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Milkshake in the Boardroom
Let Pain be Precious. Get let down-it might help you. Schedule the pain. Stare at it, learn from it and make sure you do not ignore it. There is a tendency for high driven people (whether you are an entrepreneur, an artist, a developer) to try and pass off the pain when it comes. If you are a driven individual the pain is inevitable, so much so that you could put it in your calendar.

Someone attempts to destroy your reputation, a former colleague back-stabs you, a board member has their own agenda and is turning your loved ones against you, or you realise that one of your band members is doing a solo act and selling his/her own CD’s on your tour.

There is always pain. A major failed goal hits you right in the pit of your stomach; you want to throw up, scream in agony, you are derailed by the experience. Betrayal cuts right to the core of what makes us human. Life is not fair and pain, well pain hurts. I had breakfast with Gary Thompson, brains and producer behind the famous Zimbabwean talent show A-Academy this week. He is a jovial character who gives 50 percent tips to waiters, orders more filter coffees than he should and on the side he has five kids. We are working on a project together which is in the pipeline.

He talked in depth about his disappointments; how he thought he would be a pro-golfer and he just never got the scores. How his Ad Company almost collapsed five times because of betrayal and people who wouldn’t pay. How he almost married the wrong girl, and how a thief almost ran over his head with a car. If anyone had reasons to be miserable it would be Gary.

You can tell when someone has not dealt with the pain. They can not really talk about it freely, and when the subject pops up they turn into blood hounds. As if they would still like to get revenge or hire a SWAT team to take out the perpetrator.

Gary was not like this; he was open, candid and honest. Here are the approaches I have seen him and other successful genius’s use.
l Wrestle with the pain. Let it hurt and let it take its course. Go ahead, think about all the things that might have led to the stage, dissect it if you need to, write a book about it but then, and this is the crucial part, be done with the emotional part of it and treat it like a history lesson.

l Expect it. There is nothing worse than being blind sided by an “out of the blue” let down. There is a difference between being skeptical and being aware. Skeptics lean towards never trusting anyone, but aware people have “boundaries, high hopes and low expectations.”

l Learn from it. There is no teacher like pain. A classroom setting cannot mix the emotions and heartbreak with a principle like a life experience. Shift your approach, tighten up the “ask”, take note of the tendencies, warning signs and red flags of the situation. Then you become better, wiser and more bullet proof for the next encounter.

A general rule of thumb is that one fails more than they succeed. Failure is easy but dealing with the emotions is the tough part. So expect, wrestle with, learn and become better with the pain. It is going to come sooner or later. You could try medicating it away if you like, but pain meds wear off, cover up real causes and have addictive qualities.

“It’s about the journey,” said Gary. “The painful roads end up leading to the climaxes of the story.”

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