A Diamond is a Chunk of Coal Made Good Under Pressure
Why the same pressure that creates diamonds also creates coal - and how building habits and systems lets you transform pressure into brilliance instead of burnout.
"A diamond is a chunk of coal that is made good under pressure."
— Henry Kissinger
I wanted to take a moment to remind myself that an ordinary lump of carbon, when intense pressure (and heat) is applied, will change its atomic structure and over time, will form a diamond. That same Carbon, in less intense conditions, transmutes into an ordinary lump of coal.
Pressure is inevitable, and no matter what path you are on, you will feel it, from yourself, your leaders, your dependents, and society to name a few obvious sources. We can also sometimes feel pressure in less obvious ways, that we can't always seem to quantify the source.
You know, It's that feeling when you're leaving in the morning and you just KNOW you're forgetting something, but you've checked 87 times already, and yeah, wallet, keys, phone, etc... it's all there...so you throw your hands up in the air and just go. You get to the gas station and remember, your dog wouldn't leave you alone while you were paying the bills last night... and you left your debit card on the desk at home when you let him out... so you have to go back home... and now you're going to be late... and what does "LOW" even mean, anyway? Why didn't I just get gas on the way home last night...? I've got to stop procrastinating... am I going to run out of gas on the way back to the gas station?!
queue anxiety loop
AAAAAND ACTION!
Pressure as a Growth Catalyst
High pressure or stressful situations are rarely enjoyable, but if approached with the right mindset, can lead to growth. In the moments of intense pressure, it's easy to try to take on too much, and then feel overburdened when the weight of everything feels so insurmountable. It's easy to lose sight of the end goal and just try and make it through.
But if we have habits and great systems in place that can take a little bit of the pressure off, like always getting gas the night before, we can start to feel a noticeable difference in the amount of pressure we are forced to carry around each day.
The goal is definitely not to automate every minute of your life, as that would probably be worse than constant fire drills. Instead we want to focus on developing the habits and systems that take some of the pressure out of the ordinary, and allow your creative energy to focus on your end goal, and further improvement.
Pressure Test Your Systems
With every prescription, there are of course, side effects. It is crucial that you inspect what you expect and PRESSURE TEST your systems and habits.
Sure, in theory a lot of things sound great, and even if you LOVE Star Wars, by about the middle of Episode I, of that nine movie "Star Wars" marathon, that you agreed to host for your 9 year-old's birthday, you start to question a lot of things. I even thought it would be fun to bungee jump off the stratosphere until I actually got up there and remembered I forgot to pack an extra pair of underwear.
But, let's say I came up with a perfect transit system that, in theory, could teleport you from one end of the earth to the other in an instant, but I had no actual proof of its capability, you would probably continue to hop on a plane, like you would now.
In the same way, you wouldn't trust the fate of your life, or even your livelihood to an untested system, so you just continue to hold onto the pressure yourself. Automate through habits what you can, test your systems by allowing them to do what they were designed to do and allow yourself to decompress.
If a diamond was never removed from the pressure it was under, it would just stay buried thousands of miles beneath the Earth, and the world would never get to see it shine. The same is true for us - when we carry all that pressure with us, our creative energy, that we could proactively use to be creative, goes into reactive mode and gets used up solving constant fire drills.
Choose. Your. Hard.
It's hard to spend the time and energy developing habits that make your day to day more fulfilling, but it's also hard to carry around all that pressure with you all the time.
Choose. Your. Hard.
It's hard to develop systems, and even harder to find the cracks if you don't fully push them to their limits, but it's also hard to feel like you are spinning your wheels, day after day, and not moving forward.
Choose. Your. Hard.
One More Thing
Don't forget to pace yourself. Remember that it can take over a million years for a diamond to form. Unfortunately, we don't have that kind of time, so we don't just get to just broil under a bunch of rocks for a million years, and let it happen to us - we have to seek out the pressure, and lean into it.
But, if we can develop systems and habits that focus on taking the pressure out of the ordinary, we can use our energy to be proactive.
And if you can hold up under the pressure, on the other side is a diamond.