Drawbackwards: Get What You Want (with a French Connection)

Over at Trizle’s trizoko blog they are talking about drawing backwards. In the post “How to Get What You Want”, Andrew talks about getting to where you want to be, from a place far away from there…

“We cannot draw on previous experiences, so we do what we know: acting in our usual-old-fashioned ways of doing things.”

True enough. You end up settling for the familiar. You could become an American tourist in Paris at McDonald’s. You might want that Parisian experience (why else did you take that transatlantic flight?) but haven’t mapped out where and how to get it. So in a crunch, when you are tired and hungry, walking the Champs-Elysees..it’s a Le Mac moment.

You didn’t take time to step back from that and review your options and opportunities, do a bit of research, or even notice the corner vendors with quick bites to eat.

You know, those delicious crepes filled with Nutella or the Orangina filled sport bottles in the window (the little glass bottles are novelties for U.S. stores, but that’s another post about leveraging the unfamiliar). Nothing fancy or very strange about these snacks, awfully American in fact, with a French twist. But you missed them completely because you were too busy running forward.

“Visualize in detail the outcome of what you want‚ and what you had to do to get it.”

• What specific steps did you take to get it?
• What did you have to complete?
• What did you have ignore?
• Where did you find help?

This is drawing backwards. Connecting the dots of the image you see and getting what you really want.

Back to Paris, if you were drawing backwards, you’d know the steps to having a great french meal. We know you would have your Footprints guide, 3 potential spots flagged, an aversion for stuff written in English on the buildings and an appetite for a low-key French Bistro off the main streets. Depending on how far you’d walked and what Metro stop you were at during dinner time (and based on your research, you’d know the French like to eat late) you would have options and opportunity at your finger tips.

That’s how you get what you want.