Quit Taking It Personally

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When stuff goes wrong at my work I always say "I'm not interested in pointing the finger at someone, I'm interested in solving the problem."

"we fucked up and we all need a break" If only more people could adopt this thought process.

Adam is that favorite Uncle of yours that is a walking living library with stories that never ends, he never disappoints.

I worked in advertising for 25+ years and now am an art professor. I tell my students 2 things: design is done for somebody else because you are getting paid. It not and never was yours, so things will happen to the work that are beyond your control and you have to let it go. Find something at some point during that project that you love and make that yours. Keep files, or photos of that point and be proud of it. The other thing is "Success has many mothers. Failure is an orphan.," meaning others will take credit for your success, and you will be blamed for the failure whether it's your fault or not.

At one of the lowest point of Adam's life, he calls his father.. that really touch me, made my eyes watery. I lost my father a year ago and I miss him soon much, his advice was full of wisdom and 100% on my side, even when he told me I'm wrong

“the prop self destructed.” IM DYING THIS IS HILARIOUS im just imagining his stoic face delivering that hehehe

On the "Not taking it personally" point, I want to add one thought: This is a process, not a step. You can't just decide to not take it personally and be done. Human beings don't work that way. You will need to remind yourself repeatedly as you obsess about it, not to take it personally. You may need to actually plan out other things to think about when you catch yourself taking it personally and intentionally when you start obsessing. It may be the work of days, weeks, or months depending on you and all the other variables of the situation. But it is exactly what you need to do. Work at not taking it personally and grab what valuable knowledge you can from the experience.

To make a coworker, subordinate or otherwise, feel better after messing up, I always find myself saying, “Today its you, tomorrow it’ll be me.” This comes true all too often, and it’s nice to hear it being said back to me when I’m in the dumps.

I love the last story, because Jamie had it 100% right. Don't be the person with the problem, but the person with the solution. It's important to look forward, not back. Immediately, how are you going to proceed, and later how are you going to prevent it from recurring? It ties back to focusing on what you can control.

My daughter became an engineer because of you. Now she's starting her career and your advice for her is so useful and practical. Your continue to mentor her.

Jamie's story is gold and universal, that can be used in almost anyone's daily life and business.

From bitter personal experience of working for customers who thought they knew better, if they tell (they don't usually ask) you to do something you believe to be unwise - write down your advice that it's not a good idea and why, give them a copy and get them to sign off on it - a literal signature and if they won't sign, leave the job, if it does indeed go bad, show them the signature. I've had to do that a couple of times and in both cases they threw me off the job for my "I told you so" moment - they didn't realise they were doing me a favour.

Peace is letting people be wrong about you

Grant me the serenity to accept the people I cannot change, the courage to tell them off, and the wisdom to leave them alone.

What more people need to do is to COVER THEIR ARSE! If you tell someone that their proposed action is gonna end badly, and they choose to proceed with it anyway, make sure you have it on record that you warned them so you can't get blamed.

After my first experience of my advice which predicted a problem which did occur not being listened to when I lacked authority, I resolved that such is only offered in written form: e-mail, software messenger, text, etc and not verbally. And then not brought up by me ever (I’m not out to “I told you so”) unless some blame came my way. Because then you whip out that written record and remind of your previous position. This has served to defend me at that moment but also made others start to listen to my future written “heads up” when offered.

When I was an apprentice sculptor/moldmaker at a statuary run by Italian immigrants I once humiliated myself by not listening carefully to the old guy’s advice on how I was approaching a project. Instead, I explained how smart I was and why my idea was better. When we got back from lunch, we discovered my project had literally shattered into 7 pieces. The old guys explained to me why…. But then they spent the rest of the afternoon ridiculing me and laughing about it. Being young and full of myself, I responded by acting resentful and moody. And that’s when the old Italian came over and said the thing that changed my life and gave me wisdom. He said, “hey, hard head… listen. For twenty-five years I have waited for My turn to laugh. Don’t you try to take that away from me.” With every new crop of apprentices, I get to tell them the same. In my studio, mistakes and disasters are not a cause for yelling or blaming… but for my turn to laugh. And I have always found that my apprentices learn the most from seeing the various inventive ways I recover from a disaster to bring in the project after all.

I got called in to do a financial analysis of my company as, despite my junior position, I was good with spreadsheets. I showed them that the decision they were making - to change direction and bet the company on a new idea (directly competing with Amazon) had no road to profitability. Obviously they ignored me and chose the stupid path. 12 months later the company went into a death spiral and I got 3 months redundancy. Now I'm starting my own business and trying to make a similar company while learning from their stupid mistakes.

That story about Jamie.... wow. As a mechanical engineer who has to deal with situations like that a lot, all I can say is thank you thank you thank you. I literally wrote down that story so I remember to apply that wisdom in the future.