Guten Tag Window Three Nation!  For those who do not know, that’s German for ‘Good Day!’  Welcome back to another week in YOUR life!  It thrills me to back here chatting with you, and I must say I am pumped about our topic today as it goes along extremely well with the idea behind Window Three!

However, before discussing today’s topic, I’d like to pose you with a challenge.  Below, you will find three short scenarios.  Your challenge is to read each scenario, and as you do so, try to determine how the stories are similar.  I’ll give you a hint, it has to do with the choices being made.  Good luck.

Bumper to Bumper
Having been so stressful, his day seemed longer than usual and he was very excited to get home.  Tom had picked his daughter up at the daycare that she attended and he now found himself and his ‘little angel’ headed home by their normal route on the city's bypass.  Since it was later than usual, Tom was moving at a fairly good speed in the far left lane.  

That’s when it happened!  Another car that was moving at a much slower pace moved into Tom and his daughter's lane.  “This is the fast lane you idiot!” Tom screamed at the car.  That’s when Tom decided it was time to teach this driver a lesson by driving right up on the other car’s bumper.  “Yeah, how do you like that!” Tom directed at the vehicle that was five feet in front of him and moving at 70 miles per hour.  His daughter clutched her stuffed animal tightly.  
    

New Training
It made no sense!  This was a veteran team that had seen the best and worst this economy had to throw at them.  They had been through the ups and downs, the mergers and cut backs, and through it all, they had seemingly worked hard to bring this organization success!  So now, why on earth would they need to be put through more training?  What else could they possibly need to know?  How many more of these ‘new ideas’ do they have to sit through before someone realizes that they already have a good team.  

“We’re not the problem.  The problems are in our products and pricing!”  Melissa said to Irene, another team member. Melissa continued, “I’m tired of having to go through all new training every time we don’t meet our numbers!  I’m going to say something to upper management!”  Irene chimed in, “There's no need for that!  Just do what we always do and listen to the material, but then go about business as usual.  After all, upper management only has us go through this training so they feel like they are providing us with the needed tools.”  


 
Best Round Ever!
He had only been playing for a few years now, but still, the fact that he’d never shot a round of golf in the 70’s had frustrated Chad immensely.  He rarely failed to get close, usually shooting in the low 80’s, but he had never been able to break the magic number of 80.  However, today looked like it was going to be the day!  After shooting a 38 on the front nine of his round, he now found himself needing to par out on the last two holes to accomplish his goal.  That’s when it happened.

Chad tried to approach the Par 5, 17th hole in his usual fashion and use his driver off the tee.  However, in usual fashion, he sliced the ball way off to the right and found himself in what golfers call, ‘jail’ (an area that is gridlocked by trees, leaving the golfer with few choices).  The choices that a golfer has in a situation like this are usually very clear; chip out to safety, or hit the ball towards the green and pray that it doesn’t hit a tree.  To take the safe route and chip out to the fairway would make it more difficult to get on the green in three, and then two putts for one of his much needed pars!  Chad stared down his choices thoroughly, as though he was giving thought to both, but deep down, he knew his mind was already made up.  He was going to go for it.     


As you know, most of what we discuss here at Window Three is positive emotion, not to be confused with negative emotion.  In other words, not all emotion is created equal.  This is important to note for our discussion today because of the anti-emotion that we will be talking about: Logic.   

For our purpose, we are going to discuss logic as being what makes the most sense from an objective point of view.  The situations above all featured an example of emotion replacing logic.  For example, in the instance of Tom, the driver who was teaching the other driver a lesson by riding their bumper, emotionally in the moment, riding the other person’s bumper makes complete sense.  However, from a logical (objective) point of view, it makes no sense at all as Tom is risking multiple lives, including that of he and his daughter, simply to teach this driver a ‘lesson.’

The same can be said for the other two scenarios. In the instance of the team that doesn’t want training, a group of ‘Professionals’ believe strongly that they don’t need to grow with the economy.  So much so, that they are willing to ignore, and even challenge management's decision to give their sales team new ideas and techniques that might help them perform better.  In the scenario of the golfer, we left Chad right as he was getting ready to risk his entire round on one, ‘low percentage,’ shot.    

In each of these scenarios, the main characters are trading logic for their short term emotion.  This is where it is important to note that the emotion Window Three represents is not this ‘short-term,’ seemingly negative emotion.  In these moments, each individual risks what they want most; to be home safely with family, a successful career, and the lowest score possible, for what they want in the moment; teach a driver a lesson, no more training, and to be closer to the green.     

Let’s first reiterate that Window Three always suggests thinking of things in regards to the ‘ultimate goal,’ which is positive emotion added to your life.  Second, let’s note that to the casual observer, each of these individuals have gone against ‘logic.’  Now it might seem that when making a decision, a person only has two choices: emotion or logic. After all, we just talked about how each character in the proposed scenarios traded logic for emotion.  The reality is that the emotion the characters responded to wasn’t the only emotion in the equation.  Had they chosen logic, there would have also been emotion, it would have just come at a later point.  It would have come into play when they achieved their goals.  

We could easily spend quite a bit of time dissecting what would have happened, and how the characters would have felt, had they chosen the logical decisions, however, I’ll let you play those scenarios out in your own mind.  Certainly, there is always the chance that there wouldn’t have been a car accident, that management would have thought the sales team was ‘right‘ in their negative attitudes towards training, and Chad may have hit the shot of his life and not only missed all the trees, but also put the ball on the green.  Certainly those are all possible, but the question is, “WHY?”  

The truth is that we are constantly trading what we want most, for what we want in a moment!  That’s to say that every day, we give in to our short-term emotions and throw away what we want most and the logic that goes with it.  My question to you is, "what are some daily instances in your life in which logic gets thrown out the window?  What are those moments that you don’t think about Level Three, and therefore just respond to a quick and illogical emotion?"  Because it’s these moments that become the biggest detriment to who you are, and what you hope to achieve.  

When you are in these moments, please know that the emotion you’ll feel is powerful, and it takes a special person to challenge it.  It takes a special person to step back and look at the moment logically.  When you feel these moments taking control of your CHOICES, take back control by reminding yourself what you want most in life, and then defining what Level Three might look like for each situation!  I promise that when you do so, you'll find yourself getting closer and closer to achieving things that you never thought possible!  Good luck, and have a GREAT WEEK!