Thinking about the Dip
I recently read Seth G’s book “the dip” which I’ve heard described variously as a book about choosing your battles, a book about quitting, or a book about mastery.
And it is about all those things. Because all those things revolve around a central idea:
sometimes things get harder before they get easier.
That “harder” is what Seth calls the dip.
And it is is difficult, but it’s also important because it makes being on the other side more valuable — after all not just anybody is willing to work their way through that dip.
For Seth, there’s obviously a lot about marketing, and reaching a wide audience. Obviously, it takes work to develop a new skill, grow a network of helpful people, or sell a new product. But given that our economy is “dipping” and that many of us have personal dips to work through, I’m finding Seth’s message very timely and relevant at the moment.
Getting through the dip is about the choices you make
If you’re like me and the people I know in southeast michigan, you are actually facing multiple “dips” at once. We are struggling our way through problems at work, financial problems, interpersonal problems, and we’re trying to figure out what to do about all those things.
One of the core ideas in “The Dip” is that you have to choose which battles you will fight, or you’ll loose them all. Some battles beg to be lost. You have to give up fighting on some fronts in order to win on others.
So, to go back to yesterday’s post, you have to say No to some things, in order to make it through any of the dips. You can’t have everything, you have to choose. And once you choose, you have to make it happen.