Today while I was playing my guitar the perfect metaphor hit me. Are you feeling full of fear, frustration, and not getting the results you desire right now? Well, you may think you are far off the mark of reaching what you want when all that is needed is the subtlest of shifts to bring you the results you desire.
Let me explain… First off if you’re unsure what I mean by dissonance, it is something that is not totally congruent. In music it is two sounds that are unresolved or perhaps sound a little “off” to your ear. Used consciously dissonance can create a the effect of tension in a piece of music as the composer uses dissonance and then follows it up with a release of that tension by resolving the sounds into a more harmonious whole (or vice versa). On the guitar when two or more notes are a half-step off it is usually creates a dissonant sound. For those of you not familiar with music theory, a half-step is the shortest distance between two tones. On the guitar it is one fret.
As I was playing along on a classical piece all of a sudden it just sounded God-awful; just terrible like I was all thumbs. However, when I stopped to notice what was actually happening, I had played the last few measures perfectly except everything was one half-step off. Normally I would get all ticked off, frustrated, and figure I was nowhere close to playing the passage correctly. Instead what hit me at that moment was that I was darn close to playing it right. All I needed to do was make one small shift in my positioning and the whole thing would be spot on (just what I wanted!).
So, I wondered, how often in life and business do we flip out, freak out, lose our minds in disgust because we are not getting the results we desire? So we let fear and frustration take over, throw in the towel, give up, and generally make it mean that we are losers. Pond scum. Bottom of the barrel. Yet if we could just manage to be more mindful of our experience and feelings we could see the truth of the matter. Perhaps we are just ever-so-close to getting the results we desire. We just need to make a shift. An internal shift in how we are BE-ing to bring about what we want.
So, where in your life or business right now are you scratching your head in puzzlement? Where are you feeling stuck? Identify those areas and then ask yourself — what is one small shift you can make to release that tension?
It’s not always that easy to see it for ourselves (because we’re way too close to the situation). If you need help getting clarity, I’d be happy to offer you a get acquainted call to support you – just contact me.
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