MOMENTUM PERFORMANCE COACHING BLOG

The problem with living on Someday Isle

One of my clients was recently talking to their Dad, who, sadly, at the moment is fighting a life threatening illness. During the course of the conversation, he asked his Dad, “If you could live your life again, what would you do differently?” Some of the things his Dad said didn’t surprise him, but what did surprise him was how easily these things rolled of the tongue. It became obvious to him in that moment that his Dad had spent a great deal of time thinking “if only”. He would eventually go to his grave with lots of regrets.

Apologises if you feel that the opening paragraph is a little depressing, but the fact is that most of us will go through life (and, indeed, in our business) thinking “one day I will get round to doing….” Add your own situation here it could be; sorting out my cash flow, growing my business, taking control of my time, saying, NO more, letting go of that employee that, although they may have all the skills my business needs, are toxic in the workplace, spending time with my kids, getting fit and healthy…

Why do we do it?

There could be numerous reasons/excuses for it, but what I would like to do is focus in on some that have definitely shown up in my own life, but also show up in the lives of my clients, family and friends.

We become tolerant with our present circumstances.

It is very rare in business that a problem just happens. The customer that goes bust owing you money has almost certainly been on your radar for some time, but because there isn’t a gaping hole in your cash flow, instead of chasing them, you rationalise, “They have always been good for the money in the past and I have cash at the moment, so I won’t bother them just yet”. A key word here is, ‘rationalise.’ What we are saying to ourselves is perfectly rational, but, in actual fact, we are lying to ourselves because the alternative to letting it go has a feeling of discomfort associated to it. Picking the phone up and asking for the money might mean the client gets angry for being pestered, he might take his business elsewhere, I might have to face the truth that they are in fact in financial trouble and I could lose the money….we play out in our heads all sorts of scenarios of what could go wrong.

But what if it is just an oversight from their accounting department?  What if your invoice was lost in the post? Again, there could be lots of positive reasons why the invoice hasn’t been paid, but it is still easier to give in to that uncomfortable feeling you get when you rationalise. I am going to suggest a reframe on that word to ‘rational-lies;’ we lie to ourselves because it feels more comfortable. By giving into these rational- lies, we are in fact shrinking our comfort zone or as I prefer to call it our familiarity zone -after all, a comfort zone isn’t necessarily comfortable. The problem with this way of thinking is that all the good stuff in life and business could well be on the other side of that zone.

We think we have unlimited time.

How many times have your said to yourself, “I will do it tomorrow, I promise?”   Tomorrow comes and we push it back again because there is something more urgent to deal with. We push back the important to deal with the urgent because we rational-lies we will have time to get round to the important stuff one day. What happens to that important stuff that we keep putting off well one day you can guarantee it will become urgent. That is how we could end up like the Dad of my client; with a whole load of regrets.

Fact of the matter is that, in the UK we have a life expectancy of around about 80 years and, for most of us, that seems a long way off in the future and gives us a warped perspective about time. We put things off because we think we have lots of time and we move to a new address ‘Someday Isle’. Someday Isle (I’ll) fix that cash flow problem, someday Isle (I’ll) tell that toxic member of staff to go and be successful in some other company, someday Isle (I’ll) take that holiday, someday Isle (I’ll) get round to spending more time with my kids. Problem can be that someday never arrives because there is all this urgent stuff that demands our attention and, if we choose to allow it, it will always get in the way of the important things in life.

I recently read the book, ‘Life in Half a Second,’ by Matthew Michalewicz and he had an interesting exercise it the book to bring home how we can get a more real perspective on how much time we do in actual fact have and that could if we were to choose lead us to stop putting the important things off.

The exercise is to simply take your age at your next birthday away from the 80 years you will get, if you live to the average age. Turn that answer into days by multiplying by 365 and add to that figure the days between now and your next birthday. What you have now is the number of days you could potentially have left. Does it change your perspective? Do you feel like wasting any of those days on trivial stuff? Does it make the important stuff more important?

Are you driven by pain or pleasure?

In other words, when you think of a goal that you may have, what thoughts come up for you? Do you think about all the great things that will happen as a result of achieving the goal or are you driven by the consequences of what will happen if you don’t move towards the goal? It is really important when goal setting to understand yourself. What is it that drives you? Think back to a goal that you have achieved in the past, what drove you to achieve it? What were you saying to yourself at the time? What were you looking to achieve/avoid? When you discover your preference you are now armed with the knowledge of how to speak to yourself in any moments of doubt or weakness. If you are a ‘towards driven’ person, you can tell yourself about all the great things that will happen when you get over this moment of weakness. If you are an ‘away from’ driven person, then you will almost certainly get over the moment by telling yourself about the consequences of giving into the weakness.

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