After writing about the tipping point, where a personal principle for success turns into a self-limitation, I could not help reflecting on the things we do, to avoid realizing that we are at a tipping point.

The first strategy is to allow exeptions from the rule. To take a simple example, the principle "I don't eat sweets". This may be a very helpful principle for eating healthy or keeping weight. But let`s imagine a hike on which your healthy snack stayed safely at home. The only thing your hiking partner has to offer is a bar of chocolate. Trivial? Maybe. But the point is not the single exeption. The point is that over time you may get so many exeptions to the rule that the principle gets to be only an abstract ideal, whereas your everyday behavior is directed by the exeptions. Storytellers love this discrepency, normal people hate it.

The second strategy is to escape from having to examining a principle. Let`s take "the customer is always right". But what if your customer tells you that your company will not make it to market with the new technology you are developing? The simplest escape is to drive to the conversation to safer grounds (escape). But what if your customer insists?  You may start having second thoughts, you may be wondering, how much the customer really knows about the new technology. All the while you may have discussed the weather, melting glaciers, cats on trees and god knows what, because you are trying to save your customer and yourself from the fact that - "customers can be awfully wrong". 

If you don't have sweaty palms after reading through this, congratulations. Either you are pretty tolerant for cognitive dissonance (this is what psychologists call it, when there is a gap between your ideal and the real situation). Or you are experienced enough to navigate between several prinicples.

If you feel a little uncomfortable, great. No, seriously. In storytellers' words you are feeling tension. And a story without tension is - no story. 

What I wanted to illustrate here is that principles (self-beliefs), tipping points and strategies to avoid realizing tipping points are the true material for storytellers. So, if you are going through a difficult situation, reassure yourself that you will be having a story to tell afterwards. And don't give up, just because giving up is the easiest way!