Facing unpleasant truths and making difficult choices.

Much gets written about success, with lots of attention paid to things like grit, persistence and luck. While those are valuable, two underrated factors are the willingness to face unpleasant truths and the ability to make hard choices in response.

As a qualitative researcher, I look for these characteristics when talking with people about their decisions. The extent to which people can honestly consider inconvenient facts shapes their choices. The more willing people are to face hard realities, the better their decisions and the better the outcomes.

These factors are inextricably linked: what makes unpleasant truths unpleasant is that they bring you face-to-face with hard choices.

Let’s be clear – this is hard. We naturally avoid discomfort, be it physical or mental. We tend to sidestep inconvenient realities. But success requires not flinching at what’s hard to see.

I’ve had conversations recently with colleagues who have made difficult business decisions. They have walked away from unprofitable customers, laid off employees, or have closed their offices and gone remote. I’ve also talked over the years with people in dysfunctional relationships who saw the need for change. These were wrenching decisions. But once these individuals looked unflinchingly at the situation, they did what needed to be done.

Success isn’t just about seeing harsh truths. It’s about pairing that knowledge with action. Understanding that things are going badly is one thing. Changing course is another. Making hard choices means letting go of the familiar and the comfortable. It means taking risks and facing the unknown.

What’s required to see harsh realities and make tough decisions?

Honesty – the ability to see things as they are, not as you want them to be

Humility – being able to acknowledge failure, and admit you’ve been wrong

Discipline – the willingness to act with integrity, and to stay focused on goals

Courage – the will to do what’s scary

The good news is that these skills complement and strengthen each other. The better you get at confronting scary truths, the more comfortable you’ll get choosing hard paths. And the more time you spend walking those hard paths, the better you’ll get at valuing reality over comfort.

So, examine your own life. Is there something that’s not going well? Where you’re not getting the results you’ve been expecting? When a challenge that seems solvable isn’t getting solved, look for an unacknowledged, unpleasant truth. Most intractable problems –  whether they be personal, national, or intergalactic – are so difficult because those responsible for solving them are denying reality.

While success looks great in the moment, what goes into it is anything but glamorous. It requires facing things you don’t want to face and doing things you don’t want to do. So go ahead – embrace those awful truths!

There’s just hard work.  At a recent meeting, as an icebreaker, attendees were asked to “state their superpower.” I played along (I said mine was irony), but what I wanted to say was “there are no superpowers.”

When somebody is exceptionally good at something, it’s tempting to attribute that to extraordinary talent. While that might play a role, Calvin Coolidge once observed that there’s nothing more common than unsuccessful people with talent, and that there’s no substitute for persistence and hard work.

One hallmark of being particularly good at something is making it look effortless. This undoubtably applies to my field of qualitative research. To observers and research participants, outstanding researchers appear to be engaging in nothing more than nice, relaxed, shmoozy conversations.

They don’t see the intense focus, the hours of preparation, the commitment to professional development, and the years of experience that go into what looks like a walk in the park.  So, the real superpower isn’t a superpower at all – it’s knowing how to work hard, persevere and make it look easy.

The idea of ‘superpowers’ has always made me uncomfortable. Our words shape our thoughts, and I can’t help feeling this is an unhealthy way to think about ourselves and our abilities. Why?

It’s superficial. Describing strengths as ‘superpowers’ is a lazy way to represent exceptional abilities and doesn’t prompt deeper reflection.

It’s self-mythologizing. Seeing yourself in some sort of fantasy context can lead to an inflated – even narcissistic – sense of your own abilities.

It’s the idea that skill equals magic. The notion that some people are ‘just gifted’ excuses us from making the effort to develop exceptional skills.

It overemphasizes the value of natural talent. As Silent Cal observed, talent alone isn’t enough to drive success.

It undermines accountability. Believing you have superhuman abilities can lead to delusions of grandeur, poor decision-making, and a disregard for consequences.

It promotes what psychologists call a ‘fixed mindset.’ That’s the idea that people’s abilities are unchangeable, closing us off to the possibility of developing new strengths.

It puts you under tremendous pressure. If you see yourself as having superhuman abilities, you might feel a need to be perfect. This could lead to being unwilling to take risks or make mistakes.

Extraordinary abilities are earned, not bestowed. People with apparent ‘superpowers’ have spent a lot of time, effort and resources learning to do what they do. They have dedicated themselves to excellence, have made mistakes along the way, and learned from those mistakes. While Thomas Edison may not have actually said that genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration, the sentiment remains valid.

So, if you’re wondering what your superpower is, or why you don’t seem to have one, think again. There are no superpowers. There’s just effort and commitment.

You really don’t have to care about everything.

If you have an emotional reaction to all you see and hear, you’re going to have a hard life. Truth is, it’s impossible to care about everything, and a bad idea to try.  Learn detachment. It’s OK not to share other people’s passions or concerns. Back in 2011 people became obsessed with honey badgers, mainly because they clearly don’t care about anything. Well, you too can be like a honey badger and not give a ****.

When I conduct qualitative research, I don’t just focus on what people think about a topic, but also on their depth of feeling. How much an individual cares about something tells a lot about their decisions.

Assessing strength of commitment is important, because this isn’t a binary thing. It’s possible to calibrate how much you care. There’s a continuum of engagement ranging from “I’m interested in this issue and will pay attention to it” through “I care about this and will devote time and energy to it,” all the way to “I identify with this issue – it means everything to me.”

Identification is where things become dicey. On one hand, identifying with an issue – and seeing everything through that lens – can help you be an effective agent of change. On the other hand, it’s risky. How you define yourself is a crucial question and can powerfully influence your state of mind. When you center your identity around an issue, you become vulnerable to the ups and downs associated with it. This may have implications for your mental health.

While completely throwing yourself into something might seem necessary, sometimes detaching can actually be a better way to care – some distance might facilitate better thinking and help identify solutions.

If you find yourself struggling to detach – and we all do sometimes – here are a few tips that might help:

Avoid glorifying emotions. It’s easy to wallow in outrage – I wrote about this a few years ago. But strong feelings don’t absolve you from responsibility to seek solutions. Focus instead on facts and reason.

Identify what you can and cannot control. Realizing something is beyond your influence may make it easier to disengage.

Reflect. This might involve things like mindfulness, meditation or journaling. These can help you be aware of something without overly identifying with it.

Be careful with the words that make up your internal dialogue. For instance, instead of thinking “this needs to happen,” replace that statement with “whatever occurs, I’ll roll with it.”

Visualize. Imagine taking an issue, placing it in a box, closing the box, putting that box in a drawer, then closing the drawer.

Remember, detaching doesn’t mean withdrawing completely, it just means engaging wisely. For the sake of your own mental health, be selective regarding what you care about, and how much you care.

Thanks to my BFF Michelle Ögren Jefferys for the honey badger metaphor.

You learn what you love.

I once heard a statistician observe that the most important teacher in his life wasn’t the one who taught him the most math, but the one who taught him to love math. This made me realize that, if you want to teach people something in a way that will stick, teach them to love it. Most important skills aren’t taught to us. Rather, we self-teach them. Take riding a bicycle. Nobody really teaches you this, they just put you in a position to work it out on your own.

This certainly applies to my field of qualitative research. I can’t teach you how to do what I do. Sure, I can explain basic principles and skills. I can also show you how I do certain things, and I can describe how others do them. But ultimately, this is something you figure out for yourself, and that takes time and effort. If you truly love something, you’ll be willing to invest the years (or even decades) of work required to master it, and you’ll be able to weather the disappointments and failures you will inevitably encounter along the way.

So, this brings up two important questions:

1. How do you learn to love something?
2. How to you teach somebody to love something?

I’ve found there are two keys to learning to love something:

Begin with curiosity. If you’re eager to know about something, that’s a great place to start. But beware letting curiosity morph into pressure. That probably won’t help you learn to love something.

Take it slowly and give it time. Love at first sight might be common in movies, but it’s rare in real life. Allow your enthusiasm for something to grow and evolve over time. Sometimes love is a thing that builds inside of us, not something we find.

As for how to teach somebody else to love something, in addition to the above principles, there are a couple more things to remember:

Start with why, not how. Share your reasons for loving something, and don’t be shy about modeling your feelings and practices.

Let them struggle. Allow them to work through their suffering by themselves. Sometimes, we learn to love something after we’ve wrestled with it and made it our own. This goes back to the idea that most important skills are self-taught. So, don’t think of yourself as a teacher, but as a guide.

As St. Thomas Aquinas, the 13th century Dominican priest and philosopher, once wrote, “The things that we love tell us what we are.” Learning to love something yourself, and teaching others to love things as well, are valuable skills that will teach you a lot about you. Because, when you come to love something, it becomes a part of you.

You can’t change the past.

I sometimes joke with my wife about how great it is that so many devices and apps have a mute button, and wouldn’t it be nice if certain people had that button. She generally responds that, if I’d like to marry my smartphone, I should feel free to do so. I also make extensive use of the undo function in the apps I work with, and have often wished life had that feature as well.

But it doesn’t. Newsflash – we can’t change the past, much as we would like to. As a qualitative researcher, I have often found the ‘time machine question’ to be useful. Asking participants what they would do if they could turn back time brings up all sorts of interesting topics: decision-making, regrets, fears and hopes to name a few. But, while it’s worthwhile to dwell on these questions in the context of qualitative research, it’s not a great way to live your life.

Thinking about the past is entirely human. It can be productive, particularly if your intention is to learn and improve. (A couple of years ago I wrote a post on learning from past mistakes.) It’s no accident that so much popular culture centers around the theme of time travel and changing the past. Just ask Marty McFly.

But, when rehashing the past, it’s easy to lapse into regret and recrimination. Psychotherapists understand that discussing regrets and past mistakes with patients can be risky, with the possibility of ‘retraumatizing’ patients if the memories being discussed are particularly distressing. This is why the ancient stoic philosophers exhorted their followers to let go of their disappointments and focus on the present.

So, what are some keys to looking at the past productively?

Own your failures, maybe even celebrate them. I’ve always believed that, if you never experience failure, you’re not trying hard enough.

Don’t conflate decisions with outcomes. Remember that a good decision doesn’t guarantee a good result. What’s more, sometimes you get lucky and a bad decision works out anyway. If you took a smart risk, give yourself credit for that, regardless of the results.

Be honest about what could, and could not, have been foreseen. We must expect the unexpected. Think about contingency planning – did you make sufficient allowances for the unpredictable?

Focus on what you can learn, rather than how you messed up. The point of looking back is to learn and grow, not to beat yourself up.

Know when it’s time to stop analyzing and move on. There comes a point when reflection must give way to action.

I’m not saying that any of this is easy, but it is possible. And the more you do this, the better you’ll get at it.

When you continually rehash, or even obsess over, the past, you’re not doing anything productive, you’re just wasting time and imprisoning yourself in a cycle of regret and self-blame. So, make peace with the past. Make peace with your mistakes. They have made you who and what you are today.