Personal Irresistible Force Management Lessons

"The life which is unexamined is not worth living."
--Plato

Irresistible forces affect your personal life as well as the lives of your family's members and, indeed, the lives of everyone with whom you come in contact. As examples to spur your thinking, consider the following things that are especially apt to be influenced by irresistible forces:

-Sources of frustration and anger
-Time wasters
-Joyless tasks
-Continuing disagreements with others
-Health problems
-Loss of loved ones
-Loss of job
-Limited effectiveness
-Financial problems.

If you are struggling against personal irresistible forces rather than using them to your and your family's advantage, you'll be draining lots of energy from your life and feeling a fair amount of frustration. By consciously thinking about how to turn these irresistible forces to your advantage, you'll overcome personal stalls and create breakthrough solutions where they will be the most satisfying to you and those you care most about.

Be Practical and Look for the Silver Lining

One of the lessons of irresistible force management is that all irresistible forces can be used to your benefit. Thus, when life seems to have hit you with a hard blow, that same lesson can help you to see that there is also a potential benefit that can be used to make your life much better.

But you have to take the time to look for the silver lining. Rather than seeing this idea as part of some mantra to always think positively, think of this instead as intensely practical advice.

In our career-obsessed age, hard blows can come from either being passed over for a promotion or losing your job. Few will be immune from these events over the course of a working life. Even entrepreneurs who start their own businesses may face the equivalent challenges to their role in the company.

Rather than living optimistically in the vague hope that neither negative job event will happen to you, you should always be prepared to see the events for what they are, opportunities for you to flourish. If you are passed over for promotion, take it as an indication that you have some improving to do to make yourself the most appealing candidate and then do something positive along those lines.

You can choose to nurse your wounds or you can choose to find out how you need to improve. The latter action will help you a lot more than the former.

How about losing a job? How can that have a silver lining? That occurrence is one of the most severe emotional wounds that many people experience in their lives, right up there with the death of loved ones and divorce. However, losing that job can provide you with the impetus to reconsider how well your work really fit you.

Now that you have to look around for something else, you may be able to find a better job fit. Or you may be able to learn what you need to do differently to avoid being at risk in losing another job.

Then you can use those lessons to be more successful in the next job. We all learn a lot faster from things that don't work out as we had hoped than we do from our successes.

In addition, there may be irresistible forces at work that were affecting your last employer that you need to adapt to in future employment. That realization, too, can be a very valuable lesson.

Finally, you may find a new job that has more free time associated with it so you can pursue more time with your family and your personal interests. Now, that can be really great!