Jason Buffington .com

If you feel like you’re in hot water, here’s some advice on transformative perseverance.

video transcript

If you feel like you’re in hot water, here’s some advice.

A couple mentors of mine have used hot water analogies with me lately, so let me pay it forward.

The first from my buddy Jim (whose book just came out) talks about the transformative power of small improvements. Put a pot of water on the stove and it starts at 100° — it’s just warm water

• At 120, you don’t see a difference.
• 140 no difference
• 160 … 180 … 200 … all the way to 211, you’re making minor improvements, but you’re not seeing results (yet)

For many of us, we [you] might be just 1° away from a breakthrough, because … when 211 turns to 212, water turns into steam; it is truly transformed. So stay with it.

The other mentoring moment reminds us that:

• When you boil a raw potato that is firm all the way through, it becomes soft and (as food) becomes useful.
• When you boil an egg, it starts hard yet fragile on the outside, soft inside, but then it becomes firm (and useful) afterwards.

In both cases, the boiling water transforms us from the inside-out … hard-to-soft or soft-to-hard, depending on what we need to be useful

So, the next time that you feel like you are in hot water, embrace the fact that you might be just degrees away from real transformation … from how you see yourself to where you want to be.

See you next Monday