Business Success versus Failure: "The Matrix" - How Can Science Fiction Help?

Your business has failed or failing. You're down. Here's how you can avoid giving up.

It's all about perception. I work in IT, so I can be forgiven for being a geek and loving a bit of science-fiction. But how can sci-fi teach us anything about business?

Perceiving the world around us is a risky business. Type out your business challenges without any emotion on a sheet of A4. Give it to two completely different people and ask them for their take on it, and you could very well get two different answers.

Are you a pessimist or an optimist? Can you see an opportunity or a threat? Is your glass half-full or half-empty?

The Matrix was a series of 3 sci-fi films. I watched them again between Xmas and New Year. In one scene, Mr Smith (a computer programme in a virtual world) was stood beside Morpheus (a human "alive" in the same virtual world) began a speech.

When the machines and computers took over the world, they enslaved humans as a source of power. Their "bio-energy" meant that humans became batteries. But when they shut down the human consciousness, the screen-saver they loaded into every human's brain in their little battery pods was a virtual world to give them something to do.

Smith explained that when they broadcast a perfect world into the heads of all the enslaved humans on the planet. they kept waking up. This wasn't good. Awake and conscious, they didn't produce power for the machines.

So the machines changed the broadcast - an imperfect world. In other words like yours and mine is. Full of challenges. Career challenges. Business challenges. Relationship challenges. Tragedies.

Equally, successes. Good stuff happening. Blissful family lives. Career and business success.

The humans stayed asleep.

The machines got their power.

But some of the humans escaped their pods. And they discovered how to plug into "The Matrix"and join this virtual world where the rest of mankind didn't know they were really enslaved.

While in the machines' virtual world, they realised they had a choice to follow or break the rules.

When Your Career Or Business Has Failed Or Is Failing - Why Not Break The Rules?

When things look bleak, when you're stressed, when you're up against it, it's tempting to fight or flee.

And it's natural. In fact, it's understandable. I've been there!

The fact is, it's all about perception. When you're in the midst of a bad situation, it's very easy to perceive it from a very bleak perspective. You're not in control. Others are. You can't do anything about it. You're fighting as hard as you can, but you're swimming up a waterfall.

And then you have people giving you the answers. Friends, family, professionals. But because you're in a very different world to them, they know nothing. They just don't understand. You're certain there's no way out. The harder you try, the harder it gets.

But in "The Matrix" you have a choice. You can change the rules. Heck you can leap a tall building. But that isn't real.

Or is it? In reality, they're not leaping tall buildings. They just know that they can create the rules in that particular situation. Their perception is different. Their glass is half-full.

And it's only a thought. They're just thinking the solution into existence.

They aren't really leaping tall buidlings. It's a virtual world with a set of rules which you can choose to follow or not.

Louise struck a chord with me when she said "Life is bloody difficult". But as Mr Smith said, that's because we prefer it. In other words, we choose it.

It's very easy to do, but we sometimes choose to wallow in adversity. We don't want a perfect world. We want something to complain about to others. We actually want their sympathy and support.

BUT if we realised that nearly everyone - even the most successful - have this natural human capacity to seek support and sympathy, we can do something about it.

Seek compassion and support elsewhere - from friends, family or other businesses (clients or suppliers you trust). But separately, choose to break the rules of "The Matrix". Switch off that "wallowing" gene.

When you're in the Matrix following THEIR rules, they have already won. Choose to break the rules. Choose to have a half-full glass. Choose to top up the glass to the brim and over-flowing.

At the same time, stop that part of you that wants to stop pouring ambrosia into the glass by seeking the genetic support you need elsewhere.

You do have a choice. And you also have nothing to lose. If you try you have a chance. If you don't try, you definitely have no chance.

Don't choose to let the "machines" that control your own personal "Matrix" dictate you.

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