44. What Direction Are You Going?

There’s a great essay written by Russel H. Conwell in 1890, and it’s sold in book form to this day. Buying “Acres of Diamonds” would be your biggest actionable step forward if you’re looking to get anything out of reading Coffee With Cody today. It has to do with thinking and working not just hard, but smart too. It’s about using your resources and readily available information before you go on a quest to find what you need elsewhere.

It can sometimes seem like the only way forward in life is to find another way. Everyone will encounter a moment in their lifetime when it feels like your back is against the wall, and in these moments there are 2 options. One, you can look for a way out and find another way, or two, you can push back against the wall and move forward. The hardest part can be deciding which of the 2 options you should take, which brings me to the meat of today’s discussion.

We’ve all heard of “the grass is greener syndrome”, when everything except what you’re currently doing looks wonderful. This feeling is common in those moments when our backs are against a wall. Should you press forward and double down where you’re at? Or should you abandon your course and chart another route?

You might have seen this picture before:

It can be incredibly difficult to know how far along you are on a particularly difficult journey. Presumably, when following a specific path towards a goal you’ve set, you know what it is you were hoping to achieve. However, even when you know what the reward would be if achieved, there can be a point when proceeding towards it no longer feels like a good idea, especially when progress is slow. This is when thinking and working smart come into play.

Anyone can put their head down and work hard, and nearly everyone can logically think through required tasks in order to achieve specific goals with enough focus, but you need both to know how to progress if and when things get tough. Working hard is necessary, but that’s only half of what will get you places. Imagine trying to cut a tree down with a dull machete. That’s going to take some seriously hard work. Now imagine cutting the same tree down with a new chainsaw. That would be considerably easier. You can accomplish the same thing in many different ways, so before you start dwelling on how hard it would be to press on when your back is against a wall, maybe just glance around and see if there’s a chainsaw lying around. Or better yet, lift your head to see if there’s anyone close by that can help pull you through.

Chainsaw’s can be expensive, and you might not have one, but perhaps there’s someone in your life who would lend one to you. When something seems impossible by yourself, it may become easy with the help of someone else. You might get your hands on a free chainsaw, or you might be enlightened to the fact that you don’t actually have to cut down the tree because you can just go around it. Having your back up against a wall doesn’t have to be so daunting if you think it through, so here are 3 things to further consider if you’d like an easier time: