A New Context Can Detach You From Your Winning Recipe

AS A YOUNG child you noted that you lived in an extroverted world. You created a winning recipe to help you succeed.  Today the recipe allows you to hide inside a socially acceptable way to be – colorful, flighty, mature, reliable, or strong. Or any of the thousands of other ways introverts try to be to achieve success.  For example, my recipe is to be process-driven by building step by step procedures to cope with life.

In the last four posts we discussed more effective ways to cope with disaster than by relying on your recipe.  Here we switch to a new topic, how to detach from that recipe so that it no longer runs your life.  Over the years your results from the recipe have probably been mixed. Dissatisfaction, distant relationships, and unintended consequences likely have weighed down some of your successes.

One of the most powerful things you can do as a human being is to create a new context.  Abraham Lincoln did that when he created a context of freedom for enslaved Americans during the Civil War.  Franklin Roosevelt created a context of confidence for impoverished Americans during the Great Depression.  And John Kennedy created a context of space travel for all Americans who doubted during the Cold War that we could put people on the Moon and bring them safely home.

A context is the environment in which something exists.  When you declare it in such a way that people adopt it they collectively can shift reality.  Slaves become free, fear itself becomes the only thing to fear, and astronauts walk on the Moon.  You do not need to be at the pinnacle of power to create a context. You only to declare it repeatedly in ways that engage other people. 

In 2009 a new context was the first thing that ever allowed me to get distance from my winning recipe.

How I Discovered The Context Solution

I JOINED UNITEDHEALTHCARE in 2006 and soon began looking for a way to contribute. 

Officially I was in charge of a team of Six Sigma Black Belts. They were professionals who used statistical methods to identify and remove variation from business processes.  But my heart was elsewhere – in wanting to implement the most phenomenal process I had ever seen, the Balanced Scorecard. 

It was a way to describe the strategy of a company on a single piece of paper. And to create a scorecard of measures to bring that strategy into reality. 

I was so passionate about it that I forgot I was an introvert. I began promoting it in the executive suite of this $50-billion company.  Half a dozen enthusiastic allies appeared and installed the system in their departments. But when we got a new CEO it all came to an end. 

I had the full support of my manger, a Senior VP, and we continued to push the Balanced Scorecard approach.  But the fire went out of me and I became despondent.   

Weeks passed and I realized that at my age life was about longevity, not achievement for its own sake.  And for me, longevity meant being a straight-up introvert with no pretense of being something else.  My boss allowed me to be that. My job was challenging but not overwhelming, and the company was friendly to seniors.  So I let go of the Scorecard and chose not to be driven by any process, meaning that for the first time ever I had detached from my winning recipe. 

The solution had been the ability to create a context – one of seeking longevity, meaning a life where I could contribute, as an introvert, at 110% of my capacity but not 150%, and live a longer and healthier life as a result.

Unpacking The Context Solution

A CONTEXT IS an elusive thing, a creation of the mind that you not only need to declare out loud but also need to make so engaging that other people willingly join you inside it.

Lincoln, Roosevelt, and Kennedy understood how to do both things and were masters at doing so.  All three were relentless in their declarations, telling everyone in earshot what they were committed to.  They stayed on message until the world around them gradually began to shift.

Effective context-creation is rare, because it takes persistence and determination to bring a new paradigm into existence.  But if the passion within you is deep enough, you will find the strength and the skill to do it, even if now you think you cannot.

How To Use A New Framework To Detach From Your Recipe

Step 1. Get passionate about detaching.  Look back over your life and become aware of the potentially enormous costs that your winning recipe has imposed on you (for a refresher on costs, please see Post #1).  Look for times of dissatisfaction, distant relationships, and unintended consequences. 

Then generate an unwavering determination to back away from this thing that you created before you were old enough to know any better. I did not become this determined until late in my life when I wrote my memoir.  But do not wait.  Life is too short to keep living inside your recipe any longer.

Step 2. Get passionate about being a straight-up introvert.  You have engaged everyone around you to see you as your winning recipe.  What would it look like for them to see you as the introvert that you actually are? 

If you allowed yourself openly to listen more than talk, think before speaking, and write instead of speaking to get results, how would you feel?  How about if you had more deep one-on-one conversations, used your easy ability to concentrate, and leveraged your joy at diving into work without interruption? What if you found a way to show your work only when it was finished?  

Those things are who you really are, and when engaged in should cause a deep sense of commitment to well up inside you, driving you to want to participate in them full-time. 

Step 3. Declare the new context that you are an introvert.  Remember the two requirements:

• First, speak your new paradigm into existence every chance you get. A good way to do this is one on one with the people you have your deepest relationships with.
• Second, do so quietly, convincingly, so that the other person embraces the real you that you are declaring.

When I declared to my boss that I was a behind-the-scenes researcher and writer who did not want to be in front of groups, he immediately got it .  Until I retired, he used my back-office skills to the fullest extent possible.

I Invite You To Create A New Context And Detach From Your Winning Recipe Today

• How did it work when you declared the context that you are an introvert?  Did people get it? If you would like us to consider sharing your story anonymously with The Satisfied Introvert community please email it to me at thesatisfiedintrovert@gmail.com.
• How can I help you to keep creating that context? Please go to the Contact page and enter your name, email, and questions. I cannot answer everyone but will do my best – especially if the answer could benefit others.
• To be notified of new posts to The Satisfied Introvert blog, please go to the Subscribe section at the bottom of this post and enter your name and email.  Under no circumstances will we share your information without your express permission. A new post appears every two weeks.  Coming up next: “A Relationship You Honor Can Detach You From Your Winning Recipe.” If a particular post does not apply to you, future ones most likely will!

Welcome to the elation that comes from declaring

that you are an introvert, and from being free

of the winning recipe that for so

long has exacted a cost

 2022 The Satisfied Introvert LLC