The best way to minimize the number of crucial conversations you have in life is to have a meaningless life. As soon as you go after something important, the crucial conversations will occur.
In Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking When Stakes are High, authors Joseph Grenny et al share strategies and tools for having tough conversations especially when the stakes are high and emotions are running high. The book provides a toolkit for mastering high-stakes conversations, no matter the topic or the person.
“When others hold our pens, we live with a constant gnawing fear of their disapproval. Their feedback is no longer an indictment of our behavior; it is an audit of our worth.
In their insightful book, Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking When Stakes are High, authors Joseph Grenny, Kerry Patterson et al write about “The Other Side Academy (TOSA) Game” and the concept of retaking one’s pen.
The Other Side Academy
The Other Side Academy is a training school in which students learn pro-social, vocational and life skills allowing them to emerge with a healthy life on “the other side”. Many of those who seek entrance into the Academy are convicts, substance abusers or homeless. TOSA teaches students both fundamental personal management and relationship skills such as keeping one’s promise, accountability, love, charity, and dependability.
“Nobody can go back and start a new beginning, but anyone can start today and make a new ending.” – Maria Robinson.
2025 is going to be a year of new beginnings, an opportunity to recaliberate and reset. It is ok to feel stuck, unsure, fall down, lose one’s way but the goal is to always bounce back, re-group and keep pushing. The new year is an opportunity to start afresh, set new goals, re-align commitments and decide to become who you instinctively know you were meant to be. As the saying goes “You don’t have to be great to get started, but you have to start to become great”. The bigger the goal, the bigger the struggle. Achieving your goal is not guaranteed but the struggle is guaranteed.
“You don’t have to be great to get started, but you have to start to become great”.
On your path to achieving your goal, you are going to stumble. Rest if you have to but don’t settle, or don’t dare give up on your dreams. You are put here specifically to discover your potential and awaken the giant within you. I know it is tough trying to pursue an audacious goal like finding your purpose in a world where you are expected to fit in with the crowd but please, give it shot. We miss all the chances we don’t take, begin anew and unleash your undiscovered potential. The best is yet to come and if you don’t try, you never know. You’ve got this.
