# 58 - Are You Adaptive, Rejecting or Accommodating?

Episode 58

[00:00:00] : Hey there, everybody. It's Rick Lewis with Episode 58 over the follow through formula Podcast. I have a story for you today, and the story is about performing at a corporate event in Naples, Florida at our Ritz Carlton Hotel. It was a classy black tie awards banquet for a professional association, and I had finished my waiter routine, which I've described in some of my previous episodes. If you haven't stumbled across one of those episodes where I kind of introduced everyone to what I do as an entertainer. Briefly, I dress up identically to the serving staff at a performance venue, conference center or hotel, and I pose as a waiter during the meal portion of an event. And this waiter character I play gets more and more odd and clumsy and eccentric over the course of the meal, eventually getting so inept and awkward that the guests wind up in whispered conversation about how this server ever got his job and how he's keeping it. So I had just concluded the waiter part of the routine during the meal, and it was time for me to begin my stage show for this large group off corporate executives and the set up with the way to routine just went beautifully. On this evening, people were so drawn in and hooked by the surprise theater, and by the time I got to the show, people were just having a great time, and the show was unfolding beautifully. Now, as an entertainer and a performer, when you're in front of a crowd, and especially for the kind of presentation I do, which is multifaceted, where I'm doing this whole way to routine during dinner and then I have a comedy component and a speaking component. It's very important that each one of these elements hits the right mark so that as I'm taking people through this experience over the course of the evening, it unfolds in a way that has maximum value and maximum receptivity and impact on the part of the audience by the time I get to the message. So on this particular evening, things were going really, really well. It was I just had hit this sweet spot. I was connecting with the audience in a way that I could tell from my own experience in past events was going to be absolutely ideal for them. to have a really wonderful not just entertainment experience but learning experience from the presentation. So this story takes place. Once I was on stage and in the middle of the stage show, and suddenly, somewhere out in the middle of about a 400 person audience, ah, cell phone rang. Now this happens. Sometimes people forget to turn off their phones or put them on mute. And generally that's an intrusion I would ignore. Just let it go and keep going along with the show, and usually everyone else ignores it as well. But in this instance, the owner of the phone unhealed early woman answered it and began an animated conversation with somebody on the end that was quite audible to everyone in the audience. Now, in comedy, timing is everything. The sequence of elements that I'd been delicately structuring to bring this entire presentation along to what was going to be, ah, beautiful finale came to a grinding halt. I stopped what I was doing on stage and gave the woman along comically disbelieving look like seriously, but it had absolutely no effect because she was too engrossed in her conversation to even notice that I had come to a complete halt on stage and was staring at her. So even as everyone was then, laughing at her obliviousness, she continued her dialogue without pause, which indicated this calls importance to her. She seemed to be debating something with someone, and it became evident to me and everyone else that she was not going to stop talking. In that moment, I felt really I was angry. I wanted to control her behavior. Yet I knew that getting aggressive in response would have been even more of an interruption to the show. So I had to take a deep breath and broaden the boundaries of my plans for a successful show. Otherwise, it was simply gonna The whole thing was about to really get away from me and just completely spiral down and crash and burn. So I decided to connect by investigating the importance of this conversation to her, and I did that by walking off the stage and threading my way through a few of the tables to where she was sitting. Finally, she looked up and for the first time realized the attention she had drawn to herself. So I reached down and I gently removed the phone from her hand, holding it up to my own ear so I could speak to whoever was online. And I lifted the lapel microphone that I was wearing to the phone speaker so the audience could also hear the conversation I was about toe have with this person. She had been talking Thio. I started by introducing myself and asking to whom I was speaking. And over the loudspeakers, we all heard a man's voice reply. What we could all hear was him chuckling, and he told us that he was the woman's son, so he had called her. But having reached her son on the line, this concerned mother didn't wanna let him go. Despite the inappropriateness of the circumstances under which she was chatting to him. I don't know what was going on. Maybe it had just been a while since she had spoken with him. It may even have been that he was avoiding her, because the tone that we had all overheard in the mother's voice was like the mood of an anxious parent. So I explained to the son that his mother was in the middle of a live theater performance and comically suggested politely that maybe they could resume this. Call it a later time. The sun told the listening crowd and me that he understood completely. In fact, since the moment early in the call, when his mother had mentioned where she waas, he had been trying to convince her to hang up the phone, and this is apparently what they were debating about his urge for her to end. The call was based on the fact that he himself was a comedian, Ah, successful stand up comedienne living in New York City. And he'd been telling his mother that if she didn't get off the phone, she was gonna find herself singled out and would soon find herself part of the performance. Needless to say, that's exactly what happened, and by this time, the audience and me were absolutely in stitches. It was the most hilarious thing to have stumbled into the situation and toe, have this man on the other end of the phone be on actual comedian himself and have been saying this to his mother. The episode was the highlight of the entire evening. Nothing I could have planned in advance or enforced with respect to my idea of how my perfect show should go could have matched the entertainment value of what had just happened outside of my ability to control the trajectory off the performance. So here's the reason I told you that story is because right now in my current daily life, I'm thinking about follow through and I have some big work ahead of me to recreate. Ah, vocation as an online teacher, trainer, course creator, e commerce content creator. And there's a lot of work involved with that day to day. There are all sorts of things that arise, especially right now, while we're still in the midst off this pandemic. Here in North America, there are all sorts of extenuating circumstances, friends and family who are having big difficulties and need help, literally people we know who need a place to stay. My son is home now full time because school is closed. So we're trying to home school in a rather small environment, and I'm looking for places where I can record without there being other noise in the house. I mean, there's there many, many things occurring right now that require problem solving and relationship and going with the flow, so to speak. The question I have, what I'm working with are grappling with internally is how much flexibility does one have, and how much do you protect your own plans and agenda for completing ah project or a task or ah course of direction that you believe in? And every day, of course, we're all faced with this every single day, regardless of the circumstances. Externally, it doesn't matter. You don't have to be in the midst of a pandemic to be challenged every single day by things that air coming at you that are an invitation for you to forget your course, your direction, your way. And I I don't really have any answers about this today. I'm just reflecting on it and I'm inviting you to reflect on what's the difference between one being adaptive and to me, being adaptive means I don't really know what my course is, or I might even be avoiding the course that I need to stay true to, because it produces fear or anxiety in me. And that means I'm very easily pulled off track by any little thing that smacks of needing or possibly, um, requiring my attention my energy. So if I'm just willing to drop everything I'm doing and everything I'm planning, that's in alignment with who I feel I actually am or what I'm here to do. Then I would consider that being adaptive because rather than staying true to my vision, I'm willing to do absolutely anything anyone asks of me or anything that is dangled in front of me without even really assessing. Is this the best use of my time, energy and attention? Is this necessary? Is it needed? Um, I the right person for this? Or is my job in this moment to say no and to stay it, to protect my time and energy to further what it is? I'm actually here to Dio so and I noticed this in myself. When I'm feeling up against something that's more difficult to accomplish, then it's very easy for someone just a phone up and say they need a ride somewhere or a friend to call, saying I need help. I need someone to talk Thio or, um, something to come in by email could even be a survey from a company whose products I've used, and I might suddenly find myself willingly launching into, AH, 15 minute survey and losing track of what I need to be doing instead of prioritizing the continuity of my efforts. So the first possible response or bucket or category that I see we can fall into in this situation is add activity being adaptive in relationship to life, circumstances and other people. The second category is to be rejecting, which is, of course, on the opposite end of the scale where people are coming to me or circumstances are arising. That could really use my time, energy or attention or help. And I won't even carte blanche. I won't consider them. I'm just a hard no don't interrupt me. Don't bother me. I've got my vision. I know what I'm doing. Nobody can interrupt me. And that has its own hazards and pitfalls, because any vision or purpose that we have doesn't exist in a vacuum. It's informed and guided and shaped to some extent by the environment were in and the feedback we get from life around us. If we're reading the signs of that feedback, we're going to be called upon to course correct. As we go, as we're willing to be in relationship with life as it is and allow that to shape and direct our big purpose. And to be completely rejecting off any outside influences disallows the kind of delight that showed up in the circumstance off me doing a presentation and the woman answering her phone that turned out to be absolutely wonderful. And that was a lucky moment for me. I happened to be able to thread the needle in a way that produced a notably positive result. But I wish I could hit that mark more. Usually I'm falling off on one side or the other of being adaptive or rejecting. And the third category, which the example of this story that I told you falls into is accommodating and accommodating means we are receptive and responsive toe what's coming our way even as we keep one eye on our sense of our own purpose and the and the activities that are most important for us to be tending to, I don't have any further clarity or rules or a system by which to assess that. But I just wanted to speak to this dilemma, which we all face each and every day between being adaptive, rejecting or accommodating. And I'm just inviting you to think about this in your own life. How adaptive are you? How rejecting are you, or how often do you find that ability to accommodate, what, there for you and hold your purpose in your center and your seat and dance with what is at the same time. So that's it for today. Just something for you to think about something that I'm thinking about right now. This has been Episode 58 of the follow through Formula Podcast. My name is Rick Lewis, and I'll be back tomorrow.