There have been many moments in our lives where it seems everything that could go wrong does, and it all seems to come at us in one full swoop. This could be anything from a natural disaster destroying our homes to the death of a loved one, or even losing your job and realizing you aren’t going to have enough to make ends meet. It’s this sudden rush that occupies our minds, and a lot of people may remember experiencing it during 2020 and COVID.
Susan Ford Collins is the author of the “Technology of Success” series, which includes “The Joy of Success,” “Success Has Gears,” “Our Children Are Watching,” and her latest “BLUR: Clear the Way Ahead, Even in the Worst of Times.” She’s been called “America’s Premier Success and Leadership Coach” by CNN and has facilitated more than 4,000 training sessions in person and via Zoom for major corporations, organizations in education and government, as well as for individuals and other teams.
For nearly 40 years, Collins has been facilitating leadership seminars that help people lead in the organizations in which they work and lead in their home life. She spent 20 years prior studying people who were highly successful and learning from them how they got to where they were in life. But one thing she noticed during her study was that none of them knew how to pass it on to the next person.
“They knew how to do it themselves, but they couldn’t teach it. They weren’t consciously doing it; they were unconsciously doing it. So, my job was to consciously construct a way to teach leadership skills. And then I discovered there’s three gears of success and that has to match up with three gears of leadership.”
The three gears of success, as Collins explains, are knowing the basics of something first, then being able to perform the said function or job, and, lastly, becoming more productive and innovative with what you have been taught. The three gears of leadership include being able to supervise and monitor the new, oncoming talent, being able to step back from full supervision to allow them to work on their own, and then allowing them to experiment with new ideas for said talent to be successful in their own way.
“There comes a point where just doing what you’ve been told to do, the way you’ve been to do it faster and faster is not enough. You have to breakthrough into a new idea, a new way of thinking, and we particularly live in an age of creativity.”
One of the methods of success that Collins brings up in “BLUR” is the deletion success, which focuses on removing things from your life that don’t work. In some cases, it can go as far as cutting off relationships with people to whom you were once close, or even ending a relationship or marriage. Collins noted that, when presenting at seminars, many people may enter with the mindset that divorce is a failure. But once they see it as a success, then their confidence and life outlook begin to change.
“I’d always have somebody in the audience who would break down sobbing when they really understood that divorce was a deletion success and not a failure. It was enough self-confidence and enough knowing what your needs were to be able to say, “This isn’t it” and to move on. Of course, timing and gentleness and compassion all fits into it. But we’ve got to be compassionate with ourselves and kind to ourselves and affirming to ourselves.”
Something as life-changing as ending a relationship in our personal life, or terminating an employee who is not meeting the expectations, can be something that can be viewed as catastrophic. But, as Collins puts it, there are times where it’s necessary in order for both parties to be successful in the future.
“It’s much kinder to let go an employee who is not performing in your environment than it is to keep them on. It’s much kinder to let go of a partner, where it’s clearly not working for either one of you, then to just hang in there and waste energy and waste spirit.”
When coming up with the idea for “BLUR,” Collins said her experience with BLUR came pre-COVID when she had faced many difficult events, such as a tornado and a hurricane hitting her home just hours apart from each other and both her sister and husband, Albert, being diagnosed with cancer. And with the experiences happening simultaneously, this meant the only way to describe the state was to capitalize the whole word.
“I define BLUR as that state that we get into when we’re hit by just too many things close together, and we don’t have enough time to process.”
When people don’t have enough time to process everything that occurs in their life, that state of BLUR can then lead to them forgetting where they parked their car, not remembering what someone had just told them, and other basic things. Collins said she had approached others about what she defined as BLUR, and they all agreed to having the same experience when things seem like they are out of control and it happens all at once.
“The brain is kind of like the hard drive on a computer. It gets full and can’t take anymore. The brain does the same thing, so we get into psychological and emotional overload, and life just gets blurred. There’s no other word for it.”
Initially, there wasn’t a word to describe what Collins had been experiencing after the events happening all at once. But now that she has a book that ultimately defines what she experienced and having talked to others who have felt the same, she is able to help others in overcoming the feeling she went through.
“I tell you some things that will help you turn it around, and I know they work because I used them all myself. They were things I learned.”
Although Collins has now found the correct term to use for this state of confusion and uncertainty, and giving guidance on how to overcome it, she has still experienced BLUR herself after the fact, she noted. One example is when she was taking her dog to the vet, and a flashback to losing both her sister and her husband came back into her memory.
“I drove back near the hospital where [Albert] had died, and I drove into a parking lot meter that didn’t work all of a sudden. In that moment, I was back in that confused state. I was shaking. I was like, ‘Oh, my goodness. What just happened?’ And then I realized, I just rode by that hospital. When I got to the vet, I kept saying to myself, ‘This is now, not then. This is now, not then.’ Within 10 minutes, I was able to pull myself out of it, but it was strong.”
Collins added that, while people want to forget the memories of painful experiences, those memories actually help them grow.
“If you think about it, our lives depend on being able to remember where the cliffs are, where the lions and tigers are, where you’ve been hurt. So, if we try to forget, we’re not going to succeed, because we’re wired that way. What we have to do is go in there and think about, ‘What did I learn from that situation? How is now different than then? How am I wiser now?’ and shift that to a place of more knowledge, and also ask people who were there with us, because, very often, we can’t remember.”
COVID certainly helped Collins better understand the state in which she was in when so much happened all at once, she added. Everyone during that time experienced their own form of BLUR, whether it was something related to job loss, health issues, or a combination of both and some additional things thrown in the mix.
“We all went through it in some way or another. We didn’t know how COVID was communicated from one person to another. We overreacted, then we underreacted. I think, whenever there’s a series of events that we don’t thoroughly process, we run the risk of going into BLUR. And we tend to try to forget about it, put it out of our minds. The brain says, ‘This was a danger. You need to remember this.’ So, it’s important to go in there and update those memories using other people’s memories to help.”
One critical factor for people is to make sure they have others in their corner when going through moments that can cause BLUR, Collins added. There may be some cases where the person experiencing it may not remember things correctly.
“It was like a puzzle. They filled in pieces that I didn’t remember. But that is the condition of BLUR. This is how muddled we can get. Memory is a very peculiar thing. Every time we remember something, we change it.”
To listen to the full interview, be sure to download the podcast above. We talk more about Collins’ background in leadership development and explore more on the subject of BLUR.
If you are interested in finding out more about Susan Ford Collins, you can follow her on LinkedIn, Instagram, and also view her official website.
Share this post