Peak decisions – and learning from lobsters
You'd be surprised how much you can surprise yourself. The other morning I was sitting there starting work and…
‘I was just thinking about you! What’s up?’
I didn’t respond. It was 9:17am on a Thursday. I had another meeting at 9:30 and Lois was presenting our big new brand strategy to the team at 10. So I had to tell her, now.
Plus it’d been eating me up. I couldn’t hold onto it any longer and still look myself square in the face.
So I typed out my message on Slack: ‘Hey, can I grab a quick 10 minutes?’
I sat there looking at the words the same way a backcountry skier stands looking down a steep mountain face – the last moment of thought before you commit and drop into a zone of no return.
‘Bloop’ – I sent it.
And still hadn’t replied to her question: ‘What’s up?’
Lois filled the silence: ‘Yeah, I can now before my 9:30.’
I clicked video call, hoping nerves wouldn’t crack my voice.
She was at home, with a good mood on her face.
Lois had hired me more than 5 years ago. We’d been through a lot since then. I respect her. She’s one of those people who knows how to lead and motivate a team while also being sensitive to the individuals. With me, I expect honesty even when the truth is hard. And I wasn’t sure how she was going to take this.
I told her: ‘Looking at my life right now, for me to really grow I’ve got to leave the company.’
‘I get it,’ she said. I knew she did ‘get’ it. She continued, ‘So what does this mean, tangibly?’
‘I resign.’
I’ve got to go back out on my own to see what else I can do in life.
‘That’s brave,’ she said, a smile pulling up without a single wrinkle of contempt.
We cancelled our 9:30s and she moved the team meeting to the next morning. We talked for more than 45 minutes.
After, I thought I’d feel happy and light and relieved. Instead, I felt what else I was letting go of – all the people, memories and good times, this whole thing that took up so much of life for more than 5 years. And that now would dissapear.
All the things that frustrated me and led me to needing to move on didn’t matter anymore. Work had become more like a family, where times of stress are just part of living together.
Now I felt the loss.
Goodbyes are tortuous.
But you have to be brave enough to endure. You have to know that it’s going to always hurt when you leave something close to you – throwing all its deeply embedded comforts to the wind.
Of course that loss is heavier when embedded in an uncertain future. At these times, more than anything you need to believe that with heart, hope and vision, every hard step takes you somewhere greater.
Keep climbing the peaks. Each time you get to the top, enjoy all the beautiful energy in that final moment of thought – before you take the step, drop in and go for the ride.
What’s a peak decision? Let’s ask a lobster
To live is to seek. It’s the grand adventure we all share, each on our own paths.
To seek is to grow. Yet growth is a lot harder than most of us think it up to be – because growth means saying goodbye to things that anchor us to certain comforts in an uncertain world. Yet if we stay tied to that anchor, even if we try to continue climbing we won’t make it anywhere. You can’t anchor to the past and move into a new future.
As you grow, you reach new heights. You may have already met people along the way and been enjoying the summit together for some time now. But to continue your journey and reach higher states of you, you have to leave that summit.
A peak decision is when you’re at the top and need to choose to leave everything that’s good there behind, so you can move on and continue reaching new peaks.
To learn more about peak decisions, let’s look to the bottom of the ocean:
No matter how much a lobster loves their shell, to continue growing they must leave their only source of protection and expose themselves to total vulnerability. By getting through that tough period of surviving without a shell to protect them, they are able to grow bigger and stronger. But if they were too scared to drop the shell that gave them current safety, they would die in the frightening pain of settling into a life too small for their natural growth.
Vulnerability is scary. It’s also scary powerful.
Try it. Every time you shed a shell, that’s a peak decision. What shell do you want to start with?
Having just quit my job and flung myself into the freedom of an unknown expanse, I feel the exposure and vulnerability. But I take inspiration from our lobster friends, and believe wholly that it’s the only way to grow forwards.
I realize that the bitter taste in my mouth isn’t bitterness at all. It’s fear of loss. It’s the alarm sounding because I’ve become a vulnerable lobster. And while I haven’t figured out how to stop it yet, at least I know it’s a false alarm. And that I’m going to grow greater. Excitement and fear are often so close to each other that with a just twitch of thought, we can switch between the two. And I’m now excited as ever.
You’ve gotta wonder if all those soft, shell-less lobsters are cruising around with a bit of fear and discomfort, or are feeling excited as ever about everything they’ll do in the great new shell coming their way.
Live softer to live stronger.
Drop in.