Quote-A-Day: Day 253

While you won't always get the answers you want, you should always want the answers you get. #QuoteADay #Day253 #edchat #edu #ASCDL2L

I’m waiting to hear back on something that could be quite interesting.  But, I won’t hear about it until the end of the month.  I’m a very patient person, but I’m anxious and nervous about the feedback I could get on this item.

I had emailed my contact for an update, and was told that talks were still in progress, and while it was hoped that I would receive feedback and information by the beginning of this month, it is likely that I won’t hear until the end of September.

While I would have loved to get a different answer during this update, I was thankful for a number of things.

First, my contact openly shared where her team was, and what the process would look like moving forward.  This openness, and willingness to provide me with an update (even if there wasn’t much information to give) provided me with a deeper understanding of how the project is moving forward.

Second, it gave me the chance to continue to work on building my patience.  After hearing from her, I immediately wanted to respond and ask a number of follow-up questions, to see if there was any, even a small tidbit, of information that could lead me to conclude one thing or the other.  But, after giving it a night, I realized that a response of “Thanks so much for the update; I’m looking forward to hearing from you” was exactly the type of (and really the only) reply I should give.

Finally, it made me realize the true power of answers.  Often, when there’s a question asked, we hope to receive a certain response.  But, realistically, it should rarely be about the answer we receive, and should always be about how we utilize the answer that is given.  The response I got from my contact allowed me to get a better sense of how the organization was proceeding, and made me further confident about the thorough nature of the review my idea was getting.  It also helped me to see the power of patience, and to realize that at this point, the idea is out of my hands, and I’ll just have to wait it out.

While we often don’t get the answers we’re specifically looking for, we should embrace the answers we do get.  There is learning in everything that we’re told; we just have to think about how to apply it.