Brick Wall: Hit Head Here

Some of my most memorable experiences have been Me vs. A Brick Wall. The brick wall simply doing its bricky thing, and me slamming my fists against it.

It's easy to flail against courses of brick and mortar like there is no tomorrow: wanting someone to be different than they are, staying in a dysfunctional relationship, tolerating a toxic work environment. Or trying to get blood from a stone—and everyone knows rocks have the wrong kind of veins for that.

Does any of this thrashing about feel good while doing it? No. Would I do it again? Probably not in that same situation. Do I get bruised? Yes. So why choose to battle an immovable object?

Perhaps it is to learn something I have to learn.

Randy Pausch once said, “The brick walls aren’t there to keep us out. The brick walls are there to give us a chance to show how badly we want something.”

Some of our best learnings come from experiences that have inherent challenge, crisis, or pain. Why? They push us out of our comfort zone. Conflict and pain seek resolution; we typically won’t settle for the status quo when we are suffering. Research says that 90 percent of people change to move away from pain—only 10 percent change to move toward pleasure.

The times in my life I have chosen the more difficult path, it’s usually to maintain harmony with loved ones, or stay safe. So it's essentially a path of least resistance. Usually we have other goals or things we're trying to protect in doing this—and pain is just a simple side effect. Only later through hindsight do we recognize we had options—and that there might have been a better way.

When I was in my 20s, I had a “teacher” journal. When I’d come across people who I conflicted with, instead of complaining incessantly, I would write in my journal: “Sharmin is my greatest teacher because she’s teaching me about the importance of research and being thorough.” Or “Joshua is teaching me to be a more patient person.”

Somehow, I knew the solution was not to try to change the situation (because I might not get what I wanted there) but it was more about changing my perspective on it. It was about changing me.

This is easier to do in more benign situations—but when stakes are high, watch out. When personal or family relationships are involved, it’s easy to stay in suffering. Or if a job is at stake—same thing. Hitting an organizational brick wall might mean watching your funding streams slowly decline, competitors playing by different values, losing a key leader, or a market that is fundamentally upending itself around you.

But even in those challenging systems moments, there is hope for some good. M. Scott Peck wrote, “Our finest moments are most likely to occur when we are feeling deeply uncomfortable, unhappy, or unfulfilled. For it is only in such moments, propelled by our discomfort, that we are likely to step out of our ruts and start searching for different ways or truer answers.”

If you are sitting with conflict, pain, simple inertia, or the status quo, try pausing and leaning into that brick wall. You might ask, “What is emerging here? What am I learning? What is being revealed for me or my organization?”

And in the pause, you can stop hitting your head against it. Find the softness or the give that exists. It's always possible to take a rest. Maybe tuck a prayer in a gap in the mortar like thousands do at the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem. I put a prayer there a few years ago that's slowly emerging today.