You will never reach your destination if you…

Winston Churchill famously said:

“You will never reach your destination if you stop and throw stones at every dog that barks.”

This time of global change is bringing us many ‘barking dogs’. And if we stop to throw stones at all of them then we will never reach our goals.

So Inner Leadership contains several tools that we can use to keep us focused and on track:

• The ability to stay calm in a crisis, make clear sense of our situation, and connect with what matters most to us helps us to recognise which barking dogs are important and which can be ignored 
• For the dogs that matter, it is useful to know that we have five options for deciding how much energy to devote to each and five types of outcomes we might work to create
• Knowing our values will enable us to deal with each dog more quickly and bring us energy and enthusiasm as we do so
• Once we have dealt with the barking dog, being clear about our destiny (our destination) will quickly get us facing in the right direction again
• Choosing the next step will get us moving 
• And knowing how to inspire ourselves and other people to do what needs to be done will enable us to keep moving as we inevitably come to the next ‘barking dog’

We will never reach our destination if we stop and throw stones at every dog that barks.

Knowing which dogs to throw stones at and which ones to ignore is another step towards becoming antifragile.

Do you have any ‘barking dogs’ in your life at the moment? Which are best ignored? Would you like to be able to find more options for dealing with the ones that matter and to inspire yourself to do what needs to be done? 

Adapted from Inner Leadership: a framework and tools for building inspiration in times of change.

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Photo from Wikipedia