Ever walked through a mall super fast with places to be, one thing to buy and people to see? Then, someone who knows you, stops you and starts to talking to you. All you can think about is the mixing bowls that you saw on sale last week and still hope they are. You also have to meet a friend, who you already late to meet, but I have to get those mixing bowls, maybe meeting your friend can be your out. You eventually tell them that you have to meet a client. That’s more official, its work and you can’t be late for work!
Now, lets switch this scenario around. You are walking through a mall, slowly this time, looking around, taking things in, people watching. No one comes up to you this time, you are in deep thought. There is more thought about whether you NEED the mixing bowls, what people around you are rushing to and what you are doing in the mall. You are relaxed and enjoying your day, you even smile at strangers.
Sometimes, when I push a client through the mall, I can go really fast as I try to get from here to there. I can only imagine the person I’m pushing feeling as discombobulated as in my first mall scenario, being stopped, forced to interact.
People always say my clients understand things slower, don’t always get it at first, or may have missed something when explaining a concept.
In the back of my mind, I see my clients have wonderful personality traits that go hand in hand with slower thinkers. They appreciate things more, they think longer about it, so are smarter about it, they have a love of words and language, so please say it twice and, their thought pattern is so sophisticated. Think about it, doesn’t it fit?
Try to think about a problem that you see, and then try to figure it out and fix it. The catch, you can’t say it out loud, you can only say it in your head. Even when you get the answer, you can’t say it out loud, you can tell someone in a different way, except writing it out. You can use a computer, blinking yes or no, a secret code or just keep it to yourself. Oh, you should time yourself too. Now, how long did it tell you? Did you want to give up? Were your insides burning as you tried to convey what you had figured out? Imagine doing that everyday, for everything you want to say? Hard huh!?! That’s why I say my clients are smarter, if they can convey what they want to say and if I can figure it out, they have succeeded. I have too, I am a bit smarter than when I started. They have to work with my simplistic mind to get me thinking a certain way and understand a sophisticated thinking pattern, theirs.
I used the mall scenario, because sometimes on occasion, I’ll take a client to a mall. When we get home, their parents will say, “what did you do at the mall?”
“We were in the Nic Nac store, you know the one with a bunch of things you don’t need. For 45 mins!”
A client can sometimes spend longer staring and looking at something than I can because they are thinking about it in a different way. They may look at something twice, or take longer to make a final decision as it really has to important in their world to get it. Now, if that doesn’t make sense all the time, I don’t know what does.
Next time you are shopping, before you buy something, muddle through many questions in your mind before you buy, maybe you’ll save money. If there is a problem that you can’t figure out, don’t give up and think about it in a bunch or different ways until you get it, you will feel smarter.
alwaysanadventure 