It’s time for a little success lesson from Steve Spangler, our locally based and internationally recognized hands-on science educator.
Steve’s the guy we all must thank for introducing us to the spectacular Mentos and Diet Coke geyser experiment. This fantastic display of the volatility of gas is not only instructive of scientific concepts, it also brilliantly illustrates a common professional success trap and the messy results of falling into it.
One of the first things we learn in this experiment is that it is not the Diet Coke that causes this massive eruption. There is no explosion without the Mentos. These candies—sweet, minty and delightful on their own—when dropped into the active, high pressure environment of the soda bottle, create a stellar blow up. The whole thing creates a huge mess of brown soda.
Even though the aftermath of the eruption suggests that the soda itself was the issue, we cannot overlook the role of the Mentos. The truth is, these delectable saccharine nuggets have some significant accountability in that mess.
And therein lies the perfect lesson for our pursuit of happiness and success.
Just like inside the soda bottle, the environments in which we endeavor to create success are high pressure, dynamic, and volatile. Then we, with our own characteristics and properties, act within and upon that environment. That’s when stuff blows up.
When it does, our tendency is to look at the environment or things around us for the reasons for what happened. We take the point of view that blow ups happen to or around us. We aren’t typically inclined to consider our role in creating the circumstances that allowed things to bubble and build to the point of eruption.
We don’t recognize that we also have accountability for part of the mess. And that can trip us up on our path to success.
But what’s true is this: We are the Mentos!
It is time now to become accountable for what we introduce into our own atmosphere which causes things to react. Like how the Mentos causes the carbon dioxide in the soda bottle to react, things like how we show up, how we face challenge, and how we respond to other people in our midst causes elements in our environment to react.
It doesn’t matter where the volatility in our surroundings is coming from. Whether from not seeing the growth we expected on the bottom line, our perception of not being respected for our contribution, or from our team not functioning effectively. No matter the specific situation, a reaction will occur in your surroundings to what you are doing, thinking, or saying, or fundamentally to how you are being in the environment.
As much like the Mentos as we are in creating the intense pressure that can cause messy blow ups in our own professional environments, we have the distinct advantage of being able to change our characteristics to elicit an alternate reaction. With deliberate attention to and awareness of what we are doing to contribute to blow ups we have the opportunity to modify that. We can diffuse the pressure of the environment rather than intensify it.
But it starts with owning up to and taking accountability. So from here forward….don’t be the Mentos!