The purple crocodile is imaginary!

I'm willing to bet the following is going to feel very familiar to you:

Here you are at Awesome Company, happily working on the SuperProjectOfTheMonth and about every 15 minutes you run into this little thing that's costing you just a microsecond of brain activity to notice before you get on with whatever it was you're doing.

Now it'll only cost you a microsecond, I mean, I can't probably even blink that fast, but if that happens every 15 minutes I wouldn't get anything done, let alone remember what I was doing before.

Luckily for us, we work in IT and we can DoStuff^TM

At this point I'd like to make another bet:

You get all excited about the massive improvement you're going to make when suddenly a wild impediment appears and says "No we can't do this because reasons"

If you're Dutch (or have lived here for some time) you may have come across a tv-commercial that goes like this:

Two little kids are with their mother at a swimming pool and they seem to have lost their purple inflatable crocodile. When they go to the reception desk and see that it's propped against the wall behind the counter they ask if they can have it back.

The man behind the counter responds that they will need to fill in a form to which the mother replies: "But it's right there, that's the crocodile"

The man won't be budged and replies: "But you still will need to fill in the form" at which point the mother walks away with her children looking completely bewildered.

Now this is only a tv-commercial and may seem a bit "heh, funny" but it provides me with a nice example of what I see happening quite frequently.

Remember the bet I made earlier? I think that not only the fact that "reasons" pop up can be demotivating, there is a more fundamental problem here. Given previous experiences it may very well be that you won't even bother to change or do anything because people will say no anyway!

I feel that this way of thinking gradually gets you into a situation where you muddle on and become oblivious to the things you could change to improve your life: The purple crocodile has become real!

But fear not!

While it can feel like trying to swim up a waterfall you should make an effort to change. "But won't that be tedious?" I can hear you say. Yes it most likely will, but I'd like to offer some advice. When someone says No!, there is probably a reason behind it and it may be that the nay-sayer thinks that you are aware of these reasons. As a bonus they may even think you're stupid because you're too thick to understand them.

So my advice is: Find out what those reasons are.

Because when you do you can convince people why change is necessary. It can also help you clarity the need for change and you may learn something new as well. A new perspective never hurts!

And sometimes it just pays off to just do what you need and show people how you improved. And sometimes it's just easier to ask for forgiveness instead of permission.

I hope that you now no longer believe in purple crocodiles or if you do, just to give it a nice name and show how it, too, can change.