, search for it, and you'll find all sorts of great solutions now. And if you are not in that moment right now, even though you might not feel compelled to say yes to a practice because it will take some effort on a fairly regular basis over time.

Jonathan Fields (00:29:29) - Know that at some point in the future you will be in that moment. We all will be in that moment and repeatedly. And sometimes the stakes will be very high, and we will feel like this is the thing that may make or break a lot of things that we really care deeply about, that we're working on. And to the extent that you can center that as, as a deeper why, to keep coming back to the practice in advance of when you feel you might really. Need it most. Keep saying yes to that practice. Any other thoughts as we wrap up on this here?

Karen Wright (00:30:03) - Now I just the mindfulness practice is just something that is always on my radar and something I've been more and less successful with, but I've certainly experienced more than my fair share of curveballs this last couple of years. And I absolutely that mindfulness practice is one of the one of the most important tools. So 100%.

Jonathan Fields (00:30:25) - Yeah. Thank you. And thanks to our fantastic listening community. Thanks everyone for tuning in, for listening, and we will see you here again next week on SPARKED.

Jonathan Fields (00:30:35) - Take care. Hey, so I hope you enjoyed that conversation. Learned a little something about your own quest to come alive and work in life, and maybe feel a little bit less alone along this journey to find and do what sparks you. And if you'd love to share your own moment and question with us, we would love to hear from you. Just go ahead and click on the submissions link in the show notes to get the details on how to do that. And remember, if you're at a moment of exploration, looking to find and do or even create work that makes you come more fully alive, that brings more meaning and purpose and joy into your life. Take the time to discover your own personal sparketype for free. At sparketype.com, it'll open your eyes to a deeper understanding of yourself and open the door to possibility like never before. And hey, if you're finding value in these conversations, please just take an extra second right now to follow and rate SPARKED in your favorite podcast app.

Jonathan Fields (00:31:33) - This is so helpful in helping others find the show and growing our community so that we can all come alive and work in life together. Until next time, I'm Jonathan Fields and this is SPARKED.