If I Can’t Understand It, Is It True?

How to save yourself when your brain hurts.

If the Earth was as small as a speck dust, how wide would the universe be?
As wide as your city?
As wide as your state or province?
As wide as your country?
As wide as your continent?

If we assume a speck of dust is 0.1 mm wide (about the size of a fine human hair, width of a piece of paper or a very fine grain of sand), the universe would be 4.3 trillion miles wide.

Let’s make that easier: That’s 4,300,000,000,000 miles.

But that’s really no help either. At some point, your head goes, “No, I can’t understand that. You lost me after a few zeroes.”

We have a hard time dealing with things we can’t imagine or fathom.
But just because we can’t understand it, doesn’t mean it’s not true.

The same thing goes when leaders get feedback.
It’s so easy for us to think, “No, I can’t understand it. You lost me at…..”
We have a hard time dealing with things we can’t imagine or fathom.
But just because we can’t understand it, doesn’t mean it’s not true.

So the next time you get “confusing” feedback from your spouse, partner, child, friend, manager, peer, or colleague, think of the speck of dust and the size of the universe.

Difficult to understand, but true.